Archives November 2013

The market of my town is very important. There is no other place of grain market in the area having so much brisk business as this market. The market itself is in the centre of the town. All important bazaars of the town lead to this market. It has a square shape. There is an open ground in the middle of the shops. There are shops on the four sides of the big square. The main shopkeepers are regents. Their trade is chiefly export and import of grains. There are a few shops which meet needs of the people who visit the market for purchase   The crowd scene in the market is very interesting. It is a centre of attraction for both buyers and sellers. I always find a Dig crowd there Businessmen come from far and wide for purchasing or selling their produce. The market is always crowded more...

"And you shall have an implement  [and] you shall dig with it and turn and cover your refuse." Deuteronomy 23:1 on camp sanitation Without the toilet system, disease would be widespread and water undrinkable. It is an invention that is taken for granted in the modern world, but where would we be without it? Even though they began only as holes in the ground, toilets in various forms have been used since Babylonian times. A defining step in the long and complex history of the toilet was the S-trap system developed by Alexander Cummings, a watchmaker by trade. (Thomas Crapper is often given credit for the invention of the modern toilet; although he was involved in toilet production, it was Cummings who held the patent.) Cummings's design incorporated an S-shaped bend in the drainage pipe that created a water seal between flushes. This meant that foul odors were trapped below more...

"Drinking and driving: there are stupider things, but it's a very short list." Author unknown In 1954 Robert Borkenstein (1912-2002), of the Indiana State Police, invented the breathalzyer, a portable device that provided scientific evidence of alcohol intoxication. After the consumption of alcohol, blood flows through the lungs and some of the alcohol evaporates and moves across the membranes into the air sacs. The breathalyzer shows a direct relationship between the concentration of alcohol found in the air sacs and that in blood. Subjects blow up a balloon (ensuring a deep air lurag sample is taken), the contents of which are released over a chemical solution, resulting in a color change detected by a monochromatic light beam. The extent of the color change relates to the percentage of alcohol in the breath. The breathalyzer replaced the drunk-o-meter, an earlier device developed by Rolla Harger and patented in 1936. It relied more...

Although the first patent application for a composting toilet was filed by Thomas Swinburne in 1838, the idea of recycling human waste was by no means new at this time. The Chinese had already been composting human and animal waste for use as fertilizer for thousands of years. However unattractive this process may seem, it is certainly more environmentally viable than a modern sewage system. Composting cuts down on water pollution, and human excreta contain valuable nutrients that can help farmers reduce the amount of chemical fertilizers they use on crops. Swinburne's "earth closet" was the first device that can be described as a composting toilet, that is, one that deposits earth or peat onto feces to kick start the composting process. But it was not until Henry Moule established the Moule Patent Earth-Closet Company in the 1860s that they became more commonly used. Some schools and military camps reportedly more...

"We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity —romantic love and gunpowder." Andre Maurois, novelist and writer Few inventions can have instigated as much misery to humankind as that of the seemingly innocuous gunpowder. Created by Chinese alchemists in the ninth century, gunpowder consists of a mixture of ground saltpeter (potassium nitrate), charcoal, and sulfur in approximate proportions of 75, 15, and 10 by weight. Known as "black powder," its exposure to an open flame produces an explosion that can propel an object great distances when contained in a tube closed at one end. The Chinese experimented with different levels of saltpeter content to design rockets. Arab chemists acquired knowledge of gunpowder in the thirteenth century, rapidly employing it for military purposes, including the production of a gun made from a bamboo tube reinforced with iron. The spread of information arrived in Europe, where gunpowder was more...

During a period spanning the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Slovakian mining town of Banska Stiavnica rose to fame both as a major source of gold and silver and as a center of excellence in the technologies needed to extract those precious metals. The area became synonymous with advances in ore extraction and processing. Fundamental among the many problems that mining engineers had to overcome at that time was the removal of water from shafts several hundred yards deep. Human and animal power played its part in no small measure; by the end of the seventeenth century, close to a thousand men and hundreds of horses were toiling around the clock to keep the existing pumping systems working. Steam-powered systems were put to the test. However, it was asked that if an abundance of water was the problem, why not work with water, exploit its energy potential, and turn it more...

"The band saw created a special era in American architecture... the gingerbread house was born." 200 Years of Woodworking (1976) Greek legend suggests that the first saw was made by Perdix, the nephew of the inventor Daedalus. He was inspired to create a cutting tool on observing the ridges on a fish's backbone. However, saws were probably, in use well before this; ancient Egyptians used serrated copper saw blades. The handsaw is limited by the need for people to power it. The circular saw, patented in the eighteenth century, helped alleviate that problem but also had its limitations, namely that it could cut no deeper than the radius of its disc. The band saw—a fast-moving cutting "strip" mounted in a machine—potentially solved both problems and has many advantages over the handsaw and the circular saw. William Newberry of London, England, was granted a patent for the first band saw in more...

When Thomas Edison first captured sound, his audio recordings, made using a wax cylinder, were a simple reflection of a single moment in time. During the 1940s, when a number of experimenters began looking at different approaches to audio recording, guitarist and inventor Les Paul (b. 1915) worked on the idea of capturing a number of single events and playing them back simultaneously to produce something completely new—a synthetic recording. In 1947 Les Paul's experiments came to fruition. Capitol Records issued his instrumental solo "Lover (When You're Near Me)," featuring Paul playing eight different guitar parts at the same time Paul made the recording using two wax-cylinder recording machines; after making one recording on the first cylinder the second would be of himself playing along with the first recording. He continued in this way until he had built up all eight parts. This pioneering recording technique is now referred to more...

In today's world which is constantly haunted with fear of war, every nation is spending billions in maintaining an army, in furnishing it with up-to-date weapons, and in producing highly powerful and destructive armaments such as Inter- continental ballistic Missiles (known as I.C.B.M.) and atom bombs. No nation, however, seems to feel safe, for other nations are also progressing fast in the race for armaments. Despite the end of Cold War, the world is still divided  into camps. Although the USA is the most powerful force in the world today, there are others like China, Iraq and Iran  which are manufacturing powerful weapons.  The United Nations, which was brought into existence on the ashes of the League of Nations, is seriously concerned with this problem. If by the slightest chance, any nation provokes another to war, there is no knowing what may happen  in the next few hours. Atom bomb more...

"Day is pushed out by day, and each new moon hastens to its death..." Horace, Odes, Book II The earliest known lunar calendar is in the caves at Lascaux, southwest France, and dates from around 15,000 B.C.E. Various series of spots represent half of the moon's near-monthly cycle, followed by a large empty square, which perhaps indicates a clear sky. A lunar calendar counts months (a period of 29.530588 days) and is based on the phases of the moon. Months have twenty-nine and thirty days alternately, and additional days are added every now and then to keep step with the actual moon phase. The lunar calendar was widely used in parts of the ancient world for religious observation. Agriculturally the lunar calendar is confusing as it takes no account of annual seasonal variations in temperature, daylight length, plant growth, animal migration, and mating. The lunar month divides into the solar more...