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Dec 6, 1450
Printing Press
By the middle of the 15th century several print masters were on the verge of perfecting the techniques of printing with movable metal type. The first man to demonstrate the practicability of movable type was Johannes Gutenburg. How it did it was he devised an alloy of lead, tin and antinomy that would melt at a low otemperature. cast well in the die, and be durable in the press. In dividual letter were easy movable and were put together to form words. The printers responded -
Dec 6, 1450
Printing Press Continued
..and were put together to form words. "Printers responded with moralizing, medical, practical and travel manuels." The invention of the printing press provided a superior basis for scholarships and prevented further corruption of text through hand copying. The Printing Press helped things move faster and made books and scholars more reliable (History Guide, 2004). -
Compound Microscope
Zacharias Janssen was a Dutch lens-maker who invented the first compound microscope in 1595 (a compound microscope is one which has more than one lens). His microscope consisted of two tudes that slid within one another, and had a lens at each end. The microscope was focused by sliding -
Compound Microscope Continued
...the tubes. "The lens in the eyepiece was bi-convex (bulging outwards on both sides), and the lens of the far end (the objective lens) was plano-convex (flat on one side and bulging outwards on the other side)."(Enchanted Learning 2012). This advanced microscope had a 3 to 9 times power of magnification. Zacharias Janssen's father Hans may have helped him build the microscope. (Enchanted learning 2010).This invention has helped us magnify the smallest things so that we can exam them bettter. -
Steam Pump
"Thomas Savery was the first person to invent a steam pump for the purpose of pumping out water in 1698. He called it “water by fire". The steam pump patented by him worked by boiling water until it was completely converted into vapor. The steam was then collected in a tank extracting every droplet of vapor from the original tank, thereby creating a vacuum in the original container... -
Continue Steam Pump
...It was this vacuum that was employed to produce an adequate amount of energy to pump water out from the mines" (Thomas 2012). The significance of this invention was that the energy from the pump was used to pump out water from deep mines. The invention of this steam pump lead to the greater discovery of the steam engine. -
Submarine
David Bushnell invented a machine called the American Turtle. The American Turtle was the first American submarine. The submarine was built in 1775. Its purpose was to "break the British naval bloackade of New York harbor during the American Revolution" (Mohl 2012). The American Turtle normally floated approximately six inches of exposed surface. -
Continued Submarine
...American Turtle was powered by a hand-driven propeller. The operator would submerge under the target, and using a screw projecting from the top of American Turtle , he would attach a clock-detonated explosive charge. (Mohl 2012). Due to some mechanical diffuculties the American Turtle failed to destroy its target but the British recognized the threat and moved the fleet. (Mohl 2012 -
Continued Cotton Gin
The Cotton Gin reduced the need for slavery since the slaves were used to pick the seeds out of the cotton and the newly invented machine was doing those tasks. It also incresased the amounts of cotton that was picked a day. "A single cotton gin could generate up to fifty-five pounds of cleaned cotton daily" (Rubin 2003). -
Cotton Gin
Eli Whitney is well known for his invention of the Cotton Gin. "The Cotton Gin is a mechanical device which removes the seeds from cotton, a process which, until the time of its invention, had been extremely labor-intensive. The cotton gin was a wooden drum stuck with hooks, which pulled the cotton fibers through a mesh. The cotton seeds would not fit through the mesh and fell outside" (Rubin 2003). -
Continue Steam Boat
When he finally returned to the US, Fulton went back to work on his idea for the steamboat invention. He took a special English steam engine and made some improvements to it. In the end Fulton's ship, "the Clermont, made its debut in 1807 – steaming upriver from New York to Albany. After obtaining his patent in 1809, Robert Fulton was soon running steamboat services on six major rivers and the Chesapeake Bay". (American Inventors 2008). -
Steam Boat
Robert Fulton was born in Pennsylvania with aspirations to become a portrait painter. H gained fame and was recognized after painting his friend Benjamin Franklin. While he studyed art in London, Fulton's focus shifted to canal and shipbuilding. He started out designing steam-powered ships and Fulton ended up making a name for himself by constructing submarines for the British and French. -
Power Loom
