What is the history of syringes and hypodermic needles?

            A syringe is a medical device that is used to inject fluid into, or take fluid from, the body. The word ‘syringe’ is derived from the Greek word syrinx, meaning ‘tube’. Primitive syringes were used by Romans syringes were used by Romans during the 1st century AD. They are mentioned in a journal called De Medicina as being used to treat medical complications.



            In 1899, Letitia Mumford Geer of New York was granted a patent for a syringe design that permitted the user to operate it single-handedly.



            Later, in 1946, the Chance Brothers in England produced that first all glass syringes with an interchangeable barrel and plunger. Charles Rothauser invented the world’s first disposable plastic hypodermic syringe in the late 1940s. Then, in 1956, a New Zealander, Colin Murdoch was granted a patent for a disposable plastic syringe.



            Later, many forms of syringes were introduced, among which the hypodermic syringe with a needle fine enough to pierce the skin, by Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood, was the most iconic one.





 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 




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What are the origin, and the history of paper?


            Paper making is one of the inventions made by the Chinese. Paper, as we know it today, was first made in China by Cai Lun, a Chinese court official.



            From 3000 BC onwards, the Egyptians started using papyrus made from dried reeds as a writing material. Parchment and vellum were used in the 2nd century BC in Turkey.



            The kind of paper used in the Middle East during the 8th century was made from linen, rags, and flax cord. However, this paper reached Europe only in the 10th century AD.



            As paper became common mills were built. The very first paper mill in England was built in 1494. The rise of literature soon increased the demand for paper. The continued use of rags and cloth made large-scale production impossible.



            This demand was met in 1800, when a Dutchman, Mathias Koops patented a paper made from straw and wood.



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What is the history of pen?


               During the 13th century AD, sharpened goose feathers were widely used as quill pens in Europe.



               Metal pens were considered fancy and ornamental, even during the 16th century. Bryan Donkin is credited with having invented the steel nib. In 1822, John Mitchell of Birmingham started to mass-produce steel pen nibs, and their popularity took off.



               In 1832, John Joseph Parker became the first to introduce a pen which had its own reservoir of ink. When he was trying to invent a pen that could write on leather, John J. Loud invented the first ballpoint pen. He patented it in 1888 in America. But this was not commercially successful.



               In 1943, Ladislao Jose Biro launched a new model, using quick drying ink.



               Ink had been there even before the invention of the pen. Primitive men used natural inks made from charcoal and iron oxide. In 2000 BC, Chinese scribes used a durable ink made from soot mixed with gum solution.





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When did the history of printing begin?


               The first evidence of prints was Chinese wood cuts from at least the 7th century AD. Cloth printing was popular even before paper printing in China, India, and Europe. Woodblock printing, popularly known today as xylography, was the first method of paper printing. It became widely used throughout East Asia.



               Typography-printing was developed in Europe first, which helped in the mass production of letters on paper. Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450’s. His was a durable machine. The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed using a mass-produced, movable, metal type printing press in Europe.



               Gutenberg developed an oil-based ink which was more resilient than water based inks.





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What is the history of the typewriter?


            Typewriter is a machine that was commonly used in the past, and which has keys that are pressed in order to print letters, numbers, or other characters onto paper.



            The English claim that it was Henry Mill who invented the typing machine in 1714.



            Henry received the first typewriter patent in Britain for a machine that appears to have been similar to a typewriter.



            Although many went before him, it is the name of Christopher Latham Sholes that is generally linked to the title of ‘inventor of the typewriter’, as he introduced the first typewriter to be commercially successful in 1868. He worked along with Frank Haven Hall, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule.



            The working prototype was made by the machinist Matthias Schwalbach. The patent was sold to Densmore and Yost, who made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons, then famous as a manufacturer of sewing machines, to commercialize the machine as the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer. This was the origin of the term typewriter.



            It had a QWERTY keyboard layout, which because of the machine’s success, was slowly adopted by other typewriter manufacturers. Later, many types of typewriters came into the market.




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What is the history of the bicycle?


