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|  Essay on The Importance Of The Steam Engine |
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| The Importance Of The Steam Engine Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The age of industrialization was opened by a single new technology--the steam engine, which provided the power source for the innovations that followed. The principle of steam power was not new. It had been known in the ancient world and had long been the subject of study and experimentation. No single person invented the steam engine, although popular culture in English-speaking countries credits James Watt, while the French credit Denis Papin. In reality, the steam engine was the culmination of the work of many people. The first effective machines were developed in the 1770s by Watt, a maker of precision instruments for scientists at the University of Glasgow. The initial use... |
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| Essay on The Importance Of The Steam Engine » |
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| Essay on Medieval Inventions |
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| Medieval Inventions Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Economically and socially the final two centuries of the Middle Ages were a difficult time, marked by a cooler climate than that of the twelfth century. The cooling resulted in frequent famines; the bubonic plague broke out in the fourteenth century for the first time in western Europe in eight hundred years; and countries were torn by peasant unrest and governmental tyranny, as seen for example among the men who ruled the city-states of the Italian Renaissance. And yet, alongside the social and institutional innovations already noted, it was also a remarkably inventive period in the material realm. Eyeglasses, which developed out of experiments with optics, first made their appearance... |
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| Essay on Medieval Inventions » |
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| Essay on The Pinhole Gamma-Ray Camera |
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| The Pinhole Gamma-Ray Camera Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Roscoe Koontz and fellow researchers at Atomics International in Canoga Park, California, sought to produce technology that made nuclear reactors safer. As part of his ongoing research in nuclear safety and development, Koontz designed a pinhole gamma-ray camera, an imaging device capable of detecting the distribution of radionuclides (often referred to as radioactive isotopes), atoms with unstable nuclei that emit gamma rays, which make up the ionizing radiation produced by nuclear reactions. Only gamma rays traveling in a parallel direction to the device are filtered through the camera. Although Koontz originally designed his camera to detect radiation in nuclear... |
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| Essay on The Pinhole Gamma-Ray Camera » |
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| Essay on Von Kleist's Leiden Jar |
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| Von Kleist's Leiden Jar Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Eighteenth century "electricians," searching for ways to increase the electrical charge they could generate from frictional sources, hoped to create a device to conserve significant quantities of electricity to be used at a later time. Ewald Georg von Kleist's Leiden jar accomplished just this. It was a simple device, originally a narrow-necked glass jar half-filled with water (though it was soon found that such thin-necked glasses were easily broken by the powerful electric shocks generated). The inside and outside surfaces of the jar were coated with a conductive metal foil. The glass served as the dielectric (a nonconductive material), though initially it was believed that it was... |
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| Essay on Von Kleist's Leiden Jar » |
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| Essay on The Atlantic Cable |
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| The Atlantic Cable Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. William Thomson's investigations of the transmission of signals in submarine cables, initially carried out in the laboratory, revealed that the crucial technical problem blighting the technology arose from the variations in the quality of supposedly pure copper cables. In order to introduce better quality control, it was necessary to introduce more accurate measuring devices into the production and deployment of such cables; the key invention that facilitated the latter part of this prospectus was Thomson's marine mirror galvanometer, which accompanied him on his expeditions aboard cable-laying ships in 1858. Thomson eventually took charge of the first attempt to lay an Atlantic... |
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| Essay on The Development of Dry Scouring |
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| The Development of Dry Scouring Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Thomas L. Jennings developed a practical dry-cleaning technique in response to his customers' demands. Because a fire burned Jennings's patent record, his description of dry scouring and specific information regarding his invention are unavailable. Historians hypothesize Jennings recognized that turpentine, a fluid many craftsmen used for cleaning tasks to remove greases and oils, could be used to launder fabric. Jennings probably evaluated different quantities of turpentine to determine the minimum amounts that would be effective when used on diverse materials. He possibly also combined turpentine with other chemicals to strengthen his cleanser. Jennings's... |
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| Essay on The Model A Transport Refrigeration Unit |
