Category Invensions & Discoveries

What is the backstory behind the invention of the Xerox machine?


Young Chester Carlson worked as a patent analyser for a manufacturer of electrical components. This required laborious paperwork – he had to submit multiple copies when registering his company’s inventions and ideas at the patent office. Each duplicate had to be written by hand. Carlson suffered from arthritis. He knew there had to be another way of doing his job.

Working in his kitchen during his free time, Carlson discovered that some materials changed their electrical properties when exposed to light called photo-conductivity. After years of research, he came up with a patent in 1942 for a reproduction technique based on this, which he named ‘electric photography. Another 20 years went by before he found a company interested enough to manufacture the machine. He was turned away by the likes of IBM, GE and RCA, until in 1960, the Haloid company finally thought his idea marketable.

The company was later named Xerox. The process became so popular all over the world that the word ‘xeroxing’ (a trademark) is used instead of the correct term-‘photocopying’!

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Who was Marie Curie?

Marie Curie (November 7, 1867-July 4, 1934) was a French Polish physicist and chemist, famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity and the discovery of polonium and radium.  She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris (La Sorbonne), and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Pantheon in Paris]

In 1867, Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland. She was a bright and curious child who did well in school. At the time, the University of Warsaw refused students who were women. But that didn’t stop young Maria! Instead, she learned in secret. She went to informal classes held in ever-changing locations, called the “Floating University.”

In 1891, the woman the world would come to know as Marie Curie made her way to Paris. There, she enrolled at the Sorbonne, a university that didn’t discriminate. Over the next few years, she completed advanced degrees in physics and mathematics. She also met French physicist Pierre Curie. The two married in 1895.

Marie and Pierre worked closely over the next decade. Marie’s biggest discoveries came from studying uranium rays. She believed these rays came from the element’s atomic structure. Curie created the term “radioactivity” to name the phenomena she had observed. Her findings led to the field of atomic physics.

Together, the Curies studied the mineral pitchblende. Through their experiments, they discovered a new radioactive element. Marie named it polonium in honor of her native Poland. The two later also discovered the element radium.

In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Marie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize. That same year, she also became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from a French university. After Pierre’s death in 1906, Marie took over his teaching job at the Sorbonne. She was the first female professor at the institution.

In 1911, Curie became the first person—of any gender—to win a second Nobel Prize. This time, she was recognized for her work in the field of chemistry. Curie’s scientific reputation was known around the world. In fact, she was invited to attend the Solvay Congress in Physics. There, she joined other famous scientists of the day, including Albert Einstein.

After World War I began in 1914, Marie used her scientific knowledge to support France’s efforts in the war. She helped to develop the use of portable X-ray machines in the field. In fact, the medical vehicles that carried these machines became known as “Little Curies.”

Marie Curie never knew the toll her work would take on her health. She died in France in 1934 from advanced leukemia related to prolonged exposure to radiation. Today, Curie’s notebooks are still too radioactive to be safely handled. They are stored in lead-lined boxes in France.

Marie Curie left a great legacy of accomplishment and scientific curiosity. Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, followed in her footsteps. Joliot-Curie received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935, one year after her mother’s death.

In 1995, Marie and Pierre Curie’s remains were placed in the Panthéon in Paris. This is known as the final resting place of France’s most distinguished citizens. Marie Curie was the first woman to be interred there on her own merit.

Credit : Wonder Opolis

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When and how the fist steam engines were built?

The invention of the steam engine during the eighteenth century had a fundamental effect on man’s progress. Some earlier forms of this machine had appeared during the previous century. The most famous were those of papin whose work provided a great stimulus for research into steam.

Papin built a boat with steam operated paddles, but builders of sailing boats were hostile to this new craft and papin could not make much progress with it. However, he had proved what a powerful force steam could be in locomotion. Thomas newcomen built a steam engine in 1705. It began to be used for pumping water out of mines about six years later, and by 1725 the engine was widely used in collieries. It continued in use for many years although it was not very efficient and worked slowly. It was James watt (1736-1819) who examined all the previous efforts and perfected them into a steam engine that worked fast and efficiently. For this engine watt invented a steam condenser that was separate from the cylinder which worked the piston.

The steam engine had a sensational success and proved itself enormously useful, especially in factories where it replaced machines that had previously been worked by water or animal power. It was eventually used as a locomotive to pull wagons.

 

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By whom the electric light bulb was born and how?

Thomas Edison had discovered in his experiments that there were certain bodies through which electric power flowed more easily. He called these good conductors and other bodies that resisted the flow of electric power he called bad conductors. When electricity tried to travel along a bad conductor the latter would resist so much that it glowed until became white-hot.

A carbon filament, for example, gave out a good deal of light; but the light did not last very long because the carbon would soon burn itself up as it was in contact with the oxygen in the air.

Edison then carried out an experiment inside a glass bulb from which he had removed all the air. This time the light of the glowing filament lasted much longer and the fist electric light bulb was born.

Carbon filaments have now been replaced by tungsten wire as its high melting point, low rate of evaporation and low electrical consumption make it most suitable for use in light bulbs. A further improvement has been the introduction of an inert gas in to the bulb. This was at first nitrogen but is now a mixture of 88 per cent argon and 12 per cent nitrogen.

 

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What are water trucks used for?

Water trucks are a vital part of mining and construction operations. Dust control, compaction, even fire prevention are among the uses of these powerful machines. Water trucks are different from regular trucks in that they have special tank specifications, custom chassis design and mounting apparatuses, and associated pumping equipment.

Water trucks come in a range of sizes and designs, with larger trucks able to haul as much as 36,000L. Some are even specially designed for mining applications and come with off-road tyres, safety equipment and are reinforced for stability over rugged terrain.

The spraying and filling capabilities also vary from truck to truck, depending on the purpose. For starters, filler pipes are typically mounted on the truck’s near side or via an opening on top of the tank. As for spaying capabilities, spray nozzles can be situated on the front, side and/or rear of the truck, and are typically controlled from inside the driver’s cab. There are also drip bars, hose reels, water cannons and more.

 

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How does a garbage truck work?

Basically, a garbage truck is a machine that making our waste squeeze and minimize the space that trash take.
A garbage truck that aims to reduce the size of your waste on landfills works easily. The garbage thrown into the garbage compactor is divided into small and collectible pieces with a metal mallet, then these garbage pieces are collected in groups in a bag or compacted.

Garbage trucks produced for the purpose of cleaning neighborhoods, streets, and cities are used by garbage disposal workers to clean the places we live in. The garbage collected by the sanitation engineers is loaded into the back of the garbage truck or the garbage containers are transported by the garbage machines and dumped into the back chamber of the garbage truck.

Later, the garbage loaded into the rear chamber of the truck is pushed to the middle part of the garbage truck by hydraulic cylinders. The press assembly at the rear of the truck shreds or compresses the waste. Later, when the garbage truck is full, the garbage collectors take it to waste collection centers. During unloading, the rear of the truck lifts up and the garbage is discharged from the rear chamber of the truck, accompanied by a hydraulic cylinder.

 

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How tow truck works?

A tow truck (also called a wrecker, a breakdown truck, recovery vehicle or a breakdown lorry) is a truck used to move disabled, improperly parked, impounded, or otherwise indisposed motor vehicles. This may involve recovering a vehicle damaged in an accident, returning one to a drivable surface in a mishap or inclement weather, or towing or transporting one via flatbed to a repair shop or other location.

Tow trucks are vehicles specially designed to take other cars or vehicles and bring them to another location. They are usually operated by private businesses or emergency services, depending on their intended use. Tow trucks can be used in accident recovery or vehicle repossession. Oversized tow trucks are typically used to haul several cars for transport or move even bigger vehicles such as aircraft and fire trucks.A tow truck works depending on the style of truck and their purpose. For emergency services, a tow truck could either be a flat-bed, wheel-lift, or a hook-and-chain truck.

The flatbed trucks are as the name implies: they are equipped with a large, flat surface on the back. Flat bed tow trucks have a pulley system that attaches underneath the front or back of the car. The bed would be angled down to form what looks like a ramp. As the tow truck driver actuates the pulley, the car is drawn onto the flat bed. The driver levels the bed out and secures the vehicle by the wheels onto the truck.

For the hook-and-chain tow truck, a boom is attached to the back of the tower’s vehicle. A chain with a hook at the end hangs from the boom. The tower can adjust the boom and the chain as needed. The chains and/or hook would be attached to the vehicle’s axle. The boom would lift the vehicle up and place the front wheels onto a rubberized area on the back of the truck, while the back wheels are free on the road.

Wheel-lift trucks are often used in repossessions because of their compactness and have less ability to damage a car. Wheel-lift tow trucks have a deployable attachment called a yoke on the back that touches only the wheels of the towed car. When activated, the yoke can be positioned under the front or rear wheels. The truck lifts the front or back of the car off the ground.

 

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How escalator machine helps to move things?

Escalators are one of the largest, most expensive machines people use on a regular basis, but they’re also one of the simplest.

At its most basic level, an escalator is just a simple variation on the conveyer belt. A pair of rotating chain loops pulls a series of stairs in a cons­tant cycle, moving a lot of people a short distance at a good speed.

The core of an escalator is a pair of chains, looped around two pairs of gears. An electric motor turns the drive gears at the top, which rotate th­e chain loops. A typical escalator uses a 100 horsepower motor to rotate the gears. The motor and chain system are housed inside the truss, a metal structure extending between two floors.

Instead of moving a flat surface, as in a conveyer belt, the chain loops move a series of steps. The coolest thing about an escalator is the way these steps move. As the chains move, the steps always stay level. At the top and bottom of the escalator, the steps collapse on each other, creating a flat platform. This makes it easier to get on and off the escalator. In the diagram below, you can see how the escalator does all of this.

Each step in the escalator has two sets of wheels, which roll along two separate tracks. The upper set (the wheels near the top of the step) are connected to the rotating chains, and so are pulled by the drive gear at the top of the escalator. The other set of wheels simply glides along its track, following behind the first set.

 

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How crane machine helps to move things?

Cranes combine simple machines to lift extremely heavy objects. In balance-style cranes, the crane’s beam is balanced at a point, called the fulcrum. This allows it to lift heavy objects with a relatively small force. In this way, the crane’s beam acts as a simple lever. Cranes also make use of the pulley, another simple machine. Tower cranes often have more than one pulley. This helps it multiply its force to lift heavy objects.  

Cranes exist in an enormous variety of forms, each tailored to a specific use. Sizes range from the smallest jib cranes, used inside workshops, to the tallest tower cranes, used for constructing high buildings. Mini-cranes are also used for constructing high buildings, in order to facilitate constructions by reaching tight spaces. Finally, we can find larger floating cranes, generally used to build oil rigs and salvage sunken ships.

