Tuesday, March 31, 2015

WHO INVENTED revolutionary way of lubricating steam engines without having to shut them down?

Elijah McCoy (1843 or 1844-1929) was a mechanical engineer and inventor. McCoy's high-quality industrial inventions (especially his steam engine lubricator) were the basis for the expression "the real McCoy," meaning the real, authentic, or high-quality thing. McCoy was born in Colchester, Ontario, Canada, to former slaves (George and Emillia McCoy), who had fled the USA. McCoy was educated as a mechanical engineer in Edinburgh, Scotland; he then moved to Detroit, Michigan, USA. Despite his education (and due to racism - he was of African descent), he could only get a job as a fireman and oilman on a steam-engine train, shoveling coal into a train's engine and periodically lubricating the engine. McCoy's first invention (1872) was a revolutionary way of lubricating steam engines without having to shut them down - this automatic lubricator saved an enormous amount of time and effort in transportation and in industrial production. McCoy eventually had a total of 57 patents, and was known throughout the world for his inventions. In 1920, McCoy opened his own company, the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company.

Monday, March 30, 2015

WHO INVENTED THE TRAFFIC SIGNAL?

Garrett Augustus Morgan (March 4, 1877 - August 27, 1963), was an African-American inventor and businessman. He was the first person to patent a traffic signal. He also developed the gas mask (and many other inventions). Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky, and was the son of former slaves (and the 7th of their 11 children). His formal education ended during elementary school. As a a teenager (in 1895), Morgan moved north to Cincinnati, Ohio, looking for opportunity. His incredible ability to repair machinery led to many job offers from factories. In 1907, he started his own sewing equipment and repair shop. His business expanded in 1909; he employed 32 people, who used equipment that Morgan made (and invented) himself. In 1920, Morgan went into the newspaper business, starting the "Cleveland Call." He was very successful, and eventually bought a car. While he was driving along the streets of Cleveland, he realized how unsafe intersections were, and was determined to make driving safer. Morgan patented a traffic signal on November 20, 1923 (U.S. patent No. 1,475,024, issued in 1923) - this was the first traffic signal patented, but not the first invented. His traffic signal was a T-shaped pole with arms (but with no lights) that has three signs, one or more of which popped out at a time: a red "stop," a green "go," and another red "stop in all directions." This last signal let pedestrians cross the street. It was controlled by an electric clock mechanism. This device became very popular, and was used all around the USA. Morgan sold his device to the General Electric Corporation for $40,000 (a huge sum at that time). His device was used until the three-light traffic light was developed. Morgan developed many other inventions, including a safety hood and smoke protector for firefighters (patent No. 1,113,675, in 1912), a gas mask (patent No. 1,090,936, in 1914). He also developed a zig-zag sewing machine attachment, a hair straightener, hair dying lotions, de-curling hair combs (patent No. 2,763,281, in 1956), and other inventions.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

WHO IS GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER?

George Washington Carver (1865?-1943) was an American scientist, educator, humanitarian, and former slave. Carver developed hundreds of products from peanuts, sweet potatoes, pecans, and soybeans; his discoveries greatly improved the agricultural output and the health of Southern farmers. Before this, the only main crop in the South was cotton. The products that Carver invented included a rubber substitute, adhesives, foodstuffs, dyes, pigments, and many other products.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

WHO INVENTED THE POTATO CHIP

Inventor of Potato Chips The potato chip was invented in 1853 by George Crum. Crum was a Native American/African American chef at the Moon Lake Lodge resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA. French fries were popular at the restaurant and one day a diner complained that the fries were too thick. Although Crum made a thinner batch, the customer was still unsatisfied. Crum finally made fries that were too thin to eat with a fork, hoping to annoy the extremely fussy customer. The customer, surprisingly enough, was happy - and potato chips were invented! Crum's chips were originally called Saratoga Chips and potato crunches. They were soon packaged and sold in New England - Crum later opened his own restaurant. William Tappendon manufactured and marketed the chips in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1895. In the 1920s, the salesman Herman Lay sold potato chips to the southern USA (selling the chips from the trunk of his car). In 1926, Laura Scudder (who owned a potato chip factory in Monterey Park, California) invented a wax paper potato chip bag to keep the chips fresh and crunchy - this made potato chips even more popular.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Who Invented the CD Player?

James T. Russell, a senior scientist at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, invented the technology for the compact disc in 1965. By 1985, Russell had earned 26 patents for various innovations with CD-ROM technology. History Russell earned a Bachelor's of Arts in Physics from Reed College and worked as a physicist for General Electric before landing a job at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Richland, Washington. Function As a music lover, he was frustrated that vinyl records were easily damageable, so he sketched out plans to record music onto a photosensitive platter that would be read by a laser. Time Frame In the 1970s, he continued to improve the compact disc technology, leading companies like Sony & Philips to purchase licenses for mass production. Benefits The CD Player caught on when manufacturers started making portable CD players in 1984. Fun Fact Russell has a total of 54 patents, including 11 patents for Optical Random Access Memory, better known as ORAM. Famous Ties The first album released on CD was the Swedish pop sensation ABBA's "The Visitors."

