Wright Brothers
Orville Wright
Wilbur Wright
Born: August 19, 1871
Dayton, Ohio
Died: January 30, 1948
Dayton, Ohio
Born: April 16, 1867
Millville, Indiana
Died: May 30, 1912
Dayton, Ohio
American aviators
The American aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright were the first to accomplish manned,
powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine.
Their early years
Wilbur and Orville Wright were the sons of Milton Wright, a bishop of the United Brethren in
Christ. Wilbur was born on April 16, 1867, in Millville, Indiana. Orville was born on August 19,
1871, in Dayton, Ohio. Until the death of Wilbur in 1912, the two were inseparable. Their
personalities were perfectly complementary (each provided what the other lacked). Orville was
full of ideas and enthusiasms. Wilbur was more steady in his habits, more mature in his
judgments, and more likely to see a project through.
While in high school, Wilbur intended to go to Yale and study to be a clergyman. However, he
suffered a facial injury while playing hockey, which prevented him from continuing his
education. For the next three years he continued his education informally through reading in his
father's large library.
In their early years the two boys helped their father, who edited a journal called the Religious
Telescope. Later, they began a paper of their own, West Side News. They went into business
together as printers producing everything from religious handouts to commercial fliers. In 1892
they opened the Wright Cycle Shop in Dayton. This was the perfect occupation for the Wright
brothers because it involved one of the exciting mechanical devices of the time: the bicycle.
When the brothers took up the problems of flight, they had a solid grounding in practical
mechanics (knowledge of how to build machines).
The exploits of one of the great glider pilots of the late nineteenth century, Otto Lilienthal, had
attracted the attention of the Wright brothers as early as 1891, but it was not until the death of
this famous aeronautical (having to do with the study of flying and the design of flying
machines) engineer in 1896 that the two became interested in gliding experiments. They then
decided to educate themselves in the theory and state of the art of flying.
Their beginnings in flight
The Wrights took up the problem of flight at a favorable time, for some of the fundamental, or
basic, theories of aerodynamics were already known; a body of experimental data existed; and,
most importantly, the recent development of the internal combustion engine made available a
sufficient source of power for manned flight.
Wilbur Wright (left) and his brother Orville.
Reproduced by permission of
AP/Wide World Photos
.
The Wright brothers began by accumulating and mastering all the important information
on the subject, designed and tested their own models and gliders, built their own engine, and,
when the experimental data they had inherited appeared to be inadequate or wrong, they
conducted new and more thorough experiments. The Wrights decided that earlier attempts at
flight were not successful because the plans for early airplanes required pilots to shift their
bodies to control the plane. The brothers decided that it would be better to control a plane by
moving its wings.
First trip to Kitty Hawk
The Wright brothers proceeded to fly double-winged kites and gliders in order to gain experience
and to test the data they had. After consulting the U.S. Weather Bureau, they chose an area of
sand dunes near the small town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as the site of their experiments.
In September 1900 they set up camp there.
Returning to Dayton in 1901, the Wright brothers built a wind tunnel (a tunnel wherein one can
control the flow of wind in order to determine its effect on an object)—the first in the United
States. This is where they tested over two hundred models of wing surfaces in order to measure
lift and drag (resistance) factors and to discover the most suitable design. They also discovered
that although screw propellers had been used on ships for more than half a century, there was no
reliable body of data on the subject and no theory that would allow them to design the proper
propellers for their airship. They had to work the problem out for themselves mathematically.
The Wrights, by this time, not only had mastered the existing body of aeronautical science but
also had added to it. They now built their third glider, incorporating their findings, and in the fall
of 1902 they returned to Kitty Hawk. They made over one thousand gliding flights and were able
to confirm their previous data and to demonstrate their ability to control motions of the glider.
Having learned to build and to control an adequate air frame, they now determined to apply
power to their machine.
Powered flight
The Wright brothers soon discovered, however, that no manufacturer would undertake to build
an engine that would meet their specifications, so they had to build their own. They produced
one that had four cylinders and developed 12 horsepower (a unit that describes the strength of an
engine). When it was installed in the air frame, the entire machine weighed just 750 pounds and
proved to be capable of traveling 31 miles per hour. They took this new airplane to Kitty Hawk
in the fall of 1903 and on December 17 made the world's first manned, powered flight in a
heavier-than-air craft.
