1–100 CE: Junk ship in China

 

Chinese Junk
By Zach

A junk is a boat used in China.  Junks usually have around two or three sails but sometimes have four.  Each mast is made of bamboo.  Bamboo is used because it is so strong that you don’t need very many ropes.  

Very large junks (about 150 meters or 492 feet long) are usually used for worldwide trips.  An average sized junk usually carries food from city to city.  

The first Chinese junks were built in the Song dynasty between 960-1270. Later, in 1271-1368 a Mongol emperor built the first Chinese imperial treasure fleets.  These junks sailed to Sumatra, Ceylon, and southern India.  The famous explorer, Marco Polo journeyed to the Mongol court and described seeing four-masted junks that had sixty cabins for merchants and crews of up to 300.  

About six centuries ago, the Chinese built huge armadas of junks that sailed to Ceylon, Arabia, and East Africa.  The fleet had huge nine-masted junks that were over 400 feet long and 150 feet wide or 122 meters long and 46 meters wide. There were 27,000 crew members and soldiers in the armada! These junks were escorted by water tankers, supply ships, ships for cavalry horses, and patrol boats.  The armada sailed to ports around the Indian Ocean and traded Chinese silk, porcelain, and lacquerware for spices, ivory, medicines, and pearls.  

Then between 1405-1433, treasure fleets sailed out seven times to trade with other countries.  They traded from Taiwan to the Persian Gulf. Historians believe that at this time the Chinese were ready to colonize the world.  However, all overseas trade was banned in the 1500s. 

Throughout China's history, junks were also used as war ships.

Believe it or not, today many families live on junks.  These families often use the junk as a way of making money. 

Early Inventions...!st to 5th millenium

1st–5th centuries

• 1–100 CE: Junk ship in China
• 1–100 CE: Junk rudder in China^[56]
• 38 CE: Hydraulic-powered bellows: Du Shi
• 50 CE: Mouldboard plough in China and Gaul
• 77 CE: Encyclopedia (comprehensive work): Pliny the Elder^[19]
• 78–139: Hydraulic-powered armillary sphere: Zhang Heng
• 100s: steam engine vending machine syringe force pump: Hero of Alexandria in Roman Egypt
• 2nd century: water sluice in water management Sri Lanka
• 2nd century: Lateen sail by Greco-Roman sailors^{[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66]}
• 2nd century: Steam power: Hero of Alexandria in Roman Egypt
• 2nd century: Vending machine: Hero of Alexandria
• 2nd century: Force pump: Hero of Alexandria
• 2nd century: Carding in India^[67]
• 105: Paper: Cai Lun in China^[68]
• 132: Rudimentary Seismometer: Zhang Heng in China
• 180: Rotary fan: Ding Huan in China
• 180: Winnowing fan: Ding Huan in China^{[citation needed]}
• 3rd century: Kongming lantern (Hot air balloon) in China
• 3rd century: Horseshoes in Germany
• 200–400: Stepwell in India^[69]
• Combination lock in Roman Empire^[70]
• 4th century: Toothpaste in Roman Egypt
• 4th century: Crystallized Sugar in India
• 5th century: Horse collar in China
• Fore-and-aft rig in India^[71]
• Kamal in India^[72]
• Prayer wheel: Tibet^[73]
• Three-masted merchant vessel in China^[74]
• Woodblock printing in China

[edit]6th–8th centuries

Ian Wilmut Headed team that produced the first cloned sheep - Dolly (1997)

Dolly the Sheep Creator Knighted2007 12 31

From: 

Professor Ian Wilmut, the scientist who created Dolly the sheep through genetic cloning, has been knighted in the New Year Honours list.
Prof Wilmut, 63, said he was "surprised and delighted" by his knighthood and stressed that it was a recognition to be shared by his research colleagues. 
As a boy, his early ambition was to go to sea - either in the Royal Navy or the merchant service.

But colour-blindness foiled his plan and led instead to a career in science.

Scotland's best known scientist, Prof Wilmut became interested in farming and began working on farms at weekends at the age of 14.

This led him to study agriculture at Nottingham University in anticipation of becoming a dairy farmer until a summer holiday working in a science laboratory led to a lifelong interest in embryology.

'Revolutionising biology'
Prof Wilmut and his team at the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, created Dolly in 1996 and unveiled her publicly early in 1997.

