Current Affairs Science Projects And Inventions

"There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen" Petrarch, poet John J. Laud's invention, the ballpoint pen, was far from perfect. It leaked and smudged documents and was too crude for standard letter-writing. Nevertheless, Loud—a leather tanner from Massachusetts who wanted something that could write on leather and wood—patented his new writing instrument on October 30,. 1888. With a tiny steel ball bearing in the nib and three smaller balls aligned above it to try to regulate ink flow, all refreshed with ink from a reservoir above. Loud had invented the world's  first pen that did not constantly require dipping or refilling. However, Loud was unable to control the flow of ink, which contributed to the pen never being sold commercially. If the ink were too thin the pen would leak; if it were too thick, it would clog. Depending on the temperature, the pen would sometimes do both. Loud's pen also relied solely upon gravity to deliver ink to the nib and had to be held in an almost vertical position for it to write. Eventually Loud's patent expired, making sure that the fountain pen prevailed. It was only in 1938 that Hungarian newspaper editor Laszlo Biro pressurized the ink reservoir. His pen used capillary action for ink delivery, solving the flow problems. In 1943 Biro added a gravity-fed feeder tube. His "biro" amounted to a reinvention of the ballpoint pen, sold with a promise that it could write for a year without the need for refilling. 

In 1934, Glen Joseph, a chemist at the California Fruit Growers Exchange laboratory, was trying to accurately measure acidity in citrus fruit products. The most common method at the time for testing pH, a measure of acidity or alkalinity of a substance, was to use litmus paper. Litmus paper turns different colors depending on the acidity of a substance. This was of no use to Joseph, however, because the sulfur dioxide used as a preservative in citrus Juice bleaches out the paper. Joseph tried using glass electrodes, but these were susceptible to breakage and gave a very weak signal. He finally called upon his old classmate Arnold Beckman (1900-2004), then employed as a professor at Caltech, who told Joseph that he needed to use vacuum tubes. Beckman later ended up making the instrument himself. The instrument worked, so well that Joseph soon ordered another one for his laboratory. Beckman realized he was on to something, and a patent was filed in 1934 for this "acidimeter." The following year, the National Technical Laboratories started selling this acidimeter for $195. Despite its steep cost (especially compared to dirt-cheap litmus paper), the company managed to sell eighty-seven instruments in the first three months of production. In 1939 Beckman left his professorship to run National Technical Laboratories full time, and went on to invent many more important laboratory instruments. The pH meter was a revolutionary instrument in the science laboratory. It was essentially the first portable, precision instrument that could take accurate measurements immediately and reliably. This left the scientist time to concentrate on their research instead of building complicated equipment to make simple measurements. 

Prior to videotape, film was the only practical medium via which television programs could be recorded, which was a problem for U.S. television executives whose audiences were spread across several time zones. For a viewer on the East Coast to see a show on the same night as someone on the West Coast, the live broadcast had to be filmed, sent for processing, returned to the studio, and then retransmitted a few hours later. A team at Ampex, including the enemy of hiss, Ray Dolby, and led by Charles Paulson Ginsburg (1920- 1992), developed the first solution in the form of a Videotape Recorder (VTR), a unit that could capture live images from television cameras, convert them into electrical signals, and save the information onto magnetic tape. In an audiotape recorder, the information is recorded linearly, the tape traveling past the record head at, for example, 3-7 inches (7.6-17.7 cm) per second (ips). But TV signals can contain 500 times more information than regular audio, so linear video recording, even with a much larger tape area, would require speeds of several feet per second. The Ginsburg/Ampex solution was to use multiple recording heads that were both slanted and rotated rapidly to create a transverse, rather than linear, recording pattern. This meant that the tape itself could pass the heads relatively slowly. Ampex unveiled the first commercial VTR in April 1956. It used 2-inch (5 cm) wide 3M tape traveling at 15 ips. The monochrome machines were offered at around $50,000 each. Within four days, Ampex had received orders worth $5 million. Radio stars everywhere shed a tear. 

