Science Projects And Inventions

As long as railways have existed, there have been model versions. Initially, the trains were Just pull-along, but they gradually developed to use miniature steam or clockwork engines. By 1891, the German company Marklin was selling a wind-up locomotive together with an expandable track system. Then, in 1896, Carlisle and Finch produced the first electric toy train powered by batteries. American entrepreneur Joshua Lionel Cowen (1877-1965) had a long-term interest in trains. At the age of seven he had whittled a locomotive out of wood, which exploded when he tried to fit it with a steam engine. Years later when he was researching products for his manufacturing company in New York to sell, he spotted a push train in a shop window and had the idea for a toy train that could run without supervision on a track. He initially envisaged it as an eye-catching window display for a toy more...

“I have succeeded in establishing methods for fabricating arms exactly alike, and with economy." John H. Hall Prior to the invention of the breech-loader, firearms had been loaded from the end of the barrel (muzzle- loaders), an operation that took considerable time to complete. The first breech-loading rifle to see action in combat was developed by Major Patrick Ferguson and was actually a breech-loading version of a flintlock rifle. Despite being superior to conventional flintlocks in terms of rate of fire, the weapon was notorious for breaking and did not achieve widespread use. The rifle of John H. Hall (1781-1841), the M1819, was a single-shot, breech-loader; the powder and ball were still loaded separately, but instead of being inserted into the end of the long barrel and rammed into the chamber using a rod, the rifle "broke" in the middle and the ball and powder could be loaded directly into more...

"The science of cryptography is very elegant ...the ends for which it's used is less elegant." James Sanborn, sculptor In 1926 the German Army adopted a supposedly impenetrable electro-mechanical encryption device that eventually proved their undoing in World War II. Eight years earlier, electrical engineer Arthur Scherbius (1878-1929) had developed the first model of the Enigma machine, a bulky contraption incorporating a full-sized typewriter and three rotors to code messages. When typing a letter, the first one of these electrical discs rotated and caused .the next one to do likewise, similar to the wheels in an odometer. Wires connecting the rotors provided an electrical path from the keys on the typewriter to the output end plate, with the various connections in between ensuring that the final product of the plaintext input was ciphered. However, the army deemed Scherbius's initial 110- pound (50 kg) Enigma A and B to be insufficiently more...

“An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red." Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian philosopher Henry Ford opened his first factory in America in 1903 and, with horse-drawn carts, pedestrians, bicycles, and cars sharing the treacherous and largely unlegislated roads, accidents were frequent. Garrett Morgan (1877-1963), an African-American inventor, was inspired to design the traffic signal after witnessing a horrific crash 'between a horse-drawn carriage and a motor .car. The invention was an indication of Morgan's perceptiveness; long before automobiles were as prevalent on the roads as they are today, he had the foresight to predict a problem and engineer a solution. It is a testament to his design that the signals are still in use today. Morgan came from humble roots. The son of a former slave, his formal education ended after elementary school, but his natural talent for fixing and inventing more...

Imagine a world where broadband did not exist. Without this high-speed data transfer, would the Internet still be the hub of information, pictures, movie , and business opportunities it is today? The fast connection speeds required the invention of the cable modem, and the man who did that was Iranian-born American electrical engineer Rouzbeh Yassini (b. 1958). Yassini worked for General Electric in 1981 building television receivers. To understand how the signals flowed, he took home television sets and dismantled them to see how they functioned. This knowledge proved useful when in 1986 he joined Proteon, a data- networking company that used a network cable called "twisted pair" to carry data. Despite being told that video and data did not mix, Yassini realized right from the beginning that he could employ the same coaxial wire that carried cable television into people's homes to deliver other information as well. In 1990 more...

French mechanical engineer Eugene Houdry (1892-1962) is probably best known for inventing a process for "cracking" crude oil and turning it into high-octane gasoline—otherwise known as the Houdry process. However, he is also credited with inventing the first catalytic converter for cleaning up car exhaust fumes. Houdry had an avid interest in all things automotive and enjoyed car racing. This made him acutely aware of the need for high-performance fuels in engines, and he developed a way to make high- octane fuels from petroleum using what is known as a catalyst. A catalyst is a substance that can instigate or speed up a chemical reaction, without itself being changed during the process. In the 1950s, early studies about smog in Los Angeles were published and Houdry became concerned about the effect of harmful chemicals in exhaust fumes. The main .products from car exhausts are carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor, more...

"Tempoi parendum. [One should be compliant with the times.]" Maxim of Theodosius II The tempo of a piece of music, that is, the number of beats per minute, can be established using a metronome, a type of compact, adjustable, loud clock. The most common type is powered by simple clockwork and has a vertical metal rod that swings from side to side making a loud clicking sound at every swing. The rate of swing can be adjusted by moving a small weight up or down the swinging bar. Up decreases the tempo, and down increases it. This helps musicians not only establish the intended beat, but also maintain it throughout a musical piece. The first metronome was made in 1696 by the Parisian Etienne Loulie (1654-1702). This required a single-weighted pendulum, similar to that of a grandfather clock. It had no clock escapement to maintain the pendulum in motion, so more...

At the beginning of the twentieth century, New York City may have been very picturesque in the snow and ice, however, it was not much fun if you were trying to drive a trolley car at the time. Then the only solution was for the driver to keep the windshield up and constantly get out every few minutes to clear the slush that built up on the windshield. Mary Anderson (1866-1953) was visiting New York when she noticed this predicament, and when she returned home she jotted down a solution. Her device was a swinging arm with a rubber blade that is moved by a lever inside the car, keeping the driver warm and the window clear. In 1903 she received a patent for the novel device, but when she tried to sell it in 1905 nobody was interested. It was still three years before the Ford Model T and more...

In 1969 a company called Bolt Barenek and Newman won the contract to develop a communication network called ARPANET that would enable scientists and researchers to use each other's computer facilities. During its development, an engineer named Ray Tomlinson (b. 1941) started to experiment with the coding of two programs. SNDMSG allowed members of the same network to exchange messages among one another, whereas CPYNET allowed file transfers to occur between two separate networks. It occurred to Tomlinson that by combining the two he could create a system that would make message transfer possible between different users of independent networks. One of the most significant decisions made by Tomlinson was his choice of the @ symbol to separate the user's name from the host network name. It was a fairly logical choice, but one that revived the rather esoteric symbol and saved it from the brink of linguistic extinction. Unaware more...

The ability to use a computer to fully map out product or building plans was an effect of the microchip revolution. CAD (Computer Aided Design) completely changed the design process for almost all industries, making it easier and simpler to plan, refine, and optimize product designs of almost any size. The initial development of the CAD system began in the late 1950s, when Dr. Patrick Hanratty helped to design, first a system called PRONTO, a pioneering numerical programming tool, and then the DAC (Design Automated by Computer) system. This was the first computer graphics package that allowed user interactivity with the designs and was the forerunner to the beginning of the CAD system. The turning point came in 1963 with the unveiling of the SKETCHPAD system by Ivan Sutherland (b. 1938). Developed in the United States at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the first time the computer program allowed more...