– 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.
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