Between 1882 and 1890, construction of one of the most ambitious engineering projects of the time took place near Edinburgh, Scotland. The project was to create a railway bridge that would span the Firth of Forth, one of Scotland's major tributaries, and connect the northeast and southeast of the country. The men who stepped forward to take up this challenge were Benjamin Baker (1840-1907) and John Fowler (1817-1898). Artist William Morris described it as "the supremest specimen of all ugliness," but their design became a national icon and set a new standard in engineering. Baker and Fowler were chosen in 1882 to replace the previous designer of the Forth Rail Bridge, Sir Thomas Bouch, when one of his projects, the Tay Bridge, collapsed in 1879 killing seventy-five people. Baker and Fowler had an established pedigree of engineering in Victorian Britain, their achievements including the construction of the Metropolitan Line, the first underground line in London, as well as many other railway bridges. They opted to design a cantilever bridge to span the Firth of Forth, using 64,000 tons of steel as their building material. This was the first bridge to be built from this material. The principle behind a cantilever bridge is one of balance. The bridge is projected out over the gap that needs to be spanned and counterbalanced at the shore end. Often two bridges are used, one from each side, and where the ends meet there is a third section, a simple beam bridge, to cover the gap. The idea of using cantilevers in bridges was not an entirely new one. But what made Baker and Fowler's construction unique was the sheer scope of the project. 

"A garden sprinkler [in one hour] uses the same amount of water as a family of four in one day." Caroline Roux, Journalist During the nineteenth century, the United States saw many people moving out of the city centers into the burgeoning suburbs. With more space, people began to develop an interest in cultivating gardens. The widespread introduction of city water systems also brought water to more homes. There are thousands of sprinkler patents, and it is difficult to credit the invention to one person. American Joseph Oswald's sprinkler was not the first to be patented, and his application described it as making "improvements in lawn sprinklers." His design improved the way in which the head of the sprinkler moved and also dealt with the issues of wear and tear that occurred because of the constant motion of the sprinkler. Earlier sprinklers had often been static, but Oswald's was one of the first to have a rotating mechanism propelled by the water it distributed. The classic design of the domestic lawn sprinkler has a hosepipe supplying water to a metal arm that spins on a base, spreading water thinly over a large area. Within the mechanism of the sprinkler, there is a system of gears controlling the speed of the arm to keep it from moving too quickly. Lawn sprinklers are popular throughout the world. However, in countries with water shortages, their use has been criticized as wasting a valuable resource. 

"If I had been technically trained, I would have quit, or probably would have never begun." King Gillette, American businessman Before the safety razor was invented, the dangers of shaving were evident in the description of the traditional instrument as a "cut-throat" razor. Shaving was a tricky operation, typically carried out by barbers or trusted family members rather than individuals. To protect the skin while shaving, a Frenchman, Jean-Jacques Perret, introduced one element of the safety razor in the late eighteenth century namely a guard. Inspired by the design of a carpenter's plane, he used a wooden sleeve around the blade so that only the leading edge protruded. However, the first true safety razor, combining both a guard and a removable blade, was introduced in the United States in 1875 by the German Kampfe brothers (Frederick, Richard, and Otto). The Star Razor featured a hoe-type razor with a wedge-shaped blade with only one sharp edge. In 1901 the American inventor King Gillette (1855- 1932) and his colleague William Nickerson introduced the next innovation, the disposable blade. Defying skeptics who believed it impossible to create such blades, Gillette's ultra-thin, carbon steel, double-edged blades were a great success. This was reinforced when Gillette struck a deal to provide safety razors and blades to every member of the U.S. Army during World War I. Later innovations included the introduction of longer-lasting stainless steel blades by the British company Wilkinson Sword (1965). This was followed by the even safer replaceable blade cartridge (1971), and the entirely disposable razor (1974). Environmental concerns have now prompted experiments with recyclable and biodegradable razors. 