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| The Model A Transport Refrigeration Unit Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Frederick McKinley Jones was the first person to invent a workable mechanical refrigeration system for trucks. When Jones heard about a conversation between a farmer and his employer, Joseph A. Numero, in which the farmer recalled how he had suffered great losses of food because of spoilage during long-distance shipping, Jones determined to find a way to end such waste. He began assembling various odds and ends of machinery that would provide refrigeration. When he attached his finished product to a truck and testing showed it to be successful in providing the needed cooling, the first mechanically refrigerated truck was born. In addition to developing the refrigeration... |
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| Essay on The Model A Transport Refrigeration Unit » |
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| Essay on The Flying Shuttle |
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| The Flying Shuttle Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. A weaving loom works by raising up two sets of threads alternately by means of two horizontal bars (known as "heddles") equipped with eyelets, through which the thread is passed. The raising of each individual set of warp threads leaves a space (the "shed") through which a shuttle is passed. The shuttle used prior to John Kay's invention had to be passed from hand to hand, limiting the breadth of the cloth to the length of the weaver's arm. The flying shuttle was mounted on wheels and moved between two shuttle boxes mounted to either side of the loom along a wooden track, or "shuttle race," in response to a jerking action from the weaver, which activated the "picking peg." The flying shuttle... |
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| Essay on The Kettering's Refrigerator |
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| The Kettering's Refrigerator Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Charles F. Kettering's inventions were not confined to the transportation industry. Along with Thomas Migley, Jr., the chemist at General Motors (GM) who assisted in the development of a quick-drying automotive paint and ethanol gasoline, Kettering developed an improved cooling system for refrigerators. Refrigerators of the time used dangerous gases such as ammonia, sulfur dioxide, and methyl chloride to generate the rapid evaporation needed to cool the unit. Several people, including more than one hundred people in a Cleveland hospital in 1929, were killed when chemicals leaked from their refrigerators and they breathed in the toxic fumes. Most home refrigerators were iceboxes... |
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| Essay on The Paper Bag Machine |
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| The Paper Bag Machine Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Before Margaret E. Knight's paper bag device, no machine was able to fold a web of paper into a tube and then, by the continuous operation of the machine, so operate upon the leading end of the tube to form automatically the diamond fold, which is the basis of the flat bottomed bag. The frame of the machine must be of a suitable shape to sustain the parts. The indefinitely long web of paper from which the bags are made is drawn from a roll so suspended that it can be unwound and supplied to the machine as fast as required. This web is folded about a former with the lap upon the upper side. The pasting is done by another machine. This machine folds a web of paper into a tube and operates... |
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| Essay on Improved Electric Light Bulb |
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| Improved Electric Light Bulb Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. When Irving Langmuir began studying the electric light bulb at General Electric (GE) Research Laboratory, it was universally accepted that producing a vacuum in the bulb would preserve the tungsten filament and thereby prolong the life of the bulb. He had a passion for the extraordinary vacuum equipment available at GE's laboratory, and he designed a still better pumping apparatus. When he proposed to experiment with a light bulb filled with gas, however, even his boss, Willis R. Whitney, was doubtful. A problem associated with designing a more efficient lamp was its tendency to blacken, or dim, after a period of use. Langmuir discovered that water vapor was the chief cause of... |
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| Essay on Instant Photography |
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| Instant Photography Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. In 1943, while vacationing in New Mexico with his wife, Terre, and daughter, Jennifer, Edwin Herbert Land took a photograph of his daughter, who asked why the picture did not develop immediately. Her question set in motion a momentous chain of events. Land claimed that the essentials of the instant photography system developed in his mind that very day. All the chemical complexities of bringing a photograph to life in a darkroom were to be shrunk to the size of a normal camera and performed in a few seconds. With Land's process, tiny pods protected the chemical reagents from air until the critical moment. Then, after exposure, small rollers would rupture the pods and press... |
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| Essay on Kevlar Fiber |
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| Kevlar Fiber Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Kevlar (polyparaphenylene terephthalamide) is the trade name for a strong, lightweight para-aramid synthetic fiber manufactured by DuPont. Weight for weight, it is five times stronger than steel, yet it is 43 percent less dense than fiberglass. It is nonconductive, it does not rust, and it resists wear, fatigue, corrosion, and heat. Its unique properties make it ideal for a wide range of applications. In a liquid crystal solution, such as the one from which Kevlar is made, the molecules are in an orderly, tightly packed formation. When such a solution passes through a spinneret, the aligned molecules remain in parallel as the solvent is forced out. The tightly packed, parallel, rigid molecules... |
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| Essay on Ted Hoff and the Invention of Microprocessor |
