Abacus

The Sumerians originated the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia, (eastern Mediterranean, Iraq and Turkey) and invented cuneiform writing and the abacus.

In ancient times, numbers did not exist. People used their fingers and sometimes their toes to count objects. When that was not enough, they used counters such as pebbles or twigs to track quantities. Once people began trading, merchants needed a tool to keep track of goods they bought and sold.

Each wire in the abacus frame has seven beads, with two in the upper deck and five in the lower deck. Each of the two upper deck beads has a value of 5, while the lower deck beads each have a value of 1. The wires represent the powers of ten. Beginning at the right of the abacus, the first wire represents values below 10, the second wire represents values from 10 to 99 and the third wire represents 100 to 999. This pattern continues across the remaining wires, allowing a traditional abacus with 13 wires to represent very large numbers.

Aeroplane

Orville and Wilbur Wright

Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912) – were two American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane.

Art of marking rapid dry photographic plates

George Eastman

(July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream.

See also Camera

See also roll film

Art of Printing the

John Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg, in full Johann Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, (born 14th century,Mainz [Germany]—died probably February 3, 1468, Mainz), German craftsman and inventor who originated a method of printing from movable type. Unique elements of his invention are thought to have included a metal alloy that could melt readily and cool quickly to form durable reusable type, an oil-based ink that could be made sufficiently thick to adhere well to metal type and transfer well to vellum or paper, and a new press, likely adapted from those used in producing wine, oil, or paper, for applying firm even pressure to printing surfaces. None of these features existed in Chinese or Korean printing, in the European technique used up to that time for stamping letters on various surfaces, or in woodblock printing.

Automatic Gun

Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim

Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim was an American-born British inventor best known as the creator of the first portable fully automatic machine gun, the Maxim gun. Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (5 February 1840 – 24 November 1916). Maxim held patents on numerous mechanical devices such as hair-curling irons, a mousetrap, and steam pumps. Maxim laid claim to inventing the lightbulb

Autotype process of Photography

George Eastman

In 1884, Eastman patented the first film in roll form to prove practicable; he had been tinkering at home to develop it. In 1888, he perfected the Kodak Black camera, which was the first camera designed to use roll film. In 1889 he first offered film stock, and by 1896 became the leading supplier of film stock internationally. He incorporated his company under the name Eastman Kodak, in 1892. As film stock became standardized, Eastman continued to lead in innovations. Refinements in colored film stock continued after his death.

Barometer

Evangelista Torricelli

Evangelista Torricelli, (born Oct. 15, 1608, Faenza, Romagna—died Oct. 25, 1647, Florence), Italian physicist and mathematician who invented the barometer and whose work in geometry aided in the eventual development of integral calculus.

Calculators

Jack Kilby & Jerry Merryman

Texas Instruments (TI) invented the first integrated circuit in 1958, courtesy of TI inventor Jack Kilby, and the hand-held calculator, a prototype called "Cal Tech", invented by TI's Jerry Merryman in 1967.

Early 1960's -- Mechanical calculators, slide rules, or paper and pencil are the world's main methods of calculation. As was true in the 1940's and 1950's, early 1960's calculators are complicated motor-assisted mechanical adding machines with no other electronic parts. They are called calculators rather than adding machines because complex gear systems allow them to perform multiplication and division by repetitive addition or subtraction. One mechanical model made by Friden is actually able to use gears and levers to extract square roots.

What made the portable electronic calculator small enough to be as portable as a slide rule was the inventions of Large Scale Integration (LSI) by Ted Hoff of Intel and Integrated Circuits (ICs) by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. LSI/ICs stuffed several thousand transistors and diodes into a small low-power usage package needed for many operations of transendental functions. The Light-Emitting-Diode, so crucial to the miniaturization of the battery powered calculator, was invented in the mid-1960s by the US company Monsanto and marketed together with Hewlett Packard. Subsequent manufacturers of seven-segment displays for electronic calculators included Dialight, Fairchild, Litronix, Motorola and Texas Instruments Fun with Calculators & History Pigly Link

Digital Camera

Camera

Steve Sasson

At Kodak, Sasson’s supervisor Gareth Lloyd tasked him with finding a practical use for the recently created charged coupled device (CCD) – a mechanism that captures light and transfers into usable data. Over the course of a year, Sasson was given complete autonomy. His experience taking apart electronics as a child made him think about how electrical pulses could be displayed as a two-dimensional pattern, much like how a television works. He wondered if this same concept could be applied to an all-electric camera design that contained no moving parts and committed himself to creating such a device.

“I stole the lens from our used parts bin on the manufacturing floor of the XL movie cameras,” explains Sasson. “Because the super eight movie format was larger than the active area of the CCD, I could place this in the film plane of the XL movie camera assembly, and it would work.

The camera had only an electronic shutter and no mechanical shutter, with one shutter speed of 1/20s (or 50 milliseconds). It had an infrared (IR) blocking filter in front of it as it was very sensitive to IR, and that was a problem with incandescent lighting.

(see Kodak Camera)

link

Celestial and a Terrestrial Globe

Gerhardus Mercator

The Flemish cartographer Gerhardus Mercator (1512-1594) was among the first makers of modern atlases and is best known for his great world map, or chart, using the projection that has acquired his name.

In the history of cartography the work of Gerhardus Mercator illustrated a significant departure (though by no means a complete break) with the geographical traditions of the Middle Ages and those established by the revived Ptolemaic geography. It also signaled the late Renaissance convergence of academic cartography with the practical needs of navigators, an important step in the creation of that dynamic unity between science and technology that is one of the signal characteristics of the modern world.

Cellular Networks

In the 1970s, researchers at Bell Labs in the USA began to experiment with the concept of a cellular phone network. The idea was to cover the country with a network of hexagonal cells, each of which would contain a base station.

These base stations would send and receive messages from mobile phones over radio frequencies. Any two adjacent cells would operate at different frequencies, so there was no danger of interference.

What is GSM?

Chronometer

John Harrison

John Harrison (3 April [O.S. 24 March] 1693 – 24 March 1776)

John Harrison was a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. Harrison's solution revolutionized navigation and greatly increased the safety of long-distance sea travel. 

Clock (pendulum)

Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens FRS, also spelled Huyghens, was a Dutch physicist, mathematician, astronomer and inventor, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and a major figure in the scientific revolution. Born at the Hague in the Netherlands in 1629, Huygens was the child of an important family. He studied at home under private tutors and, through his father, interacted with prominent visitors such as French philosopher and mathematician RenéDescartes. He studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden, and then at the College of Orange at Breda.

Huygens also invented the first pendulum clock, with an error of less than one minute a day. He went on to refine his clock, ultimately limiting errors to less than ten seconds over twenty-four hours.

Contraceptives

Gregor Pincus

Dr. Gregory Goodwin Pincus (April 9, 1903 – August 22, 1967) was an American biologist and researcher who co-invented the combined oral contraceptive pill. He was a brilliant scientist. When he took up Margaret Sanger’s challenge in 1950 to develop an oral contraceptive, he had already achieved in vitro fertilization of rabbit eggs, foreshadowing later successes in assisted human reproduction that have enabled tens of thousands of couples to overcome infertility.

Credit card

original Diners Club Card

Ralph Scheider (Co Founder)

The idea for Diners Club was conceived at the Majors Cabin Grill restaurant in New York City in 1949. Diners Club cofounder Frank McNamara was dining with clients and realized he had left his wallet in another suit. His wife paid the tab, and McNamara thought of a multipurpose charge card as a way to avoid similar embarrassments in the future.  He discussed the idea with the restaurant owner at the table, and the following day with his lawyer Ralph Schneider and friend Alfred Bloomingdale.

When Mr. Schneider in 1950 hit upon the idea of charging restaurant meals, he was a hard-working lawyer looking for something to supplement his $15,000-a-year income, Not too long ago, his net worth was estimated at more than $10 million!

In February 1950 the Diners Club issued the first "general purpose" credit card invented by Diners Club founder Frank X. McNamara. The card allowed members to charge the cost of restaurant bills only.

"The first credit card charge was made on February 8, 1950, by Frank McNamara, Ralph Schneider and Matty Simmons at Major's Cabin Grill, a restaurant adjacent to their offices in the Empire State Building

Cryptans (or electrics)

Donald J. Cram and Charles J. Peterson

Charles John Pedersen (October 3, 1904 – October 26, 1989) was an American organic chemist best known for describing methods of synthesizing crown ethersduring his entire 42-year career as a chemist 

Donald James Cram (April 22, 1919 – June 17, 2001) was an American chemist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles J. Pedersen "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity." They were the founders of the field of host–guest chemistry.

Deltaplane

Francis Melvin Rogallo

Francis Rogallo was born on January 27, 1912 in Sanger, California, USA as Francis Melvin Rogallo. He was married to Gertrude Sugden. He died on September 1, 2009 in Southern Shores, North Carolina, USA.

Engineer Francis Melvin Rogallo and his wife Gertrude aimed to make the dream of flying attainable for anyone. They helped thousands experience the sensation of flying freely in open air with their invention of the parawing in 1958; the creation sparked the activity that would come to be known as hang gliding.

Dental plate

Anthony A. Plantson

In 1817 Plantson developed a dental plate, There is archeological evidence that humans have attempted to replace missing teeth with root form implants for thousands of years. Remains from ancient China (dating 4000 years ago) have carved bamboo pegs, tapped into the bone, to replace lost teeth, and 2000-year-old remains from ancient Egypt have similarly shaped pegs made of precious metals. Some Egyptian mummies were found to have transplanted human teeth, and in other instances, teeth made of ivory. Wilson Popenoe and his wife in 1931, at a site in Honduras dating back to 600 AD, found the lower mandible of a young Mayan woman, with three missing incisors replaced by pieces of sea shells, shaped to resemble teeth.[59] Bone growth around two of the implants, and the formation of calculus, indicates that they were functional as well as esthetic. The fragment is currently part of the Osteological Collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.

Dental plate (rubber)

Charles Goodyear

Charles Goodyear (December 29, 1800 – July 1, 1860) was an American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer who developed vulcanized rubber

Goodyear had experimented with vulcanization – the process of turning raw rubber into a useful, pliable, and non-rotting material.

One of the most revolutionary items made with vulcanized rubber was the base for dentures. Once dentists found this material and started using it, it ushered in what has been called “the era of false teeth for the masses” beginning in the 1850s. In 1848, Thomas W. Evans, the expatriate diplo-dentist, had used Vulcanite as a base for artificial teeth, and he made a Vulcanite denture for Charles Goodyear in 1854. Vulcanite could be easily molded onto a replica of the patient’s jaw, and the resulting base, once outfitted with porcelain teeth, would fit perfectly, was comfortable, and was created cheaply.

In 1864 in the USA, the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company was founded and every dentist had to obtain an expensive licence to use the material and was charged a royalty for each denture made. Although many dentists bought licenses, the dental profession as a whole opposed the patent and licensure and protested.

The charged-couple device (CCD), invented in 1969, was the breakthrough that allowed digital photography to take off. A CCD is a light sensor that sits behind the lens and captures the image, essentially taking the place of the film in the camera. The first cameras to use CCD sensors were specialist industry models made by Fairchild in the 1970s. 

The first genuinely handheld digital camera should have been the Fuji DS-1P in 1988. It recorded images as computerized files on a 16MB SRAM internal memory card jointly developed with Toshiba, but the DS-1P never actually made it to shops.

The first digital camera to actually go on sale in the US was the 1990 Dycam Model 1. Also marketed as the Logitech Fotoman, this camera used a CCD image sensor, stored pictures digitally and connected directly to a PC for download

Diesel engine

Rudolf Diesel

Rudolf Diesel, in full Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel, (born March 18, 1858, Paris, France—died September 29, 1913, at sea in the English Channel), German thermal engineer who invented the internal-combustion engine that bears his name. on August 10, 1893. While the first engine test was unsuccessful, a series of improvements and subsequent tests led to a successful test on February 17, 1897 when Diesel demonstrated an efficiency of 26.2% with the engine, Figure 2, under load—a significant achievement given that the then popular steam engine had an efficiency of about 10%. The first Sulzer-built diesel engine was started in June 1898

Figure 2

Disc brake, Engines, power steering, four wheel drive.

Dr Fredrick Lanchester

Frederick William Lanchester LLD, Hon FRAeS, FRS (23 October 1868 – 8 March 1946), was ... In 1921 Lanchester was the first company to export left-hand drive cars. Tinted glass was also introduced on these cars for the first time. Then he turned to cars, designing and building a 5hp “horseless carriage” in 1895. It was road tested in 1896 but he wasn’t satisfied, so the following year improved on his own technology building an 8hp car with a revolutionary two-cylinder design that eliminated the vibrations plaguing other cars at the time. It also had an air-cooled engine. That year Lanchester also patented two aircraft designs.

Teaming up with his brothers in 1899 he founded the Lanchester Engine Company. In 1902 he patented the first outboard engine for boats, along with disc brakes, power steering and four-wheel drive.

Dynamite

Dr Alfred Bernhard Nobel

Alfred Nobel, in full Alfred Bernhard Nobel, (born October 21, 1833, Stockholm, Sweden—died December 10, 1896, San Remo, Italy), Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist who invented dynamite and other more powerful explosives and who also founded the Nobel Prizes.

