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.