TECHNOLOGY INVENTONS

WHO INVENTED MICRO OVEN?

Dr. Percy Spencer invented microwave in 1946 while testing magnetron for radar system. Spencer was working with Raytheon Corporation on his project when he discovered that a sweet candy placed in his pocket melted due to rapid temperature rise. The other day he tried and tested the same with popcorns and then with an egg, he was surprised to find cooked corns and egg in his lab. He shared his experience with his colleagues and started working on his new invention.

Percy Spencer added the microwave power to an aluminium box. The energy got trapped in the box and created electromagnetic field. When food was placed in the box, its temperature rose highly. Microwave oven cooking revolutionized cooking.

The first oven that was placed in Boston restaurant in 1946 was of 6 feet height, weighed 750 pounds and costed $5000. It had to be water cooled and required plumbing installation due to high heat generation. Though it was not easily accepted by people due to its huge size, heavy weight and high cost but soon the sales were higher than that of gas ranges. Now almost every kitchen has microwave for reheating and cooking food. It saves time as well as energy.

Dr. Percy Spencer continued his service with the same firm till his death, at the age of 76. He has 150 patents to his name. A self taught scientist’s name was added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame on September 18, 1999.

WHO INVENTED REFRIGERATOR?

It was in 18^th century that the process of invention of refrigerator started. In 1748 William Cullen of University of Glasgow developed a process for creating an artificial cooling medium. No one took interest in it for commercial or home consumption, it only attracted scientific attention. An American inventor Oliver Evans made the first design for the refrigerator in 1804 but until 1834 none was interested in the same. Jacob Perkins built the first refrigeration machine in 1834. In 1844, a physician John Gorrie built a working unit on the basis of Oliver’s designs. He constructed this unit to create cooling atmosphere for his patients who were suffering from yellow fever.

In 1876 Carl von Linden invented the improved method of liquefying gas and got it patented. This was a great help in the creation of practical refrigerator. Ammonia, sulphur dioxide and methyl chloride were utilized for the formation of this gas which led to many accidents. The need led to the development of Freon and was used in bulk till it was found that it was not environment friendly and affected the ozone layer.

The gas compounds have now changed to safer compounds which compress and heat up working to cool the inside air of the refrigerator. Without this adjustment the working of the refrigerator seems impossible. It has been a work of many great inventors that the present form of refrigerators has simplified the work.

WHO INVENTED WALKMAN?

Walkman is actually a Sony trademark and was the name used for portable tape or cassette deck players. These were meant for the listening pleasure of a single person and the trademark was later expanded for other portable Sony devices for audio and video entertainment. The term Walkman is also given to a range of the Sony Erricson range of mobile phones which also became immensely popular. Walkman was a device that was designed and created by audio engineer Nobutoshi Kihara who worked for Sony.

The Sony co-chairman Akio Morita wanted a device where he could listen to his favorite operas during the Trans Atlantic flights. The concept was well liked and was originally marketed in Japan in 1979 and was sensational, since it gave freedom to young people to listen to their music with light weight headphones.

Even though Morita hated the name Walkman, the name stuck on and the promotional campaign using the name had already begun and to change the name midway would have been extremely expensive for the company. In 2007 March, the digital flash based video walkman was released and was named the A800 series.

The Walkman by Sony faced stiff competition from other companies such as Toshiba, Aiwa, Panasonic etc, but the personalization of the gadget worked in its favor for almost 20 years and the essential design remained unchanged.

WHO INVENTED SOLAR PANELS?

Solar panels are used extensively or generating electricity and power throughout the world. Though the initial investment is quite high, the fuel is cheap and abundant produces hardly any pollution unlike the burning of the fossil fuels.  The solar cell technology is extremely old and work started on this way back in the 1800’s. The French physicist Antoine – Cesar Becquerel is credited with the solar panel research, in 1839. While he was experimenting with a solid electrode that was dipped in the electrolyte solution he was able to see a photovoltaic effect. He even saw a voltage develop when the sunlight fell on the electrode. The solar cell creation for the first time is credited to Charles Fritts, who used junctions that were created when the semiconductor was coated by a very thin layer of gold.

The earliest solar cells and panels that were created were extremely inefficient and the energy conversation received from the sun stood under 1%. Russell Ohl was the first inventor, who created the silicon solar cell in 1941. in 1954,  the three American researchers Gerald Pearson, Calvin Fuller and Daryl Chapin were able to create a solar panel that could the had the efficiency level of 6% with direct sunlight.

WHO INVENTED RADIO?

Radio came into being after there were significant developments that were made in wireless telegraphy. It was James Clarkes Maxwell who showed that the electromagnetic waves could travel through the empty space and other Scientists such as Heinrich Rudolf Hertz demonstrated the ability of the radio wave.  Nikola Tesla is regarded by many as one of the pioneers of telecommunication for the purpose of information. In 1897, he even applied for two patents one of which was a radio patent. He even developed the several wireless control devices. His electromagnetic receivers were more responsive than the coherers that were used by Marconi later. The term radio was used for the first time after 1920. Earlier to that wireless telegraphy was the term that was widely used.

Guglelmo Marconi was among the first to show the ability of the radio that has implications in the military, marine and commercial applications and he even started a company for the development of radio communication services and the devices. At the turn of the century, Marconi conducted the first transatlantic radio communications and was even awarded a patent for the invention of the radio.

The boom in radio broadcasting came after 1919 and by the mid 1920’s; popular radio programs for commercial purpose were being broadcast. In 1933 the FM radio was patented and after the WWII, the FM radio broadcast started in Germany. The first transistor radio was launched in the 1960 by Sony that was powered by the battery and proved to be a hit instantly.