The Power Loom was invented by a man named Francis Lowell. Francis Lowell was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. When Lowell went on a visit to England he became fascinated by the power loom. The power loom was not yet available in America. Since it was illegal to export parts or designs he studied the power loom and with the help of a skilled mechanic was able to rebuild the power loom from memory and drawing he had made while he was over in England. -
Continued Power Loom
"The power loom was a steam-powered, mechanically operated version of a regular loom, an invention that combined threads to make cloth" (Encyclopedia 2012).The power loom was pivotal in the American attempt to compete in textile manufactures at a time when capital and technological superiority still belonged to the English (Encyclopedia 2012). -
Sewing Machine
Many inventors contributed to the creation of the sewing machine, beginning in the late 1700s. In 1830, Barthelemy Thimonnier placed a patent on the first practical sewing machine in France. His factory was destroyed, reportedly by workers in the tailor industry who saw his invention as a threat. In 1851, Isaac Singer patented the first rigid arm sewing machine. The Singer machine made Isaac Singer a fortune and was the model for all future sewing machines. -
Continued Sewing Machine
Isaac Singer invented the first practical, commercially-successful sewing machine and the first multinational company. He was born in upstate New York in 1811, and developed interests in machines. A machinest asked Singers help to fix his old sewing machine. Instead of fixing it he redesigned it adding a foot pedal. "With the invention of the time-saving sewing machine, many women in the late 1800s were able to put aside hours of hand sewing. Sewing machines were costly, but women grouped ... -
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but women grouped together to purchase one machine to use jointly". (Loucks 2012). -
Telegraph
Samuel Finely breese Morse was the inventor of several improvments to the telegraph. He was born in charleston, Massachusetts in Aprill 27, 1791 (Lemelson 1997). As a student at Yale College he became interested in the developing subject of electricity. The telegraph was first built in 1774 and required "26 spereate wires, one for each letter in the alphabet" (Lemelson 1997). Morse waned to be the first to reduce the number of wires to one. As he began to improve the telegraph he used general... -
Continued Telegraph
...materials such as a home battery and some old clock gears. Morses's first telegraph device was created in 1837 which did use a "one-wire system which produced an EKG-like line on the ticker tape" (Lemelson 1997). The telegraph was used to send messages over long distnances. This definitley sped up communication over seas and made communicating over long distnaces more efficent. -
Continue Type Writer
Latham Sholes, with assistance from Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule, patented what was to be the first useful type writer. The first commercial type writer was placed on the market in 1874. Based on Sholes mechanical typewriter , the first electric type writer was built by Thomas A. Edison in the United States in 1872. This was a type writer with electronic "memory" capable of storing text. (Idea finder 2007) -
Type Writer
The type writer is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for writing in characters similar to those produced by printer's type by means of key board-operated types striking a ribbon to transfer ink or carbon impressions onto the paper. The Type Writer was difficult to perfect having to go through alot of inventors and having to go through alot of processes but was soon able to be put to use. In 1867 a Milwaukee, Winsconsin printer-publisher-politician named Christopher -
Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell invented what we now call the telephone in 1876. " Through out his life Bell had been interested in the education of the deaf people". He had grown up with his mother nearly deaf. The interest of helping deaf people lead him to invent the microphone of the "electronic speech machine". This is now called the telephone, His invention has lead to many more great things. He not only helped the hearing impaired but has equipped us all with -
Telephone Continued
..the ablilty to communicate over long distances. Telephones are very easily accessible now that almost everyone has their own phones in their pockets. "Today non-hearing people are able to use a special display telephone to communicate". This inventions has great improved American society becuase of the people it helps and the way it has affected our lives by bettering it. (Hendriksma 2003). -
Light Bulb
The modern world is an electrified world. The light bulb, in particular, profoundly changed human existence by illuminating the night and making it hospitable to a wide range of human activity. The electric light, one of the everyday conveniences that most affects our lives, was invented in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison. "He was neither the first nor the only person trying to invent an incandescent light bulb". -
Contine Light Bulb
...first nor the only person trying to invent an incandescent light bulb. (Idea finder 2007).
