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.
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