The first flight was made by Orville and lasted only 12 seconds, during which the airplane flew
120 feet. That same day, however, on its fourth flight, with Wilbur at the controls, the plane
stayed in the air for 59 seconds and traveled 852 feet. Then a gust of wind severely damaged the
craft. The brothers returned to Dayton convinced of their success and determined to build
another machine. In 1905 they abandoned their other activities and concentrated on the
development of aviation. On May 22, 1906, they received a patent for their flying machine.
The next step
The brothers looked to the federal government for encouragement in their venture, and gradually
interest was aroused in Washington, D.C. In 1907 the government asked for bids for an airplane
that would meet certain requirements. Twenty-two bids were received, three were accepted, but
only the Wright brothers finished their contract.
The brothers continued their experiments at Kitty Hawk, and in September 1908, while Wilbur
was in France attempting to interest foreign backers in their machine, Orville successfully
demonstrated their contract airplane. It was accepted by the government. The event was marred
by a crash a week later in which Orville was injured and a passenger was killed.
Wilbur's trip to France proved to be a success. In 1909 the Wright brothers formed the American
Wright Company, with Wilbur taking the lead in setting up and directing the business. His death
in Dayton on May 30, 1912, left Orville feeling depressed and alone. In 1915 he sold his rights to
the firm and gave up his interest in manufacturing in order to turn to experimental work. He had
little taste for the busy activity of commercial life.
After his retirement, Orville lived quietly in Dayton, conducting experiments on mechanical
problems of interest to him, none of which proved to be of major importance. His chief public
activity was service on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the government
agency that came before the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA), of
which he was a member from its organization by President Woodrow Wilson in 1915 until his
death in Dayton on January 30, 1948.
The Wright Brothers helped found modern aviation through their curiosity, their inventiveness,
and their unwillingness to give up their vision.
Thomas Alva Edison Biography
Thomas Alva Edison was the most prolific inventor in American
history. He amassed a record 1,093 patents covering key
innovations and minor improvements in wide range of fields,
including telecommunications, electric power, sound recording,
motion pictures, primary and storage batteries, and mining and
cement technology. As important, he broadened the notion of
invention to encompass what we now call innovation-invention,
research, development, and commercialization-and invented the
industrial research laboratory. Edison's role as an innovator is
evident not only in his two major laboratories at Menlo Park and
West Orange in New Jersey but in more than 300 companies
formed worldwide to manufacture and market his inventions,
many of which carried the Edison name, including some 200 Edison illuminating companies.
Early Life
Edison was born in 1847 in the canal town of
Milan, Ohio, the last of seven children. His
mother, Nancy, had been a school teacher; his
father, Samuel, was a Canadian political firebrand
who was exiled from his country. The family
moved to Port Huron, Michigan, when Thomas
was seven. He attended school briefly but was
principally educated at home by his mother and in
his father's library.
In 1859 Edison began working on a local branch of the Grand Trunk Railroad, selling
newspapers, magazines, and candy. At one point he printed a newspaper on the train, and he also
conducted chemical experiments in a baggage-car laboratory. By 1862 he had learned enough
telegraphy to be employed as an operator in a local office.
From 1863 to 1867 he traveled through the Midwest as an itinerant telegrapher. During these
years he read widely, studied and experimented with telegraph technology, and generally
acquainted himself with electrical science.
Early Inventive Career
In 1868 Edison became an independent inventor in
Boston. Moving to New York the next year, he
undertook inventive work for major telegraph
companies. With money from those contracts he
established a series of manufacturing shops in
Newark, New Jersey, where he also employed
experimental machinists to assist in his inventive
work.
Edison soon acquired a reputation as a first-rank inventor. His work included stock tickers, fire
alarms, methods of sending simultaneous messages on one wire, and an electrochemical
telegraph to send messages by automatic machinery. The crowning achievement of this period
was the quadruplex telegraph, which sent two messages simultaneously in each direction on one
wire.
The problems of interfering signals in multiple telegraphy and high speed in automatic
transmission forced Edison to extend his study of electromagnetism and chemistry. As a result,
he introduced electrical and chemical laboratories into his experimental machine shops.
Near the end of 1875, observations of strange sparks in telegraph instruments led Edison into a
public scientific controversy over what he called "etheric force," which only later was
understood to be radio waves.