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| Ted Hoff and the Invention of Microprocessor Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. In 1968, Ted Hoff became the twelfth employee at Robert Norton Noyce and Gordon E. Moore's new start-up company, Intel. Noyce was impressed with the practicality of Hoff's academic research and was hoping that Hoff would be able to develop commercial applications for the integrated circuits that Intel was making. At the time, the integrated circuit was relatively simple. Once the processes it would run were burned into its circuitry, it was capable of doing only that one thing. As a result, devices based on integrated circuits required a large number of circuits, one for each process or function. For simple functions such as basic bookkeeping mathematics... |
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| Essay on The Spinning Jenny and Its Impact |
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| The Spinning Jenny and Its Impact Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Converting loose fiber to yarn, so that it could be woven in a loom, involved both stretching it out and twisting it, initially using the fingers of the spinner. Hargreaves's invention, building on ideas floating around the textile field at the time, involved using synchronized rollers to replace the twisting fingers of the spinner. The process actually began with carding, which aligned all the fibers in the same direction. Then several strands of fiber were brought together in what was called the roving, which was wound on a spindle. Hargreaves's machine mounted several spindles of roving together and aligned them so that they could pass through two adjacent rollers... |
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| Essay on The Printing Press |
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| The Printing Press Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Johann Gutenberg is the inventor of typography--the art of laying out and multiplying texts and images on paper. Taking advantage of the progress made in metallurgy in his time, he set up around 1450 the first printing house in history. It was equipped with a mechanical press, movable type, high-quality paper, and oil-based inks. It had two sections: one for composition, one for printing. Gutenberg devised an innovative typographical five-stage process: punch cutting, matrix fitting, type casting, composing, and printing. The first stage consisted of carving back to front the shape of each letter or symbol on a steel punch. This was then hammered on a small copper piece called a matrix... |
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| Essay on Otto von Guericke and The Vacuum Pump |
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| Otto von Guericke and The Vacuum Pump Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. When Aristotle stated that "nature abhors a vacuum" (horror vacui), that empty space tended to pull matter, gas, or liquid to it, he unintentionally justified centuries of increasingly rigid scientific postulations that conceived of a cosmos in which emptiness itself was something of a terror. Otto von Guericke's experiments in creating a vacuum in apparent refutation of that long held argument rested on his review of two landmark experiments conducted just ten years earlier. In 1644, Evangelista Torricelli (a protege of Galileo) performed an experiment to explain why well water was harder to draw when the water was below ground level. He used a glass tube of mercury... |
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| Essay on Otto von Guericke and The Vacuum Pump » |
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| Essay on The Gregorian Telescope |
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| The Gregorian Telescope Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The Gregorian telescope is an example of a reflecting telescope. This type of telescope uses either a curved mirror or a combination of curved mirrors to reflect light and form an image. In 1616, Italian astronomer Niccolo Zucchi constructed the first reflecting telescope. In 1630, he used it to observe two bands on Jupiter and in 1640 to observe spots on Mars. However, the telescope had serious flaws that made it difficult to use. Zucchi did not succeed in accurately shaping the concave mirror. In addition, he was unable to find a way of viewing an image without blocking the mirror. Consequently, his telescope lacked practicality and did not become popular with astronomers.... |
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| Essay on The Gregorian Telescope » |
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| Essay on Liquid Paper |
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| Liquid Paper Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Before the invention of Liquid Paper by Bette Nesmith Graham, secretaries and other typists were confronted with a predicament: Though the new IBM electric typewriters were faster and easier to use than other models, mistakes made while typing on them often required redoing the work. Older, manual typewriters used ink that erased with a simple pencil eraser, but the new electronic typewriters used carbon ribbons, whose ink smudged when erased. An artistic ability earned Graham part-time jobs painting holiday scenes on the windows of the bank where she worked. Realizing that artists cover errors with paint rather than erasing them, she concluded that paint could cover typing errors as well. Graham... |
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| Essay on The Laser |
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| The Laser Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Gordon Gould is credited with inventing the laser. He named this device a "laser," an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." He was the first person to envision the powerful laser beam and how to create it. The fundamental idea came from Albert Einstein's description of the relationship between matter and light. In 1916, Einstein proposed the idea that atoms, the basic building blocks of matter, could release excess energy as light, either spontaneously or when stimulated by light. The laser consists of an optical resonator (laser cavity) between two mirrors, one fully reflecting mirror on one end and a partially reflecting one on the other end so that light... |
