Before the 16th century, guns were large, cumbersome weapons requiring two hands, one to hold the gun and one to light the gunpowder. The first pistol came into existence after the invention of the wheel lock, a complicated firing mechanism with a wheel that was wound like a clock. When the trigger was pulled, the […]
In 1937, an American law student Chester Carlson invented a copying process based on electrostatic energy called Xerography. Xerography became commercially available in 1950 by the Xerox Corporation. The word ‘Xerography’ comes from the Greek for ‘dry writing.’ Carlson had been frustrated with the slow mimeograph machine, and the cost of photography, and that lead
The first true photographs, exposed on metal that had been sensitized to accept an image, were named for their French inventor L.J.M. Daguerre in 1837. The inventor of the first process, which used a negative from which multiple prints were made, was William Henry Fox Talbot, a contemporary of Daguerre. Tintypes, patented in 1856 by
Penicillin is a widely used antibiotic agent, derived from the Penicillin mould. Penicillin was discovered by bacteriologist Alexander Fleming at St. Mary’s Hospital in London in 1928. He observed that a blue—green mould had contaminated a plate culture of Staphylococcus, and that colonies of bacteria, adjacent to the mould, were being dissolved. Curious, Alexander Fleming
At first penknives were used to sharpen pencils. They got their name from the fact that they were first used to shape feather quills used as early pens.In 1828, Bernard Lassimone, a French mathematician applied for a patent for a invention to sharpen pencils. However, it was not until 1847 that Therry des Estwaux first
Graphite is a form of carbon, first discovered in the Seathwaite Valley on the side of the mountain Seathwaite Fell in Borrowdale, near Keswick, England, about 1564 by an unknown person. Shortly after this the first pencils were made in the same area. The breakthrough in pencil technology came when French chemist Nicolas Conte developed
Modem is a device that converts between analog and digital signals. Digital signals, which are used by computers, are made up of separate units, usually represented by a series of 1/s and 0’s. Analog signals vary continuously; an example of an analog signal is a sound wave. Modems are often used to enable computers to
A parachute is simply a big umbrella that creates air re+sistance. It is possible only with a parachute that man may drift down through the air slowly to avoid injuries when striking the ground. The first man to use a parachute is believed to be a Frenchman called J.P. Balanchard. In 1785, he attached parachute
Remember ‘Pong’, literally the first arcade game that could be played at home? It was as basic as you could get, just a white ping-pong style ball that bounced around the screen, controlled by an elementary game console. It was the start of the video game era, and was followed shortly by more ‘sophisticated’ games
Well before 1880, Amanda Theodosia Jones, had already established herself as an author and an inventor. Her early work in attempting to devise a method of preserving food resulted in her being awarded two patents.Having failed to establish a successful canning company, Jones set her sights upon perfecting a method of heating furnaces. It was
Raymond V. Damadian, inventor of the Magnetic Resonance (MR) scanning machine, was born in New York in 1936. His research into sodium and potassium in living cells led him to his first experiments with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), which caused him to first propose the MR body scanner in 1969. Damadian invented an apparatus and
The motorcycle, built in 1884 by an Englishman named Edward Butler, looked pretty silly. It had three wheels, not two, and was really just a tricycle with a motor. Nevertheless, people were so afraid of Butler’s motorcycle that they asked the government to pass laws against the new machine. One law said that there must
The truth is, in the beginning, there was no monopoly on the game because there were so many versions of it. They were created on a ‘local’ basis, using the streets and features of individual cities, and in all likelihood, very few of the inventors aware that anyone else had the same idea. One of
Most histories of the modern computer begin with the ‘Analytical Engine’ envisioned by approximately 90% of the client operating system market. Charles Babbage following the mathematical ideas of George Boole, the mathematician who first stated the principles of logic inherent in today’s digital computer. Babbage’s assistant and collaborator, Ada Lovelace, is said to have introduced
Paper containers for milk are now so commonplace that it is hard to imagine that it took over twenty patient years of persistence to get the public to accept them. But it did, and the man who is responsible is named John Van Wormer. Van Wormer owned a toy factory in Toledo, Ohio. He got