Lesson 91: Roller Skates

The 1860s were busy times. The Civil War started in 1861 and killed 600,000 people. It was the worst war in American history.

The first early skates were invented by John Merlin, and they were ice skates with wheels. He himself was wounded in 1760 trying to demonstrate them. They were hard to stop and steer. The roller skate was invented in 1863 by James Plimpton. Not much is known about him.

Roller skates are shoes with 4 wheels on each shoe.  Skating is a fun way to get healthy exercise. Another sport that uses skates is roller hockey.

The 4 wheel design was safer than 2 wheels and Plimpton experimented with how to sell them best. He built roller rinks in 1866. He started renting out the skates to young dating couples and got rich of the business. He had to fight 300 lawsuits and then roller skates took off in the 1870s.

The reason roller skates took off was because of disco. The music went well with roller skates. The skates led to the skateboard in the 1950s and the roller blade in the 1990s. The rinks are still in use today.

Lesson 92: Barbed Wire

The US was expanding by 1850 and there were few fences on the open range. The only fences were farmer’s, to keep cattle out of their crop. Cattle went where they wanted so the only way to keep the cattle strait was by branding. Cattle were watched by cowboys on horses because no one could walk as far as was needed to feed the cows. Cattle drives were growing after the Civil War. The first cattle drive was in 1866. It took two months with 10 cowboys driving 3,000 head of cattle 15 miles per day.

Free roaming cows became a problem. The cows would wander onto train tracks and hold up trains. They would also eat farmers’ crops. Back then fencing was expensive and there were no close hardware stores. 160 acres was a lot of land to fence. That problem was solved in 1868.

Michael Kelly invented barbed wire in 1868. Not a lot is known about him.

Barbed wire is an easy and cheap way to control cattle. It lasts 10-20 years and works better than you would think.

Joseph Glidden invented a better version in 1873. What do you think he did to advertise it? He went and built a ranch in the middle of 160 acres and then fenced the entire thing in barbed wire. He then put 12,000 cattle on the ranch and sat back. Not one cow escaped.  Then a man named John Gates created an even better on and put on a demonstration where he drove a stampede towards a fence and it did not break.

Ranches grew and the barbed wire is used today to keep prisoners on prison and it is used to keep trespassers out. The barbed wire ended the need for cowboys and the old west.

Lesson 93: Cowboy Hat

Fur traders made the coonskin hat fashionable.  And it was used by cowboys. It was not really a good hat for cowboy work though.  Meanwhile, the gold rush had started and the 49ers appeared.

John .B. Stetson was born in 1830 in New York. He was the 7^th child of 12. His father was a hat maker and he learned the trade. Then, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He figured it was his last chance to see the frontier. So he headed west. While he was there, he noticed that coonskin hats had fleas! He also noticed that no one had the same hat. No one had the same style and none of the hats were good for work. So when he realized that he was not going to die he invented the Cowboy hat in 1865.

The cowboy hat is designed to be functional.  The brim kept the sun off your face, neck and back. The water proof fur-felt kept your face dry when it rained. It was made of rabbit and beaver. It could be used as a water bucket for your horse and to steer cattle.

Stetson knew how to advertise and the hat became popular almost immediately. It was called the hat that won the west.

The cowboy hat was iconic in the old west. Buffalo bill wore a custom made one and nothing shows the cowboy hat more than the movies.

Lesson 94: Pasteurization

Louis Pasture was born in France in 1822. He was an average student and went to school in 1838. He was a good philosophy student but a bad chemist. Then he got better with chemistry and was asked to investigate wine that was going bad. He patented his germ theory in 1865.

Pasteurization kills germs and bacteria. You heat the milk of wine hot enough to kill the germs but keep the taste. You use hot temperatures and short time.

He advertised to wine makers and it was not until 20 years later that it was used on milk. Most milk nowadays is pasteurized. The process led Thomas Whelch to invent Grape Juice.

My favorite invention this week was the roller skate. It was my favorite because I love roller skating and its lots of fun. I had not thought about its invention before. I just had fun skating. Now I know all about its invention and inventor.

Lesson 66: Safety Elevator.

Rome and Greece had a sort of elevator, and the people in the Middle Ages also used one.  One was needed for coal mining, but nobody used them because they just weren’t safe. Because of that buildings were limited to two or three stories because they used stairs.

Elisha Graves Otis was born in Vermont in 1811. He came from a rich family and he was the cousin of the inventor of the steam shovel.  He left home and became a wagon driver. He married and had 2 sons. Then, he moved to a river town and built a grist mill. But, he converted it to a saw mill and then gave that up and turned to building wagons.  His wife died in 1839 leaving him an 8 year-old son and a baby son still in diapers.  Then he moved to Albany New York and went to work in a toy factory. He had an idea for a safety stop and used it to invent the Safety Elevator in 1852 to lift wood scraps.

Elevators lift people up and down without them having to walk. They are used in sky scrapers, constriction sites and lots of other places. They are lifted by steel cable and balanced by a counterweight. But what if the cables snap? The safety elevator used a backup ratchet system and required manual lifting.

 It was remarkably slow to sale despite the benefits. It required good marketing so Elisha Otis rented a space at the World’s Fair and put on a dramatic demonstration of the elevator every hour. He would hoist himself up to the top and then order his assistant to cut the rope. The rope cut and sent him hurtling down the elevator, a couple of inches.  It got him the sales he needed.

The elevator made sky scrapers possible, they can be hundreds of feet high now and you can have lots of people living on a little bit of land.

Lesson 67: Syringe

Early civilizations had something like the syringe but it was lost during the Middle Ages. Muslims used it to preform eye surgery and it also was used for injecting medicine into blood veins.

Alexander Wood was born in Scotland in 1817. He had a good education and attained a medical degree at Edinburgh collage. He used morphine to treat patients and then he invented the Syringe in 1853.

Doctors today use hypodermic syringes. The syringe consists of a reciprocating pump and it is used to control the dosage given to patients and other things. They are used outside the hospital and they are used to fill ink cartridges.

The syringe was popularized in France by a doctor and the one handed syringe was invented in 1899. The glass syringe was invented in 1946 and the disposable syringe in 1949.

The syringe improves diabetes control and it can be used to give a patient a safe anesthesia by making sure the administration is done smoothly. Also, using the syringe helps injections act quicker. Solders during World War 1 carried morphine syringes. And they are used in Epi- pins today.

Lesson 68: The Bessemer Process

The Ottoman Empire was powerful in the 1200s but it declined by the 1800s. England was nervous about the growing Russian Empire; And France was growing and expanding under Napoleon. Then the Crimean War happened between France, England, Russia and the Ottoman Empire in 1853.

