Wednesday, August 29. 2018Who made the first powered flight?
In 1903, at Kitty Hawk in the United States, Orville Wright made what is said to be the first controlled powered flight of a heavier-than-air craft. People had already flown small airships, but there was now a race to make the first successful aeroplane. The Wright brothers and other would-be pilots had already built several gliders. The Wright biplane looked like a huge box kite, with a home-made engine that drove two propellers by means of chains – but it flew and it was controllable. Clement Adler, in France, had flown under power in 1890 in a bat-shaped aeroplane powered by a steam engine. However, the aircraft was not controllable; so many people do not accept his attempt as the first flight. Picture credit: google Wednesday, August 29. 2018Who invented the first telephone?
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was born in Scotland but moved to the USA. He realized that sound consists of vibrations, and he began working out a way of changing these vibrations into electrical impulses. These impulses could then be carried along a wire – this was the origin of the telephone. His rival, Thomas Edison, soon produced a much improved version of Bell’s telephone. Bell retaliated by devising a better version of Edison’s own phonograph. Picture credit: google Wednesday, August 29. 2018Who invented the microscope?
Although he was actually a draper, the Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) ground glass lenses and used them to examine the world about him. In the 1670s he made his first crude microscope with a tiny lens, and this allowed him to be the first person to see microscopic life such as bacteria, yeast and living blood cells. During his career, van Leeuwenhoek ground a total of 419 lenses, and his microscopes became progressively more effective. Picture credit: google
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