WHO INVENTED THE SAUNA?

A Modern Sauna

A MAYA SAUNA--- CALLED A TEMAZCAL

The history of saunas is quite long, and no one really knows who invented them, though usually they are attributed to Finland, where they have been around it is thought for thousands of years. However, there are many other saunas in other parts of the world, such as the Japanese onsen, the Turkish hamam, the Native American inipi or sweat lodge, and the Russian banya. Finland though has the most sauna establishments, including in private homes, hotels, apartments, summer cottages, and public swimming pools. If you have a sauna in Finland, the accepted manner of doing so is to take a shower, dry off, enter the sauna with your towel and stay there for about 5-8 minutes. You then exit the sauna and cool off. In Finland, the preferred manner to do this is to roll around in the snow! Once you are cooled off, you re-enter the sauna and start over again. The reason why this is repeated a number of times is that the recurring heating then cooling supposedly pulls out the poisons out of the skin, along with many other impurities. It also theoretically enables the body to fight off colds and the flu, as it is believed that the hot and cold treatment makes the body ready to fight them by preventing chills when one is sickly. The Finns frequently take the matter further, and have been known to whip each other with dried birch twigs, which are supposed to make the poisons rise faster. There are countries where saunas are taken in the nude and some not. In Japan, Croatia, Sweden, Slovenia, Russia, Finland, NE Italy, Austria and Germany they take their saunas in the nude. However, in Africa, South America, Hungary, United States, United Kingdom and in France, a sauna is taken covered by a towel. Strangely enough sitting on a tower is absolutely required in NE Italy, Austria and in Germany.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY TO YOU ALL