Henry Bessemer was born in England in 1813. His father was an inventor and he passed down those traits to his son Henry. Henry was a prolific inventor and had experience in steam powered machines. He grew interested in weapons because of the Crimean War and had a talk with Napoleon the 3^rd who wanted more steel for his weapons. He invented the Bessemer Process in 1855.

The process converts useless pig iron into useful steel.  The process forces hot air through molten iron to remove all the impurities and that leaves behind slag.  The Bessemer process made mass scale steel production feasible and it increased production. The price of steel went down and less labor was required.

Henry Bessemer licensed his patent to 5 different area iron makers But the process was just too hard for them to understand. He had to open a factory of his own. The process came to America in 1862 and there he built 11 mills. He had a public demonstration and  the railway liked his idea.

The process made the railway better and longer trains could be built. Roads use steel and concrete buildings use steel to reinforce them.  Today no building is made without steel.

Lesson 69: Egg Beater

There was European conflict in the 19^th century and America was running full steam towards industrialization. Americas Midwest was growing and the south was becoming rich although it relied on slave labor. The northeast moved to factories and the north stayed a farming community.

The Egyptians were bakers and so were the Romans. Baking grew though the Middle Ages and by 1800 it was used everywhere. The egg beater was invented by a man named Ralph Collier in 1856. Not much is known about him other than he came from Baltimore.

Today the egg beater is called the kitchen mixer. It helps you bake and it reduces labor. The beaters spin on the mixer or the bowl spins around the beaters. Some are hand held others are non-lift able. Collier’s first device was a hand held cranking machine. The crank turned the gears which turned the beaters.

Other inventors swathe egg beater and improved upon it. In 1859 a model was sold to a company, and in 1918 the Kitchen Aid was invented by Herbert Johnson.

The mixer produces large batches of things with almost no labor required. It makes baking a cake easy.

This was my favorite invention this week. It was the most interesting thing I learned about this week as well, because I love to cook and I use the mixer all the time but had no idea about how it was invented.   

Lesson 61: Jackhammer

In 1848 there was a strange outbreak of revolutions. A lot of them occurred because of cults.Also because some people believed that violent revolutions healed society. Across the sea America did not have these problems.

Mining was important but dangerous and steam engines were important tools for the process. An early jackhammer was invented in 1809 and a man named Jonathan Couch invented the modern version in 1848 which he called a percussion drill.

The jackhammer is a device for chipping away stone and concrete. The bit attached to a piston that a steam engine would bash into the rock. The bit is pushed up and down by pressurized air. Some run on electricity.

The steam engines could not be installed in the mines they produced to many bad gases. So Couch’s assistant Fowle invented compressed air.

The Mont Cenis tunnel links Italy to France. It was destined to take 25 years to build, as it was built into a mountain. But, thanks to the jackhammer it only took 14 years. The jackhammer can be used by homeowners and helps speed up road construction.

Lesson 62: Pin Tumbler Lock

Linus Yale Sr. was born in Connecticut in 1797. He moved to New York, married his wife at age 18 and had 4 children. He opened a lock shop to sell bank locks and invented the pin tumbler lock in 1843 to use in safes.

It was first called a Yale Lock and was a cylinder drum. The key lined up with the pins, pushed some up and some down, and then opened the lock. It was hard to know the length of the pins so harder to pick.

Linus Yale Jr. continued his father’s industry after he died. He became an electrical engineer and the lock became popular. Linus Jr. took the invention to the World’s Fair and advertised its benefits. He also exposed the easy picking of other locks.

The pin tumbler lock is used in the common door and new feature enhanced security adjustments are always being made. Its safety guarantees helped people trust banks for keeping their money safe. This led to the banking industry to becoming the most elite industry today.

Lesson 63: Safety Pin

The Irish Potato Famine drove immigration to America. It all started with a potato blight in the 1840s and two thirds of the population (that relied on potatoes because of outrageous Corn Laws) went hungry and immigrated to America. So 1 million people died and 1 million immigrated.

Walter Hunt was born in New York in 1797. Not much is known about him except that he became a mechanic and had an eye for invention. He invented version of the sewing machine and had experience with needles. He invented the safety pin in 1849 to pay back a debt.

Safety pins are simple folding needles. They have sharp heads and guards to keep the pins from sticking you. Sewing pins wiggled free and pricked you, these did not.

Hunt invented the safety pin to pay back a debt of 15 dollars. He sold his patent for 400 dollars to a company named WR Grace and company. Grace was the last name of the man who founded the company, an immigrant from the Irish potato famine. 15$ then is equal to 450$ today and 400$ to 12,000$. The company advertised to house wives and nurses for diapers and clothes.

Today they are still used in diapers and they helped reduce household expenses.

Lesson 64: Gyroscopes

France had a long 19th century. Napoleon was overthrown in 1814, the Bourbon Dynasty was overthrown in 1830 and the socialist overthrow happened in 1848. Then, Napoleon the 3rd took over in 1852.

Leon Foucault was born in Paris in 1819. He was home-schooled and went to medical school to become a doctor but was afraid of blood. He became interested in physics and became apprenticed to the man who discovered Leukemia. He then worked with a man and helped discover the speed of light. In 1851 he experimented with the earth’s rotation and then invented gyroscopes in 1852.

The gyroscope is a spinning disc inside gimbals. The word gyroscope is a combination of two Greek words that mean “circle” and “to look”. They seem to defy the laws of physics but they don’t. the gimbals allow the rotation and they resist forces that try to turn them. The gyros create stability.

Foucault used the gyroscope to prove the earth’s rotation and electrical motors were added in the1860s. The compass used gyroscopes in 1904 and they were used for military aircraft in World War 1 and World War 2.

Lesson 56: Rotary Printing Press

Gutenberg’s printing press launched the protestant reformation. With the press, workers could print 2 book pages an hour. Steam engines increased the rate by 1824 to 1,000 pages an hour. Richard Hoe was born in 1812 in New York. He was the son of a mechanic who owned a printing press company. At age 21 he became the president of his father’s company and he learned about the printing operation. He invented lots of things including the rotary printing press in 1843. The Press uses rotating drums and allows a never ending stream of paper to be printed. The type is on the cylinder face and hundreds of feet of paper can be loaded. It can print 7 million pages an hour at twenty miles per hour. In the 1820s the newspapers were political operations. But a man named Abell founded the Baltimore Sun, the start of penny papers. He was quick to adopt the rotary printing press. And once he did, others followed. It led to the New York Times in 1851 which used the rotary printing press, and the middle class started relying on the newspaper. The rotary printing press led to the massive greeting cards industry creation and the Christmas card industry. And it helped start the magazine industry.