               The bicycle is a vehicle consisting of two wheels held in a frame, one behind the other, propelled by pedals, and steered with handlebars attached to the front wheel. The credit for creating the first bicycle belongs to a German, Baron Karl von Drais. In 1818, von Drais patented his design and this two wheeled, human propelled machine became known as the ‘velocipede’. The following year, the design was copied to produce an iron model.



                Later, Pierre Michaux got the idea of attaching pedals to the simple devices that were in use during the 1850s. Thus, Michaux and his son Ernest produced a velocipede with pedals.



               This principle was taken further by James Starley. He created a bicycle model nicknamed penny-farthing. It got its name because of the size of its wheels. It created a cycling boom. In 1889, gears were introduced to the bicycle.



               James Moore won the first cycle track race ever in 1869.



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When did man first use motorcycles?


               The introduction of the safe bicycle led to the invention of the motorcycle. The very first steam powered motorcycle was made in the 1860s by Pierre Michaux, a blacksmith in Paris. Those motorcycles were called the Michaux-Perreaux Steam   Velocipede.



               A German, Gottlieb Daimler invented the first petrol engine motorcycle in 1885. The modern day motorcycle design is adopted from a model made by Eugene and Michel Werner. Their motocyclette was exhibited in 1897.



               However, the German-built Hildebrand & Wolfmuller motorcycle was the first motorized, two-wheeled vehicle sold to the public.



               Hildebrand & Wolfmuller was also the first company to refer to the vehicle as a ‘motorcycle’.



               In the early 1950s the NSU Company in Germany started producing the evergreen motorcycles called mopeds.



               Motor scooters first appeared in Italy in 1946 and the first one was Vespa.



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Why is the history of the bus said to be unique?


            From the 1820s onwards, vehicles similar to buses were used by men. For example, horse drawn carriages were quite popular during those days. During the 1830s steam buses were introduced. Electric trolleybuses came into use from 1882. The first motor buses, using internal combustion engines, rather than steam power, entered service in 1895.



            The first mechanically propelled omnibus appeared on the streets of London on 22nd April, 1833. These vehicles were much less likely to overturn; they travelled faster than horse-drawn carriages. They were much cheaper to run, and caused much less damage to the road surface due to their wide tyres.



            Carl Benz had produced a motorized bus as early as 1895. In the same year, he started operating a regular line service on the 15 km route between Siegen and Deutz in Germany. Frank Searle designed the first mass-produced, double-decker bus. It was operated by the London General Omnibus Company. Contemporary buses began to evolve from the 1950s onwards.



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Who invented the car?


            Karl Benz, a German mechanical engineer, designed and built the first practical car (three wheeled) powered by an internal-combustion engine, in 1885. He is often known as the inventor of the modern car.



            During the next year, he conducted a public demonstration. Benz was the first to offer his vehicle for sale in 1887.



            One of the most important landmarks in engine design came from Nicolaus Otto who in 1876 invented an effective gas motor engine.



            In 1913, the Ford Model T, created by the Ford Motor Company, became the first automobile to be mass-produced on a moving assembly line. This was the car that launched the era of popular motoring and in 1920 it became the first car to sell a million.



            The first motor car in Europe was produced by the company Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau.



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Which was the first motorized boat?


 



            A steam boat was described and patented by English physician John Allen in 1729. It soon became popular. However, boats powered by a petrol engine were only introduced in the 19th century.



            This was achieved following the invention of the internal combustion engine. The earliest boat to be powered by a petrol engine was tested on the Neckar River by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in 1886.



            It is said that the first powerboat was designed and built by the Priestman Brothers in Hull, England. The company began trials of their first motorboat in 1888. Priestman’s boats were used to tow cargo along canals.



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What is the history of trains?


               The idea of transporting things and people on rails has been around for a long time. Hero of Alexandria had experimented with steam in the 1st century AD. But only in 1698 was steam used for practical purpose. Thomas Newcomen designed the world’s first successful atmospheric steam engine in 1712. In the 1760s James Watt improved steam engine.