About 1860, the only dependable explosive for use in mines was black powder, a form of gunpowder. A recently discovered liquid compound,nitroglycerin, was a much more powerful explosive, but it was so unstable that it could not be handled with any degree of safety. Nevertheless, Nobel in 1862 built a small factory to manufacture nitroglycerin, and at the same time he undertook research in the hope of finding a safe way to control the explosive’s detonation. In 1863 he invented a practical detonator consisting of a wooden plug inserted into a larger charge of nitroglycerin held in a metal container; the explosion of the plug’s small charge of black powder serves to detonate the much more powerful charge of liquid nitroglycerin. This detonator marked the beginning of Nobel’s reputation as an inventor as well as the fortune he was to acquire as a maker of explosives. In 1865 Nobel invented an improved detonator called a blasting cap; it consisted of a small metal cap containing a charge of mercury fulminate that can be exploded by either shock or moderate heat. The invention of the blasting cap inaugurated the modern use of high explosives.

Dynamo

Hypolite Pixii

Hippolyte Pixii (1808–1835) was an instrument maker from Paris, France. In 1832 he built an early form of alternating current electrical generator, based on the principle of electromagnetic induction discovered by Michael Faraday.

Pixii's generator produced alternating current (AC) which was of little interest at the time. Following a suggestion by French physicist André Ampère (1775-1836), Pixii installed a commutator which converted the AC into direct current (DC). Alternating current would not be utilized until 160 years later, thanks largely to the efforts of Nikola Tesla.

The device that Pixii built was essentially a working model, but it was the first practical generator built on the principle Faraday had discovered. Later, Zénobe Gramme established a very profitable business building electric generators.

Dynamo and see also Electric Transformer

Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday (22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis.

He wrote a manual of practical chemistry that reveals his mastery of the technical aspects of his art, discovered a number of new organic compounds, among them benzene, and was the first to liquefy a “permanent” gas (i.e., one that was believed to be incapable of liquefaction). His major contribution, however, was in the field of electricity and magnetism. He was the first to produce an electric current from a magnetic field, invented the first electric motorand dynamo, demonstrated the relation between electricity and chemical bonding, discovered the effect of magnetism on light, and discovered and named diamagnetism, the peculiar behaviour of certain substances in strong magnetic fields.

He immediately realized that a continuous current could be produced by rotating a copper disk between the poles of a powerful magnet and taking leads off the disk’s rim and centre. The outside of the disk would cut more lines than would the inside, and there would thus be a continuous current produced in the circuit linking the rim to the centre. This was the first dynamo. It was also the direct ancestor of electric motors, for it was only necessary to reverse the situation, to feed an electric current to the disk, to make it rotate.

Electric flat iron

H.W. Seeley

Henry W. Seely (May 20, 1861 – May 20, 1943) was an American mathematician. He was born in Cazenovia, New York 

The "electric flatiron" was invented by American Henry W. Seeley and patented on June 6, 1882. It weighed almost 15 pounds and took a long time to heat. On June 6, 1882, at the time called an electric flatiron. Early electric irons developed around the same time in France used a carbon arc to create heat, however, this proved unsafe and commercially unsuccessful. 

Electric furnace

Charles Wilhelm Siemens

Sir Carl Wilhelm Siemens  (4 April 1823 – 19 November 1883)

The regenerative furnace is the greatest single invention of Charles William Siemens, using a process known as the Siemens-Martin process. The electric pyrometer, which is perhaps the most elegant and original of all William Siemens's inventions, is also the link which connects his electrical with his metallurgical researches. Siemens pursued two major themes in his inventive efforts, one based upon the science of heat, the other based upon the science of electricity; and the electric thermometer was, as it were, a delicate cross-coupling which connected both.

In 1874 he had a special cable ship built, according to his design, for Siemens Brothers, the CS Faraday. In 1881, a Siemens AC Alternator driven by a watermillwas used to power the world's first electric street lighting in the town of Godalming, United Kingdom

Electric heater

C. R. Belling

Charles Reginald Belling (1884-1965) British Inventor

The turn of the century saw other British innovations in the field of electric heating and the beginnings of portable technologies. In 1912, Charles Reginald Belling set up his own business out of his shed in Enfield manufacturing electric heaters. Early models of these heaters looked like table lamps with a copper reflective dish at the back to project heat out into the room. Belling & Co would go on to see roaring success with their business and are still a major brand within British electricals.

"Standard" portable electric fire with 6 wire-wound fireclay elements, 2 rotary switches and blue-enamelled cast iron surround with hinged t rivet at the top to support a kettle or pan, elements patented by C. R Beslling (pat no 19,054) in 1912, the "Standard being the first Belling fire to go into production, by Belling and Co, Enfield, 1912-1920

Electric lamp

Thomas Alva Edison (known as the 'The Wizard of Menlo Park' who said, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."? )

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who has been described as America's greatest inventor. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures.

From his laboratories and workshops emanated the phonograph, the carbon-button transmitter for the telephone speaker and microphone, the incandescent lamp, a revolutionary generator of unprecedented efficiency, the first commercial electric light and power system, an experimental electric railroad, and key elements of motion-picture apparatus, as well as a host of other inventions, he worked with Nikola Tesla on many join inventions.

Electric motor (AC)

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (Serbo-Croatian:10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply  Throughout his career, Tesla discovered, designed and developed ideas for a number of important inventions — most of which were officially patented by other inventors (see Thomas Edison) — including dynamos (electrical generators similar to batteries) and the induction motor. 

He was also a pioneer in the discovery of radar technology, X-ray technology, remote control and the rotating magnetic field — the basis of most AC machinery. Tesla is most well-known for his contributions in AC electricity and for the Tesla coil.

In 1895, Tesla designed what was among the first AC hydroelectric power plants in the United States, at Niagara Falls.  The following year, it was used to power the city of Buffalo, New York — a feat that was highly publicized throughout the world and helped further AC electricity’s path to becoming the world’s power system.

Tesla Coil In the late 19th century, Tesla patented the Tesla coil, which laid the foundation for wireless technologies and is still used in radio technology today. The heart of an electrical circuit, the Tesla coil is an inductor used in many early radio transmission antennas. 

The coil works with a capacitor to resonate current and voltage from a power source across the circuit. Tesla himself used his coil to study fluorescence, x-rays, radio, wireless power and electromagnetism in the earth and its atmosphere. 

Electric motor (DC)

Zenobe Gramme

Zénobe Théophile Gramme (4 April 1826 – 20 January 1901) was a Belgian electrical engineer. He was born at Jehay-Bodegnée 

by 1869 he had built a successful—and clean—direct-current dynamo, drawing on the work of Pacinotti (a version of whose machine he had improved) and other earlier physicists who had theorized autoexcitation in revolving machines. Gramme’s dynamno, used in metallurgy as well as in the production of electric light, depended upon a ring winding to hold the conductors in place on the surface of the revolving armature. Gramme was the first to give final form to the collector that derives direct current from the revolving armature, and he rapidly saw the possibility of inverting the function of the dynamo to use it as an electrical engine.

Electric railway, electric telegraph

Werner von Siemens

Ernst Werner Von Siemens, (13 December 1816 – 6 December 1892), was a German electrical engineer who played an important role in the development of the telegraph industry.

The first electric passenger train was presented by Werner von Siemens at Berlin in 1879. The locomotive was driven by a 2.2 kW, series-wound motor, and the train, consisting of the locomotive and three cars, reached a speed of 13 km/h.

The electric power transmission to the coach was by a flexible cable pulling a small eight-wheeled "contact car" (Kontaktwagen) that ran along the overhead power lines. The car was weighed so it wouldn't fall off the cables it ran on. In English language use, the Kontaktwagen was later named the "trolley", giving the trolley car and trolley bus their names. Siemens invented a telegraph that used a needle to point to the right letter, instead of using Morse code. Based on this invention, he founded the company Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske on 1 October 1847, with the company opening a workshop on 12 October. The company name is in use today.

Electric Telegraph

Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone

William Fothergill Cooke and English scientist CharlesWheatstone. The first telegraph system to be put into commercial service was a form of needle telegraph.

Although a number of telegraph machines were invented and tested in the early 1800s, Samuel Morse, of Morse Code fame, was the first to invent and officially patent a recording electric telegraph in 1837. That same year, William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone invented and patented the first commercial electric telegraph. Telegraph machines like this one worked by sending patterns of electric current down a telegraph wire to a receiver, which pointed at different letters of the alphabet in turn, spelling out the sender’s message.

Cooke and Wheatstone gained early success when their telegraph system was successfully introduced on the railways to transmit messages, signals and, importantly, time. In the 1830s, each area of Britain operated on its own ‘local’ time, based on the sunrise and sunset. To operate safely, the railways, which were rapidly springing up all over the country, needed to run to a timetable based on a standard time system. Soon, local times were being synchronized by telegraph in more and more locations and timetables began running to standard ‘railway’ time. By 1855, this had been brought in line with ‘London’ or ‘Greenwich Mean’ time, telegraphed along cables the length and breadth of Britain.

Electric transformer and dynamo

Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday, (born September 22, 1791, Newington, Surrey, England—died August 25, 1867, Hampton Court, Surrey), English physicist and chemist whose many experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism. did you know? Faradayinvented the rubber balloon while experimenting with gases.

Faraday’s great opportunity came when he was offered a ticket to attend chemical lectures by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. Faraday went, sat absorbed with it all, recorded the lectures in his notes, and returned to bookbinding with the seemingly unrealizable hope of entering the temple of science. He sent a bound copy of his notes to Davy along with a letter asking for employment, but there was no opening. Davy did not forget, however, and, when one of his laboratory assistants was dismissed for brawling, he offered Faraday a job. Faraday began as Davy’s laboratory assistant and learned chemistry at the elbow of one of the greatest practitioners of the day. It has been said, with some truth, that Faraday was Davy’s greatest discovery.

https://www.famousscientists.org/michael-faraday/

Electrocardiograph (ECG)

Willam Einthoven

Willem Einthoven (21 May 1860 – 29 September 1927) was a Dutch physician and physiologist. He invented the first practical electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) in 1895 and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 for it ("for the discovery of the mechanism of the electrocardiogram").

he began the task of registering accurately the heart sounds, using a capillary electrometer. With this in view, he investigated the theoretical principles of this instrument, and devised methods of obtaining the necessary stability, and of correcting mathematically the errors in the photographically registered results due to the inertia of the instrument. Having found these methods he decided to carry out a thorough analysis of A.D. Waller’s electrocardiogram – a study which has remained classic in its field.

Electromagnet

William Sturgeon

William Sturgeon (22 May 1783 – 4 December 1850) was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets, and invented the first practical English electric motor.

Sturgeon built an electric motor in 1832 and invented the commutator, an integral part of most modern electric motors. In 1836, the year he founded the monthly journal Annals of Electricity, he invented the first suspended coil galvanometer, a device for measuring current. He also improved the voltaic battery and worked on the theory of thermoelectricity. From more than 500 kite observations he established that in serene weather the atmosphere is invariably charged positively with respect to the Earth, becoming more positive with increasing altitude.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Sturgeon

Electron microscopy

Ernst Abbe

Ernst Karl Abbe HonFRMS (23 January 1840 – 14 January 1905) was a German physicist, optical scientist, entrepreneur, and social reformer. 

In 1866, he became a research director at the Zeiss Optical Works, and in 1886 he invented the apochromatic lens, a microscope lens which eliminates both the primary and secondary color distortion. By 1870, Abbe invented the Abbe condenser, used for microscope illumination.  In 1871, he designed the first refractometer, which he described in a booklet published in 1874. He developed the laws of image of non-luminous objects by 1872. Zeiss Optical Works began selling his improved microscopes in 1872, by 1877 they were selling microscopes with homogenous immersion objective, and in 1886 his apochromatic objective microscopes were being sold.

Electronic computer

Dr Alan M. Turing

Alan Turing , in full Alan Mathison Turing, (born June 23, 1912, London, England—died June 7, 1954, Wilmslow, Cheshire), British mathematician and logician, who made major contributions to mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, and mathematical biology and also to the new areas later named computer science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.

During the autumn of 1939 and the spring of 1940, Turing and others designed a related, but very different, code-breaking machine known as the Bombe. For the rest of the war, Bombes supplied the Allies with large quantities of military intelligence. By early 1942 the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park were decoding about 39,000 intercepted messages each month from The Enigma machine, a figure that rose subsequently to more than 84,000 per month—two messages every minute, day and night. In 1942 Turing also devised the first systematic method for breaking messages encrypted by the sophisticated German cipher machine that the British called “Tunny.” At the end of the war, Turing was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his code-breaking work.

Electroplating

Luigi Brugnatelli

Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli (also Luigi Gaspare Brugnatelli or Luigi Vincenzo Brugnatelli) (14 February 1761 in Pavia – 24 October 1818 in Pavia) was an Italian chemist and inventor who discovered the process for electroplating in 1805.

Italian chemist invented electroplating in 1805. Brugnatelli performed electrodeposition of gold using the Voltaic Pile, discovered by his college Allessandro Volta in 1800. Luigi Brugnatelli’s work was rebuffed by the dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, which caused Brugnatelli to suppress any further publication of his work.

However, Luigi Brugnatelli did write about electroplating in the Belgian Journal of Physics and Chemistry, “I have lately gilt in a complete manner two large silver medals, by bringing them into communication by means of a steel wire, with a negative pole of a voltaic pile, and keeping them one after the other immersed in ammoniuret of gold newly made and well saturated”.

http://www.aroundlabnews.com/en/

Escalator

Charles D. Seeberger

Charles D. Seeberger (May 14, 1857 – September 13, 1931) was an American inventor. In 1899, he joined the Otis Elevator Company. the Seeberger-Otis partnership produced the first step-type escalator made for public use, and it was installed at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, where it won first prize.