Thursday, March 26, 2015

WHO INVENTED THE CELLPHONE

Picture could have been first prank call...by Cooper! Do you remember a time when cell phones were rare? Today, it's hard to imagine a world without them. Even if you don't own one yourself, you probably see dozens of people talking on a cell phone every day. The rate at which we adopted the devices is astounding. But who invented them? To get the answer to that question, we need to look back more than a century. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. And then in 1900, on December 23 on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., an inventor named Reginald Fessenden accomplished a remarkable feat: He made the first wireless telephone call. He was the first to transmit the human voice via radio waves, sending a signal from one radio tower to another. Fessenden's work paved the way for broadcast radio but it also provided the foundation for cell phones and networks. In 1947, an engineer named William Rae Young proposed that radio towers arranged in a hexagonal pattern could support a telephone network. Young worked under another engineer named D.H. Ring, who led a team at Bell Laboratories, which was part of AT&T at the time. Young's design allowed for low-power transmitters to carry calls across the network. It also accounted for handoffs, which is when a caller moves from one tower's broadcast radius to another. But though the theory was sound, the technology to make it happen was lacking. It would take more than 10 years for the next development. While the world waited for further developments in cellular technology, companies like AT&T offered some customers the chance to use radio telephones. These devices were primitive compared to today's cell phones and resembled walkie-talkie transceivers. Only a few calls -- sometimes as few as three -- could be made on the system at a time. Callers would sometimes have to wait for another conversation to end before completing a call, which also meant that private conversations were practically impossible. The phones were expensive and some weighed up to 80 pounds (36.3 kilograms) -- not the sort of device you can carry around in your pocket! By the 1960s, Bell Labs engineers Richard H. Frenkiel and Joel S. Engel developed the technology that could support Young's design of a cellular network. But as AT&T sought permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to develop a cellular network, a competitor made a bold and cheeky move in 1973. That competitor was Martin Cooper, who at the time was an executive with Motorola, one of AT&T's competitors. Cooper led a team that designed the first practical cell phone. It was called the Motorola DynaTAC, and it still wasn't a tiny device -- it was 9 inches (22.9 centimeters) long and weighed 2.5 pounds (1.1 kilograms). Cooper decided to make one of the first cellular telephone calls to professional rival Joel Engel at Bell Labs. That's right -- the first cell phone was involved in what some might refer to as a prank call! It would take many more years to build out cellular networks and drive down production costs to make cell phones a viable commercial product. But after more than a century of research and development, the considerable investment has paid off.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Who Invented the Charcoal Briquette?

Ellsworth B. A. Zwoyer of Pennsylvania patented a design for charcoal briquettes in 1897. (See the image to the right) After World War One, the Zwoyer Fuel Company built charcoal briquette manufacturing plants in the United States with plants in Buffalo, NY and Fall River, MA.There are stories circulating that Henry Ford invented the very first briquette in 1920 with the help of Thomas Edison. However, the 1897 patent obviously predates this and Ford and Edison both knew Zwoyer. Ford is the man who popularized the gas-powered car in America and invented the assembly line for automobile manufacturing. Ford created a briquette from the wood scraps and sawdust from his car factory. E.G. Kingsford bought Ford's briquette and placed it into commercial production.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

WHEN WAS BARBECUING INVENTED

To barbecue means to slow-cook meat at a low temperature for a long time over wood or charcoal. In America, barbecue (or BBQ) originated in the late 1800's during Western cattle drives. The cowboys were fed the less than perfect cuts of meat, often brisket, a tough and stringy piece of meat that required five to seven hours of cooking to tenderize. Other barbecue meats used were pork butt, pork ribs, beef ribs, venison and goat.However, barbecue was not invented in America and no one knows who invented the barbecue. The word 'Barbecue' might come from the Taino Indian word 'barbacoa' meaning meat-smoking apparatus. 'Barbecue' could have also originated from the French word "Barbe a queue" which means "whiskers-to-tail." No one is sure of the correct origins of the word.

Monday, March 23, 2015

WHO INVENTED THE PALEO DIET?