Some lifting machines do not strictly fit the above definition of a crane, but are generally known as cranes, such as stacker cranes and loader cranes.

 

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How grocery trolley machine helps to move things?

Shopping carts (also known as shopping trolleys or shopping baskets in some parts of the world) are a great example of a simple machine at work. They consist of only two main parts: a metallic basket and a set of wheels. The basket has a handle attached to it (which helps in steering the cart), and it’s installed above a set of four small wheels that make pushing, pulling and steering the cart very convenient.

It’s quite clear that a shopping cart consists of very simple components, but it is of tremendous assistance to shoppers while they roam throughout the shopping mart looking for a particular flavor of cookie or a big bottle of anti-dandruff shampoo.

In some countries, including India, the United Kingdom and Australia, there is a rather queer problem with trolleys; they seem to have a mind of their own! Suppose you try to turn a trolley towards, say, the left. It would definitely turn, but not towards the left; it would either go towards the right or move straight ahead. The same thing happens when you push them in the forward direction; it goes left or right unless you apply a surprisingly large amount of force to move it in the desired direction.

 

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How potter’s wheel machine helps to move things?

The earliest wheel and axle machines were used as potter’s wheels. A potter’s wheel is a flat, round stone. By applying effort to a pedal, the potter makes the stone spin on its axle. The potter works a piece of clay between her hands on the spinning stone, shaping the clay into a pot. Clay pots were very important in everyday life in ancient times. They were used to store food, water, and medicines.

A potter’s wheel may occasionally be referred to as a “potter’s lathe”. However, that term is better used for another kind of machine that is used for a different shaping process, turning, similar to that used for shaping of metal and wooden articles.

The techniques of jiggering and jolleying can be seen as extensions of the potter’s wheel: in jiggering, a shaped tool is slowly brought down onto the plastic clay body that has been placed on top of the rotating plaster mould. The jigger tool shapes one face, the mould the other. The term is specific to the shaping of flat ware, such as plates, whilst a similar technique, jolleying, refers to the production of hollow ware, such as cups.

 

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What is CD-ROM?

CD-ROM’s are important tools for computer users. CD-ROM’s are discs that store words, music, and images. Encyclopedias, games, and other programs that would require greater storage capacity can fit onto one CD-ROM. CD-ROM stands for computer disc read-only memory.

When you put a CD-ROM into your computer’s drive, files are copied from the disc to the computer’s hard drive. These files tell the computer how to access all the information on the CD-ROM.

A DVD (digital video disc) is the same size as a CD-ROM but can store much more information. Unlike a CD or CD-ROM, the DVD is able to record data (information) on both the top and the bottom of the plastic disc. And it can record two layers of data on each side. A DVD player can also play CD-ROM’s.

A DVD contains layers of digital data encoded in tiny pits. In a DVD player, a lens focuses a laser beam on the desired layer. As the disc rotates, the pits and the flat areas between them reflect patterns of light to a photo detector, which changes the patterns into electrical signals. A single layer of a DVD has more pits, placed closer together, than an ordinary CD has, and so can store more data.

 

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What is digital code?

Computers save us a lot of work—and a lot of time. The processor of the computer follows step-by-step instructions-exactly and quickly. This series of steps is called a program. A program might be thousands of steps long, but the processor can run the program in less than a second.

The program is stored in the computer’s memory. It is stored as a series of 1’s and 0’s. This is called a digital code. Sometimes the code is stored on a CD-ROM or inside the computer on the hard drive. But the computer finds it when it needs it.

When you have finished a report, you tell the computer to print it. The computer sends the digital code to the printer. The printer has a microprocessor that changes the code into letters—so you and your teacher can read it.

Laser printers are the fastest printers. A beam of laser light makes an electrically charged image on a rotating, cylinder. The charged areas attract powdered or liquid ink called toner, onto the cylinder. The cylinder transfers the toner with the image onto the paper. The paper then passes through fuser rollers. These rollers seal the toner to the page so it doesn’t smear.

 

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What is binary code?

As electricity moves through the circuits in the computer, millions of tiny switches are turned on and off. The computer reads a code of zeros and ones. Think of the code as switches in a line. The ones are switches that are turned on, the zeros are switches that are turned off.

The code is called digital. Because it uses only two numbers in different patterns, it is also called binary code. When you type an A on the keyboard, the computer stores the A in its memory as 01000001. Each time you click the mouse, or press a key, it is changed to binary code and stored in the computer’s memory.

It’s not only numbers and text — binary is used for the most complex data. From images to video frames, at the most granular level of the data, it is binary code.

For example, an image is built up of hundreds of thousands of pixels, with each pixel containing an RGB value stored in binary code.

These binary codes fill RGB and according to the intensity generated from those codes, the intensity numbers are thrown at a video driver program. That program distributes those colors to the million crystals on your screen — and an image is seen by us!

 

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How microprocessors work?

Telephones have them. Most watches have them. They help make our cars safe. They make our telephones work more quickly. And space travel would be impossible without them.

They are microprocessors. They make our lives easier in many ways. A microprocessor is a type of microchip that can hold the signals needed to run electronic devices. Some microchips only store information. But if the microchip is also able to “figure things out,” then it’s called a microprocessor. A microprocessor works faster than your brain. And it can fit on the tip of your finger!

The surface of this tiny part is cut with grooves. Each groove is packed with thousands of tiny electrical switches. The switches are connected by thin metal wires. All the wires link together-a group called a circuit.

Microprocessors are also called integrated circuits. Equipment such as calculators made with integrated circuits are small, light, and easy to use.

When you use such equipment, bursts of electric currents speed along the circuits. These bursts are like messages. They tell the equipment what to do.

The most important part of a computer is its microchip, or integrated circuit. A microchip can fit on a fingertip. When seen under a microscope, the tiny grooves and wires look like a maze.

The first integrated circuit was made for the U.S. space program in 1959. Equipment on the spacecraft had to be very small. All electrical signals for the equipment were put on a strip of material called silicon. Later, circuits were made into tiny squares called silicon chips.

 

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How hologram works?

Look at a picture of yourself. Now look at it from a different angle. Do you see another side of yourself in the picture? No, but if you were looking at a hologram you could walk around the picture and see the left side of your body, your back, your right side, your front, and the top of your head.

A hologram is an image that looks three dimensional-that is, it seems to have depth, height, and width. Some credit cards have holograms on them. Holograms also appear in advertisements, artwork, and jewellery.

A hologram is made with laser beams. A laser beam is a kind of coloured light. One laser beam is bounced off a mirror then off the subject and onto a special film. Another laser beam is also bounced off a mirror and onto the film. Where the two beams cross on the film, they make a tiny pattern of bright and dark stripes, a hologram.

Guiding a laser beam onto the film will produce light rays that seem to come from the original subject. The resulting three dimensional image appears to hover in space. You can look over, under, and around the subject. When a hologram is viewed with regular light or sunlight, the image appears with rainbowlike bands of colour.

To make a hologram of an object, such as this teddy bear, a laser is aimed into a mirror then at the object. Another laser is reflected off a mirror and then onto the film. The film records the hologram.

 

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How DVD player works?

Is a DVD the same thing as a CD? Although DVD’s looks like CDs, they are different. A DVD works like a CD, but it can hold more information. A CD usually records only sound, but a DVD records pictures as well as sound.

Each side of a DVD can contain two layers. Each of these layers can store data. CD’s have only one layer of information.

Before CD’s and DVD’s were invented, people used cassette tapes and videotapes. Cassette tapes record and play sounds, and videotapes record and play sounds and images.

Cassette tapes, videotapes, CD’s, and DVD’s can be played again and again. That’s one of the reasons people like them so much.

A DVD can be played in a DVD player. A DVD player is often connected to a television set. When a DVD is played, pictures appear on the TV screen and sound comes out of speakers.

 

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How CD player works?

Cassette tapes sound good when they are new. But after a while, they start to sound scratchy. A compact disc, or CD, produces much better sound. It is played using a special light called a laser beam. Only the beam of light touches the CD, so it stays like new.

Sound is stored on a CD in a digital (numerical) code-a string of 0’s and 1’s. When a CD is made a microphone turns sound vibrations into electrical signals. Then a machine changes the signals into a digital code.

This code is fed into a powerful laser. As a blank disc turns, the laser cuts billions of tiny pits that represent the digital code into the surface of the disc.

Inside a CD player is another, less powerful, laser. When the CD is played, the laser reads the position of the pits. The laser reads from the centre to the edge of the disc as the CD turns. These pulses of light are turned into electrical signals. The signals make the speakers vibrate. Then you hear the sounds.

Inside a CD player, a laser beam shines on a mirror and through a lens onto the pits on the CD. When the beam hits a pit, the light is scattered. When it hits between pits, the light is reflected straight back. A sensor reads the patterns of reflected light and turns the patterns into electrical signals. These signals are used to produce sounds.

 

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How toilet machine works?

You probably don’t think of a toilet as a machine. But that’s what it is. You press down the flush lever, and the toilet does the work.

Most toilets have two main parts-a tank and a bowl. The tank sits on the back of the toilet bowl. Both contain water. The bottom of the tank has an opening with a plug. The plug keeps the water in the tank from flowing into the bowl. Pushing down the lever to flush the toilet lifts up the plug.

Water then rushes out of the tank. It flows into the toilet bowl through small holes all around the rim of the bowl.

The fresh water pushes the dirty water into the drainpipe. The plug closes when the tank is empty. Fresh water then flows through an inlet tube into the tank. And the tank is ready for the next flush.

 

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How hairdryer works?

With a hairdryer, we don’t have to wait for our hair to dry.

Inside the hairdryer, electricity travels on a pathway of wire. The electricity travels easily on most of the wire in the pathway. This is called conducting electricity. The path is open. The electrons in the wire are free to move.

But some metals resist, or slow down, the electric current flowing through the hairdryer. When the electrons slow down, they bump into one another as they move through the wire.

Then the wire heats up. The harder they bump and push, the hotter the wire gets.

When you plug in a hairdryer and turn it on, electricity travels through it. It powers a tiny fan. Then the electricity travels to coiled wire made of resistant metals. These wires heat up. The fan blows heat from these wires out through a vent. This is the hot air that dries your hair.

Inside an electric hairdryer, there is a coil of wire that heats up. The fan blows the heat out to dry your hair.

 

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How vacuum cleaner works?

Brrrrahhhh! It may sound like a roaring monster, but it’s only a vacuum cleaner doing its dirty work. The noise comes from an electric motor that runs a fan. The fan helps the vacuum cleaner suck the dirt up the hose and into the bag.

When you turn on the vacuum cleaner, the fan starts. It draws air from the bottom of the vacuum cleaner up into the dust bin or bag. As the air moves up, it leaves an empty space at the bottom of the vacuum cleaner. Any empty space is called a vacuum. That’s how the vacuum cleaner got its name.

