Browsing: Inventions

A Brief History On November 14, 1967, physicist Theodore Maiman, an American working for Hughes Research Laboratories, was finally granted a patent for the “optical maser” (maser: microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) device he called the Laser (laser: light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), once the stuff of science fiction and now an everyday common electronic device. Digging Deeper Using a synthetic ruby to focus light pumped from a high energy source (the scientific details hurt my liberal arts head), the laser was featured in the James Bond film, Goldfinger (1964) demonstrating the powerful light’s ability to…

A Brief History On November 1, 1911, the first known dropping of a bomb from an airplane in combat took place, ushering in one more way for human beings to kill each other.  This first incident was merely an Italian pilot dropping 2 hand grenades from his rudimentary airplane on a Turkish position in Libya, but soon airplanes made specifically for bombing and dropping bombs specifically made for use by airplanes would darken the skies above battlefields and cities alike. Digging Deeper The first bomber airplane was adapted for bombing not by one of the world’s great powers, but by…

A Brief History On October 28, 1948, Swiss chemist Paul Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology for his work in 1939 demonstrating the effectiveness of DDT as an insecticide. Digging Deeper As you can tell by the date of the research, World War II interfered with normal international scientific intercourse, resulting in the delay in recognition for Muller.  The DDT itself did not wait for the end of the war to make itself useful, and was put to widespread use, mainly by the United States, to greatly reduce the incidence of insect borne diseases in war…

A Brief History On October 18, 1945, the Soviet nuclear program received American atomic bomb (plutonium implosion type) plans from scientist, Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee from the Third Reich.  Fuchs had been passing nuclear secrets to the USSR in Britain prior to his involvement in the US-British-Canadian Manhattan Project. Digging Deeper Born in Germany the son of a Lutheran minister, the Fuchs family had communist leanings and opposed the rise of the Nazi state.  Fuchs went to Britain in 1933 to study physics, and was awarded a PhD and a DSc (doctor of science) degree.  In 1939 at the…

A Brief History On this date, September 28, 48 BC, Pompey the Great was assassinated on the orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt after landing in Egypt.  Although we know of this incident, many open problems concern Ancient Egypt, and some of them may never be solved.  Egyptian archaeology is in a state of constant transition, with much of the terminology and chronology in dispute.  The archaeological record is incomplete, with countless relics and artifacts missing or destroyed.  New archaeological discoveries can call into question previous conclusions about Ancient Egypt.  Furthermore, there are internal problems of overall cohesion of various…