Who invented the radio?

Who invented the radio?

Radio owes its development to two other inventions the telegraph and the telephone. In fact, all three technologies are closely related. Few radio broadcasts travel through the air exclusively, while many are sent over telephone wires. In the 1980s James Clerk, Maxwell, a Scottish physicist, predicted the existence of radio waves, and in 1886 Heinrich Rudolph Hertz, a German physicist, demonstrated that rapid variations of electric current could be projected into space in the form of radio waves, similar to those of light and heat.

Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor proved the feasibility of radio communication. He sent, and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895. By 1899, he flashed the first wireless signal across the English Channel, and two days later received the letter ‘S’, telegraphed from England to Newfoundland. This was the first successful transatlantic radio-telegraph message in 1902.

Nikola Tesla is now credited with having invented the modern radio. The Supreme Court of the US overturned Marconi’s patent in 1943 in favor of Tesla. Wireless signals proved effective in communication for rescue work when a sea disaster occurred. A number of ocean liners installed wireless equipment. In 1899, the United States Army established wireless communication with a lightship off Fire Island, New York. Tow years later, the Navy adopted a wireless system. Up to then, the Navy had been using visual signaling and homing pigeons for communication.

Who invented the calculator?

Who invented the calculator?

William Seward Burroughs invented the first practical adding and listing machine. He was awarded a patent application for his calculating machine’ in 1888.in 1886, Burroughs and several St. Louis businessmen formed the Arithmometer Co. of America to market the machine. The first machine however, required a special knack in pulling the handle to execute the calculation correctly. More often than not, novice users would get widely differing sums depending on the vigour with which they used the invention. In 1893, Burroughs received a patent for an improved calculating machine, which incorporated an oil-filled ‘dashpot’, a hydraulic governor. This device enabled the machine to operate properly, regardless of the manner in which the handle might be pulled.

Who invented the gramophone?

Who invented the gramophone?

Early attempts to design a music-playing gadget began in 1877 when Thomas Edison invented his tin-foil phonograph. The word ‘phonograph’ was Edison’s trade name for his device, which played recorded sounds from round cylinders. The sound quality on the phonograph was bad, and each recording lasted just for one only play.

On November 8, 1887 Emile Berliner, a German immigrant working in Washington DC, patented a successful system of sound recording. Berliner was the first inventor to stop recording on cylinders, and start recording on flat discs or records.

The first records were made of glass, later zinc and eventually plastic. A spiral groove with sound information was etched into the flat record. The record was rotated on the gramophone. The ‘arm’ of the gramophone held a needle that read the grooves in the record by vibration and transmitted the information to the gramophone speaker.

Berliner’s discs (records) were the first sound recording that could be mass-produced by creating master recordings from which molds were made. From each mold, hundreds of disks were pressed. Emile Berliner founded ‘The Gramophone Company’ to mass manufacture his sound discs (records) and the gramophone that played them. To help promote his gramophone system Berliner did two things, he persuaded popular artists to record their music using his system. Two famous artists who signed early on with Berliner’s company were Enrico Caruso and Dame Nellie Melba. The second smart marketing move Berliner made came in 1908, when he used Francis Barraud’s painting of “His Master’s Voice’ as company’s official trademark.

Who invented quartz clocks?

Who invented quartz clocks?

In 1927, Canadian-born Warren Marrison, a telecommunications engineer, was searching for reliable frequency standards at Bell Telephone Laboratories. He developed a very large, highly accurate clock based on the regular vibrations of a quartz crystal in an electrical circuit – the first quartz clock.

Quartz clock operation is based on the piezoelectric property of quartz crystals. If you apply an electric field to the crystal, it changes its shape and if you squeeze it or bend it, it generates an electric field. When put in a suitable electronic circuit, this interacation between mechanical stress and electric field caused the crystal to vibrate, and generate a constant frequency electric signal that can be used to operate an electronic clock display.

Quartz crystal clocks were better because they had no gears or escapements to disturb their regular frequency. Even so, they still relied on a mechanical vibration whose frequency depended critically on the crystal’s size and shape. Thus, no two crystals can be precisely alike, with exactly the same frequency. Such quartz clocks continue to dominate the market today.