A brush at the bottom of the cleaner helps loosen dirt in the rug. This brush is called a beater brush. A rubber belt connects the brush to the motor. As the motor spins, the brush spins and makes the rug vibrate. The vibration loosens the dirt. The vacuum pulls more air and dirt into the dust bin or bag.

When the dust bin gets full, it needs to be emptied. Or, when the bag gets full, it needs to be thrown away and replaced with a fresh bag.

 

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How washing machine works?

Are your favourite jeans dirty? No problem. Put them in the washer. They’ll be clean and ready to wear in no time. When people washed clothes by hand, it took all day. After the clothes were washed, each item had to be twisted to wring out the water.

Today, a washing machine does all the work. First you choose the wash setting. Then you add your clothes and detergent. When you turn the machine on, the machine fills the washing basket, or drum, with water. A tiny computer chip, called a sensor shuts off the waterflow when the level is high enough.

The clothes twist or tumble about in the soapy water. When the clothes are clean, a pump drains the dirty water from the machine. Then the rinse cycle fills the drum with clean water. When the rinse water is pumped out, the timer switches the motor to a faster speed, and the drum spins very quickly. The clothes are flung against the sides of the drum. The water is forced out of the clothes and pumped down the drain. Now your clothes are ready to be tumble dried.

 

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How toaster works?

Toast is tasty for breakfast or a snack. And with a toaster, it’s so easy to make.

First, you put a slice of bread in each toaster slot. A rack holds it in place. Then you push down the lever. The lever is connected to the rack and to a spring. The spring unwinds, but a hook holds the rack down. The heat turns on. The coils inside each slot glow orange.

The heat from the coils toasts the bread. It also heats a metal switch. The switch is made from two types of metal. One type expands from the heat. The other does not. As one half of the metal expands, the switch bends. When it bends, it moves a small bar. This bar pushes against the hook. The rack is released. The spring makes the rack and the toast pop up!

 

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How refrigerator works?

Just a few minutes after you put warm food in a refrigerator, the food feels cooler. The refrigerator carries the heat from the food into the room outside.

How does a refrigerator do this? When a liquid changes to a gas it evaporates. As it evaporates, it takes heat from the things around it. Also, when a gas changes to a liquid, it condenses, and gives off heat. 

Refrigerators are cooled by a special liquid that is easily turned into a gas and then back to a liquid. First, the cool liquid is pumped to tubes inside the refrigerator, where it evaporates. As the liquid changes to a gas, it takes heat from the air inside the refrigerator. This makes the refrigerator cooler.

Then the warm gas is pumped into tubes outside the refrigerator, where it condenses. As the gas changes back to a liquid, it gives off heat. When the liquid cools, it is pumped back into the refrigerator. There it evaporates again. In and out it goes, carrying heat from the refrigerator and keeping the food cold.

Do you ever feel chilled when you get out of the bath or after swimming? This is because the water on your skin is evaporating off your body. It goes into the air where you can’t see it. As this happens, it takes heat away from your body, making you feel chilled.

Water vapour in the air sometimes clings to objects. On a hot day water vapour sticks to a cold glass of water. As more vapour sticks to the glass, it condenses, forming droplets of water on the outside of the glass.

 

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How thermometer works?

Are you hot or cold? A thermometer will take your temperature. There are many different kinds used for different purposes. Take your pick.

One type of thermometer has a thin glass tube partly filled with liquid. When the air is warm, the liquid in the tube becomes warm and rises. It rises because heat makes a liquid expand, or take up more space. The warmer it gets, the more space it needs. When the temperature drops, the liquid contracts, or takes up less space, so it moves down the tube. The liquid in many thermometers is a silver-coloured metal called mercury. Some thermometers are filled with coloured alcohol.

A digital thermometer has a metal probe. When the thermometer is turned on, a battery inside sends around an electric current. If the probe is warm, the current will move easily. If the probe is cool, the current will not move as easily. The thermometer shows a temperature reading based on how easily the current moves.

Doctors often use an IR thermometer to detect infrared rays from a person’s eardrum. The hotter you are, the more radiation the thermometer detects. The thermometer converts the amount of radiation to a temperature reading.

 Standard thermometer contains a liquid that moves up when it becomes warm. The liquid drops down when it cools. The lines indicate the temperature.

The lines and numbers on the thermometer indicate degrees. They tell you how much the temperature changed. Degrees are marked with the symbol º. The number 0 ºC is the temperature at which water freezes. This is the same temperature as 32 ºF. The letter C stands for Celsius, and the letter F stands for Fahrenheit.

 

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Who are inventors?

Inventors are men and women who make things that make our life easier.

Many inventions are simple. In 1865 in the U.S.A., S.E. Pettee invented a machine for making paper bags. And Earle Dickson invented the first ready-to-use bandage in 1920.

Some inventions take many years to develop. The great Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci made drawings of his ideas about 500 years ago. He drew an aeroplane, a parachute, and a helicopter. It was more than 300 years before any of these were made.

The American Thomas A. Edison invented the frst light bulb in 1879. But several other men worked on similar designs before Edison did.

To keep their ideas safe and prove they thought of it first, inventors apply for a patent. The patent gives the inventor the right to make his invention or sell his idea. Edison had ore patents than anyone else – he has 1,093!

 

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Which are the inventions we see at home?

Every day we use things that make our lives easier. We flip a switch to turn on the lights. We turn on the tap and fill a glass with water. Our clothes have zippers and snaps that make getting dressed easier. We have alarm clocks to wake us.

What would life be like without lamps or zippers? How would you clean your teeth without a toothbrush or dental floss? Our homes are filled with all sorts of helpful inventions.

The refrigerator allows the modern household to keep food fresh for longer than before. Freezers allow people to freeze food and extend its expiry date for even longer periods.

A washing machine is a machine that uses water to wash laundry, such as clothing and sheets. Bendix Corporation introduced the first domestic automatic washing machine in 1937. Imagine this; this very common household appliance was not available prior to that date!

A television set, more commonly called TV, is a device used for the purpose of viewing television broadcast. It was introduced in 1920 in mechanical form.

However, the modern color television was not introduced until 1940.

The Television has become commonplace in our homes, offices, and institutions, particularly as a prime source for advertising, entertainment, and news.

 

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Why did Sir Isaac Newton stick a needle in his eye?

He did indeed. Or more accurately, he pushed a needle behind his eye and with it, indented the sclera. The needle never entered the eye.

By doing so, he stimulated his retina in many spots and noted a “phosphene” or glowing spot that resulted from the pressure. From this he was able to “map” his own retina against where he saw the spots. This map conformed to the map on the back of a rabbit’s retina that he made by shining light from a window, through a pinhole, into the rabbit’s eye that had an opening cut away from the sclera allowing him to see into the rabbit’s eye.

And thus Newton showed how the rays of light enter our eye by an optical system now called the camera design. And how the retina represents the outside world but with inversion (up is down and left is right).

Newton was a dedicated scientist who was willing to accept some pain and personal risk to satisfy his curiosity.

 

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Who invented the computer mouse?

The computer mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s, and patented in 1970. Dr Engelbart who died on July 2, 2013 also invented a number of other interactive information systems that helped make the computer a user-friendly tool. Before pioneers like specialized machines those only trained scientists could operate.

The computer mouse was popularised by its inclusion as standard equipment with the Apple Macintosh in 1984.

Why was it called ‘mouse’? The object’s shape and tail-like cord suggested the name.

A year after the mouse was invented, a researcher named Jack Kelley created the first mouse pad.

 

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Who invented the escalator?

The escalator is a moving staircase that helps people to move between floors at public places like malls, train, stations, airports etc.

The first idea of “revolving stairs” was patented by Nathan Ames in 1859 in USA, but it never saw the light of day. In the 1890s, American engineer Jesse W. Reno installed an “inclined elevator” at Coney Island, an amusement park in New York City. The 7-feet long conveyor belt was inclined at a 25 degree angle. It was the first example of a working escalator. The term ‘escalator’ was coined by Charles Seeberger, an American inventor, from the Latin word scala for steps and the word ‘elevator’, which had already been invented. He joined hands with the pioneering elevator company, Otis, and produced the first commercial wooden escalator which won the first prize at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle in France. Soon, escalators were installed in Europe and USA. As the Otis Elevator Company held the trademark rights to the word ‘escalator’ until 1950, other manufacturers called them by different names like Moving Stairs and Motorstair. Today, Otis and Schindler are the largest makers of escalators in the world.

 

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WHO INVENTED THE GRAMOPHONE?

In 1888, the German-American inventor Emile Berliner (1851-1929) invented a system of sound recording that could be mass produced. He devised a flat disc, called a gramophone record. On the disc, a groove ran in a spiral from the outer edge of the disc to the centre. Side-to-side, rather than up-and-down movements of the stylus recorded and played the sound vibrations. Once one disc had been made, it could be used as a mould to make a metal die, which could then stamp out exact copies of the disc in large numbers.

Early attempts to design a consumer sound or music playing gadget began in 1877. That year, Thomas Edison invented his tinfoil phonograph, which played recorded sounds from round cylinders. Unfortunately, the sound quality on the phonograph was bad and each recording only lasted for only one play.

Edison’s phonograph was followed by Alexander Graham Bell’s graphophone. The graphophone used wax cylinders, which could be played many times. However, each cylinder had to be recorded separately, making the mass reproduction of the same music or sounds impossible with the graphophone.

On November 8, 1887, Emile Berliner, a German immigrant working in Washington D.C., patented a successful system for sound recording. Berliner was the first inventor to stop recording on cylinders and start recording on flat disks or records.

The first records were made of glass. They were then made using zinc and eventually plastic. A spiral groove with sound information was etched into the flat record. To play sounds and music, the record was rotated on the gramophone. The “arm” of the gramophone held a needle that read the grooves in the record by vibration and transmitted the information to the gramophone speaker.

Berliner’s disks (records) were the first sound recordings that could be mass-produced by creating master recordings from which molds were made. From each mold, hundreds of disks were pressed.

Berliner founded “The Gramophone Company” to mass manufacture his sound disks (records) as well as the gramophone that played them. To help promote his gramophone system, Berliner did a couple of things. First, he persuaded popular artists to record their music using his system. Two famous artists who signed early on with Berliner’s company were Enrico Caruso and Dame Nellie Melba. The second smart marketing move Berliner made came in 1908 when he used Francis Barraud’s painting of “His Master’s Voice” as his company’s official trademark.

Berliner later sold the licensing rights to his patent for the gramophone and method of making records to the Victor Talking Machine Company (RCA), which later made the gramophone a successful product in the United States. Meanwhile, Berliner continued doing business in other countries. He founded the Berliner Gram-o-phone Company in Canada, the Deutsche Gramophone in Germany and the U.K based Gramophone Co., Ltd.

