Scientist For Life - Biography: 2011

Thursday, January 20, 2011

George Washington Carver

It is rare to find a man of the caliber of George Washington Carver. A man who would decline an invitation to work for a salary of more than $100,000 a year (almost a million today) to continue his research on behalf of his countrymen.

Agricultural Chemistry

As an agricultural chemist, Carver discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Among the listed items that he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically were his recipes and improvements to/for: adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder and wood stain.

Alexander Graham Bell - Biography

In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Graham Bell invented his telephone.

Back to The History of the Telephone

In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Graham Bell invented his telephone. In 1877, he formed the Bell Telephone Company, and in the same year married Mabel Hubbard and embarked on a yearlong honeymoon in Europe.

Biography of Thomas Edison

Edison Light Bulb

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio; the seventh and last child of Samuel and Nancy Edison. When Edison was seven his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan. Edison lived here until he struck out on his own at the age of sixteen. Edison had very little formal education as a child, attending school only for a few months. He was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother, but was always a very curious child and taught himself much by reading on his own. This belief in self-improvement remained throughout his life.

Land, Edwin Herbert

Land, Edwin Herbert, 1909–91, American inventor and photographic pioneer. While at Harvard, Land became interested in the properties and manipulation of polarized light. He left Harvard and, in 1932, created Polaroid J Sheet, a polarizing material that was inexpensive and easy to fabricate. In partnership with George Wheelwright, a Harvard physics instructor, Land in 1937 founded the Polaroid Corporation, where he adapted polarized materials for sunglasses, 3-D movies, and military use. In 1947 he demonstrated a single-step photographic process that enabled pictures to be developed in 60 seconds; a color process was marketed in 1963, and a self-developing positive print followed in 1973. In the original Land process, a negative material was exposed inside the camera and then drawn out, while being squeezed against a layer of reagent and a positive material. After 60 (later 10) seconds the layers could be separated and the negative discarded. In the current Polacolor process, light makes a series of latent images on appropriate dye layers of the film sheet; when the picture is ejected from the camera, processing reagent activates the image in these lower layers, which reaches final form after several minutes. The resulting print is protected by a hard plastic film. (See photographic processing.) Holder of more than 500 patents, Land founded the Rowland Institute of Science in 1960 and devoted his time to it after his retirement from Polaroid in 1980.

See biographies by S. McPartland (1993) and V. K. McElheny (1999).

Kay, John

Kay, John, 1704–64, English inventor. He patented (1733) the fly shuttle, operated by pulling a cord that drove the shuttle to either side, freeing one hand of the weaver to press home the weft. Workers in the weaving industry who regarded Kay's invention as a threat to their jobs mobbed Kay and destroyed his model. Various factory owners duplicated his device but managed not to pay him a royalty. Kay went to France, resumed his work, and tried unsuccessfully to win recognition in England. Although he was the inventor of one of the most important principles of modern mechanical weaving, he died in poverty.

Jacquard, Joseph Marie

Jacquard, Joseph Marie (zhôzef' märē' zhäkär') [key], 1752–1834, French inventor, whose loom is of the greatest importance in modern mechanical figure weaving. After several years of experimentation, he received a bronze medal for his model exhibited at the Industrial Exposition at Paris (1801). In 1806 his perfected loom was bought by the state and declared public property, and he was granted an annuity of 3,000 francs and a royalty on all looms sold. The Jacquard loom, the first machine to weave in patterns, has had countless adaptations in the modern textile industry.

Ives, Frederic Eugene

Ives, Frederic Eugene, 1856–1937, American inventor, b. Litchfield, Conn. A pioneer in the development of orthochromatic and trichromatic photography and of photoengraving, he followed an earlier suggestion by James Clerk Maxwell and produced in 1881 the first set of trichromatic plates. In 1878 he devised the first practical halftone process of photoengraving, developing it in 1886 to the process which came into general use. Among his other inventions are the short-tube, single-objective binocular microscope; the parallax stereogram; and a process for moving pictures in natural colors. His son Herbert Eugene Ives,. 1882–1953, inventor and physicist, b. Philadelphia, was active in the development of television. He demonstrated the transmission via telephone wires of black-and-white pictures in 1924 and of color pictures in 1929. He made a number of important contributions to color science and invented the first practical artificial-daylight lamp.