Seeberger is most commonly attributed with coining the term escalator, a combination of the Latin scala (steps) with "elevator." Seeberger's invention consisted of risers attached to a series of levers and wheels which traveled in tracks. As the slats were pulled along the tracks, the movement of the wheels and lever arms ensured that the steps remained horizontal throughout the entire operation. In addition, an elastic rubber strip placed underneath the slats remained in contact with the adjacent riser. The rubber strip served as a safety device to seal any gaps between steps.

Esperanto (Language)

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof

Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (15 December [O.S. 3 December] 1859 – 14 April [O.S. 1 April] 1917), was a Polish ophthalmologist and the inventor of the international language Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language in the world.

Bialystok’s population consisted of Poles, Jews, Germans and Russians. The tensions and suspicions between them were only too evident to Ludwig and his family, who later moved to Warsaw. Already as a schoolboy young Zamenhof started trying to fashion an international language. He believed that if people spoke the same language they would understand each other better and the entrenched hatreds between different groups would melt away.

After university in Moscow and Warsaw, Zamenhof became a doctor in Lithuania and later an ophthalmologist in Vienna and Warsaw, but he continued his linguistic work and in Warsaw in 1887 he published a 40- page booklet in Russian on his international language under the pseudonym Doctor Esperanto (‘Doctor Hopeful’), which became the language’s name.

https://www.historytoday.com/

Extinguisher (Fire)

1. First Type Ambrose Godfrey 2. modern dry powder fire extinguisher was invented by British Captain George William Manby 3. Soda type Francois Carlier

The first fire extinguisher of which there is any record was patented in England in 1723 by Ambrose Godfrey, a celebrated chemist at that time. It consisted of a cask of fire-extinguishing liquid containing a pewter chamber of gunpowder. This was connected with a system of fuses which were ignited, exploding the gunpowder and scattering the solution. This device was probably used to a limited extent, as Bradley's Weekly Messenger for November 7, 1729, refers to its efficiency in stopping a fire in London.

The modern dry powder fire extinguisher was invented by British Captain George William Manby in 1818; it consisted of a copper vessel of 3 gallons (13.6 liters) of pearl ash (potassium carbonate) solution contained within compressed air.

The soda-acid extinguisher was first patented in 1866 by Francois Carlier of France, which mixed a solution of water and sodium bicarbonate with tartaric acid, producing the propellant CO2 gas. A soda-acid extinguisher was patented in the U.S. in 1881 by Almon M. Granger. His extinguisher used the reaction between sodium bicarbonate solution and sulfuric acid to expel pressurized water onto a fire. A vial of concentrated sulfuric acid was suspended in the cylinder. Depending on the type of extinguisher, the vial of acid could be broken in one of two ways. One used a plunger to break the acid vial, while the second released a lead stopple that held the vial closed. Once the acid was mixed with the bicarbonate solution, carbon dioxide gas was expelled and thereby pressurized the water. The pressurized water was forced from the canister through a nozzle or short length of hose.

Facsimile & Electric Clock

Alexander Bain

Alexander Bain (12 October 1810 – 2 January 1877) was a Scottish inventor and engineer who was first to invent and patent the electric clock.

In 1840, desperate for money to develop his inventions, Bain mentioned his financial problems to the editor of the Mechanics Magazine, who introduced him to Sir Charles Wheatstone. Bain demonstrated his models to Wheatstone, who, when asked for his opinion, said "Oh, I shouldn't bother to develop these things any further! There's no future in them."[3] Three months later Wheatstone demonstrated an electric clock to the Royal Society, claiming it was his own invention. However, Bain had already applied for a patent for it. Wheatstone tried to block Bain's patents, but failed. When Wheatstone organised an Act of Parliament to set up the Electric Telegraph Company, the House of Lords summoned Bain to give evidence, and eventually compelled the company to pay Bain £10,000 and give him a job as manager, causing Wheatstone to resign.

Bain's first patent was dated 11 January 1841, and was in the names of John Barwise, chronometer maker, and Alexander Bain, mechanist. It describes his electric clock which uses a pendulum kept moving by electromagnetic impulses. He improved on this in later patents, including a proposal to derive the required electricity from an "earth battery", which consisted of plates of zinc and copper buried in the ground.

Bain worked on an experimental fax machine from 1843 to 1846. He used a clock to synchronise the movement of two pendulums for line-by-line scanning of a message. For transmission, Bain applied metal pins arranged on a cylinder made of insulating material. An electric probe that transmitted on-off pulses then scanned the pins. The message was reproduced at the receiving station on electrochemically sensitive paper impregnated with a chemical solution similar to that developed for his chemical telegraph. In his patent description dated 27 May 1843 for "improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces, and in electric printing, and signal telegraphs," he claimed that "a copy of any other surface composed of conducting and non-conducting materials can be taken by these means".[6] The transmitter and receiver were connected by five wires. In 1850 he applied for an improved version but was too late, asFrederick Bakewell had obtained a patent for his superior "image telegraph" two years earlier in 1848.

Facsimile machine

Edouard Belin

Édouard Belin (Vesoul, Haute-Saône, France, 5 March 1876 – 4 March 1963 in Territet, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland) was a French photographer and inventor. French engineer who in 1907 made the first telephoto transmission, from Paris to Lyon to Bordeaux and back to Paris, using an apparatus of his own invention. The first transatlantic transmission was made in 1921 between Annapolis, Md., and Belin’s laboratories at La Malmaison, France. His equipment was adopted in Britain in 1928. It was used almost exclusively by European news media during the 1930s and ’40s, when the term “Belino” came into general use for all kinds of picture transmission.

In this apparatus, the transmitter traverses the original image point by point. At each point a measurement of light intensity ]is made with an electric eye. The measurement is conveyed to the receiver. There, a variable intensity light source reproduces the light measured by the electric eye, while carrying out same displacements exactly. By doing this, it exposes the photographic paper and makes it possible to obtain a copy of the original image.

Ferrofluids

Ronald Rosenzweig

 

A ferrofluid or ferromagnetic fluid is a liquid that becomes strongly magnetized in the presence of a magnetic field.

A process for making a ferrofluid was invented in 1963 by NASA's Steve Papell to create liquid rocket fuel that could be drawn toward a pump inlet in a weightless environment by applying a magnetic field.  The name ferrofluid was introduced, the process improved, more highly magnetic liquids synthesized, additional carrier liquids discovered, and the physical chemistry elucidated by R. E. Rosensweig and colleagues; in addition Rosensweig evolved a new branch of fluid mechanics termed ferrohydrodynamics. Ferrofluids are composed of very tiny nanoscale particles (diameter usually 10 nanometers or less) of magnetite, hematite or some other compound containing iron, and a liquid. This is small enough for thermal agitation to disperse them evenly within a carrier fluid, and for them to contribute to the overall magnetic response of the fluid.

Fertiliser

Justus Freiherr von Liebig

Justus Freiherr von Liebig (12 May 1803 – 18 April 1873) was a German scientist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and was considered the founder of organic chemistry. As a professor at the University of Giessen, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the greatest chemistry teachers of all time. He has been described as the "father of the fertilizer industry" for his emphasis on nitrogen and trace minerals as essential plant nutrients, and his formulation of the law of the minimum, which described how plant growth relied on the scarcest nutrient resource, rather than the total amount of resources available

Film (moving outlines)

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince  

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince b. 28 August 1841, Metz, France Disappeared: 16 September 1890 (aged 49); Dijon,France

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince was a French artist and the inventor of an early motion picture camera, the first person to shoot a moving picture sequence using a single lens camera and a strip of film.

He was a French artist and the inventor of an early motion picture camera, the first person to shoot a moving picture sequence using a single lens camera and a strip of (paper) film. Although some have credited him as the "Father of Cinematography",his work did not influence the commercial development of cinema—owing at least in part to the great secrecy surrounding it.

A Frenchman who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Le Prince's motion-picture experiments culminated in 1888 in the city of Leeds, England. In October of that year, he filmed moving-picture sequences of Roundhay Garden, Leeds Bridge, and his brother playing the accordion, using his single-lens camera and Eastman's paper negative film. This work may have been slightly in advance of the inventions of contemporaneous moving-picture pioneers such as William Friese-Greene and Wordsworth Donisthorpe, and years in advance of that of Auguste and Louis Lumière, and William Kennedy Dickson (who did the moving image work for Thomas Edison).

Film (musical, sound)

Dr Lee de Forest

Dr Lee de Forest  (August 26, 1873 – June 30, 1961) was an American inventor, described "Father of Radio", and a pioneer in the development of sound-on-film recording used for motion pictures. He had over 180 patents, but also a tumultuous career—he boasted that he made, then lost, four fortunes.

in 1907 he patented a much more promising detector (developed in 1906), which he called the Audion; it was capable of more sensitive reception of wireless signals than were the electrolytic and Carborundum types then in use. It was a thermionic grid-triode vacuum tube—a three-element electronic “valve” similar to a two-element device patented by the Englishman Sir John Ambrose Fleming in 1905. In 1907 de Forest was able to broadcast experimentally both speech and music to the general public in the New York City area.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-de-Forest

Film (talking)

J. Engl, J. Mussolle, C. H. Vogt

In Europe, others were also working on the development of sound-on-film. In 1919, the same year that DeForest received his first patents in the field, three German inventors, Josef Engl (1893–1942), Hans Vogt (1890–1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889–1957), patented the Tri-Ergon sound system. On September 17, 1922, the Tri-Ergon group gave a public screening of sound-on-film productions—including a dramatic talkie, Der Brandstifter (The Arsonist) —before an invited audience at the Alhambra Kino in Berlin. By the end of the decade, Tri-Ergon would be the dominant European sound system. In 1923, two Danish engineers, Axel Petersen and Arnold Poulsen, patented a system that recorded sound on a separate filmstrip running parallel with the image reel. Gaumont licensed the technology and briefly put it to commercial use under the name Cinéphone.

Flashing system of throwing light out to sea from lighthouses

Robert Stephenson

Robert Stephenson  (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an early English railway and civil engineer. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father. Robert has been called the greatest engineer of the 19th century.

Returning from the Orkney Islands in 1794 on the sloop Elizabeth of Stromness, he had the good fortune to be rowed ashore when the Elizabeth became becalmed off Kinnaird Head; the ship was later driven back by a gale to Orkney, and there foundered losing all hands. On Bell Rock, which was covered by all but the lowest tide, he tells of an occasion when one of the crew boats drifted away leaving insufficient carrying capacity for the crew in the remaining boats; the situation was saved by the timely arrival of the Bell Rock pilot boat, on an errand to deliver mail to Stevenson.

Stevenson served for nearly fifty years as engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board, until 1842,during which time he designed and oversaw the construction and later improvement of numerous lighthouses. He innovated in the choice of light sources, mountings, reflector design, the use of Fresnel lenses, and in rotation and shuttering systems providing lighthouses with individual signatures allowing them to be identified by seafarers. For this last innovation he was awarded a gold medal by King William I of the Netherlands.

Flushing Toilet

Alexander Cumming 

Alexander Cumming (sometimes referred to as Alexander Cummings) FRSE (1733 –8 March 1814) was a Scottish watchmaker and instrument inventor, who was the first to patent a design of the flush toilet in 1775, which had been pioneered by Sir John Harrington, but without solving the problem of foul smells.

In 1775 English inventor Alexander Cumming was granted the first patent for a flush toilet. His greatest innovation was the S-shaped pipe below the bowl that used water to create a seal preventing sewer gas from entering through the toilet. In the late-19th century, a London plumbing impresario named Thomas Crapper manufactured one of the first widely successful lines of flush toilets. Crapper did not invent the toilet, but he did develop the ballcock, an improved tank-filling mechanism still used in toilets today. Crapper’s name would become synonymous with the devices he sold (although the English word “crap” predates him by centuries), thanks in part to American servicemen stationed overseas during World War I. These doughboys, unfamiliar with the relatively new-fangled invention, referred to the toilets as “crappers”—due to the Crapper brand’s ubiquity in England and Franc—and brought the term back home with them after the war.

Spend a Penny - One of the Great Exhibition's landmark inventions was the introduction of the UK's first paid-for flushing public toilet, when visitors spent one penny to experience a clean toilet seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine. Records show that 675,000pennies were spent.

Flying shuttle (Weaving)

John Kay

John Kay (17 June 1704 – c. 1779) was the inventor of the flying shuttle, which was a key contribution to the Industrial Revolution for weaving. 

In 1733, he received a patent for his most revolutionary device: a "wheeled shuttle" for the hand loom. It greatly accelerated weaving, by allowing the shuttle carrying the weft to be passed through the warp threads faster and over a greater width of cloth. It was designed for the broad loom, for which it saved labour over the traditional process, needing only one operator per loom (before Kay's improvements a second worker was needed to catch the shuttle).

Kay always called this invention a "wheeled shuttle", but others used the name "fly-shuttle" (and later, "flying shuttle") because of its continuous speed, especially when a young worker was using it in a narrow loom. The shuttle was described as traveling at "a speed which cannot be imagined, so great that the shuttle can only be seen like a tiny cloud which disappears the same instant."

Food processor

Kenneth Wood

Kenneth Wood B (4 Oct 1916 d 19 Oct 1997)

was an English entrepreneur and businessman, who is most famous for the development of the eponymous Kenwood Chef food mixer.