Lesson 57: Kerosene

Al-Razi actually discovered kerosene in the19th century and it was used for heat and lighting but lost over time. Abraham Gesner was born in 1797 in Canada. He wanted to be a sailor and by the time he was 20 he had been in 2 shipwrecks. He got married at age 27 and then became a doctor. He then turned his interests to geology. He practiced both medicine and geology in Canada and invented kerosene in 1846. Kerosene is a fuel and generalized trademark. It is derived from the distillation of petroleum. It has a 350 to 450 degree evaporation point. It is clear, stable and thin. Kerosene is used in lamps, heaters and Airplane fuel. Gesner founded a company in 1850 and sold kerosene, lamps and oil. Also an American inventor competed with him. With the discovery of petroleum Gesner lost control of the kerosene industry. The invention of kerosene led to the decline in the whaling industry. And it put men on the Moon.

Lesson 58: Antiseptics

Hospitals and churches took in babies from mothers who could not take care of them. And in Vienna there were two hospitals. One hospital had a death rate of 10% the other one had a death rate of 5%. Women going to have their babies, begged the doctors on their hands and knees to send them to the lower death rate hospital. Some had their babies on the street. This was a problem. Ignaz Semmelweis was born in 1818 in Budapest. He was the 5th of 10 children and his family was wealthy. He went into obstetrics and was 26 when he was finished learning, it took him 7 years. He went to work in a Vienna hospital which happened to be the hospital with the higher death rate. He witnessed the women begging the doctors and it troubled him greatly. He resolved to fix the problem. He started by eliminating the differences. He discovered that the biggest difference was that the hospital with the higher death rate had only medical students working there. The hospital with the lower death rate had only midwives in training employed. Then one of his friends died after being stabbed accidently with a student’s scalpel while preforming an autopsy. The symptoms were exactly that of the women that died. The midwives did not perform autopsies, students did. Eureka! He invented Antiseptics in 1847. Antiseptics kill germs and infection. Semmelweis’ antiseptics were made out if lime and chlorine. He did not know about germs as Pasteur’s germ theory was not known. All he knew was that the smells on the student’s hands were making women sick. Semmelweis’ antiseptics reduced the death rate from 18 % to 2 % in just one month. Some months there was a death rate of 0 %. Students from the hospital spread the word around. What do you think the other doctors’ reception to the idea was? If you think they loved the idea and thought Semmelweis was a genius, you are absolutely wrong. They hated the idea. They said he was offending them. If you said their hands were unclean then you were saying that the doctors were unclean. The hospital that he worked at fired him. Semmelweis wrote letters calling doctors irresponsible murderers. And he eventually went crazy. He died in an asylum. Dead bodies, as it was discovered were not the problem . It was germs. After Pasteur’s germ theory decreased resistance. But the doctors still ignored the data. The Germ theory was in dominance in the1880’s and today hand washing is part of our daily lives. In Semmelweis’ life, hand washing and antiseptics saved 100s of lives. Today millions are saved.

Lesson 59: Gas Masks

Gas masks are common today. You can buy a pack of little breathing masks at the store for home. They are common today for fire fighters. But before gas masks were invented firefighting was hard, you had to breathe in all those harmful chemicals. Coal mining was hard as well; too much coal dust was breathed in. Naturally inventors wanted to fix this problem. Almost nothing is known about the man who invented it. His name was Lewis .P. Haslett and he was from Kentucky. He was probably a miner himself or was involved in the mining industry somehow. A gas mask protects you from polluted air. It forces air into a filter and blocks the harmful vapors and germs from the air. The filters react with the vapors keeping them out. In some cases oxygen tanks may be needed but they help you work in harsh environments. The first gas warfare was in World War 1 and during World War 2 in 1944 the modern version was invented. It was used during the Cold War by school children. Today they are used everywhere, by nuclear weapons builders, radiation workers and many others. Please let know about any mistakes.

Lesson 51: Ether

Anesthesia goes way back. Lots of people had different ways of relieving pain. In 1804 Fredrick Surturner invented morphine, and Ether was used as a collage party drug. Crawford Long was born in Georgia in 1815. He grew up in a wealthy family and became a surgeon after many years of studying. He moved home to Georgia and read a lot. He noticed the properties of Ether seeing that when someone got hurt, they did not, after becoming sober remember any pain or that it had happened. He invented the idea of Ether as an anesthetic in 1842. It was used by putting it on a rag and the person having the surgery breathing it in. He experimented on a brain surgery and when it was complete the man said he had felt something sort of itchy but no pain, the crowed marveled. Sometimes it did make people sick though. Long did not get credit until after his death. That’s because of three men. Men named Jackson, Morton and Wells. They all discovered Ether a little bit after Long. They had terrible fights about it for years. This is how it all ended: Jackson read an article saying that Morton was the discoverer of Ether and he went crazy. He died in an insane asylum. Morton read an article about Jackson being the true inventor. He tried to commit suicide by drowning himself. Instead, he got a heart attack and died. On his tombstone it said he was the true discoverer. When Wells saw what Morton put on his tombstone, he went crazy and committed suicide in an asylum. They all probably got the idea of ether from Long, and in the end the History books call him the inventor. March 30th is National Doctors Day. The same day Crawford Long used Ether for the first time. It has led to Anesthesia being a field all on its own. This was the most interesting thing I learned about this week. It is also a terrible thing that people will fight so hard to take credit for something.

Lesson 52: Fax Machine

Before the fax machine it was hard to make copies of important papers. You had to copy by hand. It was hard and time consuming. Alexander Bain was born in Scotland in 1811. His father was a tenant farmer and he had 12 siblings. He became a clockmaker in London. He invented the electric clock around 1840 and this lesson’s invention, the fax machine in 1843. Fax is derived from the word Faxcimily and it is Latin for: make like. It scans, copies and sends documents down a phone line. The graphic image is sent down the telephone line then the image is turned into an audio signal and the other machine, using the signal, makes a reproduction of the original paper. All in about 5 seconds. Bain kept improving the machine and a man named Fredrick Bakewell made a better version. An Italian man made a commercially successful one in 1861. In 1900 Elisha Gray created an even better one. And Xerox invented in the 1990s the modern version. The fax machines connected I Phones with computers and they make running a small business cheap.