When did the accurate mechanical clocks appear?

When did the accurate mechanical clocks appear?

The clock was invented part by part. In 1577, Jost Burgi invented the minute hand. Burgi’s invention was part of a clock made for Tycho Brahe, an astronomer who needed an accurate clock for his star-gazing.

In 1656, Christian Huygens, a Dutch scientist made the first pendulum clock regulated by a mechanism with a ‘natural’ period of oscillation. Although Galileo Galilee, sometimes credited with inventing the pendulum, studied its motion as early as 1582, Galileo’s design for a clock was not built before his death. Huygens’s pendulum clock had an error of less than 1 minute a day, the first time such accuracy had been achieved. His later refinements reduced the error to less than 10 seconds a day. In 1721, George Graham improved the pendulum clock’s accuracy to 1 second a day by compensating for changes in the pendulum’s length due to heat variations. John Harrison, a carpenter and self-taught clock-maker, refined Graham’s temperature sation techniques and added new methods of reducing friction. By 1761, he had built a marine chronometer with a spring and balance wheel. It kept time on board a rolling ship to about one-fifth of a second a day, nearly as well as a pendulum clock could do on land, and 10 times better than required. One of the most famous, the W.H Shortt clock, was demonstrated in 1921. The Shortt clock almost immediately replaced Riefler’s clock as a supreme timekeeper in many observatories. This clock consists of two pendulums, one a slave and the other a master. The slave pendulum gives the master pendulum the gentle pushes needed to maintain its motion, and also drives the clock’s hands. This allows the master pendulum to remain free from mechanical tasks that would disturb its regularity.

How were water clocks used?

How were water clocks used?

Water clocks were among the earliest timekeepers that did not depend on the observation of celestial bodies. The oldest one was found in the tomb an Egyptian king, buried around 1500 BC. Later named Clepsydras (water thief) by the Greeks, who began using them about 325 BC these were stone vessels with sloping sides that dripped water at a nearly constant rate from a small hole near the bottom.

In the early-to-mid 14th century, large mechanical clocks began to appear in the towers of large Italian cities. Another advance was the invention of spring-powered clocks between 1500 and 1510 by Peter Henlein, a German locksmith from Nuremberg. Replacing the heavy drive weights permitted smaller (and portable) clocks and watches.

Henlein nicknamed his clocks ‘Nuremberg Eggs’. Although they slowed down as the mainspring unwound, they were popular among wealthy individuals due to their size and the fact that they could be put on a shelf or table instead of handing from the wall. They were the first portable timepieces.

Who invented cement?

Who invented cement?

Concrete is a material used in building construction, consisting of a hard, chemically inert substance, known as an aggregate (usually made from different types of sand and gravel), that is bonded together by cement and water..

The Assyrians and Babylonians used clay as the bonding substance or cement. The Egyptians used lime and gypsum cement. In 1756, British engineer John Smeaton made the first modern concrete by adding pebbles as a coarse aggregate and mixing powdered brick into the cement. In 1824, English inventor, Joseph Aspdin invented Portland cement, which has remained the dominant cement used in concrete production. Joseph Aspdin created the first true artificial cement by burning ground limestone and clay together. The chemical properties of the material and Joseph Aspdin created stronger cement than what using plain crushed limestone would produce.

How did ancient civilizations record time?

How did ancient civilizations record time?

After the Sumerians, the Egyptians were the next to formally divide their day into parts something like hours. Slender, tapering, four-sided monuments (Obekusjs) were built as early as 3500 BC. Their moving shadows formed a kind of sundial, enabling citizens to partition the day into two parts by indicating noon. They also showed the year’s longest and shortest days, when the shadow at noon was the shortest or longest of the year.

Another Egyptian shadow clock or sundial, possibly the first portable timepiece, came into use around 1500 BC to measure the passage of ‘hours’. This device divided a sunlit day into 10 parts, plus two ‘twilight hours’ in the morning and evening. When the long stem with five variably spaced marks was oriented east and west in the morning, an elevated crossbar on the east end cast a moving shadow over the marks. At noon, the device was turned in the opposite direction to measure the afternoon ‘hours’.

