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Science - Inventions.

  • AC current, transformation and transportation of electricity, Nicolas Tesla.
  • Television, transmission of animated images, Paul Nipkov.
  • Gramophone, recording of sound, Thomas A. Edison.
  • The telephone, Graham Bell.
  • Vaccination and sterilization, Louis Pasteur.
  • Telegraph, transmission of messages, Samuel Morse and Guglielmo Marconi.
  • The steam engine, James Watt.
  • The four-stroke engine, Nikolaus Otto.
  • Tire with tire tube, John Boyd Dunlop, and Édouard and André Michelin.
  • The train, Richard Trevithick (English).
  • Sewers, Town of London.
  • Protocol HTML and Internet, CERN.
  • The art of the book printing, Johannes Gutenberg.
  • The computer, mechanical and electronic calculation, Babbage, Bool and Von Neumann.

 

Who did not make the turn of the objects which surround him, and who did not wonder what we should do without these objects.    But much of the things which we know today, were not always an obviousness.    Some are even the fruit of chance, because the inventor, even than he discovered it, he sought something different in the beginning.    Graham Bell for example, did not intend at all to invent a device being used to speak remotely, i.e. a telephone, but wanted simply to return hearing to a deaf person.    It goes the same way for the Internet, the researchers of CERN did not seek to create a world wide data-processing network, but quite simply needed a tool for the sharing of documents.    It were those who had started to use this communication system, who made Internet what it is today.    A good example of a theory, in which nobody believed at the time, is the one of binary calculation, and the methods which result from this.    That made now a little more than hundred years that these theories were established, and now we cannot do without a computer any more.

Sources: WikiPédia

AC current, transformation and transmission electricity, Nicolas Tesla.

We frequently allot the electrification of the world to Thomas A. Edison, but even if Edison had indeed invented the incandescent lite bulb, Edison, used at his time of the direct current (DC) coming from a dynamo, or battery.    The system of the generation of electricity necessary for the lighting, which was done locally, quickly proved insufficient and difficult to manage.    It should be known that direct current (DC) cannot not change, i.e. we cannot use a transformer to modify the intensity tension ratio.    The tension of a system with direct current was at the time close to 110 volts, and the same everywhere, causing an enormous loss on averages and long distances.    It is Nicolas Tesla and his work on induction and the AC current, that we owe the electric distribution system of today.    He had proofed that one could generate electricity in AC current, by using an alternator in the place of a dynamo, and transport this AC current at a long distance using a high voltage and low intensity, then transform it locally into low tension and high intensity.    It is the work of Nicolas Tesla which contributed primarily to the development of the electrification of the whole world, as such know we it.

Television, transmission of animated images, Paul Nipkov.

Never no invention have had as much impact on the everyday life, than the patent deposited by the German Paul Nipkov, on January 6, 1 884.    In spite of the fact, that it was not him who had the idea to break up an image into more or less luminous points, it is well with him that we owe the box with images, our slippers cinema, of today.

It was in 1860, that the first transmission of images (fixed) per electric way had been carried out by Caselli, by using an apparatus baptized pantélégraphe.    But it is well the German Paul Nipkov, who had invented on January 6, 1 884 what we call today television, by posing his patent of a device that we now know under the name "Nipkov Disc".    This system analysis the image was based on a perforated disc turning with 25 turns a second.    Each hole, 30 to 200, is placed at a decreasing distance from the center, which makes it possible to analyze the image line by line.    The image is then made up of as many lines as the disc is bored with holes.    A photocell recovers the light which passes the holes of the disc to transform it into electric signal.    With the reception, an identical system, a neon tube replacing the electric eye and a revolving disc at the same speed restores the images.    But in fact progress in electronics would allow the transmission of quality images.

Unfortunately, no electronics and radio tube, and no means of amplification existed at the time.    Therefore the invention was almost forgotten.    It is well a half-century later that an Englishman took up the idea of Paul Nipkov, and worked out something functional.    Even if the English asserting him to be the inventor of television, the true merit of this invention goes to the German Paul Nipkov.

Gramophone, recordings sound, Thomas A. Edison.

It is not Edison who recorded sound first, but it was Scott who records for the first time the word using the phonautograph.    It was in 1857 that Edison, then in 1877 that Graham Bell improved the recording of sound with the invention of the gramophone.    In this model, the operator played or sang in a horn finished by a diaphragm, whose vibration moved a stylet which notched a soft wax cylinder.    The recording was made up on this cylinder, by a spiral furrow of variable depth.    For the restitution of the sound, the wax was hardened, and the stylet replaced by a foam point, which printed the diaphragm with the same movement as with the inscription.    This primitive model was the subject of many and important improvements.    The model presented here would be still in operating state.    Engraved on the object: "Number 28584. Manufactured under the patents of Thomas A. Edison May 18, 1881 June 1893".