Menlo Park
In 1876, Edison created a freestanding industrial research facility incorporating both a machine
shop and laboratories. Here in Menlo Park, on the rail line between New York City and
Philadelphia, he developed three of his greatest inventions.
Urged by Western Union to develop a telephone that could compete with Alexander Graham
Bell's, Edison invented a transmitter in which a button of compressed carbon changed its
resistance as it was vibrated by the sound of the user's voice, a new principle that was used in
telephones for the next century.
While working on the telephone in the summer of 1877, Edison discovered a method of
recording sound, and in the late fall he unveiled the phonograph. This astounding instrument
brought him world fame as the "Wizard of Menlo Park" and the "inventor of the age."
Finally, beginning in the fall of 1878, Edison devoted thirty months to developing a complete
system of incandescent electric lighting. During his lamp experiments, he noticed an electrical
phenomenon that became known as the "Edison effect," the basis for vacuum-tube electronics.
He left Menlo Park in 1881 to establish factories and offices in New York and elsewhere. Over
the next five years he manufactured, improved, and installed his electrical system around the
world.
West Orange Laboratory
In 1887, Edison built an industrial research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, that
remained unsurpassed until the twentieth century. For four years it was the primary research
facility for the Edison lighting companies, and Edison spent most of his time on that work. In
1888 and 1889, he concentrated for several months on a new version of the phonograph that
recorded on wax cylinders.
Edison worked with William Dickson from 1888 till 1893 on a motion picture camera. Although
Edison had always had experimental assistants, this was the clearest instance of a co-invention
for which Edison received sole credit.
In 1887 Edison also returned to experiments on the electromagnetic separation and concentration
of low-grade iron and gold ores, work he had begun in 1879. During the 1890's he built a fullscale plant in northern New Jersey to process iron ore. This venture was Edison's most notable
commercial failure.
Later Years
After the mining failure, Edison adapted some of the machinery to process Portland cement. A
roasting kiln he developed became an industry standard. Edison cement was used for buildings,
dams, and even Yankee Stadium.
In the early years of the automobile industry there were hopes for an electric vehicle, and Edison
spent the first decade of the twentieth century trying to develop a suitable storage battery.
Although gas power won out, Edison's battery was used extensively in industry.
In World War I the federal government asked Edison to head the Naval Consulting Board, which
examined inventions submitted for military use. Edison worked on several problems, including
submarine detectors and gun location techniques.
By the time of his death in 1931, Edison had received 1,093 U.S. patents, a total still untouched
by any other inventor. Even more important, he created a model for modern industrial research.
Last Updated: 07/26/2011 , taep@rci.rutgers.
Evangelista Torricelli
Born: 15 Oct 1608 in Faenza, Romagna (now Italy)
Died: 25 Oct 1647 in Florence, Tuscany (now Italy)
Evangelista Torricelli's parents were Gaspare Torricelli and Caterina Angetti. It was a fairly
poor family with Gaspare being a textile worker. Evangelista was the eldest of his parents three
children, having two younger brothers at least one of whom went on to work with cloth. It is
greatly to his parents' credit that they saw that their eldest son had remarkable talents and,
lacking the resources to provide an education for him themselves, they sent him to his uncle who
was a Camaldolese monk. Brother Jacopo saw that Evangelista was given a sound education
until he was old enough to enter a Jesuit school.
Torricelli entered a Jesuit College in 1624 and studied mathematics and philosophy there until
1626. It is not entirely clear at which College he studied, with most historians believing that he
attended the Jesuit College in Faenza, while some believe that he entered the Collegio Romano
in Rome. What is undoubtedly the case is that after study at the Jesuit College he was then in
Rome. Certain facts are clear, namely that Torricelli's father died in or before 1626 and that his
mother moved to Rome for she was certainly living there in 1641 at the time of her death.
Torricelli's two brothers also moved to Rome and again we know for certain that they were
living there in 1647. The most likely events seem to be that after Gaspare Torricelli died,
Caterina and her two younger sons moved to Rome to be with Evangelista who was either
already living there or about to move to that city.