The Greeks invented a prototype of the alarm clock around 250 BC. They also built a water clock where clock where the raising waters would both keep time and eventually hit a mechanical bird that triggered an alarm.

In 1908, the Westclox Clock Company is issued a patent for the Big Ben alarm clock. The outstanding feature on this clock is the bell-back, which completely envelopes the inner case back and is an integral part of the case. The bell-back provides loud alarm.

Who made silver first?

Who made silver first?

Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) of England, invented the first process for mass-producing steel inexpensively. An American William Kelly, had held a patent for a ‘system of air blowing the carbon out of pig iron’, a method of steel production known as the pneumatic process of steel making. Air is blown through molten pig iron to oxidize and remove unwanted impurities. Bankruptcy forced Kelly to sell his patent to Bessemer, who had been working on a similar process for making steel.

Bessemer patented ‘a decarbonization process, utilizing a blast of air’, in 1855. Modern steel is made using technology based on Bessemer process. Bessemer was knighted in 1879 for his contribution to science. The ‘Bessemer Process’, for mass-producing steel, was named after Bessemer. Robert Mushet invented Tungsten steel u 1808. Henry Brearly invented Stainless steel in 1916.

Who was the inventor of the water pump in mines?

Who was the inventor of the water pump in mines?

By 1711, Thomas Newcomen completed making his first commercial engine. It could do the work of team if 500 horses! In 1712, Newcomen and John Calley built their first engine on top of a water-filled mine shaft to demonstrate its power, pumping it out in hours. Soon, orders from wet mines all over England began to pour in it. Although its first use was in a coal-mining area, Newcomen’s engine would find its greatest use pumping water out of the mineral mines in his native West Country, such as the tin mines of Cornwall. Before Newcomen died, he had installed over a hundred of his engines in the mining districts of the Britain. By 1725, this engine was in common use in collieries and it held its place without material change for about three-quarters of a century. In 1765, James Watt, the steam engine man, while working for the University of Glasgow, was asked to repair a Newcomen engine which was deemed inefficient but was the best steam engine of its time. That set the inventor to work on several improvements to Newcomen’s design.

Did Thomas Edison really invent the light bulb?

Did Thomas Edison really invent the light bulb?

Edison didn’t ‘invent’ the light bulb, but rather, he improved up a 50-year old idea. Henry Woodward of Toronto, along with Mathew Evans, patented a light bulb in 1875. Unfortunately, the two entrepreneurs could not raise the finance to commercialize their invention. The enterprising American, Thomas Edison, who had been working on the same idea, bought the rights to their patent. Edison had the backing of syndicate of industrial interest with $50, 000 to invest. Using a lower –current, a small carbonized filament, and an improved vacuum inside the globe, Edison successfully demonstrated the light bulb in 1879, and made history. Sir Humphrey Davy of England invented the first electric carbon arc lamp in 1801. A.E. Becquerel of France theorized about the fluorescent lamp in 1857. Sir Joseph Swann of England and Thomas Edison both invented the first electric incandescent lamps around the 1870s.

Who invented the battery?

Who invented the battery?

A battery, which is actually an electric cell, is a device that produces electricity from a chemical reaction. Strictly speaking, a battery consists of two or more cells connected in series or parallel, but the term is generally used for a single cell. A cell consists of a negative electrode; an electrolyte, which conducts ions; a separator, also an ion conductor; and a positive electrode.
In 1748, Benjamin Franklin first coined the term ‘battery’ to describe an array of charged glass plates. From 1780 to 1786 Luigi Galvani demonstrated what we now understand to be the electrical basis of nerve impulses, and provided the cornerstone of research for later inventors like Alessandro Volta.
Volta invented the voltaic pile and discovered the first practical method of generating electricity in 1800. Constructed of alternating discs of zinc and copper with pieced of cardboard soaked in brine between the metals, the voltaic pile produced electrical current.
In 1836, an Englishman, John F. Daniel invented the Daniel Cell that used two electrolytes: copper sulfate and zinc sulfate. The Daniel Cell was somewhat safer and less corrosive than the Volta Cell. In 1859, a French inventor Gaston Plante developed the first practical storage lead-acid battery that could be recharged. This type of battery is primarily used in automobiles today.
Lew Urry developed the small alkaline battery in 1949. Alkaline batteries last five to eight times as long as zinc-carbon cells, their predecessors. This was not a patentable invention, since Volta and others long ago created the principles of batteries.

