crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2018-12-24 00:39:03

443) Joseph Day (Inventor)

Joseph Day (1855 in London – 1946) is a little-known English engineer who developed the extremely widely used crankcase-compression two-stroke petrol engine, as used for small engines from lawnmowers to mopeds and small motorcycles. He trained as an engineer at the Crystal Palace School of Engineering at Crystal Palace in London, began work at Stothert & Pitt in Bath, and in 1889 designed the crankcase-compression two-stroke engine as it is widely known today (in contrast to the two-stroke engine designed by Dugald Clark), the Valve-less Two-Stroke Engine. In 1878 he started his own business, an iron foundry making cranes, mortar mills and compressors amongst other things.

Valveless two-stroke engine

He advertised a new design of "valveless air compressor" which he made on licence from the patentee, Edmund Edwards. By 1889, he was working on an engine design which would not infringe the patents that Otto had on the four-stroke, and that he eventually called the Valveless Two-Stroke Engine. In fact there were two flap valves in Joseph Day's original design, one in the inlet port, where you would probably find a reed valve on a modern two stroke, and one in the crown of the piston, because he did not come up with the idea of the transfer ports until a couple of years later. He made about 250 of these first two-port motors, fitting them to small generating sets, which won a prize at the International Electrical Exhibition in 1892.

It was one of Joseph Day's workmen who made the modification which allowed the skirt of the piston to control the inlet port and do away with valves altogether, giving rise to the classic piston ported two stroke. Only two of these original engines have survived, one in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the other in the Science Museum in London.

American patent

The first American patent was taken out in 1894, and by 1906, a dozen American companies had taken licences. One of these, Palmers of Connecticut, managed by entrepreneur Julius Briner, had produced over 60,000 two-stroke engines before 1912. Many of these early engines found their way into motorcycles, or onto the back of boats.

Bath factory

His company in Bath was a general engineering one, and his engines were a sideline. Much of his money came from the manufacture of bread making machinery, and the prices of wheat were very turbulent around the turn of the Century. The profitability of Day’s factory fluctuated just as wildly. These were early days for the idea of the limited company, and shareholders, then as now, could panic and bring down a company that they thought to be under threat. The problem was made worse by the publication of rumours, or the deliberate orchestration of publicity campaigns in the press.

Lawsuits

Joseph Day suffered from his involvement with both of the aforementioned, with the result that his firm was driven into bankruptcy. A flurry of lawsuits followed, with Day as either plaintiff or defendant. The Treasury Solicitor even tried to have him extradited from the USA where he had gone to try to sell his US patents in order to raise money. The case was eventually settled when the jury found that Day had no case to answer, but it all came too late, and he went into virtual retirement by the seaside. The development of his engine then passed to his licence holders in America, whose royalties restored his finances sufficiently to allow him to launch a spectacular new venture after the First World War. This new enterprise was the exploration for oil.

Obscurity and death

Day lost most of his fortune exploring for oil in Norfolk in the east of England. A second financial disaster was the last straw, and Joseph Day disappeared from public view between 1925 and his death in 1946. His obscurity was so complete that a mere five years after his death, the Science Museum made a public appeal for biographical information about him – with no apparent result.

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Jai Ganesh · 2018-12-26 01:36:59

444) Trevor Baylis

Trevor Graham Baylis (13 May 1937 – 5 March 2018) was an English inventor best known for the wind-up radio. The radio, instead of relying on batteries or external electrical source, is powered by the user winding a crank. This stores energy in a spring which then drives an electrical generator. Baylis invented it in response to the need to communicate information about AIDS to the people of Africa. He ran a company in his name dedicated to helping inventors to develop and protect their ideas and to find a route to market.

Early life and education

Trevor Baylis was born on 13 May 1937 to Cecil Archibald Walter Baylis, an engineer, and his wife, Gladys Jane Brown, an artist, in Kilburn, London. He grew up in Southall, Middlesex, and attended North Primary School and Dormers Wells Secondary Modern School.

Career

His first job was in a Soil Mechanics Laboratory in Southall where a day-release arrangement enabled him to study mechanical and structural engineering at a local technical college.

A keen swimmer, he swam for Great Britain at the age of 15; he narrowly failed to qualify for the 1956 Summer Olympics. In 1959, Baylis started his National Service as a physical-training instructor with the Royal Sussex Regiment and swam for the Army and Imperial Services during this time. When he left the army he took a job with Purley Pools, the company which made the first free-standing swimming pools. Initially he worked in a sales role, but later switched to research and development.

His swimming skills enabled him to demonstrate the pools and drew the crowds at shows, and this led to forming his own aquatic-display company as professional swimmer, stunt performer and entertainer, performing high dives into a glass-sided tank. With money earned from performing as an underwater-escape artist in the Berlin Circus, he set up Shotline Steel Swimming Pools, a company which supplies swimming pools to schools.

Invention

Baylis's work as a stunt man exposed him to the needs of disabled people, through colleagues whose injuries had ended their performing careers. By 1985, this involvement had led him to invent and develop a range of products for the disabled called Orange Aids.

In the late 1980s or early 1990s, Baylis saw a television programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa and realised that a way to halt the spread of the disease would be to educate and disseminate information by radio. Within 30 minutes, he had assembled the first prototype of his most well-known invention, the wind-up radio. The original prototype included a small transistor radio, an electric motor from a toy car, and the clockwork mechanism from a music box. Baylis filed his first patent in 1992.

While the prototype worked well, Baylis struggled to find a production partner. The turning point came in 1994 when his prototype was featured on a film produced by Liz Tucker for the BBC TV programme Tomorrow's World, which resulted in an investor coming forward to back the product. With money from investors he formed a company called Freeplay Energy; in 1996, the Freeplay radio was given the BBC Design Awards for Best Product and Best Design. In the same year Baylis met Queen Elizabeth II and Nelson Mandela at a state banquet, and also travelled to Africa with the Dutch Television Service to produce a documentary about his life. He was awarded the 1996 World Vision Award for Development Initiative that year.

The year 1997 saw the production in South Africa of the new generation Freeplay radio, a smaller and cheaper model designed for the Western consumer market which uses rechargeable cells with a generic crank generator.

During the 1990s, Baylis was also a regular on the Channel 4 breakfast programme, The Big Breakfast.

In 2001, Baylis completed a 100-mile walk across the Namib Desert, demonstrating his electric shoes and raising money for the Mines Advisory Group. The "electric shoes", developed in collaboration with the UK's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, use piezoelectric contacts in the heels to charge a small battery that can be used to operate a radio transceiver or cellular telephone.

Following his own experience of the difficulties faced by inventors, Baylis set up the Trevor Baylis Foundation to "promote the activity of Invention by encouraging and supporting Inventors and Engineers". This led to the formation of the company Trevor Baylis Brands PLC which provides inventors with professional partnership and services to enable them to establish the originality of their ideas, to patent or otherwise protect them, and to get their products to market. Their primary goal is to secure licence agreements for inventors, but they also consider starting up new companies around good ideas. The company is based in Richmond, London.

Personal life

For many years, Baylis lived on Eel Pie Island on the river Thames. He regularly attended jazz performances at the Eel Pie Island Hotel. He died on 5 March 2018, at the age of 80, having been debilitated by Crohn's disease.

Awards and honours

Baylis was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for humanitarian services in the 1997 Birthday Honours, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to intellectual property. Baylis was awarded 11 honorary degrees from UK universities. He received honorary doctorates from Heriot-Watt University in 2003 and Leeds Metropolitan University in 2005.

Jai Ganesh · 2018-12-28 01:07:03

445) Randi Altschul

Randice-Lisa "Randi" Altschul (born 1960) is an American toy inventor based in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. She is an inventor of the first disposable cellphone. She began inventing in 1985 and by age 26 became a millionaire. She has granted more than 200 licenses of ideas for games and toys.

Early career/toy inventor

Altschul's first successes were with toys and games. Her first idea was a 'Miami Vice Game' which built on the success of the American television series of the same name. Other notable toys and games included a Barbie's 30th Birthday Game, and a wearable stuffed toy that could give hugs under the control of the child who was wearing it. She also developed a monster-shaped breakfast cereal which turned soft when covered in milk. Altshul also made money from selling her ideas for board games whose marketing relied on a link with other popular American television series like 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' and 'The Simpsons'. Altschul became rich and part of the profits were invested in super-thin technology.

Althschul got the idea for the phone when she lost the signal for her conventional mobile phone and resisted the urge to dispose of an expensive phone. She realized that a disposable phone might assist travelers like herself. Altschul created a new company called Diceland Technologies to exploit these technologies to make the phone she planned.

First disposable cell phone

In November 1999 Altschul teamed up with Lee Volte. Volte had been the Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Tyco. Altschul and Volte obtained several patents for what would be the world's first disposable mobile phone. Their intellectual property also included the trademark "Phone-Card-Phone". The new device was a phone that was of a size similar to an existing phone card. The credit card sized device was less than five millimetres thick, and was not made from plastic or metal, but from materials based on recycled paper. The phone incorporated a magnetic strip which meant that credit card companies could store identification which would allow the phone owner to make purchases. The phone was intended to sell at about twenty dollars, and the purchaser would be able to make phone calls totaling up to an hour. The phone was sold as disposable, but it could also be recycled; people who returned their used phones would receive a credit of two to three dollars. Frost & Sullivan, declared the Phone-Card-Phone to be the 2002 Product of the Year.

Altschul and her company, Diceland Technologies, envisioned prospective customers of the Phone-Card-Phone as people who were not impressed by the latest technology or women who just wanted to ensure that their sons and daughters would be able to make phone calls to them and their families. Altschul aimed the marketing at those people who would not be interested in a long-term mobile phone contract or tourists who may not usually need a phone but would need one whilst holidaying abroad for the short period of their vacation.

Jai Ganesh · 2018-12-30 00:27:30

446) William Cullen

William Cullen, (born April 15, 1710, Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scot.—died Feb. 5, 1790, Kirknewton, near Edinburgh), Scottish physician and professor of medicine, best known for his innovative teaching methods.

Cullen received his early education at Hamilton Grammar School, in the town where he was born and where his father, a lawyer, was employed by the duke of Hamilton. In 1726 Cullen went to the University of Glasgow, where he became a student of British surgeon John Paisley. In 1729 Cullen was hired to serve as ship’s surgeon aboard a merchant vessel sailing from London to the West Indies. Upon his return to London, he took a post as an assistant to a local apothecary. Cullen remained in London until 1732, when he ventured home to Scotland and established his own medical practice near the village of Shotts in Lanarkshire (now North Lanarkshire). In 1734 he attended the new medical school at Edinburgh, returning to his private practice in Hamilton two years later. He spent eight years in private clinical practice, attending without fee those too poor to afford his services. In 1740 he received an M.D. from Glasgow, and several years later he obtained permission to deliver a series of independent lectures on chemistry and medicine, the first to be offered in Great Britain. He was elected to the chair of medicine at Glasgow in 1751. In 1755 Cullen returned to the University of Edinburgh, where he was later appointed to the chair of the institutes (theory) of medicine and eventually became sole professor of medicine, the position he held until shortly before his death. In 1777 Cullen was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London.

Cullen was considered a progressive thinker for his time. He was the first to demonstrate in public the refrigeration effects of evaporative cooling, a phenomenon he wrote of in “Of the Cold Produced by Evaporating Fluids and of Some Other Means of Producing Cold” (Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary, vol. 2 [1756]). In medicine he taught that life was a function of nervous energy and that muscle was a continuation of nerve. He organized an influential classification of disease (nosology) consisting of four major divisions: pyrexiae, or febrile diseases; neuroses, or nervous diseases; cachexiae, diseases arising from bad bodily habits; and locales, or local diseases. This system, which Cullen described in his work 'Synopsis Nosologiae Methodicae' (1769), was based on the observable symptoms that arise from disease and that are utilized for diagnosis.

Cullen was most famous, however, for his innovative teaching methods and forceful, inspiring lectures, which drew medical students to Edinburgh from throughout the English-speaking world. He was one of the first to teach in English rather than in Latin, and he delivered his clinical lectures in the infirmary, lecturing not from a text but from his own notes. His 'First Lines of the Practice of Physic' (1777) was widely used as a textbook in Britain and the United States.

Many of Cullen’s pupils went on to make important contributions to science and medicine. Among his most well-known students were British chemist and physicist Joseph Black, known for the rediscovery of “fixed air” (carbon dioxide); English physician William Withering, known for his medical discoveries concerning the use of extracts of foxglove (Digitalis purpurea); British physician John Brown, who was a propounder of the “excitability” theory of medicine; and American physician and political leader Benjamin Rush, who, in addition to being a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was known for his advocacy for the humane treatment of the insane.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-01 01:43:07

447) Alexander Coucoulas

Alexander Coucoulas is an American inventor, research engineer, and author. He was named "Father Of Thermosonic Bonding" by George Harman, the world's foremost authority on wire bonding, where he referenced Coucoulas's leading edge publications in his book, Wire Bonding In Microelectronics. A Thermosonic bond is formed using a set of parameters which include ultrasonic, thermal and mechanical (force) energies. The vibratory motion travels along the coupler system, a portion which is tapered to serve as the velocity transformer. The velocity transformer amplifies the oscilliatory motion and delivers it to a heated bonding tip.

Thermosonic bonding is widely used to electrically connect silicon integrated circuit microprocessor chips into computers as well as a myriad of other electronic devices that require wire bonding.

As a result of Coucoulas introducing thermosonic bonding lead wires in the early 1960s, its applications and scientific investigations by researchers throughout the world have grown as confirmed by the thousands of Google search-sites. The all-important proven reliability of thermosonic bonding, as confirmed by these investigations, has made it the process of choice for connecting these crucially important electronic components. And since relatively low bonding parameters were shown to form reliable thermosonic bonds, the integrity of the fragile silicon integrated circuit chip central processor unit or CPU, is assured throughout its intended lifetime use as the "brains" of the computer.

Personal background

Coucoulas retired from AT&T Bell Labs as a member of the technical staff in 1996 where he pioneered research in the areas of electronic/photonics packaging, laser technology and optical fibers which resulted in numerous patents, and publications. He was twice awarded best paper which he presented at the 20th and 43rd IEEE Electronic Components Conference for "Compliant Bonding" in 1970 " and AlO Bonding in 1993 both of which were his patented inventions. His Ionian-Greek immigrant parents were born in the city of Smyrna. His single-parent father, Demetrios (James) Koukoulas (as a maimed Smyrnaean Greek soldier), was rescued from the coastal waters of the Aegean sea by a Japanese naval cruiser while in view and during the devastating Fire of Smyrna in September 1922. The Japanese cruiser brought him to Pereaus, Greece where he immigrated to The United States via Ellis Island on the SS King Alexander in November of that same year.

Coucoulas is a native New Yorker who served in the US Army as a combat engineer in the Far East Command in the early 1950s, and was awarded the National Defense Service Medal for the Korean War (1950-1954). He then obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Metallurgical Engineering and Material Science at New York University which was financed by the GI Bill, a graduate scholarship and part-time jobs in the New York Metropolitan area. His graduate thesis was under the tutorage of Dr. Kurt Komarek, who is a former Rector (President) and present professor emeritus of the University Of Vienna. Coucoulas co-authored a paper with Dr. Komarek which included his thesis,. His spouse, Marie Janssen Coucoulas, played a significant supportive role throughout his professional career while also contributing to the welfare of learning disabled children in the capacity of a professional Learning Consultant. His daughters, Diane and Andrea, distinguished themselves as a University of North Carolina Professor and elementary student counselor respectively.

Engineering research

Thermosonic bonding

As mentioned above, in the mid 1960s, Alexander Coucoulas, reported the first thermosonic wire bonds using a combination of heat, ultrasonic vibrations and pressure which led to his first invention. He first set up a commercial ultrasonic wire bonder (capable of transmitting vibratory energy and pressure) in order to investigate the attachment of aluminum wires to tantalum thin films deposited on glass substrates which simulated bonding a lead wire to the fragile metallized silicon integrated circuit "chip". He observed that the ultrasonic energy and pressures levels needed to sufficiently deform the wire and form the required contact areas significantly increased the incidences of cracks in the glass or silicon chip substrates. A means of heating the bond region was then added to the ultrasonic bonder. The bond region was then heated during the ultrasonic bonding cycle which virtually eliminated the glass failure mode since the wire dramatically deformed to form the required contact area while using significantly lower ultrasonic energy and pressure levels. The enhanced wire deformation during the ultrasonic bonding cycle was attributed to the transition from cold working (or strain hardening of the wire) to near hot working conditions where its softness was enhanced. As the bonding temperature was increased the onset of recrystallization (softening mechanism) occurs where the strain hardening is most extensive. Thus the dual mechanisms of thermal softening and ultrasonic softening which is caused by vibratory energy interacting at the atomic lattice level, facilitated the desired wire deformation. Christian Hagar and George Harman stated that in 1970 Alexander Coucoulas reported additional work in forming thermosonic-type bonds which he initially called hot work ultrasonic bonding. In this case, copper wires were bonded to palladium thin films deposited on aluminum oxide substrates. As a result of these earliest reported thermosonic wire bonds, G.Harman stated "as such, Alexander Coucoulas is the Father of Thermosonic Bonding". At present, the majority of connections to silicon integrated circuits (the chip) are made using thermosonic bonding because it employs lower bonding temperatures, forces and dwell times than thermocompression bonding, as well as lower vibratory energy levels than ultrasonic bonding, to form the required bond area. As a result of using lower bonding parameters to form the required contact area, Thermosonic Bonding largely eliminates damaging the relatively fragile silicon integrated circuit micro-chip during the bonding cycle. The proven reliability of thermosonic bonding has made it the process of choice, since such potential failure modes could be costly whether they occur during the manufacturing stage or detected later, during an operational field-failure of a micro-chip which had been permanently connected inside a computer or a myriad of other electronic devices.

