Safety PIN

                      Long before William Hunt Invented the safety pin in 1849, a kind of safety pin made of gold was used by Ecruscams, in the 7th century B.C.

Rubber Tyres

                        Rubber Tyres were invented long before automobiles. The first rubber tyres were, devised by Robert William Thomson, a Scottish engineer in 1845 They were, at first, just strip of rubber that were fitted around wheels. The first major application was to bicycles.

Rubber heel

                     Tired of pounding pavements looking for a job, Humphrey O' Sullivan of Boston (USA) sat down one day and invented the rubber heel. 
                                                                                                                                                                                          

Roller Skates

                   The first pair of roller skates were worn in 1760 by Joseph Merlin, a musical instrument maker who loved to invent things. invited to a costume party, Merlin arrived with his newly-made skates. He put them on and rolled into the ball room playing a violin. Unfortunately, he had not learned how to stop or change directions. He sailed widely across the floor and crashed into a large mirror. He smashed the mirror, broke his violin and cut himself severely. But the idea soon caught on, and people have been rolling along on roller skates ever since.

Rocking Chair

                                         Rocking Chair was invented by Benjamin Franklin.

REVOLVER

                                    The first successful revolver, the prototype from which all later revolvers are descended, was patented by the American gunsmith Samuel Colt (1814 - 1862). He also made riffles and shotguns with revolving chambers, but his first factory went bankrupt and it was not until the 1850s that Colt had a big success with his Navy revolver. His guns were used by the army and the navy in the American civil war.

Radium

                  A major discovery was made in 1898, which was to change the course of science and transform medicine. French physicist Pierre Curie (1859 - 1906) and his polish wife Marie (1867 - 1934) discovered, in the course of thir experiments, the radiactive elements radium and polonium.
                   

                  Their discovery of these elements was the birth of modern nuclear physics and led to the whole science of radiotherapy. The couple were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903, which they shared with French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852 - 1908) who had first discovered the rays emitted by uranium slats.
                  

               Pierre curie was killed in an accident, but Marie became Professor of Physics at Sorbonne in his place and went on to isolate the new elements in 1910. Her achievements were recognized by a Nobel Prize and an honorary professorship in radiology at Warsaw.

QUILT

                                Among purely indigenous American craft-works, none excites more interest today than the patch work quilt. Not that the notion of quilting is uniquely American. The ancient Chinese made padded clothing out of layers of stitched-together fabric; and Europeans of old slept under coverlets whose "counter-points" - the stitches used to tack interior padding in place - were frequently worked in elaborate liner pasterns.

Punch Card

                        The first punch card for giving instructions to machines - the forerunners of today's computer cards - were used in the textile mills of France in the early eighteenth century. A loom designed by Basile Bouchon in 1725 used holes punched in a roll of paper to weave designed into silk fabric. When the paper was pressed against a row of needles. the needles lining up with the holes stayed in place, while the others moved on.

Pulverizing

                        In the early 1700s, the French physicist Renede Reaumur discovered the concept of making paper from wood after watching wasps chewing wood, turning it to pulp with their saliva and spreading it on their nests, where it dried into "paper" when exposed to air. But the idea was not put into practical use until 1852, when the first wood grinding machine for pulverizing wet wood (invented by a German weaver, Frderic Keller) was employed in the production of the first news print.

Printing a page

             Who invented a printing press, so that a book or magazine like this one could be made? The earliest printed book was made in China in 868 AD. In Germany in 1450 a printing press was invented by Gutenberg.

Portable Time-Piece

                           The first portable time-piece was made in Nuremberg in 1504 by Peter Henlein. Because of their shape and heft, these early watches were called "Nuremberg live eggs". The first wrist-watch appeared as early as 1790. It was made by Jacquest-Droz and Leschot of Geneva.

Potato Chips

                            In the year 1853, in Saratoga Spring, New York, a fussy diner in a restaurant sent his meal back because the french-fried potatoes were too thick and soggy. The chef became angry and decided to make the thinnest fried potatoes the diner had ever seen. He sliced a potato into paper-thin silvers, fried the pieces in boiling fat and sent the golden chips back to the complaining customer. The customer loved them! " Saratoga potato chips" became a popular Item on the restaurant's menu. Thus, potato chips were actually in vented by mistake.

