Safety Glass by Edouard Benedictus in 1903. SAFETY GLASS

Fascinating facts about the invention



of Safety Glass by Edouard Benedictus in 1903. SAFETY GLASS


Today safety glass, which will not splinter when exposed to shock, is everywhere-in windshields for cars, goggles for machinists, and windows and doors for many public buildings. Essential as it is, safety glass was the result of a clumsy mistake. Edouard Benedictus, a French scientist, was working in his laboratory. The year was 1903. Benedictus climbed a ladder to fetch reagents from a shelf and inadvertently knocked a glass flask to the floor. He heard the glass shatter, but when he glanced down, to his astonishment the broken pieces of the flask still hung together, more or less in their original contour.


On questioning an assistant, Benedictus learned that the flask had recently held a solution of cellulose nitrate, a liquid plastic, which had evaporated, apparently depositing a thin coating of plastic on the flask’s interior. Because the flask appeared cleaned, the assistant, in haste, had not washed it but returned it directly to the shelf.


As one accident had led Benedictus to the discovery, a series of other accidents directed him toward its application. In 1903, automobile driving was a new and often dangerous hobby among Parisians. The very week of Benedictus’s laboratory discovery, a Paris newspaper ran a feature article on the recent rash of automobile accidents. When Benedictus read that most of the drivers seriously injured had been cut by shattered glass windshields, he knew that his unique glass could save lives.






As he recorded in his diary: "Suddenly there appeared before my eyes an image of the broken flask. I leapt up, dashed to my laboratory, and concentrated on the practical possibilities of my idea.,, For twenty-four hours straight, he experimented with coating glass with liquid plastic, then shattering it. "By the following evening," he wrote, "I had produced my first piece of Triplex [safety glass]-full of promise for the future." Unfortunately, automakers, struggling to keep down the price of their new luxury products, were uninterested in the costly safety glass for windshields. The prevalent attitude was that driving safety was largely in the hands of the driver, not the manufacturer. Safety measures were incorporated into automobile design to prevent an accident but not to minimize injury if an accident occurred.






It was not until the outbreak of World War I that safety glass found its first practical, wide-scale application: as the lenses for gas masks. Manufacturers found it relatively easy and inexpensive to fashion small ovals of laminated safety glass, and the lenses provided military personnel with a kind of protection that was desperately needed but had been impossible until that time. After automobile executives examined the proven performance of the new glass under the extreme conditions of battle, safety glass’s major application became car windshields.

Facts that you did not know.

 facts you likely didn’t know about popular inventions

The Super Soaker was invented by a nuclear engineer out of a PVC pipe and Coke bottle

Lonnie Johnson first sold the idea to Lamari by firing it inside their Philadelphia offices. He was then introduced to Hasbro — awesomeness has ensued ever since.

 


Bag-pipes were invented in Persia, not Scotland






“It was most likely a rather crude instrument comprised of reeds stuck into a goatskin bag. As civilization spread throughout the Middle East and into the Mediterranean lands, the people brought along their music.”
 

The guy who voiced Mr. Owl in Tootsie Pop cartoons also invented the artificial heart







“Paul Winchell built the prototype with the advice and input of Henry J. Heimlich, the doctor who invented the most famous method of saving choking victims, and received his patent in 1963. He later donated the patent to the University of Utah.”

 


The word “hello” was invented because no one knew how to start a telephone call






“Over at the laboratories of Edison’s rival, Bell was insisting on “Ahoy!” as the correct way to answer the telephone. It was trounced by “hello,” which became the standard as the first telephone exchanges, equipped by Edison, were set up across the United States and operating manuals adopted the word.”

The same company that invented aspirin, Bayer, also invented heroin as a cold medicine

 
Corn Flakes were invented to stop masturbation







“In 1898, John Harvey Kellog introduced another health food known as “Corn Flakes.” Corn Flakes — like Graham Crackers and Granola — were designed to avoid inflaming the sexual appetite. At that time, they were not sweetened with sugar. Kellogg believed that sugar was unhealthy and associated with vice and degeneracy.”