How was electricity discovered?

How was electricity discovered?

Michael Faraday, Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Andre-Marie Ampere, and Greg Ohm did work that provided the basis for modern electrical engineering.
Italian physician Girolamo Cardano returned to the subject of electricity in De Subtilitate (1550) distinguishing, perhaps for the first time, between electrical and magnetic forces. In 1600, the English scientist William Gilbert coined the modern Latin word ‘electricus’ from ‘elektron’, the Greek word for ‘amber’ which soon gave rise to the English word – electricity.
Otto von Guericke invented an early electrostatic generator in 1660. Other European pioneers were Robert Boyle, who in 1675 stated that electric attraction and repulsion can act across a vacuum. Stephen Grey, who in 1729 classified materials as conductors and insulators, and C. F Du Fay, who first identified the tow types of electricity that would later be called positive and negative.

Photographic Films:

Photographic Films:

The first flexible films, dating to 1889, were made of cellulose nitrate, which is chemically similar to guncotton. A nitrate-based film will deteriorate over time, releasing oxidants and acidic gases. It is also highly flammable. Special storage for this film is required. It is highly explosive and should be kept at low temperatures, in sealed bags, in fireproof vaults.
Nitrate film is historically important because it allowed for the development of roll films. The first flexible movie films measured 35 mm wide and came in long rolls on a spool. In 1920s, using this technology, 35-mm roll was developed for the camera. By the late 1920s, medium-format roll film was created. It measured six centimeters wide and had a paper backing making it easy to handle in daylight.

Which was the first camera to use a lens?

Which was the first camera to use a lens?

In the 16th century, Geronimo Cardano, the Italian physician, mathematician and astrologer used a convex lens in a camera and, in a sense, started the photographic industry.
Photography, as well know it, actually began in 1816 when Joseph Niepce, a French researcher, captured an image on paper that had been sensitized with the advent of digital cameras, photographic film loses its importance. Film-less cameras are the ‘in thing’ now.

Who invented photography?

Who invented photography?

The first true photographs, exposed on metal that had been sensitized to accept an image, were named for their French inventor L. J. M Daguerre in 1837.
The inventor of the first process, which used a negative from which multiple prints were made, was William Henry Fox Talbot, a contemporary of Daguerre.
Tintypes, patented in 1856 by Hamilton Smith, were another medium that heralded the birth of photography. A thin sheet of iron was used to provide a base for light-sensitive material, yielding a positive image. Photography advanced considerably when sensitized materials could be coated on glass plate. The first glass negatives were wet plate. They had to be developed quickly before the emulsion dried. In 1889, George Eastman, realizing the potential of the mass market, used a newly invented film with a base that was flexible, unbreakable and could be rolled. Emulsions coated on a cellulose nitrate film base, such as Eastman’s, made the mass-produced box camera reality.

Who invented Photostat?

Who invented Photostat?

In 1937, an American law student Chester Carlson invented a copying process based on electrostatic energy called Xerography. Xerography became commercially available in 1950 by the Xerox Corporation. The word ‘Xerography’ comes from the Greek for ‘dry writing’.
Carlson had been frustrated with the slow mimeograph machine, and that lead him to inventing a new way of copying. He invented an electrostatic process that reproduced words on a page in just seconds.
Carlson couldn’t find investors for his new invention. IBM and the U.S Army Signal Corps turned him down. It took him eight years to find an investor, the Haloid Company which later became the Xerox Corporation. Carlson filed a patent application in April, 1939, stating, ‘I knew I had a very big tiger by the tail’. Xerox Corporation also trademarked the name ‘Xerox’ and has protected the name carefully.