Hyatt, John Wesley

Hyatt, John Wesley, 1837–1920, American inventor, b. Starkey, N.Y. He is known especially for his development of celluloid; with his brothers, he began its manufacture in 1872. He also invented the Hyatt filter, a means of chemically purifying water while it is in motion; a widely used type of roller bearing; a sugarcane mill superior to any previously used; a sewing machine for making machine belting; and a substitute for ivory in the manufacture of billiard balls and other articles.

Howe, Elias

Howe, Elias, 1819–67, American inventor, b. Spencer, Mass. He was apprenticed in 1838 to an instrument maker and watchmaker in Boston at whose suggestion he turned his attention to devising a sewing machine. He exhibited his first machine in 1845 and patented another in 1846. No financial backing was secured in the United States, and in 1846 a third machine was sold in England, together with all rights in Great Britain, to William Thomas. Howe worked with Thomas in London to produce a machine to stitch leather. After a breach between the two, Howe returned to the United States to find his machine being manufactured by others. He brought several suits (including one against Isaac M. Singer) for infringement of patent and finally obtained a judgment for royalty in 1854. With the royalties earned through an extension of his patent (1861–67), he supported during the Civil War an infantry regiment in which he served as a private and in 1865 established in Bridgeport, Conn., the Howe Machine Company.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Crompton, Samuel

Crompton, Samuel, 1753–1827, English inventor of the mule spinner, or muslin wheel, an important step in the development of fine cotton spinning. Working as a young man in a spinning mill, he knew the defects of the Hargreaves jenny and determined to produce something better. After five years of secret work, he perfected (1779) a machine that combined the features of the jenny and Arkwright's frame and that, in one operation, by drawing, twisting, and winding the cotton, produced a very fine yarn. Crompton, however, was too poor to obtain a patent for his invention and sold his rights for £60. Later Parliament granted him £5,000.

Cooper, Peter

Cooper, Peter, 1791–1883, American inventor, industrialist, and philanthropist, b. New York City. After achieving success in the glue business, Cooper, with two partners, erected (1829) the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore. There he constructed the Tom Thumb, one of the earliest locomotives built in the United States. His success in trials on the Baltimore & Ohio RR probably saved that pioneer line from bankruptcy. During the next 20 years, Cooper expanded his holdings, becoming a leader in the American iron industry, and in 1870 he was awarded the Bessemer gold medal for rolling the first iron for fireproof buildings. Cooper invented and patented other practical devices and processes. His faith in the success of the Atlantic cable led him to invest heavily in the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company after banks refused to finance the operation. He was president of this company for 20 years while he headed the North American Telegraph Company, which controlled more than half of the telegraph lines in the country. An outstanding leader in the civic affairs of New York City, Cooper led the successful fight to secure a public school system and did much to improve several of the municipal departments. His lasting monument is Cooper Union in New York City, built after his own plans to provide for education for the working classes. He supported the Greenback party in national politics, and in 1876 he was the party's presidential candidate, polling over 80,000 votes. Many of his addresses were collected in Ideas for a Science of Good Government (1883, repr. 1971). Abram S. Hewitt was his son-in-law, Peter Cooper Hewitt his grandson.

See biographies by R. W. Raymond (1901), A. Nevins (1935, repr. 1967), and E. C. Mack (1949).

Colt, Samuel

Colt, Samuel, 1814–62, American inventor, b. Hartford, Conn. In 1835–36, he patented a revolving-breech pistol and founded at Paterson, N.J., the Patent Arms Company, which failed in 1842. An order for 1,000 revolvers from the U.S. government in 1847 in the Mexican War made possible the reestablishment of his business. He later built the Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company factory at Hartford. Colt also invented a submarine battery used in harbor defense and a submarine telegraph cable. His revolving-breech pistol became so popular that the word Colt was sometimes used as a generic term for the revolver.