Another example showing the importance and reliability of using thermosonic bonding was when L Burmeister et al. of Hamburg University, Germany, reported that using solely ultrasonic power to bond gold wires to YBa2Cu3O7 microstructures, such as microbridges, Josephson junctions and superconducting interference devices (DC SQUIDS) can degrade them. Burmeister et al. stated that the problem was overcome by using Coucoulas's thermosonic bonding process where it left the microstructure device intact so they could be employed.

Growing Applications Of Thermosonic Bonding

At present, the majority of connections to the silicon integrated circuit chip are made using thermosonic bonding because it employs lower bonding temperatures, forces and dwell times than thermocompression bonding, as well as lower vibratory energy levels and forces than ultrasonic bonding to form the required bond area. Therefore, the use of thermosonic bonding eliminates damaging the relatively fragile silicon integrated circuit chip during the bonding cycle. The proven reliability of thermosonic bonding has made it the process of choice, since such potential failure modes could be costly whether they occur during the manufacturing stage or detected later, during an operational field-failure of a chip which had been connected inside a computer or a myriad of other microelectronic devices.

Thermosonic bonding is also used in the flip chip process which is an alternate method of electrically connecting silicon integrated circuits.

Josephson effect and superconducting interference (DC SQUID) devices use the thermosonic bonding process as well. In this case, other bonding methods would degrade or even destroy YBaCuO₇ microstructures, such as microbridges, Josephson junctions and superconducting interference devices (DC SQUID).

When electrically connecting light-emitting diodes with thermosonic bonding techniques, an improved performance of the device has been shown.

Compliant bonding

Following his pioneering of thermosonic bonding, Coucoulas invents "Compliant Bonding which was a means of solid-state bonding the extended electroformed leads of a "beam leaded Chip" to the outside world. It was a unique method of solid state bonding in that the bonding energy (heat and pressure) was transmitted through a compliant aluminum tape. The compliant tape overcame the thickness variations of the beam leads and also acted as a chip carrier to the bonding site. In 1971, he was awarded best paper-presentation for "Compliant Bonding" which was among more than 90 papers presented at the 20th IEEE Electronic Components Conference in 1970 by engineers and research scientists from around the world.

Extruding silica glass tubes for making optical fibers

The first step in producing optical waveguides by the MCVD optical fiber process is making highly concentric fused silica tubes with a minimal variation along their entire length which translates into the critical ovality of the final optical fiber. Coucoulas proposed and reported the making of extruded fused silica tubes that closely followed the Poiseulle-Hagen equation for laminar flow and thus produced cladding tubes with dimensional properties required for making acceptable optical fibers. Coucoulas with collaborative colleagues was awarded patents regarding the tube making process.

Twenty-three years after being awarded best paper for "Compliant Bonding" as mentioned above, Coucoulas was again awarded Outstanding Paper at the 43rd Electronic Components and Technology Conference in 1993 (which he presented and co-authored with his collaborative colleagues).It was titled,"AlO Bonding: A Method of Joining Oxide Optical Components to Aluminum Coated Substrates." He also was awarded a U.S. patent for inventing AlO Bonding.[9]

Microstructure of Solid Carbon Dioxide ("Dry Ice")

His first industrial research position was at Air Reduction Central Research facility in New Jersey where he investigated and co-authored a paper in the Transactions of the Metallurgical Society of AIME entitled, "Some Observations on the Microstructure and Fragmentation of Solid Carbon Dioxide" with the following abstract:

Solid carbon dioxide (dry ice), which exists metastably as a constantly subliming molecular solid in a normal room temperature environment, was shown to exhibit many microstructural features which are similar to those observed in metals and ceramics at temperatures approaching their melting points. An investigation was made of factors affecting a costly brittleness condition known as "sandiness" which occurred in manufactured blocks of dry ice (polycrystalline solid carbon dioxide). The sandiness was found to be highly dependent on specific manufacturing and storage conditions that cause excessive grain growth which leads to a concentration of gas filled pores in the decreasing grain boundary regions.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-03 00:19:01

448) Katharine Burr Blodgett

American scientist, Katharine Burr Blodgett is known for numerous important contributions to the field of industrial chemistry. She is mainly acknowledged for her invention of the color gauge and non-reflecting or “invisible” glass.

Early life and Education and Career:

Born in Schenectady, New York on January 10, 1898, Katharine or Katie (her nickname) was the second child of Katharine Burr and George Blodgett, a patent lawyer for the General Electric Company. Her father was killed only a few weeks before she was born. Her father’s death left more than sufficient amount of wealth to the family.

After Katie’s birth, the family moved to New York City, then to France in 1901, and then back to New York City in 1912. Here she completed her schooling from the Rayson School and developed an early interest in mathematics. She completed high school at the age of fifteen and earned a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and received her B.A. degree in 1917.

Career:

Her interest in physics began when she attended college. After college, Blodgett decided that a career in scientific research would allow her to further pursue her interest in both mathematics and physics.

During her vacations, Blodgett traveled to upstate New York in search of employment opportunities at the Schenectady General Electric plant. Some of her father’s former colleagues in Schenectady introduced Katie to research chemist Irving Langmuir. While showing his laboratory, Irving Langmuir recognized Katie’s aptitude and advised her to continue her scientific education. Following his advice she went on to pursue master’s degree in science and was the first woman to be ever awarded a doctorate in physics from Cambridge University.

After her masters she became the first woman to be hired as a scientist at General Electric. Langmuir encouraged her to participate in some of his earlier discoveries.

First, he put her on the task of perfecting tungsten filaments in electric lamps (the work for which he had received a patent in 1916). He later asked Blodgett to concentrate her studies on surface chemistry.

Her most important contribution came from her independent research on an oily substance that Langmuir had developed in the lab. The then existing methods for measuring this unusual substance, were only accurate to a few thousandths of an inch but Katie’s way proved to be accurate to about one millionth of an inch. Her new discovery of measuring transparent objects led to her invention of non-reflecting glass in 1938. This invisible glass proved to be a very effective device for physicists, chemists, and metallurgists. It has been put to use in many consumer products from picture frames to camera lenses and has also been exceptionally helpful in optics.

During the Second World War Blodgett made another outstanding breakthrough: the smoke screens. The smoke screens saved many lives by covering the troops thereby protecting them from the exposure of toxic smoke.

Blodgett’s work was acknowledged by many awards, including the Garvan Medal in 1951. She earned honorary degrees from Elmira College in 1939, Brown University in 1942, Western College in1942, and Russell Sage College in 1944. She was nominated to be part of the American Physical Society and was a member of the Optical Society of America.

Death:

Katharine Burr Blodgett died in her home on October 12, 1979 aged 81.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-05 00:19:59

449) George Ballas

George Charles Ballas Sr. (June 28, 1925 – June 25, 2011) was an American entrepreneur. He invented the first string trimmer, known as the Weed Eater in 1971. He is the father of ballroom dancer, Corky Ballas, and grandfather of professional dancer Mark Ballas of 'Dancing with the Stars'.

Early life

Ballas was born in Ruston, Louisiana. He was the son of Karolos ("Charles") Ballas and Maria (née Lymnaos), who were Greek immigrants that ran a restaurant. His brother is Peter Ballas.

He enlisted in the United States Army at the age of 17 in 1942 during World War II and was a bombardier. Ballas would later serve in the Korean War.

Family

He married Maria Marulanda who was of Mexican and Spanish descent in 1951.

He had five children, Corky Ballas, George Ballas Jr., Michelle Ballas Pritchard, Maria Ballas Jamail, and Lillian Ballas Miles.

His grandson Mark Ballas is a dancer in 'Dancing with the Stars'. He had six other grandchildren.

Inventor

Ballas got the idea for the trimmer while driving through an automatic car wash, where the rotating brushes gave him an idea. Using a tin can laced with fishing line and an edge trimmer, he tried out his idea, which worked. After some refinements, he shopped it around to several tool makers, who all rejected his invention. He went on to develop the garden tool himself. The first year, sales were over a half million dollars. By 1977 they were $80 million, and Ballas sold his company the following year to Emerson Electric Company.

("string trimmer", "weed-whacker", a "weed eater", a "line trimmer" or a "strimmer" (in the UK and Ireland), is a tool which uses a flexible monofilament line instead of a blade for cutting grass and other plants near objects, or on steep or irregular terrain. It consists of a cutting tip at the end of a long shaft with a handle.)

History

The whipper-snipper was invented in the early 1970s by George Ballas of Houston, Texas, who conceived the idea while watching the revolving action of the cleaning brushes in an automatic car wash. His first trimmer was made by attaching pieces of heavy-duty fishing line to a popcorn can bolted to an edger. Ballas developed this into what he called the "Weed Eater", since it chewed up the grass and weeds around trees.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-05 15:56:06

450) Maria Montessori

Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori (August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori broke gender barriers and expectations when she enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the University of Rome, where she graduated – with honors – in 1896. Her educational method is in use today in many public and private schools throughout the world.

Life and career

Birth and family

Montessori was born on August 31, 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy. Her father, Alessandro Montessori, 33 years old at the time, was an official of the Ministry of Finance working in the local state-run tobacco factory. Her mother, Renilde Stoppani, 25 years old, was well educated for the times and was the great-niece of Italian geologist and palaeontologist Antonio Stoppani. While she did not have any particular mentor, she was very close to her mother who readily encouraged her. She also had a loving relationship with her father, although he disagreed with her choice to continue her education.

1883–1896: Education

Early education

The Montessori family moved to Florence in 1873 and then to Rome in 1875 because of her father's work. Montessori entered a public elementary school at the age of 6 in 1876. Her early school record was "not particularly noteworthy", although she was awarded certificates for good behavior in the 1st grade and for "lavori donneschi", or "women's work", the next year.

Secondary school

In 1883 or 1884, at the age of 13, Montessori entered a secondary, technical school, Regia Scuola Tecnica Michelangelo Buonarroti, where she studied Italian, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, accounting, history, geography, and sciences. She graduated in 1886 with good grades and examination results. That year, at the age of 16, she continued at the technical institute Regio Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci, studying Italian, mathematics, history, geography, geometric and ornate drawing, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and two foreign languages. She did well in the sciences and especially in mathematics.

She initially intended to pursue the study of engineering upon graduation, an unusual aspiration for a woman in her time and place. However, by the time she graduated in 1890 at the age of 20, with a certificate in physics–mathematics, she had decided to study medicine instead, an even more unlikely pursuit given cultural norms at the time.

University of Rome—Medical school

Montessori moved forward with her intention to study medicine. She appealed to Guido Baccelli, the professor of clinical medicine at the University of Rome, but was strongly discouraged. Nonetheless, in 1890, she enrolled in the University of Rome in a degree course in natural sciences, passing examinations in botany, zoology, experimental physics, histology, anatomy, and general and organic chemistry, and earning her diploma di licenza in 1892. This degree, along with additional studies in Italian and Latin, qualified her for entrance into the medical program at the University in 1893.

She was met with hostility and harassment from some medical students and professors because of her gender. Because her attendance of classes with men in the presence of a undressed body was deemed inappropriate, she was required to perform her dissections of cadavers alone, after hours. She resorted to smoking tobacco to mask the offensive odor of formaldehyde. Montessori won an academic prize in her first year, and in 1895 secured a position as a hospital assistant, gaining early clinical experience. In her last two years she studied pediatrics and psychiatry, and worked in the pediatric consulting room and emergency service, becoming an expert in pediatric medicine. Montessori graduated from the University of Rome in 1896 as a doctor of medicine. Her thesis was published in 1897 in the journal Policlinico. She found employment as an assistant at the University hospital and started a private practice.

1896–1901: Early career and family

From 1896 to 1901, Montessori worked with and researched so-called "phrenasthenic" children—in modern terms, children experiencing some form of mental retardation, illness, or disability. She also began to travel, study, speak, and publish nationally and internationally, coming to prominence as an advocate for women's rights and education for mentally disabled children.

On 31 March 1898, her only child – a son named Mario Montessori (March 31, 1898 – 1982) was born. Mario Montessori was born out of her love affair with Giuseppe Montesano, a fellow doctor who was co-director with her of the Orthophrenic School of Rome. If Montessori married, she would be expected to cease working professionally; instead of getting married, Montessori decided to continue her work and studies. Montessori wanted to keep the relationship with her child's father secret under the condition that neither of them would marry anyone else. When the father of her child fell in love and subsequently married, Montessori was left feeling betrayed and decided to leave the university hospital and place her son into foster care with a family living in the countryside opting to miss the first few years of his life. She would later be reunited with her son in his teenage years, where he proved to be a great assistant in her research.

Work with mentally disabled children

After graduating from the University of Rome in 1896, Montessori continued with her research at the University's psychiatric clinic, and in 1897 she was accepted as a voluntary assistant there. As part of her work, she visited asylums in Rome where she observed children with mental disabilities, observations which were fundamental to her future educational work. She also read and studied the works of 19th-century physicians and educators Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Édouard Séguin, who greatly influenced her work. Maria was intrigued by Itard's ideas and created a far more specific and organized system for applying them to the everyday education of children with disabilities. When she discovered the works of Jean Itard and Édouard Séguin they gave her a new direction in thinking and influenced her to focus on children with learning difficulties. Also in 1897, Montessori audited the University courses in pedagogy and read "all the major works on educational theory of the past two hundred years".

Public advocacy

In 1897 Montessori spoke on societal responsibility for juvenile delinquency at the National Congress of Medicine in Turin. In 1898, she wrote several articles and spoke again at the First Pedagogical Conference of Turin, urging the creation of special classes and institutions for mentally disabled children, as well as teacher training for their instructors. In 1899 Montessori was appointed a councilor to the newly formed National League for the Protection of Retarded Children, and was invited to lecture on special methods of education for retarded children at the teacher training school of the College of Rome. That year Montessori undertook a two-week national lecture tour to capacity audiences before prominent public figures. She joined the board of the National League and was appointed as a lecturer in hygiene and anthropology at one of the two teacher-training colleges for women in Italy.

Orthophrenic School

In 1900 the National League opened the Scuola Magistrale Ortofrenica, or Orthophrenic School, a "medico-pedagogical institute" for training teachers in educating mentally disabled children with an attached laboratory classroom. Montessori was appointed co-director. 64 teachers enrolled in the first class, studying psychology, anatomy and physiology of the nervous system, anthropological measurements, causes and characteristics of mental disability, and special methods of instruction. During her two years at the school, Montessori developed methods and materials which she would later adapt to use with mainstream children.
The school was an immediate success, attracting the attention of government officials from the departments of education and health, civic leaders, and prominent figures in the fields of education, psychiatry, and anthropology from the University of Rome. The children in the model classroom were drawn from ordinary schools but considered "uneducable" due to their deficiencies. Some of these children later passed public examinations given to so-called "normal" children.

1901–1906: Further studies

In 1901, Montessori left the Orthophrenic School and her private practice, and in 1902 she enrolled in the philosophy degree course at the University of Rome. (Philosophy at the time included much of what we now consider psychology.) She studied theoretical and moral philosophy, the history of philosophy, and psychology as such, but she did not graduate. She also pursued independent study in anthropology and educational philosophy, conducted observations and experimental research in elementary schools, and revisited the work of Itard and Séguin, translating their books into handwritten Italian. During this time she began to consider adapting her methods of educating mentally disabled children to mainstream education.

Montessori's work developing what she would later call "scientific pedagogy" continued over the next few years. Still in 1902, Montessori presented a report at a second national pedagogical congress in Naples. She published two articles on pedagogy in 1903, and two more the following year. In 1903 and 1904, she conducted anthropological research with Italian schoolchildren, and in 1904 she was qualified as a free lecturer in anthropology for the University of Rome. She was appointed to lecture in the Pedagogic School at the University and continued in the position until 1908. Her lectures were printed as a book titled Pedagogical Anthropology in 1910.

1906–1911: Casa dei Bambini and the spread of Montessori's ideas

The first Casa

In 1906 Montessori was invited to oversee the care and education of a group of children of working parents in a new apartment building for low-income families in the San Lorenzo district in Rome. Montessori was interested in applying her work and methods to mentally normal children, and she accepted. The name Casa dei Bambini, or Children's House, was suggested to Montessori, and the first Casa opened on January 6, 1907, enrolling 50 or 60 children between the ages of two or three and six or seven.

At first, the classroom was equipped with a teacher's table and blackboard, a stove, small chairs, armchairs, and group tables for the children, and a locked cabinet for the materials that Montessori had developed at the Orthophrenic School. Activities for the children included personal care such as dressing and undressing, care of the environment such as dusting and sweeping, and caring for the garden. The children were also shown the use of the materials Montessori had developed. Montessori herself, occupied with teaching, research, and other professional activities, oversaw and observed the classroom work, but did not teach the children directly. Day-to-day teaching and care were provided, under Montessori's guidance, by the building porter's daughter.

In this first classroom, Montessori observed behaviors in these young children which formed the foundation of her educational method. She noted episodes of deep attention and concentration, multiple repetitions of activity, and a sensitivity to order in the environment. Given free choice of activity, the children showed more interest in practical activities and Montessori's materials than in toys provided for them, and were surprisingly unmotivated by sweets and other rewards. Over time, she saw a spontaneous self-discipline emerge.