How was the telescope improved?

How was the telescope improved?

The improvement of the telescope to the powerful instrument of our time was a long gradual process involving many men and many centuries. It was all based on the improvement of lenses.
Galileo’s telescope was quite simple. It had two lenses in a lead tube. In 1610, Johannes Kepler of Germany used a more complicated lens system, which gave higher magnification. From that Huygens of Holland, learned to grind lenses that would focus more accurately and made some that brought the rays of the Sun down to a flaming pinpoint.
Isaac Newton, the great British physicist, after spending much time in designing colour-corrected lenses, made a great improvement on the astronomical telescope. There had been experimentation with curved mirrors that gathered the reflection of an image and focused it. Newton used this technique in what is now known as the reflecting telescope.
The mirror received the distant image and sent it through a system of lenses for magnification. This device, the reflecting telescope, is the one we use today for most astronomical observation. The modern version is essentially the same as Newton’s in principle. The reflecting telescope has the highest power and allows us to see distant galaxies - galaxies that are millions of light years away.

Did Galileo invent the telescope?

Did Galileo invent the telescope?

The origin of the telescope is shrouded in mystery. Galileo, however, was not the original designer of the telescope. The Dutch were the first to use the instrument. The diary of Johannes Janssen describes the achievements of his father, Zacharias, a spectacle-maker. About 1590, the elder Janssen discovered that a combination of a convex lens with a concave lens for an eyepiece enabled its user to see distant objects, not only more clearly, but also with greater magnification- a discovery that became known in history as the principle of the compound microscope.
In 1608, Hans Lippershey, a Dutch optician, made use of this new knowledge to devise a telescope. However, Lippershey did not invent this wonderful tool for seeing at great distances. His discovery was made because he had inspected an earlier telescope, one made in Italy. No one knows who the Italian designer was, but the instrument itself had the inscribed date, 1590. It was Galileo who first saw the rings around the planet Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. These discoveries were so astounding in their time that Galileo became known as the inventor of the telescope, a misconception that persists even today.

How did spectacles originate?

How did spectacles originate?

Around 1000AD, the first vision aid was invented, called a reading stone, which was a glass sphere that was laid on top of the material to be read that magnified the letters.
Around 1284 in Italy, Salvino D’Armate is credited with inventing the first wearable eye glasses. The ingenious American inventor Benjamin Franklin invented bifocal spectacles in 1784. he was getting old, and was having trouble seeing objects both close up and at a distance. He grew so tired of switching two different pairs of spectacles, so he devised a way to have both type of lenses fit into a single frame. The distance lens was placed at the top, and the up-close lens was placed at the bottom. Bifocal spectacles are made this way even today.
The oldest known lens was found in the ruins of ancient Nineveh, and was made of polished rock crystal, 4 cm in diameter.
Around the year 1752, eyeglass designer James Ayscough introduced his spectacles with double-hinged side pieces. The lenses were made of tinted glass as well as clear. Ayscough felt that white glass created an offensive glaring light that was bad to the eyes. He advised the use of green and blue glasses. Ayscough glasses were the first sunglass like eye-glasses, but they were not made to shield the eyes from the sun, they corrected for vision problems.
Edwin H. Land invented a cellophane-like polarizing filter (patented in 1929), the first modern filters to polarize light. Polarizing celluloid became the critical element in polarizing sunglass lenses; it is a process that reduces light

What was the practical use of the lens?

What was the practical use of the lens?

The first practical use of a glass lens was not in a telescope, not in a microscope, but in eyeglasses! Although Grosseteste and Bacon began the basic research on eye-glasses, no one knows the name of the man who made the first working pair of spectacles.

Were lenses invented or discovered?

Were lenses invented or discovered?

It seems likely that the principle of the curved lens was discovered through observation. No single man invented the lens. The requirements for a lens are a transparent substance in which the thickness can be regulated, and can be shaped to a desired curve. Lenses could no be made until glass was invented. Glass fits the requirements exactly.

How and when were mirrors invented?