After the war, he founded Woodlau Industries, with wartime colleague Roger Laurence, starting production in 1947 in Woking with the A100 turnover toaster, an appliance that was uncommon in the UK at that time, and then the A200 food mixer - the predecessor of the Kenwood Chef which was launched in 1950. When Roger Laurence left the company, Wood changed the name to Kenwood Manufacturing Company Ltd. The company moved to Havant in Hampshire in 1961, then employing a workforce of 700.

Kenwood's products were successful because Wood identified household tasks that gave housewives most work and developed machines to do those jobs. Within a few years of setting up the company, he was one of Britain's youngest millionaires.

Fountain pen

Lewis E. Waterman

Lewis Edson Waterman (November 18, 1837 – May 1, 1901), born in Decatur, New York, held multiple fountain pen patents and was the founder of the Waterman pen company.

Waterman used the capillarity principle to create his first pen. It used air to induce a steady and even flow of ink. His idea was to add an air hole in the nib and three grooves inside the feed mechanism. He christened his pen "the Regular" and decorated it with wood accents, was for this "three fissure feed" which his first pen-related patent was granted in 1884

Free electron laser

John Madey

John M. J. Madey (28 February 1943 - 5 July 2016) was a professor of Physics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, a former director of the Free Electron Laser Laboratory at Duke University, and formerly a professor (research) at Stanford University.

While an undergraduate at the California Institute of Technology, he had a discussion where the question came up as to whether or not it was possible to enhance the transition rate for bremsstrahlung through stimulated emission. Madey received a BS degree in Physics and a MS degree in Quantum Electronics from the California Institute of Technology in 1964 and 1965. He continued thinking about the stimulated emission question while working on his doctoral degree at Stanford, when he invented the free-electron laser. He was awarded a PhD in 1970, and appointed as Professor (Research) of Electrical Engineering in 1986.

Stanford University refused to patent this idea so Madey filed for a patent on his own In the following years, he developed an innovative laser research program which was highly regarded in the scientific community.

Freeze-drying

Arsene d'Arsonval

Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval (June 8, 1851 – December 31, 1940) was a French physician, physicist, and inventor of the moving-coil D'Arsonval galvanometer and the thermocouple ammeter.

In 1892, he became director of the new laboratory of biophysics at the College de France and continued in that post until 1910. His main contributions were in electrophysiology. From 1889 D'Arsonval did the first research on the physiological effects of alternating current on the body. He discovered that currents with frequency over 5,000 Hz did not cause the muscular contractions and nerve stimulation effects of electric shock. Instead they seemed to have beneficial effects. He pioneered the therapeutic application of high frequency current to the body, founding the field of electrotherapy. He developed a spark-excited resonant circuit to generate currents of 0.5-2 MHz called "D'Arsonval currents" for therapy, which became known as "D'Arsonvalization". It was later used for diathermy.

Frequency modulation

E. H. Armstrong

Edwin Howard Armstrong (December 18, 1890 – February 1, 1954) was an American electrical engineer and inventor, who developed FM (frequency modulation) radio and the superheterodyne receiver system.

In 1933 Armstrong secured four patents on advanced circuits that were to solve this last basic problem. They revealed an entirely new radio system, from transmitter to receiver. Instead of varying the amplitude, or power, of radio waves to carry voice or music, as in all radio before then, the new system varied, or modulated, the waves’ frequency (number of waves per second) over a wide band of frequencies. This created a carrier wave that natural static—an amplitude phenomenon created by electrical storms—could not break into. As a result, FM’s wide frequency range made possible the first clear, practical method of high-fidelity broadcasting.

Front-wheel drive

J. Walter Christie 

J. Walter Christie of the United States patented a design for a front-wheel-drive car, the first prototype of which he built in 1904. He promoted and demonstrated the vehicle by racing at various speedways in the United States, and even competed in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup and the French Grand Prix. In 1912 he began manufacturing a line of wheeled fire engine tractors which used his front-wheel-drive system

Galvanometer

Andre-Marie Ampere

André-Marie Ampère Born 20 January 1775; ‎Lyon, Died 10 June 1836 (aged 61); ‎Marseille  was a French physicist and mathematician who was one of the founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as "electrodynamics". He is also the inventor of numerous applications, such as the solenoid and the electrical telegraph

In September 1820, Ampère's friend and eventual eulogist François Arago showed the members of the French Academy of Sciences the surprising discovery of Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted that a magnetic needle is deflected by an adjacent electric current. Ampère began developing a mathematical and physical theory to understand the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Furthering Ørsted's experimental work, Ampère showed that two parallel wires carrying electric currents attract or repel each other, depending on whether the currents flow in the same or opposite directions, respectively - this laid the foundation of electrodynamics. 

Galvanoplasty

Moritz Hermann von Jacobi

Moritz Hermann (Boris Semyonovich) von Jacobi , b (21 September 1801 – d. 10 March 1874) was a German and Russian engineer and physicist. Jacobiworked mainly in Russia. He furthered progress in galvanoplastics, electric motors, and wire telegraphy.

n 1838, he discovered galvanoplastics, or electrotyping, a method of making printing plates by electroplating. The way in which this works is analogous to a battery acting in reverse. The stereotype was an impression taken from a form of movable lead type and used for printing instead of the original type. This technique is used in relief printing.

He also worked on the development of the electric telegraph. In 1842-1845 he built a telegraph line between Saint Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo using an underground cable. 

Gas lighting

William Murdock

William Murdoch (sometimes spelled Murdock) (21 August 1754 – 15 November 1839) was a Scottish engineer and inventor. Murdoch was employed by the firm of Boulton & Watt and worked for them in Cornwall, as a steam engine erector for ten years, spending most of the rest of his life in Birmingham, England.

Murdoch was the inventor of the oscillating cylinder steam engine, and gas lighting is attributed to him in the early 1790s, also the term "gasometer". However, Archibald Cochrane, ninth Earl of Dundonald, had already in 1789 used gas for lighting his family estate.[1]Murdoch also made innovations to the steam engine, including the sun and planet gear and D slide valve. He invented the steam gun and the pneumatic tube message system, and worked on one of the first British paddle steamers to cross the English Channel. Murdoch built a prototype steam locomotive in 1784 and made a number of discoveries in chemistry.

Geiger counter

Geiger & Muller

Geiger–Müller tube. A Geiger counter is an instrument used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation. Also known as a Geiger–Muller counter (or Geiger–Müller counter), it is widely used in applications such as radiation dosimetry, radiological protection, experimental physics, and the nuclear industry. The Geiger–Müller tube or G–M tube is the sensing element of the Geiger counter instrument used for the detection of ionizing radiation.

Genetic grafting

Herbert W. Boyer

Herbert Wayne "Herb" Boyer born July 10, 1936

Is a researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along with Stanley N. Cohen and Paul Berg he discovered a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, thereby jump starting the field of genetic engineering.

In 1975, Boyer met Robert Swanson who worked for a venture capital company. Swanson believed in the burgeoning biotech industry and in 1976, Genentech, Inc. was born. Genentech cloned and later developed the method for synthesizing human insulin using recombinant DNA technology. Genentech continues to be one of the biggest biotech companies in the world.

Glass (stained)

Augsburg Cathederal

During medieval times, stained glass windows were made from a combination of sand and potash (wood ash). These two ingredients were heated to the point where they'd liquify and become glass when cooled. In order to color the glass, powdered metals were added into the molten (heated) mixture before it cooled. Stained glass was a mosaic of different shapes and sizes of glass, first assembled on a drawn piece of board to map out their placements. If there was a need for shadows or outlines, artists would use black paint to add these details to the glass. In order to connect the pieces of stained glass in their patterns as determined by the artist, lead was used along with putty. When put together like pieces of a puzzle, the whole window became stabilized by an iron frame. 

Glider

Sir George Cayley

Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857) was an English engineer, inventor, and aviator. He is one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics.

Cayley established the modern configuration of an airplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control as early as 1799.  In 1804 he flew the first successful glider model of which there is any record. His work culminated in 1853 with the completion of a full-scale glider that carried his reluctant coachman on the first manned glider flight on record.

An individual of wide technical and scientific interests, Cayley invented the light-tension wheel (forerunner of the bicycle wheel), the expansion-air, or hot-air, engine (1805), and the caterpillar tractor (1825).

Gramophone

Emile Berliner

Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929), originally Emil Berliner, was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for inventing the flat disc record (called a "gramophone record" in British and American English) and the Gramophone. A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), often simply record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc.

He founded the United States Gramophone Company in 1894, The Gramophone Company in London, England, in 1897, The phonograph is a device for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms, it is also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or, since the 1940s, a record player.

Gramophone Developed

Thomas Alva Edison and Emile Berliner

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.

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.

Guided missile

Wernher von Braun

Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German and later American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Germany and a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States.

On Thursday, September 20, 1945, Wernher von Braun arrived at Fort Strong. The small military site on the northern tip of Boston Harbour's Long Island was the processing point for Project Paperclip, the government programme under which hundreds of German scientists were brought into America. Von Braun filled out his paperwork that day as the inventor of the Nazi V-2 rocket, a member of the Nazi party, and a member of the SS who could be linked to the deaths of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Two and a half decades later on Wednesday, July 16, 1969, von Braun stood in the firing room at Kennedy Spaceflight Centre and watched another of his rockets, the Saturn V, take the Apollo 11 crew to the Moon.

Gunpowder

Roger Bacon (Originally developed in China)

Roger Bacon (b 1214, Ilchester, United Kingdom– d. 1292)

English Franciscan philosopher and educational reformer who was a major medievalproponent of experimental science. Bacon studied mathematics, astronomy, optics, alchem, and languages. He was the first European to describe in detail the process of making gunpowder, and he proposed flying machines and motorized ships and carriages. Bacon therefore represents a historically precocious expression of the empirical spirit of experimental science, one of the first figures to be associated with the invention of spectacles was the thirteenth century English friar Roger Bacon, who was based in Paris and outlined the scientific principles behind the use of corrective lenses in his Opus Majus (c.1266)

The Chinese made 'firecrackers' by wrapping gunpowder in parchment and made rockets for launching from a catapault. The first person in Europe to make gunpowder was Roger Bacon, a 13th century monk. ... Guns were invented just after Bacon's death in 1292, so he never used the term gunpowder.

Gyrocompass

Elmer A. Sperry

Elmer Ambrose Sperry, Sr. (October 12, 1860 – June 16, 1930) was an American inventor and entrepreneur, most famous as co-inventor, with Herman Anschütz-Kaempfe, of the gyrocompass and as founder of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. He was known as the "father of modern navigation technology."

After experiencing seasickness on an Atlantic voyage in 1898, Sperry started to work on incorporating a large gyroscope into a ship to lessen the effect of waves on the ship. His gyroscope-stabilized ship differed from others at the time by having a sensor built in to the system to detect the first signs of a wave that the system would have to work to mitigate. In 1911, Sperry worked with the US Navy to incorporate his gyroscopic stabilizer, which greatly reduced major roll of the ship, into Navy ships. While effective, Sperry's gyrostablizer never was widely sold because of its expense, both in installation and maintenance.

Sperry found another use for his gyroscopes in 1908.  Magnetic compasses on steel battleships at the time had issues with maintaining magnetic north with the variations of the magnetic field they experienced. Working with Hannibal C. Ford, Sperry began work on a gyrocompass to replace the magnetic compass. In 1910 he founded the Sperry Gyroscope Company in Brooklyn, New York on the basis of this innovation. His first navigational gyroscope was tested that same year in USS Delaware (BB-28). After successful tests, Sperry's gyrocompass was soon being installed on American, British, French, Italian, and Russian naval crafts. During World War I, the importance of the gyrocompass increased as the compass was adapted to control the steering of a ship to automatically hold a steady line.

In 1887, Sperry created a system to bring electricity into coal mines, heating the copper wires to prevent corrosion. This system allowed him to bring self-designed mining equipment deep below the surface, to greatly increase the production of coal. In 1888 the Sperry Electric Machinery Mining Company was founded.

In 1890, Sperry formed the Sperry Electric Railway Company.  Here he used ideas from the electric trains sold by his mining company to create electric trolleys in large, hilly cities in Ohio and Pennsylvania. While working with this company, Sperry designed an electric automobile, which lead to Sperry patenting ideas that would be later used in the development of portable lead acid batteries. In 1896, he drove his car in Paris, making it the first American-made car in Paris.  In 1894, General Electric bought the railway company and its associated patents.

In 1900 Sperry established an electrochemical laboratory at Washington, D.C., where he and his associate, Clifton P. Townshend, developed a process for making pure caustic soda and discovered a process for recovering tin from scrap metal.

Heat pump

William Thomson Kelvin

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was an Irish-Scottish mathematical physicist and engineer Scottish-Irish physicist William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, was one of the most eminent scientists of the 19th century and is best known today for inventing the international system of absolute temperature that bears his name.

In the nineteenth century, physicists still believed that heat was an everlasting matter, and Thomson initially believed so, too. After he studied Joule's several essays on the generation of heat by electric current, he started to change his mind and began to study in collaboration with Joule. Their findings have provided strong experimental support for the First law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy). 

Heat-resistant glass

Otto Schott (Carl Zeiss)

Friedrich Otto Schott (17 December 1851 – 27 August 1935) was a German chemist, glass technologist, and the inventor of borosilicate glass. 

Carl Zeiss (b 11 September 1816 – d.  3 December 1888) was a German scientific instrument maker, optician and businessman who founded the workshop of Carl Zeiss in 1846, which is still in business today as Carl Zeiss AG. Zeiss gathered a group of gifted practical and theoretical opticians and glass makers to reshape most aspects of optical instrument production. His collaboration with Ernst Abbe revolutionized optical theory and practical design of microscopes. Their quest to extend these advances brought Otto Schott into the enterprises to revolutionize optical glass manufacture. The firm of Carl Zeiss grew to one of the largest and most respected optical firms in the world.