Based on her observations, Montessori implemented a number of practices that became hallmarks of her educational philosophy and method. She replaced the heavy furniture with child-sized tables and chairs light enough for the children to move, and placed child-sized materials on low, accessible shelves. She expanded the range of practical activities such as sweeping and personal care to include a wide variety of exercises for care of the environment and the self, including flower arranging, hand washing, gymnastics, care of pets, and cooking. She also included large open air sections in the classroom encouraging children to come and go as they please in the room's different areas and lessons. In her book she outlines a typical winter's day of lessons, starting at 09:00 AM and finishing at 04:00 PM:
• 9–10. Entrance. Greeting. Inspection as to personal cleanliness. Exercises of practical life; helping one another to take off and put on the aprons. Going over the room to see that everything is dusted and in order. Language: Conversation period: Children give an account of the events of the day before. Religious exercises.
• 10–11. Intellectual exercises. Objective lessons interrupted by short rest periods. Nomenclature, Sense exercises.
• 11–11:30. Simple gymnastics: Ordinary movements done gracefully, normal position of the body, walking, marching in line, salutations, movements for attention, placing of objects gracefully.
• 11:30–12. Luncheon: Short prayer.
• 12–1. Free games.
• 1–2. Directed games, if possible, in the open air. During this period the older children in turn go through with the exercises of practical life, cleaning the room, dusting, putting the material in order. General inspection for cleanliness: Conversation.
• 2–3. Manual work. Clay modelling, design, etc.
• 3–4. Collective gymnastics and songs, if possible in the open air. Exercises to develop forethought: Visiting, and caring for, the plants and animals.

She felt by working independently children could reach new levels of autonomy and become self-motivated to reach new levels of understanding. Montessori also came to believe that acknowledging all children as individuals and treating them as such would yield better learning and fulfilled potential in each particular child. She continued to adapt and refine the materials she had developed earlier, altering or removing exercises which were chosen less frequently by the children. Also based on her observations, Montessori experimented with allowing children free choice of the materials, uninterrupted work, and freedom of movement and activity within the limits set by the environment. She began to see independence as the aim of education, and the role of the teacher as an observer and director of children's innate psychological development.

Spread of Montessori education in Italy

The first Casa dei Bambini was a success, and a second was opened on April 7, 1907. The children in her programs continued to exhibit concentration, attention, and spontaneous self-discipline, and the classrooms began to attract the attention of prominent educators, journalists, and public figures. In the fall of 1907, Montessori began to experiment with teaching materials for writing and reading—letters cut from sandpaper and mounted on boards, moveable cutout letters, and picture cards with labels. Four- and five-year-old children engaged spontaneously with the materials and quickly gained a proficiency in writing and reading far beyond what was expected for their age. This attracted further public attention to Montessori's work. Three more Case dei Bambini opened in 1908, and in 1909 Italian Switzerland began to replace Froebellian methods with Montessori in orphanages and kindergartens.

In 1909, Montessori held the first teacher training course in her new method in Città di Castello, Italy. In the same year, she described her observations and methods in a book titled 'Il Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica Applicato All'Educazione Infantile Nelle Case Dei Bambini' (The Method of Scientific Pedagogy Applied to the Education of Children in the Children's Houses). Two more training courses were held in Rome in 1910, and a third in Milan in 1911. Montessori's reputation and work began to spread internationally as well, and around that time she gave up her medical practice to devote more time to her educational work, developing her methods and training teachers. In 1919 she resigned from her position at the University of Rome, as her educational work was increasingly absorbing all her time and interest.

1909–1915: International recognition and growth of Montessori education

As early as 1909, Montessori's work began to attract the attention of international observers and visitors. Her work was widely published internationally, and spread rapidly. By the end of 1911, Montessori education had been officially adopted in public schools in Italy and Switzerland, and was planned for the United Kingdom. By 1912, Montessori schools had opened in Paris and many other Western European cities, and were planned for Argentina, Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Syria, the United States, and New Zealand. Public programs in London, Johannesburg, Rome, and Stockholm had adopted the method in their school systems. Montessori societies were founded in the United States (the Montessori American Committee) and the United Kingdom (the Montessori Society for the United Kingdom). In 1913 the first International Training Course was held in Rome, with a second in 1914.

Montessori's work was widely translated and published during this period. 'Il Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica' was published in the United States as The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children's Houses, where it became a best seller. British and Swiss editions followed. A revised Italian edition was published in 1913. Russian and Polish editions came out in 1913 as well, and German, Japanese, and Romanian editions appeared in 1914, followed by Spanish (1915), Dutch (1916), and Danish (1917) editions. Pedagogical Anthropology was published in English in 1913. In 1914, Montessori published, in English, Doctor Montessori's Own Handbook, a practical guide to the didactic materials she had developed.

Montessori in the United States

In 1911 and 1912, Montessori's work was popular and widely publicized in the United States, especially in a series of articles in McClure's Magazine, and the first North American Montessori school was opened in October 1911, in Tarrytown, New York. The inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his wife became proponents of the method and a second school was opened in their Canadian home. The Montessori Method sold quickly through six editions. The first International Training Course in Rome in 1913 was sponsored by the American Montessori Committee, and 67 of the 83 students were from the United States. By 1913 there were more than 100 Montessori schools in the country. Montessori traveled to the United States in December 1913 on a three-week lecture tour which included films of her European classrooms, meeting with large, enthusiastic crowds wherever she traveled.

Montessori returned to the United States in 1915, sponsored by the National Education Association, to demonstrate her work at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California, and to give a third international training course. A glass-walled classroom was put up at the Exposition, and thousands of observers came to see a class of 21 students. Montessori's father died in November 1915, and she returned to Italy.

Although Montessori and her educational approach were highly popular in the United States, she was not without opposition and controversy. Influential progressive educator William Heard Kilpatrick, a follower of American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey, wrote a dismissive and critical book titled The Montessori Method Examined, which had a broad impact. The National Kindergarten Association was critical as well. Critics charged that Montessori's method was outdated, overly rigid, overly reliant on sense-training, and left too little scope for imagination, social interaction, and play. In addition, Montessori's insistence on tight control over the elaboration of her method, the training of teachers, the production and use of materials, and the establishment of schools became a source of conflict and controversy. After she left in 1915, the Montessori movement in the United States fragmented, and Montessori education was a negligible factor in education in the United States until 1952.

1915–1939: Further development of Montessori education

In 1915, Montessori returned to Europe and took up residence in Barcelona, Spain. Over the next 20 years Montessori traveled and lectured widely in Europe and gave numerous teacher training courses. Montessori education experienced significant growth in Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

Spain (1915–1936)

On her return from the United States, Montessori continued her work in Barcelona, where a small program sponsored by the Catalan government begun in 1915 had developed into the Escola Montessori, serving children from three to ten years old, and the Laboratori i Seminari de Pedagogia, a research, training, and teaching institute. A fourth international course was given there in 1916, including materials and methods, developed over the previous five years, for teaching grammar, arithmetic, and geometry to elementary school children from six to twelve years of age. In 1917 Montessori published her elementary work in L'autoeducazionne nelle Scuole Elementari' (Self-Education in Elementary School), which appeared in English as The Advanced Montessori Method. Around 1920, the 'Catalan independence movement began to demand that Montessori take a political stand and make a public statement favoring Catalan independence, and she refused. Official support was withdrawn from her programs. In 1924, a new military dictatorship closed Montessori's model school in Barcelona, and Montessori education declined in Spain, although Barcelona remained Montessori's home for the next twelve years. In 1933, under the Second Spanish Republic, a new training course was sponsored by the government, and government support was re-established. In 1934, she published two books in Spain, Psicogeometrica and Psicoarithemetica. However, with the onset of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, political and social conditions drove Montessori to leave Spain permanently.

The Netherlands (1917–1936)

In 1917, Montessori lectured in Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Montessori Society was founded. She returned in 1920 to give a series of lectures at the University of Amsterdam. Montessori programs flourished in the Netherlands, and by the mid-1930s there were more than 200 Montessori schools in the country. In 1935 the headquarters of the Association Montessori Internationale, or AMI, moved permanently to Amsterdam.

The United Kingdom (1919–1936)

Montessori education was met with enthusiasm and controversy in England between 1912 and 1914. In 1919, Montessori came to England for the first time and gave an international training course which was received with high interest. Montessori education continued to spread in the United Kingdom, although the movement experienced some of the struggles over authenticity and fragmentation that took place in the United States. Montessori continued to give training courses in England every other year until the beginning of World War II.

Italy (1922–1934)

In 1922, Montessori was invited to Italy on behalf of the government to give a course of lectures and later to inspect Italian Montessori schools. Later that year Benito Mussolini's Fascist government came to power in Italy. In December, Montessori came back to Italy to plan a series of annual training courses under government sponsorship, and in 1923, the minister of education Giovanni Gentile expressed his official support for Montessori schools and teacher training. In 1924 Montessori met with Mussolini, who extended his official support for Montessori education as part of the national program. A pre-war group of Montessori supporters, the 'Societa gli Amici del Metodo Montessori' (Society of Friends of the Montessori Method) became the Opera Montessori (Montessori Society) with a government charter, and by 1926 Mussolini was made honorary president of the organization. In 1927 Mussolini established a Montessori teacher training college, and by 1929 the Italian government supported a wide range of Montessori institutions. However, from 1930 on, Montessori and the Italian government came into conflict over financial support and ideological issues, especially after Montessori's lectures on Peace and Education. In 1932 she and her son Mario were placed under political surveillance. Finally, in 1933, she resigned from the Opera Montessori, and in 1934 she left Italy. The Italian government ended Montessori activities in the country in 1936.

Other countries

Montessori lectured in Vienna in 1923, and her lectures were published as Il Bambino in Famiglia, published in English in 1936 as The Child in the Family. Between 1913 and 1936 Montessori schools and societies were also established in France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Serbia, Canada, India, China, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Association Montessori Internationale

In 1929, the first International Montessori Congress was held in Elsinore, Denmark, in conjunction with the Fifth Conference of the New Education Fellowship. At this event, Montessori and her son Mario founded the Association Montessori Internationale or AMI "to oversee the activities of schools and societies all over the world and to supervise the training of teachers." AMI also controlled rights to the publication of Montessori's works and the production of authorized Montessori didactic materials. Early sponsors of the AMI included Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, and Rabindranath Tagore.

Peace

In 1932, Montessori spoke on Peace and Education at the Second International Montessori Congress in Nice, France; this lecture was published by the Bureau International d'Education, Geneva, Switzerland. In 1932, Montessori spoke at the International Peace Club in Geneva, Switzerland, on the theme of Peace and Education. Montessori held peace conferences from 1932 to 1939 in Geneva, Brussels, Copenhagen, and Utrecht, which were later published in Italian as Educazione e Pace, and in English as Education and Peace. In 1949, and again in 1950 and in 1951, Montessori was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving a total of six nominations.

Laren, the Netherlands (1936–1939)

In 1936 Montessori and her family left Barcelona for England, and soon moved to Laren, near Amsterdam. Montessori and her son Mario continued to develop new materials here, including the knobless cylinders, the grammar symbols, and botany nomenclature cards. In the context of rising military tensions in Europe, Montessori increasingly turned her attention to the theme of peace. In 1937, the 6th International Montessori Congress was held on the theme of "Education for Peace", and Montessori called for a "science of peace" and spoke about the role of education of the child as a key to the reform of society. In 1938, Montessori was invited to India by the Theosophical Society to give a training course, and in 1939 she left the Netherlands with her son and collaborator Mario.

1939–1946: Montessori in India

An interest in Montessori had existed in India since 1913, when an Indian student attended the first international course in Rome, and students throughout the 1920s and 1930s had come back to India to start schools and promote Montessori education. The Montessori Society of India was formed in 1926, and Il Metodo was translated into Gujarati and Hindi in 1927. By 1929, Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore had founded many "Tagore-Montessori" schools in India, and Indian interest in Montessori education was strongly represented at the International Congress in 1929. Montessori herself had been personally associated with the Theosophical Society since 1907. The Theosophical movement, motivated to educate India's poor, was drawn to Montessori education as one solution.

Internment in India

Montessori gave a training course at the Theosophical Society in Madrasin 1939, and had intended to give a tour of lectures at various universities, and then return to Europe. However, when Italy entered World War II on the side of the Germans in 1940, Britain interned all Italians in the United Kingdom and its colonies as enemy aliens. In fact only Mario Montessori was interned, while Montessori herself was confined to the Theosophical Society compound, and Mario was reunited with his mother after two months. The Montessoris remained in Madras and Kodaikanal until 1946, although they were allowed to travel in connection with lectures and courses.

Elementary material, cosmic education, and birth to three

During her years in India, Montessori and her son Mario continued to develop her educational method. The term "cosmic education" was introduced to describe an approach for children aged from six to twelve years that emphasized the interdependence of all the elements of the natural world. Children worked directly with plants and animals in their natural environments, and the Montessoris developed lessons, illustrations, charts, and models for use with elementary aged children. Material for botany, zoology, and geography was created. Between 1942 and 1944 these elements were incorporated into an advanced course for work with children from six to twelve years old. This work led to two books: 'Education for a New World' and 'To Educate the Human Potential'.

While in India, Montessori observed children and adolescents of all ages, and turned to the study of infancy. In 1944 she gave a series of thirty lectures on the first three years of life, and a government-recognized training course in Sri Lanka. These lectures were collected in 1949 in the book 'What You Should Know About Your Child'.
In 1944 the Montessoris were granted some freedom of movement and traveled to Sri Lanka. In 1945 Montessori attended the first All India Montessori Conference in Jaipur, and in 1946, with the war over, she and her family returned to Europe.

1946–1952: Final years

In 1946, at the age of 76, Montessori returned to Amsterdam, but she spent the next six years travelling in Europe and India. She gave a training course in London in 1946, and in 1947 opened a training institute there, the Montessori Centre. After a few years this centre became independent of Montessori and continued as the St. Nicholas Training Centre. Also in 1947, she returned to Italy to re-establish the Opera Montessori and gave two more training courses. Later that year she returned to India and gave courses in Adyar and Ahmedabad. These courses led to the book The Absorbent Mind, in which Montessori described the development of the child from birth onwards and presented the concept of the Four Planes of Development. In 1948 Il Metodo was revised again and published in English as 'The Discovery of the Child'. In 1949 she gave a course in Pakistan and the Montessori Pakistan Association was founded.

In 1949 Montessori returned to Europe and attended the 8th International Montessori Congress in Sanremo, Italy, where a model classroom was demonstrated. The same year, the first training course for birth to three years of age, called the 'Scuola Assistenti all'infanzia' (Montessori School for Assistants to Infancy) was established. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Montessori was also awarded the French Legion of Honor, Officer of the Dutch Order of Orange Nassau, and received an Honorary Doctorate of the University of Amsterdam. In 1950 she visited Scandinavia, represented Italy at the UNESCO conference in Florence, presented at the 29th international training course in Perugia, gave a national course in Rome, published a fifth edition of Il Metodo with the new title 'La Scoperta del Bambino' (The Discovery of the Child), and was again nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1951 she participated in the 9th International Montessori Congress in London, gave a training course in Innsbruck, was nominated for the third time for the Nobel Peace Prize. Montessori died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 6, 1952 at the age of 81 in Noordwijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.

Legacy

Maria Montessori and Montessori schools were featured on coins and banknotes of Italy, and on stamps of the Netherlands, India, Italy, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka,
Educational philosophy and pedagogy

Early influences

Montessori's theory and philosophy of education were initially heavily influenced by the work of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, Édouard Séguin, Friedrich Fröbel, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, all of whom emphasized sensory exploration and manipulatives. Montessori's first work with mentally disabled children, at the Orthophrenic School in 1900–1901, used the methods of Itard and Séguin, training children in physical activities such as walking and the use of a spoon, training their senses by exposure to sights, smells, and tactile experiences, and introducing letters in tactile form. These activities developed into the Montessori "Sensorial" materials.

Scientific pedagogy

Montessori considered her work in the Orthophrenic School and her subsequent psychological studies and research work in elementary schools as "scientific pedagogy", a concept current in the study of education at the time. She called for not just observation and measurement of students, but for the development of new methods which would transform them. "Scientific education, therefore, was that which, while based on science, modified and improved the individual." Further, education itself should be transformed by science: "The new methods if they were run on scientific lines, ought to change completely both the school and its methods, ought to give rise to a new form of education."

Casa dei Bambini

Working with non-disabled children in the Casa dei Bambini in 1907, Montessori began to develop her own pedagogy. The essential elements of her educational theory emerged from this work, described in 'The Montessori Method' in 1912 and in 'The Discovery of the Child' in 1948. Her method was founded on the observation of children at liberty to act freely in an environment prepared to meet their needs. Montessori came to the conclusion that the children's spontaneous activity in this environment revealed an internal program of development, and that the appropriate role of the educator was to remove obstacles to this natural development and provide opportunities for it to proceed and flourish.

Accordingly, the schoolroom was equipped with child-sized furnishings, "practical life" activities such as sweeping and washing tables, and teaching material that Montessori had developed herself. Children were given freedom to choose and carry out their own activities, at their own paces and following their own inclinations. In these conditions, Montessori made a number of observations which became the foundation of her work. First, she observed great concentration in the children and spontaneous repetition of chosen activities. She also observed a strong tendency in the children to order their own environment, straightening tables and shelves and ordering materials. As children chose some activities over others, Montessori refined the materials she offered to them. Over time, the children began to exhibit what she called "spontaneous discipline".

Further development and Montessori education today

Montessori continued to develop her pedagogy and her model of human development as she expanded her work and extended it to older children. She saw human behavior as guided by universal, innate characteristics in human psychology which her son and collaborator Mario Montessori identified as "human tendencies" in 1957. In addition, she observed four distinct periods, or "planes", in human development, extending from birth to six years, from six to twelve, from twelve to eighteen, and from eighteen to twenty-four. She saw different characteristics, learning modes, and developmental imperatives active in each of these planes, and called for educational approaches specific to each period. Over the course of her lifetime, Montessori developed pedagogical methods and materials for the first two planes, from birth to age twelve, and wrote and lectured about the third and fourth planes. Maria created over 4,000 Montessori classrooms across the world and her books were translated into many different languages for the training of new educators. Her methods are installed in hundreds of public and private schools across the United States.

