MGIMS WARDHA

"I'm an optimist, but an optimist who carries a raincoat...." Harold Wilson, former British Prime Minister It was a Scottish chemist, Charles Macintosh, who gave us one of the most widely recognized names, the Mackintosh, the eponymous and essential waterproof coat. He invented, not the coat, but the waterproof material from which such garments are made. Macintosh's experiments began with waste products from the process of creating gas from coal. Initially he extracted ammonia from the waste products to make a violet-red dye. This process left a further waste product, called coal-tar naphtha. Macintosh began to experiment with this as a solvent, quickly realizing its waterproof qualities. He began to coat a thin material with it, but encountered two problems: the rubber was sticky, and it had a terrible odor. He combated the first problem by pressing two sheets of the fabric together, with the rubber In the middle, which more...

"As an accumulator of power, [the] press surpasses anything that has yet been invented...." Scientific American (Jan 1864) Joseph Bramah (1748-1814), an inventor and locksmith born in Yorkshire, England, developed and patented the hydraulic press in 1795. He also invented a beer engine (1797), a papermaking machine (1805), a machine for printing bank notes with sequential serial numbers (1806), and a fountain pen (1809). Hydraulic presses are widely used in industry for tasks that require a large force. Their capacity can range from 1 ton, or less, to more than 10,000 tons. The machine depends on Pascal's principle, which is that pressure throughout a closed system is constant. Typically it has two cylinders and pistons of differing cross-sectional areas joined by a length of small- diameter tubing. A fluid, such as oil, is displaced when either piston is pushed inward. The small piston displaces a smaller volume of fluid than more...

"Shell are made of cast iron... and are sent flying toward the enemy camp from an eruptor." Jiao Yu and Liu Ji, Fire Dragon Manual(c. 1368-1398) During the Chinese Song Dynasty (circa 960-1279), artillery engineering exploded, as it were, with the development of the ancestor of the cannon: flame- throwing "fire lances" made of bamboo. When gunpowder at one end was ignited, it forced sand, lead pellets, or shards of pottery at the enemy. When metal later replaced bamboo, probably in the early 1100s, these lances became "fire tubes" or "eruptors." The oldest record of them is a painting, dated to 1128. The early Chinese cannons could throw a ball about 50 yards (45 m). A century later they had become powerful enough to breach city walls, and were made of bronze. According to the historian of Chinese technology Joseph Needham, cannon warfare took a great step forward with the more...

"The first stone... fell with such weight and force upon a building that a great part... was destroyed." Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo(c.1298) The word catapult came from two Greek words: kata, meaning "downward," and pultos, which refers to a small circular shield. Katapultos was taken to mean "shield piercer." The weapon was said to have been invented in 399 B.C.E. in the Sicilian city of Syracuse and, according to Archimedes, was. derived from a composite bow, which was similar to the crossbow. Early catapults had a central lever with a counterweight at the opposite end to the projectile basket. Torsion-powered catapults entered into common use in Greece and Macedon around 330 B.C.E. Alexander the Great used them to provide cover on the battlefield as well as during sieges. The Chinese, Greeks, and Romans used various types of catapults. The ballista, built for Philip of Macedon, was similar more...

Science has gifted us so many wonderful things that have affected our style of living and made life easy going. Computer is one of them that have played an important role in improving the conditions of advanced nations. We can effectively realize our dreams through proper use of computers. India declared its computer policy in November 1984. It has opened a new beginning of computer revolution in the history of India. The first computer in India was built in 1966 by Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. After a while Bhabha Atomic Research Centre added to computers in a series. Computers are now manufactured on a commercial basis. This   given a further momentum to the computer  revolution in India. The establishment of the Electronics Corporation of India was a momentous event. The use of electronics will not accentuate the problem of unemployment. On the other hand it will provide employment more...

Dating back to 1839, the daguerreotype is one of the oldest known forms of photography. It was the first process that did not require excessively long exposure times, making it ideal for portrait photography. Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) had been trying since 1829 to capture the images he viewed through his camera obscura, a wood box that produced an image on a sheet of frosted glass via a lens at one end. In 1839, after a decade of painstaking work, he presented his daguerreotypes to a joint session of the Academic des Sciences and the Academic des Beaux-Arts. The pictures included images of shells, fossils, and a dead spider, photographed through a microscope. The process for developing the pictures was long and laborious. The plates had to be prepared from a sheet of copper coated with a thin layer of silver. The silver surface had to be polished until it was more...

"I was famous for my kites; and my sleds were the envy... of all the boys in town." Margaret Knight Margaret Knight(1838-1914) was one of the first American women to be awarded a patent. She was a prolific inventor from the age of twelve, when an accident in a textile mill prompted her to design a safety feature to protect workers from the looms. The flat-bottomed paper bag, however, is her most widely remembered invention, as it endures to this day. Knight was working in a paper-bag factory after the American Civil War when she saw the need for a different kind of bag. The factory produced flat bags, more like envelopes, which were unsuitable for bulky items. Square, flat-bottomed bags could be made, but only by hand. Although she had little education, Knight—after studying the factory machinery—built a working wooden prototype of a machine at home. Understanding that she more...

As recently as the 1950s, people with sight clouded by cataracts would slowly go blind with no hope of a cure. Today, in most cases, a cataract sufferer's eyesight can be restored to what it was when they were a teenager in an operation taking just thirty minutes. The man responsible for this incredible breakthrough was British ophthalmologist Harold Ridley (1906-2001), although he had to battle for this achievement to be recognized by his peers. During World War II Ridley treated pilots with injuries caused by shards of Perspex® from their cockpits being lodged in the eye. He noticed that the Perspex® did not react with the eye and realized that, its inert quality, combined with its lightness and optical properties, made it ideal for the construction of replacement lenses for damaged eyes. He confided this information to optical scientist John Pike, who helped design and make the first-ever intraocular more...

"He [Seymour Cray] is the Thomas Edison of the supercomputing industry." Larry L. Smarr, physicist Imagine if you could revolutionize the design of computers and leave the competition standing; U.S. inventor Seymour Cray (1925-1996) made a habit of doing just that. In 1972, with a long history of extending the reach of computer technology already behind him, Cray set up the Cray Research company to concentrate on building a powerful computer. His design for the Cray 1 was the first major commercial success in supercomputing. It was essentially a giant microprocessor capable of completing 133 million floating-point operations per second with an 8- megabyte main memory The secret to its immense speed was Cray's own vector register technology and its revolutionary "C" shape, which meant its integrated circuits could be packed together as tightly as possible. It produced an immense amount of heat and it needed a complex Freon-based cooling more...

"Political power...  grows out of the barrel of a gun...” Mao Zedong, political leader The basic mechanism from which the traditional flintlock originated is thought to have first appeared on a firearm made for King Louis XIII of France. The name of the French courtier Marin Le Bourgeoys appears on the flintlock, and it is thought to have been made in about 1612. The flintlock works as follows. First, the hammer of the gun, which holds a piece of flint, is pulled back or rotated to the half-cock position. Gunpowder is poured into the barrel, followed by ammunition— often a steel ball—and both are pressed into position with a ramrod. A small amount of finely ground gunpowder is then placed in a compartment below the hammer, known as the flashpan. The hammer is then pulled back or rotated to the full-cock position, and the gun is ready to be fired. more...