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| Essay on Charles Goodyear and Vulcanization of Rubber |
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| Charles Goodyear and Vulcanization of Rubber Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Before vulcanization, the only method to seal small gaps between moving machine parts--for example, between a cylinder and piston in a steam engine--was to use leather soaked in oil, which could leak or create extra friction if packed more tightly. Vulcanized rubber could be formed into exact shapes and would comply with moderate to large deformations under pressure and would revert to its original dimensions when the pressure was removed. This property as well as durability and lack of stickiness made it a useful sealing material. Unvulcanized natural rubber is a polymer made up of long hydrocarbon (carbon and hydrogen) chains, which can move independently toward... |
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| Essay on Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod |
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| Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. In June, 1752, Benjamin Franklin performed (few now doubt) his famous kite experiment, to confirm the electrical nature of lightning; in October, he published a letter describing the experiment. The following year, in his almanac Poor Richard Improved, a brief essay, "How to secure Houses, &c. from Lightning," described a simple method of protection: Provide a small Iron Rod . . . of such a Length, that one End being three or four Feet in the moist Ground, the other may be six or eight Feet above the highest Part of the Building. To the upper End of the Rod fasten about a Foot of Brass Wire, the Size of a common Knitting-needle, sharpened to a fine Point; the Rod may be... |
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| Essay on Benjamin Franklin as a Scientist |
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| Benjamin Franklin as a Scientist Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Franklin considered the communication and application of useful knowledge almost as important as its discovery. In 1743, he published a pamphlet proposing what became in the following year the American Philosophical Society, an organization devoted to the communication of knowledge concerning, as Franklin explained, "all philosophical Experiments that let Light into the Nature of Things, tend to increase the Power of Man over Matter, and multiply the Conveniencies or Pleasures of Life"--as succinct a statement of the credo of an inventor as one could want. Biographers of Franklin routinely comment on the way his observations of everyday life lead to his asking revealing... |
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| Essay on Benjamin Franklin as a Scientist » |
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| Essay on Fahrenheit's Thermometer |
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| Fahrenheit's Thermometer Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit's instruments were the first reliable thermometers. Fahrenheit completed his alcohol and mercury thermometers by carefully crafting several instruments to identical specifications and testing them until they calibrated temperature equally. He tried many different scales before settling on the one that would bear his name, using work by Guillaume Amontons to determine the boiling points of water and other liquids. He also discovered that mercury was an ideal liquid for measuring temperature. Fahrenheit originally established 30œ as the freezing point of fresh water and 100œ as the normal human body temperature. His first estimate of body temperature... |
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| Essay on The First Steamboat |
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| The First Steamboat Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. John Fitch's steamboat design called for placing a brick furnace in a wooden boat. The fire in the furnace heated water in a boiler, releasing steam. The steam entered a cylinder, forcing a piston to move. The piston's motion moved a shaft, which moved paddles that turned, propelling the boat. Fitch and Henry Voight had to make several adjustments to these original ideas to make their steamboat work. Their first plan called for a cylinder only three inches in diameter, but that was not strong enough to move a twenty-ton boat. Fitch calculated that they needed a twelve-inch cylinder. When the engine was tested on land, the piston leaked. Placing the cylinder vertically fixed that problem... |
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| Essay on The Automated Flour Mill |
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| The Automated Flour Mill Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Motivated by the need to invent machines to replace expensive manual laborers in the grain-to-flour business, Oliver Evans developed an integrated system of mechanical devices and processes that produced a superior flour with minimal human input. Initially, waterwheels supplied the power; humans were necessary only to start and monitor the machines and barrel the flour. Examples of Evans's mechanizations include an endless belt-and-buckets device that delivered the grain to an upper floor at a rate of three hundred bushels per hour. The buckets emptied the grain into a hopper above the millstones, and gravity guided the grain to these rotating millstones, where the grain was... |
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| Essay on The Air Conditioner |
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| The Air Conditioner Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Although Stuart Cramer of Charlotte, North Carolina, originally coined the term "air conditioning" for a process he patented in 1906, it was Willis Carrier who is responsible for making the term widely known. The "dew-point control" device he conceived in 1902, through which moisture and ventilation are combined mechanically to control humidity and air temperature, is the basis for all modern air conditioning systems. The air conditioner as it is known today works on basic principles not unlike the age-old practice of placing wet cloths in an open passageway to cool the area inside it. In the mechanical application, a chemical refrigerant is pushed through a series of evaporator coils... |