At the Jesuit College Torricelli showed that he had outstanding talents and his uncle, Brother
Jacopo, arranged for him to study with Benedetto Castelli. Castelli, who like Jacopo was a
Camaldolese monk, taught at the University of Sapienza in Rome. Sapienza was the name of the
building which the University of Rome occupied at this time and it gave its name to the
University. There is no evidence that Torricelli was actually enrolled at the university, and it is
almost certain that he was simply being taught by Castelli as a private arrangement. As well as
being taught mathematics, mechanics, hydraulics, and astronomy by Castelli, Torricelli became
his secretary and held this post from 1626 to 1632. It was an arrangement which meant that he
worked for Castelli in exchange for the tuition he received. Much later he took over Castelli's
teaching when he was absent from Rome.
There does still exist a letter which Torricelli wrote to Galileo on 11 September 1632 and it gives
us some very useful information about Torricelli's scientific progress. Galileo had written to
Castelli but, since Castelli was away from Rome at the time, his secretary Torricelli wrote to
Galileo to explain this fact. Torricelli was an ambitious young man and he greatly admired
Galileo, so he took the opportunity to inform Galileo of his own mathematical work. Torricelli
began by Galileo Galileo that he was a professional mathematician and that he had studied the
classical texts of Apollonius, Archimedes and Theodosius. He had also read almost everything
that the contemporary mathematicians Brahe, Kepler and Longomontanus had written and, he
told Galileo, he was convinced by the theory of Copernicus that the Earth revolved round the
sun. Moreover, he had carefully studied Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the
World - Ptolemaic and Copernican which Galileo had published about six months before
Torricelli wrote his letter.
By 1641 Torricelli had completed much of the work which he was to publish in three parts as
Opera geometrica in 1644. We shall give more details of this work later in this biography, but
for the moment we are interested in the second of the three parts De motu gravium. This
basically carried on developing Galileo's study of the parabolic motion of projectiles which had
appeared in Discourses and mathematical demonstrations concerning the two new sciences
published in 1638. Torricelli was certainly in Rome in early 1641 when he asked Castelli for his
opinion on De motu gravium. Castelli was so impressed that he wrote to Galileo himself, at this
time living in his home in Arcetri near Florence, watched over by officers from the Inquisition.
In April 1641 Castelli travelled from Rome to Venice and, on the way, stopped in Arcetri to give
Galileo a copy of Torricelli's manuscript and suggest that he employed him as an assistant.
so that readers not familiar with the new methods would still be convinced of the correctness of
his results.
By 1641 he had proved a number of impressive results using the methods which he would
publish three years later. He examined the three dimensional figures obtained by rotating a
regular polygon about an axis of symmetry. Torricelli also computed the area and centre of
gravity of the cycloid. His most remarkable results, however, resulted from his extension of
Cavalieri's method of indivisibles to cover curved indivisibles. With these tools he was able to
show that rotating the unlimited area of a rectangular hyperbola between the y-axis and a fixed
point on the curve, resulted in a finite volume when rotated round the y-axis. Notice that we have
stated this result in the modern notation of coordinate geometry which was totally unavailable to
Torricelli. This last result, described in [1] as:I have already called attention to certain philosophical experiments that are in progress ...
relating to vacuum, designed not just to make a vacuum but to make an instrument which will
exhibit changes in the atmosphere, which is sometimes heavier and denser and at other times
lighter and thinner. Many have argued that a vacuum does not exist, others claim it exists only
with difficulty in spite of the repugnance of nature; I know of no one who claims it easily exists
without any resistance from nature.
Whether a vacuum existed was a question which had been argued over for centuries. Aristotle
had simply claimed that a vacuum was a logical contradiction, but difficulties with this had led
Renaissance scientists to modify this to the claim that 'nature abhors a vacuum' which is in line
with those who Torricelli suggests believe a vacuum exists despite 'the repugnance of nature'.
Galileo had observed the experimental evidence that a suction pump could only raise water by
about nine metres but had given an incorrect explanation based on the "force created by a
vacuum". Torricelli then described an experiment and gives for the first time the correct
explanation:We have made many glass vessels ... with tubes two cubits long. These were filled with mercury,
the open end was closed with the finger, and the tubes were then inverted in a vessel where there
was mercury. .. We saw that an empty space was formed and that nothing happened in the vessel
where this space was formed ... I claim that the force which keeps the mercury from falling is
external and that the force comes from outside the tube. On the surface of the mercury which is
in the bowl rests the weight of a column of fifty miles of air. Is it a surprise that into the vessel, in
which the mercury has no inclination and no repugnance, not even the slightest, to being there, it
should enter and should rise in a column high enough to make equilibrium with the weight of the
external air which forces it up?