Interesting Facts About Inventions

Interesting Facts About Inventions











Before invention of the thermometer, brewers used to check the temperature by dipping their thumb, to find whether appropriate for adding Yeast. Too hot, the yeast would die. This is where we get the phrase " The Rule of the Thumb".

Sliced bread was patented by a jeweller, Otto Rohwedder, in 1928. He had been working on it for 16 years, having started in 1912.

Joseph Niepce developed the world's first photographic image in 1827. Thomas Edison and W K L Dickson introduced the film camera in 1894. But the first projection of an image on a screen was made by a German priest. In 1646, Athanasius Kircher used a candle or oil lamp to project hand-painted images onto a white screen.

Interesting Facts is that The Sumerians invented writing.

The Sumerians, who lived in the Middle East, invented the wheel in about 3450 BC.






Karl Benz invented the first gas powered car. The car had only three wheels. The first car with four wheels was made in France in 1901 by Panhard et LeVassor.






JOSEPH RECHENDORFER was the first person to think of putting a piece of rubber onto the top of a pencil which makes it real easy to rub out mistakes.

Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India.



Interesting Facts is that India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.






Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laserbprinters,all were invented by women.



In Scotland, a new game was invented. It was entitled Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.


The first rocket was invented by the Chinese in the 13th century.






False eyelashes were invented by the American film director D.W. Griffith while he was making his 1916 epic, "Intolerance". Griffith wanted actress Seena Owen to have lashes that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life. A wigmaker wove human hair through fine gauze, which was then gummed to Owen's eyelids. "Intolerance" was critically acclaimed but flopped financially, leaving Griffith with huge debts that he might have been able to settle easily - had he only thought to patent the eyelashes.

Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump."






The fortune cookie was invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodlemaker.






Mr. Peanut was invented in 1916 by a Suffolk, Virginia schoolchild who won $5 in a design contest sponsored by Planters Peanuts.






Everyone thinks it was Whitcomb Judson who invented the zipper but it was really Elias Howe. Elias was so busy inventing the sewing machine that he didn't get around to selling his zipper invention which he called a "clothing closure".

Interesting Facts is that The oiuja board was invented by Isaac and William Fuld, and was patented July 1, 1892.

The hamburger was invented in 1900 by Louis Lassen. He ground beef, broiled it, and served it between two pieces of toast.


In 2003, scientists managed to create a material dense enough to stop light mid-way through it, allowing them to observe static light.

The Can opener wasn't invented until 48 years after the can.

Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered as a propagator of violence-he invented dynamite.

Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.

Dry cereal for breakfast was invented by John Henry Kellogg at the turn of the century Inventor Samuel Colt patented his revolver in 1836.

The bagpipe was originally made from the whole skin of a dead sheep.

A Brief History of Playing Cards

A Brief History of Playing Cards
Playing Cards have existed for millennia and around them hundreds of games and conventions have been devised. It is upon their fall, their suits and their ranks that fortunes have been dashed and players been daunted. The standard deck comprises 52 cards, in four suits each of thirteen ranks. In the Royal Household are Kings, Queens and Jacks, and another fellow who plays a cameo in games here and there known as the Joker.

The English pattern itself derives from a 15th century design that originated in Rouen, France. One might not think twice as to why it is these characters who have come to contritely inhabit the ranks of the deck. Their place in playing cards was by no means a journey of certainty, and it was not without the possibility of other contenders.


But it was these Kings, Queens and Knights, this English household, dressed in their 16th century period garb that underwrites the standard of the Anglo-American playing card. Their history begins way back in the murky dimness when many patterns were emerging in regions, and when many different Royal Households contended for eminence.