Montessori method

One of Montessori's many accomplishments was the Montessori method. This is a method of education for young children that stresses the development of a child's own initiative and natural abilities, especially through practical play. This method allowed children to develop at their own pace and provided educators with a new understanding of child development. Montessori's book, The Montessori Method, presents the method in detail. Educators who followed this model set up special environments to meet the needs of students in three developmentally-meaningful age groups: 2–2.5 years, 2.5–6 years, and 6–12 years. The students learn through activities that involve exploration, manipulations, order, repetition, abstraction, and communication. Teachers encourage children in the first two age groups to use their senses to explore and manipulate materials in their immediate environment. Children in the last age group deal with abstract concepts based on their newly developed powers of reasoning, imagination, and creativity.

Works

Montessori published a number of books, articles, and pamphlets during her lifetime, often in Italian, but sometimes first in English. According to Kramer, "the major works published before 1920 (The Montessori Method, Pedagogical Anthropology, The Advanced Montessori Method—Spontaneous Activity in Education and The Montessori Elementary Material), were written in Italian by her and translated under her supervision." However, many of her later works were transcribed from her lectures, often in translation, and only later published in book form.

Montessori's major works are given here in order of their first publication, with significant revisions and translations.

• (1909) Il Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica applicato all'educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini
o revised in 1913, 1926, and 1935; revised and reissued in 1950 as La scoperta del bambino
o (1912) English edition: The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children's Houses
o (1948) Revised and expanded English edition issued as 'The Discovery of the Child'
o (1950) Revised and reissued in Italian as La scoperta del bambino
• (1910) Antropologia Pedagogica
o (1913) English edition: Pedagogical Anthropology
• (1914) Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook
o (1921) Italian edition: Manuale di pedagogia scientifica
• (1916) L'autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari
o (1917) English edition: The Advanced Montessori Method, Vol. I: Spontaneous Activity in Education; Vol. II: The Montessori Elementary Material.
• (1922) I bambini viventi nella Chiesa
• (1923) Das Kind in der Familie (German)
o (1929) English edition: The Child in the Family
o (1936) Italian edition: Il bambino in famiglia
• (1934) Psico Geométria (Spanish)
o (2011) English edition: Psychogeometry
• (1934) Psico Aritmética
o (1971) Italian edition: Psicoaritmetica
• (1936) L'Enfant(French)
o (1936) English edition: The Secret of Childhood
o (1938) Il segreto dell'infanzia
• (1948) De l'enfant à l'adolescent
o (1948) English edition: From Childhood to Adolescence
o (1949) Dall'infanzia all'adolescenza
• (1949) Educazione e pace
o (1949) English edition: Peace and Education
• (1949) Formazione dell'uomo
o (1949) English edition: The Formation of Man
• (1949) The Absorbent Mind
o (1952) La mente del bambino. Mente assorbente
• (1947) Education for a New World
o (1970) Italian edition: Educazione per un mondo nuovo
• (1947) To Educate the Human Potential
o (1970) Italian edition: Come educare il potenziale umano

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Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-07 00:16:49

451) Nikolay Benardos

Nikolay Nikolayevich Benardos (1842–1905) was a Russian inventor of Greek origin who in 1881 introduced carbon arc welding, which was the first practical arc welding method.

Biography

Nikolay Benardos was born on July 8, 1842 in Benardosivka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (now Mostove Bratske Raion Mykolaiv Oblast Ukraine).
During the 1860s and 1870s he investigated the electric arc, and he worked on this in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kineshma. Nikolay Benardos was the first to apply an electric arc to heat the edges of the steel sheets to the plastic state. He demonstrated a new way of metal compounds in Paris in 1881.

He could not stay in the capital due to his financial state of affairs and in 1899 he moved to Fastiv (now Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine).

He died at the age of 63 in Fastiv.

M. M. Benardos Museum in Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine

The museum was established in Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi (Ukraine) in 1981 to commemorate 100 years after inventing the Elektrogefest. The museum consists of five rooms: a study, living room, workshop, laboratory and the exhibition hall.

Who invented electric arc welding?

Nikolay Nikolaevich Benardos was born on July 8, 1842 in the Kherson province, in a family with rich military traditions. Already in childhood, the future inventor showed great interest in various crafts, which was greatly facilitated by the fact that his father had several small workshops. His favorite activities were plumbing and blacksmithing.

In 1862, at the insistence of his father, Nikolai entered the medical faculty of Kiev University. His first invention - the dental filling - falls on student years. The seal was silver. Benardos' first patient was a batman, whom he had rid of toothache with a silver filling.

Four years later, he transferred to the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy in Moscow in the Department of Agricultural Sciences. During his studies, he invented and tested many devices. After three years of study, Benardos leaves the academy, and devotes all his time to inventing, living in a family estate.

Virtually all his funds Benardos allowed either to provide technical support for his research, or to arrange the life of the surrounding peasants. He provided extensive medical care to residents of nearby villages, organized a pharmacy, where he gave out medicines free of charge.

The most important invention that brought him worldwide fame was the method of electric arc welding developed by him in 1882. In addition to welding, Benardos’s method was also suitable for electrical cutting of metals.

He owns one of the first projects of the AC power station on the Neva River (1892). In the same year, at the 4th Electric Exhibition in St. Petersburg, Benardos was awarded the highest award of the Russian Technical Society - the gold medal for successful use of the arc in the electric welding invented by him. In 1899, he was awarded the title of honorary electrical engineer.

Nikolai Nikolayevich Benardos died on September 21, 1905 in Fastov, Kiev province.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-09 00:29:56

452) Seth Boyden

Seth Boyden (November 17, 1788 – March 31, 1870) was an American inventor.

Life

He was born in Foxboro, Massachusetts, on November 17, 1798. He had a brother, Uriah A. Boyden.

He worked as a watchmaker and moved to Newark, New Jersey.

Boyden perfected the process for making patent leather, created malleable iron, invented a nail-making machine, and built his own steamboat. He is also credited with having invented a cut off switch for steam engines and a method for producing zinc from ore. At the time of his death, he told friends that he had, even at that time, enough experiments on hand to last two whole lifetimes.

In 1818, Boyden received a piece of German manufactured high-gloss leather (said to be a German military cap front) from a local carriage manufacturer and used that to investigate the possibility of creating a version of leather in the United States that was treated in such a way that the material would be decidedly more dressy than work boots and similar leather goods, but retained its desirable qualities of protection and durability. To reverse engineer the European leather, Boyden set up a shed at the Malleable Cast Iron Foundry of Condit & Bowles at 25 Orange Street in Newark, New Jersey and ultimately discovered a way to produce his own patent leather. Using a formula that was based on a series of treatments using layers of linseed oil-based coats, the new shiny leather began commercial production on September 20, 1819. Boyden’s efforts resulted in the production of glossy leather that quickly caught on as a complement for formal dress. Despite its name, Boyden never patented his process.

Boyden began his work with malleable iron in 1820, when he was 32 years old. From observing the behavior of iron that stuck to the walls of his grandfather's forge, he had developed a theory about the heat treatment of iron. He completed his research in 1826, and won an award ("Premium No. 4") from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia two years later, who noted that Boyden's annealed cast iron specimen No. 363, containing an assortment of buckles, bits, and other castings, were "remarkable for their smoothness and malleability" and "the first attempt in this country to anneal cast iron for general purposes." This invention, now called blackheart iron, is one of the most important contributions to metallurgy by an American.

Several sources state that Boyden "made the first American daguerreotype" and this statement appears on a plaque at the base of a Boyden statue in Newark's Washington Park. While it has long been accepted that D.W. Seager of New York City produced the first daguerreotype in America, it is unclear which other Americans may have been experimenting with the process prior to a public display of Seager's daguerreotypes in the Summer of 1839. A daguerrean camera built by Boyden still exists in the collection of the Newark Museum.

Boyden rarely patented his inventions, preferring instead to take individual contracts and to build and sell off businesses. He did make large sums from this, but not enough to support his research and to provide for his old age. During the last 15 years of his life, Boyden lived in near-poverty in Hilton, New Jersey (now Maplewood, New Jersey) and developed a hybrid strawberry known as the Hilton strawberry.

Honors

Seth Boyden's name is found on an elementary school in Maplewood, New Jersey, and a complex of public housing projects in Newark, New Jersey. Additionally, a statue of Boyden stands in Newark's Washington Park. This statue is the first one raised in the United States which honored an engineer.

Additional Information

Seth Boyden, “one of America’s greatest inventors,” according to Thomas Edison, spent the last 15 years of his life in “Middleville”—what is now Hilton. Although Newark was the site of most of his innovations and inventions, it is in the Hilton neighborhood of Maplewood where he is honored by both “Boyden Avenue” and “Seth Boyden Elementary School.” The simple farmhouse where he spent the last years of his life still exists, adjacent the school that bears his name.

Seth Boyden was born to Seth and Susan Boyden in 1788 in Foxborough, Massachusetts. During his youth, he worked on his father’s farm, and learned about cast iron and hand-wrought iron at his grandfather’s iron furnace. His skill at mechanics and engraving was apparent when he was just a teenager. Although he lacked formal education, he educated himself in the fields of chemistry, optics, metallurgy, astronomy, electricity, geology and botany.

Boyden’s achievements range from inventing a machine to make nails (at the age of 21), a machine to split leather hides, innovations to the processes of plating silver and making “patent leather.” He produced the first daguerreotype camera in this country after reading a description of the process. His most famous invention was the process for making malleable cast iron. Boyden also constructed three steam locomotives and invented a cut-off valve for steam engines.

Boyden married Abigail Sherman in 1814. The following year, at the age of 27, he came to Newark, New Jersey and set up a harness and leather shop—the beginning of 55 years of contribution to American industry. After years of experimenting in a small forge he had built in his house, Boyden discovered the process for making malleable cast iron. This is considered his most valuable invention because it freed American industry from its dependence on European iron. Boyden’s method was one of the most important steps in the development of modern steel.

Seth Boyden established a small factory and employed over sixty men to operate its furnaces. By 1835, Boyden sold his iron business and began to work on steam locomotives. The Morris and Essex Railroad, the forerunner of the Lackawanna, needed an engine that was strong enough to pull a train up the steep grade between Newark and Orange. After three years, Boyden produced the “Orange” and the “Essex”—two steam engines with mechanical improvements he had invented that gave them the power to climb steep grades. Boyden even built a steam engine for a railroad in Cuba—the “Cometa.”

In 1850, at 62 years of age and accompanied by his son, Seth Boyden crossed the Isthmus of Panama on a donkey and in one of the earliest steamboats on the Pacific, embarked on an adventure—the California Gold Rush. After little success in this endeavor, father and son returned to Newark all but penniless, but welcomed home with a salute of guns in Washington Park.

Boyden’s lack of interest in wealth was well known. He was a man of great generosity, who preferred to share his ideas rather than hold on to them. Too busy to apply for patents, Boyden lost potential income from his many inventions. Only once did he apply for a patent and that was for one of his latest inventions—a hat-body forming machine. Typical of his generous nature, Boyden turned the patent over to a manufacturer who later employed him in a hat factory for $50 a month.

Boyden’s impoverished state compelled several Newark businessmen who had profited by his inventions, to purchase a small farm and house in Middleville, just several miles from Newark. This was intended as a home for his old age. Boyden moved there in 1855 at the age of 67, and in this community, spent the last 15 years of his life. He had a small workshop beyond the house where children brought him their pennies to be nickel-plated. In this little shop, Boyden continued to tinker and invent. He was fascinated with lightening and set up an electric barometer on the roof of his house. Local farmers paid attention to his predications about the weather, which were often correct. Boyden continued to work at the hat factory in Newark in order to support himself.

While living in Middleville Boyden became interested in horticulture and he turned his efforts to the cultivation of strawberries. In order to improve the size and flavor of local strawberries, Boyden experimented with hybridization. He set out plants of the large, sour type in alternate rows with those of small and sweet berries. The “Boyden” and the “Hilton” strawberries were the result. Other varieties developed by Seth Boyden were “Boyden’s Mammoth”, “Green Prolific”, and “Agriculturalist.” “Boyden’s No. 30” became widely known as the best of them all. Because the normal process of producing seeds took so long, Boyden manipulated the soil by adding a freezing mixture. He was able to do in 48 hours what typically would take all winter. Typical of this generous man, Boyden gave plants to all of his neighbors as well as advice about growing them. Soon it seemed that all Boyden’s friends and neighbors were growing strawberries. Elias W. Durand of Irvington became so proficient under Boyden’s direction, that several years after Boyden’s death, his berries took medals at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.

Henry Jerolamon bought the Boyden house after Seth Boyden’s death and found three rows of “Boyden’s No. 30” berries. Jerolamon had great success with his strawberries and was known as the “Strawberry King.” Strawberries were still being grown commercially in Hilton as late as 1915, however, the yield became progressively less, until it took so many plants to produce a quart of berries, it was now longer economical.

Not long before he died, Boyden told a friend “I have enough ideas to last two more lifetimes.” Boyden died in Middleville on March 31, 1870 at age 82. His funeral was at the Universalist Church in Newark and he was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Newark. A movement to erect a statue to the memory of Seth Boyden began the year after his death. The site chosen was a spot in the center of Washington Park in Newark, not far from the site of his old workshop. The statue was unveiled May 3, 1890.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-11 01:22:02

453) Hugh Bradner

Hugh Bradner (November 5, 1915 – May 5, 2008) was an American physicist at the University of California who is credited with inventing the neoprene wetsuit, which helped to revolutionize scuba diving.

A graduate of Ohio's Miami University, he received his doctorate from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, in 1941. He worked at the US Naval Ordnance Laboratory during World War II, where he researched naval mines. In 1943, he was recruited by Robert Oppenheimer to join the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory. There, he worked with scientists including Luis Alvarez, John von Neumann and George Kistiakowsky on the development of the high explosives and exploding-bridgewire detonators required by atomic bombs.

After the war, Bradner took a position studying high-energy physics at the University of California, Berkeley, under Luis Alvarez. Bradner investigated the problems encountered by frogmen staying in cold water for long periods of time. He developed a neoprene suit which could trap the water between the body and the neoprene, and thereby keep them warm. He became known as the "father of the wetsuit."

Bradner worked on the 1951 Operation Greenhouse nuclear test series on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. He joined the Scripps Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics as a geophysicist in 1961. He remained there for the rest of his career, becoming a full professor in 1963, and retiring in 1980. In retirement, continued to work both on oceanographic research, as well as on the DUMAND deep ocean neutrino astronomy project.

Early life

Hugh Bradner was born in Tonopah, Nevada, on November 5, 1915, but he was raised in Findlay, Ohio. His father, Donald Byal Bradner, was briefly director of the Chemical Warfare Service at Maryland's Edgewood math. His mother was Agnes Claire Bradner née Mead. He had an older brother, Mead Bradner. Bradner graduated from Ohio's Miami University in 1936 and later received his doctorate from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, in 1941, writing his thesis on "Electron-optical studies of the photoelectric effect" under the supervision of William Vermillion Houston.

Manhattan Project

After receiving his doctorate from Caltech, Bradner worked at the US Naval Ordnance Laboratory where he researched naval mines until 1943. He was recruited by Robert Oppenheimer to join the Manhattan Project in 1943 at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, which helped to develop the first atomic bomb. Bradner helped to develop a wide range of technology needed for the bomb, including research on the high explosives and exploding-bridgewire detonators needed to implode the atomic bomb, developed the bomb's triggering mechanism, and even helped design the new town around the laboratory. He worked closely with some of the most prominent scientists including Luis Alvarez, John von Neumann and George Kistiakowsky. He witnessed the Trinity test, the first nuclear weapons test, at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945.

Bradner met his future wife, Marjorie Hall Bradner, who was also working as a secretary on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory. The couple were married in Los Alamos in 1943. Security at the top secret facility was so tight that neither Bradner's nor Hall's parents were allowed to attend the ceremony, though Oppenheimer was among the wedding guests. The couple remained together for over 65 years until she died on April 10, 2008 at the age of 89.

Wetsuit

After the war, Bradner took a position studying high-energy physics at the University of California, Berkeley under Luis Alvarez, whom he had worked with at the Manhattan Project. He remained at the University until 1961. He worked on the 1951 atomic bombing test on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which was part of the Operation Greenhouse nuclear test series.

Bradner's job at Berkeley required him to do a number of underwater dives. He had previously talked to United States Navy frogmenduring World War II concerning the problems of staying in cold water for long periods of time, which causes the diver to lose large amounts of body heat quickly. He worked on developing a new suit that would counter this in the basement of his family's home on Scenic Avenue in Berkeley, California, and researched the new wetsuit at a conference in Coronado, California, in December 1951. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the wetsuit was invented in 1952. Bradner and other engineers founded the Engineering Development Company (EDCO) in order to develop it. He and his colleagues tested several versions and prototypes of the wetsuit at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Scripps scientist and engineer Willard Bascom advised Bradner to use neoprene for the suit material, which proved successful. He found that it "would trap the water between the body and the neoprene, and the water would heat up to body temperature and keep you warm".

A 1951 letter showed that Bradner clearly understood that the insulation in such a suit was not provided by the water between the suit and the skin, but rather that this layer of water next to the skin, if trapped, would quickly heat to skin temperature, if the material in the suit were insulative. Thus, the suit only needed to limit purging by fresh cold water, and it did not need to be dry to work. He applied for a U.S. patent for the wetsuit, but his patent application was turned down due to its similar design with the flight suit. The United States Navy also did not adopt the new wetsuits because of worries that the neoprene in the wetsuits might make its swimmers easier to spot by underwater sonar and, thus, could not exclusively profit from his invention.