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| Essay on The Invention of Nylon |
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| The Invention of Nylon Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Wallace Hume Carothers and his research team at DuPont investigated several chemical possibilities to create the first synthetic fibers before focusing on polyamides--polymers consisting of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen molecules. The chemists made what Carothers referred to as a super-polymer when acids and alcohols, specifically molecules of adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine, both containing six carbon atoms, reacted. The chemists removed water from this superpolymer and pulled it into a thin flexible filament similar to silk threads but stronger. Carothers and DuPont personnel referred to that synthetic fiber as polyhexamethyleneadipamide, polymer 66, and fiber 66, before DuPont... |
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| Essay on The Invention of Nylon » |
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| Essay on Xerography |
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| Xerography Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. When Chester F. Carlson tried to find a sponsor for his invention, he had no model to show. All he had was a crude, six-step process he demonstrated unsuccessfully to IBM but with greater success to Battelle: He coated a smooth plate with a layer of dielectric material, then applied an electrostatic charge to the coated plate; placing a printed page facing the plate, he used a bright light to shine an image of the document on the plate, releasing the charge on the plate where light struck unshaded areas; the plate was dusted with a charged powder, revealing the image; the image was transferred to a sheet of paper, where the image was fused by heat. Carlson's demonstration involved difficult manual... |
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| Essay on The Adding and Listing Machine |
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| The Adding and Listing Machine Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The patent for the Burroughs Registering Accountant was granted in 1892. It became one of the most popular and well marketed of the adding machines. The success of the machine depended on not only the mechanical aspect but also the sales aspect. While the early Burroughs machines were simply encased in wooden boxes, later ones were partially encased in glass. The latter kind enabled salesmen to show the machine's inner workings and impress potential buyers with the mechanics. Salesmen trained buyers how best to use the machine, including changes in bookkeeping practices that would take advantage of the machine's mechanics. The machine featured keys used to set digits... |
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| Essay on The Spectroscope |
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| The Spectroscope Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Prior to the discovery of the spectroscope, chemical tests were used to identify each of the known chemical elements. As an increasing number of elements were being discovered during the nineteenth century, the spectroscope became a useful tool to quickly characterize elements since each has a unique chemical "fingerprint." This fingerprint appears in the form of dark lines, representing absorbed light, as well as a series of colored lines from the emitted light when elements or compounds are heated to a high enough temperature. For example, lithium produces a red light, copper is green, and potassium is violet. To the eye, this light appears to be composed of just one or two colors. However, when... |
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| Essay on The Transistor |
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| The Transistor Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The transistor invented by Walter H. Brattain and John Bardeen in December, 1947, was called the point-contact transistor. One month later, William Shockley, the supervisor of the three-man group, invented the junction transistor. All three were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 for the invention of the transistor. Although the construction of the two types of transistors is different, they operate in essentially the same way. In its basic form, the transistor's function is to take electric current (electrons), send those electrons from one element to another (in the case of a transistor, the emitter and the collector), and control the flow of those electrons with a third element... |
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| Essay on Vacuum Cleaners |
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| Vacuum Cleaners Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The idea of mechanical carpet- and upholstery-cleaning machinery dates from the nineteenth century. In 1869, a dirt-removing machine was created to blow dirt from carpets, but it operated by hand: one person to pump the bellows and the other person to point the nozzle at the floor. Most significant, the debris was blown in the air and thus was not removed completely. Gradually, human power was replaced by either coal or petroleum-powered machines, but they, too, operated by blowing air through and around dirty carpets. H. Cecil Booth's cleaner used a machine to create a vacuum that sucked dirt and dust out from carpet and upholstery, conveying the debris through a flexible tube into a chamber closed... |
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| Essay on Quick Freezing |
