-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.
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