Bradner and his company, EDCO, tried to sell his wetsuits in the consumer market. However, he failed to successfully penetrate the wetsuit market the way others have done - including Bob Meistrell and Bill Meistrell, the founders of Body Glove, and Jack O'Neill. Various claims have been made over the years that it was the O'Neill or the Meistrell brothers who actually invented the wetsuit instead of Bradner, but recent researchers have concluded that it was Bradner who created the original wetsuit, and not his competitors. In 2005 the ‘Los Angeles Times’ concluded that Bradner was the "father of the wetsuit", and a research paper published by Carolyn Rainey at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1998 provided corroborating evidence.

Later career and life

Bradner joined the Scripps Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics as a geophysicist in 1961. He became a full professor in 1963 and retired in 1980. He remained interested in oceanography, scuba diving, seashell collecting and the outdoors throughout his later years, and continued to work both on oceanographic research, as well as on the DUMAND deep ocean neutrino astronomy project, which combined his two careers in physics and oceanography.
Hugh Bradner died at the age of 92 at his home in San Diego, California, on May 5, 2008, from complications of pneumonia. He was survived by his daughter, Bari Cornet, three grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-13 00:58:43

454) Harry Coover

Harry Wesley Coover Jr. (March 6, 1917 – March 26, 2011) was the inventor of Eastman 910, commonly known as Super Glue.

Life and career

Coover was born in Newark, Delaware, and received his Bachelor of Science from Hobart College before earning his Master of Science and Ph. D. from Cornell University. He worked as a chemist for Eastman Kodak from 1944–1973 and as Vice President of the company from 1973-1984. He later moved to Kingsport, Tennessee, where he spent the rest of his life.

Superglue

In 1942, while searching for materials to make clear plastic gun sights, Coover and his team at Eastman Kodak examined cyanoacrylates, a material that was used during both World Wars (1914-1918; 1939-1945) as an alternative to stitches on large cuts and wounds,[citation needed] rejecting them as too sticky. Nine years later, Coover was overseeing Kodak chemists investigating heat-resistant polymers for jet canopies when cyanoacrylates were once again tested and proved too sticky. That time around, however, Coover recognized that he had discovered a unique adhesive. In 1958, the adhesive, marketed by Kodak as Super Glue, was introduced for sale.

Generally, cyanoacrylate is an acrylic resin which rapidly polymerises in the presence of water (specifically hydroxide ions), forming long, strong chains, joining the bonded surfaces together. Because the presence of moisture causes the glue to set, exposure to moisture in the air can cause a tube or bottle of glue to become unusable over time. To prevent an opened container of glue from setting before use, it must be stored in an airtight jar or bottle with a package of silica gel. Another convenient way is attaching a hypodermic needle on the opening of glue. After applying, residual glue soon clogs the needle, keeping moisture out. The clog is removed by heating the needle (e.g. by a lighter) before use.

Cyanoacrylate is used as a forensic tool to capture latent fingerprints on non-porous surfaces like glass, plastic, etc. Cyanoacrylate is warmed to produce fumes which react with the invisible fingerprint residues and atmospheric moisture to form a white polymer (polycyanoacrylate) on the fingerprint ridges. The ridges can then be recorded. The developed fingerprints are, on most surfaces (except on white plastic or similar), visible to the unaided eye. Invisible or poorly visible prints can be further enhanced by applying a luminescent or non-luminescent stain.

While much attention was given to the glue's capacity to bond solid materials, Coover was also the first to recognize and patent cyanoacrylates as a tissue adhesive. First used in the Vietnam War to temporarily patch the internal organs of injured soldiers until conventional surgery could be performed, tissue adhesives are now used worldwide for a variety of sutureless surgical applications.

Other inventions

Coover held 460 patents and Super Glue was just one of his many discoveries. He viewed "programmed innovation," a management methodology emphasizing research and development, among his most important work. Implemented at Kodak, programmed innovation resulted in the introduction of 320 new products and sales growth from $1.8 billion to $2.5 billion. Coover later formed an international management consulting practice, advising corporate clients around the world on programmed innovation methodology.

Coover received the Southern Chemist Man of the Year Award for his outstanding accomplishments in individual innovation and creativity. He also held the Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management, the Maurice Holland Award, the IRI Achievement Award, and was a medalist for the Industrial Research Institute. In 1983, Coover was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 2004, Coover was inducted into the 'National Inventor's Hall of Fame'. In 2010, Coover received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Coover died of natural causes at his home in Kingsport, Tennessee, on March 26, 2011.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-15 00:51:20

455) Édouard Branly

Édouard Eugène Désiré Branly (23 October 1844 – 24 March 1940) was a French inventor, physicist and professor at the Institut Catholique de Paris. He is primarily known for his early involvement in wireless telegraphy and his invention of the Branly coherer around 1890.

Biography

He was born on 23 October 1844. Édouard Branly died in 1940. His funeral was at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris and was attended by the President of France, Albert Lebrun. He was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Coherer

Temistocle Calzecchi-Onesti's experiments with tubes of metal filings, as reported in "Il Nuovo Cimento" in 1884, led to the development of the first radio wave detector, the coherer, by Branly some years later. It was the first widely used detector for radio communication. This consisted of iron filings contained in an insulating tube with two electrodes that will conduct an electric current under the action of an applied electrical signal. The operation of the coherer is based upon the large electrical contact resistance offered to the passage of electric current by loose metal filings, which decreases when direct current or alternating current is applied between the terminals of the coherer at a predetermined voltage. The mechanism is based on the thin layers of oxide covering all the filings, which is highly resistive. The oxide layers are broken down when a voltage is applied of the right magnitude, causing the coherer to "latch" into its low-resistance state until the voltage is removed and the coherer is physically tapped.

Branly's coherer

The coherer became the basis for radio reception, and remained in widespread use for about ten years, until about 1907. British radio pioneer Oliver Lodge made the coherer into a practical receiver by adding a "decoherer" which tapped the coherer after each reception to dislodge clumped filings, thus restoring the device's sensitivity. It was further developed by Guglielmo Marconi, then replaced about 1907 by crystal detectors.

In 1890, Branly demonstrated what he later called the "radio-conductor", which Lodge in 1893 named the coherer, the first sensitive device for detecting radio waves. Shortly after the experiments of Hertz, Dr. Branly discovered that loose metal filings, which in a normal state have a high electrical resistance, lose this resistance in the presence of electric oscillations and become practically conductors of electricity. This Branly showed by placing metal filings in a glass box or tube, and making them part of an ordinary electric circuit. According to the common explanation, when electric waves are set up in the neighborhood of this circuit, electromotive forces are generated in it which appear to bring the filings more closely together, that is, to cohere, and thus their electrical resistance decreases, from which cause this piece of apparatus was termed by Sir Oliver Lodge a coherer. Hence the receiving instrument, which may be a telegraph relay, that normally would not indicate any sign of current from the small battery, can be operated when electric oscillations are set up.[ Prof. Branly further found that when the filings had once cohered they retained their low resistance until shaken apart, for instance, by tapping on the tube.

In On the Changes in Resistance of Bodies under Different Electrical Conditions, he described how the electrical circuit was made by means of two narrow strips of copper parallel to the short sides of the rectangular plate, and forming good contact with it by means of screws. When the two copper strips were raised the plate was cut out of the circuit. He also used as conductors fine metallic filings, which he sometimes mixed with insulating liquids. The filings were placed in a tube of glass or ebonite, and were held between two metal plates. When the electrical circuit, consisting of a Daniell cell, a galvanometer of high resistance, and the metallic conductor, consisting of the ebonite plate, and the sheet of copper, or of the tube containing the filings, was completed, only a very small current flowed; but there was a sudden diminution of the resistance which was proved by a large deviation of the galvanometer needle when one or more electric discharges were produced in the neighbourhood of the circuit. In order to produce these discharges a small Wimshurst influence machine may be used, with or without a condenser, or a Ruhmkorff coil. The action of the electrical discharge diminishes as the distance increases; but he observed it easily, and without taking any special precautions, at a distance of several yards. By using a Wheatstone bridge, he observed this action at a distance of 20 yards, although the machine producing the sparks was working in a room separated from the galvanometer and the bridge by three large apartments, and the noise of the sparks was not audible. The changes of resistance were considerable with the conductors described. They varied, for instance, from several millions of ohms to 2000, or even to 100, from 150,000 to 500 ohms, from 50 to 35, and so on. The diminution of resistance was not momentary, and sometimes it was found to remain for twenty-four hours. Another method of making the test was, by connecting the electrodes of a capillary electrometer to the two poles of a Daniell cell with a sulphate of cadmium solution. The displacement of mercury which takes place when the cell is short-circuited, only takes place very slowly when an ebonite plate, covered with a sheet of copper of high resistance, is inserted between one of the poles of the cell, and the corresponding electrode of the electrometer; but when sparks are produced by a machine, the mercury is rapidly thrown into the capillary tube owing to the sudden diminution in the resistance of the plate.

Branly found that, upon examination of the conditions necessary to produce the phenomena, the following data:

The circuit need not be closed to produce the result.

The passage of an induced current in the body produces a similar effect to that of a spark at a distance.

An induction-coil with two equal lengths of wire was used, a current is sent through the primary while the secondary forms part of a circuit containing the tube with filings and a galvanometer. The two induced currents caused the resistance of the filings to vary.

When working with continuous currents the passage of a strong current lowers the resistance of the body for feeble currents.

Summing up, he stated that in all these tests the use of ebonite plates covered with copper or mixtures of copper and tin was less satisfactory than the use of filings; with the plates he was unable to obtain the initial resistance of the body after the action of the spark or of the current, while with the tubes and filings the resistance could be brought back to its normal value by striking a few sharp blows on the support of the tube.

Honours

Branly was nominated thrice for a Nobel Prize, but never received it. In 1911, he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences, winning over his rival Marie Curie. Both had opponents in the Academy: she a female and he a devout catholic, who had left Sorbonne for a chair in the Catholic University of Paris. Branly eventually won the election by two votes. In 1936 he was elected to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Branly was named as Marconi's inspiration during the first radio communication across the English Channel, when Marconi's message was: "Mr. Marconi sends to Mr. Branly his regards over the Channel through the wireless telegraph, this nice achievement being partly the result of Mr. Branly's remarkable work."

Branly's discovery of radioconduction was named an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing in 2010.

Legacy

The quai Branly – a road that runs alongside the River Seine in Paris – is named after Branly. It is the name of this road, not of Branly himself, that led to the naming of the Musée du quai Branly.

Branly is also commemorated by a technical High School (lycée) in Châtellerault, a commune in the Vienne department in the Poitou-Charentes region.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-15 22:41:48

456) Cyrille Duquet

Cyrille Duquet (31 March 1841—1 December 1922) was a Canadian goldsmith, flutist, and inventor in Quebec. Originally working in the field of clocks and watches, he was also a passionate jewelry collector.

On 1 February 1878, he was granted a Canadian patent for a telephone receiver, than may have been used in early types of handsets. This patent was for a new transmitter based on a cluster of permanent magnets that improved signal clarity, and a new mouthpiece design. Later, Duquet worked on combining transmitter and receiver in one unit, arranged both on each end of a board. The first telephone installed in Montréal was one Duquet designed, and he followed with installing phones and phone lines in the area.

At about the same time as Alexander Graham Bell, he developed a telephone connecting his home and shop. Bell's father, Melville Bell, responsible for the Canadian interests of Graham Bell, who had recently moved to Boston, offered Duquet to sell him the rights to the telephone on Canadian soil, for the sum of 20,000 dollars. Unable to raise this colossal sum, Duquet abandoned all interests to the Canadian Telephone Company in 1882.

Fleetford Charles Sise, vice-president of the Canadian Telephone Company, gave notice because he believed Cyrille Duquet plagiarized Bell. Mr. Duquet was for $5000, but got away with damages of about $10; he sold his invention for the sum of $2,100 provided to waive any project in the world of telephony. However, it is left to him the undisputed paternity - and recognized - the handset in use worldwide. A photo of his phone is available in the collections of Libraries and Archives Canada and the original phone is currently stored at Bell Canada. An exact replica of the apparatus manufactured and marketed by Cyrille Duquet in 1878 was made by Bell Canada as a gift to Duquet's granddaughter.

The main clock of the National Assembly of Quebec bear his signature. That of Saint-Jean-Baptiste library is also his creation. A government building, located on Boulevard Charest in Quebec City, was named in his honor, and Quebec Street bears his name. He fabricated in 1883 the black rod, symbol of authority, today preserved at the National Assembly in Québec city.

Excellent flutist, Cyrille Duquet was a member of the Septet Haydn, virtuoso ensemble of Quebec, some of whom have joined the Société symphonique de Québec (now Quebec Symphony Orchestra) in 1903 .

He was a municipal councilor in Quebec François Langelier and Simon-Napoléon Parent between 1883 and 1890 and from 1900 to 1908.

Biography of Cyrille Duquet

Early Life

Cyrille Duquet inventor of Telephone handset was a very famous inventor and scientist who belonged to the Canadian nationality. He is known best for his invention of telephone handset and it can be said that this invention changed the history and dimensions of modern telephony. Though he is not known for much of his work in the field of telephony but his invented handsets are still used all over the world. He was born in the year of 1841 in the month of March on 31st day and his place of birth was as Quebec, French which is located in Northern Canada. He was not only an inventor but in spite of that, he was also a very famous flutist, musician, politician and with that a goldsmith too.

Interest in different Fields

Though there is not much information found about his educational career but it is clear that, he spent a very successful life working in different fields and as a different profession. His interests were politics and music too, in addition with that of science and inventions. As a politician, he had a successful career because he used to be a municipal councilor over there in his home town. He worked on this position for two times in his whole life which were as; first period was from the year of 1883 to 1890 and then later after from the year of 1900 to that of 1908. His interest in music was as that he was also a member of septet Hayden there in Quebec and it shows his passion about both of his interests as mentioned above.

Inventor of Telephone Handset

In the same days, when Graham Bell had invented a telephone, he had made a same invention but that was a telephone handset and he had developed it to connect his shop and home. He was not awarded the patent initially for this invention.

Telephone Handset

Later on, he tried to buy the invention rights from Graham Bell but he asked for such an amount, which was not in his range hence he kept it left and starting working on the betterment of his invention. His invention was considered as something without a good future at that time, but it is quite a strange thing that it is still used all over the world but the telephone of Graham Bell is out of fashion from a long time. The most important thing in his telephone was that of a handset which could be used by the user to hear the voice of the caller by lifting it easily to the ear. Later after, these handsets were also combined a transmitter to improve the strength and quality.

Death

He died in the year of 1922 in the month of December on 1st day. He was almost 81 years of age at the time of his death.

He died in Quebec, on 1 December 1922 at the age of 81 years. He was buried in Notre-Dame-de-Belmont.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-17 00:14:07

457) Fe del Mundo

Fe Villanueva del Mundo, (born Fé Primitiva del Mundo y Villanueva; 27 November 1911 – 6 August 2011) was a Filipina pediatrician, the founder of the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines. Her pioneering work in pediatrics in the Philippines while in active medical practice spanned eight decades. She gained international recognition, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1977. In 1980, she was conferred the rank and title of National Scientist of the Philippines, and in 2010, she was conferred the Order of Lakandula.

Early life and education

Del Mundo was born at 120 Cabildo Street in the district of Intramuros, Manila, on November 27, 1911. She was one of eight children of Bernardo del Mundo and Paz (née Villanueva; d. 1925). Her family home was opposite the Manila Cathedral. Bernardo was a prominent lawyer from Marinduque who served one term in the Philippine Assembly representing the province of Tayabas. Three of her eight siblings died in infancy, while an older sister died from appendicitis at age 11. The death of her older sister, who had made known her desire to become a doctor for the poor, spurred young del Mundo toward the medical profession.

In 1926, del Mundo enrolled at the UP College of Medicine, at the original campus of the University of the Philippines in Manila. She earned her medical degree in 1933, graduating as class valedictorian. She passed the medical board exam that same year, placing third among the examinees. Her exposure while in medical school to various health conditions afflicting children in the provinces, particularly in Marinduque, led her to choose pediatrics as her specialization.

Postgraduate studies

After del Mundo graduated from UPM, President Manuel Quezon offered to pay for her further training, in a medical field of her choice, at any school in the United States. Del Mundo has sometimes been said to have been Harvard Medical School's first woman student, the first woman enrolled in pediatrics at the school, or its first Asian student. However, according to an archivist at Harvard's Center for the History of Medicine,

“While Dr. Del Mundo was remarkable in many ways, the evidence that she was a medical student at Harvard Medical School is largely anecdotal and not well sourced. As far as my research using Harvard Medical School catalogs and records shows, she earned her Medical Degree from the University of the Philippines Manila in 1933, and in 1936, came to Boston to further her studies in pediatrics. The fact that Harvard Medical School did not admit women students and Dr. Del Mundo already earned her medical degree suggests that she was not admitted as a student, even in error, and I cannot find proof that she graduated from Harvard Medical School ... Instead, it seems more likely that she completed graduate work at Harvard Medical School through an appointment at Boston Children’s Hospital ... del Mundo is listed as an Assistant Physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, and a Research Fellow in Pediatrics in 1940. Further suggesting that she was a graduate student and not a medical student, in her autobiographical statement in Women Physicians of the World (1977), Dr. Del Mundo explains "I spent three years of my postgraduate studies at the Children’s Hospital in Boston and at Harvard Medical School, one year at the University of Chicago, six months at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and short terms in various pediatric institutions, all to round out my training." “

Del Mundo returned to Harvard Medical School's Children's Hospital in 1939 for a two-year research fellowship. She also enrolled at the Boston University School of Medicine, earning a Master's degree in bacteriology in 1940.