Lesson 53: Steam Powered Iron Passengers Ships

Sailing was treacherous. It still is, but less dangerous. The steam boat fixed the problem of sailing up stream. But how could Europe trade with America. It took 80 days round trip and there were no big vessels. Isambard Brunel was born in England in 1806. He was the son of Mark Isambard Brunel the inventor of the tunneling shield. He also had good schooling and his father educated him in many things. He was apprenticed to a clockmaker and helped his father on his tunneling shield. He almost drowned doing so though. He became the chief engineer of the Great Western Railroad and invented the iron steam ship in 1843. He named it the S.S. Great Britain. Its befits were: It shipped on time and had predictable schedules. It also carried lots of passengers cheaply. Brunel was already famous and on top of that his ships out preformed his rival ships. He had grand ideas and he built the S.S. Great Eastern, the biggest ship in the world at the time. And due to immigration demands increased in the 1880s. The S.S. Great Eastern laid the transatlantic telegraph cable and immigrants transformed America. They led to the Gilded Age which gave way to the Progressive Era.

Lesson 54: Ice Cream Maker

There were ice cream types in the ancient world. Royalty enjoyed the treat. So did Roman Emperor Nero. Nero had people whose soul job was to get him ice cream. George Washington also loved ice cream. One year, he spent 200$ on ice cream. That’s the equivalent of 5,000$ today. But, it was too expensive for most people. It took hours just to make a small batch. It was very laborious. The Ice Cream Maker was invented by a woman named Nancy Johnson. Next to nothing is known about her. She patented the Ice Cream Maker in 1843. Cream, Sugar, Vanilla and Milk are what you use in your basic vanilla ice cream recipe. The ice cream maker is a bucket with a crank on it. You put your ice cream mix in a canister and put it in the middle of the bucket. Then you fill the space around the canister with layers of ice and rock salt. The salt lowers the melting point of the ice. Then you crank the handle and mix your ice cream. It makes the process less hard. Nancy Johnson sold the patent and others improved and released different designs. That led to ice cream stores. Also, mass production of ice cream emerged by the second half of the1800s. Ice Cream is cheap, delicious and can be any flavor. It represents the wealth of the western civilization. There are companies that exist just to sell ice cream.

Lesson 46: Electric Clock

After the mechanical clock was invented productivity increased. You could track the time better than with a sundial. The breakthrough was the escapement. It increased accuracy and the pendulum assisted.

Alexander Bain was born in Scotland in 1811. His father was a tenant farmer and he had 6 brothers and 6 sisters. He was apprenticed to a clock-maker and then moved to London and became a clock-maker himself. Bain learned about electromagnetism and used what he had learned to invent the electric clock in 1840.
The electricity kept the pendulum moving instead of weight. In time the pendulum was replaced with electric oscillators. Crystallized oscillators track time and are smaller, more portable and last longer.

Bain was almost swindled out of his patent by Charles Wheatstone. But Parliament awarded Bain damages when they found out. And after 1840, electric clocks were popping out everywhere.

The electric clock replaced the mechanical clock and now digital clocks are common everywhere.

Lesson 47: Blueprints

To build anything you need a plan. And before the blueprint it was hard to make copies of building plans. Draftsmen were people whose job was to make copies by hand, of plans. But, it was hard.

John Herschel was born in England in 1792. His father’s name was William Herschel and he was an astronomer. He discovered the planet Uranus. John went to South Africa for some time in 1833 to study plants. He loved Botany and was an in demand scientist. He invented the blueprint in 1842.

Blueprints are drawings. The process helped make it fast and easy to make copies of building plans. First you take some chemically coated paper and expose it to ultra violet light. Then when you remove the light the blueprint remains. It preserved perspective on copies but there is one downside. You can’t make changes to blueprints.

It was also used by Botanists and scientists as well as builders. It declined in the 1940s though.

Blueprints made it easier to make copies of things, and later was replaced by Computer Aided Design, CADs.

Lesson 48: Stapler

Bundling was hard in the 19th century. Pages were sewn together with ribbon or string and wax was used on envelopes. Red tape was used on stacks of paper to hold them together. It was very difficult.

Samuel Slocum was born on Rhode Island in 1792. And he had 7 siblings. He learned carpentry and then moved to London to make sewing pins. He started a factory to produce the pins and invented the stapler when trying to ship his sewing pins in 1841.

The stapler binds paper together using U shaped metals driven into paper and the ends are then bent. They are used everywhere. Someone even invented a staple gun used in construction. Staples are even used in surgery.

A man named George McGill spent 20 years improving the stapler. And a commercially successful one was invented in 1879. After that lots of people invented staplers. In 1884 the word “stapler” was used. The Swingline stapler was invented in 1925 and became famous.

Staplers are standard tools. The surgical staples reduce the risk of infection and staples are a common school tool. One child even got an F for not positioning his staple in the right place on his homework.

Lesson 49: Grain Elevator

The Erie Canal was finished in 1825. It opened trading between the East and the Midwest. Food prices fell and grain passed quickly through the canal. But unloading took several days. This was a problem.

Joseph Dart was born in Connecticut in 1799. He moved to Buffalo and sold furs to traveling Indians. He went into grain trading after the Erie Canal was completed But needed to unload grain faster. So he hired a man named Robert Dunbar to figure out a way to fix the problem and in 1842 the grain elevator was invented.

Grain Elevators lift grain into silos. Dart’s was steam powered and it was a leather belt with buckets on it. The buckets scooped up the grain 8 times faster than a man could and included a scale at the top to weigh the grain. It unloaded, stored and dispersed.

Darts grain elevator was built by the river and word about it spread around. Robert Dunbar went and built grain elevators in Russia, England, New York City and lots of other places. Grain elevators are still important today.

Grain elevators transformed Buffalo and spurred trade all over the world. More people moved west. It was a collaboration of inventions.

The grain elevator is the most interesting thing I learned about this week. I think it is the most interesting because at first I did not know what it was, but now that I know I see what an important invention it is.

Lesson 41: Steel Plow

The first kind of plow was the Scratch Plow it was good for dry soil but did not work for rich soil. The Heavy Plow was invented next during the Middle Ages. But then, settlers moving west, again encountered new soil.

John Deere was born in Vermont in 1804. His father was a tailor and he had a good education. After collage he became a blacksmith in 1825 at age 21. As a Blacksmith, Deere had lots of people come into his shop and from the customers he learned of the problem of hard to plow soil. He had an idea. Deere had watched his father making leather clothes and he noticed that polished needles slid through the leather easier than dull ones, the same for polished pitchforks. They slid through the soil easier. So he invented the Steel Plow in 1837.

The prairie soil was fertile. The soil stuck to the plows and made it hard to plow if every few minutes you had to stop and clean off the moldboard because the soil stuck to it. But John Deere’s polished steel plow slid through the sticky soil and it could not stick. The steel plow moldboard was different and self-cleaning.

Deere tested his plow at his neighbor’s farm and sales spread by word of mouth. He like many other inventors offered risk free guarantee, for example. If you were interested in buying the steel plow, then you could keep it for a trial period. If you liked the plow, you bought it, if not you returned it and you had lost nothing. It worked. He built a factory near a river and some railroads. And he competed with the harvester.