After she became a worldwide sensation, Prof Wilmut told the US Academy of Achievement website: "The fact that the whole animal comes from a single cell is really an extraordinary thing, and it's fascinating to try to understand it more.

"But back then it was simply wanting to understand how to improve milk production, how to improve fertility, and the collection of milk."

Last month, Prof Wilmut announced that he was abandoning the cloning of human embryos in stem cell research in favour of a new technique developed in Japan.

The citation for his knighthood credits Prof Wilmut with "revolutionising" biology through the cloning technique which underpins the science of stem cell technology.

The citation also says he has shown an "outstanding" commitment to bringing the benefits of basic science to medical treatment.

His role at the Roslin Institute in cloning Dolly the sheep, the world's first clone from an adult cell, led to an OBE in 1999 and he has been elected a fellow of five scientific academies worldwide.

Prof Wilmut now heads the Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University, which brings together experts from the Institute for Stem Cell Research and scientists and clinicians from Edinburgh University's medical school. 

Tim Berners-Lee Creator of the World Wide Web (1989)

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, is a British computer scientist and MIT professor credited with invention of the World Wide Web (otherwise known as WWW, W3, W3C, internet, web, net, and information superhighway).
Berners-Lee is a Apple Mac user. He describes UNIX based Mac OS X operating system as very similar to the NeXTStep operating system on which he developed the World Wide Web program originally.
Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web’s continued development.
Conceptualized in March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee implemented the first successful communication between a HTTP client and server via the internet on December 25 of 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory.
Describing his idea, Berners-Lee said “I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web.”

Tim Berners-Lee with Apple Mac laptop at CERN, where the World Wide Web was born / invented

The first World Wide Web server was developed and hosted on NeXT workstation computer. NeXT workstations are high tech computers developed by Steve Jobs’ NeXT Computer Inc. – the company Steve Jobs established while he was ousted from Apple Mac division from the late 80s to most of 90s.

First World Wide Web Server at CERN, made possible by Tim Berners-Lee, created and hosted on Steve Jobs creation NeXT workstation computer

With the first WWW internet server developed and hosted on a NeXT workstation computer, it’s not too far of a stretch say Steve Jobs has indirectly helped enabling the invention of the World Wide Web. NeXT was eventually bought by Apple and integrated into Mac OS X (More on Steve Jobs, Apple, NeXT, Pixar in a future article.)

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that they could easily be adopted by anyone. As part of the work with Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due.

Akio Morita Inventor of the personal stereo (1979)

Today Sony announced that it would cease Japan-based production of one of the 20th Century’s most defining consumer appliances, the Walkman. While that may not be the last we hear of the Walkman it certainly marks the end of an era - that ended long ago. But the history of the Walkman’s amazing success and it’s even more amazing father, Sony co-founder Akio Morita, is worth remembering - for the lessons it teaches every innovator about the climb up and down the innovation summit. Here’s an excerpt about Sony and Akio from my latest book The Innovation Zone.

Morita’s personal chemistry of defiance and fearlessness in the absence of hard proof, in fact in the face of utter disbelief and ridicule by colleagues and competitors, is the raw material of innovation in its most basic form. Sony’s innovations were the foundation of not only an industry, but a movement that ultimately lead the way to globalization, innovation, and consumerism on a scale more massive than could ever have been conceived of by anyone before the Second World War.

In 1946, with his father’s $25,000 investment, Morita and Masaru Ibuka, a university colleague, partnered to form Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation (Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. Also known as TTK).

In what has to be one of the most brilliant product rollout campaigns of the 20th century consumer electronics industry, Akio allowed the market to shape itself. Over four years, TTK transformed itself into Sony and went through four generations of technology until it finally hit the market epicenter with its TR-63 in 1957. In the next two years, Sony created no less than eight additional generations of the pocket transistor radio, each one the embodiment of numerous lessons learned. By then, it had sold more than 1,000,000 pocket transistor radios. The breakthrough pace of Sony’s ability to innovate was unprecedented at the time, and it quickly became the hallmark of its agile brand.
Because of Morita’s ability to fail fast and abandon his ideas in favor of the market’s ideas, nothing Sony developed ever got stuck as an invention. Instead, Sony flooded the market with one innovation after another. It was an endless deluge of innovations, each slightly better than the last, each slightly less expensive, and each slightly more in tune with the buyer – call it relentless re-invention through failure.
One reason we get too wrapped up in the product side of innovation is that we see the end result (in Sony’s case the Walkman), and focus on the object as the innovation. In fact, the object is only the end result of an amazingly integrated and spontaneous organization. Sony was able to innovate not only because of Morita’s ethos, but more so because of the processes it had put into place to allow ideas to flourish in a climate of creation. The risk for Sony ultimately was not the risk of new ideas, but instead the risk of not having new ideas. Innovation is a very unforgiving, constantly accelerating treadmill. Once you jump on, you have little choice but to move faster with each step with no graceful way to get off.

