Science Projects And Inventions

"The advantage is obvious: I can call my mate in Sydney and chat for the price of a local London call." John Diamond, journalist. The Times In 1973, researcher Danny Cohen's Network Voice Protocol was first used on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), where it allowed research sites to talk with each other over the computer network. For many years afterward, however, sending your voice over the Internet was the preserve of researchers, geeks, and early computer gamers. But in 1995 a company called VocalTec released a piece of software it called Internet Phone. Designed for Microsoft Windows, it turned the speaker's voice into computer data, compressing it enough to send it in real time over a modem connection to another computer on the Internet. Many people suddenly became interested in Internet Telephone, for one simple reason—it was cheap. In the United States, for example, the local call to more...

"Owens was an inventor. He was no designer, but he could direct engineers." Richard LaFrance, Owens's chief of engineering Michael Owens's (1859-1923) automatic glass bottle- making machine not only revolutionized the glass industry by speeding up the process of bottle-making and reducing its cost, it also helped the growth of several related sectors and eradicated child labor in the industry. At the time glassblowing was one of the most highly paid crafts, and children were often employed as cheap labor. In fact, Owens—who never received any formal education—started working at a West Virginia glass factory at the age often to support his family. He subsequently moved to Toledo, Ohio, to work for entrepreneur Edward Libbey, who gave him the opportunity to realize his inventive potential. Building on existing concepts of similar semi-automatic machines (operated by five people), he conceived a fully automatic device in 1903. The suction of a vacuum—created more...

Canadian-born Reginald Fessenden (1866-1932) caused a landmark in the development of radio when he transmitted his own voice over radio waves late in 1900, a feat not even Marconi had achieved. At the time, Fessenden was working for the United States Weather Bureau to develop wireless technology for weather forecasting. On December 23, at his station on Cobb Island, Maryland, Fessenden transmitted what is considered the first wireless transmission carrying audio sound. "Hello, one, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If it is, telegraph back and let me know," he shouted into the microphone. Thiessen excitedly telegraphed back that it was. The transmitter that Fessenden used was a spark transmitter, a device developed in the late nineteenth century by radio pioneers Hertz, Marconi, and Braun to generate radio frequency electromagnetic waves. Fessenden had modified it so that the sparks produced more continuous waves rather than more...

"A mysterious contrivance consisting of a vault hermetically closed by a hydraulic seal..." Jean-Louis Mouras The treatment of human waste has varied throughout history from simply throwing it out on the street to complex modern sewage systems. Frenchman Jean- Louis Mouras invented a new type of waste system in the late nineteenth century, which is still used today by communities not connected to main sewer lines. During the 1860s Mouras built a masonry tank attached to his house to collect human waste, which then overflowed into a regular cesspool. After about twelve years the tank was opened and Mouras discovered to his surprise that there were almost no solids in the tank. Mouras, along with scientist and priest Abbe Moigno, patented the tank in 1881. The working of the septic tank is simple in concept. Waste enters the tank at one end, is allowed to sit for a period, and more...

"Left all alone in some punkensh place, like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space..." Dr. Seuss, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? (1973) Patented more than 200 times in the United States alone, the humble coat hanger has undergone many transformations to reach its modern incarnation. Various methods of hanging clothes had probably existed before Britain's Queen Victoria was gifted a set of wooden coat hangers for her wedding in 1840, however, the mass-market wire hanger was not invented until 1903. The story goes that Albert Parkhouse, an employee of the Timberlake Wire and Novelty company, a Michigan-based firm that specialized in wire lampshade frames, was irritated by arriving at work one day to find that all the coat hooks were in use. Seizing a piece of wire, he bent it into two large oblong hoops and then twisted both ends at the center into more...

"No other device since the shields and lances of the ancient knights fulfills a man's ego like [a car]." Sir William Rootes, automobile manufacturer Superchargers, also called blowers, are used in cars to increase the power of internal combustion engines. German automobile-maker Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) first came up with the idea of pumping extra air into the engine to increase the horsepower. This effectively makes an engine larger for less weight, which is ideal for racing cars and aircraft. Initially engines relied on atmospheric pressure to keep air inside the engine. By pumping extra air into the engine, the amount of oxygen was increased, and this burned more fuel, giving the vehicle a power boost. Daimler's design was based on twin-rotor air pumps that forced extra air into the system. His design went into production in Mercedes and Bentley cars in the 1920s and was essential to World War II more...

Welding is one of the processes whereby two metals are joined together. The two metals to be joined are melted (sometimes in the presence of a molten filler metal) and made to intermingle by applying intense heat. The bond formed between the two metals, being made of a mix of both the metals, is incredibly strong. This process is different from soldering and brazing where the joining metal is a different metal with different properties. Electric arc welding utilizes the incredible heat generated by an electric arc as the means of melting the metals. A power source is linked to the metal to be worked on and, at the other end of the circuit, to an electrode of some kind. It is between this electrode and the surface of the work metal that the electric arc forms. Like so many inventions, its creation cannot strictly be allotted to one person more...

"Sprinklers typically reduce the chances of dying in a home fire by one haIf to two thirds." National Fire Protection Association The automatic fire sprinkler can trace its earliest origins back to 1806 and an Englishman called John Carey. However, it was almost seventy years later that the first commercially viable fire sprinkler was invented. In 1874 Henry S. Parmelee invented a sprinkler head for use in his piano factory. It had a single valve, plugged with a solder that would melt in a fire. Once melted, the valve was opened, releasing water through a perforated chamber. The design was such that only areas affected by fire would be doused. A few modifications later and the Parmelee Sprinkler Company began to market the invention. After installation in a number of factories, where they were tested by real fires, the sprinklers soon spoke for themselves. Once insurance companies were on board, more...

Sodium thiopental was discovered in 1932 by Ernest H. Volwiler (1893-1992) and DonaleeL. Tabern (1900-1974) , two scientists on a quest to discover an anesthetic that could be injected directly into the bloodstream. Working for Abbott Laboratories, the pair spent three years screening hundreds of compounds to find one that could produce unconsciousness prior to surgery, with limited side effects. Sodium thiopental was first tried in humans on March 8, 1934, by Dr. Ralph M. Waters in an investigation of its properties. It was found to induce anesthesia for ten to thirty minutes by depression of the central nervous system within sixty seconds of injection. It was also found to show surprisingly little analgesia. For this reason, it was commonly used to make it easier for doctors to administer longer lasting, inhalable anesthetics after patients had comfortably "gone under." Sodium thiopental was the first general anesthetic to be widely used more...

People become quite excited about artificial hearts. But, when you think about it, the heart is basically a pump, the same kind of pump that people have been using for thousands of years. Described in these terms, it does not sound quite so advanced. By contrast, an artificial liver is a complex achievement. Far from the one trick pony that the heart is, the human liver has to undertake many tasks simultaneously. Among other functions, it helps to break down food into usable substances, detoxifies harmful chemicals,, stores energy in the form of glycogen, and manufactures any number of substances from bile to the proteins that make cuts stop bleeding. But how do you combine all those different functions into an artificial liver? Numerous ways have been tried to treat liver failure, from replacing the entire blood volume in a person's body with new blood to hemodialysis. All have met more...