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Torpedo (1864)

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  Torpedo (1864) *Giovanni Luppis creates the self-propelled uncderwater missile. *"Damn the torpedoes.... Captain Crayton, go ahead! Joucett, full speed!" Admiral David Farragut, Battle of Mobile Bay, 1864 "Torpedoes are examined on the derk of a target ship after a test firing from HMS Snapper in 1940 The British 7,000-ton steamer Beluchistan sank after this torpedo strike by the German U-boat U-68 in 1942".                         NDespite its notoriety as a naval weapon, the fir modem torpedo was developed in landincked Austa or rather by a retired army officer in what was then the Austrian Empire stretching down to the Adriatic Sea 1864 Giovanni Luppis (1813-1875) presented his idea of using small, unmanned boats carrying explosives against enemy ships to Robert Whitehead (1823 1905), an English engineer producing stram engines for the Austrian Navy Similar devices (spar torpedoes) were also employed in the American Civil War taking place at the same time. Howe

Color Photography (1861)

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  Color Photography(1861)  *Maxwell develops the trichromatic process for producing color images. *Maxwell's composite image of three photographs shows tartan ribbon through filters of different colors. British mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was a giant of nineteenth- century science. Best known for his Maxwell equations, which were the best insight into electromagnetism of their day, his interests also included Saturn's rings and the human perception of color. It was this latter interest that led to the first color photograph in 1861. In the manner of a true showman, Maxwell revealed his photograph of a tartan ribbon at the Royal Institution in London. His studies of human vision, including the condition of color blindness, had led him to conclude that color images were possible using a " trichromatic process ." He had arranged for his tartan ribbon to be shot by professional photographer Thomas Sutton, the inventor of the single-lens ref

Air Conditioning

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             Air Conditioning (1902)                 Carrier makes the world a much cooler place to live. The ancient Romans tried to keep their buildings cool during hot weather by pumping water from aqueducts through the wall of their houses, whereas in south-east Asia people hung wet grass mats over the windows to lower the temperature of air inside. Modern air conditioning, which arrived in 1902s, is the continuation of this rudimentary principle.  (1876-1950) of Buffalo, New York, developed the fundamental scientific theories of air conditioning. His first system was designed for use in a printing plant. Changes in the temperature and humidity of the plant were causing the ink nozzle to be out of line, which made color printing problematic. Carrier was assigned with the task of fixing this problem. His early system, which made use of spraying nozzles to cool and dehumidify the air, was large, extremely expensive, and rather dangerous because it relied on the use of ammonia as a c

Electrical Generator

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                             Electrical Generator (1869) Gramme fulfills the dream of plentiful, cheaply produced electricity. Inventor...             The dynamos produced   by Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry in the 1830s were little more than laboratory curiosities.It was Belgian industrialist and electrical engineer, Zenobe Theophile Gramme (1826- 1901) , who developed in 1869, the first high-voltage, smooth,direct-current generator. Information... In 1871 Gramme and the French engineer Hippolyte Fontaine entered a manufacturing partnership. In 1873 the pair discovered that their dynamo machine was reversible and could thus be converted in to an electrical motor. Their 1873 exhibit at the Vienna Exposition convinced the world of the ease of generating electricity and conversely that electricity could be reliably utilized to do heavy work.              By 1880 Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti had patented the Ferranti dynamo, a machine that he developed with the help of William Thomson (

X-ray Photography

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                          X-ray Photography (1895)          Rontgen discovers how to photograph inside the bodies of living things. Introduction                                                           An X-ray is a form of electromagnetic   radiation with a very short wavelength, in the range 10   to 0.01 nanometers. German physicist Wilhelm  Rontgen (1845-1923)  was experimenting with   cathode rays in 1895 when he realized that these   produced another form of radiation when they hit the   glass of the cathode ray tube. He called them X-rays, as   ‘X’ stands for the unknown in mathematics. Rontgen   discovered that X-rays passed through soft materials,   such as paper, card and fabric, and produced   fluorescence and can be used to form images on a   barium-coated photographic plate and discovered the X-   rays passed through the flesh, but not through her   bones, or her ring. Rontgen was awarded the first Noble   prize for physics in 1901.   Information