Corning Glass Works wasn't the first company to develop temperature-resistant glass, however. In the 1880s, a German scientist, Otto Schott, developed a low-expansion glass called borosilicate glass, but used it mostly to make products for industrial and scientific settings, such as laboratory glass.

Helicopter

Sikorsky Igor

Igor Ivan Sikorsky, (born May 25, 1889, Kiev, Russian Empire [now in Ukraine]—died October 26, 1972, Easton, Connecticut, U.S.), pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter.

Sikorsky's first aircraft of his own design, the S-1 used a 15 hp Anzani 3-cylinder fan engine in a pusher configuration, that could not lift the aircraft. His second design called the S-2 was powered by a 25 hp Anzani engine in a tractor configuration and first flew on June 3, 1910 at a height of a few feet. On June 30 after some modifications, Sikorsky reached an altitude of "sixty or eighty feet" before the S-2 stalled and was completely destroyed when it crashed in a ravine.[28][29] Later, Sikorsky built the two-seat S-5, his first design not based on other European aircraft. Flying this original aircraft, Sikorsky earned his pilot license; Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) license No. 64 issued by the Imperial Aero Club of Russia in 1911

Holography

Dennis Gabor

Dennis Gabor, (born June 5, 1900, Budapest, Hung.—died Feb. 8, 1979, London, Eng.), Hungarian-born electrical engineer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1971 for his invention ofholography, a system of lensless, three-dimensional photography that has many applications.

Holography, means of creating a unique photographic image without the use of a lens. The photographic recording of the image is called a hologram, which appears to be an unrecognizable pattern of stripes and whorls but which—when illuminated by coherent light, as by a laser beam—organizes the light into a three-dimensional representation of the original object.

An ordinary photographic image records the variations in intensity of light reflected from an object, producing dark areas where less light is reflected and light areas where more light is reflected. Holography, however, records not only the intensity of the light but also its phase, or the degree to which the wave fronts making up the reflected light are in step with each other, orcoherent. Ordinary light is incoherent—that is, the phase relationships between the multitude of waves in a beam are completely random; wave fronts of ordinary light waves are not in step.

Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-born scientist, invented holography in 1948, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics more than 20 years later (1971). Gabor considered the possibility of improving the resolving power of the electron microscope, first by utilizing the electron beam to make a hologram of the object and then by examining this hologram with a beam of coherent light, 

Hovercraft

Christopher Cockerell

Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell CBE RDI FRS (4 June 1910 – 1 June 1999) was an English engineer, best known as the inventor of the hovercraft.

Cockerell's theory was that instead of just pumping air under the craft, as Thornycroft had, if the air were to be instead channelled to form a narrow jet around the perimeter of the craft, the moving air would form a momentum curtain, a wall of moving air that would limit the amount of air that would leak out. This meant that the same cushion of high pressure air could be maintained by a very much smaller engine; and for the first time, a craft could be lifted completely out of the water. Cockrell tested his designs in the broadland village of Somerleyton, Suffolk

He tested his theories using a vacuum cleaner and two tin cans. His hypothesis was found to have potential, but the idea took some years to develop, and he was forced to sell personal possessions to finance his research. By 1955, he had built a working model from balsa wood and had filed his first patent for the hovercraft, No GB 854211. Cockerell had found it impossible to interest the private sector in developing his idea, as both the aircraft and the shipbuilding industries saw it as lying outside their core business.

In January 1959, the NRDC formed a subsidiary called Hovercraft Development Ltd. Cockerell was the Technical Director and the company controlled the patents which it used to license several private sector firms to manufacture craft under the registered trademark of Hovercraft.

Hydrogen bomb

Edward Teller

Edward Teller (Hungarian: b  January 15, 1908 –  d. September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb", although he did not care for the title, and was only part of a team who developed the technology.

In 1942, Teller was invited to be part of Robert Oppenheimer's summer planning seminar, at the University of California, Berkeley for the origins of the Manhattan Project, the Allied effort to develop the first nuclear weapons. A few weeks earlier, Teller had been meeting with his friend and colleague Enrico Fermi about the prospects of atomic warfare, and Fermi had nonchalantly suggested that perhaps a weapon based on nuclear fission could be used to set off an even larger nuclear fusion reaction. Even though he initially explained to Fermi why he thought the idea would not work, Teller was fascinated by the possibility and was quickly bored with the idea of "just" an atomic bomb even though this was not yet anywhere near completion. At the Berkeley session, Teller diverted discussion from the fission weapon to the possibility of a fusion weapon—what he called the "Super", an early concept of what was later to be known as a hydrogen bomb.

Incandescent electric lamp

Sir Joseph Wilson Swan

Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914) was an English physicist, chemist, and inventor. 

He is known as an independent early developer of a successful incandescent light bulb, and is the person responsible for developing and supplying the first incandescent lights used to illuminate homes and public buildings, including the Savoy Theatre, London, in 1881

Swan had solved the problem of incandescent electric lighting by means of a vacuum lamp. On 3 February 1879, he publicly demonstrated a working lamp to an audience of over seven hundred people in the lecture theatre of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, Sir William Armstrong of Cragside presiding. Swan turned his attention to producing a better carbon filament, and the means of attaching its ends. He devised a method of treating cotton to produce "parchmentised thread", and obtained British Patent 4933 on 27 November 1880.[10] From that time he began installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England.

Income Tax

Marquis De Vauban

Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, Seigneur de Vauban, later Marquis de Vauban (1 May 1633 – 30 March 1707) commonly referred to as Vauban (French:), was a French military engineer, who participated in each of the wars fought by France during the reign of Louis XIV.

Vauban came from a family of minor Burgundian nobility. Like many young nobles, he began his military career at the age of 17 and during his lifetime rose to become a marquis and a Marshal of France, the highest rank in the French army, never before attained by a military engineer. There is little known about his early education although it was probably rudimentary. Vauban, never unsuccessful in a siege, captured 48 fortresses and was associated with at least 160 building projects. An indefatigable traveler who crisscrossed France in his many tours of inspection as Commissioner General of Fortifications, he also was a prolific writer on matters dealing not only with fortifications but economics and taxation, social policy, and politics. His reputation in France continues undiminished to this day. Royalists saw him as the faithful but never servile servant of a powerful monarch. Revolutionists saw his ideas on social and economic policy — calls for equitable taxation, improvement of the living standards of the peasantry, religious toleration of Protestants, and promotion through merit — as heralding the agenda of the French Revolution.

Internet

ARPAnet

As you might expect for a technology so expansive and ever-changing, it is impossible to credit the invention of the internet to a single person. The internet was the work of dozens of pioneering scientists, programmers and engineers who each developed new features and technologies that eventually merged to become the “information superhighway” we know today.

Long before the technology existed to actually build the internet, many scientists had already anticipated the existence of worldwide networks of information. Nikola Tesla toyed with the idea of a “world wireless system” in the early 1900s, and visionary thinkers like Paul Otlet and Vannevar Bush conceived of mechanized, searchable storage systems of books and media in the 1930s and 1940s. 

Still, the first practical schematics for the internet would not arrive until the early 1960s, when MIT’s J.C.R. Licklider popularized the idea of an “Intergalactic Network” of computers. Shortly thereafter, computer scientists developed the concept of “packet switching,” a method for effectively transmitting electronic data that would later become one of the major building blocks of the internet.

The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network. 

On October 29, 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first message: a “node-to-node” communication from one computer to another. (The first computer was located in a research lab at UCLA and the second was at Stanford; each one was the size of a small house.) The message—“LOGIN”—was short and simple, but it crashed the fledgling ARPA network anyway: The Stanford computer only received the note’s first two letters.

The technology continued to grow in the 1970s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a communications model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks. 

ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet.

Interferometer

Antoine Labeyrie

Antoine Emile Henry Labeyrie (born 12 May 1943) is a French astronomer, who held the Observational astrophysics chair at the College de France between 1991 and 2014, where he is currently professor emeritus.

Labeyrie has proposed the idea of an astronomical interferometer where the individual telescopes are positioned in a spherical arrangement (requiring them to be positioned to a fraction of a wavelength). This geometry reduces the amount of pathlength compensation required when re-pointing the interferometer array (in fact a Mertz corrector can be used rather than delay lines), but otherwise is little different from other existing instruments. He has suggested a space-based interferometer array much larger (and complex) than the Darwin and Terrestrial Planet Finder projects using this spherical geometry of array elements along with a densified pupil beam combiner, calling the endeavor a "Hypertelescope"project. It might theoretically show features on Earth-like worlds around other stars. 

Internal combustion engine

Beau de Rochas

Alphonse Beau de Rochas, (born April 9, 1815, Digne, Fr. —died March 27, 1893, Vincennes), French engineer who originated the principle of the four-stroke internal-combustion engine. ... discovered by a French engineer, Alphonse Beau de Rochas, in 1862, a year before Lenoir ran his car ...

An internal combustion engine (ICE) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in acombustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high-pressure gases produced by combustion applies direct force to some component of the engine. The force is applied typically to pistons, turbine blade, rotor or a nozzle. This force moves the component over a distance, transforming chemical energy into useful work.

The first commercially successful internal combustion engine was created by Étienne Lenoir around 1859 and the first modern internal combustion engine was created in 1876 by Nikolaus Otto

Jet engine

Sir Frank Whittle

Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, FRAeS (1 June 1907 – 9 August 1996) was an English Royal Air Force air officer. He is credited with single-handedly inventing the turbojet engine.

Pondering the problem he thought: "Why not substitute a turbine for the piston engine?" Instead of using a piston engine to provide the compressed air for the burner, a turbine could be used to extract some power from the exhaust and drive a similar compressor to those used for superchargers. The remaining exhaust thrust would power the aircraft

Despite lengthy delays in their own programme, the Luftwaffe beat the British efforts into the air by nine months. 

Testing and production ramp-up was immediately accelerated. In December 1942 Rover had tested the W.2B for a total of 37 hours, but within the next month Rolls-Royce tested it for 390 hours. The W.2B passed its first 100-hour test at full performance of 1,600 lbf (7.1 kN) on 7 May 1943. The prototype Meteor airframe was already complete and took to the air on 12 June 1943. Production versions of the engine started rolling off the line in October, first known as the W.2B/23, then the RB.23 (for "Rolls-Barnoldswick") and eventually became known as the Rolls-Royce Welland. Barnoldswick was too small for full-scale production and turned back into a pure research facility under Hooker's direction, while a new factory was set up in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Rover's W.2B/26, as the Rolls-Royce Derwent, opened the new line and soon replaced the Welland, allowing the production lines at Barnoldswick to shut down in late 1944.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Whittle

Kaleidoscope

Sir David Brewster

Sir David Brewster KH PRSE FRS FSA(Scot) FSSA MICE (11 December 1781 – 10 February 1868) was a British scientist, inventor, author, and academic administrator. In science he is principally remembered for his experimental work in physical optics, mostly concerned with the study of the polarization of light and including the discovery of Brewster's angle. He studied the birefringence of crystals under compression and discovered photoelasticity, thereby creating the field of optical mineralogy. For this work, William Whewell dubbed him the "father of modern experimental optics" and "the Johannes Kepler of optics."

An instrument of more significance, the stereoscope, which – though of much later date (1849) – along with the kaleidoscope did more than anything else to popularise his name, was not as has often been asserted the invention of Brewster. Sir Charles Wheatstone discovered its principle and applied it as early as 1838 to the construction of a cumbersome but effective instrument, in which the binocular pictures were made to combine by means of mirrors. A dogged rival of Wheatstone's, Brewster was unwilling to credit him with the invention, however, and proposed that the true author of the stereoscope was a Mr. Elliot, a "Teacher of Mathematics" from Edinburgh, who, according to Brewster, had conceived of the principles as early as 1823 and had constructed a lensless and mirrorless prototype in 1839, through which one could view drawn landscape transparencies, since photography had yet to be invented.

Kinetoscope

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who has been described as America's greatest inventor.

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video, by creating the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. A process using roll film was first described in a patent application submitted in France and the U.S. by French inventor Louis Le Prince. The concept was also used by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1889, and subsequently developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892.[1] Dickson and his team at the Edison lab also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations.

Kodak Camera

George Eastman

George Eastman (July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream.

In 1884, Eastman patented the first film in roll form to prove practicable; he had been tinkering at home to develop it. In 1888, he perfected the Kodak Black camera, which was the first camera designed to use roll film. In 1889 he first offered film stock, and by 1896 became the leading supplier of film stock internationally. He incorporated his company under the name Eastman Kodak, in 1892. As film stock became standardized, Eastman continued to lead in innovations. Refinements in colored film stock continued after his death.

Laser

Narinder Singh Kapany 

Narinder Singh Kapany (Punjabi: (born 31 October 1926) is an Indian-born American physicist known for his work in fibre optics. He was named as one of the seven "Unsung Heroes" by Fortune in their 'Businessmen of the Century' issue (1999-11-22). He is also known as "Father of Fiber Optics".

An optical fiber (or optical fibre) is a flexible, transparent fiber made of glass (silica) or plastic, slightly thicker than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or “light pipe”, to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of optical fibers is known as fiber optics. Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communications, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than other forms of communication.