Medical practice

Del Mundo returned to the Philippines in 1941, shortly before the Japanese invasion of the country. She joined the International Red Cross and volunteered to care for child-internees then detained at the University of Santo Tomas internment camp for foreign nationals. She set up a makeshift hospice within the internment camp, and her activities led her to be known as "The Angel of Santo Tomas". After the Japanese authorities shut down the hospice in 1943, del Mundo was asked by Manila mayor León Guinto to head a children's hospital under the auspices of the city government. The hospital was later converted into a full-care medical center to cope with the mounting casualties during the Battle of Manila, and would be renamed the North General Hospital (later, the Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center). Del Mundo would remain the hospital's director until 1948.

Del Mundo joined the faculty of the University of Santo Tomas, then the Far Eastern University in 1954. She likewise established a small medical pediatric clinic to pursue a private practice.

Establishment of the Children's Medical Center

Frustrated by the bureaucratic constraints in working for a government hospital, del Mundo desired to establish her own pediatric hospital.Towards that end, she sold her home and most of her personal effects, and obtained a sizable loan from the GSIS (the Government Service Insurance System) in order to finance the construction of her own hospital. The Children's Medical Center, a 100-bed hospital located in Quezon City, was inaugurated in 1957 as the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines. The hospital was expanded in 1966 through the establishment of an Institute of Maternal and Child Health, the first institution of its kind in Asia.

In 1958, del Mundo conveyed her personal ownership of the hospital to a board of trustees.

Later life and death

Del Mundo was still active in her practice of pediatrics into her 90s. She died on August 6, 2011, after suffering cardiac arrest. She was buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Research and innovations

Del Mundo was noted for her pioneering work on infectious diseases in Philippine communities. Undeterred by the lack of well-equipped laboratories in post-war Philippines, she unhesitatingly sent specimens or blood samples for analysis abroad. In the 1950s, she pursued studies on dengue fever, a common malady in the Philippines, of which little was known at the time. Her clinical observations on dengue, and the findings of research she later undertook on the disease are said to "have led to a fuller understanding of dengue fever as it afflicts the young". She authored over a hundred articles, reviews, and reports in medical journals[8] on such diseases as dengue, polio and measles. She also authored ‘Textbook of Pediatrics’, a fundamental medical text used in Philippine medical schools.

Del Mundo was active in the field of public health, with special concerns towards rural communities. She organized rural extension teams to advise mothers on breastfeeding and child care. and promoted the idea of linking hospitals to the community through the public immersion of physicians and other medical personnel to allow for greater coordination among health workers and the public for common health programs such as immunization and nutrition. She called for the greater integration of midwives into the medical community, considering their more visible presence within rural communities. Notwithstanding her own devout Catholicism, she was an advocate of family planning and population control.

Del Mundo was also known for having devised an incubator made out of bamboo, designed for use in rural communities without electrical power.

Awards and recognition

In 1980, del Mundo was declared as a National Scientist of the Philippines, the first Filipino woman to be so named.

Among the international honors bestowed on del Mundo was the Elizabeth Blackwell Award for Outstanding Service to Mankind, handed in 1966 by Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and the citation as Outstanding Pediatrician and Humanitarian by the International Pediatric Association in 1977. Also in 1977, del Mundo was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service.

In 2008, she received the Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Award of the AY Foundation.

On April 22, 2010, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo awarded del Mundo the Order of Lakandula with the rank of Bayani at the Malacañan Palace.

Posthumously, she was conferred the Grand Collar of the Order of the Golden Heart Award by President Benigno Aquino III in 2011.

On November 27, 2018, a Google Doodle was displayed to celebrate del Mundo's 107th birthday.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-19 00:25:54

458) Philip Diehl (inventor)

Philip H. Diehl (January 29, 1847 – April 7, 1913) was a German-American mechanical engineer and inventor who held several U.S. patents, including electric incandescent lamps, electric motors for sewing machines and other uses, and ceiling fans. Diehl was a contemporary of Thomas Edison and his inventions caused Edison to reduce the price of his incandescent bulb.

He occasionally spelled his first name 'Phillip'.

Early life

Philip H. Diehl was born in Dalsheim, Germany.

In July 1868, he immigrated to New York City where he worked in several machine shops before finding work as an apprentice with the Singer Manufacturing Company. In 1870 or 1871 he was transferred to Chicago, Illinois and worked at Remington Machine Company until 1875. He lost all of his possessions in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. In 1873, Diehl married Emilie Loos in Chicago.

In 1875, Diehl moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey and took charge of experimental work improving sewing machines at the Singer plant. His daughter, Clara Elvira, was born April 2, 1876.

Inventions

While working at Singer in Elizabeth, Diehl experimented at work and at his home. This resulted in several inventions.

Electric light

Working in the basement of his home on Orchard Street in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Diehl invented a lamp that was different from Thomas Edison's incandescent electric lamp, which was patented in 1879. Diehl's lamp had no lead-in wires. In 1882 Diehl obtained the first patent on this induction incandescent lamp. The base of the lamp contained a wire coil that coupled with a primary coil in the lamp socket, causing current to flow through the lamp without the need for lead-in wires. Two additional patents were granted in 1883, followed by patents for electrical lighting systems in 1885 and 1886.

Following is a partial list of lamp or lighting related patents issued to Philip Diehl.

• U.S. No. 255,497, Incandescent Electric Lamp, March 28, 1882
• U.S. No. 272,125, Electric Incandescent Lamp, February 13, 1883
• U.S. No. 276,571, Incandescent Electric Lamp, May 1, 1883
• U.S. No. 314,567, Electric Arc Lamp, March 31, 1885
• U.S. No. 350,482, Electric Lighting System, October 12, 1886

Diehl erected the city's first arc light in front of the Corey Building in Elizabeth, which still stands at 109 Broad Street.

Diehl's invention of the induction lamp was used by George Westinghouse to force royalty concessions from Thomas Edison. The Westinghouse Company bought Diehl's patent rights for $25,000. Although Diehl's lamp could not be made and sold at a price to compete with the Edison lamp, the Westinghouse Company used the Diehl bulb to force the holders of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights.

Sewing machine

Together with Lebbeus B. Miller, Diehl invented and patented the "oscillating shuttle" bobbin driver designed and a sewing machine build around it.

Electric engines

Diehl's work at Singer to improve the sewing machine led to developments in electric motors, first to power sewing machines and later for other uses as well. In 1884 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania he demonstrated a dynamo, modeled after his smaller motor, which generated a current for arc lamps, sewing machine motors and incandescent lamps, all covered by his patents. The judicial committee at the exhibition judged it to be one of the best dynamos exhibited.

Ceiling fan

The fan was invented in 1882 by Schuyler Skaats Wheeler. A few years later, Philip Diehl mounted a fan blade on a sewing machine motor and attached it to the ceiling, inventing the ceiling fan, which he patented in 1887. Later, he added a light fixture to the ceiling fan. Later in 1904,Diehl and Co. added a split-ball joint, allowing it to be redirected; three years later, this developed into the first oscillating fan.

Death

Philip Diehl died on April 7, 1913 in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Honors

In 1889 the American Institute of New York awarded Philip Diehl a bronze medal, which bears the inscription ‘The Medal of Merit, awarded to Philip Diehl for Electric Fans and Dynamos, 1889’

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-21 00:20:11

459) Jane Austen

Jane Austen was a Georgian era author, best known for her social commentary in novels including 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' and 'Emma.'

Who Was Jane Austen?

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. While not widely known in her own time, Austen's comic novels of love among the landed gentry gained popularity after 1869, and her reputation skyrocketed in the 20th century. Her novels, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, are considered literary classics, bridging the gap between romance and realism.

Early Life

The seventh child and second daughter of Cassandra and George Austen, Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. Jane's parents were well-respected community members. Her father served as the Oxford-educated rector for a nearby Anglican parish. The family was close and the children grew up in an environment that stressed learning and creative thinking. When Jane was young, she and her siblings were encouraged to read from their father's extensive library. The children also authored and put on plays and charades.

Over the span of her life, Jane would become especially close to her father and older sister, Cassandra. Indeed, she and Cassandra would one day collaborate on a published work.

In order to acquire a more formal education, Jane and Cassandra were sent to boarding schools during Jane's pre-adolescence. During this time, Jane and her sister caught typhus, with Jane nearly succumbing to the illness. After a short period of formal education cut short by financial constraints, they returned home and lived with the family from that time forward.

Literary Works

Ever fascinated by the world of stories, Jane began to write in bound notebooks. In the 1790s, during her adolescence, she started to craft her own novels and wrote Love and Freindship, a parody of romantic fiction organized as a series of love letters. Using that framework, she unveiled her wit and dislike of sensibility, or romantic hysteria, a distinct perspective that would eventually characterize much of her later writing. The next year she wrote The History of England..., a 34-page parody of historical writing that included illustrations drawn by Cassandra. These notebooks, encompassing the novels as well as short stories, poems and plays, are now referred to as Jane's Juvenilia.

Jane spent much of her early adulthood helping run the family home, playing piano, attending church, and socializing with neighbors. Her nights and weekends often involved cotillions, and as a result, she became an accomplished dancer. On other evenings, she would choose a novel from the shelf and read it aloud to her family, occasionally one she had written herself. She continued to write, developing her style in more ambitious works such as Lady Susan, another epistolary story about a manipulative woman who uses her sexuality, intelligence and charm to have her way with others. Jane also started to write some of her future major works, the first called Elinor and Marianne, another story told as a series of letters, which would eventually be published as Sense and Sensibility. She began drafts of First Impressions, which would later be published as Pride and Prejudice, and Susan, later published as Northanger Abbey by Jane's brother, Henry, following Jane's death.

In 1801, Jane moved to Bath with her father, mother and Cassandra. Then, in 1805, her father died after a short illness. As a result, the family was thrust into financial straits; the three women moved from place to place, skipping between the homes of various family members to rented flats. It was not until 1809 that they were able to settle into a stable living situation at Jane's brother Edward's cottage in Chawton.

Now in her 30s, Jane started to anonymously publish her works. In the period spanning 1811-16, she pseudonymously published Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice (a work she referred to as her "darling child," which also received critical acclaim), Mansfield Park and Emma.

Death and Legacy

In 1816, at the age of 41, Jane started to become ill with what some say might have been Addison's disease. She made impressive efforts to continue working at a normal pace, editing older works as well as starting a new novel called The Brothers, which would be published after her death as Sanditon. Another novel, Persuasion, would also be published posthumously. At some point, Jane's condition deteriorated to such a degree that she ceased writing. She died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, Hampshire, England.

While Austen received some accolades for her works while still alive, with her first three novels garnering critical attention and increasing financial reward, it was not until after her death that her brother Henry revealed to the public that she was an author.

Today, Austen is considered one of the greatest writers in English history, both by academics and the general public. In 2002, as part of a BBC poll, the British public voted her No. 70 on a list of "100 Most Famous Britons of All Time." Austen's transformation from little-known to internationally renowned author began in the 1920s, when scholars began to recognize her works as masterpieces, thus increasing her general popularity. The Janeites, a Jane Austenfan club, eventually began to take on wider significance, similar to the Trekkie phenomenon that characterizes fans of the Star Trek franchise. The popularity of her work is also evident in the many film and TV adaptations of Emma, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility, as well as the TV series and film Clueless, which was based on Emma.

Austen was in the worldwide news in 2007, when author David Lassman submitted to several publishing houses a few of her manuscripts with slight revisions under a different name, and they were routinely rejected. He chronicled the experience in an article titled "Rejecting Jane," a fitting tribute to an author who could appreciate humor and wit.

Jane%20Austen%20Picture%201.jpg

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-23 01:15:29

460) Henry Burden

Henry Burden (April 22, 1791 – January 19, 1871) was an engineer and businessman who built an industrial complex in Troy, New York called the Burden Iron Works. Burden's horseshoe machine, invented in 1835, was capable of making 60 horseshoes a minute. His rotary concentric squeezer, a machine for working wrought iron, was adopted by iron industries worldwide. His hook-headed spike machine helped fuel the rapid expansion of railroads in the U.S. The Burden Iron Works is now an historical site and museum.

Early life

Henry Burden was born in Dunblane, Perthshire, Scotland, the son of Peter Burden (1752–1829) and Elizabeth Abercrombie (1756–1837). His father was a sheep farmer. He studied engineering at the University of Edinburgh, and returned to the farm making implements and a water wheel to power them.

He emigrated in 1819 with a letter of introduction to Stephen van Rensselaer, courtesy of the American Minister in London.

Career

Burden started at the Townsend & Corning Foundry, manufacturers of cast iron plows and other agricultural implements, located in Albany’s south end - near today’s Port of Albany. The next year, he invented an improved plow, which took first premium at three county fairs, and a cultivator, which was said to have been the first to be put into practical operation in the country. He also made mechanical improvements on threshing machines and grist mills.

He moved to Troy in 1822, and worked as superintendent of the Troy Iron and Nail Factory. The factory was located on north side of the Wynantskill Creek in South Troy, about a half-mile northeast of today’s Troy-Menands bridge. Burden's inventions, which automated work that was previously done by hand, made the factory extremely profitable. Burden soon became the sole owner of the factory and renamed it H. Burden and Sons. The Burden Iron Works, as it came to be known, produced a variety of iron-based products.

Innovator

He experimented not only in the manufacture of items like horseshoes and spikes, but also in the production of machines to make them. In May 1825, he secured a patent for a machine to make spikes, which up until then were made by hand. The Burden Iron Works produced the first ship spikes and the first horseshoes made by machinery in the world. In 1835 he designed the "Horseshoe Machine" that could produce 60 shoes a minute. Burden became the chief horseshoe producer for the Union Army.

Burden became involved in supplying the iron needed by the nation's rapidly expanding railroads. In 1840 he obtained a patent for the first hook-headed spike. He made ten tons of these for the Long Island Railroad in 1836. His suit against Corning and Winslow for patent infringement lasted from 1842 to 1867, when the patent was upheld. Also in 1840 he obtained a patent for the "rotary squeezer", which came to be used in all the leading iron manufactories in both America and Europe. Burden held twelve patents in total.

He was also among the first to suggest the use of plates for iron-clad seagoing vessels, and sent specimen plates of his own manufacture to Glasgow for testing. The company forged the hull plates for the USS Monitor, the Navy's first iron-clad battleship, which engaged the Confederacy's Merrimac in 1862 in the first battle of its kind.

Burden Iron Works

Burden replaced the small wooden mill with a large millworks. The river adjacent to the works was shallow and full of bars, and the land along the river was low and frequently flooded. At great expense, Burden had the grounds filled in, and the river dredged, so that the company's docks were accessible to large vessels. A network of railroad tracks wove through the property to move train loads of sand, iron ore from the Lake Champlain region, and limestone from the downriver city of Hudson. The firm had its own locomotive. Steam derricks were used to unload coal from the dock and move it to the coal heap, three hundred feet distant, a ton at a time.

He originated a system of reservoirs along the Wynantskill Creek to hold the water in reserve and increase the water-supply to power the mills. In order to find the necessary power to run his foundry, in 1851 Burden designed and constructed a 60-foot wheel that could generate 500 horsepower. The poet Louis Gaylor Clark, characterized the huge whell as the "Niagara of Water-Wheels,". The wheel's design caught the eye of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student George W.G. Ferris, who in 1893 unveiled his own invention, the Ferris Wheel, similar to Henry Burden's water wheel.

Some idea of the magnitude of the ironworks at Troy is suggested by the fact that in 1864 the cost of iron, coal, and other materials was over $1,500,000. Burden Iron Works used 90,000 tons of coal annually. In 1880 the ironworks employed 1,400 men. The ironworks produced 600,000 kegs of horseshoes and 42,000 tons of iron, exclusive of pig, annually. Their yearly sales of horseshoes average about $2,000,000.

Burden himself is described as a large man with deep-set eyes and a cheerful demeanor. An accomplished mechanic, he could make a better piece of work than any man in his shops; and could deal a heavier blow with a sledge than any of his strikers at the forge. Upright himself, he was apt to assume the uprightness of others.

The Henry Burden family papers are located at the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They contain correspondence from 1816 to 1853 between Burden, his business acquaintances, and his sons pertaining to his numerous industrial inventions and to the business affairs of the Troy Iron and Nail Factory in Troy, New York. The collection documents the iron industry in the mid-19th century, as well as the market for Burden's numerous industrial inventions.

Steamboats

Burden had a great interest in navigation. As early as 1825 he laid before the Troy Steamboat Association certain original plans whereby the construction of steamboats for inland navigation could be greatly improved, and which some years later were adopted in the building of the steamer 'Hendrick Hudson.' In 1833, he created the steamboat "Helen," named in honor of his wife. Its deck rested upon two cigar-shaped hulls, three hundred feet in length, with a paddle-wheel amidships thirty feet in diameter. The boat was lost on its first trial due to pilot mismanagement, and Burden turned his attention to ocean navigation.

Besides increasing the length of the boats, he suggested, for the convenience and accommodation of passengers, the erection of sleeping-berth-rooms on the upper decks, being a decided change from the holds of vessels, where they had previously been placed. His views on navigation being known, some gentlemen of Glasgow issued, with his permission, a prospectus of "Burden's Atlantic Steam-Ferry Company." Although the company never materialized his ideas were subsequently imitated by Samuel Cunard of the Cunard Line.