WHO INVENTED  TELEVISION?

The names of many are associated with the invention of the television. The two people who worked on the same appliance at two totally different places were Vladimir Kosma Zworykin; a Russian who was born in America and worked for Westinghouse Corporation, the other was a farm boy from Utah, Philo Taylor Farnsworth. Zworykin was the one who got his electron scanning tube also known as iconoscope patented first, in the year 1923 and was thus thought of as the inventor of modern television. The quality of his work was very poor and not appreciated.

It was on September 7, 1927 that Fransworth gave a successful demonstration for the transmission of the television signals for which he used his self designed scanning tube and received the patent for the same in the year 1930.

The patent for a similar type of tube was also applied for by Zworykin in 1923 but he was refused the same as the tube was not in a functional state. He could make a functional tube in the year 1934 and got the patent for it in 1938.

Many people acclaim John Logie Baird to be the original inventor of television as he was the one to give the very first live demonstration of the working television which had images that moved and had tone graduation on 26 January in the year 1926.

WHO INVENTED COMPASS?

A compass is used for determining direction identification. It is used for aviations, camping, hunting and other traveling purposes while moving from one place to another.  No records confirm that who invented or when compass invented but it was was believed that compass came into existence in the first century and was used by the Chinese. Chinese used lodestone in the compasses. They were the first to discover the special property of the lodestone, an iron metal that it always faced north when kept on a plane surface. Around 1300, mariner’s compass was invented in Europe. These were magnetic compasses of very simple kind and they were not very reliable too. For improving upon the reliability the needle was escalated under a card on a tip of a sharp pin and kept in a small box that was made of either wood or of ivory.

The ship compasses – a large gimbal mounted instrument which had its own light became popular in 19^th century. In 1908 gyroscopic compass was invented, which kept the compass pointing not to the magnetic north but to the north of real earth.

The market has variety of compasses suiting the specific requirement of the individual. The variety of compasses include field compass, map navigation compass, mirror compass etc. This invention of human has been rated among the best inventions as it helps man to know about directions.

WHO INVENTED MICROSCOPE

Compound microscope was invented in 17^th century. As to who invented the compound microscope is a question of controversy. There are three persons who claim to have invented it; Hans Lippershey, Zacharias and Hans Jansen and Giovanni Faber. The microscope was originally invented by Galileo who called it “Little Eye” but Giovanni Faber renamed it as “microscope”. Microscope was rather discovered than invented. While using different lenses at different combinations the nearby objects appeared enlarged. The first microscope was just a tube with lenses at both the ends. This was invented by Jansen’s.

In the mid 17^th century there were tremendous changes made in this field by Robert Hooke and Anton van. Robert studied microscope carefully and brought its results to public in the form of Micrographia. Anton took microscope to the attention of the biologists.

Different people kept on working on the concept. Joseph Jackson Lister solved the problem of blurred images with spherical aberration in the year 1830. In 1878’ Ernst Abbes concocted theory relating wavelength of light to resolution. Ultra microscope was invented by Richard Zsigmondy in 1903 won the Nobel Prize for the same. For the study of transparent and colorless organic material phase- contrast microscope was invented in 1932 by Frits Zernike. In 1938 electron microscope was promoted by Ernst Ruska. In 1981, scanning tunneling microscope was invented by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer.

WHO INVENTED DIESEL ENGINE?

Dr. Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine in the year 1897. He was mechanical engineer by profession and belonged to Germany. The diesel engine is a compressed–ignition engine that works with a piston which compresses air and injects oil-based fuel into the superheated air, causing spontaneous combustion of the fuel. The main advantage of this engine is that instead of using expensive petrol it makes use of cheap heavy oil and is fuel efficient.

Herbert Ackroyd- Straut was the one who invented this type of an engine in 1890 and the same was manufactured by Hornsby & Sons of Lincolnshire two years later in the year 1892. The engine had a major problem, the heat had to be supplied from outside to the cylinder head till the engine started to work properly. Another design for the same was made in 1892 which did not require supply of heat. A year later, Dr. Rudolf Diesel produced the modern diesel engine and worked on the same for next four years.

Diesel was born in 1858 in Paris, France. The early years of his childhood were spent in France but due to war in 1870 the family shifted to London. At the age of 14 he had made up his mind for becoming an engineer. He got scholarship and graduated with highest marks. He came back to Paris in 1880 and assisted his professor in designing modern refrigerator. He married in 1883 and was blessed with three children.

WHO INVENTED CAMERA?

Johann Zahn designed the first camera in 1685. But the first photograph was clicked by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in the year 1814. It was thousands of years back that an Iraqi scientist Ibn- al- Haytham made a mention of this kind of a device in his book, Book of Optics in 1021. The earlier cameras were incapable of saving the images and were huge in size. The first practical photography was invented by Louis Daquerre in 1829 but he took almost 10 years to produce the effective method which was named after him as daquerreotype. All this was done in Niepce’s partnership. The process of obtaining a picture on a silver- coated copper sheet was mentioned in a booklet. Louis and Niepce’s son sold the rights of the process to the French government and soon there were number of daquerreotype studios working.

Many people then worked on improving the technology. In 1841, Henry Fox Tablot invented calotype; the process of getting number of positives from a single negative. Hamilton Smith got patent for tintypes in 1856. The year 1851 witnessed the development of wet plate negatives by Frederick Scoff Archer followed by the invention of dry plate negatives in 1879. George Eastman invented the flexible film roll in 1889. The color photography at commercial level started in the year 1940. This was the beginning of comfortable photography with a handy camera.