The Deere Company is still a major producer of farm equipment today and it made the west possible. Today the Midwest is the third biggest wheat producer in the world after China and India.

Lesson 42: Steam Shovel

The Egyptians and the Greeks used cranes to do work for them. The Romans did too. Mark.I.Brunel invented the tunneling shield in 1818 but most work was done by animals and human powered construction in the early 19th century.

William Smith Otis was born in Pelham Massachusetts in 1813. He loved mechanical inventions and invented the steam shovel in 1835 at age 22.
The steam shovel is a steam powered dirt moving bucket moved by pistons. Holes were dug faster, deeper and easier.

Otis died four years later in 1839 after receiving his patent. He had gotten typhoid fever and died at age 26. After his death his patent passed to his relatives and the railroad drove demand for the shovel. It was improved and sales spread more rapidly after its patent expired. It made taller buildings and was used in the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal boosted shipping. And the shovel helped build roads. Some even dug the Empire State Building’s foundation.

Lesson 43: Postage Stamp

The postal service had problems. The recipient paid for the mail and the mail was subjected to spying. Something needed to change.

Rowland Hill was born in England in 1795. His family had important and influential friends. He worked for the government and was a painter. Story goes that he watched a woman who was too poor to receive a letter from her fiancé. So he invented the postal stamp in 1838.

The postal stamp is a piece of paper with adhesive backing that says: the postage has been paid for. The sender paid for the sending and costs were based on weight not distance. They had illustrations on them and the stamped postmark said the stamp had been used.

There were postage reforms in 1839 and Hill worked with Charles Babbage. Support from businesses grew, and price for sending fell.

The stamp came to America in 1847 and two stamps were made, one of George Washington which was 10 cents, and one of Benjamin Franklin which cost 5 cents. It spurred westward expansion and commerce expanded as communication prices fell.

Lesson 44: Vulcanized Rubber

Rubber comes from trees. Aztecs and Mayans used rubber to make boats and other stuff water proof. It was used in pencils as erasers in the1700s and it spread from England.

Charles Goodyear was born in Connecticut in 1800. His father manufactured buttons and farm equipment. He grew up learning how to build things using tools. He got married and opened a hardware store. He improved a rubber life preserver and was determined to fix the rubber problem. He invented vulcanized rubber in 1839.

One day when he was showing off the rubber to some people the rubber flew out of his hands because he was so excited. The rubber landed on a nearby hot oven. When he had picked it up he noticed that where the rubber was burned it was hard but still elastic.

Vulcanization eliminates stickiness and is weather proof. First you mix rubber than sulfur than you heat it up. It is no longer brittle but durable.

He started a factory to produce rubber products and he died in 1860. The Goodyear Company was formed in 1898 named after yep; you guessed it, Charles Goodyear. The company’s slogan is: Goodyear Get There.

This week, vulcanized rubber was the most interesting thing I learned about along with the steel plow. The reason is that I have always been familiar with the John Deere merchandise but I never knew what it was, that story behind it. And because I never stopped to think of how people made rubber, or what made it durable.

Lesson 36: Electromechanical Relay

The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 to discuss revising the Articles of Confederation which was the law of the land at the time. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wanted it gone and replaced with a constitution that said all states had to agree on going to war and there was no taxing power for the government. They used Shay’s rebellion to untruthfully write to George Washington and they said that the rebellion was a big problem so he came to the meeting. The Articles of Confederation was replaced with the U.S. Constitution and that led to George Washington becoming the first president of America. Joseph Henry was born in New York in 1797. He became a silversmith and was interested in Science. He became a engineer then a science Professor. He invented the multiple coil magnet in 1831 and the Relay in 1835. The Relay is a Electromechanical switch that allows a remote operation of circuits. It is powered by a electromagnet. Its function helped it spread initially and it spread quickly after 1837. The telephone also used Relays. It made the telegraph and telephones possible. And it protects the power grid from short circuits. It is used in automobiles and AC control.

Lesson 37: Revolver

Spain conquered the Aztecs in 1521 and Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. Spain’s empire faltered and that led to Mexican then Texan independence. Samuel Colt was born in 1814 in Connecticut. He was fascinated with Science as a teenager and built a battery. He went to sea to learn to be a sailor and being inspired by a ships steering wheel he invented the Revolver in 1835. The Revolver is named for its rotating cylinder and the most important parts are the trigger and the hammer. There is a single and double action revolver and they are loaded with power. Later, reloading cartridges were made. The Revolver is reliable, safe and can fire Six shots rapidly. Colt was blocked from selling to state militias and was unsuccessful in securing purchases from Congress. So he sold to Florida Indian fighters. Samuel walker was impressed by the revolver and purchased some for his Texas rangers. They were called the most efficient guns in the world and stories were told. One, of a band of 30 rangers fighting off a band of 500 Mexicans. Colt spread the interchangeable parts industries through America and his guns led to cartridge type bullets. The M1911 defined the hand gun stile. This is the most interesting thing I learned this week because I have seen lots of movies with the Revolver but I did not know the story of how it was invented.

Lesson 38: Morse Code

The First Great Awakening began in the 1730s and lasted to the1770s. Samuel Morse was born in Massachusetts in 1791. His father was a Calvinist preacher and he became a painter. Samuel Morse painted John Adams and James Monroe. In 1835 he received a letter from his father that said his wife had been very ill but that she was getting better. The next day he received another letter from his father that said his wife had died. He rushed home as fast as he could but by the time he got home she had already been buried. He grieved for her and then invented Morse Code around 1836. He said no one should have to go through what he had. He wanted a way for news to travel faster. Morse Code takes advantage of the telegraph features and turns the Alphabet into a series of dots and dashes. For example the SOS is dit dit dit, dah dah dah, dit dit dit. Morse’s friend Alfred Vail improved the code and in 1844 Morse Sent the first telegraph message 40 miles, it said “What hath god wrought”. The code spread quickly and a transatlantic cable was built in 1866. Samuel Colt invented a water proof cable and went into business with Morse for a short while. At first the radio used Morse code. It was important during wars,and it enabled land armies to move quickly.

Lesson 39: Circuit Breaker

The Second Great Awakening happened and Calvinism Declined to Arminianism’s rise. Baptists and Methodists multiplied. Charles Grafton Page was born in 1812 in Massachusetts. He loved electricity as a boy and built a machine at ten years old that was static electric and he “shocked” his friends. He gained insight to electricity through experiments. He invented the Circuit Breaker to used in a generator around 1836. It protects cables from short circuits. High currents= Large forces. He patented it in 1867 but he died six weeks later. Before he died he had published a lot of articles that were read by Thomas Edison who invented another one in 1879. One was invented in Germany in 1914 that was a mini Circuit Breaker. The Circuit Breaker is a basic and crucial component to the power grid. It was involved in the great North-East Blackout in which 50,000,000,0 people lost power for 2 days!