Postage Stamps

                   The first postage stamp for general use were issued in Great Britain in 1840. Before this time, people brought their letter to the post office to be mailed. They paid the postmaster a fee and the postmaster wrote his name on a corner of the envelop to show that postage had been paid. Prepaid gummed stamps enable people to buy stamps in advance and stick them on their letters in place of the postmaster's signature. The first street mailbox, It no longer was necessary to go to post office to mail letters.

POPCORN

                                              Popcorn was discovered by American Indians. For over a thousand years, Indians have been popping and eating popcorn.

          
                                                 Some indians popped corn by tossing  kernels into the fire and waiting for them to pop out. Others popped corn in pots that had been filled with hot sand. Some Indians wore head dresses and necklaces made of puffed corn. The Aztecs used popcorn in thire religious ceremonies. Early American settlers learned about popcorn from the Indians.

PLYWOOD

                           The inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel also invented plywood and worked out detailed plans for prefabricating plywood houses that could be easily transported to the construction site for quick erection.

PHOTOGRAPH

                                 The first object we can call a photograph was produce in 1822 by the French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce. The process was not really practical, thought, it required an exposure of as long as eight hours. Niepce became bankrupt, and in 1829 went into partnership with the French artist Louis Jacques Mande' Dangnerre, who was also working on the process. Dangnerre improved it to such an extent that he usually is considered the inventor of photography.

PAPER MONEY

                     Paper money is a Chinese invention, dating from the seventh century, although some Chinese historians claim that paper money was actually first printed there in 119 B.C. The first bank note were not placed in service until 1661, in Sweden.

PENCILLIN

                  It is one of the most important medical discoveries of our time, for it allows doctors to easily treat illness and infections that once killed many people. If it were not for pencillin and other drugs like it, there would be little a doctor could do for you, if you came down with a very bad cold or a serious infection.

                    Centuries ado, mold bread was sometimes used as an antiseptic, but no one knew why mold kill germs. Late in the 19th century, scientists discovered that certain molds and bacteria produces substances that would kill or prevent the growth of other bacteria. These substances are now called antibiotics.
                  
                  Then, in 1928, an English scientist named Alexander Fleming was working in his laboratory with a culture of bacteria. When a kind of mold, called penicillium, accidentally infect the culture, Fleming noticed that the mold killed the bacteria around it. Further experiment showed that these molds produced a substance that would kill many common bacteria and Fleming named the substance Penicillin.

                 What was most important about penicillin was that it did not harm living body cells, as did the antibiotics discovered before that. In 1939, other scientist found a way to purify and strengthen penicillin, and it became available in the 1940s.

                 

Parking Meter

                     The parking meter was invented by Carl C. Magee of Oklaroma City, USA. It was in 1936 that his application to the U.S. Patent Office was granted.

PAPER

                         From papyrus to Pardment to paper - the story of what people have written their words on is a fascinating one. It all started In Egypt over 5,000 years ago. Ancient Egyptians wrote on a material made from the papyrus reed, a plant grown in the delta of the Nile River. They made this "plant paper" by laying strips of the stem tissue side by side and then sticking them together with a crude kind of paste made from bread crumbs soaked in boilling water. In other ancient countries paper called parchment was made from animal skins. But some early South American Indians preferred making their parchment from the skin of .....humans!
   

                         The inventor of paper was a Chinese official named Ts'ai Lun, who first made his paper in 105 A.D. from an assortment of strange ingedients including mulberry and bamboo fibers. fish nets and rags. The Emperor Ho Ti was so pleased with Ts'ai Lun's invention that he made him a rich and important man in his court. Unfortunately, success went to the inventor's head and he become involved in a dangerous intrigue. Rather than be shamed by public exposure, he commited sucide by taking poison. We do not know if he left a sucide note behind, written on the paper he invented.

                     The Chinese jealously guarded the secret of paper making for nearly a 1000 years. Finally, the Moors learned it and brought it with them into Spain and Sicily. From there, it spread throughout Europe and by the 1200s, paper mills were appearing in Italy and else where. Johan Gutenberg gave paper a big boast when he invented the first practical mechanical printing press in 1455. Within next fifty years, thousand of books were being printed all over Europe and paper was much in demand.