The telephone, Graham Bell.

Telephone, who does not have one ?    But what is an obviousness today, was right in the beginning nothing but a lucky find in margin of work made by Alexander Graham Bell, who sought to return hearing to a deaf person.    This work, where he sought to capture the sound and to transform it into eclectic current fluctuations, led to this sentence where it asks his assistant to come, who came towards him and said to him that it had clearly understood his master, when he awaited the call in the apparatus.    It was thus on March 10, 1876, in Boston, in Massachusetts, that this handcrafted apparatus produced by Alexander Graham Bell, was baptized vibraphone, with which he succeeds for the first time to remotely transmit the voice of his inventor.    Professor of elocution for deaf people, Bell is interested in vocal physiology and telegraphy.    To 29 years, his research on the vocal transmission by vibration results to be successfully.    With some associates, he founds the Bell Telephone Company and markets the first telephones.    Note that Graham Bell finished marrying the girl whom he was supposed to return its hearing, however without returning hearing to her.

Vaccination and sterilization, Louis Pasteur.

Nobody, who goes today to the supermarket, to buy his small yoghurt pots, a package of vanilla cream , bread rods, these milk cartons, wine a bottle and some cheese, still remind this doctor of the 19th century, Louis Pasteur.    Even if Pasteur is known to have invented a remedy against rabies, it is him that we deserve much of what relates to food such as it is presented to day.    Because it is well him who had shown that these very small beings, now known under the name bacteria, and other moulds, even known at the time were at the origin of the majority of the diseases, and moulds of food.    He had also shown that the life did not appeared systematically, as they believed at his time.    But which what they believed at that time to be the origin of nothing, was nothing but an invisible world.    It is him who is at the origin of the fermentation methods as they are used today.    Because it is well him who had developed the system to sterilize food and to sow it with a fermentation agent of pure state.    A second invention of him was to infect a person with a deliberately weakened infectious agent, which we know today under the name vaccination.    Most famous of these vaccinations was that of rabies.

Transmission of messages, Samuel Morse and Guglielmo Marconi.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse, more known under the name of Samuel Morse, was an American, painter, inventor of the electric telegraph and the correspônding alphabet which bear its name.    He was born on April 27, 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and died on April 2, 1872 in New York.    Guglielmo Marconi (April 25, 1874 to July 20, 1937) was an Italian physicist and businessman.    Based on the discoveries of Hertz, Popov, Branly and Lodge, he carries out many experiments on the propagation of the Hertzian waves.    Like Samuel Morse for the electric telegraph, he is the true promoter of the transmissions by radio or TSF (French ; means wireless transmission, saying literally : “Télégraphie Sans Fil”).    The first communication took place on May 1897 in Morse with more than 13 km between Lavernock (Wales) and Brean (England) over the Bristol-board Channel.    On return in Italy in July 1897, the Italian royal navy allows him to carry out tests between a fixed transmitter located in the arsenal of San Bartolomeo with Spezia (Italy) and a receiver on board the tug boat San Martino.    The antenna used was 34 m length.    A range of 18 km was reached.    Creation of the “Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company”.

The steam engine, James Watt.

The importance of the invention of the steam engine by James Watt does not leave any doubt.    Because this invention had marked the beginning of the industrial era.    Even if Mr James Watt had not completely invented the steam engine on its own, it is well him who had made, starting from the steam engines of Savery or Newcomen, used formerly as long as pumps in the English mines, a steam engine able to function in a stable and autonomous way.

The steam engines of Savery or Newcomen posed the same problem of output and continuity in the movement.    At the end of some cycles of operation the machines stopped.    It was necessary to stop them and restart them.    In order to improve the power and the regularity of its steam engine, James Watt had the idea to transform these machines "single cycle" by machines "double cycle" and bring some of its inventions there:

The wheel
The centrifugal governor
The distributor slide valve of the vapor
The beam with its articulated parallelogram
The external condenser

The four-stroke engine, Nikolaus Otto.