-Summarize each of the inventions you studied this week and how they impacted history. Also, explain the most interesting thing you learned this week, and why.

Lesson 31: The Combine Harvester

Hiram Moore was born in 1801 in New Hampshire. After he grew up he moved to Michigan and there he met a man by the name of John Hascall. Hascall had moved to Michigan to escape the conflict that was going on with the Freemasons. Hascall had a problem. He had a wheat crop and no men to help him harvest the wheat. Hascall’s wife had a dream. She saw, in her dream a machine that was pulled by two horses while it cut and harvested the wheat. John Hascall told Hiram Moore about his wife’s dream and in 1834 when he was 33, Hiram Moore invented the Combine Harvester.

The Harvester was pulled by 18 horses not 2 and it was a mini portable mill. It helped reduce farm work and it changed the world.

This invention was the most interesting thing I learned this week because I think it is interesting that a woman’s dream practically invented the Combine Harvester. In America we have a huge crop industry and a lot of it would not be possible without the Harvester.

Lesson 32: The Solar Compass

Rome had professional Surveyors. New surveying instruments appeared around the 1500s and a public surveying department was set up in 1785.

William Austin Burt was born in Massachusetts in 1792. He was the 5th of 7 children and he developed an interest in navigation. He believed that his call in life was to help people. He invented lots of things like the typographer (typewriter) and a instrument for sailors to use but I am going to review something else. Burt became a surveyor for the U.S. government and taught his 5 sons all about surveying so they became surveyors as well. To solve the problem of magnetic interference he invented the Solar Compass in 1835.

One of the benefits of the Solar Compass was that it had no reliance on the Earth’s magnetic field. It also had movable parts to determine the position of true north and an hour circle. The earliest shooting time was 8:30 in the morning. One rotated the revolving limb to the local hour time then rotated the whole compass until the sun filled the tic tac toe plate and you were now facing true north.

Burt won an award from the Franklin institute, and also demonstrated the compass at the World’s Fair in 1852. But, the patent on it expired. The U.S. government, rather dishonestly, then made the compass the standard surveying tool so they did not have to pay a royalty to Burt. And they would not renew his patent.

The benefits of the Solar Compass were that property lines were drawn straight, and accidentally iron was discovered in Michigan. That iron led to the growth of the steel industry.

Lesson 33: The Propeller

The basic forms of boat propulsion is rowing. Archimedes invented the Versatile Screw around 250 BC and people began experimenting with the idea of using it on boats.

Francis Pettit Smith was born in 1808 in England. He had a good education and his father worked for the post office. As a child he was fascinated by boats and as he grew older he was interested in boat propulsion. He invented the Screw Propeller in 1835.

It was better than the paddle wheel because it was lighter and had more efficient fuel costs. It did not rock ships as much on stormy seas and was easier to navigate. It was cheaper to install and turned rotation into linear motion.

Another inventor named John Erickson invented one as well 6 weeks later and he tried to get the navy’s support by building a 45 foot long boat and sailed it along a river, but the navy was not impressed. Smith took his propeller out to sea and while we was on the ocean there was a storm. Smith’s propeller handled the storm fine and won the navy’s support.

Lesson 34: The Mechanical Computer

The Egyptians and Greeks used a device called the abacus to do math and Rome had an even more complicated abacus. Blase Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642 and the Leibniz wheel was invented in 1673.

Charles Babbage was born in London in 1791. He grew up wealthy and had a good education. He self taught himself math and loved Mathematics. He depended on his father for money but after his father died he inherited all his father’s wealth. He noticed the books of data tables had errors. He wanted to fix that so Babbage Designed his “Analytical Engine in 1835.

It used punch cards and did most things like modern computers. It had a data memory and printed tables automatically and accurately.

He never built the machine but he also designed a Difference Engine. Adda Lovelace was fascinated by the concept. She became the world’s first computer programmer.

His machines never had much impact on history but his Difference Engine was built in 2002. It took 17 years to build. The Harvard Mark 1 was built by IBM in 1939 and Babbage’s work helped build it. IBM developed the PC market in 1981 and through the 1980s.

-Summarize each of the inventions you studied this week and how they impacted history. Also, explain the most interesting thing you learned this week, and why.

Lesson 26: The Platform Scale.

Scales have been used since ancient times, but they became important to the economy in the Middle Ages. That is where Thaddeus Fairbanks comes in. He was born in 1796 in Massachusetts.His father owned a mill where he worked with his father and learned about machines. When Thaddeus Fairbanks was 29 he set up shop and became a wheelwright. He built and foundry in 1823 and invented a stove and cast iron plow. His brother Erastus came to work for him and they opened a company named the E&T Fairbanks company. He and his brother became interested in growing and processing hemp. Thaddeus invented scales to solve problem of to large counter weights and invented the Platform Scale in 1830. It measures large and heavy objects and uses levers. It was functional and accurate. Demand was strong for a scale that solved the problem of counter weights to weigh heavy things and it sold well and industrialization continued demand.Thaddeus soled them overseas and sales slowed in the Civil War but by the 1860s scales were installed almost everywhere. Today The Fairbanks company still sells scales to the railway and Platform Scales are important to the auto industries. They changed how scales where used and enhance production lines.

Lesson 27: The Railroad T-Rail.

Robert Stevens was born in New Jersey in 1787. His father was John Stevens and Robert went to kings collage but dropped out at age 17. He worked with his father to build steamships and improved them as well. In 1830 he became president of a railroad company And he invented the T-Rail in 1831. The T-Rail gets its name from the fact that it looks like an upside down T. The heaver the rail the heaver load it can carry. Railroad ties are spaced 18 inches apart and tie plates fasten rails to the ties. The Stevens rail became the American standard because it was sturdy and easy to install. Charles Vignoles introduced the T-rail to England and there it became known as the Vignoles Rail. Railroads also played a role in the Civil War. The South’s railroads were less developed the the North’s and Southern trains degraded quicker than expected. The T-Rail helped the North win the Civil War and it has helped change the world.

Lesson 28: Multi-Coil Magnets

William Sturgeon invented Electromagnets in 1824 but they were limited because the wire lacked insulation.That’s where this lesson starts with a man named Joseph Henry. He was born In 1797 in New York. His father died and he lived with his grandfather until he was 13 then he became an apprentice to a watch maker. He was interested in science at age 16 and he became a state engineer after collage. He became a teacher of math and science at age 29 in 1826. He invented the Multi-Coil Magnet in 1831. William Sturgeon coated the wire with varnish and had to loosely coil the wire around the conductor but Henry could wrap it tightly and closer together because insulated wire increases coil density. Joseph Henry became the first secretary at the Smithsonian institution. Later a young man came to him seeking advice about an invention he was building, that man’s name was Alexander Gram Bell and the invention was the telephone. This was the most interesting thing I learned this week because without Joseph Henry we might not have the telephone.