Herbert Boyer Pioneer of genetic engineering (1973)

Modern genetic engineering began in 1973 when Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen used enzymes to cut a bacteria plasmid and insert another strand of DNA in the gap.  Both bits of DNA were from the same type of bacteria, but this milestone, the invention of recombinant DNA technology, offered a window into the previously impossible -- the mixing of traits between totally dissimilar organisms.  To prove that this was possible, Cohen and Boyer used the same process to put a bit of frog DNA into a bacteria.
        Since 1973, this technology has been made more controllable by the discovery of new enzymes to cut the DNA differently and by mapping the genetic code of different organisms.  Now that we have a better idea of what part of the genetic code does what, we have been able to make bacteria that produce human insulin for diabetics (previously came from livestock), as well as EPO for people on kidney dialysis (previously came from urine of people in third world countries with ringworm).
        In 1990, a young child with an extremely poor immune system recieved genetic therapy.  Some of her white blood cells were genetically manipulated and re-introduced into her bloodstream while she watched Sesame Street.  These new cells have taken over for the original, weak white cells, and her immune system now works properly.  Although relatively few people have had their cells genetically altered, these advances have made the prospect of mainstream genetic medicine seem more likely.

George Gray Invented the LCD and LED (1970)

We are surrounded by digital displays on our watches, clocks, calculators, televisions, CD and DVD players. The list goes on and on. But last time you glanced at one of those displays, did you take the time to thank Hull and Professor George Gray?

In a solid, molecules always maintain their orientation and stay in the same position with respect to one another. The molecules in liquids are just the opposite: they can change their orientation and move anywhere in the liquid. But there are some substances that can exist in an odd state, not quite solid, not quite liquid. When they are in this state their molecules tend to maintain their orientation like the molecules in a solid, but also move around to different positions like the molecules in a liquid. This means that liquid crystals are neither a solid nor a liquid, hence their seemingly contradictory name. 
Liquid crystals were discovered as early as 1888 but their structure and properties were first described by Charles Mauguin in 1911. Over in Hull, Sir Brynmor Jones initiated research in the field of liquid crystals in the 1930s. It was only when he became head of the Department of Chemistry that responsibility for this research passed to George Gray, which was to be a pivotal decision.

After the invention of the twisted nematic liquid crystal display in 1972, liquid crystal research suddenly became fashionable. Twisted nematic liquid crystals are naturally twisted. Applying an electric current to these liquid crystals will untwist them to varying degrees, depending on the current’s voltage. Their application however, proved impractical because of a lack of photo-chemically and chemically stable nematic materials that existed in the liquid-crystalline state at room temperature.
In 1973, George Gray changed all that. Alongside Ken Harrison and the Ministry of Defence, he developed cyano-biphenyl liquid crystals, which were found to possess stable nematic phases (meaning they have no spacial ordering of the molecules) at, or close to, room temperature. His invention became an overnight success and the marketplace was suddenly flooded with electronic devices containing small area liquid crystal displays (LCD’s), that for the most part contained Hull materials. LCD’s use these liquid crystals because they react predictably to electric current in such a way that controls the passage of light. The research group was awarded The Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement in 1979.

George Gray went on to be awarded the Fellowship of The Royal Society of Chemistry (FRS), the Fellowship of The Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), honoured with a CBE and receive the Kyoto Laureate of 1995. He also remains an Emeritus Professor at the University of Hull.


LED’s vs. LCD’s 

LCD - Liquid Crystal Display - favoured display systems because they are thin, light and require very little power.