Opinion Poll

                             In 1938 only 8% of the American people believed that Hitlar had no further territorial ambition in Europe, and 84% favoured registration of pistols and revolvers - so reported the tree-years-old-Gallup Po, the "grand daddt" of opinion polls in the United States. Formal opinion polls did not exist until the 1930s, but they have become increasigly important, Particularly in politics and business. The Gallup Poll boasts a remarkable record. for national elections have deviated on the average by only 2.3% point from the actual elections returns. An impressive performance despite the 1948 Dewey Truman Gaffe that Gallup and most other pollsters committed. since 1936, and in the period of 1970-76 it was slightly more than one per cent.

Nitroglycerine

              In 1847, the Italian chemist Asacanio Sobero produced nitroglycerine for the first time. But when he heated a drop of it, there was a shattering explosion. Realizing, in horror, its possible application to warfare, Sobrero stopped all research in that direction. The trouble was that other scientists did not.

NEWSPAPER

   

                                                      The first Newspaper was probably the Tsign Pao (News of the Capital) a court journal published in Peking. It is said to have started as early as the 500s, and continued publication until 1935. In the beginning, it was printed from carved wooden blocks and was published by the Chinese Government to inform people of important events. There was also a Government "newspaper" in ancient Rome. It recorded current events and was called the Acta Diuran (Daily Events). By the 16th century, people were paying for newspaper.
     

NEON

                   The father of so many inventions - Georges Claude who lived in Paris at the turn of the century was also known as the "Edison of France". About 1901 he found that a rare kind of gas - neon, could be obtained from the air.The problem was, in Claude's own words, "Once we had it, no one had any use for it". Claude and his assistants experimented. The most interesting quality of neon, they found, was that it glowed when as electrical charge was passed through it.

                    This fact gave Claude an idea for an entirely new way of producing light. He made neon tubes that could be used like ordinary light bulbs, but people did not take to the reddish light for household use. Then by bending the tubes with heat, Claude found a way to from letters. He realized that neon tubes could be used as advertising signs.

                   The neon sign was first used in the United States in 1923 to advertise a play called "Little Old New York". The sign attract more interest than the play and the boom in neon had began.

Moratorium

                                     The suggestion of a moratorium on invention was put forward in 1933 by Sir James Alfred Ewing, an eminent British engineer. The moratorium would have allowed for assimilation and integration of the exiting mass of inventions and for evaluation of further proposals.

Modern Magic

                 The founder of modern magic Jean Eugene Robert Houdin (1805 - 1871) was an inventor of many complicated toys and automate.

                His first profitable gadget was an alarm click; a bell wound peal to rouse the Sleeper and a lighted candle would come out of a box. It was for his application of electricity to clocks in general that Houdin was decorated in Paris, In 1855. ( Harry Houdini assumed his name from Houdin's)

Modern Lock

                           Lock have been around for thousand of years,but the kind of lock we use today is less than 200 years old.In 1817, the British government offered a prize to any one who could design a lock that could not be picked open by a thief. A man named Jeremiah chubb presented a lock and that he said, was safe. To test the lock, the government gave it to a lock-picker, who was in jail, offering him his freedom if he could pick the lock. He tried for ten weeks, but could not open the lock. In all the years Since this kind of lock was invented, no one has even been able to pick it open! This of lock most people have in their doors was invented in 1861, by an American named Linus Yale. It is called a Cylinder Lock.

Miner's Lamp

                               Some historians of science claim that the handsomest of the great scientist was the English chemist Humphry  Davy. His lectures on science during the years of the Napoleonic wars were extremely successful, society women flocking to him as much to see him as to hear his excellent talks. He discovered seven new elements and nitrous oxide (a gas), and he invented the miner's lamp. He seems also to have been a talented poet, according to the estimate of such established poets as Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Mechanical Man

              Elektr, the mechanical man, was made by the Westinghouse Company and first exhibited in new york city during the World's Fair of 1939-40. The seven-foot, 260-pound robot was set in motion by vibration of the human voice. He could walk, smoke, count on his fingers up to 10 , tell whether an object held before him was red or green and perform 20to 30 other feast. Elektro's electrical system contained 24,900miles of wire or enough to encircle the globe.