Launderette

J. F. Cantrell

The washing machine running on electricity was invented in 1908, But very few people could afford this luxury or avail laundry services. Regular electricity supply was another major constraint. J.F. Cantrell purchased four electric washing machines and installed them in the same building in 1934 in Fort Worth, Texas. He charged people by the hour for washing their clothes. Hot water and electricity were supplied, but users were obliged to bring their own soap.

This was a boon to all people. This was the start of 'washateria' or 'Laundromat',

Although many people use the word “Laundromat” to generically refer to coin-operated laundries, the first washing machine for public use was actually called a “Washateria.”

The name “Laundromat” was first registered as a goods and services trademark by Westinghouse Electric Corp. in 1940. White Consolidated Industries Inc. acquired the trademark in 1975 when it purchased the major-appliance division of Westinghouse.

Lift (mechanical)

Elisha J. Otis

Elisha Graves Otis (August 3, 1811 – April 8, 1861) was an American industrialist, founder of the Otis Elevator Company, and inventor of a safety device that prevents elevators from falling if the hoisting cable fails.

At the age of 40, while he was cleaning up the factory, he wondered how he could get all the old debris up to the upper levels of the factory. He had heard of hoisting platforms, but these often broke, and he was unwilling to take the risks. He and his sons, who were also tinkerers, designed their own "safety elevator" and tested it successfully. He initially thought so little of it he neither patented it nor requested a bonus from his superiors for it, nor did he try to sell it. After having made several sales, and after the bedstead factory declined, Otis took the opportunity to make an elevator company out of it, initially called Union Elevator Works and later Otis Brothers & Co.

No orders came to him over the next several months, but soon after, the 1853 New York World's Fair offered a great chance at publicity. At the New York Crystal Palace, Otis amazed a crowd when he ordered the only rope holding the platform on which he was standing cut. The rope was severed by an axeman, and the platform fell only a few inches before coming to a halt.

The safety locking mechanism had worked, and people gained greater willingness to ride in traction elevators; these elevators quickly became the type in most common usage and helped make present-day skyscrapers possible.

Lightning conductor

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE b. 17 January 1706, Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts, United States d. 17 April 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

was an American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a leading writer, printer, political philosopher, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. Wikipedia

On a June afternoon in 1752, the sky began to darken over the city of Philadelphia. As rain began to fall and lightning threatened, most of the city’s citizens surely hurried inside. But not Benjamin Franklin. He decided it was the perfect time to go fly a kite.

Franklin had been waiting for an opportunity like this. He wanted to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning, and to do so, he needed a thunderstorm.

He had his materials at the ready: a simple kite made with a large silk handkerchief, a hemp string, and a silk string. He also had a house key, a Leyden jar (a device that could store an electrical charge for later use), and a sharp length of wire. His son William assisted him.

Franklin had originally planned to conduct the experiment atop a Philadelphia church spire, according to his contemporary, British scientist Joseph Priestley (who, incidentally, is credited with discovering oxygen), but he changed his plans when he realized he could achieve the same goal by using a kite.

So Franklin and his son “took the opportunity of the first approaching thunder storm to take a walk into a field,” Priestley wrote in his account. “To demonstrate, in the completest manner possible, the sameness of the electric fluid with the matter of lightning, Dr. Franklin, astonishing as it must have appeared, contrived actually to bring lightning from the heavens, by means of an electrical kite, which he raised when a storm of thunder was perceived to be coming on.”

Despite a common misconception, Benjamin Franklin did not discover electricity during this experiment—or at all, for that matter. Electrical forces had been recognized for more than a thousand years, and scientists had worked extensively with static electricity. Franklin’s experiment demonstrated the connection between lightning and electricity.

Linoleum

Frederick Walton

Frederick Edward Walton, b 13 March 1834, United Kingdom d 16 May 1928, Nice, France

was an English manufacturer and inventor whose invention of Linoleum in Chiswick was patented in 1863. He also invented Lincrusta in 1877 (Lincrusta, an embossed wall-covering base on linoleum, launched in 1877.In all he obtained over 100 patents. )

In 1860, he established an experimental factory in Chiswick where he worked on oxidisation of linseed oil, for which he was granted a patent in 1860. He experimented with the oxidized oil as a replacement for rubber. He discovered that combining the oil with cork and colouring agents produced a useful material for floor covering,and in 1863 patented this new material. Walton called this new cloth "linoleum".He moved his factory for Staines, and in 1864, formed the Linoleum Manufacturing Company and by 1869 the factory in Staines was exporting to Europe and the United States.

Linotype

Otto Margcnthaler

Ottmar Mergenthaler (May 11, 1854 – October 28, 1899) was an American inventor who has been called a second Gutenberg, as Mergenthaler invented the 

In 1876, Mergenthaler was approached by James O. Clephane and his associate Charles T. Moore, who sought a quicker way of publishing legal briefs. By 1884 he conceived the idea of assembling metallic letter molds, called matrices, and casting molten metal into them, all within a single machine. His first attempt proved the idea feasible, and a new company was formed. Always improving his invention, Mergenthaler further developed his idea of an independent matrix machine.

In July, 1886, the first commercially used Linotype was installed in the printing office of the New York Tribune. Here it was immediately used on the daily paper and a large book. The book, the first ever composed with the new Linotype method, was titled, The Tribune Book of Open-Air Sports. Produced by his Mergenthaler Linotype Company, the machine remained a mainstay of the publishing industry until the 1980s.

Liquid oxygen combustible

Carl von Linde

Carl Paul Gottfried Linde (11 June 1842 – 16 November 1934) was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. He discovered a refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes.

Linde's first refrigeration system used dimethyl ether as the refrigerant and was built by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg (now MAN AG) for the Spaten Brewery in 1873. He quickly moved on to develop more reliable ammonia-based cycles. These were early examples of vapor-compression refrigeration machines, and ammonia is still in wide use as a refrigerant in industrial applications.

His apparatus for the liquefaction of air combined the cooling effect achieved by allowing a compressed gas to expand (the Joule–Thomson effect first observed by James Prescott Joule and Lord Kelvin) with a counter-current heat exchange technique that used the cold air produced by expansion to chill ambient air entering the apparatus. Over a period of time this effect gradually cooled the apparatus and air within it to the point of liquefaction.

Linde followed development of air liquefaction equipment with equipment that also separated air into its constituent parts using distillation processes.

Linde's inventions and developments spurred development in many areas of cryogenics,  physics, chemistry and engineering.

Lithography

Alois Senefelder

Johann Alois Senefelder (6 November 1771 – 26 February 1834) was a German actor and playwright who invented the printing technique of lithography in the 1790s.

Problems with the printing of his play Mathilde von Altenstein caused him to fall into debt, and unable to afford to publish a new play he had written, Senefelder experimented with a novel etching technique using a greasy, acid resistant ink as a resist on a smooth fine-grained stone of Solnhofen limestone. He then discovered that this could be extended to allow printing from the flat surface of the stone alone, the first planographic process in printing.

He joined with the André family of music publishers and gradually brought his technique into a workable form, perfecting both the chemical processes and the special form of printing press required for using the stones. He called it "stone printing" or "chemical printing", but the French name "lithography" became more widely adopted. And with the composer Franz Gleißner he started a publishing firm in 1796 using lithography.

The value of the new cheap and exact reproduction process was recognized early by land surveying offices across Europe. Senefelder was appointed 1809 to be the Inspector of a new Institution set up for this purpose in Bavaria called the "Lithographic Institute"

Lithotripter

Eisenberger and Chauss

A lithotripter is a noninvasive device that breaks up kidney stones by passing electromagnetic shock waves through a water bath while a patient sits inside. The lithotripter provides a nonsurgical means of pulverizing stones into pieces small enough to be passed naturally in the patient's urine.

The development of miniaturized nephroscopes which allow one-stage stone clearance with minimal morbidity has brought the role of shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) in stone management into question.

Locomotive

George Stephenson

George Stephenson, (born June 9, 1781, Wylam, Northumberland, Eng. ... 12, 1848, Chesterfield, Derbyshire), English engineer and principal inventor of the railroad locomotive.

Stephenson designed his first locomotive in 1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway named Blücher after the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (It was suggested the name sprang from Blücher's rapid march of his army in support of Wellington at Waterloo).[ii] Blücher was modelled on Matthew Murray’s locomotive Willington, which George studied at Kenton and Coxlodge colliery on Tyneside, and was constructed in the colliery workshop behind Stephenson's home, Dial Cottage, on Great Lime Road. The locomotive could haul 30 tons of coal up a hill at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), and was the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive: its traction depended on contact between its flanged wheels and the rail.

Loom (power)

Edmund Cartwright

Edmund Cartwright, (born April 24, 1743, Marnham, Nottinghamshire, Eng. ... 30, 1823, Hastings, Sussex), English inventor of the first wool-combing machine and of the predecessor of the modern power loom.

His attention had been turned to Sir Richard Arkwright’s cotton-spinning mills at Cromford, Derbyshire, which he saw on a visit in 1784. Inspired to construct a similar machine for weaving, he invented a crude power loom, first patented in 1785. That same year he set up a weaving and spinning factory in Doncaster, Yorkshire, but had to surrender it to creditors in 1793. In 1789 he had patented a wool-combing machine; although it lowered manufacturing costs, it did not benefit Cartwright financially. In 1809, however, the House of Commons voted Cartwright £10,000 in recognition of benefits conferred on the nation through his power loom. His other inventions included a cordelier (machine for making rope; 1792) and a steam engine that used alcohol instead of water.

Loudspeaker

Horace Short

In 1898, Horace Short patented a design for a loudspeaker driven by compressed air; he then sold the rights to Charles Parsons, who was issued several additional British patents before 1910. A few companies, including the Victor Talking Machine Company and Pathé, produced record players using compressed-air loudspeakers. However, these designs were significantly limited by their poor sound quality and their inability to reproduce sound at low volume. The first experimental moving-coil (also called dynamic) loudspeaker was invented by Oliver Lodge in 1898.[5] The first practical moving-coil loudspeakers were manufactured by Danish engineer Peter L. Jensen and Edwin Pridham in 1915, in Napa, California.[6] Like previous loudspeakers these used horns to amplify the sound produced by a small diaphragm. Jensen was denied patents. Being unsuccessful in selling their product to telephone companies, in 1915 they changed their target market to radios and public address systems, and named their product Magnavox. Jensen was, for years after the invention of the loudspeaker, a part owner of The Magnavox Company.

Kellogg and Rice in 1925 holding the large driver of the first moving-coil cone loudspeaker.

Prototype moving-coil cone loudspeaker by Kellogg and Rice in 1925, with electromagnet pulled back, showing voice coil attached to cone

The first commercial version of the speaker, sold with the RCA Radiola receiver, had only a 6 inch cone. In 1926 it sold for $250, equivalent to about $3000 today.

The moving-coil principle commonly used today in speakers was patented in 1924[failed verification] by Chester W. Rice and Edward W. Kellogg. The key difference between previous attempts and the patent by Rice and Kellogg is the adjustment of mechanical parameters so that the fundamental resonance of the moving system is below the frequency where the cone's radiation Impedance becomes uniform

Macadamised Roads

Imagine how long it took to build all the roads in the world

Construction of the first macadamized road in the United States (1823). In the foreground, workers are breaking stones "so as not to exceed 6 ounces in weight or to pass a two-inch ring".

John Macadam

John Loudon McAdam (23 September 1756 – 26 November 1836) was a Scottish civil engineer and road-builder. He was the inventor of "macadamisation"

he decided to remake the roads under his care with crushed stone bound with gravel on a firm base of large stones. A camber, making the road slightly convex, ensured rainwater rapidly drained off the road rather than penetrate and damage the road's foundations. This construction method, the greatest advance in road construction since Roman times, became known as "macadamisation", or, more simply, "macadam".

The macadam method spread very quickly across the world. The first macadam road in North America, the National Road, was completed in the 1830s and most of the main roads in Europe were subject to the McAdam process by the end of the nineteenth century.

Although McAdam was paid £5,000 for his Bristol Turnpike Trust work and made "Surveyor-General of Metropolitan Roads" in 1820, professional jealousy cut a £5,000 grant for expenses from the Parliament of the United Kingdom to £2,000 in 1827.  His efficient road-building and management work had revealed the corruption and abuse of road tolls by unscrupulous turnpike trusts, many of which were run at a deliberate loss despite high toll receipts.

Machine gun

James Puckle\

James Puckle (1667–1724) was an English inventor, lawyer and writer from London chiefly remembered for his invention of the Defence Gun, better known as the Puckle gun, a multi-shot gun mounted on a stand capable of (depending on which version) firing up to nine rounds per minute.

In 1718, Puckle patented his new invention, the Defence Gun — a tripod-mounted, single-barreled flintlock weapon fitted with a multishot revolving cylinder, designed for shipboard use to prevent boarding. The barrel was 3 feet (0.91 m) long with a bore of 1.25 inches (32 mm) and a pre-loaded cylinder which held 6-11 charges and could fire 63 shots in seven minutes—this at a time when the standard soldier's musket could at best be loaded and fired five times per minute.

Puckle demonstrated two versions of the basic design: one, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets, while the second variant, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets which were considered to be more damaging and would, according to its patent, convince the Turks of the "benefits of Christian civilization.

Machine tools

C. M. Spencer

There are five basic types of machine tools to perform machining: lathe or turning machine, drilling or boring machine, milling machine, shaper or planer, and grinder.

A machine tool is a machine which is specifically designed to cut a metal into desired shape in order to process. ... It is mainly, meant for cutting a metal. Eg: Lathe, Milling machine, Drilling machine, Shaper. A machine tool belongs to a category of machines but all machines cant be called as machine tools.

