Archives May 2013

"We shall never run the risk of being confined in a coupe with, insufferable people."      Otto Julius on automobile travel versus train Like most "firsts" in automotive history, just who devised the first clutch is debatable. Almost all historians agree that the clutch was developed in Germany in the 1880s and some of them credit Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929) with its invention. Daimler met Maybach while they were working for Nikolaus Otto, the inventor of the internal combustion engine. In 1882 the two set up their own company, and from 1885 to 1886 they built a four-wheeled vehicle with a petrol engine and multiple gears. The gears were external, however, and engaged by winding belts over pulleys to drive each selected gear. In 1889, they developed a closed four-speed gearbox and a friction clutch to power the gears. This car was the first to be more...

"Forty-six of [Hezekiah's]... towns and innumerable smaller villages [I] besieged and conquered." King Sennacherib of Assyria The battering ram has none of the subtleties of the Trojan horse, but the results are the same; an uninvited entry. Principally weapons of war, early battering rams were heavy wooden beams, sometimes with a metal- covered end that was on occasion shaped as a ram's head (hence the name), whose sole purpose was to breach the fortifications of towns and castles. In its simplest mode of operation, the battering ram was carried by several people who would run with the ram and thrust it at the target with as much force as they could muster. The key to success was speed, however, and later rams were wheeled. Battering rams became increasingly sophisticated. One important example was the siege engine of the Assyrians of circa 1000 B.C.E. Their ram was suspended from a covered more...

"Patent examiners questioned whether [Rickenbacker's Frying Pan] was 'operative.'" Monica Smith, Smithsonian Institution Although the guitar had existed in some form since the Renaissance, it was most commonly used as a parlor instrument. The nineteenth century saw it gradually move toward the concert hall, but the guitar still remained a solo or small-ensemble instrument. It played a formative role in the birth of jazz in the 1920s, but as bands became larger and brass sections became louder, the guitar struggled to make itself heard. The solution was to amplify the sound. Around 1924, an engineer named Lloyd Loar, working for the Gibson guitar company, developed the idea of the magnetic pickup. Placed beneath the strings of the guitar, the pickup creates a magnetic field. The strings vibrate and disturb the magnetic field; these disturbances are converted to electrical current that is amplified and played back through a loudspeaker. Gibson, however, more...

Iranian astronomical observer and instrument designer Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi (circa 940-1000) constructed the first known mural sextant, with a radius of 66 feet (20 m), on an accurate north-south facing wall in Ray, near modern Tehran, Iran. The name "sextant" refers to the fact that the instrument had an angular scale that was 60 degrees in length, one sixth of a circle. (When measuring latitude, one minute is equal to one sixtieth of a degree.) The instrument was designed to measure the altitude of the sun above the horizon at noon on the days of both the summer and winter solstice, the two dates in the year when this angle has its maximum and minimum value. From the average of these two angles, an observer could determine his or her latitude—the angular distance between the equator and the observation site. The height of the sun in the sky was measured by more...

True friendship is a divine quality. To get a true friend is achievement rare now days. Someone is lucky if he gets a true friend. I am lucky enough to have true friend in Rakesh.' I value his friendship. He is really a true friend. We both are class fellows for last four years. Rakesh has many qualities of head and heart. He is an ideal student. He is very punctual in coming to school. He completes his home task regularly. His books and exercise note-books are very clean. Moreover he has a very good handwriting. His behaviour is a model for other students. He is very polite, good mannered and sweet tempered. He never promises anything wrong to others. I have never seen him losing his temper. His uniform is always neat and clean. Though he is not a very brilliant student yet he always tries to improve himself. more...

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was born on 22 May, 1778 at a time when our country was marred by various superstitions. He led our country from darkness to light. His father's name was Radha Kanta Roy and mother's name was Tarini Devi. His education started from the village school. He went to Kashi for studying Sanskrit. He also learned various languages like Arabic, French and English. He was a very good He encouraged promotion of education. He was rebellious by nature. He was awarded the title "Raja" by the Mughai Emperor. He did great work in the fields of education, politics and religion. He rendered a service of ten years in East India Company. Then he spent the rest of his life serving the people of India as a social reformer. He is remembered for his great work Sati Daho. He fought a great battle against the Sati custom, an more...

“To pinpoint the smallest fragments of the universe you have to build the biggest machine in the world." The Guardian The cyclotron was a subatomic particle accelerator that used a magnetic field to force the particles to move around a circular path in a thin, doughnut- shaped vacuum chamber, with a fixed frequency electric field for acceleration. This was then developed into the synchrotron, in which both the magnetic and the electrical fields could be varied. By decreasing the frequency of the applied voltage as the electrons move faster, the accelerating voltage and the orbiting particles could be synchronized. This phase stability ensured that the particles that were going too fast were accelerated less than those going too slowly, and the result was a stable cloud of particles that were gradually accelerated together. In 1945 two proposals for a synchrotron were put forward, one by Edwin McMillan (1907-1991) in the more...

"The use of these fireplaces in very many houses ...is a great saving of wood to the inhabitants." Benjamin Franklin, statesman and scientist Before inventing the lightning rod and bifocal lenses, American statesman and polymath Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) had turned his attention to keeping peoples' homes warm and safe. In the eighteenth century many homes in the United States, built of wood and heated by open hearths, were at great risk of fire. This had concerned Franklin since at least 1735, when he organized the first volunteer fire department in his adopted home town of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He also called for building regulations to include minimum safety standards in fireplace design—modern standards are still based on them. In 1742 he designed a new stove that he called the "Pennsylvania fireplace"; it was later called the "Franklin stove" or "circulating fireplace." The stove was a box lined with metal that stood more...

Printing on demand (POD) has revolutionized the publishing world. The process, established in 2006 by Books on Demand, uses digital technology to print copies of a book once an order has been placed. POD is infinitely quicker and simpler to set up than conventional printing because the pages are stored electronically, eliminating the need for lithographic films or printing plates. It is also relatively cheap. Unit costs are higher per copy than with traditional printing methods, but POD offers lower costs per copy for small print runs after set-up costs are taken into account. POD books can be made available in either a traditional printed format or as an e-book. POD digital technology is rescuing many older and relatively obscure titles from oblivion by enabling them to remain available and in print. Cambridge University Press (CUP) has been using the process since 1998 and now has more than 10,000 titles more...

When telephonic communication systems were first invented, and few people actually owned a telephone with number buttons. Telephone calls would be connected via a human operator. You would lift a receiver, the switchboard operator would ask you for the number you wished to call, and he or she would plug a wire into the requisite part of the board to have you connected. However, as telephones became more popular, it became increasingly impractical to have humans connecting the calls by hand and so electromechanical switchboards were invented. Soon communications companies found that even this was not enough— there was so much telephonic traffic to deal with that they started to overload and seize up. It was Erna Schneider Hoover (b. 1926), a computer programmer with a PhD in mathematics and a specialist in symbolic logic, who struck upon the solution when she was working for Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. more...