He attempted to examine the vacuum which he was able to create and test whether sound
travelled in a vacuum. He also tried to see if insects could live in the vacuum. However he seems
not to have succeeded with these experiments.
In De motu gravium which was published as part of Torricelli's 1644 Opera geometrica,
Torricelli also proved that the flow of liquid through an opening is proportional to the square root
of the height of the liquid, a result now known as Torricelli's theorem. It was another remarkable
contribution which has led to some suggesting that this result makes him the founder of
hydrodynamics. Also in De motu gravium Torricelli studied projectile motion. He developed
Galileo's ideas on the parabolic trajectory of projectiles launched horizontally, giving a theory for
projectiles launched at any angle. He also gave numerical tables which would help gunners find
the correct elevation of their guns to give the required range. Three years later he received a
letter from Renieri of Genoa who claimed that he had conducted some experiments which
contradicted the theory of parabolic trajectories. The two corresponded on the topic with
Torricelli saying that his theory was in fact based on ignoring certain effects which would make
the experimental data slightly different.
Torricelli not only had great skills in theoretical work but he also had great skill as a maker of
instruments. He was a skilled lens grinder, making excellent telescopes and small, short focus,
simple microscopes, and he seems to have learnt these techniques during the time he lived with
Galileo. Gliozzi writes in [1]:... one of Torricelli's telescope lenses ... was examined in 1924 ... using a diffraction grating. It
was found to be of exquisite workmanship, sos much so that one face was seen to have been
machined better than the mirror taken a reference surface ...
Hours before his death he tried to ensure that his unpublished manuscripts and letters be given to
someone to prepare for publication and he entrusted them to his friend Ludovico Serenai. After
neither Castelli nor Michelangelo Ricci would undertake the task and although Viviani did agree
to prepare the material for publication he failed to accomplish the task. Some of Torricelli's
manuscripts were lost and it was not until 1919 that the remaining material was published as
Torricelli had wished. His collected works were published with Gino Loria and Guiseppe
Vassura as editors, three volumes being published in 1919 and the fourth volume in 1944 nearly
300 years after Torricelli's death. Sadly material left by him, bearing his own signature, was
destroyed in the Torricelli Museum in Faenza in 1944.
Torricelli's remarkable contributions mean that had he lived he would certainly have made other
outstanding mathematical discoveries. Collections of paradoxes which arose through
inappropriate use of the new calculus were found in his manuscripts and show the depth of his
understanding. In fact he may indeed have made contributions which will never be known, for
the full range of his ideas were never properly recorded.
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was born on March 27, 1845, at Lennep in
the Lower Rhine Province of Germany, as the only child of a merchant in, and manufacturer of,
cloth. His mother was Charlotte Constanze Frowein of Amsterdam, a member of an old Lennep
family which had settled in Amsterdam.
When he was three years old, his family moved to Apeldoorn in The Netherlands, where he went
to the Institute of Martinus Herman van Doorn, a boarding school. He did not show any special
aptitude, but showed a love of nature and was fond of roaming in the open country and forests.
He was especially apt at making mechanical contrivances, a characteristic which remained with
him also in later life. In 1862 he entered a technical school at Utrecht, where he was however
unfairly expelled, accused of having produced a caricature of one of the teachers, which was in
fact done by someone else.
He then entered the University of Utrecht in 1865 to study physics. Not having attained the
credentials required for a regular student, and hearing that he could enter the Polytechnic at
Zurich by passing its examination, he passed this and began studies there as a student of
mechanical engineering. He attended the lectures given by Clausius and also worked in the
laboratory of Kundt. Both Kundt and Clausius exerted great influence on his development. In
1869 he graduated Ph.D. at the University of Zurich, was appointed assistant to Kundt and went
with him to Würzburg in the same year, and three years later to Strasbourg.
In 1874 he qualified as Lecturer at Strasbourg University and in 1875 he was appointed
Professor in the Academy of Agriculture at Hohenheim in Württemberg. In 1876 he returned to
Strasbourg as Professor of Physics, but three years later he accepted the invitation to the Chair of
Physics in the University of Giessen.