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WHAT WAS THE EARLIEST SOUND RECORDING?

In 1877, the American inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931) experimented with a machine called a “phonograph”, which converted sound vibrations into grooves on a cylinder covered with tinfoil. A sharp needle, called a stylus, was attached to a diaphragm at the narrow end of a large horn. When sound waves travelled into the horn, they made the diaphragm vibrate, causing the needle to move up and down, and cutting a groove of varying depth in the tinfoil. If this process was reversed, so that the needle was made to run over the grooves, it caused the diaphragm to vibrate. Vibrations passed through the horn, pushing air in front of them, to reach the listener’s ear as sound. Later, wax-coated cylinders were used instead of tinfoil, to give a better result.

The history of sound recording – which has progressed in waves, driven by the invention and commercial introduction of new technologies — can be roughly divided into four main periods:

  • the “Acoustic” era, 1877 to 1925
  • the “Electrical” era, 1925 to 1945
  • the “Magnetic” era, 1945 to 1975
  • The “Digital” era, 1975 to the present day.

Experiments of capturing sound on a recording medium for preservation and reproduction began in earnest during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Many pioneering attempts to record and reproduce sound were made during the latter half of the 19th century – notably Scott’s Phonautograph of 1857 – and these efforts culminated in the invention of the phonograph by Thomos Edison in 1877. Digital recording emerged in the late 20th century and has since flourished with the popularity of digital music and online streaming services.

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WHO INVENTED THE LOCOMOTIVE?

A Locomotive is an engine that can travel under its own power, not pulled by horses, for example. But we usually think of it as running on tracks, or tramways, as they were first called. In 1804, Richard Trevithick (1771-1833), an English inventor, designed a train to pull coal wagons in a Welsh colliery. Trevithick was convinced that steam engines had a great future and later travelled to Peru and Costa Rica, where he introduced steam engines into the silver mines.

In 1802, Richard Trevithick patented a “high pressure engine” and created the first steam-powered locomotive engine on rails.  Trevithick wrote on February 21, 1804, after the trial of his High Pressure Tram-Engine, that he “carry’d ten tons of Iron, five wagons, and 70 Men…above 9 miles…in 4 hours and 5 Mints.”  Though a ponderous-sounding journey, it was the first step toward an invention that would utterly change man’s relationship to time and space. 

George Stephenson and his son, Robert, built the first practical steam locomotive.  Stephenson built his “travelling engine” in 1814, which was used to haul coal at the Killingworth mine.  In 1829, the Stephenson built the famous locomotive Rocket, which used a multi-tube boiler, a practice that continued in successive generations of steam engines.  The Rocket won the competition at the Rain-hill Trials held to settle the question of whether it was best to move wagons along rails by fixed steam engines using a pulley system or by using locomotive steam engines. The Rocket won the £500 prize with its average speed of 13 miles per hour (without pulling a load, the Rocket attained speeds up to 29 miles per hour), beating out Braithwaite and Erickson’s Novelty and Timothy Hackworth’s Sans Pareil.  The Stephenson incorporated elements into their engines that were used in succeeding generations of steam engines.

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WHAT DO THE NUMBERS BEFORE STEAM TRAIN NAMES MEAN?

Steam locomotives are described by the arrangement of their leading, driving and trailing wheels. In fact, only the driving wheels are connected to the cylinders that provide the engine’s power. So a 2-8-2 has two leading wheels, eight driving wheels and two trailing wheels.

Under the Whyte notation for the classification of Steam locomotives, 2-8-2 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, usually in a leading truck, eight powered and coupled driving wheels on four axles and two trailing wheels on one axle, usually in a trailing truck. This configuration of steam locomotive is most often referred to as a Mikado, frequently shortened to Mike.

At times it was also referred to on some railroads in the United States of America as the McAdoo Mikado and, during the Second World War, the MacArthur.

The notation 2-8-2T indicates a tank locomotive of this wheel arrangement, the “T” suffix indicating a locomotive on which the water is carried in side-tanks mounted on the engine rather than in an attached tender.

The 2-8-2 wheel arrangement allowed the locomotive’s firebox to be placed behind instead of above the driving wheels, thereby allowing a larger firebox that could be both wide and deep. This supported a greater rate of combustion and thus a greater capacity for steam generation, allowing for more power at higher speeds. Allied with the larger driving wheel diameter which was possible when they did not impinge on the firebox, it meant that the 2-8-2 was capable of higher speeds than a 2-8-0 with a heavy train. These locomotives did not suffer from the imbalance of reciprocating parts as much as did the 2-6-2 or the 2-10-2, because the center of gravity was between the second and third drivers instead of above the centre driver.

The first 2-8-2 locomotive was built in 1884. It was originally named Calumet by Angus Sinclair, in reference to the 2-8-2 engines built for the Chicago & Calumet Terminal Railway (C&CT). However, this name did not take hold.

The wheel arrangement name “Mikado” originated from a group of Japanese type 9700 2-8-2 locomotives that were built by Baldwin Works for the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge Nippon Railway of Japan in 1897. In the 19th century, the Emperor of Japan was often referred to as “the Mikado” in English. Also, the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado had premiered in 1885 and achieved great popularity in both Britain and America.

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WHICH WAS THE WORLD’S FIRST PUBLIC RAILWAY?

The first public railway in the world to run a regular service was opened on 27 September 1825. It ran between Stockton and Darlington in the north of England. A steam train called The Locomotion pulled 34 wagons, some of which carried coal, while others were adapted to carry passengers. Both the locomotive and its track were built to the design of George Stephenson (1781-1848). Stephenson’s background was in mining engineering. Coal mines had long used tracks to move wagons of coal, and it was with steam engines for these wagons that Stephenson first experimented.

“The world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives, its first line connected collieries near Shildon with Stockton and Darlington… The movement of coal to ships rapidly became a lucrative business, and the line was soon extended to a new port and town at Middlesbrough. While coal waggons were hauled by steam locomotives from the start, passengers were carried in coaches drawn by horses until carriages hauled by steam locomotives were introduced in 1833″. 

One of the significant results of the success of the Stockton and Darlington project was the extent to which it gave support to plans for building a railway between Liverpool and Manchester.

 

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HOW WILL MOTOR CARS CHANGE IN THE FUTURE?

Two areas of car design have been researched very thoroughly in the past few years. One of these concerns fuel consumption and exhaust gases, as the realization grows that the world’s fossil fuels are polluting the atmosphere. The other is safety. It is likely that future cars will be able to prevent some accidents by assessing – the distance to an obstacle and taking evasive action without prompting from the driver.

After decades of auto technology that had evolved only marginally since the mid-20th century, experts say we’re now seeing a super-fast shift that’s comparable to the industry’s early days. “In the last 30 to 40 years the way cars were manufactured didn’t change much,” says Ozgur Tohumcu, CEO of the car-tech company Tantalum. “But now things are fundamentally changing — and very quickly.”  Quickly, indeed. Here’s a look at some of the cool innovations we’re likely to see in the next generation of cars.

Voice commands for your car

High on the list of innovations is the introduction of Alexa-like personal assistants. “You’ll be able to interact with your car through voice command,” says Tohumcu. One scenario: You might be driving and looking for a parking space. All you’ll have to do is say “Find parking,” and your vehicle will navigate you to the closest, least expensive, safest garage, based on your programmed preferences, and then pay the fee with your credit card.

Mechanic on wheels

Cars will be able to diagnose their own mechanical problems. “If it’s a software fix that’s needed, you’ll get an upgrade,” Tohumcu says. If you need to take the car to a mechanic, the car will research the options and book itself an appointment. (It will be able to renew its own insurance and look for better deals, too.)

More map options

As navigational maps get overlaid with more data, you’ll be able to choose your route based on a broadening array of criteria, including “least polluted.” “People will be taken from point A to point B through better air-quality routes,” Tohumcu says. “If you’re an older person or you have chronic asthma, this becomes a real benefit.” Other possibilities: “safest route” and “most scenic.”

Custom-designed vehicles

Using 3D printing technology, Arizona-based Local Motors is 3D-printing cars. “They work with pre-determined engine types and 3D print cars on top of those engines,” Tohumcu says. “You can pick and choose features from different cars to create your own.” That means we may see all kinds of interesting-looking cars on the street, he says. “These cars won’t be cheap, but if you really want to stand out it’s one way to go.”

Shared autonomous vehicles

Self-driving cars are already here and doing well in safety tests, says Alan Brown, executive vice president at NuVinAir, an automotive-industry startup, who previously spent 27 years with Volkswagen. The twist he predicts: People will be able to share these cars. “Cars today sit unused 80 percent of the time,” he says. “If the car is self-driving, we have a wonderful opportunity for people to co-own it and pay only for the portion of the car they use.” He sees the potential, in particular, for younger people who may not be able to afford their own vehicle, people with disabilities who aren’t able to drive, and older people who may need to stop driving.

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HOW DO RACING CAR DRIVERS ACHIEVE HIGH SPEEDS?

Formula 1 driver cannot win races by themselves. Large teams of mechanics and technicians are needed to enable the car to perform well. The driver spends more time testing the car than he does racing, and no aspect of the vehicle is ignored. Even while the car is waiting at the start of a race, special electric heaters are warming the tyres so that they give their best performance. Every second counts in motor racing, so mechanics practice until they can change all four tyres of the car in under three seconds! Controlling the car at high speed puts enormous physical and mental strain on the driver. There is no power steering in Formula 1 cars, so the driver needs great strength and split-second reactions.

Drag racing sounds easy, but it is one of the most difficult types of game racing. If you want to achieve the race, you must prepare and check all the things, such as a good racing equipment, the racing system, and the driver status. For this, the most important thing that you should prepare a good battery for your racing car.

A good racing device is the indispensable for racing, you should prepare a good racing car and long driving battery to keep the car long run. As we know that long driving battery should have high capacity, but this will also add its weight. More weight will lower the racing speed that may lose the race.

Choosing a racing oil to reduce the friction for maximum power and cooler engine temperatures, resulting in improved lap times and longer-lasting equipment.

Practice to increase your reaction time in a drag race whenever you get the chance, every driver and every car is different, and they are affected by variables such as turbo lag, tire type and the type of fuel used.

Many people know that if you want to keep racing car driving long and maintain fast racing speed, you should increase the battery voltage. Tattu battery adopts leading-edge battery technology that can provide an optimal solution for racing car. It will be the best choice for your race car.

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WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A VETERAN CAR AND A VINTAGE CAR?

A veteran car was made between 1896 and 1903, while a vintage car was built after 1904 and before 1930.