Playing Cards are believed to have arrived in Europe around the 1350’s. One of the earliest historical references comes in 1379 (Giovanni de Covelluzzo, City of Viterbo) and not surprisingly it is the form of a prohibition forbidding the use of cards on Sunday or the Sabbath. By that time, however, playing-cards were well and truly vested in European culture and were as well known in Switzerland and Germany as they were along the Mediterranean coast. How they got there, no one really knows. (PROBABLY FROM CHINA)

The earliest archaeological documentation of playing cards comes from 12th century China. This oldest of tangible artefacts is described as a paper money card. Apparently the deck was arranged in four suits of coins, more coins, strings of coins and myriads of strings of coins, with numerical values 1-9. The cards are thought to have been accepted as a kind of paper currency. In games like these, they were not only used as the instruments of gaming, but the very bets you laid.






Even further back than this, it is known that playing cards existed in Persia and throughout the Arabian Peninsula as early as the 8th century. While it seems plausible enough to expect that Gypsies or merchants arriving from these places may have been responsible for introducing them to European culture, the threads are difficult to weave, and any exemplary forms completely unknown.






More likely that playing cards arrived in Europe from Egypt, crossing the Mediterranean some time in the 14th century. In Egypt there was a class of military servants who used a 52-card deck that looks almost identical to some of the earliest Italian decks. The 52 cards were divided into four suits of Swords, Sticks, Cups and Coins. Numbers 1-10 were represented as pips arranged on the card, exactly as they are on playing cards today, and the three royal titles were Malik (King), Na’ib Malik (Deputy King) and Thani Na’ib (Under Deputy), though none were represented in human form, but rather as geometric patterns.






By the late 14th century playing cards were in widespread use right across Europe and card-making shops were emerging everywhere. It was in Germany that the giant leap forward took place in printing, and wood blocks were churning out cards by the 100s. The earliest examples of European design displayed the ‘Latin Suits’ of Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins. The Germans and the Swiss were producing more elegant forms as Hearts, Bells, Leaves and Acorns (1475) and by the 1480s the French had turned to producing Hearts, Clubs, Spades and Diamonds.






Although the first playing cards to arrive in England were Latin suited, by the 1590’s the most common cards in circulation were those of French origin.






It was the Europeans who began to give the Court cards their faces, and as they did so their characters turned to more familiar titles like “King”, “Chevalier” and “Valet”. While all this was going on, there was also some conjecture about the optimum number of cards to be playing with. Some decks had as few as 48, others as many as 56. In some the Royal Household was extended to four by including Queens, in others, Queens replaced Kings altogether. In France’s high world of Fashion, the Valet was even given some plaits in his hair.


By the late 15th century, most card players had agreed that the standard deck played best with 52 cards. In Germany, that meant the end for Queens, and in Spain they had never really been invited into the Household in the first place. In France, however, just enough elegance balanced with sophistication and the Queens were spared gallows of disregard. It was from here they found passage to England, flanked either side by King and Knave, to take residence in the Royal Household there.






Design elements took a number of forms. In France, for example, there were some nine distinctive regional patterns, and much experimentation and variation was going on across Europe. It was in the city of Agen, France, around 1745 that fledgling reversible court cards first broke press. Up until then, picture cards were drawn in full length with head, legs, and torso and included many design elements such as weapons and horses. Naturally, the new reversible design eliminated some of these, but since you didn’t have to turn your picture cards right way up every time you were dealt them upside down, everybody liked the idea. Ironically, the French authorities prohibited production of these new cards, while everywhere else they were eagerly embraced. As early as the 1800s, even some decks being produced in America had this design feature.






The rise of the Ace to pre-eminence had it beginnings in the 14th century. In early games the Kings were always the highest card but by the late 14th century special significance began to be placed on the lowest card, the One or “Ace” as we have come to know it. The practice was only further popularized in the republican fervor of the French Revolution (1789-1799) where many more games began to be played ‘Ace high’. There was even the suggestion of doing away with the Royal family altogether and instead of Kings, Queens and Knights have Liberties, Equalities and Fraternities, but that idea just never caught on.