After having declined invitations to similar positions in the Universities of Jena (1886) and
Utrecht (1888), he accepted it from the University of Würzburg (1888), where he succeeded
Kohlrausch and found among his colleagues Helmholtz and Lorenz. In 1899 he declined an offer
to the Chair of Physics in the University of Leipzig, but in 1900 he accepted it in the University
of Munich, by special request of the Bavarian government, as successor of E. Lommel. Here he
remained for the rest of his life, although he was offered, but declined, the Presidency of the
Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt at Berlin and the Chair of Physics of the Berlin Academy.
Röntgen's first work was published in 1870, dealing with the specific heats of gases, followed a
few years later by a paper on the thermal conductivity of crystals. Among other problems he
studied were the electrical and other characteristics of quartz; the influence of pressure on the
refractive indices of various fluids; the modification of the planes of polarised light by
electromagnetic influences; the variations in the functions of the temperature and the
compressibility of water and other fluids; the phenomena accompanying the spreading of oil
drops on water.
Röntgen's name, however, is chiefly associated with his discovery of the rays that he called Xrays. In 1895 he was studying the phenomena accompanying the passage of an electric current
through a gas of extremely low pressure. Previous work in this field had already been carried out
by J. Plucker (1801-1868), J. W. Hittorf (1824-1914), C. F. Varley (1828-1883), E. Goldstein
(1850-1931), Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), H. Hertz (1857-1894) and Ph. von Lenard
(1862-1947), and by the work of these scientists the properties of cathode rays - the name given
by Goldstein to the electric current established in highly rarefied gases by the very high tension
electricity generated by Ruhmkorff's induction coil - had become well known. Röntgen's work
on cathode rays led him, however, to the discovery of a new and different kind of rays.
On the evening of November 8, 1895, he found that, if the discharge tube is enclosed in a sealed,
thick black carton to exclude all light, and if he worked in a dark room, a paper plate covered on
one side with barium platinocyanide placed in the path of the rays became fluorescent even when
it was as far as two metres from the discharge tube. During subsequent experiments he found that
objects of different thicknesses interposed in the path of the rays showed variable transparency to
them when recorded on a photographic plate. When he immobilised for some moments the hand
of his wife in the path of the rays over a photographic plate, he observed after development of
the plate an image of his wife's hand which showed the shadows thrown by the bones of her hand
and that of a ring she was wearing, surrounded by the penumbra of the flesh, which was more
permeable to the rays and therefore threw a fainter shadow. This was the first "röntgenogram"
ever taken. In further experiments, Röntgen showed that the new rays are produced by the impact
of cathode rays on a material object. Because their nature was then unknown, he gave them the
name X-rays. Later, Max von Laue and his pupils showed that they are of the same
electromagnetic nature as light, but differ from it only in the higher frequency of their vibration.
Numerous honours were showered upon him. In several cities, streets were named after him, and
a complete list of Prizes, Medals, honorary doctorates, honorary and corresponding memberships
of learned societies in Germany as well as abroad, and other honours would fill a whole page of
this book. In spite of all this, Röntgen retained the characteristic of a strikingly modest and
reticent man. Throughout his life he retained his love of nature and outdoor occupations. Many
vacations were spent at his summer home at Weilheim, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, where
he entertained his friends and went on many expeditions into the mountains. He was a great
mountaineer and more than once got into dangerous situations. Amiable and courteous by nature,
he was always understanding the views and difficulties of others. He was always shy of having
an assistant, and preferred to work alone. Much of the apparatus he used was built by himself
with great ingenuity and experimental skill.
Röntgen married Anna Bertha Ludwig of Zürich, whom he had met in the café run by her father.
She was a niece of the poet Otto Ludwig. They married in 1872 in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands.
They had no children, but in 1887 adopted Josephine Bertha Ludwig, then aged 6, daughter of
Mrs. Röntgen's only brother. Four years after his wife, Röntgen died at Munich on February 10,
1923, from carcinoma of the intestine.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the
book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this
document, always state the source as shown above.
Encyclopedia of World Biography on The Lumière Brothers
The French inventing team of brothers Auguste Lumière (1862-1954) and Louis Lumière (18641948) was responsible for a number of practical improvements in photography and motion
pictures. Their work on color photography resulted in the Autochrome process, which remained
the preferred method of creating color prints until the 1930s. They also applied their
technological talents to the new idea of motion picture photography, creating the first projection
system that allowed a film to be seen by more than one person at a time.
