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Category Scientists & Inventions

Who made the first powered flight?

            In 1903, at Kitty Hawk in the United States, Orville Wright made what is said to be the first controlled powered flight of a heavier-than-air craft. People had already flown small airships, but there was now a race to make the first successful aeroplane. The Wright brothers and other would-be pilots had already built several gliders. The Wright biplane looked like a huge box kite, with a home-made engine that drove two propellers by means of chains – but it flew and it was controllable.

            Clement Adler, in France, had flown under power in 1890 in a bat-shaped aeroplane powered by a steam engine. However, the aircraft was not controllable; so many people do not accept his attempt as the first flight.

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Who invented the first telephone?

 

 

            Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was born in Scotland but moved to the USA. He realized that sound consists of vibrations, and he began working out a way of changing these vibrations into electrical impulses. These impulses could then be carried along a wire – this was the origin of the telephone. His rival, Thomas Edison, soon produced a much improved version of Bell’s telephone. Bell retaliated by devising a better version of Edison’s own phonograph.

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Who invented the microscope?

 

 

                        Although he was actually a draper, the Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) ground glass lenses and used them to examine the world about him. In the 1670s he made his first crude microscope with a tiny lens, and this allowed him to be the first person to see microscopic life such as bacteria, yeast and living blood cells. During his career, van Leeuwenhoek ground a total of 419 lenses, and his microscopes became progressively more effective.

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Who invented the first steam engine?

            During the 1st century AD, a Greek inventor and mathematician called Hero of Alexandria produced a device that later led to the development of modern turbines and jet engines. Hero’s device was a hollow water-filled ball mounted on a swivel. Two nozzles stuck out on opposite sides, pointing in different directions. When the ball was heated, steam shot out of the nozzles, causing the ball to spin rapidly.

            Hero failed to see the practical use of this device and regarded it as an interesting toy. He went on to invent several mathematical formulae, one of which is still used for calculating the area of a triangle.

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Who was Galileo?

            Galileo (1564-1642), the great Italian scientist and mathematician, was the first astronomer to use a telescope, the discoverer of the pendulum’s laws and the founder of modern physics.

            Two of his great contributions to knowledge are associated with famous buildings in Pisa, the northern Italian city where he was born. When Galileo was 19, he observed a lamp swinging in the cathedral. From its movement he concluded that a pendulum swinging to and fro could be used for measuring time, and so prepared the way for the invention of the modern clock. By dropping objects from the Learning Tower of Pisa he demonstrated that bodies of different weights fall at the same rate.

            While Professor of Mathematics at the University of Padua (1592-1610), Galileo made his first telescope by fitting a lens at each end of an organ pipe. Later he made a telescope that magnified 30 times. He found that the Milky Way was a mass of stars, studied the moon and discovered the four largest satellites of the planet Jupiter.

            Galileo’s observations convinced him that Nicholaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the Polish astronomer, was right in his theory that the earth rotates on its axis and revolves round the sun. This view was contrary to the teaching of the Church, and in 1616 he was given o formal warning. But in 1632 he published a dialogue in support of the Copernican system that offended the Church by its satire and use of Holy Scripture. He was summoned before the Inquisition, forced to retract his views and made to live in seclusion for the rest of his life.

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When was the sextant invented?

            The sextant was invented in England in 1732 by John Hadley. Hadley’s instrument is used mainly at sea to determine a ship’s latitude, or distance from the equator. Its invention laid the foundation of modern navigation with the aid of the sun and stars.

              The instrument is so called because it is equipped with an arc which is usually one-sixth of a circle, or 600. It measures the angle of the sun’s or a star’s altitude above the horizon. As this angle varies with the distance from the equator, the information obtained helps the navigator to calculate his position. All he needs in addition is the time, the date and the longitude which can be found by comparing local time with the time at Greenwich.

         To operate the sextant, the navigator looks through its small telescope straight at the horizon. At the same time, an image of the sun is reflected by mirrors into the user’s field of vision. When the sun is made to appear exactly on the horizon, the arm which moves the mirrors gives the required measurements to calculate the ship’s position.

       The handling of a sextant is generally to as “shooting the sun”.

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Who first classified butterflies and moths?

            Butterflies and moths were first classified by the great Swedish botanist Carl von Linne (1707-78), generally known as Carolus Linnaeus. His method, which applied to plants and all living things, was the binomial system. This meant the each insect was given two scientific and internationally recognized names: the first is a generic name denoting the genus or group to which the subject belongs; the second is a specific epithet indicating the species within the group.

            Similarly we all have surnames and forenames. But, in the case of the Linnaean system, Latin or Greek words are used to ensure uniformity regardless of the expert‘s native language. The first or generic name is spelt with a capital letter, but the second name usually begins with a small one.