See biography by W. B. Edwards (1953).

Cierva, Juan de la

Cierva, Juan de la (hwän dā lä thyār'vä) [key], 1895–1936, Spanish aeronautical engineer, inventor of a rotary-wing aircraft called an autogiro. He flew his first autogiro in 1923 and crossed the English Channel in an improved model in 1928.

See his Wings of Tomorrow (1931).

Emmett Chappelle

inventor

Born: 1925

Through his discovery that a specific combination of chemicals caused living organisms to emit light, Chappelle facilitated important findings within the fields of biology and chemistry, including developing techniques for detecting bacteria in such items as food and water.

Cartwright, Edmund

Cartwright, Edmund, 1743–1823, English inventor and clergyman. He was the inventor of an imperfect power loom that, when finally patented (1785), became the parent of the modern loom. It was the first machine to make practical the weaving of wide cotton cloth. A few of Cartwright's many other inventions were a wool-combing machine (1789), a machine for ropemaking (1792), and an engine (1797) that used alcohol as fuel. He cooperated with Fulton on his experiments with steam navigation.

Bramah, Joseph

Bramah, Joseph (brăm'u, brä'–) [key], 1748–1814, English inventor. In 1784 he took out his first patent on a safety lock, and in 1795 he patented his hydraulic press, known as the Bramah press (see under hydraulic machine). He devised a numerical printing machine for bank notes and was one of the first to suggest the practicability of screw propellers and of hydraulic transmission.

Borden, Gail

Borden, Gail, 1801–74, American dairyman, surveyor, and inventor, b. Norwich, N.Y. He was for several years a deputy surveyor in Mississippi; afterward he joined the colony of Stephen F. Austin in Texas. There, besides farming, stock-raising, and newspaper activities, he superintended the surveying of lands for Austin. He laid out the city of Galveston, where he became collector of customs. After returning (1851) to New York, he worked on a process of evaporating milk, which he patented in 1856. Jeremiah Milbank backed him financially, and the Borden Milk Company (now the Borden Family of Companies, including Borden Foods Corp. and Borden Chemicals Inc.) opened its first evaporating plant in 1858. During the Civil War his product was found to be of great value to the army, and its use spread rapidly afterward. Borden subsequently also patented processes for concentrating fruit juices and other beverages.

See biography by J. B. Frantz (1951).

Blériot, Louis

Blériot, Louis (lwē blārēō') [key], 1872–1936, French aviator and inventor. He devoted the fortune acquired by his invention of an automobile searchlight to the invention and construction of monoplanes. After making several short-distance records, he was the first to cross (July 25, 1909) the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine.

Birdseye, Clarence

Birdseye, Clarence, 1886–1956, American inventor and founder of the frozen food industry, b. Brooklyn, N. Y., studied at Amherst College. In 1912 he went to Labrador on a fur-trading expedition and when he returned to the United States in 1916 began experimenting with freezing foods, aiming at commercial application. He developed a method for freezing fish and in 1924 he was one of the founders of the General Foods Company, which began manufacturing various frozen food products. In 1929 the company was bought by the Postum Company (later the General Foods Corp.) for $22 million. By 1949, Birdseye had perfected the anhydrous freezing process, reducing the time needed for the operation from 18 hr to 1 1/2 hr.

Bell, Alexander Graham

Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847–1922, American scientist, inventor of the telephone, b. Edinburgh, Scotland, educated at the Univ. of Edinburgh and University College, London; son of Alexander Melville Bell. He worked in London with his father, whose system of visible speech he used in teaching the deaf to talk. In 1870 he went to Canada, and in 1871 he lectured, chiefly to teachers of the deaf, in Boston and other cities. During the next few years he conducted his own school of vocal physiology in Boston, lectured at Boston Univ., and worked on his inventions. His teaching methods were of lasting value in the improvement of education for the deaf.