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| Quick Freezing Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. When Clarence Birdseye perfected his method of quick freezing, the frozen food industry was on the road to becoming the behemoth it has grown into. Earlier experiments with freezing foods involved slow freezing, in which a significant loss in flavor occurs and in which vitamins and minerals are diminished. Quick freezing overcomes these difficulties. The most common form of quick freezing is the air-blast method, in which food is subjected to a steady blast of air chilled to about -50œ Fahrenheit. This air is forced into an insulated tunnel through which food passes on a conveyor belt. Generally the food has already been packaged, although sometimes fruits and vegetables are frozen... |
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| Essay on The Laser Probe |
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| The Laser Probe Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Dr. Patricia Bath began work on an invention for laser cataract surgery in 1981. Unable to find the appropriate lasers in the United States, she traveled to Berlin, Germany, where she studied the latest laser technology as she designed her "apparatus for ablating and removing cataract lenses," later called the laserphaco probe. Once the invention was complete, she successfully tested it on human cadavers. Her device was first used on live human subjects seven years after she began experiments, and she was awarded a patent for her laserphaco probe in 1988. Bath's procedure uses a laser to destroy and remove the cataract coating of the eye. Aflexible line (less than one millimeter in diameter)... |
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| Essay on The Hand-Operated Fan |
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| The Hand-Operated Fan Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The hand-operated fan Hertha Marks Ayrton developed for the British army was made of waterproof canvas and cane, with a wooden handle. Its fifteen-inch square blade had a firm center with side and end flaps. These loose flaps prevented fumes from rushing into the area behind the fan, ensuring they would be dispelled. Made to be portable, it was three and a half feet long, weighed less than one pound, and could be folded. The fan worked by creating disturbances in the air that traveled toward the fumes. As the fan beat in a regular rhythm, this wave pattern could be reinforced, creating standing waves that caused the air to rise higher and higher. The up-and-down motion of the fan... |
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| Essay on The Invention of Electric Drill |
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| The Invention of Electric Drill Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Following the development of practical electric motors in the 1870's and 1880's, inventors and engineers rushed to find ways to put the motors to use. Electricity promised to make cumbersome tasks easier, and by the end of the nineteenth century electric motors were powering fans, carpet sweepers, vehicles, and industrial machinery. Because an electric motor converts electrical energy to mechanical energy, it could perform repetitive, laborious work such as drilling into rock. Drills have been used by humans for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient Egyptian and Harappan civilizations (in present-day India and Pakistan). The earliest drills were bow... |
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| Essay on The Spinning Frame |
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| The Spinning Frame Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The earlier spinning machine credited to Lewis Paul and John Wyatt substituted two mechanically rotated rollers for the wheel and distaff that had been used in spinning since time immemorial--to the extent that a famous English traditional rhyme begins "When Adam delved and Eve span." The Paul-Wyatt machine did not work very well, because the machine could not compensate, as a hand spinner instinctively did with skillful gestures, for two problems that inevitably arose as the process went on: the increasing diameter of the accumulated thread on the "distaff roller" and the tendency of the thread to become twisted in the drawing space. Sir Richard Arkwright's machine solved both these... |
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| Essay on The Phased-Array Antenna |
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| The Phased-Array Antenna Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. One of the lesser-known but most important inventions of Luis Alvarez was his microwave phased-array antenna. He needed a thin (3œ) fan-shaped radar beam for the microwave early warning radar system, which would have required a rectangular reflector 8 by 75 feet when fed by a single radiating (dipole) element. He then realized that he could obtain better results from a series of many equally spaced radiating elements along a pipe-like waveguide, which he found would require a length of only 24 feet for a 3œ beam. Microwaves from the waveguide, radiating out from these elements, would overlap and reinforce each other in one direction and cancel in all other directions... |
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| Essay on The Alexanderson Alternator |
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| The Alexanderson Alternator Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. One of the most difficult challenges faced by Reginald Aubrey Fessenden in realizing his dream of making radio waves carry the human voice was the problem of generating a continuous carrier wave. In 1901, neither the vacuum tube nor the transistor existed, so any device that would produce a carrier wave would have to be mechanical in nature. Fessenden, who recognized that radio waves were an electromagnetic phenomenon, conceptualized an alternator that would change phase far more frequently than the usual 60 cycles per second of American line voltage, perhaps as much as 100,000 cycles per second. However, when this consummate theorist approached engineers to actually... |
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| Essay on The Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer |
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| The Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. George Edward Alcorn applied his physics skills to develop instrumentation to analyze electromagnetic radiation X-ray sources for aerospace applications. With three colleagues, Alcorn initiated invention of an imaging X-ray spectrometer to aid researchers in acquiring data on the composition of distant planets and stars. His device functioned more consistently and accurately than existing imaging X-ray equipment, particularly electromagnetic radiation detectors. U.S. Patent number 4,472,728, "Imaging X-ray Spectrometer" (1984), cites information and prior patents that influenced his invention, including optical and electronics technical articles, a 1970 semiconductor... |
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| Essay on Archimedes |
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| Archimedes Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The earliest firmly datable event in Archimedes' career came late in his life. Ancient literary authorities described Archimedes' applications of physical principles to mechanical inventions for the defense of his city. Archimedes reportedly constructed several (not entirely plausible) weapons to defend Syracuse, an ally of the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War, during a siege of the city by the Roman commander Marcus Claudius Marcellus in 213-211 b.c.e. Those reported weapons included gigantic metallic parabolic mirrors to focus the Sun's rays on the sails of Roman ships in Syracuse's harbor. More plausible are reports that he demonstrated the power of the compound pulley and... |
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| Essay on Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) |
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| Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Liquid crystal displays are based on the ability of liquid crystals to rotate light, especially when in the twisted nematic or cholesteric phase. The liquid crystal components are placed between two flat pieces of glass, allowing LCDs to be much lighter and thinner than displays using a traditional cathode-ray tube. LCDs also run on much less power than traditional displays. Most LCDs utilize the twisted nematic phase of liquid crystals between two polarizers with perpendicular orientation. When ordinary light is sent through a vertical polarizer, only the light that is in the same direction as the slits in the polarizer will pass through. Therefore, the light leaving is all... |
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| Essay on The Internal Combustion Engine |
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| The Internal Combustion Engine Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The history of the internal combustion engine in the twentieth century follows three different paths, of which only one led to a complete innovation. These paths were represented by the Otto engine, the Diesel engine, and the gas turbine; it was the last of these that was wholly new. All paths led eventually to a heavy dependence on oil products as a source of motive power, particularly for transport, the consequences of which became painfully apparent in the 1970s. The development of Otto engine was conservative, in that a young engineer familiar with it in 1900 would, in his old age, see no radical changes in the latest models of 1950. This is not to say, of course... |
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| Essay on Steam Engine On Ships |
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| Steam Engine On Ships Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The Act of Navigation, the creation of the colonial empire, and the Industrial Revolution had given England predominance on the seas of the world, a position she was to retain until the 1930's. The quick growth of ocean shipping helped develop better instruments of navigation; the invention of the sextant in 1731 and of the chronometer in 1735 made shipping more reliable and safe. The eighteenth century also was an age of great activity in cartography, and the seas of the world were practically all mapped in that period. The English merchant navy doubled in size not only during the eighteenth century, but again between 1790 and 1820, and this rise continued for a considerable period... |
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| Essay on The Development of the Automobile |
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| The Development of the Automobile Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. The steam engine was too bulky to be used as a source of power for mechanically propelled road vehicles; what was needed was an engine that would combine the fire box, boiler, and cylinder of a steam plant in a small lightweight unit. The internal combustion engine, in which injected fuel mixed with air is exploded to drive the piston in a cylinder, proved to be the answer. It could supply more power per weight than a steam engine, and its moderate fuel consumption made long-distance travel not only possible but economical. The evolution of the internal-combustion engine was conditioned by the increasing supply of cheap fuel and cheap steel. The supplies of gas or alcohol were... |
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| Essay on The Development of the Automobile » |
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| Essay on Steam Power and Land Traffic |
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| Steam Power and Land Traffic Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Inventions & Inventors. Early in the history of the steam engine there was already no doubt in the minds of inventors that steam would one day move the carriages that were then drawn by horses or mules. A Frenchman, Cugnot, had constructed a steam-propelled vehicle, but it crashed at the first trial in 1769. William Murdoch was more successful with his experiments at Cornwall in 1785. A far better carriage, driven by high-pressure steam, was demonstrated by Trevithick in 1801. It attained a speed of from eight to nine miles an hour on the road. After more experimental models demonstrated by Evans in 1804 and others, Gurney and Hancock were able to open steam-coach service by 1831 with their "Automaton"... |
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