Woodside Presbyterian Church

Woodside Presbyterian Church was built in 1869 by Henry Burden on land owned by Erastus Corning, of Corning's Albany Iron Works as a memorial to the wife of Henry Burden, who died in 1860. She had expressed concern for the iron workers and their families, who had to walk miles in inclement weather to churches in downtown Troy and wished for a church closer to the Iron Works. An inscription on the church wall reads, "Woodside Memorial Church, dedicated to the service of the Triune God, has been erected to the memory of Helen Burden by her husband, Henry Burden, in accordance with her long-cherished and earnest desire, 1869." Erected at a cost of $75,000, it was the third most expensive church edifice in Troy at the time. The site is adjacent to Wynantskill Creek.

Personal life

On January 23, 1821, at Saint Gabriel Presbyterian Church in Montreal, Québec, Henry Burden wed Helen McOuat (1802–1860), whom he had known in Scotland. She was the daughter of James McOuat (1762–1837) and Margaret Bilsland (1770–1840). Her family immigrated to Canada and were based in Lachute, Québec, Canada at the time of her marriage to Henry. Together, Helen and Henry had eight children:

i) Peter Abercrombie Burden (1822–1866), who married Abigail Abby Akin Shepherd (1826–1853).
ii) Margaret Elizabeth Burden (1824–1911), who married Ebenezer Proudfit (1808–1880).
iii) Helen Burden (1826–1891), who married Gen. Irvin McDowell (1818–1885).
iv) Henry James Burden (1828–1846), who died at age 18, unmarried.
v) William Fletcher Burden (1830–1867), who married Julia Ann Hart (1833–1867).
vi) James Abercrombie Burden (1833–1906), who married Mary Proudfit Irvin (1848–1920). Had issue, including James A. Burden II and Arthur Scott Burden, first husband of Cynthia Roche.
vii) Isaiah Townsend Burden (1838–1913), who married Evelyn Byrd Moale (1847–1916).
viii) Jessie Burden (1840–1911), who married Charles Frederick Wadsworth (1835–1899).

His wife died on March 10, 1860, in Troy, New York. Henry Burden died of heart disease on Thursday morning, January 19, 1871. Burden's funeral was held at the Woodside Presbyterian Church, which he had built near the ironworks. On the day of the funeral the Burden Mills, the Albany Iron Works, the J.A. Griswold & Co. works, and the Cohoes rolling mill of Morrison and Colwell all closed so that the workers could attend. Also is attendance was the Thomas Cornet Band wearing "the usual badge of mourning".

At one time Henry Burden employed almost one-eighth of the population of the city of Troy, and "spent a lifetime in devising means for lightening toil".

Descendants

Margaret Elizabeth Burden Proudfit (1824–1911), Henry's and Helen's first daughter, wrote a long biographical account of her family. Margaret was an accomplished draughtswoman and writer.

Two of Henry’s grandsons, James A. Burden and William A. M. Burden married granddaughters of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-25 01:41:43

461) Charles F. Brannock

Charles F. Brannock (May 16, 1903 – November 22, 1992) was the inventor and manufacturer of the familiar Brannock Device for measuring overall length, width, and heel-to-ball length of the foot. Brannock, proprietor of the successful Park-Brannock Shoe Store in Syracuse, New York, developed the device in 1925. The instrument was a sales aid, but by ensuring more accurate fittings, the device also helped his customers alleviate or avoid foot problems due to ill-fitting shoes. Brannock also developed specially calibrated devices for the various branches of the military, which issued millions of boots and shoes to servicemen, especially during World War II. Though there were competing measuring devices on the market, the Brannock Device quickly became the industry standard and is still used in shoe stores all over the world.

The Brannock Device® is the standard foot measuring tool for the world's footwear industry. But few people are able to call the device by name, much less identify its inventor, Charles Brannock.

Brannock was born into the shoe business. His father, Otis Brannock, joined with Ernest Parks in 1906 to found the downtown Park-Brannock Shoe Co. in Syracuse, New York. As a Syracuse University student, young Brannock wanted to find the best way to measure the foot. He played around with the idea for a couple of years and finally built a prototype using an Erector set. In 1926 and 1927, Brannock patented the device and created a company to build it.

Before the Brannock Device®, the available option was a primitive block of measured wood. The Brannock Device® dramatically improved the accuracy of a foot measurement, to 95-96 percent right. The size system is linear. For example, a Men's size 1 is 7-2/3 inches. Each additional size is 1/3 inch longer. Widths work the same way. Each width is separated by a distance of 3/16 of an inch. There are actually nine widths in the US system (width actually varies with foot length): AAA, AA, A, B, C, D, E, EE, and EEE.

The Brannock Device® comes in green, purple, red or black. There are models for men, women, athletic shoes and ski boots, and for children, always with two knobs for adjusting the fit cups at both ends for the curve of the heel, and a sliding bar for adjusting "firmly for thin foot, lightly for wide foot."

A Unique Device

At first, the invention was valued for what it did for the local shoe store. No one else in Syracuse could fit a shoe so perfectly. If someone had an unusual size, and the device picked it up, Brannock made sure he had a match in stock. Soon, however, word of the device got around, and demand was suddenly booming. In fact, during World War II, the Army hired Brannock to ensure that boots and shoes fit enlisted men. That's when Brannock first expanded his manufacturing facilities.

Brannock believed in all the things that are supposedly dead in industry. He loved small business. He loved working downtown. And he built his product to last. While some had advised Brannock to make his devices out of plastic, ensuring that they would need to be replaced every couple of years, he refused to entertain that notion, and would only make them from durable steel. Today, most shoe stores don't get rid of their Brannock Devices for 10 or 15 years, until the numbers finally wear away from so much use.

Throughout the 1980s, Brannock showed up in the office every working day to take care of business. His health began to fail then, and he considered selling the business, but any would-be buyer had to guarantee the device would not be cheapened or changed. That point was not negotiable.

He died the age of 89. The company was purchased by Sal Leonardi during that decade. Today, the Brannock Device® remains the standard for the footwear industry. With more than one million devices sold, the Brannock Device® has varied very little over the years. However, the company, under its new owners, has started manufacturing customized models and is currently considering producing a digital model.

charles-brannock.jpg?559307683969468533

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-27 00:38:50

462) Paul Eisler

Paul Eisler (1907 – 26 October 1992, London) was an Austrian inventor born in Vienna. Among his innovations were the printed circuit board. In 2012, ‘Printed Circuit Design & Fab’ magazine named its Hall of Fame after Eisler.

Early life and education

He graduated in engineering from Vienna University of Technology in 1930. Being Jewish, antisemitic German-Nationalist organizations prevented him from getting an engineering job in Vienna, so he obtained employment with the English recording technology firm (Gramaphone Company, EMI from March 1931) operating under its His Master's Voice brand in Belgrade. His task there was to eliminate radio interference on the music broadcast system on trains running from Belgrade to Niś. The project was a technical success but a financial failure because the Serbian railroad could only pay HMV by barter in grain, not pounds sterling, due a foreign exchange crisis. As a result, he had to return to Vienna. He was still prevented from working as an engineer, but he found work as a journalist and printer, first at Randfunk (which developed a low-cost method of tabulating a radio program guide at the printer) and eventually landing at a social-democratic publisher, Vorwärts. The experience in printing proved crucial later. However, after the 1934 putsch by Austrian fascists and due to social-democratic nature of Vorwärts it was shut down. Working independently, he patented some ideas from his doctorate at the university (on graphical sound recording and stereoscopic television) and leveraged them to obtain a visa to visit England to offer the patents to companies there in 1936. His first cousin, Philipp Fehl, contacted Eisler upon arrival as a refugee in England and Eisler helped to make sure that Fehl's father left Vienna alive after his release from the Dachau concentration camp.

Inventions

Living in a Hampstead boarding house, without work or a work permit, he began to fabricate a radio using a printed circuit board while trying to sell some of his ideas. Around this time, the Odeon hired him to work on their cinema technology. One of the common problems there was coping with theatre goers who spilled foods such as ice cream on the seats. Eisler devised a yellow fabric to cover affected furniture for the benefit of the next theater goer as well as flag it for removal and cleaning at the next opportunity.

Though he was able to help several members of his family escape Austria, he was subject to internment by the British as an enemy alien after the onset of World War II. After being released in 1941 and a short spell in the Pioneer Corps, he was able to engage Henderson and Spalding, a lithography company in Camberwell run by Harold Vezey-Strong, to invest in his printed circuit idea via a specially created subsidiary of Henderson and Spalding called Technograph, but forfeited rights to his invention when he neglected to read the contract before signing it. It was a pretty standard employment contract in that he agreed to submit any patent right during his employment for a nominal fee (one pound sterling) but it also gave him 16.5 percent ownership of Technograph. It drew no interest until the United States incorporated the technology into work on the proximity fuzewhich was vital to counter the German V-1 flying bomb. However, he did manage to obtain his first three printed circuit patent for a wide range of applications. They were split out from a single application submitted in 1943 and finally published after long legal procedures on 21 June 1950.
After the war ended, the United States opened access to his printed circuit innovation and since 1948, it has been used in all airborne instrument electronics. Very few companies acknowledged or licensed Technograph's patents and the company had financial difficulties. He resigned from Technograph in 1957. Among his projects as a freelancer, were films to heat "floor and wall coverings" and food, for example, fish fingers. The wallpaper idea was viable, but interest waned after the advent of cheaper energy resources with the discovery of natural gas in the North Sea.

Eisler invented many other practical applications of heating technology, such as the pizza warmer and rear window defroster, but was not so successful in their commercialization.

In 1963, Technograph lost a lawsuit against Bendix over most of the claims in the US versions of patents.

Honours

He was awarded the Pour le Mérite by the French government.The Institute of Electrical Engineers awarded him the Nuffield Silver medal.

(A printed circuit board (PCB) mechanically supports and electrically connects electronic components or electrical components using conductive tracks, pads and other features etched from one or more sheet layers of copper laminated onto and/or between sheet layers of a non-conductive substrate. Components are generally soldered onto the PCB to both electrically connect and mechanically fasten them to it.

Printed circuit boards are used in all but the simplest electronic products. They are also used in some electrical products, such as passive switch boxes.

Alternatives to PCBs include wire wrap and point-to-point construction, both once popular but now rarely used. PCBs require additional design effort to lay out the circuit, but manufacturing and assembly can be automated. Specialized CAD software is available to do much of the work of layout. Mass-producing circuits with PCBs is cheaper and faster than with other wiring methods, as components are mounted and wired in one operation. Large numbers of PCBs can be fabricated at the same time, and the layout only has to be done once. PCBs can also be made manually in small quantities, with reduced benefits.

PCBs can be single-sided (one copper layer), double-sided (two copper layers on both sides of one substrate layer), or multi-layer (outer and inner layers of copper, alternating with layers of substrate). Multi-layer PCBs allow for much higher component density, because circuit traces on the inner layers would otherwise take up surface space between components. The rise in popularity of multilayer PCBs with more than two, and especially with more than four, copper planes was concurrent with the adoption of surface mount technology. However, multilayer PCBs make repair, analysis, and field modification of circuits much more difficult and usually impractical.)

After Gustav Tauschek, another Viennese engineer and inventor - Paul Eisler, made a significant contribution in the modern electronics industry with the invention of printed circuit board (PCB) in 1936.

The Austrian Jew Paul Eisler was born in Vienna in 1907. After graduating with an engineering degree from Technische Universität Wien (Vienna University of Technology) in 1930, already a budding inventor, he didn't manage to find a proper job in Austria. In 1934, Eisler accepted a workplace in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to design a radio-electronic system for a train, but that job ended when the customer offered payment in grain instead of currency.

Back in Austria, Eisler wrote for newspapers and founded a radio journal, and began to learn about printing technology. Printing was a fairly robust technology by the 1930s, and Eisler started to imagine how the printing process could be used to lay down electronic circuits on an insulating base, and do so in volume. At the time, it was usual to interconnect all components in electronic devices with hand-soldered wires, an error-prone method of manufacture, which did not lend itself to any high degree of automation. Eisler wanted to eliminate these problems, printing the wires on a board, and mounting the elements over it.

In 1936 Eisler decided to leave Austria, in order to escape persecution from Nazists. He secured an invitation to work in England based on two patent applications he had already filed: One for a graphical sound recording and one for a stereoscopic television with vertical resolution lines.

In London he managed to sold the TV patent for ₤250, enough money to live for a while in a Hampstead boarding house, which was a good thing, because he couldn't find a job. He proceed to develop his printed circuit board idea, and one telephone company really liked it, at least initially, because it would have eliminated those bundles of wiring used for phone systems back then.

Radio with first Printed Circuit Board by Paul Eisler from 1942 : Eisler didn't found a piece of good fortune in England though. As WWII loomed, he worked at getting his family out of Austria. His sister committed suicide and when the war began, in 1940 the British interned him as an illegal alien. Even locked up, this brilliant engineer began to fabricate a radio using a printed circuit board.

After being released in 1941, Eisler was able to find a work in a music printing company - Henderson and Spalding. Originally, his objective was to perfect the company's unworkable Technograph music typewriter, operating out of a laboratory in a bombed-out building. Later, Technograph invested in his printed circuit idea (the concept of using etched foil to lay down traces on a substrate). Unfortunately, Eisler forfeited rights to his invention when he neglected to read the contract before signing it, but it wasn't the first or last time Eisler would be taken advantage of. It was a pretty standard employment contract in that he agreed to submit any patent right during his employment for a nominal fee (one pound sterling) but it also gave him 16.5 percent ownership of Technograph.

Eisler first boards look much like plates of spaghetti, with almost no straight traces. He filed a patent application in 1943.

Technograph drew no interest until the United States incorporated the technology into work on the proximity fuzes of shells, which was vital to counter the German V-1 flying bomb.

After that, Eisler had a job and some small amount of fame. After the war, the technology spread. The U.S. mandated in 1948 that all airborne instrument circuitry was to be printed.

Eisler's 1943 patent application was eventually split into three separate patents: 639111 (Three-Dimensional Printed Circuits), 639178 (Foil Technique of Printed Circuits), and 639179 (Powder Printing). These three were published on June 21, 1950, but very few companies actually licensed the patents, and Technograph had financial difficulties. Eisler resigned from Technograph in 1957, to work as a freelancer.

Among his projects as a freelancer, were films to heat "floor and wall coverings" and food, the foil battery, concrete molds, the pizza warmer and rear window defroster, and more, but Eisler was not so successful in their commercialization. Later he found success in the medical field, and died with dozens of patents to his name.

Eisler's invention of the etched foil printed circuit, whilst being of enormous benefit to the world-wide electronics industry, brought him little personal financial return. Eisler died in London on 26th of October, 1992. He had just received the Institution of Electrical Engineers' Nuffield Silver Medal.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-29 00:16:34

463) John Haven Emerson

John Haven Emerson (February 5, 1906 – February 4, 1997) was an American inventor of biomedical devices, specializing in respiratory equipment. He is perhaps best remembered for his work in improving the iron lung.

Early life

Emerson was born in 1906 in New York City, the son of Dr. Haven Emerson, Health Commissioner of New York City, and Grace Parrish Emerson, the sister of Maxfield Parrish. He was named for his paternal grandfather (1840–1913), who was also a medical doctor.

At the age of 22, he bought a rudimentary machine shop from the estate of a local inventor. He moved the equipment to a small warehouse in Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he built research apparatus for professors and researchers of Boston-area medical schools, and produced many inventions over the following years. In 1928, he designed a Barcroft-Warburg apparatus for tissue respiration studies. In 1930, he designed a new type of micromanipulator which was valuable in early physiology studies and later saw use in assembly of electronic components. In 1931, Emerson developed an oxygen tent which incorporated an improved cooling system.

Work on the iron lung

Emerson's father encouraged him to work on an artificial respirator after noticing the beginning of a polio epidemic. Emerson thus began his work on the iron lung in the early 1930s, improving the design of the Drinker lung. Completed in July 1931, Emerson's lung was quieter, lighter, more efficient, and cheaper. With a $1000 price tag, it sold for less than half the price of Drinker's make. Drinker threatened legal action against Emerson, and later filed a lawsuit which backfired. Drinker not only lost the suit, his patents were declared invalid.

Emerson's new design replaced blowers and valves with a flexible diaphragm in a dual layer. This acted as a failsafe: if one layer was torn, the second would continue operation. He also made improvements to the chamber. The first example of this design, nicknamed "Old Number One", is currently on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Emerson continued to make improvements to the iron lung, adding a quick opening and closing function, an improved pressure gauge, and emergency hand operation. His final improvement was the addition of a transparent positive pressure dome, allowing ventilation when the chamber was opened to care for the patient.

Later inventions

In the mid-1940s, following a suggestion of Dr. Alvin Barach, Emerson perfected the Thunberg barospirator, which caused respiration without moving the lungs at all. Emerson was involved with the development of high-altitude flight valves and SCUBA gear for the Navy shortly before World War II. In 1942 he developed an automatic resuscitator. In 1949 he developed a mechanical assistor for anesthesia with the cooperation of the anesthesia department at Harvard. In 1955 he built a pleural suction pump for postoperative thoracic surgery, the Emerson Postop Pump, which is still widely used. Late in the twentieth century he assisted Alvin Barach in developing the "In-Exsufflator Cough Machine", a device to aid in secretion removal in patients with neuromuscular disease.

Relatives

Emerson was the brother of Robert Emerson the scientist who discovered that plants have two photoreaction centers. Emerson was the great-grandson of the brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His uncle was the illustrator Maxfield Parrish. His first cousin was Bartram “Bart” Kelley, also a nephew of Maxfield Parrish, who was a major designer of military helicopters for Bell Aircraft and Bell Helicopter.

Patent images

For the lawsuit involving the iron lung, images were lacking on some of the old patents. New drawings were supplied to Emerson by his cousin, Maxfield Parrish Jr.