As early as 1865, Bell conceived the idea of transmitting speech by electric waves. In 1875, while he was experimenting with a multiple harmonic telegraph, the principle of transmission and reproduction came to him. By Mar. 10, 1876, his apparatus was so far developed that the first complete sentence transmitted, “Watson, come here; I want you,” was distinctly heard by his assistant. The first demonstration took place before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston on May 10, 1876, and a more significant one, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition the same year, introduced the telephone to the world. The Bell Telephone Company was organized in July, 1877. A long period of patent litigation followed in which Bell's claims were completely upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

With the 50,000 francs awarded him as the Volta Prize for his invention, he established in Washington, D.C., the Volta Laboratory, where the first successful sound recorder, the Graphophone, was produced. Bell invented the photophone, which transmitted speech by light rays; the audiometer, another invention for the deaf; the induction balance, used to locate metallic objects in the human body; and the flat and the cylindrical wax recorders for phonographs. He investigated the nature and causes of deafness and made an elaborate study of its heredity.

In 1880 the magazine Science, which became the official organ for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was founded largely through his influence. Bell was president of the National Geographic Society from 1898 to 1903 and was made a regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1898. After 1895 his interest was occupied largely by aviation. He invented the tetrahedral kite. The Aerial Experiment Association, founded under his patronage in 1907, brought together G. H. Curtiss, F. W. Baldwin, and others, who invented the aileron principle and developed the hydroplane.

See biographies by C. D. Mackenzie (1928, repr. 1971), A. Johnson (1985), E. S. Grosvenor and M. Wesson (1997), and T. Foster (1998).

Paul Baran

inventor

Born: 1926

Baran developed one of the fundamental concepts behind today’s advanced computer networking systems. Digital packet switching allowed for better data networks and provided the technical foundation for the eventual development of the Internet Protocol.

Baird, John Logie

Baird, John Logie, 1888–1946, Scottish inventor. In 1926 he gave the first demonstration of true television with a televisor of his own invention that differed from later instruments in being partially mechanical rather than wholly electronic. He accomplished transatlantic television in 1928 and demonstrated color television in the same year. He also invented (1926) the noctovisor, an instrument for making objects visible in the dark or through fog by means of infrared light.

Babbage, Charles

Babbage, Charles (băb'ij) [key], 1792–1871, English mathematician and inventor. He devoted most of his life and expended much of his private fortune and a government subsidy in an attempt to perfect a mechanical calculating machine that foreshadowed present-day machines. He was a founder of the Royal Astronomical Society. He wrote Tables of Logarithms (1827) and an autobiography (1864).

See biographies by M. Moseley (1970) and D. Halacy (1970).

Arkwright, Sir Richard

Arkwright, Sir Richard, 1732–92, English inventor. His construction of a machine for spinning, the water frame, patented in 1769, was an early step in the Industrial Revolution. His machines and his gift for organization enabled him and his partner, Jedediah Strutt, to establish huge cotton mills and thus helped to start the factory system. He became very wealthy and was knighted in 1786.

See R. S. Fitton and A. P. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights, 1758–1830 (1958, repr. 1968); The Arkwright Society, Arkwright and the Mills at Cromford (1971).

Steinmetz, Charles Proteus

Steinmetz, Charles Proteus (stīn'mets) [key], 1865–1923, American electrical engineer, b. Breslau, Germany, studied at the Univ. of Breslau. Forced to flee Germany because of his socialist activities, he came to the United States in 1889. Rudolf Eickemeyer, who had just begun to build electrical apparatus in his factory in Yonkers, N.Y., gave him his start in electrical engineering research. When the General Electric Company bought out Eickemeyer in 1892, Steinmetz joined the new owners. He discovered the law of hysteresis, which made it possible to reduce the loss of efficiency in electrical apparatus resulting from alternating magnetism; developed a practical method of making calculations of alternating current, thus revolutionizing electrical engineering; and did valuable research on transient electrical phenomena (lightning). He built a generator that produced artificial lightning. Professor (1902–23) at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., Steinmetz wrote many scientific papers and a number of standard texts. He remained a socialist and was president of the Schenectady board of education (1912–23) and of the common council (1916–23).