How and when were mirrors invented?

The history of mirrors dates back to ancient times when man-kind first saw reflections in a pond or river, and considered it magic. At first, polished stone or metal was used in the first early manmade mirrors. Later, glass was used in combination with metals like tin, mercury and lead to create mirrors. Today, combining glass and metal is still the design used in almost all modern mirrors. The two-way mirror was originally called the ‘transparent mirror’. Just like a regular there is a silver coating on the glass of a two-way mirror, which, when applied to the back of the glass, renders the glass opaque and reflective on its face under ordinary light conditions.

Who invented glass?

Who invented glass?

Glass is an inorganic solid material that is usually clear, or translucent with different colours. Glass blowing was invented during the 1st century BC by the glassmakers of Syria. On March 25, 1902, Irving W Colburn patented the sheet glass drawing machine, making the mass production of glass for windows possible. On august 2, 1904, a patent for a ‘glass shaping machine’ was granted to Michael Owen. The immense production of bottles, jars etc. owe its inception to this invention.

Who invented paper?

Who invented paper?

A courtier named Ts’ai-Lun from Lei-yang in China was the inventor of paper (not papyrus) circa 105 AD. However, the word paper is derived form the name of the reedy pant papyrus which grows abundantly along the Nile River in Egypt. Paper is made of pulped cellulose fibers like wood, cotton of flax. Papyrus is made from the sliced sections of the flower stem of the papyrus plant pressed together and dried.

How come the Qwerty keyboard is still around?

How come the Qwerty keyboard is still around?

This is really the case of the early bird catching the worm. As far as the typewriter keyboard is concerned, first was vital! The name ‘QWERTY’ for our typewriter keyboard comes from the first six letters in the top alphabet row (the one just below the numbers). It is also called the ‘universal’ keyboard for rather obvious reasons. When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. They clashed and jammed when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters. The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called ‘type bars’. The type bar hung in a circle. If two type bars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as ‘TH’ and make sure their type bars hung at safe distances.
He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, who was Sholes’ chief financial backer. Sholes’ solutions did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced

How has printing change human history?

How has printing change human history?


When Johannes Gutenberg used movable type to print the first book in history, he ended an era that had started thousands of years before his time, and began another that still exists. The concept of preserving ideas, events and history is an invention of humanity as a whole and the beginnings of this concept appeared quite early in man’s time on earth.

Who invented the first typewriter?

Who invented the first typewriter?

Christopher Latham Sholes (1819 – 1890), a U.S mechanical engineer, invented the first practical modern typewriter with his partners S.W Soule and G.Glidden in 1866. The invention was patented in 1868, and was manufactured (by Remington Arms Company) in 1873. Before the computer, the typewriter may have been the most significant everyday business tool. Five years, dozens of experiments, and two patents later, Sholes and his associates produced an improved model similar to today’s typewriters. The type-bar system and the universal keyboard were the machine’s novelty, but the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. Thus formed the ‘QWERTY’ keyboard.
Sholes lacked the patience required to market the new product and sold the rights to Densmore. He, in turn, convinced Philo Remington (of rifle fame) to market the device.
The first electric typewriter was the Blickensderfer. In 1944, IBM designed the first typewriter with proportional spacing. Pellegrine Tarri made the first typewriter proven to work in 1801 and invented carbon paper in 1808. George K. Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee patented the typewriter ribbon on September 14, 1886.
Mark Twain was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher.

How do modern printing presses work?

How do modern printing presses work?

Today, our printing presses are completely automatic. Amazingly complicated machines can now print an entire newspaper, put it together, and fold it – all in one continuous operation. Technological changes take place at a fast pace. If you want to see a lino type machine now, you will have to go to the museum of old printing machines. Computers are used for rapid composing. Computers permit the choice of a variety of fonts. Type setting has become obsolete.

What were the books first to be printed in this way?

What were the books first to be printed in this way?


There are disputes about the exact date of the first book but, contrary to popular opinion, the famous Gutenberg Bible was not the first. A calendar and some poetry were printed around 1448, and a book on speechmaking appeared in 1450. The famous Bible was produced in 1454.

