6th Class

"None of our mordern craftsmen [except Alberti] has known how to write these subject..." Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists (1550) Devised by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), the anemometer was a simple instrument to measure wind speed. It had a rectangular metal plate attached to a horizontal axis with a hinge, so that in the wind the metal plate lifted, giving an indication of relative wind speed that could be measured crudely on a curved scale bar below the plate. In light winds, the plate would move slightly on its hinge; in stronger winds, the plate would lift further. Alberti describes and illustrates this device in his book, The Pleasure of Mathematics (1450).' The well-educated son of a wealthy merchant, Albert! was an accomplished artist, athlete, horserider, musician, mathematician, cryptographer (inventing the cipher disc), classicist, writer, cleric, and architect. He was a true Renaissance polymath, created by the intellectual culture more...

"Our earth is degenerate in these latter days.... The end of the world is evidently approaching? Inscription on an Assyrian tablet About 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia invented humankind's first writing system. Having already established the world's first true civilization by introducing agriculture and domesticating cattle, they decided that it was more efficient to record their economic transactions in writing rather than use tokens to represent the number of beasts and the amount of harvest they traded. Their initial use of simple pictograms (drawings representing actual things) quickly developed into a complex system of symbols where items were illustrated by one sign and their volume by another. The Sumerians' innovation was not only used for commercial purposes, but also extended to phonetic—rather than wholly pictographic—ideograms that expressed concepts such as deity and royalty as well as thoughts. As the symbols evolved, the notes that were recorded on more...

"We think the iPhone is a 'game changer'... it will change how people think about... handsets." Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T Announced in January 2007 and eagerly awaited, the Apple iPhone could play music, take photographs, browse the internet, send e-mail, play movies, and store up to 8 gigabytes of information. It also had Wi-Fi capabilities, a calculator, calendar, and notepad, and operated via a nifty touch-screen mechanism. And it could make a telephone call. With its large screen, lack of buttons, and sleek appearance, the iPhone stood out in design terms alone—unlike its competitors, it did not look like a phone. What is more, the touch screen was designed to be operated by a finger, so it was no longer necessary to find the stylus required by other models. However, the iPhone did not perform as well as expected, with Apple taking only a 5 percent share of the more...

"[The company name of] lava brand motion lamp' hasn't caught on with American consumers." James P. Miller, Chicago Tribune Englishman Edward Craven Walker (1918-2000) had the idea for the lava lamp while enjoying a drink in a bar. Looking at a homemade lamp, made from a cocktail shaker and some cans, Walker realized the potential for a glass containing fluids that did not mix and had different densities. Back home, he started work on a novelty lamp, using an incandescent bulb to heat the contents of a glass bottle containing a mixture of water, translucent wax, and carbon tetrachloride. In the lamp the wax heated up, melted, and rose in the. bottle—when it reached the top, it cooled and fell back to the bottom. Molten wax would have floated on water at any temperature, but the carbon tetrachloride increased its density. Walker started a company called Crest worth and in more...

"Men of former times used to cm ploy lard... for greasing their axles." Pliny, historian As long as there have been wheels, there has been the need for lubrication. Any tribologist (an expert in the science of lubrication) will tell you that it serves to reduce friction. It conserves energy, reduces wear and tear, prevents overheating, and reduces noise. The ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, and later those of Greece and Rome, used wheels in pottery for channeling water and for transportation. Olive oil was used as an axle lubricant, and an Egyptian chariot dated to 1400 B.C.E. was found with animal fat on the axles. Fats add a crucial viscosity that water lacks. For Roman chariot racers, wheel lubrication would have been life-saving, and a mosaic has been found in Spain showing a man holding an amphora of oil beside the racetrack, much like the pit-stop mechanics of today. A first more...

"They serve as a monument to a bygone era... waiting for… freighters that no longer come." Grain Elevators, A History (website) The first grain elevator was built in Buffalo, New York, by Joseph Dart in 1842. Dart was a retail merchant who had seen Buffalo boom since the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, linking the Midwest to New York. Initially grain was loaded and unloaded by hand, a back- breaking job that took several days. To overcome this problem Dart built the first wooden grain elevator. The elevator consisted of a large wooden structure that served as a storage bin for the grain, to which a steam-driven belt with buckets was attached. The belt could be maneuvered into the hold of cargo vessels and activated, whereupon the buckets would scoop up the grain and deposit it into the storage bins. The elevator allowed ships to be unloaded at more...

Modern offices rely heavily on spreadsheets for calculations and sorting data. The idea of transferring what used to be a large sheet of accounts that had to be calculated by hand to a computer was first proposed by Professor Richard Mattessich in 1961. In 1969, a spreadsheet-type application was developed by Rene Pardo and Remy Lamau for use on mainframe computers and was used for budgeting in some major companies. The spreadsheet in its modern incarnation, however, was conceived in 1978 by Dan Bricklin {&. 1951), a student at Harvard Business School. Bricklin imagined a computer program that would show the data it contained and enable easy manipulation and calculations. It would also recalculate instantly if the initial data changed. The prototype spreadsheet was not very powerful, so Bricklin recruited Bob Frankston (b. 1949), from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to improve it. Frankston added better arithmetic and the ability more...

In gilding, a thin layer of gold covers an object of base material to give the appearance of a solid gold object. Plywood originated in much the same way. With fine woods in short supply in Egypt around 3500 B.C.E., it became necessary to find alternative solutions to the demands of high-quality furniture making. One such solution involved taking thin sheets of decorative woods and glueing them to thicker pieces of low- quality wood. This is believed to have been done purely for cosmetic and economic reasons, but the process also brings about improvements to the physical properties of the resulting hybrid wood. Since the days of Egyptian plywood, the material has maintained its place in popular design, as illustrated by its use in the stylish furniture .of Gerrit Rietveld, Marcel Breuer, and Alvar Aalto.-Unlike the designers of 5,000 years ago, however, these men were aware that the plywood items' more...

"Speed has never killed anyone; suddenly becoming stationary... that's what gets you." Jeremy Clarkson, TV presenter Rather ironically, it was a Dutch rally driver, Maurits Gatsonides (1911-1998), who invented the speed camera. Gatsonides enjoyed most of his driving successes in the 1950s, and it was during this period that he came up with a device—known as the Gatso—to measure his speed while cornering in a bid to improve his driving, that is, to make him drive faster. The camera works by using radar to measure the speed at which a vehicle passes the device, photographing those that break the limit. Two photographs are taken and, should the initial measurement be questioned, the position of the vehicle relative to the white lines painted on the road indicates the average speed that the vehicle traveled at during a set time interval. Fixed speed cameras have been used widely in the United Kingdom, more...

By the age of nineteen, Cornishman Richard Trevitbick (1771-1833) worked for the the Cornish mining industry as a consultant engineer. The mine owners were attempting to skirt around the patents owned by James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, because the royalties were costing them a fortune. William Murdoch had developed a model steam carriage, starting in 1784, and demonstrated it to Trevithick in 1794. Trevithick thus knew that recent improvements in the manufacturing of boilers meant that they could now cope with much higher steam pressures than before. Using steam at a higher pressure, Trevithick could eliminate the need for a separate condenser, which was integral to the patents held by Watt, as well as peripherals such as the air pump. Further, Watt's low-pressure engines required large buildings to house them. By using high-pressure steam in his experimental engines, Trevithick was able to make them smaller, lighter, and more more...