Stop, proceed with caution, Go!

Imagine our fast paced streets without traffic lights. What a mess it would create. Well even back in the 1800's it was still a problem with pedestrians getting run over by hoarse and buggies.

In 1868, across the seas, the city of London found a way to deal with this problem. They created a gas powered lantern with red and green signals. This lantern was placed at a busy corner and was rotated by hand. This version proved to be a bit unsafe when the lantern exploded and killed the police officer controlling it. Fast forward to the early 1920's in America where two people had invented a more modern version. Detroit police officer William Potts created a traffic light by adapting a railroad signal and African American inventor Garrett A. Morgan came up with an electric rotating version. Although Garrett was the first to receive a patent for his light, Potts' light was already being used on the streets. Some still dispute over who was the first to actually invent the traffic light. Either way it has become one of the most important traffic controlling devices still used today.

Work cited:

Candice Solomon. "Traffic light, 1923." 24 June 2009. http://www.isrl.illinois.edu/~chip/projects/timeline/1923solomon.htm

John Crandall. "Who invented the traffic light? William Potts of Detroit." 5 April 2007. Suite 101.com 24 June 2009. http://transportationhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/who_invented_the_traffic_light

Scan this pack of Wrigley's Gum Please

When you go to the store everything is rung up with the use of an electronic scanner, but what is it that is being scanned? Well it is the UPC Code of course. This imprint of bars and numbers can tell a lot of information about a product and helps to make shopping quick.

The use of the bar code as it is known by came about in the 1950's.The first bar code was circular in shape. Over time it moved to a linear shape that we recognize today.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbar_code.htm

~Angela

The adding machine was invented by a nineteen-year-old French boy named Blaise Pascal way back in the year 1642. Blaise made it to help his father in his work. The man was a clerk, and all day long he had to do a tremendous number of mathematical calculations. The boy’s invention consisted of a wooden box with sixteen dials on it. By turning the dials, one could do simple addition and subtraction very quickly.
There were two prior attempts to create such a machine which were discovered only recently. One is of Wilhelm Schickard who invented a mechanical calculator in 1623. Apparently only two prototypes were built and their location is unknown (if they survived at all). Only in the 1950's when letters of Schickard were discovered was this information revealed. From diagrams in these letters it was possible to reconstruct his machine.

An even earlier attempt was made by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. In 1967 some of his notes were found in the National Museum of Spain, which included a description of a machine bearing a certain resemblance to Pascal's machine. A model of da Vinci's machine was made with the help of these notes.


Works Cited: The Adding Machine. 1997-2007. Ideafinder.com. 24 June 2009.
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/addmachine.htm

~Angela

Technology = Failures???

You can't possibly get a good technology going without an enormous number of failures. It's a universal rule. If you look at bicycles, there were thousands of weird models built and tried before they found the one that really worked. You could never design a bicycle theoretically. Even now, after we've been building them for 100 years, it's very difficult to understand just why a bicycle works - it's even difficult to formulate it as a mathematical problem. But just by trial and error, we found out how to do it, and the error was essential.

~Freeman Dyson

Do you think most technological advances were brought on by trial and error or through a well though out plan?

~Angela

Radar Love

You've all seen the troopers on the side of the road. Arm hanging out the window holding that dreaded radar gun. Where did it come from? Who created this device which has helped police pull over those not abiding by the speed limit?

The radar gun was invented by Bryce K. Brown in March of 1954 and first used by Illinois patrolman Leonard Baldy. A radar gun is basically a mini Doppler radar unit which calculates the speed of an object in its path. The original gun had to be held in a stationary position for it to work. Unfortunately for the speeders today there are now two types of guns: the hand held one which needs to be stationary and the newer version mounted to cars which are able to work while the vehicle is in motion.

Work cited:

"Radar Gun." Wikipedia. Wiki posting modified. 1 June 2009. Wkimedia Foundation. 24 June 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_gun

"Are you lying to me?"

I once spoke with a police officer many years ago about lie detectors. He told me when he joined the force back in the late 70's, the "seasoned" officers would sit a suspect down in a chair and hook wires to them. They would ask the suspect questions and then push a button. Amazingly a piece of paper would come out with an "X" on it telling the cops he was lying. In reality the officers had them hooked up to a photo copier and when they would push the button all it really did was send out a photo copy of the "X" they placed in it earlier. Not very legal.

Of course that's not what really happens. In the earlier societies they used many bizarre ways to prove someone was lying. The first instrument to measure the physical change in a person came from Cesare Lombroso who was an Italian criminologist. His device had the individual place their hand in a special sealed tank of water and this would measure physical changes to the pulse and blood pressure. Through the years improvements were made and the water was dropped and replaced by a blood pressure cuff and a galvanometer.

Although the lie detector (also known as a polygraph) is widely and frequently used it is still to this day a very controversial method.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-TZ8Z5S9rI

Work cited:

BOOKRAGS STAFF. "Lie Detector". 2005. June 24 2009. .

First Vaccinattion

The first vaccination was by Edward Jenner. The for first time he used it was on a boy and once he injected the vaccine he found out that they boy was immune to small pox. He then published the small pox vaccine by the 1798. After he did that within three years 1000,000 people in Britain was vaccinated. In the 1954 the disposable syrings, and needles were made. This is how Dr. Jonas Salks was able to vaccinate millions of American childern with the Salk polio vaccine. By Jen

Bells, Mart. "History of the Vaccination Needle ." 2007. About. 23 Jun 2009 .