Nikolaus August Otto (Holzhausen June 14, 1832 - Cologne January 28, 1891) is a German industrial inventor, and Co-inventor of the internal combustion engine in 1867.    Founder of the industrial company Deutz AG (IVECO since 1975). (Father of Gustav Otto, Co founder of BMW with Karl Rapp in 1917) In its youth he started to try out the gas engines, and in 1864 together with two friends he founded in Cologne his own company, N.A. Otto and Co, which was the first to manufacture internal combustion engines.    This company, which moved in 1867 to Deutz on other bank of the Rhine, still exists today under the name of Deutz AG.    His first atmospheric engine was built in May 1867.    Five years later he was joined by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach and together they produced the engine with four-stroke cycle or Otto cycle (this was the start of Daimler and Mercedes-Benz industries) Descibed initially in 1876, the travel of the piston form a top to bottom movement in a cylinder.    The patent of Otto was canceled in 1886 after it was discovered that another inventor, Alphonse Beau of Rochas had already described in 1862 the principle of the four-stroke cycle in a booklet with private diffusion, but of which, however, he had deposited the patent.    In 1911 his son Gustav Otto 28 years old, founds the company "Gustav Otto Flugmaschinenfabrikun", factory of plane engines of which he is pioneer in Munich in Bavaria on the basis of engine invented by his father.    Its company becomes BMW on July 21, 1917 after fusion with the company "Rapp Motoren Werke" of Karl Rapp.

Tire with tire tube, John Boyd Dunlop, then Édouard and André Michelin.

John Boyd Dunlop, who lived from 1840 to 1921, is the Scottish inventor who had invented the tire tube, and which had founded the company of tires which bears its name.    He was born on February 5, 1840 in a farm in Dreghorn, in the Scottish area of North Ayrshire.    He makes then studies of veterinary surgeon at the University of Edinburgh then follows this occupation during nearly 10 years at his place, before leaving into 1867 for Belfast, to Ireland.    Meanwhile, in 1839 Charles Goodyear deposits the patent of the vulcanization of rubber, and in 1845 the Scot Robert William Thomson, invents the first tire starting from rubber binding stuck on a rim, of which it deposits a patent in 1846.    Alas, the lack of robustness of the tire and the impossibility of finding a practical application to his invention, make that William Thomson gives up his patent of the “wheel of air”.    John Boyd Dunlop has in 1887, without apparently knowing the invention of W. Thomson, the idea to surround the wooden bicycle wheels of his son with rubber tubes filled of air in order to improve comfort of it, the noise, speed and adherence on road.    His tire has an immediate success in the bicycle world, the great champions of the time use it successfully.    John Boyd Dunlop deposits the patent of the tire with air with valve on December 7, 1888.    But the invention of Dunlop does not allow easy repair in the event of puncture.    It was in 1891 that Édouard and André Michelin invented the first dismountable tires with a tire tube.    In margin of the bicycle, the invention of Dunlop (and technical innovations of the Michelin brothers) arrive at one crucial period of the development of the automobile and especially of the motor cycle, his invention finds thus an immediate application.    Dunlop yields his patent to William Harvey Of Cros against 1'500 shares of the lately created company.    Finally he does not make great fortune of his invention.    John Boyd Dunlop dies on October 23, 1921 in Dublin.

The train, Richard Trevithick (English).

We owe the invention of the railroad to Richard Trevithick (English)    It is him who developed the first genuine engine for passenger transport, whose first voyage had taken place on February 22, 1804.    The first commercial line in France was "Paris - Pecq", then Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Roads of rails, called Wagonways, were used in Germany as of 1550.    These primitive enclosed roads were made up of rails of wood, on which the horse-drawn carriages could move with a greater facility than on dirtiness covered roads.    The "Wagonways" were the beginnings of the modern railroads.    Little by little from 1776 onwards, iron had started to replace wood in the rails, and for the wheels of the carriages.    The "Wagonways" were gradually transformed into trams, and were diffused all over Europe.    The horses always provided the essential power of traction.    It was into 1789, that an English, William Jessup had designed the first carriages with the wheels with flask.    The support was a groove which made it possible to the wheels to improve the catch with the rail, this was an important design, which had been deferred to the posterior engines.    The invention of the vapor engine was critical with the invention of the modern railroad.    It was in 1803, that a man named Samuel Homfray, had decided to begin the development of a steamer-actuated vehicle, to replace the horse-drawn vehicles on the trams.    It is Richard Trevithick, (1771-1833) who had built this vehicle, the first tram with steam engine.    It was on February 22, 1804, when the engine transported a load of 10 tons iron, 70 men, and of five additional carriages out on the 14 kilometers between the Ironwork with at Stylo-y-Darron and the town of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, at the bottom of the valley called Abercynnon.    The trip had taken approximately two hours.    The english Jules Griffiths was the first one to register a patent in 1 821 for a road engine for passengers.    It was in September 1825, that the company "Stockton & Darlington Railroad Company" had begun its activity as las the first railroad company.    They then started to program to transport goods, and passengers, on a regular interval, and this using the engines designed by the English inventor, George Stephenson.    The engine of Stephenson drew six cars charged with coal, and 21 private cars with 450 passengers at a speed of fourteen kilometers per hour.