               Linnaeus published more than 180 scientific works, some of the most important ones after he left Sweden for Holland, where he studied medicine. After visiting England and France he returned to Sweden, where he was given the chair of botany at Uppsala University.

When was the first balloon flight made?

               Balloon flights have become a popular air sport these days though the number of participants is limited to a few. Balloon festivals are organized every year at different places all over the world as a competitive sport as well as for fun and entertainment. But who made the first balloon flight and when?

               The idea of a balloon flight first occurred in the mind of two Frenchmen when they watched smoke rising up inside a chimney. This led Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier to build the first man-carrying balloon. The balloon made by them was filled with hot air from a fire to provide the lift required for flying. It was the year 1783 when the people of Paris were amazed to see a sheep, a cock and a duck flying in a balloon made by Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier. But strangely the fact remains that though they made the first balloon they could not become the first air travellers. The honour of making the first balloon flight is shared by two brave men, J.P. de Rozier and Marquis d’ Arlandes. This historic flight carrying these two men was made in November, 1783. With this began the era of flying.

               But a balloon flight of this kind depended on wind blowing and the balloon flew in the direction of the wind. To overcome this drawback the first powered flight was made by fitting an engine to a balloon in the year 1852. Henri Gifford of Paris made this airship with a balloon fitted with hydrogen gas for lifting the balloon. A platform was attached below the balloon through wires and a small steam engine was fitted on this platform. The airship could be moved forwards with the help of a propeller run by the engine. This was the fore-runner of the more advanced airships and the later day aeroplanes which were run by electric and petrol engines.

               There are some interesting facts about the recent history of ballooning. A balloon called Miss Champagne rose to a height of 50 feet with 61 passengers on board on 19 Feb 1988.

               The Dutch balloonist Henk Brink made a balloon that reached a height of 328 feet with 50 passengers on board on 17 August 1988 which lasted for 25 minutes. 

What are Dr. S. Chandrasekhar’s contributions to astrophysics?

               Dr. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was a world famous astrophysicist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1983 for his outstanding researches in the field of astronomy related to the structure and evolution of stars. He shared this prize with an American professor William Fowler. Do you know why he received this honour and what are his contributions to the astrophysics?

               Prof. Chandrasekhar was born on Oct 19th, 1910 in Lahore. He was educated at Presidency College, Madras University. He got his doctorate from Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1933 to 1937 he worked on stellar evolution. His genius is established from the fact that he became a Fellow of Trinity College at a young age of 24. And at the age of 25 he had put forth his theory on dying stars which startled the whole world.

               In 1938 he became an Assistant Professor in Chicago University and in 1953 acquired American citizenship. In the same year he was given the Gold medal of Royal Astronomical Society.

               In 1947 Dr. Chandrasekhar became a Professor in Chicago University and the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Astrology in 1952. His genius is evident from the fact that his book An Introduction to the study of Stellar Structure, published in 1939 is still used as a reference book for students of astrophysics all over the world.

               In 1973 he was made a member of the Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel Prizes. His findings on White Dwarfs are internationally acclaimed. ‘Chandrasekhar Limit’ that deals with the limiting mass of the stars is again an epoch making discovery by him.

               The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes was his most important work, published in 1983. His latest book was Newton’s Principia for the common reader. Prof. Chandrasekhar passed away as an American citizen in the year 1995, within a few weeks of the publication of this book.

 

What were Ramanujan’s contributions to mathematics?

               Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the greatest mathematicians India has ever produced. His contributions to the theory of numbers brought him worldwide acclamation. He was born in a poor Brahmin family of south India on 22nd December, 1887. Due to lack of scope, he started his career as a clerk. In his spare time he used to devise mathematical Problems himself and solve them.

               When he was 15 years old he obtained a copy of George Shoobridge Carr’s Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics. Having verified the results in Carr’s book, Ramanujan went beyond and developed his own theorems. In 1903 he secured a scholarship from the University of Madras. But since he devoted himself fully to mathematics and neglected other studies it was forfeited the following year.

               But undeterred, Ramanujan continued with his work in extreme poverty without employment. He got married in 1909 and began to search for a permanent employment. He obtained a clerical post with the Madras port trust.

               Ramanujan published his first research papers in the journal of the Indian Mathematical Society in the year 1911. His genius slowly gained recognition and in 1913 he began a correspondence with the British mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy that led to a special scholarship from the University of Madras and a grant from Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1914 Ramanujan went to England, where Hardy tutored him privately and collaborated with him in some research.

               Ramanujan’s genius was unrivalled. He worked out the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hyper geometric series, and the functional equations of the Zeta function and his theory of divergence series. In England, Ramanujan made further advances, especially in the partition of numbers. His papers were published in English and European journals. In 1918 he became the first Indian to be elected as a Fellow to the Royal Society of London.

               In 1917 Ramanujan got tuberculosis and so he returned to India. He died at Chelput in Madras on 26th April, 1920.