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James Watt invent First Steam Engine
When James Watt had completed his training, he returned to Glasgow to set up in business for himself, only to be met by the same restrictions that existed in London; the gilds were still struggling to retain their control of the trade of the chartered towns, and as Watt was neither the son of a burgess nor the husband of the daughter of one, and not having served a regular apprenticeship, he was refused permission to open his shop. Watt's early friendship with the Glasgow professors now stood hi -
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Investions
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Eli Whitney invents Cotton Gin, Interchangeable parts for muskets
Eli Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin and a pioneer in the mass production of cotton. Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765 and died on January 8, 1825. He graduated from Yale College in 1792. By April 1793, Whitney had designed and constructed the cotton gin, a machine that automated the separation of cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber. -
Robert Fulto - Regular Steamboat service on the Hudson River
In 1860, the steamboat Daniel Drew, owned by Daniel Drew, entered day boat service, but Drew soon sold his interest. It then was purchased at auction in 1863 by Alfred Van Santvoord and his partners, John McB. Davidson and Chauncey Vibbard, to operate as a day boat. The Daniel Drew was one of the best boats on the river, and Van Santvoord announced he would soon build a new steamboat to run with the Daniel Drew. Facing this threatened competition, Capt. Smith sold the Armenia to Von Santvoord. -
Alfred Nobel produces dynamite, the first high explosive which can be safely handled.
Swedish industrialist, engineer, and inventor, Alfred Nobel built bridges and buildings in Stockholm. His construction work inspired Nobel to research new methods of blasting rock. In 1860, the inventor first started experimenting with nitroglycerine -
First Skycraper built
The Home Insurance Building was born out of the building frenzy that followed the Great Chicago Fire. The city, formerly made largely from wood, was being re-built in stone, iron, and a new material called steel. The building boom helped the economy flourish and structures in the city's central Loop district reached higher and higher to accommodate the demand for space. -
Eiffel Tower
The tower is 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall about the same height as an 81-storey building. During its construction, the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to assume the title of the tallest human-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building in New York City was built in 1930. Because of the addition of the antenna atop the Eiffel Tower in 1957, it is now taller than the Chrysler Building by 5.2 metres (17 ft). Not including broadcast antenna -
Rudolf Diesel - Diesel Engine
The diesel engine differs from gasoline engines in one significant engineering fact: it achieves combustion of its fuel by the heat of compression in the combustion chamber rather than by the introduction of a spark. This difference dictates a different set of parameters for construction throughout the engine, but the diesel is still an internal combustion engine like its gasoline counterpart. Although many had tried to perfect this concept, it was Rudolph Diesel who first patented the design an -
Orville and Wilbur Wright First Airplane
In 1899, after Wilbur Wright had written a letter of request to the Smithsonian Institution for information about flight experiments, the Wright Brothers designed their first aircraft: a small, biplane glider flown as a kite to test their solution for controlling the craft by wing warping. Wing warping is a method of arching the wingtips slightly to control the aircraft's rolling motion and balance. -
Henry Ford Model T Ford, Large-Scale Moving Assembly Line
On May 26, 1927, Henry Ford watched the fifteen millionth Model T Ford roll off the assembly line at his factory in Highland Park, Michigan. Since his "universal car" was the industrial success story of its age, the ceremony should have been a happy occasion. Yet Ford was probably wistful that day, too, knowing as he did that the long production life of the Model T was about to come to an end. He climbed into the car, a shiny black coupe, with his son, Edsel, the president of the Ford Motor Comp -
First Zeppelin built.
On July 2nd, in the year 1900, The people of Friedrichshafen, Germany came out to witness a momentous occasion. For two years a huge floating building had been anchored on lake Bodensee and in this building, the local Count, Ferdinand von Zeppelin had been spending all his time and resources with a small band of engineers and builders. As the building had progressed, the Count was often made the object of ridicule and jokes. Many thought that the count was squandering his family's savings on a r