At what indeterminable point in time does an old car become a Classic? It may be easier to find the true location of Camelot than be able to find agreement between various groups of automotive enthusiasts as to what constitutes a Classic Car. It is very easy to define a Veteran Car, as they were, quite simply, built before the First World War. Similarly a Vintage Car was built before 1930, and Post Vintage referred to cars from the 30s until the end of WWII, however after this point it all becomes a bit hazy.

Some automotive organisations may refer to a car made in the 1940s as a Classic, while others my consider cars from the 1980s to Classics. Classic Car insurance generally kicks in for cars 20 years and older. However, there is also the UK Road Tax exemption on Classic Cars. When this was first introduced, a car needs to be more than 25 years old to be eligible. However now, due to a change in the rules, this only applies to cars built before 1973. So does that make everything built pre-1973 officially classic and everything built after not and never to be deemed so?

Few people would deny that the Ferrari Testarossa was a “Classic” from the moment she was launched in 1984, however hardly anyone would deem a VW Passat from the early 70s as a Classic. The Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs is campaigning for the reintroduction of the rolling scheme, but with a 30 year threshold. Yet, as shown above, defining a Classic by age alone oversimplifies it somewhat.

For a car to be considered and appreciated as a Classic there needs to be an aesthetic appeal. This could be for its design credentials or an element of timeless engineering beauty, combined with the ability to turn heads. When pulling up at a country hotel, do other guests stop to stare or ask questions? A Classic Car, like a classic beauty, needs to have that oh-so-subtle envy factor.

Being pragmatic, there is a value equation with Classic Cars which is associated with rarity, desirability and of course age. If the car has stopped going down in value and begun to rise again then that indicates that it has reached Classic status. A concourse car is more desirable than a restored version.

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WHAT IS A CUSTOM CAR?

A custom car is one that has been altered from the manufacturer’s original specifications to suit the wishes of its owner. This may involve painting it with extraordinary designs, making the engine more powerful, or even “stretching” it by cutting the entire car in half and inserting additional body parts. Some cars have been made very long indeed by this method.

The one Custom car has 26 wheels and contains a swimming pool! There’s a helicopter parked on the car’s boot area. However, it’s not a fake and rather is the world’s longest car ever built. Called the “American Dream,” this massive limousine was built by California custom car guru Jay Ohrberg. It measures in at a stunning 100 feet long, which earned it the title of being the longest car, certified by Guinness World Records in the mid-’90s. Ohrberg chose a golden 1970s Cadillac Eldorado as the starting point for his mega project, which he began working on in the late 1980s. The 100-foot long stretched limo has a whopping 26 wheels and two separate driver’s cabins.

To make the American Dream even more special, Ohrberg decided to give it some of the most outrageous amenities, which include a helipad. In addition to that, the stretched limo has a Jacuzzi, diving board, king-sized water bed, as well as a small lace and candelabra-festooned living room. The American Dream was a show car which was trailered on flatbed trucks from location to location. It was leased to a company which used it as a promotional vehicle until the lease ran out. It was left abandoned in a New Jersey warehouse for many years before it resurfaced in 2012 at a salvage auction in a very bad state, which seemed like the end of the road for the American Dream. However, the New York’s Automotive Teaching Museum acquired it in 2014.

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WHAT ARE THE MAIN SYSTEMS OF A CAR?

Like the human body, a car can be thought of as having systems with different functions, all working together to make the vehicle operate effectively.

 The modern vehicle is made up of a variety of parts and components all working together to achieve a final product: “The Car”. These parts and  components are assembled in groups to perform various tasks. These groups are referred to as systems. There are many systems that make up the modern vehicle, some working with others to perform a larger, sometimes more complex, task and others working individually in order to accomplish an individual job. The following is a list of the major systems that make up the modern vehicle.

  • The Engine – including lubrication and cooling.
  • The Fuel System – including evaporative emission.
  • The Ignition System
  • The Electrical System – including starting and charging.
  • The Exhaust System –including emission control.
  • The Drive Train – including the transmission.
  • The Suspension and Steering Systems
  • The Brake System
  • The Frame and Body

There are many other systems which contribute to the modern vehicle such as the Supplementary Restraint System (seat belts and air bags), Climate Control System (designed to provide passengers with a comfortable environment in which to ride) and everybody’s favourite the Sound System.

THE ENGINE

The engine is the vehicle’s main source of power. This is where chemical energy is converted into mechanical energy. The most popular type of engine is referred to as the Internal Combustion Engine. This engine burns an air/fuel mixture inside itself in order to drive a series of pistons and connecting rods that in turn rotate a crankshaft providing us with a continuous rotating motion with which to drive the vehicle and other components. The engine also incorporates others systems, including the lubrication system and the cooling system, all working efficiently together. The cooling system maintains the engine at an ideal operating temperature while the lubrication system ensures that all the moving parts are kept well-oiled in order to provide a long serviceable life.

Electrical system

As well as moving the wheels, the engine also powers an alternator, or dynamo, which generates electrical current. This current is stored in the battery. This supplies energy for the car’s lights, windscreen wipers, radio and such features as electric windows.

Suspension system

The suspension is a system of springs and shock absorbers that prevents every jolt caused by an uneven road surface being felt by the driver and passengers inside the car.

Transmission system

The transmission system consists of the crankshaft, gears and the differential. This is a system of gears on the axles that allows the wheels to travel at different speeds when going round corners, when the outer wheel travels further than the inner one.

Braking system

Each wheel has a brake unit, connected to the brake pedal by a tube full of brake fluid. Pushing the pedal forces the fluid down the tube, causing a brake shoe to press against a metal disk or drum on the inside of the wheel. Friction causes the wheels to slow and stop.

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HOW DOES THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE WORK?

Internal combustion engines are usually fuelled by petrol or diesel. This fuel is burnt (combusted) within metal cylinders. The burning fuel causes a piston to move up and down inside each cylinder, and it is this upward and downward movement that is translated into a turning movement by the crankshaft, causing the axles and wheels to turn and the car to move.

Combustion, also known as burning, is the basic chemical process of releasing energy from a fuel and air mixture.  In an internal combustion engine (ICE), the ignition and combustion of the fuel occurs within the engine itself. The engine then partially converts the energy from the combustion to work. The engine consists of a fixed cylinder and a moving piston. The expanding combustion gases push the piston, which in turn rotates the crankshaft. Ultimately, through a system of gears in the powertrain, this motion drives the vehicle’s wheels.

There are two kinds of internal combustion engines currently in production: the spark ignition gasoline engine and the compression ignition diesel engine. Most of these are four-stroke cycle engines, meaning four piston strokes are needed to complete a cycle. The cycle includes four distinct processes: intake, compression, combustion and power stroke, and exhaust.

Spark ignition gasoline and compression ignition diesel engines differ in how they supply and ignite the fuel.  In a spark ignition engine, the fuel is mixed with air and then inducted into the cylinder during the intake process. After the piston compresses the fuel-air mixture, the spark ignites it, causing combustion. The expansion of the combustion gases pushes the piston during the power stroke. In a diesel engine, only air is inducted into the engine and then compressed. Diesel engines then spray the fuel into the hot compressed air at a suitable, measured rate, causing it to ignite.

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WHICH WAS THE FIRST CAR?

In 1769 the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation was built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot.

In 1808, Hyden Wischet designed the first car powered by the de Rivaz engine, an internal combustion engine that was fueled by hydrogen.

In 1870 Siegfried Marcus built his first combustion engine powered pushcrt, followed by four progressively more sophisticated combustion-engine cars over a 10-to-15-year span that influenced later cars. Marcus created the two-cycle combustion engine. The car’s second incarnation in 1880 introduced a four-cycle, gasoline-powered engine, an ingenious carburetor design and magneto ignition. He created an additional two models further refining his design with steering, a clutch and a brake.

The four-stroke petrol (Diesel) internal combustion engine that still constitutes the most prevalent form of modern automotive propulsion was patented by Nikolaus Otto. The similar four-stroke Diesel engine was invented by Rudolf Diesel. The hydrogen fuel cell, one of the technologies hailed as a replacement for gasoline as an energy source for cars, was discovered in principle by Christian Friedrich Schonbein in 1838. The battery electric car owes its beginnings to Anyos Jedlik, one of the inventors of the electric motor, and Gaston Plante, who invented the lead-acid battery in 1859.

In 1885, Karl Benz developed a petrol or gasoline-powered automobile. This is also considered to be the first “production” vehicle as Benz made several other identical copies. The automobile was powered by a single cylinder four-stroke engine.

In 1913, the Ford Model T, created by the Ford Motor Company five years prior, became the first automobile to be mass-produced on a moving assembly line. By 1927, Ford had produced over 15,000,000 Model T automobiles.

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WHAT DID JOSEPH PRIESTLEY DISCOVER?

In 1774, the English chemist Joseph Priestley announced that he had discovered ar element within the air. Previously it had been thought that air itself was an element. However, Priestley’s achievement is an example of something that happens quite frequently in science. Although Priestley undoubtedly did discover the presence of oxygen, he was not the first to do so. A Swedish chemist called Carl Scheele had discovered it some months before, and it was not until some months later that a French chemist, Antoine Lavoisier, used Priestley’s work to explain what oxygen is and its importance in respiration and combustion. He also gave oxygen its name. The sharing of scientific knowledge moves our understanding of the world forward. No one person can put together all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

Priestley entered the service of the Earl of Shelburne in 1773 and it was while he was in this service that he discovered oxygen. In a classic series of experiments he used his 12inch “burning lens” to heat up mercuric oxide and observed that a most remarkable gas was emitted. In his paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1775 he refers to the gas as follows: “this air is of exalted nature…A candle burned in this air with an amazing strength of flame; and a bit of red hot wood crackled and burned with a prodigious rapidity, exhibiting an appearance something like that of iron glowing with a white heat, and throwing sparks in all directions. But to complete the proof of the superior quality of this air, I introduced a mouse into it; and in a quantity in which, had it been common air, it would have died in about a quarter of an hour; it lived at two different times, a whole hour, and was taken out quite vigorous.”

Although oxygen was his most important discovery, Priestley also described the isolation and identification of other gases such as ammonia, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide and nitrogen dioxide.

The Leeds Library holds important archival material on Priestley’s time there. It was while he was in Leeds that he began his most important scientific researches namely those connected with the nature and properties of gases. A bizarre consequence of this is that Priestley can claim to be the father of the soft drinks industry. He found a technique for dissolving carbon dioxide in water to produce a pleasant “fizzy” taste. Over a hundred years later Mr Bowler of Bath benefited from this when he formed his soft drinks industry.

Priestley should be included in any pantheon of scientists. The bicentenary of his death is an opportune time to reassess his life and work and several events are planned during the year. He possessed enormous scientific skills and originality of thought as well as having the courage to promote unpopular views. He was a man of rare insight and talent.

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HOW DOES SIR EDMOND HALLEY’S NAME LIVE ON?