See biographies by J. W. Hammond (1924) and J. N. Leonard (1929).

Sprague, Frank Julian

Sprague, Frank Julian (sprāg) [key], 1857–1934, American electrical engineer, b. Milford, Conn., grad. Annapolis, 1878. He was an assistant to Thomas Edison in 1883 and independently created a superior electric motor that was readily adaptable to industrial machinery. He also improved systems of electric energy and wheel suspension systems from which he developed the first electric street railway, installed at Richmond, Va., in 1887. He contributed greatly to the development of electric railways by inventing the multiple-unit system of automatic control, an automatic brake, and numerous other devices; he also developed the electric elevator.

Sperry, Elmer Ambrose

Sperry, Elmer Ambrose, 1860–1930, American inventor, b. Cortland, N.Y. Although probably best known for his work on the gyroscope, he also invented the gyrocompass (1910), an extremely effective high-intensity searchlight, a new system of street lighting, and numerous electrical devices. He founded the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the American Electrochemical Society.

Siemens, Sir William

Siemens, Sir William, 1823–83, English electrical engineer, b. Germany; brother of Ernst Werner von Siemens. Originally his name was Carl Wilhelm Siemens. After visiting England to introduce an electroplating device he devised with his brother Ernst he returned in 1844 and became (1859) a naturalized British subject. He was head of the English branch of the Siemens firm, which made telegraphic and other electrical apparatus and handled electrical engineering projects. Among his important inventions were a water meter (1851) and a device for reproducing printing that remained standard until the development of photography, and he was one of the first to apply (1883) electric power to railways. With his brother Frederick he developed an improved regenerative furnace that was used to produce steel; the process, and a variation of it introduced by Pierre Martin, came to be known as the open-hearth process. He was knighted in 1883.

Siemens, Ernst Werner von

Siemens, Ernst Werner von (ernst ver'nur fun zē'muns) [key], 1816–92, German electrical engineer and inventor. He was a founder and director of Siemens and Halske, a firm that made electrical apparatus. He was co-inventor of an electroplating process (1841), and alone developed an electric dynamo. He laid the first telegraph line and built the first electric railway in Germany and, with his brother Sir William Siemens, developed (1866) a widely used process of steelmaking. The Siemens unit of electrical conductance was proposed by him. In 1884 he founded a research laboratory at Charlottenburg.

See his Inventor and Entrepreneur (1892, tr. 1966) and his Scientific and Technical Papers (2 vol., tr. 1892–95).

Ruska, Ernst

Ruska, Ernst, 1906–88, German electrical engineer. By applying the discovery that electron waves are 100,000 times shorter than those of light, Ruska built a microscope that used a beam of electrons to produce a greatly magnified image. Although he first invented the microscope in 1933, it was not until 1986 that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery. Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig were awarded half of the prize for building the scanning tunneling microscope. Ruska taught for many years at the Technical Univ. of West Berlin.

Poulsen, Valdemar

Poulsen, Valdemar (väl'dumär poul'sun) [key], 1869–1942, Danish electrical engineer. He invented (1898) the telegraphone (an early wire recorder) and the high-frequency Poulsen arc used in wireless telegraphy and radio.

Kennelly, Arthur Edwin

Kennelly, Arthur Edwin (ken'ulē) [key], 1861–1939, American electrical engineer, b. Bombay (now Mumbai), India, educated at University College School, London. He was Edison's chief electrical assistant (1887–94) and was later professor at Harvard (1902–30) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1913–24). Much of his research was on electromagnetism and alternating currents. In 1902 he advanced the theory, also proposed by Oliver Heaviside, that a layer of ionized air in the upper atmosphere might deflect downward electromagnetic waves. The theory was demonstrated as fact, and the deflecting layer is known as the Heaviside-Kennelly layer (see ionosphere).