"The driver of a racing car is a component.... I changed gear so hard that I damaged my hand" Juan Manuel Fangio, Formula One World Champion Changing gear while driving a car is something we take for granted; but in the early days of motoring it was a much more delicate operation that required a lot of skill and practice. With the old straight-cut gears, the rotational speed of the gears had to be the same before they could be meshed together to power the wheels. However good a driver you were , the result was often a terrible grating noise. Drivers had to use a complicated procedure known as double declutching. When changing up a gear the driver had to disengage the clutch, switch to neutral, and let the engine run down to a slower speed. It was necessary to re-engage the clutch for a moment, which slowed down the gears, allowing you to shift into the new higher gear. Changing down a gear was even worse. Once you had disengaged the clutch and shifted to neutral, you had to briefly engage the clutch again and give the accelerator pedal a boost, which would spin up the gears to a higher rotational speed, allowing you to then engage the higher, faster gear.           When Cadillac introduced synchromesh gears in 1929, it was a blessed relief for drivers without three feet. The concept was a simple one. The rotation of gear wheels still had to match up if you were going to engage one toothed wheel with another, but synchromesh did it for you. As the rotating wheels approach each other, protruding bronze rings and grooves on the gear wheels come into contact before the teeth. The contact friction quickly makes sure the wheels are spinning at the same rate before the teeth on the gears actually meet. By the 1950s synchromesh gears had become practically universal. 

"The faster the drill rotated, the less discomfort the patient experienced." Malvin E. Ring, dentistry historian As long as 5,000 years ago, people were using bow drills to bore into teeth. Later, the Greeks and Romans drilled teeth for rudimentary purposes, but the art was lost in the Dark Ages. Precision drilling was reinvented by French physician Pierre Fauchard in 1728, but many crucial subsequent developments came from the United States. George Washington's dentist, John Greenwood, developed the first powered drill, enabling more accurate and faster drilling through the use of a foot treadle (taken from a spinning wheel). Englishman George Harrington refined this with a motor in 1864, but the most important developments of the era were by an American engineer and inventor, George F. Green from Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 186S Green redesigned Harrington's drill using compressed air. He had worked on several prototypes while employed by the S. S. White Company of Philadelphia, the largest dental supplies manufacturer of the time. His pneumatic device was heavy and slow, but it improved upon the speed, 100 revolutions per minute (rpm), of hand drills at least fivefold. By 1875, Green—whose other inventions included an electric railway and a grain binder—had perfected and patented an electric drill, which revolutionized dentistry Forty years later speeds were up to 3,000 rpm, and today they can exceed 400,000 rpm. 

Electric turn signals, or indicators, are now a standard feature of virtually all motor vehicles. They are essential for warning fellow road users of intended movements to avoid collisions. Before their invention, drivers had to rely on good old-fashioned hand signals to let others know when they intended to turn. It is thought that the first automatic turn signals were patented in 1907 by an Englishman called Percy Seymour Douglas-Hamilton. His so-called "devices to indicate the intended movement of vehicles" were in the shape of hands to mimic the manual signals in use at the time. Some years later, in 1925, Edgar A. Walz Jr. obtained a patent for a modern turn signal, but car manufacturers at that time were not interested. The first company to incorporate electric turn signals into a commercial car was Buick. They introduced the device in 1938 as a safety feature and advertised it as the "flash-way directional signal." The driver would simply flick a switch on the steering column, which would illuminate a flashing directional arrow on the rear of the vehicle. In 1940, Buick improved upon their design by introducing self- canceling turn signals. Since then, the design and function of the electric turn signal has remained virtually unchanged. Most modern cars have indicator lights mounted at the front and rear corners, and occasionally at the sides. Another improvement is the introduction of amber lights, which allow the signals to be visible in bright sunlight. The signal is usually operated by a lever mounted on the steering column, with upward or downward movements activating right- or left-hand turn signals. The signals flash at a steady rate of between sixty and 120 per minute. 

"1. Find out what the typical housewife really wants.   2. Produce it!” Kenwood dishwasher ad, 1965 The dishwasher was invented in the nineteenth century, not by a busy housewife or a restaurant owner looking to speed up the kitchen dishwashing, but by a well-to-do American socialite who was tired of her servants chipping her plates. The first patent for a dishwasher was granted in 1850 to John Houghton, but his design proved to be impractical. Josephine Cochrane (1839-1913), the daughter of a civil engineer, came up with a machine, patented in 1886, that was not dissimilar to the dishwasher we use today. Plates and cups were supported in a wire rack lying flat in a copper boiler and blasted with pressurized water until clean. The machine created interest among Josephine's friends who began putting in their orders, and, following a showing at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Josephine was soon supplying machines to restaurants and hotels in Illinois, trading under the name of Cochrane's Crescent Washing Machine Company. It was not until the 1950s that dishwashers became more popular, with the advent of permanent plumbing and electronic motors. Today a dishwasher is a common feature in Western kitchens.