LED - Light Emitting Diode - an electronic device that lights up when electricity is passed through it. They are good for displaying images because they can be relatively small and they do not burn out. However, they require more power than LCD’s. 

Jack Kilby, Jerry Merryman and James von Tassel... The portable calculator (1967)

Jack St.Clair.

Jerry Merryman.

James von Tassel
There are few living men whose insights and professional accomplishments have changed the world. Jack Kilby is one of these men. His invention of the monolithic integrated circuit - the microchip - some 30 years ago at Texas  Instruments (TI) laid the conceptual and technical foundation for the entire field of modern microelectronics. It was this breakthrough that made possible the sophisticated high-speed computers and large-capacity semiconductor memories of today's information age. 

Jerry D. Merryman

Jerry D. Merryman joined TI in 1963 and remained with the company for 30 years. He was one of three team members responsible for the invention of the handheld electronic calculator, and served as project manager and logic designer for the two-year project.

Stephanie Kwolek Invented kevlar (1966)..the bullet proof fabric

Kevlar - Stephanie Kwolek By Mary Bellis

By Mary Bellis Stephanie Kwolek’s research with high performance chemical compounds for the DuPont Company led to the development of a synthetic material called Kevlar which is five times stronger than the same weight of steel. Kevlar, patented by Kwolek in 1966, does not rust nor corrode and is extremely lightweight. Many police officers owe their lives to Stephanie Kwolek, for Kevlar is the material used in bullet proof vests. Other applications of the compound include underwater cables, brake linings, space vehicles, boats, parachutes, skis, and building materials. Stephanie Kwolek was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1923. Upon graduating in 1946 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) with a bachelor’s degree, Stephanie Kwolek went to work as a chemist at the DuPont Company. She would ultimately obtain 28 patents during her 40-year tenure as a research scientist. In 1995, Stephanie Kwolek was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. How Does Body Armor Work? When a handgun bullet strikes body armor, it is caught in a "web" of very strong fibers. These fibers absorb and disperse the impact energy that is transmitted to the vest from the bullet, causing the bullet to deform or "mushroom." Additional energy is absorbed by each successive layer of material in the vest, until such time as the bullet has been stopped. Because the fibers work together both in the individual layer and with other layers of material in the vest, a large area of the garment becomes involved in preventing the bullet from penetrating. This also helps in dissipating the forces which can cause nonpenetrating injuries (what is commonly referred to as "blunt trauma") to internal organs. Unfortunately, at this time no material exists that would allow a vest to be constructed from a single ply of material.

Percy LeBaron Spencer Invented the microwave oven (1946)

The Microwave Oven Cooks Food Quickly
by Microwave Radiation

PERCY SPENCER 24jan1950

Patent Name: Method of Treating Foodstuffs
Patent Number: 2,495,429
Patent Date: 24 January 1950
Inventor: Percy L. Spencer, of West Newton, Massachusetts
What It Does: Cooks food quickly by microwave radiation.


Background: In 1946, Percy Spencer, a self-taught electronics wizard who never graduated grammar school, received U.S. patent 2,408,235 for the development of a high-efficiency magnetron. Magnetron tubes employ heated cathodes to generate electrons that are affected by electro-magnetic energy and reduced microwave radiation. Microwave radiation is used both in radar and in the "method of treating foodstuffs" that Spencer invented and patented four years later.
While working for the Raytheon Manufacturing Company, Spencer was running tests on one of the new magnetron tubes when he noticed the candy bar in his pocket began to melt. In playing his natural inventor instincts, he decided to play some uncooked popcorn in front of the magnetron tube. To his delight, the Colonels began popping. (This is still a favorite application of microwave technology.)
Engineers at Raytheon went to work on Spencer's discovery. The first commercial microwave oven was introduced in 1947. It was 750 pounds and 5 1/2 feet tall. Twenty years in many modifications later, the first countertop, domestic microwave oven hit the market. By 1975, microwaves were selling faster than conventional gas range ovens.

1. Electron-discharging cathodes (14) housed within oscillators are joined by conductors (20, 21).
2. These conductors are interned connected by another conductor (22), a center tap on a winding (17) of the transformer (18).
3. Coaxial transmission lines (24, 25) alternately deliver hyper-frequency energy to a wave guide (23).
4. The wave guide is directed at a piece of food on the speed-adjustable conveyor (28).