The Ace of Spades is regarded as the insignia card of the deck. Traditionally it is used to display the manufacturers logo or brand name as a testament to quality and a mark of identification. The practice began in 17th century England when, under the reign of King James 1st, a duty was imposed on local playing card manufacturers. The Ace of Spades carried the insignia of the printing house, so they could be identified, and a stamp as proof of tax paid. The duty was abolished in the 1960’s but the practice of inscribing the brand insignia on the Ace of Spades remains.

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran...The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1907

Charles Louis Alphonse LaveranThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1907 was awarded to Alphonse Laveran "in recognition of his work on the role played by protozoa in causing diseases".

3 Unsokved mysteries..from the net

Placebo Effect







The placebo effect is when a persontakes something they believe is medicine for an ailment they are suffering(which is not really a medicine), and they get better. A placebo is an inert substance, and when taken (with the advice from others that it will cure them)makes


the person get better, simply because they were expecting or believed that it would work. Something similar, called the nocebo effect, is when aperson takes fake drugs and thinks they are experiencing problems that would have been caused by the real drugs. They have been known to reduce pain as well. Why they occur is mysterious and they are only one of the many complicated things related to the body-brain connection. In fact, our own bodies hold many unsolved mysteries.

 
Pan spermia







How didlife on earth appear? Science suggests that life started when the planetwas favourable for habitation. Yet did microscopic organisms just pop out ofnowhere? One hypothesis is panspermia, whichsuggests that €˜seeds of life€™ exist everywhere


around the universe, andthat life on earth started when these €˜seeds€™ came here, probably by ameteor. It also suggests that these


seeds are taken to other habitableplaces in the universe. Something similar to this is exo-genesis. It suggeststhat life was brought to


earth those billions of years ago, however it doesnot say that life is also taken to other habitable places. Somepeople


believe aliens brought life to our planet, as suggested by thetheories of Erich Von Daniken. Although some are sceptical as to how


lifecould exist in space and get carried to other planets, there is substantialevidence that certain life forms, like spores and


certain types of bacteria can actually exist in space, perhaps in a dormant state.
 

 
Mass extinctions







From the death of the dinosaurs, to the disappearance of the creatures inthe Permian Era, mass extinctions are occurring even now.






Sometimes, the cause is clear. We are destroying the biosphere and the atmosphere, and scientists predict that in the next 100 years, 50% of all living species will become extinct. But sometimes, the realreason is unclear. It may have been due to competition from other species,


dramatic climate changes, or the impacts from an asteroid/meteor (the last one being quite a popular one). Yet some questions remain unanswered. Why was it that some species died out, and others survived,some to this day (famous example: the coelacanth).
During the extinction of the dinosaurs, crocodiles and turtles were around, but they survived, even to this day, while the dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, the marine reptiles and others died out. While some people believe that those species were unable to cope with the (possibly) new surroundings, others are not convinced. To this day,they are a mystery, and without a time machine, we may never know. Other popular theories include:- flood basalt events,smaller asteroid showers, global warming/cooling, sea level drops.
 

Camillo Golgi           

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1906 was awarded jointly to Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system"

Abstract



Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal were the two main investigators that revealed the morphological organization of the cerebellar cortex, although they never shared the same basic concepts. While for Golgi all axons fused into a large syncytium (the diffuse nerve network), for Cajal they had free endings and communication between neurons was done by contiguity not by continuity. The classical diagrammatic representation of the cerebellar circuitry shown by Cajal in his Croonian lecture (1894), although still valid, has drastically change by the accumulation of the great amount of data generated from 1894 to our days. The topic of this review is to briefly summarize this new knowledge, and to confront it with Cajal's concepts, to determine whether or not the added complexity to the circuit invalidates the Cajal's principles. Our conclusion is that although most of these principles are consolidated, the applicability of the law of dynamic polarization does not adapt to some of them.

Robert Koch..1905

Robert Koch



The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1905 was awarded to Robert Koch "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis".

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov


Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1904 was awarded to Ivan Pavlov "in recognition of his work on the physiology of digestion, through which knowledge on vital aspects of the subject has been transformed and enlarged".

