A Brief History On April 7, 1827, John Walker of Stockton-on-Tees, England (Dunham County), first sold the item he had invented the year before, the now taken for granted friction match. Today, with smoking on the decline, and the need for starting fires greatly diminished by modern technology, it is hard to remember just how important the invention of the friction match was. Just try lighting a stogie with flint and steel! Digging Deeper Walker was original apprenticed to a surgeon, but quickly realized he was not of the proper mind set for surgery, so he switched his studies to…
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A Brief History On April 3, 1981, the Osborne Computer Corporation unveiled its latest creation, the Osborne 1, the first portable computer to be commercially viable. The grand daddy of all the laptops, tablets, pads and smartphones we have today started with this 24.5 pound chunk of electronics. Despite the pioneering nature of the company, Osborne went out of business only 4 years later. Digging Deeper Costing a whopping $1795 (or equivalent to over $5000 today), the Osborne 1 had to be plugged in to a wall socket for power as it had no internal battery. Although you could not…
A Brief History On March 25, 1958, the Canadian supersonic interceptor, the Avro Arrow made its first flight. Designed to fly at Mach 2+ it seemed like a good airplane, but was mysteriously cancelled prior to production, with all partly assembled units and prototypes destroyed. Other promising weapons have suffered the same fate, some of which may well have been effective while others faded away due to insurmountable problems. Today we list 10 more military weapons that failed to make it into mass production or widespread issue, expanding on our original article “10 Weapons That Never (Or Barely) Went into…
A Brief History On March 9, 2020, we take a look at some of today’s technology that is not celebrated the way some previous inventions have been. Virtually everyone knows that Edison invented the light bulb and Bell invented the telephone, but we ask, who knows the inventor of the touch screen? Who invented the computer chip? Who came up with GPS? Today we take a few selected modern devices and tell you a little about how they came about. What would you add to this list? (Note: Not being scientists ourselves, some of the technology in this article is…
A Brief History On March 5, 1872, George Westinghouse patented the air brake, a system for use with railroad trains. Prior to his invention, the brakes on trains had to be operated by a brakeman individually turning a large brake wheel on each car. With the Westinghouse system, the engineer could have all the cars in his train brake at the same time, allowing for safer train travel and longer trains. Air brakes also revolutionized the trucking industry, as prior to their adoption the use of trucks in mountainous terrain was rather dangerous. Like many other unsung inventions, air brakes…