Magnetic recording tape

Fritz Pfleumer

Fritz Pfleumer (20 March 1881 in Salzburg – 29 August 1945 in Radebeul) was a German-Austrian engineer who invented magnetic tape for recording sound.

Pfleumer had developed a process for putting metal stripes on cigarette papers, and reasoned that he could similarly coat a magnetic stripe, to be used as an alternative to wire recording. In 1927, after experimenting with various materials, Pfleumer used very thin paper which he coated with iron oxide powder using lacquer as glue. He received a patent in 1928.

On 1 December 1932 Pfleumer granted AEG the right to use his invention when building the world's first practical tape recorder, called Magnetophon K1. It was first demonstrated at the IFA in 1935.

Match (safety)

John Walker

John Walker b. 29 May 1781, Stockton-on-Tees, United Kingdom d. 1 May 1859 was an English inventor who invented the friction match. 

Experimenting with various chemical elements finally bore fruits when he created paste that was could combust into flames when scraped to rough surface. He first noticed these effects while working in his hearth at his home. This breakthrough led him to create first simple prototypes of matches which were made from cardboard sticks. By 1824 he started selling those matches, who instantly became very popular in his home town. By changing the design of the sticks into three inch long wooden splints, he soon received offers of purchase from neighboring towns and started selling more and more.

Sadly, his design was not perfect, and because of that he never wanted to patent it. Sulfur on the head of the stick sometimes burned so brightly and hotly, that it managed to detach itself and fall on the floor, damaging either carpet or even clothes of the people who were wielding the match.

http://www.historyofmatches.com/matches-inventors/john-walker/

Micrometer

William Gascoigne

William Gascoigne  b. 1612, England, United Kingdom d. 2 July 1644, was an English astronomer, mathematician and maker of scientific instruments from Middleton, Leeds who invented the micrometer and the Telescopic sight.

While experimenting with a Keplerian telescope, William Gascoigne discovered that an image viewed with a telescope became clearer when the optical focal points of two lenses was combined. Realizing that a telescope could be more accurately used when using a line to guide its direction, he created a new telescopic sight. He then created a sextant, similar to the ones used by Tycho Brahe, to measure the distance between celestial bodies with a stunning level of accuracy for the time. This was due to Gascoigne adding two adjustable points and a screw in order to increase the accuracy of the measurement. This would eventually be called a micrometer, and was one of the most common tools used for astronomical research for more than a century.

https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/invention-micrometer

Microphone

Professor David Edward Hughes

David Edward Hughes (16 May 1831 – 22 January 1900), was a British-American inventor, practical experimenter, and professor of music known for his work on the printing telegraph and the microphone.

Hughes started his invention career in his early 20’s with the invention of the printing type telegraph instrument. Invented and used in America, it was also instrumental in the successful growth of the communications network of Europe. His work on suppression of electrical interference and discovery of the carbon microphone led to improved telephone communications and experiments with his induction balance led to the metal detector. His wireless experiments for which he had invented a unique detector enabling him to receive a transmission over a distance of 500 yards with his mobile receiver in 1879-1880 are a tribute to his ingenuity.

https://davidedwardhughes.com/

Microphone (Carbon)

Thomas Alva Edison and Edward Hughes

The first microphone that enabled proper voice telephony was the (loose-contact) carbon microphone (then called transmitter). This was independently developed around 1878 by David Edward Hughes in England and Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison in the US.

The carbon microphone, also known as carbon button microphone, button microphone, or carbon transmitter, is a type ofmicrophone, a transducer that converts sound to an electrical audio signal. It consists of two metal plates separated by granules of carbon. One plate is very thin and faces toward the speaking person, acting as a diaphragm. Sound waves striking the diaphragm cause it to vibrate, exerting a varying pressure on the granules, which in turn changes the electrical resistance between the plates. Higher pressure lowers the resistance as the granules are pushed closer together. A steady direct current is passed between the plates through the granules. The varying resistance results in a modulation of the current, creating a varying electric current that reproduces the varying pressure of the sound wave. 

Microprocessor

Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, plus Andrew Grove

Robert Noyce (Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley"), Gordon Earle Moore (born January 3, 1929) an American businessman and engineer, and Andrew S. Grove, Hungarian-born American businessman who was credited with being and he driving force behind the enormous success of the semiconductor joined together in July 1968 and founded NM Electronics, which later became Intel 

Microscope

Zacharias Janssen

Zacharias Janssen (1580-1638) was a Dutch spectacle-maker in Middleburg, Holland

He is generally believed to be the first investigator to invent the compound microscope. ... he worked not far from Hans Lippershey, The pair worked together as spectacle makers Hans Lippershey was another optical scientist who is often alternatively credited with the invention of the microscope.

The Dutch diplomat William Boreel was a longtime acquaintance of Zacharias Janssen, who had written to him about the device in letters. Boreel saw the microscope for himself, but only years later when it had already fallen into the hands of another family friend, Cornelius Drebbel. When the physician of the French King publicly sought information regarding the origin of the microscope during the 1650s, Boreel responded, relating information about the Janssens and recounting the device they had created and his experience surrounding its use

https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/janssen.html

Microwave oven

Percy L. Spencer

Percy Lebaron Spencer (July 19, 1894 – September 8, 1970) was an American physicist and inventor. He became known as the inventor of the microwave oven.

One day while building magnetrons, Spencer was standing in front of an active radar set when he noticed the candy bar he had in his pocket had melted. Spencer was not the first to notice this phenomenon, but he was the first to investigate it. He decided to experiment using food, including popcorn kernels, which became the world’s first microwaved popcorn. In another experiment, an egg was placed in a tea kettle, and the magnetron was placed directly above it. The result was the egg exploding in the face of one of his co-workers, who was looking in the kettle to observe. Spencer then created the first true microwave oven by attaching a high-density electromagnetic field generator to an enclosed metal box. The magnetron emitted microwaves into the metal box blocking any escape, allowing for controlled and safe experimentation. He then placed various food items in the box, while observing effects and monitoring temperatures.

Morse Code of Signals

Samuel Finley Morse

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American painter and inventor. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morsecontributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs.

Around 1837, Morse, therefore, developed an early forerunner to the modern International Morse code. William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in Britain developed an electrical telegraph that used electromagnets in its receivers. They obtained an English patent in June 1837 and demonstrated it on the London and Birmingham Railway, making it the first commercial telegraph. Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1833) as well as Carl August von Steinheil (1837) used codes with varying word lengths for their telegraphs. In 1841, Cooke and Wheatstone built a telegraph that printed the letters from a wheel of typefaces struck by a hammer.

Morse system of Electric Telegraph

Samuel Morse

HOW DID WIRELESS WORK ON SHIPS?

The new mode of transmission had to compete with existing cable networks. Marconi sold his earliest systems to lighthouses and ships, which could not access the cable network and yet had most need of rapid communication. 

Titanic Disaster

By the time of Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912, most passenger ships operating in the north Atlantic had a Marconi installation staffed by Marconi Company operators.

Communication between ship and shore was by Morse code, as it was for conventional telegraphy. The equipment only transmitted messages for about 300 miles in daylight, although that figure doubled or tripled after dark thanks to the refraction of long-wave radiation in the ionosphere.

The dramatic rescue of over 700 survivors from the Titanic disaster in April 1912 was made possible thanks to new wireless telegraphy equipment. on most ships there was only a single wireless operator, who worked a long shift and then closed down for the night. 

But as Titanic collided with an iceberg in calm seas on the night of 14 April 1912, Harold Cottam, operator on nearby Cunard liner Carpathia, was still awake. 

He was in a position to receive the first distress signal from Titanic, sent by senior wireless operator Jack Phillips. When Carpathia received the distress call, it immediately turned and steamed the 60 miles towards Titanic’s given position, a journey of almost four hours.

The International Radiotelegraphic Convention, signed in 1906, had agreed on SOS—three dots, three dashes, three dots in Morse code—as the international distress signal. The Convention had come into force in 1908, but 'CQD', the Marconi Company's distress signal, was still widely used at the time of Titanic's voyage, including by radio operator Jack Phillips, but then he suggested that they send SOS. "It’s the new call, and it may be your last chance to send it."

More than 1500 of the 2224 passengers and crew on board were lost, but four days after the sinking, the Cunard liner Carpathia steamed into New York carrying over 700 survivors. 

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/titanic-marconi-and-wireless-telegraph

Phonograph

Thomas Alva Edison

The phonograph is a device for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms, it is also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or, since the 1940s, a record player. ... Thephonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison.

The phonograph was developed as a result of Thomas Edison's work on two other inventions, the telegraph and the telephone. In 1877, Edison was working on a machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper tape, which could later be sent over the telegraph repeatedly. This development led Edison to speculate that a telephone message could also be recorded in a similar fashion. He experimented with a diaphragm which had an embossing point and was held against rapidly-moving paraffin paper. The speaking vibrations made indentations in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder with tin foil wrapped around it. The machine had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, and one for playback. When one would speak into a mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder by the recording needle in a vertical (or hill and dale) groove pattern. Edison gave a sketch of the machine to his mechanic, John Kruesi, to build, which Kruesi supposedly did within 30 hours. Edison immediately tested the machine by speaking the nursery rhyme into the mouthpiece, "Mary had a little lamb." To his amazement, the machine played his words back to him.

History of sound

process known as " puddling " for converting pig iron into malleable iron

Henry Cort

Henry Cort (c. 1740 – 23 May 1800) was an English ironmaster. During the Industrial Revolution in England, Cort began refining iron from pig iron to wrought iron (or bar iron) using innovative production systems.

Cort developed his ideas at the Fontley Works (as he had renamed Titchfield Hammer) resulting in a 1783 patent for a simple reverberatory furnace to refine pig iron followed by d a 1784 patent for his puddling furnace, with grooved rollers which mechanised the formerly laborious process. His work built on the existing ideas of the Cranege brothers and their reverberatory furnace (where heat is applied from above, rather than through the use of forced air from below) and Peter Onions' puddling process where iron is stirred to separate out impurities and extract the higher quality wrought iron. The furnace effectively lowered the carbon content of the cast ironcharge through oxidation while the "puddler" extracted a mass of iron from the furnace using an iron "rabbling bar". The extracted ball of metal was then processed into a "shingle" by a shingling hammer, after which it was rolled in the rolling mill. The original process of Cort was ineffectual until significant alterations were made by Richard Crawshay and other Merthyr Tydfil ironmasters as Cort used iron from charcoal furnaces rather than the coke smelted pig iron in general production by then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cort

Revolver

Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt b. July 19, 1814 – d.  January 10, 1862 was an American inventor, industrialist and businessman who established Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company (now Colt's Manufacturing Company) and made the mass production of revolvers commercially viable.

A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has a revolving cylinder containing multiplechambers and at least one barrel for firing. The revolver allows the user to fire multiple rounds without reloading after every shot, unlike older single-shot firearms. After a round is fired the hammer is cocked and the next chamber in the cylinder is aligned with the barrel by the shooter either manually pulling the hammer back (single action operation) or by rearward movement of the trigger (double action operation).

Roll Photographic Film

George Eastman

When George was 24, he planned to visit Santo Domingo and, on the advice of a colleague, decided to document the trip. But the photography equipment alone was enormous, heavy and costly. He bought all the equipment, but he never took the trip.

Instead he began researching how to make photography less cumbersome and easier for the average person to enjoy. After seeing a formula for a "dry plate" emulsion in a British publication, and getting tutelage from two local amateur photographers, Eastman formulated a gelatin-based paper film and a device for coating dry plates.

Eastman resigned from his bank job after launching his fledgling photography company in April 1880. In 1885, he headed to the patent office with a roll-holder device that he and camera inventor William Hall Walker had developed. This allowed cameras to be smaller and cheaper. Eastman was also one of the first American industrialists to employ a full-time research scientist. Together with an associate, Eastman perfected the first commercial transparent roll film, paving the way for the invention of Thomas Edison’s motion picture camera in 1891.

Eastman also bought the patent rights to twenty-one inventions related to photographic cameras issued to David Henderson Houston. Houston immigrated to America in 1841 from Glasgow, Scotland. While he earned a living as a farmer, Houston was an avid inventor who filed his first patent in 1881 for a camera that used a roll of film—which hadn’t been invented yet.

Houston eventually licensed his patent to the Kodak Company. He received $5,750—which was considered a magnanimous sum in the 19th century. Houston also licensed patents for folding, panoramic, and magazine-loaded cameras to Kodak.

Eastman also came up with the name Kodak, because he believed products should have their own identity, free from association with anything else. So in 1888, he launched the first Kodak camera (a few years later, he amended the company name to Eastman Kodak).

History

Safety Lamp, Laughing Gas etc..

Sir Humphrey Davy

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet PRS MRIA FGS FRS (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a Cornish chemist and inventor, who is best remembered today for isolating, using electricity, a series of elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, who is best remembered today for isolating, using electricity, a series of elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and  calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry.

In 1799, he experimented with nitrous oxide and was astonished at how it made him laugh, so he nicknamed it "laughing gas" and wrote about its potential anaesthetic properties in relieving pain during surgery. He also invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He joked that his assistant Michael Faraday was his greatest discovery.

Sewing Machine

Elias Howe

Elias Howe, (born July 9, 1819, Spencer, Mass., U.S.—died Oct. 3, 1867, Brooklyn, N.Y.), American inventor whose sewing machine helped revolutionize garment manufacture in the factory and in the home.