Auguste and Louis Lumière were pioneers in the improvement of photographic materials and
processes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Using their scientific abilities and business talents,
they were responsible for developing existing ideas in still photography and motion pictures to
produce higher quality products that were practical enough to be of commercial value. Their
initial business success was manufacturing a "dry" photographic plate that provided a new level
of convenience to photographers.
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.
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell might easily have been content with
Design sketch of the phone.
the success of his telephone invention. His many laboratory
notebooks demonstrate, however, that he was driven by a
genuine and rare intellectual curiosity that kept him regularly
searching, striving, and wanting always to learn and to create. He would continue to test
out new ideas through a long and productive life. He would explore the realm of
communications as well as engage in a great variety of scientific activities involving kites,
airplanes, tetrahedral structures, sheep-breeding, artificial respiration, desalinization and
water distillation, and hydrofoils.
Sponsored Links
With the enormous technical and later financial
success of his telephone invention, Alexander Graham
Bell's future was secure, and he was able to arrange
his life so that he could devote himself to his scientific
interests. Toward this end, in 1881, he used the
$10,000 award for winning France's Volta Prize to set
up the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. A
believer in scientific teamwork, Bell worked with two
associates, his cousin Chichester Bell and Charles
Sumner Tainter, at the Volta Laboratory. Their
experiments soon produced such major improvements
in Thomas Edison's phonograph that it became commercially viable. After 1885, when he
first visited Nova Scotia, Bell set up another laboratory there at his estate, Beinn Bhreagh
(pronounced Ben Vreeah), near Baddeck, where he would assemble other teams of bright
young engineers to pursue new and exciting ideas.
Among one of his first innovations after the telephone was the "photophone," a device that
enabled sound to be transmitted on a beam of light. Bell and his assistant, Charles Sumner
Tainter, developed the photophone using a sensitive selenium crystal and a mirror that
would vibrate in response to a sound. In 1881, they successfully sent a photophone
message over 200 yards from one building to another. Bell regarded the photophone as "the
greatest invention I have ever made; greater than the telephone." Alexander Graham Bell's
invention reveals the principle upon which today's laser and fiber optic communication
systems are founded, though it would take the development of several modern technologies
to realize it fully.
Over the years, Alexander Graham Bell's curiosity would
lead him to speculate on the nature of heredity, first among
the deaf and later with sheep born with genetic
irregularities. His sheep-breeding experiments at Beinn
Bhreagh sought to increase the numbers of twin and triplet
births. Bell was also willing to attempt inventing under the
pressure of daily events, and in 1881 he hastily constructed
an electromagnetic device called an induction balance to try
and locate a bullet lodged in President Garfield after an
Alexander Graham Bell
assassin had shot him. He later improved this and produced Sketch of a vacuum jacket in use.
a device called a telephone probe, which would make a
telephone receiver click when it touched metal. That same year, Bell's newborn son,
Edward, died from respiratory problems, and Bell responded to that tragedy by designing a
metal vacuum jacket that would facilitate breathing. This apparatus was a forerunner of the
iron lung used in the 1950s to aid polio victims. In addition to inventing the audiometer to
detect minor hearing problems and conducting experiments with what today are called
energy recycling and alternative fuels, Bell also worked on methods of removing salt from
seawater.
However, these interests may be considered minor activities
compared to the time and effort he put into the challenge of
flight. By the 1890s, Bell had begun experimenting with
propellers and kites. His work led him to apply the concept
of the tetrahedron (a solid figure with four triangular faces)
to kite design as well as to create a new form of
architecture. In 1907, four years after the Wright Brothers
first flew at Kitty Hawk, Bell formed the Aerial Experiment
Photograph of the
Silver Dart
Association with Glenn Curtiss, William "Casey" Baldwin,
Thomas Selfridge, and J.A.D. McCurdy, four young engineers whose common goal was to
create airborne vehicles. By 1909, the group had produced four powered aircraft, the best
of which, the Silver Dart, made the first successful powered flight in Canada on February
23, 1909. Bell spent the last decade of his life improving hydrofoil designs, and in 1919 he
and Casey Baldwin built a hydrofoil that set a world water-speed record that was not broken
until 1963. Months before he died, Bell told a reporter, "There cannot be mental atrophy in
any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers
for his unceasing hows and whys about things.