The paleolithic diet, also known as the paleo diet or caveman diet, is a fad diet based on the food humans' ancient ancestors might likely have eaten, such as lean meat, nuts and berries. The diet is based on several premises. Proponents of the diet posit that during the Paleolithic era — a period lasting around 2.5 million years that ended about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture and domestication of animals — humans evolved nutritional needs specific to the foods available at that time, and that the nutritional needs of modern humans remain best adapted to the diet of their Paleolithic ancestors. Proponents claim that human metabolism has been unable to adapt fast enough to handle many of the foods that have become available since the advent of agriculture. Thus, modern humans are said to be maladapted to eating foods such as grain, legumes, and dairy, and in particular the high-calorie processed foods that are a staple of most modern diets. Proponents claim that modern humans' inability to properly metabolize these comparatively new types of food has led to modern-day problems such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. They claim that followers of the Paleolithic diet may enjoy a longer, healthier, more active life. Critics of the Paleolithic diet have pointed out a number of flaws with its underlying logic, including the fact that there is abundant evidence that paleolithic humans did in fact eat grains and legumes,that humans are much more nutritionally flexible than previously thought, that the hypothesis that Paleolithic humans were genetically adapted to specific local diets remains to be proven, that the Paleolithic period was extremely long and saw a variety of forms of human settlement and subsistence in a wide variety of changing nutritional landscapes, and that currently very little is known for certain about what Paleolithic humans ate. Paleolithic life expectancies were much shorter than modern life expectancies, and food and diet composition are among the main reasons for this change.

Friday, March 20, 2015

WHO INVENTED THE FIRST SMOOTHIE

A smoothie (alternatively spelled Smoothi, smoothee or smoothy, the name comes from the smooth property of the emulsion) is a blended and sometimes sweetened beverage made from fresh fruit (fruit smoothie), vegetables and in special cases can contain chocolate or peanut butter. In addition to fruit, many smoothies include crushed ice, frozen fruit, honey or contain syrup and ice ingredients. They have a milkshake-like consistency that is thicker than slush drinks. They can also contain milk, yogurt or ice cream. Smoothies are often marketed to health-conscious people, and some restaurants offer add-ins such as soy milk, whey powder, green tea, herbal supplements, or nutritional supplement mixes. The electric blender gave birth to the smoothie in the United States. The word "smoothie" was first coined by Mabel Stegner on June 23, 1940 in an article titled "Let the blender do it for you!" published in the New York Herald Tribune (p. 14-15). Concerning ingredients she wrote: "For instance, place a few ounces of milk, fruit juice, tomato juice or any desired liquid in the food container [of the blender]. Add a banana, or strawberries, or pitted cherries, or diced vegetables, Place the container on the base, switch on the electricity and in less than a minute out comes a banana milk 'smoothie,' a fruit nectar, or a raw vegetable cocktail.[1] The earliest known use of the word "smoothee" also appeared in 1940 and also in connection with the newly commercialized electric blender. That year the Waring Corporation, founded by the popular bandleader Fred Waring[citation needed], published its first little booklet of recipes titled "Recipes to Make Your Waring-Go-Round," which contained 12 early recipes for "milk smoothees." Waring had hired Mabel Stegner, B.S., a Home Economics Consultant from the University of Wisconsin, to develop the recipes.[2] Smoothies were first made in the homes of those who owned an electric blender: power blender,[3] immersion blender, hand blender. They became widely available in the United States in the late 1960s when ice cream vendors and health food stores began selling them. By the 1990s and 2000s, smoothies became available at mainstream cafés and coffee shops and in pre-bottled versions at supermarkets all over the world.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Anna Atkins (née Children)

Anna Atkins (née Children; 16 March 1799 – 9 June 1871 was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph. Atkins was born in Tonbridge, Kent, United Kingdom in 1799. Her mother Hester Anne Children "didn't recover from the effects of childbirth" and died in 1800. Anna became close to her father John George Children. Anna "received an unusually scientific education for a woman of her time." Her detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father's translation of Lamarck's Genera of Shells. In 1825 she married John Pelly Atkins, a London West India merchant, and they moved to Halstead Place, the Atkins family home in Sevenoaks, Kent. They had no children. Atkins pursued her interests in botany, for example by collecting dried plants. These were probably used as photograms later.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

SERA QUE CONOCES A ESTA MUJER

Solicitamos tu ayuda... ésta mujer de aproximadamente 30 años de edad, se encuentra en calidad de desconocida en la cama 112 de terapia intensiva del Hospital General, fue localizada en Rosamorada severamente golpeada y trasladada a Tepic, con traumatismo craneoencefálico severo, fractura de pelvis y golpes en todo su cuerpo... si la identificas o conoces a alguno de sus familiares, por favor comunícate a Derechos Humanos al Tel. 213-89-86 o lada sin costo 01 800 503-77-55. Las imágenes no son agradables, pero por favor comparte, alguno de tus contactos podría ayudar a identificarla... gracias.