Sir Edmond Halley’s name is remembered because he was the first person to predict that the comet he saw in 1682 followed a path that would bring it within sight of the Earth again in 1758. Unfortunately, he was no longer alive at that date to see his prediction come true, but his achievement was recognized and his name attached to the comet ever afterwards. In fact, the comet can be seen from Earth every 75-79 years. Its appearance was first recorded by Chinese astronomers in 240BC. The comet, still an unexpected visitor, also appeared in 1066 and was embroidered onto the Bayeux Tapestry, which records the Norman invasion of England.

Edmond (or Edmund) Halley was an English scientist best known for predicting the orbit of the comet that was later named after him. Though he is remembered foremost as an astronomer, he also made significant discoveries in the fields of geophysics, mathematics, meteorology and physics.           

In 1704, Halley was appointed the Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford. Continuing his work in observational astronomy, Halley published “A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets” in 1705. In this work, he showed that comet sightings of 1456, 1531, 1607 and 1682 were so similar that they must have been the same comet returning. He predicted that it would return in 1758.

In 1716, Halley devised a method for observing transits of Venus across the disk of the sun in order to determine the distance of Earth from the sun. He also proposed two types of diving bells for exploring underwater. In 1718, by comparing star positions with data recorded by the Greek philosopher Ptolemy, he deduced the motion of stars.

In 1720, Halley succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal. He continued to make observations, such as timing the transits of the moon across the meridian, which he hoped would eventually be useful in determining longitude at sea.

Halley died Jan. 14, 1742, in Greenwich, England. He did not survive to see the return of what later was named Halley’s Comet, on Christmas Day in 1758.

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HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR NEW INVENTIONS TO BECOME WIDELY AVAILABLE?

At one time tens or even hundreds of years might have passed between a scientist’s discovery of a potentially useful fact or method and its use by a wide range of other people. Nowadays, the process is much quicker. This is partly because research is often very expensive and there is pressure to find a commercial use for an invention to help to pay for new research. Modem methods of mass production and global advertising also mean that new products can become popular very quickly.

Hundreds of years ago, news about new products travelled very slowly. Today, advertising is aimed at individual markets and ensures that as many people as possible are aware of what is available.

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WHY IS GALILEO REMEMBERED?

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was an Italian scientist who worked on many mechanical problems but is perhaps best known for his astronomical observations. These supported the ideas developed by Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), a Polish scientist. He claimed that rather than the Sun orbiting the Earth, the Earth orbits the Sun. This idea went against the teachings of the Church, so Copernicus did not tell many people about it. Indeed, when Galileo spoke out in its support, he was put on trial and forced to withdraw his claim. Even today, scientific discoveries are not always popular when they go against long-held beliefs.

Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei provided a number of scientific insights that laid the foundation for future scientists. His investigation of the laws of motion and improvements on the telescope helped further the understanding of the world and universe around him. Both led him to question the current belief of the time — that all things revolved around the Earth.

The Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, taught that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones, a belief still held in Galileo’s lifetime. But Galileo wasn’t convinced. Experimenting with balls of different sizes and weights, he rolled them down ramps with various inclinations. His experiments revealed that all of the balls boasted the same acceleration independent of their mass. He also demonstrated that objects thrown in the air travel along a parabola.

At the same time, Galileo worked with pendulums. In his life, accurate timekeeping was virtually nonexistent. Galileo observed, however, that the steady motion of a pendulum could improve this. In 1602, he determined that the time it takes a pendulum to swing back and forth does not depend on the arc of the swing. Near the end of his lifetime, Galileo designed the first pendulum clock.

Galileo is often incorrectly credited with the creation of a telescope. (Hans Lippershey applied for the first patent in 1608, but others may have beaten him to the actual invention.) Instead, he significantly improved upon them. In 1609, he first learned of the existence of the spyglass, which excited him. He began to experiment with telescope-making, going so far as to grind and polish his own lenses. His telescope allowed him to see with a magnification of eight or nine times. In comparison, spyglasses of the day only provided a magnification of three.

It wasn’t long before Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens. He was the first to see craters on the moon, he discovered sunspots, and he tracked the phases of Venus. The rings of Saturn puzzled him, appearing as lobes and vanishing when they were edge-on — but he saw them, which was more than can be said of his contemporaries.

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WHAT WAS THE SPINNING JENNY?

The spinning jenny was one of the inventions that revolutionized textile production in the eighteenth century. For thousands of years, spinners were able to produce only one thread at a time, using devices such as spinning wheels. Then in 1764, James Hargreaves, an English weaver, invented a machine that could be operated by one person but spin several threads at the same time.

During the 1700s, a number of inventions set the stage for an industrial revolution in weaving. Among them were the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the spinning frame, and the cotton gin. Together, these new tools allowed for the handling of large quantities of harvested cotton.

Credit for the spinning jenny, the hand-powered multiple spinning machine invented in 1764, goes to a British carpenter and weaver named James Hargreaves. His invention was the first machine to improve upon the spinning wheel. At the time, cotton producers had a difficult time meeting the demand for textiles, as each spinner produced only one spool of thread at a time. Hargreaves found a way to ramp up the supply of thread.

The people who took the raw materials (such as wool, flax, and cotton) and turned them into thread were spinners who worked at home with a spinning wheel. From the raw material they created a roving after cleaning and carding it. The roving was put over a spinning wheel to be twisted tighter into thread, which collected on the device’s spindle.

The original spinning jenny had eight spindles side by side, making thread from eight rovings’ across from them. All eight were controlled by one wheel and a belt, allowing for much more thread to be created at one time by one person. Later models of the spinning jenny had up to 120 spindles.

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HOW ARE GREAT INVENTIONS MADE?

An invention is a new method, material or machine that applies theoretical principles to a practical use. That does not mean that the inventor necessarily understands why his invention works! Inventions may be the result of hard work, or luck, or both. Very often, it is the name of the person who popularized the new idea that we remember, not the person who first thought of it.

An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within an overall engineering and product development process. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field. An inventor may be taking a big step toward success or failure.

Some inventions can be patented. A patent legally protects the intellectual property rights of the inventor and legally recognizes that a claimed invention is actually an invention. The rules and requirements for patenting an invention vary by country and the process of obtaining a patent is often expensive.

Another meaning of invention is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social behaviours adopted by people and passed on to others. The Institute for Social Inventions collected many such ideas in magazines and books. Invention is also an important component of artistic and design creativity. Inventions often extend the boundaries of human knowledge, experience or capability.

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WHAT DID BENJAMIN FRANKLIN RISK HIS LIFE TO DISCOVER?

In the eighteenth century, wealthy and influential men often interested themselves in more than one branch of learning. The American Benjamin Franklin was a statesman, printer, author and scientist. He left school at twelve, being the fifteenth child of seventeen, but soon made up for his lack of formal education. As well as his political work, he conducted many experiments concerning electricity. In 1752, he flew a kite in a thunder-storm, attaching a metal key to the damp string. An electrical charge ran down the string and Franklin was able to feel it jump to his finger when he approached the key. From this he concluded that lightning was an electrical spark and in 1753 launched his invention of the lightning conductor.

By 1750, in addition to wanting to prove that lightning was electricity, Franklin began to think about protecting people, buildings, and other structures from lightning. This grew into his idea for the lightning rod. Franklin described an iron rod about 8 or 10 feet long that was sharpened to a point at the end. He wrote, “The electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently, before it could come near enough to strike…” Two years later, Franklin decided to try his own lightning experiment. Surprisingly, he never wrote letters about the legendary kite experiment; someone else wrote the only account 15 years after it took place.

In June of 1752, Franklin was in Philadelphia, waiting for the steeple on top of Christ Church to be completed for his experiment (the steeple would act as the “lightning rod”). He grew impatient, and decided that a kite would be able to get close to the storm clouds just as well. Ben needed to figure out what he would use to attract an electrical charge; he decided on a metal key, and attached it to the kite. Then he tied the kite string to an insulating silk ribbon for the knuckles of his hand. Even though this was a very dangerous experiment, some people believe that Ben wasn’t injured because he didn’t conduct his test during the worst part of the storm. At the first sign of the key receiving an electrical charge from the air, Franklin knew that lightning was a form of electricity. His 21-year-old son William was the only witness to the event.

Two years before the kite and key experiment, Ben had observed that a sharp iron needle would conduct electricity away from a charged metal sphere. He first theorized that lightning might be preventable by using an elevated iron rod connected to earth to empty static from a cloud. Franklin articulated these thoughts as he pondered the usefulness of a lightning rod.

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Who invented the parachute?

               Leonardo de Vinci (1452-1519) was thought until recently to have been the first to design a parachute. But drawings have now been found that were made five years before da Vinci’s sketches, possibly by an engineer in Siena central Italy.

               However, the first man to make and successfully use a parachute was a Frenchman, Andre Garnerin (1770-1825), who stretched cloth across a bamboo framework and parachuted from a balloon over Paris in 1797. It was an uncomfortable descent as the fabric was too thick o spill out any wind, and the parachute came down swinging violently like a pendulum. Garnerin was is a tiny basket, to which he clung tightly until his rough landing on the plain of Monceau. The parachutes of those days were developed from the crude canvas devices used to descend from hot air balloons.

               Modern parachutes are made of pure silk or good-quality nylon in small panels and have a small pilot parachutes which open first and helps to pull out the main parachute.

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Who designed the first steamboat?

            The first boat ever to be moved by steam power was designed by a Frenchman Jacques Perier and tested on the Seine in Paris in 1775. But the first really successful steamboat was built by Perier’s fellow countryman, the Marquis Claude de Jouffroyd’Abbans. His craft which was 141 feet long and equipped with straight-paddled side wheels travelled several hundred yards against the current on the Saone at   Lyons on July 25, 1783.

              Among early American pioneers was James Rumsey who in 1786 drove a boat at four miles an hour on the Potomac River, propelled by a jet of water pumped out at the stern. Between 1786 and 1790 John Fitch experimented in the Delaware River at Philadelphia with different methods of propulsion, including paddle wheels a screw propeller and steam-driven oars.

              The first to apply successfully the principle of steam to screw propellers was John Stevens whose boat, equipped with two propellers was John Stevens whose boat, equipped with two propellers, and crossed the Hudson River in 1804. However, his achievements was soon eclipsed by Robert Fulton’s 150-foot long paddle wheeler Clermont which in 1807 covered the 150 miles from New York to Albany in 30 hours at a maximum speed of five miles an hour. With Fulton in command on the Hudson, Stevens looked elsewhere, and in 1808 his new boat, the Phoenix, sailed out of New York harbor to become the first steamboat ever to go to sea.

              Both Stevens and Fulton were following in the steps of the Scottish inventor William Symington who in 1802 constructed a steamboat in Scotland, the Charlotte Dundas, which was used as a tug on the forth and Clyde Canal. The Charlotte Dundas was a paddle-wheel steamer used this method of propulsion.