Learning Theories

When we talk of learning we usually think of something related to the classroom, such as English or Maths. However, Psychologists refer to learning as a relatively permanent change in behaviour as a result of experience'. Learning is a fundamental process in all animals and the higher up the evolutionary scale the animal, the more important is the ability to learn. All animals need to adapt their behaviour in order to fit in with the environment and to adapt to changing circumstances in order to survive.






Much of our behaviour consists of learned responses to simple signals. Can all behaviour be analysed in the same way? Some psychologists believe that behaviour is the sum of many simple stimulus-response connections. However there are other psychologists who think that stimulus-response is too simplistic and that even simple responses to stimuli require the processing of a vast amount of information.






The Behaviourists are a group of psychologists who focus on these stimulus-response connections, the two most famous being Watson and Skinner. Behaviourism arose because there was dissatisfaction with approaches in psychology that involved 'unscientific, techniques such as introspection and dealt with unmeasurable aspects of behaviour such as the role of the unconscious mind. Behaviourists try to explain the causes of behaviour by studying only those behaviours that can be observed and measured. They leave focused their efforts on two types of learning processes known as classical conditioning and operant conditioning.






Classical Conditioning






This is learning by association. A Russian physiologist called Ivan Pavlov, studied salivation in dogs as part of his research programme. Normally, dogs will salivate at the when food is presented, but Pavlov was interested why the dogs had started to salivate when the saw the people that usually fed them (they also responded to the sound of the dishes being used for their meals). Pavlov set up an experiment to find out if the dogs could be trained to salivate at other stimuli such as the sound of a bell or a light. At feeding times, Pavlov would ring a bell and the amount of saliva produced by the dog was measured. After several 'trials' Pavlov rang the bell without presenting the food and found that the dogs salivated in the same way as if food was being presented.






You will note that the conditional response is the same as the unconditioned response, the only difference being that the response is evoked by a different stimulus.






The Classical Conditioning Procedure:






In scientific terms, the procedure for this is as follows.






1 Food is the unconditioned stimulus or UCS. By this, Pavlov meant that the stimulus that elicited the response occurred naturally.






2 The salivation to the food is an unconditioned response (UCR), that is a response which occurs naturally.






3 The bell is the conditioned stimulus (CS) because it will only produce salivation on condition that it is presented with the food.






4 Salivation to the bell alone is the conditioned response (CR), a response to the conditioned stimulus.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1902

Ronald Ross

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1902 was awarded to Ronald Ross "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it".

Ronald Ross, son of an Army Major, a brilliant and polyvalent mind, poet of romantic lyrics, part time novelist, playwright, painter, musician and mathematician, who never wanted to be a medical practitioner, became a researcher by accident, designed some of the most elegant experiments with sheer instincts and his own shrewd observations and ultimately won the second ever Nobel Prize in Medicine in the year 1902. Having faced a lot of hardship and administrative interference and apathy (what he called "administrative barbarism") and spent from his own pocket to pay the assistants and 'volunteers' for his research, he converted adversity to advantage and overcame all odds with his single minded pursuit to carry out his well designed and elegant experiments. With his penchant for writing, he has left for posterity detailed and poetic accounts of his path-breaking research and work thereafter.onald Ross, son of an Army Major, a brilliant and polyvalent mind, poet of romantic lyrics, part time novelist, playwright, painter, mRusician and mathematician, who never wanted to be a medical practitioner, became a researcher by accident, designed some of the most elegant experiments with sheer instincts and his own shrewd observations and ultimately won the second ever Nobel Prize in Medicine in the year 1902. Having faced a lot of hardship and administrative interference and apathy (what he called "administrative barbarism") and spent from his own pocket to pay the assistants and 'volunteers' for his research, he converted adversity to advantage and overcame all odds with his single minded pursuit to carry out his well designed and elegant experiments. With his penchant for writing, he has left for posterity detailed and poetic accounts of his path-breaking research and work thereafter.