Contrary to popular belief, Howe was not the first to conceive of the idea of a sewing machine. Many other people had formulated the idea of such a machine before him, one as early as 1790, and some had even patented their designs and produced working machines, in one case at least 80 of them.  However, Howe originated significant refinements to the design concepts of his predecessors, and on September 10, 1846, he was awarded the first United States patent (U.S. Patent 4,750) for a sewing machine using a lockstitch design. His machine contained the three essential features common to most modern machines:

a needle with the eye at the point,

a shuttle operating beneath the cloth to form the lock stitch, and

an automatic feed.

Eye of the Needle Ina dream he thought the king gave him twenty-four hours in which to complete the machine and make it sew. If not finished in that time death was to be the punishment. Howe worked and worked, and puzzled, and finally gave it up. Then he thought he was taken out to be executed. He noticed that the warriors carried spears that were pierced near the head. Instantly came the solution of the difficulty, and while the inventor was begging for time, he awoke. It was 4 o'clock in the morning. He jumped out of bed, ran to his workshop, and by 9, a needle with an eye at the point had been rudely modeled. 

Spining Mule

Samuel Crompton

Samuel Crompton (3 December 1753 – 26 June 1827) was an English inventor and pioneer of the spinning industry. Building on the work of James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright he invented the spinning mule, a machine that revolutionized the industry worldwide.

The building of the spinning mule took five years and all the money Crompton had earned as a fiddler at a local theater. He worked in secrecy, usually at night; the noises coming from his workshop led many neighbors to believe the building was haunted. The final product--crude, but very efficient--was finished in 1779, just after Crompton's twenty-seventh birthday.

The spinning mule used the two most important elements of the water-frame and the spinning jenny. From Arkwright's water frame it borrowed a set of rollers to draw out the cotton fibers; from the jenny, a moving carriage that gently stretched the roving. Added to this was Crompton's own spindle carriage, which insured that no tension was applied to the yarn before it had been completely spun. The yarn spun by this machine was strong and smooth, able to be used in materials such as muslin, and did not break as easily as that spun by the jenny. Though it was originally called the Hall-in-the-Wood wheel (after Crompton's birthplace), it soon became known as the spinning mule because of its hybrid nature.

Spinning Frame

Sir Richard Arkwright

Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution.

He acquired a secret method for dyeing hair and traveled around the country purchasing human hair for use in the manufacture of wigs. During this time he was often in contact with weavers and spinners and when the fashion for wearing wigs declined, he looked to mechanical inventions in the field of textiles to make his fortune.

By 1767, a machine for carding cotton had been introduced into England and James Hargreaves had invented the spinning jenny. With the help of a clockmaker, John Kay, who had been working on a mechanical spinning machine, Arkwright made improvements that produced a stronger yarn and required less physical labour. His new carding machine was patented in 1775.

Arkwright's fortunes continued to rise and he constructed a horse-driven spinning mill at Preston - the first of many. He developed mills in which the whole process of yarn manufacture was carried on by one machine and this was further complemented by a system in which labour was divided, greatly improving efficiency and increasing profits. Arkwright was also the first to use James Watts' steam engine to power textile machinery, though he only used it to pump water to the millrace of a waterwheel. From the combined use of the steam engine and the machinery, the power loom was eventually developed.

BBC History Arkright

Spinning Jenny

James Hargreaves

James Hargreaves, Hargreaves also spelled Hargraves, (baptized Jan. 8, 1721, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, Eng. —died April 22, 1778, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire), English inventor of the spinning jenny, the first practical application of multiple spinning by a machine.

The idea for the spinning jenny is said to have come when a one-thread spinning-wheel was overturned on the floor, and Hargreaves saw both the wheel and the spindle continuing to revolve. He realized that if a number of spindles were placed upright and side by side, several threads might be spun at once. The spinning jenny was confined to producing cotton weft threads, and was unable to produce yarn of sufficient quality for the warp. High-quality warp was later supplied by Arkwright's spinning frame.

Hargreaves built a jenny for himself and sold several of them to his neighbours.[4] His invention was initially welcomed by other hand spinners until they saw a fall in the price of yarn.

Opposition to the machine caused Hargreaves to leave for Nottingham, where the cotton hosiery industry benefited from the increased provision of suitable yarn.

In 1764 he invented the spinning jenny, a machine that greatly speeded the production of cotton by simultaneously spinning eight threads. In 1768 local spinners destroyed the machine, fearing that it threatened their jobs. Hargreaves moved to Nottingham and, with Thomas James, built a spinning mill and became one of the first great factory owners.

Steam Engine

James Watt

James Watt FRS FRSE (30 January 1736 – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution

While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology of steam engines. He realised that contemporary engine designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and reheating the cylinder. Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines. Eventually he adapted his engine to produce rotary motion, greatly broadening its use beyond pumping water.

Watt attempted to commercialise his invention, but experienced great financial difficulties until he entered a partnership with Matthew Boulton in 1775. The new firm of Boulton and Watt was eventually highly successful and Watt became a wealthy man. In his retirement, Watt continued to develop new inventions though none was as significant as his steam engine work.

Steam Hammer

James Nasmyth

James Hall Nasmyth (sometimes spelled Naesmyth, Nasmith, or Nesmyth) (19 August 1808 – 7 May 1890) was a Scottish engineer, philosopher, artist and inventor famous for his development of the steam hammer. He was the co-founder of Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company manufacturers of machine tools.

Up to 1843, Nasmyth, Gaskell & Co. concentrated on producing a wide range of machine tools in large numbers. By 1856, Nasmyth had built 236 shaping machines.

In 1840 he began to receive orders from the newly opened railways which were beginning to cover the country, for locomotives. His connection with the Great Western Railway whose famous steamship SS Great Western had been so successful in voyages between Bristol and New York, led to him being asked to make some machine tools of unusual size and power which were required for the construction of the engines of their next and bigger ship SS Great Britain.

Steam Turbine

Sir Charles Algernon Parsons

Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, OM, KCB, FRS (13 June 1854 – 11 February 1931) was an Anglo-Irish engineer, best known for his invention of the compound steam turbine, 

He developed a turbine engine there in 1884 and immediately utilized the new engine to drive an electrical generator, which he also designed. Parsons' steam turbine made cheap and plentiful electricity possible and revolutionised marine transport and naval warfare.

Within two years, the destroyers HMS Viper and Cobra were launched with Parsons' turbines, soon followed by the first turbine powered passenger ship, Clyde steamer TS King Edward in 1901; the first turbine transatlantic liners RMS Victorian and Virginian in 1905, and the first turbine powered battleship, HMS Dreadnought in 1906, all of which were driven by Parsons' turbine engines.

Stethoscope

Rene Laennec

René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec (French:17 February 1781 – 13 August 1826) was a French physician and musician. His skill of carving his own wooden flutes led him to invent the stethoscope in 1816, while working at the Hospital Necker. He pioneered its usage in diagnosing various chest conditions.

I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics, ... the great distinctness with which we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood on applying our ear to the other. Immediately, on this suggestion, I rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder and applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my ear, and was not a little surprised and pleased to find that I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of my ear.

Telephone

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born American inventor, scientist, and engineer who is credited with inventing and patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.

Alexander Graham Bell is most famous for his invention of the telephone. He first became interested in the science of sound because both his mother and wife were deaf. His experiments in sound eventually let him to want to send voice signals down a telegraph wire. He was able to get some funding and hire his famous assistant Thomas Watson and together they were able to come up with the telephone. The first words spoken over the telephone were by Alex on March 10, 1876. They were "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you".

Dusksters

Martin Cooper

Martin Cooper, an engineer at the Motorola company in the US, was developing something that came close to the Star Trek communicator that had fascinated him since he first saw it on TV. Effectionally named THE BRICK

Cellular Networks

In the 1970s, researchers at Bell Labs in the USA began to experiment with the concept of a cellular phone network. The idea was to cover the country with a network of hexagonal cells, each of which would contain a base station.

These base stations would send and receive messages from mobile phones over radio frequencies. Any two adjacent cells would operate at different frequencies, so there was no danger of interference.

What is GSM?

Television

John L. Baird

John Logie Baird FRSE (13 August 1888 – 14 June 1946) was a Scottish engineer, innovator, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, demonstrating the first working television system on 26 January 1926, and inventor of both the first publicly demonstrated colour television system,

The development of television was the result of work by many inventors. Among them, Baird was a prominent pioneer and made major advances in the field. Many historians credit Baird with being the first to produce a live, moving, greyscale television image from reflected light. Baird achieved this, where other inventors had failed, by obtaining a better photoelectric cell and improving the signal conditioning from the photocell and the video amplifier.

Between 1902 and 1907, the German physicist Arthur Korn invented and built the first successful signal-conditioning circuits for image transmission. The circuits overcame the image-destroying lag effect that is part of selenium photocells. Korn's compensation circuit allowed him to send still fax pictures by telephone or wireless between countries and even over oceans, while his circuit operated without benefit of electronic amplification. Korn's success at transmitting halftone still images suggested that such compensation circuits might work in television. Baird was the direct beneficiary of Korn's research and success.

The process of converting cast-iron into steel

Sir Henry Bessemer

Sir Henry Bessemer FRS (19 January 1813 – 15 March 1898) was an English inventor, whose steel-making process would become the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century for almost one hundred years from 1856 to 1950. He also played a significant role in establishing the town of Sheffield as a major industrial centre.

Bessemer had been trying to reduce the cost of steel-making for military ordnance, and developed his system for blowing air through molten pig iron to remove the impurities. This made steel easier, quicker and cheaper to manufacture, and revolutionized structural engineering. One of the most significant innovators of the Second Industrial Revolution, Bessemer also made over 100 other inventions in the fields of iron, steel and glass. Unlike most inventors, he managed to bring his own projects to fruition and profited financially from their success.

Thermometer, and Telescope

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) has always played a key role in any history of science and, in many histories of philosophy, he is a, if not the  if not the, central figure of the scientific revolution of the 17thCentury. His work in physics or natural philosophy, astronomy, and the methodology of science still evoke debate after over 400 years.

In 1585 Galileo left the university without having obtained a degree, and for several years he gave private lessons in the mathematical subjects in Florence and Siena. During this period he designed a new form of hydrostatic balance for weighing small quantities and wrote a short treatise, La bilancetta (“The Little Balance”), that circulated in manuscript form. He also began his studies on motion, which he pursued steadily for the next two decades.

Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and "hydrostatic balances", inventing the thermoscope and various military compasses, and using thetelescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, the observation of Saturn's rings, and the analysis of sunspots.

Whitworth Rifle

Sir Joseph Whitworth

Sir Joseph Whitworth, 1st Baronet FRS FRSA (21 December 1803 – 22 January 1887) was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist. In 1841, he devised the British Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard for screw threads. Whitworth also created the Whitworth rifle, often called the "sharpshooter" because of its accuracy and considered one of the earliest examples of a sniper rifle.

Whitworth also designed a large rifled breech-loading gun with a 2.75 inch (69.85 mm) bore, a 12-pound 11-ounce (5.75 kg) projectile and a range of about 6 miles (10 km). The spirally-grooved projectile was patented in 1855. This was rejected by the British Army, who preferred the guns from Armstrong, but was used in the American Civil War.

Wireless Telegraph

Marchese Gulielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marchese Marconi. Guglielmo Marconi (25 April 1874– 20 July 1937) was an Italian inventor, known for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide.

In 1894, he began experimenting with radio waves as a student at the Livorno Technical Institute. Incorporating the earlier scientific work of Henry R. Hertz and Oliver Lodge in electromagnetic radiation, he was able to develop a basic system of wireless telegraphy. Though not a scientist, Marconi recognized the value of wireless technology.

In 1895 he began laboratory experiments at his father’s country estate at Pontecchio where he succeeded in sending wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles.

In 1896 Marconi took his apparatus to England where he was introduced to Mr. (later Sir) William Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the Post Office, and later that year was granted the world’s first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. He demonstrated his system successfully in London, on Salisbury Plain and across the Bristol Channel, and in July 1897 formed The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Limited (in 1900 re-named Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company Limited). 

Zeppelin dirigible airship

Count Von Ferdinand Zeppelin

Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin[1] (8 July 1838 – 8 March 1917) was a German general and later inventor of the Zeppelin rigid airships his second airship, the LZ 2, was started in April 1905. It was completed by 30 November, when it was first taken out of its hangar, but a ground-handling mishap caused the bows to be pulled into the water, damaging the forward control surfaces. Repairs were completed by 17 January 1906, when LZ 2 made its only flight. Too much ballast was jettisoned on takeoff, causing the airship to rise to an altitude of 427 m (1,401 ft). Here a stiff breeze was encountered, and although the airship was at first able to overcome this, the failure of the forward engine due to cooling problems followed by the failure of the other due to a broken clutch-spring left the airship at the mercy of the wind. It was brought down near Kisslegg in the Allgäu mountains, with some damage caused by the stern's striking some trees during mooring, but was more severely damaged by high winds the following night, and had to be dismantled

Although a replacement for LZ 4, the LZ 5 was built and accepted into Army service as L II, Zeppelin's relationship with the military authorities continued to be poor, and deteriorated considerably due to his criticism of the Army following the loss of L II, which was carried away from its moorings and wrecked on 25 April 1910. However, the business director of Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin, Alfred Colsman, came up with a scheme to capitalise on the public enthusiasm for Zeppelin's airships by establishing a passenger-carrying business.

Up until 1914 the German Aviation Association (Deutsche Luftschiffahrtsgesellschaft or DELAG) transported 37,250 people on over 1,600 flights without an incident. Within a few years the zeppelin revolution began creating the age of air transportation.