What was the Gutenberg process?

What was the Gutenberg process?

Once Gutenberg decided to make metal type, he began to search for the right metal. He finally settled on a mixture of lead and tin, an alloy that is easy to melt and cast, but which retains its shape under pressure. He also devised a method of making metal molds.

First, the letter was carefully cut, shaped, and polished on the end of a copper or iron rod. Next, this was hammered into a soft metal, probably lead, where it left a negative impression. Then, the alloy for the type itself was melted and poured into the mold.

Besides this, Gutenberg also designed a tray into which the individual letters ware assembled as words and clamped into place. The tray was set into a hand press, inked, and squeezed down on the sheet of paper. We can see that Gutenberg did not invent just a method of making movable type. He devised the entire process of printing from the type-casting and the mixing of the ink to the final steps of typesetting and stamping. Like all other basic inventions, it was revolutionary. Many copies could be made in a short time and then the same type could be remove and reassembled for another printing.

“The printing press developed from wine making press. The inked type faced upwards and paper pressed down on to it”

Who was the European inventor of printing?

Who was the European inventor of printing?

Yet, despite this evidence, the invention of printing with movable type is regarded as a European discovery of the 15th century, and ascribed to Johannes Gutenberg, a printer of Mainz, Germany.

There is still some mystery connected with this invention. Four names are mentioned whenever the discovery of printing is discussed. They are Johannes Gutenberg, Laurens Costar, Peter Schaffer and Johannes Fusty. Historians did not agree for a long time on all the facts and theories, but in an effort to settle the dispute they decided to call Johannes Gutenberg the inventor of movable type, since his life was the best documented.

Gutenberg, born around 1400 in Mainz, was a printer who worked very diligently at his task of cutting letters into wooden blocks. At some time during the 1400’s, he conceived the idea of casting each letter as a small block of metal. No one knows whether he had heard of the Chinese and Korean systems, or if he took the idea from the Dutch printer, Lourens Coster, who may or may not have thought of the same method earlier. Johannes Fust, and his son-in-law, Peter Schoffer, who were also printers and metal casters, financed Gutenberg. Because of this close association, experts advanced the name of all the three men as the actual inventors of movable type printing.

What is movable type?

What is movable type?

Before the mid-1450’s printing was accomplished by carving all the letters into one wooden block. Because of the difficulty in preparing the blocks, the only kind of printing done then was for titled and decoration. The rest of the book was usually handwritten.
With the revolutionary invention of movable type, each letter was an individual block of type, which could be inserted into a frame along with the other letters. It was not a new idea in the 1400’s. Marco Polo, in 1298, told about the Chinese method of printing with individual blocks of type – Chinese method of printing with individual blocks of type – Chinese researchers date this practice as far back as the eleventh century. During 1045, a Chinese craftsman named Bi Sheng made individual letters of baked earthenware and set them in a block of wax, which he inked and pressed onto paper. By 1300, the Chinese were using wood blocks. The Koreans outdid them by making letters with metal

Who invented the alphabet?

Who invented the alphabet?

Archaeologists have determined that the first workable alphabet was Phoenician in origin, and written as a crude script. However, each letter stood for a sound, and had a symbol of its own. This alphabet, dating from 1600 BC, is the ancestor of all modern Western alphabets. Once introduced, it spread rapidly through the Middle East and finally, people of the time were able to write out complete words. Ideas could be expressed much more easily than before, and narrative stories and poetry began to appear. The first Greek alphabet was developed from the Phoenician one during the fifth century BC. It was changed, improved, and extended until it had great flexibility. It became known as the Ionic alphabet and had 24 characters. When the Romans smashed the Greek Empire, they adopted this alphabet and adapted it to their own needs

What were the nest steps in the development of writing?

What were the nest steps in the development of writing?