               By the 1780s both British and French pioneers were experimenting with the idea of using steam to drive heavy wheeled road engines. Richard Trevithick is credited with developing the first high-pressure engine, compact enough to operate on tramways. In 1813, William Hedley built the puffing billy, a locomotive. George Stephenson further developed it. His locomotive was used to pull the first engine-driven freight and passenger service along the 16 km route of the Stockton & Darlington railway.



               In 1879, the German engineer Werner von Siemens presented the world’s first electric train. Diesel power made its debut in 1912, in a locomotive built by the Swizz firm Sulzer.





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What is the story of man’s first flight?


               Many men got injured in their quest to take flight. One among them was Eilmer, who fixed wings to his hands and feet, and tried to take flight from a tower of Malmesbury Abbey in the 11th century.



               He broke his legs and was seriously injured after the attempt. It is said that many imaginary flying objects and machines were sketched by the famous artist Leonardo da Vinci.



               The brothers Joseph-Michael and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier, prosperous paper manufacturers, began experimenting with lighter-than-air devices after observing that heated air directed into a paper or fabric bag made the bag rise. In 1783, the brothers Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier demonstrated the first hot-air balloon. It flew about 2.5 km, before crashing and bursting into flames.



               Since 1899, Wilbur and Orville Wright had been scientifically experimenting with the concepts of flight. They made four flights on 17th December 1903, on their first powered aircraft, at Kitty Hawk.



               The longest lasted just under a minute and covered 259.6 m. Thus the first flight changed the history of mankind. Wright Brothers’ aeroplane was crude. Later, many changes were introduced in aeroplanes.




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When was the first passenger airline established?


 



            Germany’s Deutsche Luft-Reederei established the world’s first passenger airline in February 1919. The next month, the French started a route from Paris to Brussels. In the same year, a British company, Air Transport and Travel, started the first daily international service linking London and Paris.



            Britain had five, Germany had seven and France has eight airlines by the end of a decade after the introduction of passenger aircraft. Earlier, converted bombers were used as passenger aircraft. The first purpose-built airliner was the British de Havilland DH 16 in 1919. The first jet airliner was the de Havilland Comet introduced in 1952.



            In 1958, Boeing 707 became the first long-haul airliner. It had 179 seats and a cruising speed of about 910 km/h. Jumbo jets such as Boeing 747 were introduced later in 1970.



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What is the history of photography?


               In the 9th century, Arab astronomers became the first to notice the properties of photography. They found that a beam of light reflected from an illuminated object and entering a darkened room through a hole, would project the image upside down.



               In 1727, Johann Heinrich Schulze, a German professor of anatomy, discovered that silver nitrate turns dark when exposed to light. The unexposed side remained white. He captured cut-out letters on a bottle of light-sensitive slurry. He was amazed to find that the results were durable.



               Thomas Wedgwood, in the early development of photography, managed to produce impermanent images on cloth and white leather.



               In the 1820s, the French inventor Nicephore Niepce first managed to get an image that was captured by the first camera ever made. Louis Daguerre, an associate of Niepce, developed the first commercially viable photographic process called daguerreotype. Later, the paper-based calotype negative and salt print process was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. It was in the 1990s that digital photography was first introduced.



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Why is it said that the history of artificial organs dates back to the 5th century BC?



            The earliest recorded use of limb prosthesis is that of a Persian soldier named Hegesistratus. In 1579, the French army surgeon Ambroise Pare used artificial limbs on his amputees. Later, a noncorrosive metal-vitallium was discovered. It was widely used for making artificial ligaments. Gore – Tex, a porous form of Teflon was approved for making artificial body parts in the US in 1988.



            The first-ever artificial pacemaker was engineered by Dr. A. S. Hyman in 1932. It was an apparatus to deliver regular electrical stimulations to the heart. The first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7 in 1982, designed by Willem Johan Kolff and Robert Jarvik. One of the earliest instances of plastic surgery can be found in the Sushruta Samhita, an important medical text from Ancient India.



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