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Where was the wheel invented?

          The earliest wheels so far discovered were found in graves at Kish and Susa, two ancient Mesopotamian cities. These wheels are believed to date from 3,500 B.C. they were made from three planks, clamped together with copper clasps. This kind of wheel also existed in ancient times in Europe and the Near East. No one is sure where the wheel was invented, but this archaeological evidence suggests it was probably In ancient Mesopotamia

            A wheel with proper spokes was not invented until after 2,000 B.C. there are records of this wheel in northern Mesopotamia, central Turkey, and north-east Persia. By the 15th century B.C., spoked wheels were being used on chariots in Syria, Egypt, and the western Mediterranean.

           The solid wheel was used mostly in farming. Tripartite wheels- wheels with three spokes- were being used in the Bronze age in Denmark, Germany and Northern Italy for carts.

          The invention of the wheel made it possible for people to transport heavy objects much more easily. It also enabled them to travel farther and trade with each other more easily, and so find out about other countries and customs.

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Who built the first Bicycle?

               The first ride able bicycle was made by Kirkpatrick Mac Milan of Dum-friesshire, Scotland, in 1839, although an attempt to construct one had been made by Jean Theson at Fontainebleau, France, in 1645.

               Before this, crude machines had been made, which had no farm o f steering and had to be propelled by publishing the feet against the ground. Machines of this type appear on bas-reliefs in Babylon and Egypt and on frescoes in Pompeii. In England, a stained glass window, dated 1580, in the church of Stoke Poges, Bucking hamshire shows a cherub astride such a machine.

               But all these machines seem to have been four-wheeled. The true bicycle belongs to the 19th Century.

               Macmillan’s bicycle was driven by rods attached from pedals to a sprocket on the rear wheel. The first chain-driven bicycle was produced by Tribout and Meyer in 1869. In this year the first bicycle show-in Paris and the first bicycle road race –from Paris to Rouentook place.

              An Englishman, James Starley, of Coventry in Warwickshire, is known as “the father of the cycle industry”. In 1871 he introduced a bicycle with a large driving wheel and a smaller trailing wheel. This was the “ordinary” bicycle, known to everyone as the penny-farthing. In 1874 a chain-driven bicycle with two wheels of equal diameter was designed by H.J. Lawson. This is known as the safety bicycle and became enormously popular from about 1885 when the Rover safety bicycle was built by John K. Starley, James’s nephew.

             The pneumatic tyre – in other words, a tyre filled with air-was invented in 1888 by John Boyd Dunlop, a veterinary surgeon of Belfast, Northern Ireland. By 1893 the design of the bicycle had been developed into the modern diamond frame with roller-chain drive and pneumatic-tyred wheels.

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When were contact lenses invented?

The first contact lenses were made by A.E. Fick in 1887, but were not successful. During the early part of this century opticians tried to produce extremely thin shell-like lenses to fit closely over the eye. An impression was taken of the eye and a glass shell made which, with a suitable fluid under it, covered most of the eye. After 1938, plastic was used instead of glass, and in about 1950, smaller lenses were introduced which covered only the cornea and floated on a layer of tears. These lenses, only 7 to 11 mm in diameter and 0.1 to 1mm thick can usually be worn all day without being removed.

    Besides being invisible, contact lenses provide a much wider field of vision than spectacles. They are more practical for use in active sports because they are not easily lost or broken, and they can be tinted for use as sunglasses. But contact lenses are not effective in all cases of eye trouble. They are also expensive, and some people find difficulty in learning to wear them.

    As research continues, even smaller and more flexible lenses are being developed.

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When was the thermometer invented?

 

 

The fist practical thermometer or instrument for measuring temperature was invented shortly before the end of the 16th century by the famous Italian astronomer Galileo. It was an air thermometer giving only a rough indication of the degrees of heat and cold, and later he increased its efficiency by using alcohol instead of air.

       The principle on which most thermometer work is that a liquid or gas used for measuring expands or contracts with changes in temperature more rapidly than the glass containing it. Thus when a coloured liquid is confined in a thin glass tube the difference in expansion, as shown by the level of the liquid against a graduated scale, indicates the temperature.

    About 1714 the German scientists Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit designed a thermometer which, for the first time, used mercury as the measuring agent. He also introduced the scale named after him in which 320 is the freezing point of water and 2120 the boiling point. Mercury is still used in most thermometers because it has a high boiling point (6740) and a low freezing point (-380).

    An alcohol thermometer, still in use in some countries, was made by Rene de Reaumur, a French naturalist, about 1731. About 11 years later Andres Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, used the centigrade scale for the first time, with freezing point 00 and boiling point at 1000.

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Who first used a powered dental drill?

The first powered dentist’s drill was made by George Washington’s dentist, John Greenwood, who adapted his mother’s spinning wheel with its foot treadle to rotate his instrument.

    Earlier dentists had operated their drills by means of bowstrings, a method which must have required skill, determination and physical stamina on the part of the dentist, as well as a great deal of courage from the patient. Later drills were operated by turning a handle at the side.

In 1829 James Nasmyth, the Scottish inventor of the steam hammer, used rotary power to improve the efficiency of the drill. A hand-operated drill with a flexible cable was patented by Charles Merry, an American dentist in 1858; and George Harrington, an Englishman, invented in 1864 a drill driven by a clockwork motor.

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Who sent the first radio message?

Guglielmo Marconi is usually credited with sending the first radio message. Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy; He came to England in 1896 and obtained a British patent for his wireless telegraphy system. In 1897 he established a radio transmitter on the roof of the post office at St Martin’s-Le-Grand in London, and sent a message a distance of a few hundred yards.

       He continued to improve his apparatus, and in 1898 radio was installed aboard a ship at sea, the East Goodwin lightship off the south-east coast of England. In the following year wireless messages were sent across the English Channel.

    The first radio transmission across the Atlantic was on December 12, 1901 from a station on the cliffs at poldhu, in Cornwall, and the message, three dots representing the letter S in the Morse code, was picked up at St John’s in Newfoundland.

     The existence of radio waves was first demonstrated by Heinrich Hertz, a German professor, in 1887. Marconi based his experiments on Hertz’s research.

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Who invented the Aero Plane?

The first aero plane ever to fly was built by a French naval officer, Felix du Temple de la Croix. In 1874 his monoplane, powered with a hot-air engine, took off from the top of a hill near Brest in France. It did not get far, just a short hop, but it was a beginning. A few years later, in 1890, Clement Ader of France flew his own plane, Eole, entirely under its own power for about 50 meters. It was a world record.

     The first truly successful aero plane flight was in 1903. In December of that year Orville Wright flew his chain-driven plane Flyer I at a speed of 8m.p.h and at an altitude of 12 feet for 12 seconds in North Carolina, United States. It was several years before the Wrights’ achievements were fully appreciated in America.

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Who invented the Wankel engine?

Felix Wankel, a German motor engineer, invented the rotary piston engine which bears his name. Deprived of a university education when his family’s fortune vanished in the German inflation of 1919-20, he went in for car repairing and set up his own business in 1924 at the age of 22.

        Soon he began work at designing a rotary piston engine, an idea which had attracted engineers since the invention of the stream engine. From 1934 to 1936 his research was backed by B.M.W. and from 1936 to 1945 by the German air force. In 1951 he established his own research institute and financed it by working as a consultant.

Wankel succeeded in discovering the secret of effective seals between the rotating pistons and the casing. He also discovered the geometrical form of an engine that could carry out the four-stroke cycle in one chamber without valves, giving a useful high compression ratio. His engine ran successfully for the first February, 1957. N.S.U. began limited production of Wankel engines for a car is 1963, and went into large-scale production in 1967.

      The rotary piston engine challenges the usual internal combustion engine, using reciprocating pistons, because it offers reduced size, weight, vibration, noise and production costs for comparable thermal efficiency. It is considered suitable for industrial, marine and aeronautical uses.

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Who was the last man to discover a planet?

Clyde Tombaugh, a young American research student, made the last discovery of a planet while working in 1930 at the Lowell Observatory, Arizona state College. This planet is Pluto, the ninth one in order of distance from the sun, 3,670 million miles away.

    Although Tombaugh, who was 26 at the time, was the first astronomer to see Pluto, its existence had been suspected by Percival Lowell, builder of the observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell began searching for the planet in 1905, the year before Tombaugh was born. He observed that there was a difference between the predicted and actual positions of Uranus, and this led him to conclude that there must be another planet. His final calculations about “panel X” were published in 1914, but he had still not found the planet when he died two years later.

    Another American, W.H Pickering, took up the search, concentrating on the irregular movements of the planet Neptune. He saw a clue in the movement of comets, which seem to be attracted by large planets. Here were 16 known comets whose paths took them millions of miles beyond Neptune. Which is 2,800 million miles from the sun, and Pickering was convinced that they were being attracted by a still more distant planet.

   In 1919 yet another hunt was begun by Milton Humason at Mount Wilson Observatory, Pasadena, California. Instead of mathematical calculation, Humason tried photograph. He took two pictures of a series of stretches of the sky, with a gap of one or two days between exposures. In such photographs stars stay still, but planets change position.

    When Tombaugh discovered Pluto, it became clear that Humason had photographed the planet twice. Once it had been masked by a star, and the second time its image had coincided with a flaw in the photographic plate. The main difficulty in the search had been that Pluto was extraordinarily faint. Pickering formed the opinion that it was not Lowell’s planet X, but that a huge planet remains to be discovered.

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When was the hydrofoil invented?

The hydrofoil, a boat supported clear of the water by underwater wings called hydrofoils, was invented by an Italian, Forlanini, in 1898. In 1918 a hydrofoil, powered by an aircraft engine, gained the world’s water speed record. The commercial hydrofoils now used in Europe are based on the work of German engineers who carried out research into the design of high-power, lightweight engines.

       In the early 1950s hydrofoils were developed in the United States, Canada and Russia using high-powered gas turbines. They are used for both military and commercial purposes.

     Since water is 775 times heavier than air, very small hydrofoil wings will support relatively heavy boats. But, since operating in water puts great loads on boats, the hulls are usually built of high-strength steel.

    The object in raising the hull of the hydrofoil from the water is to avoid the resistance caused by friction and drag. This means the power needed to drive the boat at high speeds is cut by half. Another result is that the hydrofoil travels smoothly in quite rough water, and is not slowed down.

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Who invented the jet engine?

The first flight by a jet-propelled aircraft was made in Germany on August 27, 1939. Its engine was designed by Hans-Joachim von Ohain, who had conceived the idea while a student at Gottingen University in Lower Saxony. Unknown to von Ohain, the British inventor and aviator Frank Whittle had thought of the idea some years earlier. But his engine did not have its first flight until May 14, 1941.