Mechanical clock

                          The invention of the first mechanical clock has been attributed to I'Hsing and Liang Ling-tsan of China 725 AD.

Matches

                            In 1825 Walker,  a 44-years old chemist from the English town of Stockton-on-Tees, was busy making a"lighting mixture" of antimony sulphide and potassium chlorate for use with a flint and steel. When he accidentally rubbed some of the mixture against his hearthstone, he discovered that it lit spontaneously. He could light the friction matches he developed from this discovery by drawing them through a piece of folded sand paper. Walker's invention, sold only locally, was never patented. It was Samue Jones who copied and patented the matches in 1828 under the trade name ucifer. The invention of the modern friction match is attributed to Sir Issac Holden of Keighley, Yorkshire; in 1829he produced a match of phosphorous and sulphur that, being more effcient than Walker's superseded it by 1833.

Man-Made Fiber

          The first man-made fiber was produced experimentally by Sir Joseph Swan in 1883.

Malted Milk Powder

                        Malted milk, was originally developed as a preservative for milk powder. The man who discovered the method was William Horlick of Racine, Wisconsin, U.S.A. wisconsin is known as the "Dairy State", and in fact, produces so much milk that it has always been a problem what to do with the surplus. Many Wisconsonites had tried to preserve milk. The most popular idea was to dry it untill it became a powder. But milk powder suffered from one major drawback. It tended to spoil during the drying process.

                          Horlick's idea was to add something to milk that might prevent spoilage. He tried many substances. Finally, one worked, an extract of wheat and barley that had been treated with malt. He called hes malted milk powder "diatoid"people did not like the name very much, but they liked his product.

Lithographic Printing

          The technique of lithography was discovered about 1796 by Johann Neponuk Aloys Senefelder, an aspiring Czech playwright. He is said to have copied his mother's laundry list on to a piece of limestone, using a wax pencil. When he accidentally spilled water on the stone, he noticed the waxed portion did not become wet . Sensefelder realized that the same principle would enable printing ink to be selectively transferred to paper or cloth. The process he developed and patented in 1801 marked a major development in the history of printing.

Leeuwenhock Microscope

               The most remarkable of all the 17th century microscopist was Antonie Van Leeuwenhock who held the position of janitor at the Deft City Hall for all of his adult life (it was a sinecure). Building his own microscopes, he was the first to describe spermatozoa-reporting the discovery rather nervously, fearing it might be considered obscene. He was the first to describe structure that could only be bacteria. No one else was to see bacteria again for a century, that is, untill microscopes were devised that could magnify as well and as clearly as Leeuwenhock's tiny lenses.

KODAK

                           The first camera was bought by George Eastman in 1874, when he was twenty four years old. It was to lead him to fame and fortune. Photography at that time him to fame and fortune. Photography at that time was not new. In fact, it had been over forty years earlier that the Frenchman Louis Daguerre, had invented the process. Professional photographers were already taking high quality pictures. The trouble was that taking and developing photographs was very large and chemically treated glass plates were used as a recording medium.

                            George Eastman loved photography. He also believed that everyone shoud be abe to enjoy it. He put his genius to work on the problem of making photography cheaper. His first discovery was light, flexible and inexpensive. Then he developed a simple box camera that anyone could operate. It was made to hold enough film for one hundred exposures.
                           
                              The first of Eastman's cameras, called Kodaks, went on sale in June, 1888. Loaded and ready for use, they only cost twenty-five dollars. In the beginning, when a film was used up, the owner had to send it, camera and all, to the single developing plant in Rochester, New York, for printing. Soon, however, refinements enabled film to be printed locally. The public loved the little Kodak camera and Eastman's dream of popular photography came true.

Juke Box

  An Edison phonograph jukebox, Invented by Louis Glass, was set up in San Francisco in 1889. Jhone C. Dunton's 1905 Invention was the first to offer a choice of 24 cylinder recordings. The first juke box using disc recording was made in chicago a year later
.