Hounsfield, Sir Godfrey Newbold

Hounsfield, Sir Godfrey Newbold, 1919–2004, British electrical engineer. A radar expert for the Royal Air Force during World War II, in the 1950s Hounsfield began developing computer and X-ray technology for EMI, Ltd., an international electronics and entertainment corporation. He built the prototype for the first CAT scan machine, which originally was designed to produce detailed images of cross-sections of the human head, in 1972. For this innovation he shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Allan Cormack, who had independently derived and published the mathematical basis of CAT scanning in 1963–64. Hounsfield was knighted in 1981.

Gramme, Zénobe-Théophile

Gramme, Zénobe-Théophile (zānôb' tāôfēl' gräm) [key], 1826–1901, Belgian electrical engineer. While working as a model maker for a Parisian manufacturer of electrical devices, Gramme became interested in improving them. He knew little of electrical theory, but he had seen the Italian physicist Antonio Pacinotti's direct-current dynamo, and in 1869 he built one of his own that proved practical in applications such as electric illumination. By reversing the principle of his dynamo, he invented the electric engine.

Goldmark, Peter Carl

Goldmark, Peter Carl, 1906–77, Hungarian-American engineer, b. Budapest. He studied at the Univ. of Vienna (B.S., 1929, Ph.D., 1931); worked for a radio company in England (1931–33). After emigrating to the United States (1933), he worked as a construction engineer until joining the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1936. There he developed the first commercial color television system, which used a rotating three-color disk. Although initially approved by the Federal Communications Commission, it was later superseded by an all-electronic color system that was compatible with black-and-white sets. Goldmark developed the 33 1/3 LP phonograph that greatly increased the playing time of records. He also developed a scanning system used by the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft in 1966 to transmit photographs to the earth from the moon.

See his autobiography (1973).

Fleming, Sir John Ambrose

Fleming, Sir John Ambrose, 1849–1945, English electrical engineer. He was a leader in the development of electric lighting, the telephone, and wireless telegraphy in England and the inventor of a thermionic valve (the first electron tube). Fleming was a professor at the Univ. of London and at University College and was knighted in 1929. Among his many publications are Fifty Years of Electricity (1921) and The Propagation of Electric Currents in Telephone and Telegraph Conductors (1911).

See his Memories of a Scientific Life (1934).

Ferraris, Galileo

Ferraris, Galileo (gälēlā'ō fār-rä'rēs) [key], 1847–97, Italian physicist and electrical engineer. He is noted for his work on alternating current and for his discovery (1885) of the rotary magnetic field, through which he promoted the development of alternating-current motors.

Belidor, Bernard Forest de

Belidor, Bernard Forest de (bernär' fôre' du bālēdôr') [key], 1693–1761, French engineer. He wrote numerous books dealing with mathematics, artillery, and hydraulic, civil, and military engineering. One of his engineering works, a manual of rules and tables, was reprinted until 1830. His four-volume Architecture hydraulique (1737–53) was the first work of its kind to apply integral calculus to practical problems; its influence for the next hundred years was international in scope.

Ammann, Othmar Hermann

Ammann, Othmar Hermann (ôt'mär, o'mon) [key], 1879–1965, American civil engineer, b. Switzerland, grad. Federal Polytechnic Institute, Zürich, 1902. He came to the United States in 1904 and was naturalized in 1924. He served (1925–39) with the Port of New York Authority and was its director of engineers from 1937 to 1939. An authority on bridges, he participated in either the designing or the construction of Hell Gate, George Washington, Triborough, Bronx-Whitestone, and Verrazano-Narrows (at its opening in 1964, the longest and heaviest suspension bridge in the world) bridges in New York City, and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Baker, Sir Benjamin

Baker, Sir Benjamin, 1840–1907, English civil engineer. He helped build London's underground railway, Tower Bridge, and the Blackwall Tunnel, and with Sir John Fowler he designed and built the bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scotland. In Egypt he assisted with the first Aswan dam. Baker also designed the cylindrical ship used to carry the obelisk Cleopatra's Needle from Egypt to London.

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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Thursday, January 13, 2011