Science Projects And Inventions

“Change is inevitable—except from a vending machine." Robert C. Gallagher The concept for a vending machine actually dates back to ancient Greece, when the great experimenter, Hero of Alexandria, had the simple idea for a device that accepted a coin and dispensed holy water. The weight of the coin tipped a balance that opened a valve, letting water out until the coin slipped from the balance pan and a counterweight returned the mechanism and closed the valve. This neat idea formed the basis for the modern vending machine. Various contraptions for vending began to be produced in the 1800s, including some designed to get around the legal ramifications of selling illicit merchandise, such as the machines designed by Robert Carlile for selling banned books. Another example is Simeon Denham's design for a machine to dispense postage stamps for a penny.      But it is unclear whether this machine ever more...

"One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth." Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher Some lies roll off the tongue all too easily, while others can put the body under noticeable stress, inducing sweating palms, nervous twitches, contorted voices, and pounding heartbeats. Thanks to John Augustus Larson (1892-1983), signals such as these can also help to incriminate the sneakiest of liars. Larson, a medical student at the University of California, invented the polygraph in 1921 and, In doing so, introduced one of the most contentious tools ever brought to the police officer's locker. Larson's lie detector worked by continuously and simultaneously monitoring physical responses such as changes to blood pressure, pulse rate, and respiration. Unfortunately, there is no known lie hormone that is secreted during acts of deception, and as the responses under surveillance can be triggered by any stressful situation or indeed be suppressed more...

Before the arrival of the electric iron, various methods were used to smooth out washed and wrinkled clothes. Charcoal-filled pans dating back to ancient China lasted through to the seventeenth century when they were replaced by cast iron flat irons, which were heated up in open fires. By the late nineteenth century, flat irons were being heated by a range of fuels including kerosene and animal oils. But ironing was a sweaty, tiring, and dirty task typically involving a hot coal stove and numerous flat irons, which required continuous heating. With the coming of electricity it was inevitable that someone would spot an opportunity. Henry W. Seely an American inventor based in New York, was the first to develop and patent an electric iron in 1882. The electric iron uses resistive heating—heat produced by resistance to an electric current. This is used to warm a metal hot plate, today made more...

The modern system of automobile brakes was patented in 1902 by British car manufacturer Frederick William Lanchester (1868-1946). He took the disk brakes then available and radically improved their design. But, competition with the new drum brakes meant that disk brakes took almost fifty years to become a reality on a mass-produced car, and another five years before the concept became widespread. Lanchester and his three brothers formed the Lanchester Engine Company in 1899. He had been designing cars and engines since 1889, and had built the United Kingdom's first four-wheel drive car in 1895. In 1902 their latest prototype, which contained a ten horse-powered, twin cylinder engine, was fitted with the new system of disk brakes. Disk brakes slow a car by removing energy from the rotating wheel; brake pads squeeze both sides of the rotor connected to the wheel. The friction of this generates heat, which escapes via more...

“I  like an escalator because an escalator can never break,  it can only become stairs." Mitch Hedberg, comedian American Jesse W. Reno (1861-1947) came up with the notion of an "inclined elevator" at the age of sixteen and patented the idea in 1891. It was not the first idea of its type because a patent had been granted earlier for a steam-driven design/but this was never built. In 1895 Reno's moving stairway was built as an attraction at New York's Coney Island amusement park. The term "escalator" was not attached to the invention until 1897, when Charles Seeberger combined sea, a (Latin for "stairs") and elevator, the name of a device invented some years previously. Seeberger redesigned the escalator, and it was built in the Otis factory, New York. This became the first commercial escalator, winning first prize at the Paris Exposition in 1900. The Otis Elevator Company bought the more...

"Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night" Dave Barry, humorist In 1884 William Upjohn (1853-1932), a U.S. doctor from Michigan, invented the first pill that could dissolve in the stomach. Upjohn had the innovative idea of introducing a starter particle into a revolving pan. As the pan turned, the starter was sprayed with powdered medicine, building up the new pill layer by layer. The number of layers controlled the strength of the pill. The resulting "friable" (easily crushable) pill dissolved when ingested.  Prior to Upjohn's development, patients had to ingest drugs in liquid form or as pills with hard coatings. The problems were that the dosage of liquids was inconsistent and the pill coatings were so hard that they did not always dissolve, meaning that patients received no benefit. After patenting his invention in 1886, Upjohn developed a machine to mass-produce his more...

"The first off the assembly line were plated with gold and silver and made into a necklace... “ Norman Nock, Austin Healy Magazine (1996) The cross-shaped screw-head is ubiquitous today, yet its widespread use came only a lifetime ago. Traditional flat-head screws, in use since the late seventeenth century, suffer from two disadvantages: one, the slot and screwdriver have to be precisely aligned; and two, the screwdriver can easily slip from its position thanks to centrifugal force. These problems are particularly pronounced in automated production lines, where robots are not able to compensate for slippage as easily as humans. The cross-head screw, with a pointed tip for self-centering, was designed to eliminate these problems and deliver more torque to boot. The cross-head was popularized by Henry F. Phillips (1890-1958) from Portland, Oregon. Phillips built on the work of inventor J. P. Thompson, who had designed, but failed to capitalize on, more...

"The scientific man... does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up."    Nikola Tesia In 1887 David Hughes transmitted Morse code over a short distance. A year later, Heinrich Hertz produced and detected his own radio waves, but he did not realize their practical use. It was only in 1891, when Nikola Tesia (1856-1943) began his researches, that radio technology started to come into its own. Serbian-born Tesia, by then living in New York, was a practical inventor. He quickly saw the potential in the strange resonances and interactions caused by the alternating currents of his electrical experiments. He worked on radio for several years, filed several patents, presented his ideas in London, and created a working long-distance radio system in New York. Tesia was distracted by the long, bitter war between his alternating-current electricity system and Thomas Edison's rival direct-curr.ent system, which left the way more...

"Adhesive stamps...[entail] a serious loss of time when hundreds of letters have to be despatched." Carl Bushe Sticking a stamp to a letter is a fairly trivial matter if you only have one letter. But if you have hundreds of letters then the process of licking and sticking each individual stamp becomes very time-consuming. In the late nineteenth century, Frenchman Carle Bushe first conceived and patented a machine that would print a stamp on an envelope and record the amount of postage payable on a meter. Today the post office supplies users with franking machines, set up with a pre-paid credit limit, which stamps envelopes and registers the cost of the postage used. The credit is then topped up when necessary. Franking originally dates back to the seventeenth century when Members of Parliament (MPs) regularly sent hundreds of official letters and were given the privilege of free postage. In those more...

From the first recorded uses of flax as a textile fiber around 5,000 B.C.E., to the adoption of cotton, wool, and silk, people have always been ready to exploit any material that can be made into long flexible fibers and woven or knitted into fabric. In 1655 the English scientist Robert Hooke first proposed creating artificial silk from a gelatinous mass, but it it took another 200 years for anyone to realize that ambition. In 1895 the Swiss chemist Georges Audemars made a mixture or pulp from the bark of a mulberry tree and rubber. By dipping a needle into this mess he was able to draw out fibers of artificial silk. His process took a long time for each fiber and was too slow to be of any practical use. In 1884 the French chemist, Comte Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet , having refined the method used by Audemars, patented more...