Lesson 29: The Mechanical Reaper.

Reaping is the first step to harvesting. It used to take 1 hour just to thresh. 1/4 of human labor was devoted just to threshing.In the 1600s reaping was done by hand or sickle,scythes were used later. It took all day or more just to reap, it was time for someone to fix this problem. Cyrus McCormik was born in Virginia in 1809. His father Robert McCormik was an inventor and farmer who spent years trying to invent a reaper at last his wife said let Cyrus finish the building. Cyrus with the help of a slave named Joe Anderson patented the Mechanical Reaper in 1834. It was pulled by horses while a moving knife cut the wheat and tossed it off to the side. It reduced limits on farming and increased profit. It was slow to spread because there was some reluctance. So Cyrus McCormik offered a money back guarantee with the purchase of a reaper. If the reaper worked, you payed the money and you got a good piece of farming equipment. It it did not work you sent it back and kept your money. The reaper changed farming and became the harvester.

– Summarize each of the inventions you studied this week and how they impacted history. Also, explain the most interesting thing you learned this week, and why.

The Microphone

Before the microphone it was hard to hear people far away unless they shouted. So the Greeks invented amphitheaters but it was still hard to hear. Charles Wheatstone was born in England in 1802. His father was a music teacher and he became an apprentice to his uncle but he did not like to make instruments as that was what his uncle did. He preferred to read and liked to buy books and one day he bought a book by Alessandra Volta and became interested in the voltaic pile. Wheatstone learned that sound is caused by vibrating pressure waves and invented the microphone in 1827. It looked like a pair of headphones, worked like speakers in reverse and it converted sound into electricity. It led to the telephone and has reshaped our world.

The Typewriter

William Austin Burt was born in Massachusetts in 1792. He was the 5th of nine children and grew up on a farm. His family moved to the city and at age 14 he went to school for 3 weeks out of a whole year. The next year he devoted his talents to helping people and went to school for 6 weeks. Burt invented lots of things but the one I am going to talk about is the typewriter. He invented it in 1826 and called it the typographer, it was not called a typewriter until 1874. Typewriters imprint neat writing into paper and allow us to type at faster speeds than we can write. It wasn’t successful until after he died but by 1850 it was apparent that a new form of writing was needed. A company called Sholes and Glidden released the modern design in 1874. Also, Mark Twain was the first writer to submit a typewritten book. It gave way to the key board and computers.

The Braille Reading System

The Napoleonic Wars began in 1803 and ended in 1815. Napoleon wanted a secret form of writing so he told one of his men to invent one. That mans name was Barbier and he came up with a form of raised dots that you could read in the dark. But, the army rejected it because it was too hard to learn. Also, blindness was a huge problem in the 1800s. Louis Braille was born in France in 1809. His father had a leather shop and as a child at the age of 3 he was playing with one of his fathers tools and blinded himself in one eye. The infection from his eye spread to the other eye and it also was blind by the time he was 5. He attended a school for the blind and wanted to help blind people read. He had heard about Barbier’s method and made up one of his own in 1824 at age 15. Braille published books on his method and it spread quickly. Braille helps blind people read and brings them up out of poverty. This is the most interesting thing I learned about this week because without Braille Helen Keller would not have been able to go to collage. I read about Helen Keller and I love her story but without Braille she could not have done the things she did.

The Sewing Machine

Stop a moment and think about what you are wearing. If its a dress then before the sewing machine it wold have taken about 13 hours to make. If you are wearing pants then they would have taken 3 hours to make. Just wanted to let you know. Barthelemy Thimonnier was born in France in 1793. He was the oldest of 7 and became a tailor. He married a woman who also was a tailor and invented the sewing machine in 1829. He opened a factory to produce military uniforms but it was burned by some protestors. Then he opened a new one that Lasted over 200 years. He died in poverty but he left behind a great invention. Sewing machines stitch fabric together manically. In 1832 Walter Hunt invented a sewing machine. In 1844 John fisher invented another sewing machine and Elias How invented the lock stitch in 1846. Isaac Singer was successful in selling sewing machines in 1856 and today Singer is still one of the most popular sewing machine brands there is. People started buying sewing machines in the mid 1800s and the sewing machine has changed the world.

-Summarize each of the inventions you studied this week and how they impacted history. Also, explain the most interesting thing you learned this week, and why.

The Pencil

The earliest forms of writing were on clay tablets and Greeks and Romans used erasable wax tablets. The French Revolution began after France went broke. During it, Napoleon rose up the ranks and Britain blocked the inflow of the pencil and other goods to France. And England gained a monopoly over pencils because the had the only pure graphite mine in the world. So Nicolas Conte invented the modern pencil as we know it today. Pencils are graphite and clay rods encased in wood. They are cheap to make and use. The Conte pencil did not spread to America. You are probably thinking wait, wait, I thought you said he invented the pencil we use today, that’s true, he invented it first but 25 years later someone else invented the same pencil. His name was Henry David Thoreau and he wrote a book called Walden about how inventions are terrible and the time he spent just living off the land. But its a total fraud. During his time “living off the land” he went home and had his mother wash his clothes and used his invention of the pencil to write his book.

The Stethoscope

Hospitals go way back. At first they were christian enterprises but the government began getting involved in the 1600s. Rene Laennec was born in France in 17781. His mother died when he was young and he was sent to live with his uncle and as a child he was often sick. At age 12 he trained under great french doctors who taught him to use sound to determine the illness in the patient. Well he became a doctor and as a doctor he watched school children playing with hollowed out sticks, they would put one end to their ear and the other end they would scratch and listen to the sound it made. One day when treating a lady with a heart problem he was too modest to lay his head on her chest so he remembering the children with the sicks took a piece of paper and rolled it up and put it to her chest and he was surprised at how clearly he could hear her heartbeat and thus invented the stethoscope in 1816. The chest piece captures sound waves and they travel down tubes to our ears. Laennec published a book in 1819 and his design spread. The modern version was invented in 1852.