Sewers, town of London.

Photograph: Old station of pumping

The sewers of London (the United Kingdom) represents part of the network of water treatment worn of the British capital.    Built during second half of the XIXth century based on the projects of British engineer Joseph Bazalgette, this network contributed to the cleansing of the city and allowed eliminate the cholera.

At the beginning of the XIXth century, the Thames is was an open sewer which collects all worn water of London.    The invention and the use of the water closet makes the houses more hygienic but all is evacuated by the networks originally intended for rainwater.    A new disease, the cholera, appears and other diseases like dysentery and the typhoid fever are spread.

In August 1849, Joseph Bazalgette is named geometrician assistant in Metropolitan Sewer Commission.    Edwin Shadwek and William Farck think as a number of their contemporaries, that the cholera is transported by miasmas, i.e. the odors are responsible for the diseases.    They thus decide cleaning of the sewers towards the rivers.

The epidemic finishes in winter 1849 without nobody knows the origin of the disease.    John Snow expresses a doubt on the theory of miasmas.    In 1853, the disease reappears.    For Snow, it appears whereas the disease (cholera) is propagated by the drinking water.

Preliminary drafts:
   Joseph Bazalgette is named in 1856 in the metropolitan council of work and must build a new sewerage system.    He calculates that the slope necessary is 40 centimeters to one kilometer.    This will allow a sufficient flow while avoiding prematurely using the drains by a too important speed.    He bases its plans on the idea to convey the refuse in the estuary of the Thames, with gravity, a tank, and a outfall.    His plans must take account of the importance of the tide which it uses to cause the mechanical extraction of the waste accumulated in the final tank.    His plans require 300'000'000 bricks, more than 150 km of 3 meters height tunnel and of oval form for the resistance.    The whole of the project envisages the construction of two networks distinct located on both sides from the Thames.    The plans were redrawn five times, and rejected five times of continuation by the authorities.

Work of the sewers:
   The contamination is so strong, that during the summer 1858 the notable ones flee the city.    The air of the Parliament is also contaminated.    The members of Parliament sign then the bill and give 3'000 000 British pounds to begin work.    This work must allow the construction of 1'750 km of tunnels in order to convey 140'000'000'000 of liters of refuse (140 billion) per annum.    For each tunnel, work consists to trench, to build the drain (out of bricks), and to cover with ground.    The solidity of the work depends on materials used.    Bricks being maintained with cement.    This last was selected according to its properties of resistance.    Portland cement is selected; this was then about a new material.    One of its principal properties is to harden in contact with water.    But it suffers from a difficult proportioning.    For this reason, a sample of each botch of cement is controlled (form of quality control).    Work was stopped at the end of one year because of a strike of the masons who claim 6 shillings per day (worked) instead of five.    During work, accidents occur: A gas pipeline is bored, which causes an explosion and a death.    The workmen of the subway dig too much close to the sewers, the subway is then flooded.    In the south of London, quantities of ground and wood break down.    On the 6 workmen buried alive by the accident, 3 are found alive, 2 died and 1 disappeared without remainder.    But, less than ten accidents occur during all the duration of the work.    In order to look after its image, he invited journalists at the connection of two sections of conduit.    One of the principal elements of the work is the tunnel of Woolwich, which must convey the used water towards the pumping station.    This pumping station contains the largest pump ever manufactured, 4 steam engines are installed there.    They make it possible to pump from 7 meters of depth, and store the water used in a tank.    The station was inaugurated by the Prince of Wales.

End of work:
   3 months after the inauguration, the cholera reappeared.    A water tank seemed to be contaminated, whereas water was to be filtered.    Eels were found in the tank.    The presence of these eels proved that not filtered water contaminated by the refuse was brought in the tank.    Since the end of work, the cholera never reappeared in London.    On July 26, 1 867, in spite of spectacular precipitations, the sewers run out all water.

Protocol HTML and Internet, CERN.

