Archives November 2013

The two world wars led to many breakthroughs in all areas of science and technology. It was not, however, an easy time to get independently funded inventions off the ground, as German engineer Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) discovered. In 1936 Zuse invented the Z1, an electromechanical binary computer, but it was completely obliterated by World War II bombing that left no trace of it or its blueprints behind. Work on the Z2 was difficult because the war made it impossible for Zuse to work with other computer engineers from Britain or the United States, but he still managed to complete it in 1940. The Z3, a more sophisticated version of the Z2, was finished in 1941, partially funded by contributions from the DVL (the German Experimentation Institution for Aviation). It was the first fully functional program- controlled electromechanical digital computer in the world. Sadly this too was destroyed in the war, more...

Before American Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884) invented the reaper, crops were tediously gathered by hand, usually with the aid of a hand-swung scythe. Often landowners were limited by what they could reap in the fall rather than by the size of their land or the amount of seed that could be sown in the spring, McCormick's father had started to work on the design of a "reaper," a horsedrawn machine that could automatically cut and bundle corn, but he was unsuccessful and passed his researches over to his son. Cyrus McCormick's reaper design of 1831 had a frame that he would place over himself and his horse to stabilize the contraption while its large, mechanical, armlike cutters would cut the crop. McCormick was not happy with his first design and delayed obtaining a patent until 1834, when a rival reaper inventor appeared in Maryland. However, the reaper did not catch on, more...

The dynamos produced by Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry in the 1830s were little more than laboratory curiosities. It was a Belgian industrialist and electrical engineer, Zenobe Theophile Gramme (1826- 1901), who developed, in 1869, the first high-voltage, smooth, direct-current generator. In 1871 Gramme and the French engineer Hippolyte  Fontaine entered a  manufacturing partnership. In 1873 the pair discovered that their dynamo machine was reversible and could thus be converted into an electrical motor. Their 1873 exhibit at the Vienna Exposition convinced the world of the ease of generating electricity and conversely that: electricity could be reliably utilized to do heavy work. By 1880 Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti had patented the Ferranti dynamo, a machine that he developed with the help of William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin). The London Electric Supply Corporation commissioned Ferranti to design the world's first modem power station, at Deptford, England. He designed the generating plant more...

“From backyard tuners to luxury limousine manufacturers, they've all relied on Buchl's turbocharger." Don Sherman, Automobile magazine The turbocharger is similar to the supercharger but, instead of mechanically forcing extra air into the engine, it uses the exhaust to drive a turbine that boosts air in. Swiss engineer Alfred Buchi (1879-1959) realized that using a turbine to make use of engine exhaust would actually recover otherwise lost energy to make the combustion cycle much more efficient. Turbochargers and diesel engines fit together perfectly since diesel engines have no throttle to stall the air flow to the turbine. They were first implemented commercially in two German passenger ships, in which the addition of the turbocharger increased the horsepower from 1,750 to 2,500. Putting turbochargers into cars, however, proved a little harder. As it is the hot air from the combustion that drives the turbine, the materials that make it must be more...

"I wanted to create a vision of Invisibility.... This is a kind of augmented reality." Susumu Tachi Thanks to Japanese research, the twenty-first-century soldier may soon be blending invisibly into the background. The man behind optical camouflage, Susumu Tachi (b. 1946), is a professor at Tokyo University, where he works on the "science and technology of artificial reality." Ironically, since he now works to make things invisible, Tachi previously developed a robotic guide dog for the blind. The optical camouflage developed by Tachi and his research team works by filming the background environment and projecting it onto a coat worn by the test subject. However, this is no average coat. It is covered in thousands of tiny beads that reflect light back to its source, therefore rendering the coat invisible. This is the theory, but in reality the system is still far from perfect and in great need of cutting more...

“... the luminous Alto display, covered with images and graphical fonts, was a revelation." John Markoff, New York Times (April 3,2003) There are many contenders for the title of first ever "personal computer." However, it was Xerox PARC in 1973 that was responsible for creating perhaps the most innovative design in computer history—a personal computer as we would recognize it today. The Alto, named after the Californian Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where it was created, was made up of a cabinet (containing a 16-bit custom-made processor and disk storage), a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and even the first what-you-see-is-what-you-get graphical user interface featuring windows and clickable icons. The Alto was designed primarily for research and had to be compact enough to fit in an office, but powerful enough to support a user interface while being able to share information between machines. This led it to feature groundbreaking innovations more...

"It was a paradise for scientists. In Los Alamos, whatever you wanted, you got." Joseph Rotblat, physicist During World War II the United States used an unprecedented $2 billion to feed an ultra-secret research and development program, the outcome of which would alter, the relationships of nations forever. Known as the Manhattan Project, it was the search by the United States and her closest allies to create a practical atomic bomb: a single device capable of mass destruction, the threat of which alone could be powerful enough to end the war. The motivation was simple. Scientists escaping the Nazi regime'-had revealed that research in Germany had confirmed the theoretical viability of atomic bombs.' In 1939, in support of their fears that the Nazis might now be developing such a weapon, Albert Einstein and .others wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) warning of the need for atomic research. more...

"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...