    Briefly, a jet engine takes in air from the atmosphere, compresses it, and uses it in burning fuel. The mixture of hot gases is then expelled through a nozzle in a powerful backward jet which propels the aircraft forwards.

     This forward thrust is the effect of a scientific principle first explained by the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). He pointed out that with every action there is a reaction which is equal but opposite to it. Thus when a gun is fired, the forward movement of the shell is matched by the backward recoil of the barrel. In a similar way the reaction to the jet exhaust drives the engine forward. The thrust is obtained by the pressure of the jet against the inside of the nozzle and not, as many people suppose, by the exhaust gases “pushing” against the atmosphere.

     The jet engine, whether turbojet, turboprop, ramjet or turbofan, weights less than a piston engine of comparative power and can be much more streamlined.

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When was the telephone invented?

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) invented and patented in 1876 the first telephone that was of any real practical use. In 1874 he said: “if I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically.” This is the principle of the telephone.

      On March 10, 1872, the first historic message was telephoned to Thomas A Watson, Bell’s assistant, who was in another room: “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.”

     Bell’s first machine gave electrical currents too feeble to be of much use for the general public. In 1877 the American scientist Thomas A. Edison (1847-931) invented the variable-contact carbon transmitter, which greatly increased the power of the signals.

    The telephone was immediately popular in the United States, but Bell found little interest in Britain when he visited the country in 1878. Then Queen Victoria asked for a pair of telephone and the royal interest resulted in a London telephone exchange being formed in 1879 with eight subscribers.

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When were the museums started?

          A museum is an institution that collects, studies, exhibits and conserves objects for cultural and educational purposes. They are of several kinds. There are museums devoted to art, science, history, industry and technology.

          The word ‘museum’ comes from the Greek word Mouseion which means ‘temple of the Muses’. The Muses were the goddesses of the arts. One of the first institutions, called Mouseion was founded in Alexandria, Egypt in the 3rd century B.C. Its aim was to collect information that might be of some interest to the scholars. The scholars used to live and carry out their research there. The museum displayed a collection of art pieces and antiquities like statues, astronomical and surgical instruments, elephant tusks and hides of rare animals.

          Later kings and nobles started having their own museums by collecting art objects and antiques from different parts of the world. However, these were private museums, meant only for their families and friends.

          After the French Revolution the doors of the French museums were opened to the general public. In 1793, during the revolution, the Republican Government established a national museum in Lauvre, Paris. For the first time in the 19th century buildings were specially designed for this purpose. One of the first buildings in Europe was the Atles Museum in Berlin, Germany. It was constructed in 1830.

          Today, we have museums in almost all the big cities of the world. They are visited by thousands of people everyday. The oldest museum in the world is the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford which was built in 1679. The largest museum in the world is the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was founded in 1874. The largest and the most visited museum in the United Kingdom is the British Museum which was opened for public in 1759. Bombay, Madras, Delhi and other big cities in India have museums devoted to different subjects. 

Who developed the shorthand?

          Shorthand is a system of writing fast using characters, abbreviations or symbols for letters, words or phrases. Other names for shorthand are stenography (little or narrow writing), tachygraphy (swift writing) and brachygraphy (short writing). Because of its obvious usefulness, today it is widely used in business, industry and other professions of the world.

          Most historians trace back the origin of shorthand to the Greek historian Xenophon who used an ancient Greek system to write the memoirs of Socrates. Marcus Tullius Tiro of Rome invented the Latin shorthand far back in 63 B.C. He also compiled a dictionary of shorthand. 

          However, the systematic development of shorthand took place in the 17th century. John Willis is considered the father of modern shorthand. Later the industrial developments brought in a demand for stenographers in the business. During the 18th century several shorthand systems were developed but the one developed by the English stenographer Samuel Taylor in 1786 was adapted in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, German, Dutch, Hungarian and other languages. Sir Isaac Pitman developed the modern system based on Taylor’s system in 1837. It consisted of 25 single consonants, 24 double consonants and 16 vowel sounds.

          Irish born John Robert Gregg developed another system in 1888 which was based on circles, hooks and loops. In 1893 this system was introduced in U.S.A. In the present century rapid strides have been made in this field.

           Nowadays many machines are also available which can record fast speeches. Stenotype machine was invented by Ward Stone Ireland, a U.S. stenographer and court reporter, around 1906. This machine is used for recording speeches. It is especially employed for conference and court reporting.

When was the stethoscope invented?

           A stethoscope is a device used by physicians to listen to the sounds inside the body. Generally, these sounds originate from the heart, lungs, abdomen and the blood vessels. Very often valuable information about the disorders in certain parts of the body can be obtained through observing the change in sounds. For instance, a change in the sounds made by the rushing of blood through the heart valves or by the closing of valves may give important clues to different heart diseases. Similarly, an abnormality in the sounds made by air in the windpipe and airways in the lungs may indicate certain lung disorders.

           Stethoscope was invented by a French doctor, Rene T.H. Laennec, in 1815. It was a one-foot-long hollow wooden cylinder. He put one end of the cylinder on to his patient’s chest and listened to the sounds produced by the heart and the chest through the other end. As he compared such sounds from different patients, he could reach certain conclusions. In 1819, he published these conclusions in the form of a book entitled, De L’ Auscultation Mediate, and soon stethoscope came into general use.

            Since those days, many modifications have been made in its design. A modern stethoscope basically consists of a contact piece called the chest piece. This can be a flat chest piece for high-pitched sounds or a bell-shaped open-ended chest piece for low-pitched sounds. It conducts sounds through two flexible rubber or plastic tubes to a pair of ear pieces which fit into the physician’s ears and excludes other sounds. The chest piece is put in contact with the different parts of the chest and the back. Now, through these sounds the physician gets valuable clues regarding the different diseases the patient might be suffering from. The stethoscope is still the simplest and the most useful means available to doctors to examine the lungs and heart. 

How did the circus begin?

          The Romans were the first to use the word ‘circus’ in the first century B.C. The large open area was called ‘The Circus Maximus’. Here the main attraction was a chariot race. The drivers wore helmets and were wrapped in lengths of bright coloured flowing clothes. The ground was so large as to accommodate around 1, 50,000 people. In those days Rome had other kinds of entertainments also. Jugglers, acrobats, rope-walkers and animal-trainers also entertained people in many ways.

          Eventually all those feats became part of what we call ‘circus’ today.

          After the fall of the Roman Empire, circus went into oblivion for many centuries. The first modern circus came into being in England in 1768, when Philip Astley turned into a trick rider, and he traced the first ring. The name circus was first used in 1782 when the Royal Circus was set up by Charles Hughes. Many showmen found a new outlet in the circus, as did the rope dancers, acrobats, jugglers and others, where it could be seen clearly that nothing was faked. Hence they got much popularity. In the first half of the 19th century many circus sprang up even in the United States.

          Circus is a popular means of entertainment today. It is universally loved by the young and the old. In the modern circus we see many amazing feats like rope-walking, wire-cycling, fire-eating, weightlifting, trapeze and innumerable animal and bird games. Jugglers, acrobats and clowns join in to add to the entertainment.

          The world’s largest permanent circus is Circus Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. This was opened on 18 October, 1968. It covers an area of 11,984 sq. mts. The largest travelling circus is the Gold Unit of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. It was used for a show at Sapporo, Japan on 1 July 1988. The largest circus crowd comprised of 52,385 people who attended the performance of “The Greatest Show on Earth” in New Orleans, USA on 14 September, 1975. 

 

Who discovered Australia?

          Australia is the smallest continent but the largest island (piece of land covered with water from all sides) of the world. Its total area is about 8,000,000 sq. km (3,000,000 sq. miles). People during the medieval times talked about the existence of a large continent in the Southern Hemisphere. No one had seen it and people wondered what it was like and whether it was inhabited at all. It was called the ‘unknown southern land’.

          During the 16th century, European countries had been seeking new lands in order to expand their commercial activities. In 1606 the Dutch were the first to visit Australia. Their ship called the ‘Dnyffkin’ anchored off the Northern coast of Australia. When some of its crew went ashore to refill their water casks, they were driven out by the fierce natives. The Dnyffkin sailed away without exploring any other part of the vast continent.

          In 1642 Captain Abel Tasman was sent by the Dutch to explore more about the continent. He sighted the west coast, which he called Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Later he explored New Zealand. In 1770 the English Captain James Cook discovered the South Eastern coast of Australia and named it New South Wales. In 1788 the first English colony was established in the city of Sydney.

          Who, then, were the first inhabitants of Australia?

          Before the arrival of Europeans in the late 18th century the country was first inhabited by the Aborigines who reached Australia from Southern Asia about 20,000 years ago. In 1870 there were about 300,000 Aborigines in Australia. They arrived in two groups; the first group was eventually driven from the south-east into Tasmania; the second was racially quite different which occupied the rest of Australia.

          Today, Australia is among the highly developed countries of the world. Its inhabitants are self-sufficient in almost every respect. It has many distinctive features. Two-third of its land is a desert. It is, however, rich in minerals like gold, tungsten, manganese, cobalt, lead and zinc. Its unique wild life includes animals like kangaroo, koala and birds like emu, black swan. The plants like giant eucalyptus and bottle tree are found here in abundance.

 

Who invented the shoes?

          The primitive man who lived in caves had to make his way through rocks. To protect his feet he probably covered them with bags of grass, strips of animal hide or even flat pieces of wood. These were fastened to the soles of the feet by crude thongs (crude straps) bound around the ankles. These were the first shoes.

          Among the civilized people, Egyptians were the first to make shoes. They used pads of leather or papyrus (a tree with thick stem) which were bound to the feet with two straps. In order to protect the toes, its front was sometimes turned up. Samples of shoes, made around 2000 B.C. have been found in Egypt.

          In some cold countries, people developed a different kind of shoes. They were bags padded with grass and tied around the feet. 

         As far as the modern shoes are concerned, their origin can be traced back to the crusades. Crusades were the military expeditions by the European Christian countries to recover the Holy land from the Muslims in the Middle Ages. These crusaders went on long-drawn wars and had been on their feet. So it became necessary to make shoes that would last long. Gradually, fine leather shoes of attractive designs began to appear in Italy, France and England.

           The designs of shoes have always been subject to changes according to the fashion. For example, in the 16th century people preferred shoes with broad toes. In the 17th century high heels came into fashion. Kings and nobles also ordered some special changes in the designs of their shoes.

           With the development of modern techniques, many varieties of shoes are now being made. Besides leather, rubber, plastic and canvas are also being used in shoes. Plastic-covered shoes which do not need any polishing have come into fashion. Rexin-top sports shoes have become the most popular throughout the world. Today there is a wide range of shoes to choose from according to one’s needs and taste.