Jigsaw Puzzles

              Jigsaw puzzles were invented in the 1760s by an English print maker, John Spibury, as an aid in helping school children learn their geography lessons. The puzzles were made by gluing hand-colored maps of pieces to be fitted together.

             "Dissected Puzzles" were individually cut by hand or with mechanical Jigsaw until late into the 19th century. By that time, they had also become known as "Jigsaw puzzles". Today's mass-produced puzzles are stamped out with steel cutting dyes.  

Jet Engine

                 A jet aeroplane engine was invented by Frank Whittle (1907), an officer in Royal Air Force. In which the means of propulsion was provided by a stream of gas being forced out backwards at great speed. In May 1941 his forced out backwards at great speed. In May 1941 his new engine was fitted into a specially built aircraft which made a successful flight. By the end of the Second World War, the Gloster Meteor, the first British jet fighter aircraft, was being produced.

Jeans

                    The Gold Rush of 1848 attracted many adventurers to Caifornia. Levi Strauss (20Years) had been a draper, or cloth seller, in New York and he took a few bolts of cloth seller, in New York and he took a few bolts of cloth to sell on the journey west. In this manner he earned his way and by the time he reached California, Levi Strauss had sold everything except a roll of canvas.

                     It turned out that "up in the diggin's," where the miners worked, pants wore out very quickly. So Strauss made some pairs of canvas trousers to sell to miners. More and more miners wrer coming to Strauss and  asking him for a pair of those canvas trousers. It was not  long before he forgot all about gold digging.

                    He called his pants "Levi's", They were popular with cowboys as well as miners. Today, called Levis or blue jeans, they are popular with men, women and children in many countries of the globe.

ISIS

         An ingenious California by the name of Dr.Cecil Nixon constructed a robot in 1940 with uncommon abilities. The doctor, who named his creation Isis, fashioned the instrument in the form of ancient Egyptian goddess Isis rested on the couch with a Zither on her lap.
              
       The Instrument could play any of about 3,000 tunes when asked to do so by anyone within a 12-foot radius. This came about becouse Isis was constructed so that voice vibrations touched off her complicated mechanism. Isis right hand picked out the melody of the zither, while her left hand performed the accompaniment.

        The machinery inside the Isis included 1187 wheel and 370 electromagnets. There were numerous other parts. As a crowning touch, Dr. nixon made Isis react to  a warm temperature. When she got hot, she would remove the vell from her face all by herself.It is not known that has happened to Isis in the 50-odd years she was built. Apparently, she is not on exhibition anymore.

Internal -CombutionEngine

      A compatriot of Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler , independently arrived at his own verson of the internal-combustion engine that Benz had developed, Althought the two never met, the firm which succeeded their enterprises merged and formed the present Mercedes-Benz Company.

   Perhaps the first truly practical gasoline-powered automobile was the pan hard, designed, in 1894, by a Frenchman named Krebs, The French had begun to produce autos a few years earlier, after Levassor purchased the French rights to Daimer's engine of 1887. In the U.S. several inventors got high marks for pioneering efforts in the field. Among them were the Duryea brothers,who won the first  automobile race in America in 1895.

Inoculations

(First inoculation against smallpox)

                           Today not many people getsmall pox, but in the past it was extremely common. Many people caught itand manydied asa result.Those who lived to tell the tale bore "pock marks",unightly hoes in the skin where the small pox-scabs had been.

                            Smallpox or variol,is a very infectious and contagious disease that starts as a rash which develops into blisters. Within a few days the blisters fester and then start to crack and dry up.

                          In 1717 Lady Mary Wortley (1689  - 1762) noticed that people in Turkey,where her husband was an ambassador, sometimes used the fluid from smallpox blisters to protect people who had not been infected. Four years later she introduced the practice, known as variolation,into Britain where it was quickly accepted.Although the inoculation itself killed some people, the overall death rate was dramatically reduced.                          

Ice Skates

              Today's splendid skates have come to us through improments over the centuries. Perhaps the earliest ice skates were simply the bones of animals which were bount tothe feet.The primitive Norsemen made much use of these bone "runners" and later other people of Northern Europe quickly learned how to travel at speed on icy surfaces.

       it is not know when metal skates were introduced. It may have been soon after the people of Northern Europe learned how to work iron different shapes,as early as the 4th century.