Early Life

John Haven Emerson inventor of iron lung was a very famous scientist and biologist of America. He is known best for his invention of iron lung and it can be said that this invention led him to be very famous scientist of the field of biology. He was an American by the nationality and descent pattern. He was born in the year of 1906 in the month of February on 5th day and his place of birth was as New York, which is located in United States of America. There is not any kind of specific information available about his life span of educational period and other such things before starting of formal career but it is worth to know further things about him.

Career

It is clear from his life period that he earned education in the field of biology and biomedical sciences so after that, he started formal career in that field. In the year of 1928, when he was just 22 years of age, he started his initial work when he got a machine shop of rudimentary. He planned something big and as a result started his work as getting a warehouse in Harvard Square. He moved all the equipment of rudimentary machinery shop and other related materials to that ware house and started formal biomedical research in the field.

Inventor of Iron Lung

As his father was also from the field of health sciences and was a police commissioner of the New York, he suggested him to build any artificial respirator or something like as a modern iron lung. He started the work on this thing in the year of 1930 and completed it just after one year of work in 1931, when he was just 25 years of age.

Iron Lung

As mentioned above, he started the work of its invention on his father’s advice but later on worked for betterment of its design. He succeeded in this thing and came up with modern form of an artificial respirator or also said as an iron lung. Iron lung is also termed as negative pressure ventilator sometimes but it can be said that, in modern times, it is only known by this second name. It can be said as a special form of ventilator which is used for purpose of breathing or to make someone breathe artificially, when its original system of lungs is not working and there is a danger of death. This thing normally happens when the ability of any person to breathe gets weakened or the muscles used for that purpose, does not play their role properly.

Death

He died in the year of 1997 in the month of February on 4th day. He was almost 91 years of age at the time of his death.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-01-31 00:12:50

464) Samuel W. Alderson

Samuel W. Alderson, American inventor (born Oct. 21, 1914, Cleveland, Ohio—died Feb. 11, 2005, Los Angeles, Calif.), created (1968) the first example of what became known as the crash-test dummy, a device modeled on the average adult male that made it possible to study the effect an automobile crash had on the human body.

Samuel W. Alderson (October 21, 1914 – February 11, 2005) was an American inventor best known for his development of the crash test dummy, a device that, during the last half of the twentieth century, was widely used by automobile manufacturers to test the reliability of automobile seat belts and other safety protocols.

Alderson was born in Cleveland, Ohio but was raised in southern California as a toddler where his Romanian-immigrant father ran a custom sheet-metal and sign shop. He graduated from high school at the age of 15 and went on to intermittently study at Reed College, Caltech, Columbia and UC Berkeley. He frequently interrupted his education to help out with the family sheet-metal business. He completed his formal education at the University of California, Berkeley under the tutelage of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest O. Lawrence, but did not complete his doctoral dissertation.

In 1952, he began his own company, Alderson Research Laboratories, and quickly won a contract to create an anthropometric dummy for use in testing aircraft ejection seats. At about the same time, automobile manufacturers were being challenged to produce safer vehicles, and to do so without relying on live volunteers or human cadavers.

In 1966, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was passed, which together with Ralph Nader's book, 'Unsafe at Any Speed' put the search for an anatomically faithful test dummy into high gear. With this as a goal, Alderson produced the V.I.P., a dummy designed to mimic an average male's acceleration and weight properties, and to reproduce the effects of impact like a real person. His work went on to see the creation of the Hybrid family of test dummies, which as of the beginning of the 21st century are the de facto standards for testing.

Alderson also worked for the United States military. During World War II, he helped develop an optical coating to improve the vision of submarine periscopes, and worked on depth charge and missile guidance technology. He also helped create dummies, known as "medical phantoms", that reacted to radiation, and synthetic wounds, used in emergency training simulations, which behaved like real wounds. Based on that experience, he formed another company that he managed until shortly before his death, Radiology Support Devices, to supply the healthcare industry. Alderson is also known for his other inventions including spaghetti, toenail clippers, the cardboard box, and the death-metal banjo. Later on, he built dummies to test the Apollo nose cone's water landing capability.

Alderson died at his home in Marina Del Rey, California, due to complications from myelofibrosis. Alderson was widowed once and divorced three times. In addition to his son Jeremy, he is survived by a sister, another son, and four grandchildren.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-02-02 00:40:14

465) Momofuku Ando

Momofuku Ando, (March 5, 1910 – January 5, 2007) was a Taiwanese-Japanese inventor and businessman born in Imperial Japanese Taiwan who founded Nissin Food Products Co., Ltd.. He is known as the inventor of instant noodles and the creator of the brands, Top Ramen and Cup Noodles.

Early life and education

Ando was born Go Pek-Hok in 1910 into a wealthy Taiwanese family in Kagi-chō , Japanese-era Taiwan, and raised by his grandparents within the city walls of Tainan-chō following the deaths of his parents. His grandparents owned a small textiles store, which inspired him, at the age of 22, to start his own textiles company, using 190,000 yen, in Eiraku-chō, Daitōtei, Taihoku (Taipei).

In 1933, Ando traveled to Osaka where he established a clothing company while studying economics at Ritsumeikan University.

Career

Founding Nissin

After World War II, Japan lost Taiwan as its territory and Ando as a Taiwanese had to choose between becoming a citizen of the Republic of China (Taiwan) or remaining a Japanese subject. Ando chose the former in order to keep his ancestral properties in Taiwan (since all Japanese nationals had to forfeit their properties in Taiwan). However, Ando remained in Japan.

In his biography, Ando said he had provided scholarships for students, which at the time was a form of tax evasion. After he lost his company due to a chain reaction bankruptcy, Ando founded what was to become Nissin in Ikeda, Osaka, Japan, starting off as a small family-run company producing salt.

Invention of Chicken Ramen

With Japan still suffering from a shortage of food in the post-war era, the Ministry of Health tried to encourage people to eat breadmade from wheat flour that was supplied by the United States. Ando wondered why bread was recommended instead of noodles, which were more familiar to the Japanese. The Ministry's response was that noodle companies were too small and unstable to satisfy supply needs, so Ando decided to develop the production of noodles by himself. The experience convinced him that "Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat.”

On August 25, 1958, at the age of 48, and after months of trial and error experimentation to perfect his flash-frying method, Ando marketed the first package of precooked instant noodles. The original chicken flavor is called Chikin Ramen. It was originally considered a luxury item with a price of ¥35, around six times that of traditional udon and soba noodles at the time. As of 2016, Chicken Ramen is still sold in Japan and now retails for around ¥120, or approximately one third the price of the cheapest bowl of noodles in a Japanese restaurant.

Cup o' Noodles invention

According to The Financial Times, Ando's invention of Cup Noodles in 1971, at the age of 61, helped spark the popularity of instant noodles overseas. He had observed that Americans ate noodles by breaking the noodles in half, putting them into a cup, and pouring hot water over the noodles. They also ate them with a fork instead of chopsticks. Ando was inspired, and felt that a Styrofoam cup—with a narrower bottom than the top—would be the ideal vessel for holding noodles and keeping them warm. Eating the noodles would then be as easy as opening the lid, adding hot water and waiting. This simplicity, efficiency and low price of Cup Noodles went on to transform Nissin's fortunes.

Ando began the sales of his most famous product, Cup Noodle, on September 18, 1971 with the idea of providing a waterproof polystyrene container. As prices dropped, instant ramen soon became a booming business. Worldwide demand reached 98 billion servings in 2009.

Industry memberships

In 1964, seeking a way to promote the instant noodle industry, Ando founded the Instant Food Industry Association, which set guidelines for fair competition and product quality, introducing several industry standards such as the inclusion of production dates on packaging and the "fill to" line. He was also the chairman of the International Ramen Manufacturers' Association.

Personal life and death

In 1966, Ando naturalized through marriage and became a Japanese citizen. "Momofuku" is the Japanese reading of his Taiwanese given name, while Andō is the last name of his Japanese wife.

Ando died of heart failure on January 5, 2007 at a hospital in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture at the age of 96.

Ando was survived by his wife Masako, two sons and a daughter. Ando claimed that the secret of his long life was playing golf and eating Chicken ramen almost every day. He was said to have eaten instant ramen until the day he died.

Honors

Ando was repeatedly honored with medals by the Japanese government and the emperor, including The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, Second Class, in 2002 which is the second most prestigious Japanese decoration for Japanese civilians.
• Medal of Honor with Blue Ribbon (1977)
• Order of the Sacred Treasure, Second Class, Gold and Silver Star (1982)
• Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon (1983)
• Director-General of the Science and Technology Agency "Distinguished Service Award" (1992)
• Order of the Rising Sun, Second Class, Gold and Silver Star (2002)

Foreign decoration
• Order of the Direkgunabhorn of Thailand, Fourth Class, (2001)

Order of precedence
• Senior fourth rank (2007, posthumous)of the say

Commemoration

The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum is named after him.

In 2015, Google placed a doodle created by Google artist Sophie Diao on its main web page commemorating his birthday on March 5.

The name of the Momofuku restaurants in the United States alludes to Momofuku Ando.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-02-04 00:37:27

466) Mulalo Doyoyo

Inventor: Mulalo Doyoyo

Born: 13-August-1970

Country: South Africa

Education: Brown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Cape Town

Occupation: Engineer, inventor, and professor

About Inventor

Mulalo Doyoyo (born 13 August 1970) is a South African engineer, inventor, and professor.

Early LIife History

Mulalo Doyoyo was born at William Eddie Hospital in Venda to Khorommbi Doyoyo and his wife Mudzuli (née Dzaga) of Vondwe village. Venda was a bantustan in northern South Africa during apartheid and is now part of the Limpopo Province.

He started his bantu education schooling at Vondwe Lower Primary School in 1977 and then moved on to Tshidimbini Higher Primary School in 1981. He joined Tshidimbini Secondary School in 1984 where he studied until 1985. In 1986, he registered at Mbilwi Secondary School where he founded a science club and a hand-written student newspaper the weekly tri-opinion. He was later voted as the head boy of the school, matriculating in 1988.

Anglo American awarded him a scholarship to study engineering. He chose to pursue his studies at the University of Cape Town. He was enrolled at the university in a five-year engineering bridging program,which at the time was designed for bantu education matriculates. Towards the end of his studies, he was additionally awarded a Shell Oil Company scholarship.

He resided in Smuts Hall, where he became a tutor in science and engineering, eventually becoming a head tutor. He became a publication officer of the student engineering council, a student representative of the South African Institute of Aerospace Engineers, and a founder of the student aerospace society in the faculty of engineering and the built environment.

Eventually, he became the president of the student engineering council. He later created Temescial (technology, medicine, and science for all), an organisation aimed at exposing underprivileged young people in high schools to those fields of learning. Temescial held its first workshop at the University of Venda in 1993.

Doyoyo's honors thesis was on the design and construction of mechanical equipment to investigate false brinelling of heavy-duty bearings in electric motors. Having completed his requirements of a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering before graduation, he was admitted by Brown University as a visiting undergraduate student, taking graduate courses in solid mechanics, materials science, and applied mathematics. He earned masters' degrees in solid mechanics and applied mathematics in 1995 and 1996, respectively.

Research & career

Applying the foundation and plate theories of structural mechanics, he proved that as an internal reinforcing element, a truss lattice structure has the ability to reduce the weight of a pressure vessel by decreasing its skin thickness while improving its fracture strength. This led to the invention disclosure of microtruss pressure vessels. These pressure vessels accommodate non-round shapes resulting in increased safety, driving range, and cabin space for hydrogen vehicles.

In an effort to develop energy storage systems for large-scale traditional and renewable energy sources, he begun research collaboration with electricity generation companies. As one of the results of this collaboration, he developed Cenocell, a patented concrete-like material that is based on fly ash without the addition of Portland cement. Fly ash is a pollutant byproduct of coal-fired power plants, cement production, paper manufacturing, and mining operations. Cenocell microstructure resembles that of a natural gas reservoir rock.

As of 2006, he became interested in doing research aligning with his homeland's Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) He started work with his graduate students on green building and renewable energy. Between 2007 and 2009, he was appointed as a professor extraordinaire and later a visiting research and innovation chair at the Tshwane University of Technology. This afforded him the opportunity to collaborate with local researchers on the RDP.

This collaboration inspired him to create Retecza (resource-driven technology concept center). During its inception in South Africa in 2008, the organisation welcomed cross-disciplinary researcher and industrialist participants from around the world. One of the outcomes of Retecza was the design and construction of a hydrogen motorbike named "Ahifambeni".

After leaving Georgia Tech, he moved to Midrand, Johannesburg, where he created an experimental laboratory for environmental-friendly chemicals. Since its founding in 2012, the laboratory has generated several inventions. He also taught mechanical engineering briefly at the University of Johannesburg. Sasol Chemcity recognised the Midrand lab activities and provided funding through its program for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Working in collaboration with concrete manufacturers and mining companies, he developed "green" chemical binders Solunexz and Glunexz for coal dust, construction aggregates, and charcoal. With continued support from Sasol, he developed Amoriguard, a non-volatile organic compound paint and skim coating based on tailings and industrial waste. In 2014, he worked on flushing solar-powered toilets that operate as a miniature waste-treatment plant. This technology based on nanofiltration and anaerobic digestion is implemented in places where water supply and sanitation are scarce.

Jai Ganesh · 2019-02-06 00:44:25

467) Doi

Doi (Doi, born February 2, 1943) is a Japanese electrical engineer, who played a significant role in the digital audio revolution. He received a degree in electrical engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1964, and a PhD from Tohoku University in 1972.

He joined Sony Japan in 1964 and started the first digital audio project within Sony. He was the driving force behind the PCM adaptor, and was a prominent member of the Sony/Philips taskforce responsible for the design of the Compact Disc. He created, among others, the CIRC error correction system. He, with Kees Immink, refutes the myth that the Compact Disc's playing time was determined by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

He was the lead engineer of the DASH multi-track digital audio tape recorder. In the 1990s, he headed Sony's Digital Creatures Laboratory, where he was responsible for the Aibo, Sony's robotic dog. In 2003, Doi created the Qrio, a running humanoid robot.

Awards and honors

Fellowship, Audio Engineering Society
Eduard Rhein Prize, 1981
Silver Medal, Audio Engineering Society.

Biography of Doi

Early Life

Doi inventor of Compact Disc is a very famous inventor and scientist who belongs to the Japanese descent. He is known best for his invention of compact disc which laid the foundation of new history in the world of storage devices and made it much easy and convenient to store the data and information travelling. He was born in the year of 1943 in the month of February 2nd and his place of birth was as local town located there near Tokyo in Japan. He is a very famous electrical engineer of Japan and is still alive by the date. He invented many things related to his field but this thing became as his identity.

Education

He started his formal education when he was just some years of age by studying in his local town school. He was a below than average student in his childhood and was not much interested in his studies but later on, his interest built up as the time passed, in the field of sciences. After completion of his initial education, he joined the Tokyo Institute of Technology where he started to study the field of electrical engineering. After some years, he earned his degree in the field in the year of 1964 when he was 21 years of age. He continued his education and completed it in the way that got the final degree of doctorate from Tohoku University of Japan in the year of 1972.

Career and Invention

After the completion of his education, he started his formal career soon, when he was hired for a job in the “Sony” company which is one of the best known companies all over the world. He started working in the audio projects over there and was the team leader too. He invented the PCM adapter and later on came with the design and invention of compact disc.

Inventor of Compact Disc

Doi is widely credited for his invention of compact disc, which he invented while his work in Sony Company. That was not the only invention on his credits but he had invented many other things over there or in other words, was the driving force behind those inventions e.g. CIRC error correction system etc.

Compact Disc

Compact Disc can be said as a storage device which is digitally formatted optical data storage disc. The basic aim behind its invention was to store the playback sounds and to play later on, but afterwards, it was developed to the modern format of a CD – ROM and specifically as a CD –R. There are many other formats of the compact disc under the derivations which are as VCD, CD – RW, CD – I, Photo – CD etc.

At present:

Currently he is 76 years of age and is residing there in Japan. He had stopped worked in the field but is still considered an authority in himself.

Math Is Fun Forum

#476 2018-12-24 00:39:03

Re: crème de la crème

#477 2018-12-26 01:36:59

Re: crème de la crème

#478 2018-12-28 01:07:03

Re: crème de la crème

#479 2018-12-30 00:27:30

Re: crème de la crème

#480 2019-01-01 01:43:07

Re: crème de la crème

#481 2019-01-03 00:19:01

Re: crème de la crème

#482 2019-01-05 00:19:59

Re: crème de la crème

#483 2019-01-05 15:56:06

Re: crème de la crème

#484 2019-01-07 00:16:49

Re: crème de la crème

#485 2019-01-09 00:29:56

Re: crème de la crème

#486 2019-01-11 01:22:02

Re: crème de la crème

#487 2019-01-13 00:58:43

Re: crème de la crème

#488 2019-01-15 00:51:20

Re: crème de la crème

#489 2019-01-15 22:41:48

Re: crème de la crème

#490 2019-01-17 00:14:07

Re: crème de la crème

#491 2019-01-19 00:25:54

Re: crème de la crème

#492 2019-01-21 00:20:11

Re: crème de la crème

#493 2019-01-23 01:15:29

Re: crème de la crème

#494 2019-01-25 01:41:43

Re: crème de la crème

#495 2019-01-27 00:38:50

Re: crème de la crème

#496 2019-01-29 00:16:34

Re: crème de la crème

#497 2019-01-31 00:12:50

Re: crème de la crème

#498 2019-02-02 00:40:14

Re: crème de la crème

#499 2019-02-04 00:37:27

Re: crème de la crème

#500 2019-02-06 00:44:25

Re: crème de la crème

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