‘All these innovations also empower people and make the world a better and brighter place to live in, where even international communication happens instantaneously and massive information is accessible to everyone within split seconds.’
OUR life today is more comfortable, more convenient, more productive, and less physical, and we are healthier and happier because of the inventions of brilliant people around the world. All these innovations also empower people and make the world a better and brighter place to live in, where even international communication happens instantaneously and massive information is accessible to everyone within split seconds. Here are some of those wonderful, invaluable, and priceless inventions.
Microscope
Dutch spectacle maker Zacharias Janssen, in Middleburg, Holland, during the Dutch Golden Age, had been considered the creator of the compound microscope in 1590. The name microscope (to view little things) was coined in 1656. In 1675, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, using a microscope with one lens was the first to observe bacteria.
Electricity
Electricity was not invented. It has been omnipresent in the atmosphere as a set of physical phenomena since the world came to be. Benjamin Franklin has been credited with the discovery of electricity in 1752 through his flying kite that was hit by lightning during a thunderstorm causing jolts of electricity.
Although the discovery of electricity had been attributed to Thomas Edison (1879) following his extensive studies built on the research of many brilliant men like Alessandro Volta (1800), no single person could be credited with the discovery. Instead, countless researchers made the contribution that enabled its discovery.
Thales of Melitus (548/545 BC), the first mathematician, is often credited with discovering static electricity in 500 BC by rubbing fur on amber and other substances.
Telephone
Italian innovator Antonio Meucci invented the first basic phone in 1849 and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised his own phone in 1854. Alexander Graham Bell won the first US patent for his telephone in 1876.
Automobile
The first automobile, Motorwagen, was invented by Karl Benz, in 1886, his vehicle powered by a gas engine, with patent number 37435.
In 1893, Charles Duryea and J. Frank, bicycle mechanics at the time, designed the first successful American gasoline automobile.
Three years later, in 1896, the founder of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford, “built his first car and took it for a spin on the streets of Detroit.”
Airconditioning
Willis H. Carrier, “The Father of Air Conditioning,” was the chief engineer of the Buffalo Forge Company who invented the first electrical air conditioner unit in 1902, but it was not until 1914 before the first residential air conditioning was installed. The unit was 20 feet long and 7 feet high and cost $500,000 in today’s money. The tinier window version was introduced in 1931. Today, only 10 percent of homes in the United States are not air-conditioned.
Television
Philo Farnsworth designed the first electronic television that was demonstrated in San Francisco on September 7, 1927 after working on it for 7 years. A German patent for color television was recorded in 1904, and Vladimir K. Zworykin, a Russian inventor, patented his version of color TV in 1925. The medium first burst into popularity in the 1940s and 50’s and transformed American life forever. Color TV arrived in the USA in the 1960s, followed by cable in the 70s, VCRs in the 80s and high definition in the late 90s. Among the early inventors of the TV remote control was Serbian-American Nikola Tesla, but the first version of wireless TV remote control was invented in 1955 by Eugene Polley, mechanical engineer at Zenith Electronics. Robert Adler, a colleague of Polley, invented the first wireless remote, using ultrasonic sound, called Space Command” in 1956. The first patent for smart TV was in 1994 and flat screen came out in 1997. By 2010, greater improvements were made, ultimately resulting in the first 4K TV in 2012, with super-resolution and clarity.
Internet
Nikola Tesla, in the 1900s, toyed with the idea of a “world wireless system,” and Paul Otlet and Vannevar Bush conceived of a mechanized, searchable storage system of books and media in the 1930s and 40s, long before the technology to actually built the internet. In the late 1960s, the first workable prototype of the internet came, originally funded by the US Department of Defense. The technology grew in the 70s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), a communications model that set the standard for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks.
Refrigerator
William Cullen, a Scottish physician demonstrated the first artificial refrigeration in 1748 at the University of Glasgow. American Oliver Evans in 1805 designed the first refrigeration machine blueprint. Albert T. Marshall in 1899 secured the first patent for a domestic (large and expensive) refrigerator. In 1913, the first electric refrigerators for homes were invented and produced by Fred W. Wolf of Fort Wayne, Indiana, with the unit placed on top of an icebox. It was in 1927 when General Electric invented the first electric refrigerator (the precursor of our units today) for homeowners, which cost around $520, about $7,000 today. The introduction of Freon in the 1920’s expanded the popularity of safer refrigerators in the1930. Today, more than 99 percent of American households have at least one refrigerator (34 percent have 2 or more), most built with various bells and whistles, Bluetooth and wireless (internet) enabled.
Mobile phone
Motorola engineer Martin Cooper, who created the first mobile phone was the first person to use one (called RTS, Radio Telephone System) on October 17, 1973. He never imagined his project would become one of the most valuable inventions in history.
Today, mobile phones are pocket-size, ubiquitous, and so versatile, they function as a phone, a texting and emailing system, a browser, a calculator, cameras, video cam, clock, calendar, flashlights, magnifier, reminder, tape recorder, radio, television, GPS, a virtual credit card/digital wallet, a powerful mini-computer, etc., all-in-one, in the palm of almost every person around the world, anywhere they may be, at least 12/7 round the year.
People leave home and travel perhaps without their spouse, shirt or shoes, but never without their cellphone.
Next week: More historical inventions.
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a cardiac surgeon emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, health advocate, medical missionary, newspaper columnist, and chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He is a decorated recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1995, conferred by then Indiana Governor, later Senator, and then-presidential candidate Evan Bayh. Other Sagamore past awardees include President Harry Truman, President George HW Bush, Muhammad Ali, Astronaut Gus Grissom, renowned educators, scientists, and political and business leaders (Wikipedia).
Websites: www.FUN8888.com, Today.SPSAtoday.com, and philipSchua.com Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com
