The printing press has been around since it’s earliest forms found in ancient China. The printing press took much effort to operate in the 1700s. It worked through movement of letter stamps and mechanical power and pressure. The system only allowed for one page to be created at a time, but was much quicker than hand copying.
After the invention of the steam engine, steam powered machines started to become the industry standard. The printing press received the power of the steam engine in 1843 by Richard M. Hoe. His version of the printing press allowed millions instead of thousands of pages to be produced in a single day.
Because literacy rates were at very high levels, demand for material to read was also high. Books, Magazines, and Newspapers were at the top of demanded reading materials. The new steam powered printing press allowed quick mass production of papers through a system that could print on both sides at once, cut, and fold the paper all on the same machine line.
Its high production speed and cheap costs to operate allowed printed material to be produced at cheaper prices than in the century before its existence.
Man has dreamed of flying in the sky since the begging of time. Orville Wright and his brother Wilbur Wright were the first to create a “flying machine” or what we would eventually call the airplane. The machine flew 120 feet forward in 12 seconds, not substantial, but it was the concept that it could be done that fueled development of other airborne vehicles by other inventors.
The airplane that was flown in 1903 by the Orville brothers was comprised of a light frame that held an engine, two levels of wings and a tail. The wings were there to balance the plane and to get air resistance under them and thus create lift. The tail was there to try to keep the airplane in a straight travel path. The engine was there to spin blades to propel the machine forward. Although you could not steer on the initial prototype airplane, it still was a major advancement for the time.
Today, life wouldn’t be the same without TVs, but TVs would be nothing without their respective remote controls. The first remote control was developed by Nikola Tesla in 1898.
Although Nikola Tesla was the first to create a remote control, they were not heavily used until a company named Zenith started experimenting with ways to control TVs from a distance.
Originally they had a system that connected a control panel to the TV through a cable. It was not popular due to the length limitations and because there were few channels to choose from at the time.
Zenith experimented with radio waves to get data across distances, but many objects and sounds caused the signals to fail. Eventually they played with the idea of an Infrared remote control.
The infrared remote control works by assigning each button an unique code. When a button is pressed, a series of signals are sent in straight rays to a sensor called a “photodetector” that interpreted the signals back into the codes they represented and preformed the action that was linked to to it by sending the data to the other components of the device.
Modern day medical knowledge owes much to X-ray technology. The idea was invented by Professor Wilhelm Roentgen while he was working with a cathode ray tube and discovered that the rays penetrated through the materials around it.
It worked much like a camera worked. There was the X-rays which were shown upon an object infront of a special metallic plate that was sensitive the ray. Any of the rays that hit the plate would leave an impression viewable under light.
Unlike the camera, the source of light, or in this case X-rays, had to be produced through electricity and not the sun. The X-ray had special properties that allowed it to pass through thin materials. At the time, it was not known that over exposure to it was dangerous.
The radio was based of two previous inventions of the telegraph and the telephone. However, current communications were all controlled and limited by the wires that connected everything.
Many people contributed to the concept of radio waves and “wireless telegraphy” such as James Maxwell and Mahlon Loomis.
The first real radio that resembles the skeleton of the radio that we have in our current lives was developed by Lee Deforest. It consisted on an antenna that picked up radio signals and electronics that looked for a specific frequency. The waves were then interpreted into sounds and played through speakers.
The transmitter for the radio created waves as a specific frequency through transmitters that discharged a controlled level of electricity at controlled intervals that corresponded to sounds/information that would be received and analyzed by the receiver.
The military were the first to use this technology. Due to government fear of enemies getting a hold of the radio technology, U.S. took control of all development. Eventually the radio technology was released to the public and refined. Once they became economically affordable, many families had one in their home. First the “walkie talkie” type of radio then later the “radio station” type of radio.
The ballpoint pen was invented by John Loud in 1888. It is the same pen that we use today. Although the product did not become popular until its boom in 1945, it revolutionized the usage of the ink pen even at the time of its invention.
There were many problems with the initial ballpoint pen were that it could either leak or clog and the temperature basically dictated if the pen would work or not. But even then, the product showed promise of being better than the current system of the fountain pen.
Ladislas Biro and Georg improved upon the previous design of the ballpoint pen, but were still unable to get the pen to work 100% smoothly and ended up selling the patent to an American company named Eversharp.
Eversharp added a retractable system to the pen to allow the pen tip to stay protected while not being used. They also revised the ink formula which made it less staining on clothing. It quickly became a standard writing tool used by professionals in all areas of business and individuals in life. It became known as the “PaperMate”.
The zipper is not a recent invention that came about in the last few decades. It was invented by an engineer named Whitcomb Judson in 1891 and was created to replace the hook and eye shoelaces that almost piece of clothing had in the 19th century.
Many people did not pay attention to his invention and the few that did were not very impressed.
A decade later, another engineer named Gideon Sundback added upon the idea Judson had previously started. He made a smaller and lighter version of the “hookless fastener”.
The zipper worked by having interlocking teeth that were combined through the fastener where the two strips that held the teeth would converge or diverge and thus open and close respectively.
The invention eventually was renamed from the “hookless fastener” to the Zipper because of the sound it made when opening or closing it. Soon it appeared on boots, purses, and eventually pants.
The first cameras came out during the early 1800’s but they were big, bulky, and hard to setup. George Eastman was the first to invent the “kodak” handheld camera which was first released to the public in 1888.
The camera was put inside a small box shape. It came with enough film strips for 100 pictures. These film strips were sent back to the kodak factory for processing and reloading of the film strips.
The camera works much like how cameras work in modern day. There was a shutter and opened and shut to get just enough light to get a clear image embedded onto the film strip. The film strip is made out of material that is very light sensitive and when exposed, will “record” an impression onto the material.
Using the camera was much more difficult when compared to digital cameras today. First, there was no auto-adjust for focus. Photographers had to use distance marks on the focus dial to figure out how to get the clearest picture. There were no previews of the picture right after the user took it either. The camera was a system of simple mechanics that opened and shut the shutter, then moving in the next part of film strip so that it would be ready for the next exposure.
It was comprised of metal frame, internal mechanics, film strip, and the glass lens that the photographer looked through in order to get the gist of what the picture would look like after he/she took it.
The camera brought about a new aspect to journalism because it allowed everyday individuals take pictures of things around them. This gave birth to photo journalists.