Science Projects And Inventions

“... this [invention] enables good sight and is one of the most useful of arts... the world possesses." Fra Giordano da Rivalto, sermon (1305) In the first century the Roman philosopher and dramatist Seneca used a glass sphere full of water resting on his reading material to magnify the letters, and this method was certainly used by farsighted monks a millennium later. Glass blowers in Venice produced lenses that were used as magnifying glasses, and in Europe in the late thirteenth century these were being used in pairs, one for each eye, the holding frame being made of wood or horn. Salvino D’Armate of Pisa (1258-1312) and the friar Alessandro da Spina (d. 1313) of Florence are often given the credit for the invention of spectacles, in the year 1284, but Marco Polo, in 1270, saw elderly Chinese using spectacles and, when asked, they credited the invention to Arabs in more...

More than fifty years: before the Wright brothers flew almost an entire minute in the world's first airplane, French engineer Henri Giffard (1825-1882) traveled 17 miles (27 kilometers) from Paris to Trappes in a lighter- than-air aircraft. Inspired by the streamlined model airship unveiled by.his compatriot Pierre Jullien in 1850, Giffard built his'"'143 feet (44 meter) long, cigar-shaped dirigible and got it off the ground two years later. With its three-bladed propeller driven by a 3-horsepower (2.2 kilowatt) steam engine, it was the first passenger-carrying, powered, and steerable airship in history. The world's .most famous airship, the twentieth century zeppelin, was rigid with a shape determined by a skeletal structure. Giffard's design was non-rigid. Like a balloon, the envelope's shape depended on the pressure of the hydrogen inside that lifted the airship. The dirigible's maiden flight took place on September 24, 1852, when Giffard—sitting in a gondola hanging, from a. more...

"Be he 'live, or be he dead I'll grind his bones to make my bread." Jack and the Beanstalk, English Fairy Tales (1890) As humankind ceased to live as nomadic hunter- gatherers and began to settle down and raise crops, a different style of tool became necessary. People were now able to grow grain. However, grain had to be ground into flour in order to make bread. To accomplish this task an early form of mill, called a quernstone, eventually emerged. Approximately 4,000 years ago, humans worked out that they could place one rough stone on top of another and use the two of them to grind grain into small particles. Early versions consisted of a rough rock base, or quern, and a smaller rock that could be ground over the top of it, often referred to as a rubbing stone. A major advance occurred when the top stone was more...

Named after Samuel Morse (1791-1872)—Morse code is a simple code in which letters are represented by dits and dahs. The code, which is a milestone in long- range communication, was designed so that telegraph operators could communicate via a series of electrical signals. In 1844, several years after Morse and his partner Alfred Vail had created the code. Morse demonstrated to the American Congress the power of the telegraph by using the code. To their awe, he sent the message "What hath God wrought" from Washington to Baltimore at a speed that no horse or car could hope to match. Congress was skeptical of Morse for several years before they agreed to build the Washington-Baltimore line (at the enormous cost of $30,000). Morse code took off and was soon used internationally by militaries, railroads, and businesses. The first form of radio communication was "wireless telegraphy," which involved transmitting Morse code more...

“... a piece of work which excites the admiration of the most learned mathematicians." Cosmogrciphica Pomponii Melae (1511) Often in history one critical invention leads to another that overshadows the first. This was true of the German locksmith Peter Henlein, the inventor of the portable or pocket watch. He created this sometime between 1504 and 1508, and it could operate for up to forty hours before it needed rewinding. Henlein's work was made possible by the invention, more than fifty years earlier, of a single piece of metal that, when in a certain shape, would use the metal's natural elasticity to both absorb and release a force applied to it: the humble coiled spring. History does not recall who first created this most useful invention, but a small number of examples of spring-driven clocks have survived from the early fifteenth century. The coiled spring's ability to store energy was what more...

"Native Americans burned oily fish (candle fish) wedged into a forked stick." Bob Sherman, Candle Making History It is difficult to attribute the invention of the candle to one society or country. The first "candles" may have been nothing more than melting lumps of animal fat set on fire. Later, these evolved into reeds dipped into animal fat, longer burning than their predecessors but still without a wick (a central slow-burning core to the candle, usually made from fiber or cord). Archeological evidence indicates that both the Egyptians and the Greeks were using candles with wicks (not dissimilar to those we know today) as long ago as 3000 B.C.E. Many ancient cultures appear to have developed some variation of the candle, using materials such as beeswax or tallow or even the product of berries to make the wax. This surrounded a wick made from fibers of plant material, rolled papyrus, or more...

“The most significant development for [navigation and surveillance] since... radio navigation." National Aeronautical Association The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a system of satellites that transmit microwaves over specific wavelengths. GPS receivers pick up signals from these satellites and define a location from the information they obtain. The system was developed by the U.S. government in 1993, but similar mechanisms have been set up in other countries including the Russian GLONASS (incomplete), China's-COMPASS system, and the upcoming Galileo system in 'Europe. The GPS system costs the U.S. government approximately $750 million a year and is used worldwide for navigation. The system is extremely useful and there are a huge range of commercial and domestic applications. In military terms, GPS is used to track targets, locate positions in unknown territory, and project missiles, and it is also used in search and rescue and reconnaissance missions. In the civilian world, GPS units more...

After the straight hairstyles of the 1920s, waves and curls became the fashion, and a new product was needed to hold hair firmly in place. Women had been using natural compounds such as clays and gums to hold their hair in place for centuries, but it was the invention of the aerosol, can that led to the development of the first hair spray. During World War II, the United States government was looking for a way to spray insecticides to kill malaria-carrying bugs. In 1943, two. Department of Agriculture workers designed an aerosol can pressurized by liquefied gas. Soon, hair spray was produced using the same principle, with a debate still raging over whether it was Chase Products of Broadview, Illinois, in 1948, or Helene Curtis of Chicago seven years later who came up with the idea. Early hair sprays contained polymers (long-chain chemical compounds) that when dry form tiny more...

"I'm quitting. ...I'm going to open up an appliance store, I've always really been into toasters." Dane Cook, actor and comedian In 1919 Charles Strite, a factory worker in a manufacturing plant in Stillwater, Minnesota, became annoyed by the burned toast on offer in the factory canteen and set about trying to solve the problem. Originally, toasting bread would have been carried out over a fire, but labor-saving devices to help with this procedure followed, and the first electric toaster was invented in 1893. It worked by passing electricity through coils of Nichrome" (a nickel-chromium alloy), which caused them to give off heat, thus toasting the bread. Early toasters were sold as a status symbol, even before electricity was common in homes, with the power cord designed to connect to a light socket, the only electrical connection any house would have had. Strite's innovation was to add a clockwork timer more...

“[Electricity] had to be abandoned when no adequate insulators could be found for the wires.” In Paris in 1791, a little-known engineer and inventor named Claude Chappe (1763-1805) began to experiment with an optical signaling system or visual telegraph. His ambition was to send complex messages via a succession of towers using a combination of signaling arms. Three years later, in 1794, working with the aid of his four brothers, Chappe demonstrated his first optical semaphore. His string of fifteen towers placed within sight of each other was able to transmit a message 120 miles (190 km) from Paris to Lille in only nine minutes. The project's burdensome costs were borne by a French leadership who were recently at war with Austria and eager for any strategic advantage in communication, Each tower was topped by a 30-foot (9 m) mast to which a rotating arm was attached with smaller, counterbalanced more...