Once men found that they could make marks to signify syllables and sounds, there was no longer a need to draw pictures. By 3000 BC, the Sumerians, the Hittites, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians developed cuneiform writing, a system of wedge-shaped marks impressed in clay that was able to completely express the various languages. By 1700 BC, the Minoan Empire had developed and actual script. The wedge shaped figures disappeared, and people began to write in flowing curves. But it still represented only items and ideas and, at the best, a few syllables. An alphabet was needed. It arrived a thousand years after the onset of the Minoan script, and it began a whole new era.
The ancient Romans gave us most of our modern languages. Their language was Latin, the basis for most of the Western tongues. The actual shapes of the letters we use in print today are descended from the shapes of the early Roman letters. Then, writing came to another stand still. The alphabet had been formalized, standard shapes for all the letters had been adopted, and that was it. Learning to read was a luxury because it was so difficult to obtain reading material. A new invention was needed – a way to make many copies easily and cheaply. The date was 1440 and it marked man’s first use of movable type.

How was writing first used?

How was writing first used?


It is now generally believed that the first use of writing was for keeping lists at temples of worship. In many of the ancient kingdoms, the priestly hierarchy was very powerful, and they collected a yearly tribute from all the subjects of the realm. In order to keep track of the thousands of items collected from the people yearly, clay tablets were inscribed with lists of the tribute.
The other early use of writing was by merchants. Many of the tablets found in the ruins of the Sumerian Empire contain lists of produce and items for sale. Some are bills! This was the beginning. It would be a long time before man would use his newly found skill for setting down ideas, in addition to business lists.

When did writing begin?

When did writing begin?

Actual writing took a long time to develop. For thousands of years, men drew pictures of their activities and sent their messages in the form of pictures (photographs), which represented events. This system developed into a form of writing around 3, 500 B. C. Archaeologists have determined that the earliest form of writing was born in Erech, a city of the Sumerians, which flourished around 3500 B.C. Within its ancient ruins, they discovered hundreds of clay tablets, all inscribed with symbols, pictures and number markings. The Sumerian inscriptions used some pictures, but they were surrounded with other markings and signs that denoted sounds and monetary amounts. It was a step above the pictograph. Some of the marks actually represented verbal expression, and some combinations actually formed words. The Egyptians and the Orientals kept the pure pictograph method for a much longer period.

When did Man learn to make fire himself?

When did Man learn to make fire himself?

No one yet knows just when men began to make fire themselves, but scientists believe that it happened very early in history. They say that it must have come about as a result of the observation of sparks. Hot sparks blown by the wind spreads forest fires, and early toolmakers must have noticed that the rocks they chipped at often threw off similar sparks. It’s likely that these first artisans obviously began to select those rocks that would make sparks every time they were struck. A very common mineral, iron pyrites, will give a shower of sparks when hit with another stone. Flint, the basis for many early tools, does this even better. This method of producing sparks by striking stones together is known a percussion, and all that is needed to start a fire is to direct the sparks to a pile of tinder made of dry leaves and tiny scraps of wood.
Many methods and devices Inventions have been invented to produce fire by rubbing wood together. Some are quite simple. The fire-saw consisted of a serrated block of wood; another piece was rapidly scraped back and forth across the toothed edges. The fire plough was made in roughly the same way, with a grooved piece of wood, and another piece that was slid rapidly back and forth in the groove.
The most successful of these was the fire drill. This device consisted of a block of wood with a hole partially cut into it. A stick with a rounded end was inserted into the hole, and rotated rapidly. There were many variations in the method of rotation. The important thing was that they all produced fire.

How the use of fire discovered?

How the use of fire discovered?
Man, obviously, did not invent fire. He only discovered how to use it, and harness its energy. This single discovery did more to raise early man above an animal existence than any other invention or discovery. Fire was the first force that gave man some independence from his environment. It became the basis for the vast amount of technology that followed in the years to come, and is still the basis for most of our modern technical processes.
Fire is a phenomenon that occurs in nature quite often. The eruption of volcanoes, the spontaneous combustion of decaying matter, and bolts of lightning all produce natural fires. Primitive man, living completely in the wilds, was in a good position to observe such production of fire. He also observed its effect – destruction.
Once early man had captured a bit of fire, perhaps a burning stick from a forest fire, he kept it going by adding small bits of wood from time to time.