The Tunneling Shield

Ralph Dodd first attempted to tunnel under the Thames. They started building in 1798 but had to stop because they kept getting flooded. Marc Isambard Brunel was born in France in 1769. He had a talent for drawing and math. At age 17 he joined the french navy. While he was in the the navy the french revolution broke out and after he was out of the navy he had to escape the reign of Robespierre he fled France and barley escaped with his life. He arrived in New York City in 1793 and later was appointed Chief engineer of New York City. Then He went to England and married his old girlfriend who had been captured and nearly executed but when Robespierre’s reign ended, she was released and then went to England where they got married. In England he massed produced pulley blocks, While in England he patented the tunneling shield in 1818 he got the idea from the ship worm that chews holes in ships. The tunneling shield protects the men digging the tunnel. Each man has a sort of compartment where they dig the tunnel out then the shield is pushed forward and they dig again that way they are able to excavate 8 to 12 feet per week. Meanwhile Brunel was sent to deters prison because the people who were using his shield were not paying on time. So he sent letters to Russia saying that if they bailed him out of deters prison he would come build tunnels for them. That did it, people in England knew that if he went to Russia, England would lose his inventions they told Brunel that they would bail him out only if he promised not to go to Russia. This was the most interesting thing I learned this week. I think it is interesting that people will go to such extremes to keep ahead of other people. They started building the Thames tunnel in 1825 and finished in 1843.

Paved Roads

Systematic road building was passed on to local churches in the 1500s. A french engineer invented a new system in 1764 and that was improved in the 1800s by a Scottish inventor but they still were expensive to build. John Mcadam was born in Scotland in 1756. He was the youngest of 10 and at age 14 his mother died and he was sent to live with his uncle in New York at his counting house. He became a wealthy prize agent but had to flee England in 1782 and go back to Scotland. In Scotland he became involved in road building. He invented paved roads in 1816. Paved roads are made of layers of gravel 30 feet wide with a 3 foot rise toward the center to allow drainage. The first paved road in America was finished in 1823. Fun Fact: 1 trillion miles are driven on the interstate every year.

-Summarize each of the inventions you studied this week and how they impacted history.

-Also, answer this question: list two or three sources of motivation that you think are powerful enough to drive inventors to pursue their inventions, even in the face of adversity like bankruptcy and ridicule. Explain why.

Lesson 6 The Vapor-Compression Theory

Before air conditioning and refrigerators, ice houses stored blocks of ice in the summertime. Because heat rises, houses had tall ceilings and in the summertime outside work was harder and took longer because people had to stop work sooner than you have to now because it was just too hot. In 1755 William Cullen experimented with refrigeration and in 1758 Benjamin Franklin investigated vapor cooling. But modern refrigeration started with Oliver Evans. He was a good inventor and discovered vapor refrigeration in 1805. There are four main components to the vapor compression theory, the evaporator coil, the condenser, the expansion valve and the compressor. Evaporation absorbs heat and cools the environment. Condensing releases heat and warms the environment. Electricity preforms the work and creates the cold environment that prevents food from spoiling. Evans developed the theory but did not build a device. It was in 1834 when Jacob Perkins built the first refrigeration system in the world and John Gorrie built one in 1856 for medical purposes. James Harrison built another one for business, also Theodor Lowe installed refrigeration units on food ships in 1869. The first refrigeration units were used in homes in 1913. Freon in 1920 accelerated residential expansion. Air conditioning has changed the world.

Lesson 7 Oliver Evans

Flour milling needed fixing in America in the 1700s. It was an booming industry that was inefficient. Some times if you bought flour you got fine powder but other times you got half ground flour and other times the would be dirt in the flour. The whole process was just begging “fix me”. Oliver Evans was born in Delaware in 1755. As a teenager he became an apprentice to a wheel wright. He was a reader and writer and he was creative. In 1773 he and 2 of his brothers built a mill as a lab so he could experiment. He had an idea: to put the wheat in on one side of the mill and have it come out as flour on the other side with little to no worker help. Evans was ahead of his time. George Washington after seeing Evan”s mill in work, installed the Evans system at his home Mount Vernon,so his mill system spread. His mills are still in use today and without him we would not have AC.

Lesson 8 Percussion Ignition

Ignition systems evolved from the Arquebus. The wheel-lock system was invented in 1500. And the flintlock method in the 1600s. Early shotguns were used at first for duck hunting, a popular sport but the guns needed improvement. John Forsyth was born in 1769 in Scotland. He received a collage education at Kings collage and his father was a Presbyterian minister. After collage he became a minister at age 23. He enjoyed duck hunting, but did not like his guns delay, usually the duck would hear it and fly away. So during the Napoleonic wars when Britain went to war with France from 1803 to 1815 he worked in the armory and there he had the tools to experiment with the idea of a new gun but he got fired when he nearly blew up all Britain’s gun supply. After that he invented the percussion cap method in 1807. After he invented it and Britain used it to fight Napoleon, Napoleon offered Forsyth 20,000 pounds to make it for France but he declined being loyal to Britain. Percussion ignition relies on vibration. The percussion cap is filled with mercury fulminate it is channeled into the barrel and the friction creates a small explosion which ignites the powder. It allowed guns to fire in to rain and fire faster. Forsyth opened a gun shop and advertised his gun to wealthy sportsmen. But he was not successful because he had to constantly fight patent pirates. In 1814 an man named John Shaw patented his own method of the system and within 30 years it was used by the military.

Lesson 9 The Canning Process

The French Revolution Began in 1789. The French government had lots of enemies and little remaining military experience. So they drafted all the citizens of France into one huge army. But they had a problem: how do they feed an army of 1,000,000 people in the middle of nowhere? So Napoleon divided his troops into smaller groups out to find food, that way they could move faster and find food. But that nearly lost him a battle when half his army was out searching for food. So he offered a reward of 12,000 franks to anyone who could find a way to preserve food for long periods of time. Nicolas Appert was born in 1749 and he became a chef in 1784 at age 35. He heard about the reward and he experimented around 1795 and it took him 15 years to invent his method. He put food in champagne bottles and the put the cork on and then boiled the bottles in water. He won the prize but in order to get the money he had to publicize his idea so people could learn to do it as well. Canning uses temperature or pressure. You pour water into the can with whatever you want to can and then you put the lid on and boil it. The boiling kills all the germs and after you have cooled them off the lid is sealed so tight that no germs can get in. Tin cans replaced glass jars by 1812. Mason jars were invented in 1858. And it led to the invention of the can opener in the 1850s.

Inventors have often been laughed at because their ideas seemed foolish or impossible, but if they stopped they would still think about what they had discovered or noticed and they would have to live never knowing what would have happened if they had explored into the unknown. Think of what would have happened if Mary Schweitzer had listened to her friends and not pursued her discovery because she was laughed at, we would not know as much about dinosaurs as we do now. Or the inventor of the spinning jenny what if he had listened to the protestors who told him nobody wanted his invention, but he did not give up and now we sill use the method of the spinning jenny.