Archives September 2013

It is true that miracles do occur in man's life. If I become a millionaire by the blessings of Almighty, my dreams will become true. I have certain plans in my mind regarding the investment of money. As man is selfish by nature and I am also a man made of flesh and blood first of all I will invest half of my money for the upliftment of my own family. I will set up a beautifully decorated departmental store in some posh colony of the city. I will make some investment in the share market and other investment plans of the government. As they will provide me investment profits for my future plans. A man is said to be a social animal. He has certain duties for the society. In this matter my first priority will be of setting a leprosy home, which will be fully equipped with all more...

"Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal". Popular post-American Civil War slogan Samuel Colt (1814-1862) produced the first revolver capable of firing five or six times without reloading. It was equipped with a cylinder containing chambers into which bullets were loaded. The cylinder would revolve with each cock of the hammer, enabling each chamber to. lock into position behind the barrel and discharge the bullet with a pull of the trigger. In anticipation of demand for the revolver, Colt opened a manufacturing plant, but poor sales forced its closure. Co-It's fortunes changed after favorable reports from U.S. troops fighting in Florida and Texas instigated a government order for 1,000 pistols. With the assistance of Eli Whitney Jr., Colt opened the world's biggest armory in Hartford, Connecticut, developing a production line of handguns and interchangeable parts. By 1856 the company was gaining a reputation around more...

A water bed consists of a heated, water-filled mattress inside either a "hard-sided" rectangular wooden frame or a "soft-sided" robust foam frame. Both types rely on a strong metal platform to bring the mattress to a convenient height. Early models had only one water chamber within the mattress, making it very bouncy, but later designs incorporated fiber blocks and several interconnected water chambers to reduce the wave action. Some modern water beds comprise a mixture of water and air chambers. Thermostatically controlled electrical heating pads usually maintain the water at body temperature, at around 86°F (30°C). In 1883 Dr. William Hooper of Portsmouth, England, obtained a British patent for a water bed designed for patients at risk of developing bedsores. However, his model lacked the technologies to ensure that the beds were watertight, and he was unable to control the water temperature, so his invention was not a commercial success. more...

Dennis Ritchie [b. 1941) is idolized by computer programmers all over the world. Why? Because he wrote what is, without a doubt, the most widely used programming language in the world. After gaining undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard, Ritchie went to work for Bell Laboratories in 1968. It was there, alongside Ken Thompson (b. 1943), that he created the UNIX operating system. At the time, Bell Labs was using a programming language called "B," which was used to write UNIX. Building on this operating system, Ritchie, in his own words, "added data types and new syntax to Thompson's B language, thus producing the new language 'C.'" This new language, designed to be used with the UNIX operating system, is general purpose and, critically, was written to allow ft to be "ported," or transferred from one type of computer to another. At the time, Ritchie and Thompson had been working more...

When beer is stored in large quantities—in the cool cellar of a bar or pub, for example—it can be retained in the casks in which it was delivered, where its continued fermentation improves the taste and strength of the drink. When the cask beer is eventually drawn out by a pump, it mixes with nitrogen in the air and gains its characteristic texture and head. Guinness Irish s-tout is unusual in that its distinctive head is caused by special taps that ensure a precise mix. When brewers started putting beer in bottles so that it could be drunk away from the cask, they found that the fermentation in bottles caused a much higher level of carbonation. All this carbon dioxide is good because it leaves no room for oxygen in the bottle, which would sour the beer, but it creates a much fizzier drink. Without the taps to pour the more...

"The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation..." U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977 Building on a concept proposed by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1745, Joseph-Mane Jacquard (1752- 1834), namesake of the famous loom, perfected a more practicable interpretation of his fellow Frenchman's idea—automation using punched cards. Jacquard knew from experience that silk weaving, although a skillful art, was extremely repetitive. It was this aspect of the process he attacked and so he set out to control the weaving process by linking the actions of the loom to the pattern of holes on the cards. Each card had the same number of rows and columns, the presence or absence of a hole being detected mechanically and thereby determining the loom's movements. Ultimately, many such cards would be connected in sequence, enabling the loom to weave complex designs time and time again. In 1803 Jacquard was summoned more...

"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming." Richard Branson, British entrepreneur Londoner Obadiah Elliot invented the leaf spring in 1804 when he piled steel plates on top of each other, pinned them together, and attached them to the end of a carriage. His design remains a key component in supporting heavy goods vehicles, however, he was not the first person to add a bit of spring to transportation, Ancient Roman vehicles were suspended on elastic wooden poles, which work on the same principle. The spring is formed by stacking several layers of steel in the shape of an arc with an axel in the center and the edges tied to the vehicle. What has made the leaf spring such a popular invention is that varying the number of leaves (steel plates) or the curvature of their configuration alters the performance and weight capacity of the spring. They more...

The need for a sealed face mask to protect against the inhalation of smoke and airborne toxins became apparent with the development of underground mining in the eighteenth century. A crude respirator was invented by the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt in 1799 while he was working as a mining engineer. Other designs included Garratt Morgan's "Safety Hood and Smoke Protector," developed in 1912, consisted of a cotton hood with two hoses reaching down to the floor, where cleaner air would often be found. But the crucial imperative in the development of an effective gas mask was the use of poison gas, especially chlorine. This gas was used for the first time in World War I by the German Army at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. Initial attempts to counteract the chlorine gas using cotton mouth pads and absorbent hoods proved either ineffective or cumbersome and thousands more...

"Whatever happened /To Tuesday and so slow/Going down the old mine/With a transistor radio." Van Morrison, "Brown Eyed Girl" When the transistor first appeared in 1947, few could have guessed how it would quickly transform the world of consumer electronics. The transistor was the size of a fingernail, weighed practically nothing, and was a direct replacement for the bulky, delicate electricity-powered glass valve. Suddenly, electronic circuitry was able to shrink to a fraction of its former size and be powered by small DC (direct current) batteries. The first popular consumer product to take advantage of this miniaturization was the transistor radio. Although there had been a number of small portable models appearing at trade fairs in Europe and Japan, the 1954 Regency TR-1 was the first to go into mass production. The technology behind the Regency transistor radio came from an innovative U.S. electronics corporation, Texas Instruments. They had designed more...

My mother is a kind lady. She is very good in her behaviour. Everybody in the family likes her. She has many qualities of head and heart. She is highly educated and intelligent. She is very hard-working, kind, caring and loving. Her love for us has no limits. She is a housewife and ever busy She gets up earlier than others and goes to bed last of all. She cooks food, washes our clothes, looks after our every need and comfort. She enjoys serving us. Sometimes, I feel sorry for her and help  her in her work in my own humble way. Her love and care are a great source of inspiration to me. They help me in keeping good health and being cheerful. It is because of her that I am so good at studies. If I am ill, she would leave no stone unturned to look after me more...