ICED TEA

       Iced tea was invented in St; Louis, Missouri at the world's Fair of 1904.

Ice cream sundae

           There are many claims for the invention of the ice cream sundae, which emerged during the 1890s. But contemporary laws that forbade the sale of soda on Sunday undoubtedly had a hand in popularizing the dessert. The first sundae were sold in ice cream parlous only on Sunday and thus were called "sundae" was made later by the ice cream parlour proprietors eager to see the dish shed its Sunday - only connotation.

ICE CREAM

            Ice cream is not a new treat. In ancient Rome, the Emperor Nero sent runners into the mountains for snow, which his chefs mixed with honey, fruit and juices for his frozen desserts. When Marco polo returned from his famous journey to the Orient at the end of the 13th century, he brought with him a recipe for a kind of sherbet made from fruit juice and milk. It was said that people there had been eating it for thousands of years. Centuries later, European chefs experimented with ice cream recipes ti invent the dairy ice cream we eat and enjoy today.

             The first commercially made ice cream in the United States was sold by Mr. Hall in New York city in 1786. The first ice cream soda was reputedly concocted by Robert Green of Philadelphia, who in 1874, added ice cream to pain soda water. But credit for the first ice cream cone goes to a young ice cream salesman at the 1904 Lousiana purchase exposition in St. louis - or rather to his date. The salesman, Charies E. Manches, gave an ice cream sandwich and a bouquet of flowers to the layers of the sandwich into a cone to hold her flower, thus founding an American institution.

HOME Air-conditioner

                                    In the summer of 1902, a printer in Brooklyn New York, was having trouble with colour  printing because the hot, humid weather was causing the paper on the presses to change size enough to cause distortions of printing. Willis Haviland Carrier, a young engineer trying to solve the problem, found that air retained less moisture at lower temperatures. He designed a machine that flew air over chilled pipes and stabilized the Carrier's concept became the basis of the home air-conditioner.

Helicopter

          Helicopter were developed from windmills! This is not so surprising since windmills and helicopter both have large blades that turn in the air. The first person to make windmill blades, which normally move in the wind, turn from an internal source of power, was the 15th century artist, sculptor and inventor, Leonardo da vinci.

          It was not until almost hundred years later, after the development of the airplane, that could take and land from a standing position. American engineers, in 1919, had the technology, But it had been Leonardo, in the 1400c, who had the idea.

Hamburger

                Hamburger gets its name from Hamburg, Germany, a city where a kind of 'Hamburg steak' made of shredded raw meat was once a popular dish it is from these steak that American borrowed the name 'Hamburger' and gave it to the familiar sandwich of ground beef in a split bun. Today, any kind of ground up meat is called hamburger, even though it may be far removed from the original version from Hamburg, Germany. Hamburgers have come to be staple of the fast food industry and are one of the most popular sandwich in the world.

Gun cotton

                       The german chemist Chrstian F. Schonbein was experimenting with a mixture of nitric acid and sulphuric acid in the kitchen of his house in 1845. Fran schonbein strictly forbade such experiments in home, but she was out at than time.Shonbein accidentally spilled some of the acid and in a panic, he seized the first thing at hand, his wife's cotton apron, sopped up the mixture, then hung it over the stove to dry before his wife came home. When the apron dried, it suddenly burned, and so rapidly that it seemed simply to disappear. The astonished Schonbein investigated and found he had formed which is now called "nitro cellulose" or "Gun cotton". This was the beginning of the replacement of gunpowder on the battlefield, when it reigned supreme for 500 years.

Electrocardiograph

    Willem Einthoven  invented electrocardiograph in 1903. For his wonderful achivement, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1924.

    The electrocardiograph is an instrument which is used in the examination of people suffering from heart disease. It indicates how serious is their illness and maintains a check on recovery subsequent to a heart attack. In essence, it detects the amount of electricity which paaes through the heart muscle as it pumps blood through the body.

  Einthoven's successful invention stemmed from the discovery by two German scientists in the mid -19th century, that a frog's heart creates an electric current.