John Logie Baird Biography (1888-1946)
John Logie Baird was one of the principal players in the early days of television. His invention,
the photomechanical television, was the first to broadcast a live transmission. Born in Scotland in
1888, Baird received his education at the Royal Technical College and the University of
Glasgow. Plagued by poor health, he was unable to serve in World War I and was ultimately
forced toresign his position as an electrical engineer. He then decided to become a "professional
amateur," and pursued many different interests and enterprises.However, after exhaustion led to
a nervous breakdown, Baird chose to concentrate on electronics, especially following Guglielmo
Marconi's demonstration ofhow radio waves could be used to carry an audio signal. Baird was
certain that a similar process could transmit a visual signal, and he began working upon a design
that would do so. At the heart of Baird's design was a device called a Nipkow disk, a scanning
disk invented in 1884 by the German scientist Paul Nipkow. Basically, this device was
comprised of a cardboard disk with a series of square holes, situated in a spiral. When coupled
with a photoelectriccell and spun, the Nipkow disk is able to scan areas of lightness and darkness
and convert that information into an electrical signal. By using a seconddisk, synchronized with
the first, Nipkow was able to retranslate that signalinto a primitive visual image. Baird took
Nipkow's idea one step farther, developing a system by which the signal could be sent via
electromagnetic waves, rather than cables. While still in the developmental stages, Baird's
invention found little financial support, since most investors considered it a merenovelty. During
this time Baird worked as a shoe shiner and a razor blade salesman, earning just enough money
to pay for food, shelter, and mechanical supplies. Much of the prototype for his invention was
built out of household items such as a cake tin, knitting needles, a bicycle lamp, and string. On
October 2, 1925, Baird succeeded in sending the image of a ventriloquist's dummyfrom one end
of his attic to the other. Exhilarated, he ran to the shop downstairs and persuaded a young boy to
become the first person to have his imagetransmitted by television. Baird became famous nearly
overnight, and soon investors were giving him enough money to pursue even more ambitious
goals. In 1927 he sent a television signal from London to Glasgow and in 1928 from London to
New York. Unfortunately, the Nipkow disk and the photomechanical designproduced an image
of very poor resolution--a flaw inherent to the mechanicaldesign. Soon, Baird's invention would
be replaced by the cathode-ray tube design of Vladimir Zworykin. Still, Baird continued to strive
for better television designs. He helped to develop natural color television as well as large-screen
projection, which, he envisioned, would ultimately allow the public towatch television on a
movie screen. Baird died in obscurity, his early contributions nearly forgotten, in 1946, at the age
of 58.
Background:Charles Babbage was born in London, England December 26, 1791. Babbage
suffered from many childhood illnesses, which forced his family to send him to a clergy
operated school for special care.
Babbage had the advantage of a wealthy father that wished to further his education. A stint
at the Academy at Forty Hills in Middlesex began the process and created the interest in
Mathematics. Babbage showed considerable talent in Mathematics, but his disdain for the
Classics meant that more schooling and tutoring at home would be required before Babbage
would be ready for entry to Cambridge. Babbage enjoyed reading many of the major works
in math and showed a solid understanding of what theories and ideas had validity. As an
undergraduate, Babbage setup a society to critique the works of the French mathematician,
Lacroix, on the subject of differential and integral calculus. Finding Lacroix's work a
masterpiece and showing the good sense to admit so, Babbage was asked to setup a
Analytical Society that was composed of Cambridge undergraduates. The works of this
group, which included John Herschel and George Peacock, were serious publications in this
period, no mean feat for a group of undergraduate students, but many of the leading math
scholars expressed praise for the contribution of Babbage. Charles completed his schooling
and started to write papers on various subjects for the Royal Society of London, who
honored him with an invitation to join and the role of vice-president. It is interesting to note
that Babbage felt the society a group of stuff shirts interested in stroking their own egos at
the expense of real knowledge.
Babbage became interested in Astronomy and the equipment used to study the heavens.
This appears to be the time when Charles got the idea for a mechanical calculation device.
Frustrated with the waste of time and money used to create logarithmic table manually,
Babbage invented the Difference Machine to create these tables. The success of this
endeavor led Babbage to envision a device that could perform any calculation. Dubbed the
Analytical Engine, Babbage received funding from the government to turn the dream into a
reality. Unfortunately, Babbage was never able to finish the project as the whims of politics
and funding decisions forced the project to be dismissed after a few flawed programs were
beta tested. The logic of the process and structure of the engine formed the basis of the
calculation process of the modern computer.