Opposite with the beliefs, the Internet, and above all, its protocol of document description in hypertext, was not an invention of the industrial groups, and it was not an invention of one of associations of standardization.    The Internet and HTML protocol was born at CERN the European Center for Nuclear Research, in Geneva.    This center is not, contrary that what its name could make you believe, an institution to manufacture bombs, nor does it manufacture either equipment for nuclear thermal power stations, but is a center where we try to recreate the conditions of the Big-bang, for better sunderstanding the nature of the matter.    It was natural that the scientists sought to share the results of their research between them.    Therefore a system and a protocol of document sharing were developed.    Since, this system was taken over by the majority of the research centers, of the universities, and other organizations, and made its way since.    This protocol and system underwent a multiple of adaptations since, to have become the Internet of today.

The art of books printing, Johannes Gutenberg.

Johannes Gensfleisch say Gutenberg (Literally: Goodmountain ) - was born about 1400 in Mainz, Germany.    Innovator in the use of the mobile characters, he is recognized like the first printer to have used the mobile metal characters for the printing of a book.    His invention will revolutionize the traditional methods of book production, in spite of that his existence was difficult, ripped of by his associate - Fust or Fuchs - he will be saved of misery by Adolphe II of Nassau who granted him a life pension and the title of gentleman.    Johannes is the 3rd child of a rich family Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden.    His date of birth cannot be established precisely.    Between 1434 and 1444 he can be found in Strasbourg where he gets his training to become goldsmith.    The bases of its future work - mixing and the mastering of alloys - will enable him to conceive resisting and ad infinitum reproducible block letters.    His residence between on March 12, 1444 and on October 17, 1448 is unknown (perhaps Netherlands).    For this year he has been in Mainz (documented on October 17, 1448).    Since the beginning of 1450 he maintains a financial relation with J. Fust, who gave him 1550 guilder.    Gutenberg pawned his tool and took Fust like associate.    In 1450, Gutenberg found the way to production engineering of exchangeable and equal (alloy of lead, iron, tin and antimony the types out of metal) metal types with the help of cut stamps of iron, matrices of copper and an instrument to be cast.    Gutenberg died on February 3, 1468 in his birthplace.

The computer, mechanical and electronic calculation, Babbage, Bool and Von Neumann.

It was not, contrary to the beliefs, Blaise Pascal, who would have invented the computer, we must allot to him the invention of the calculating machine, considering that the Chinese counting frame was only an assistance, and did not have, contrary to the machine of Blaise Pascal a of function "calculation".    The machine of Pascal, on the other hand, cannot be calcified to be the first computer, because it was neither able to store data, neither store the results, nor store the operations to be made.    The first which had developed such a prototype, was the English Babbage, in the middle of the XIXth century.    Mr Babbage had well, after having tested successfully a prototype, having drawn a concept which corresponded to a computer, but it was necessary to await the beginning of the XXIth century before a team of a university could build the machine.    His concept resembles curiously the model establish by John Von Neuman, one century later !

George Bool published in 1839 his first study in Cambridge Mathematical Journal.    This publication and the support which it obtained from the circle of the algebraist of Cambridge makes it him possible to become gradually more essential like an important personality of the world of mathematics.    In 1844, after the publication of a report of analysis in Philosophical Transactions, the Royal Society decrees a medal to him.    It is the beginning of a series of work posing the bases of what one will name later the Boolean algebra.    In 1847 "Mathematical Analysis of Logic", then "An investigation into the laws of thought", on which are founded the mathematical theories of logic and probabilities in 1854.    George Boole develops a new form of logic to with it, at the same time symbolic system and mathematics.    The goal: to translate ideas and concepts into equations, to apply certain laws to them and to retranslate the result in logical terms.    For that, he creates a binary algebra accepting only two numerical values: 0 and 1.    This algebra is defined by the data of a unit E (nonempty) provided with two laws of internal composition (AND and OR) satisfying a certain number of properties (commutation..., distributivity...).    The work of Boole, even if it is theoretical, will find the applications in various fields as the information processing systems, the theory of probability, electric circuits and telephones, etc.    This thanks to scientists like Pierce, Frege, Russel, Turing and Shannon.

The computer of today is primarily based on work of George Bool and John Von Neuman, who showed the construction of the first computer, Z3, a programmable but still mechanical machine, in 1 941.    This first programmable machine, was quickly followed by the British computer Colossus, which was followed in its turn by the ENIAC, which used, just like Colossus, the vacuum tubes.    The ENIAC, acronym of Electronic Numerical Integrator To analyze and Compute, is the first entirely electronic computer built to be Turing-complete. It could be reprogrammed to solve a great number of calculative problems.


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