Innovators

Optics and Electricity

Benjamin Franklin6 Jan. 1706-17 Apr. 1790

First to suggest that big storms blow from the northeast.

Introduced methods for printing to minimize counterfeiting

Invented bifocal glasses in 1784

Benjamin Franklin (cont.)

He proved that there were not two kinds of electricity (the current theory) but only one; to explain the seemingly two kinds, he applied the terms plus and minus, or positive and negative, to electricity.

Franklin demonstrated that in electrifying objects nothing new was created or lost but that the electricity was rearranged

Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519

Produced highly detailed anatomical drawings of the human body

Completed about 30 dissections of humans and fetuses in his lifetime to gain insight on the human body structure

Leonardo da Vinci (cont.)

Famous artist Designed cannons,

armored cars, scaling ladders, crossbows, and even tanks and submarines (in 1485)

Designed aeroplanes (basically similar to the modern glider) and helicopters

Galvani, Luigi  (1737–1798) Italian anatomist and physiologist

In the late 1770s began his experiments in electrophysiology.

He observed that the muscles of a dissected frog twitched when touched by a spark from an electric machine or condenser, such as a Leyden jar.

Similar responses could be obtained when such muscles were laid out on metal during a thunderstorm, or even by simple contact with two different metals, without the deliberate application of an electric current.

Galvani, Luigi  (1737–1798) Italian anatomist and physiologist

Galvani concluded that the source of the electricity therefore lay in the living tissue, and did not derive from outside.

His finding was later disproved by Alessandro Volta.

However Galvani is celebrated for his discovery of Galvanic electricity (the metallic arc), as well as for applications of his principle to the galvanization of iron and steel and the invention of the galvanometer, named in Galvani's honor by André Ampère.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), U.S. electrical engineer and

inventor, born in what is now Croatia.

He developed the first alternating-current induction motor, as well as several forms of oscillators, the tesla coil, and a wireless guidance system for ships.

The SI unit of magnetic flux density is named after Tesla

Innovators

Flight and Space

Amelia (Mary) (1898–1937), Earhart ('e( )r härt) U.S. aviator. In 1932, she became the first

woman to fly an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean by herself.

In 1937, her plane disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean during an around-the-world flight.

Wright brothers   Wilbur (1867–1912) and Orville (1871–1948),

US aviation pioneers. They assembled their first aircraft in their bicycle factory. In 1903, Orville made the first piloted flight in a power-

driven plane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This flight lasted just 12 seconds, and attracted little

attention. In 1908, Wilbur made longer and higher flights in France,

and Orville was equally successful in the USA. The brothers eventually convinced military authorities

and manufacturers to invest in powered aircraft.

Armstrong, Neil Alden   (1930– )

US astronaut. On 20 July 1969, he became the first person to set foot on the Moon and made his now famous remark, ‘That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’

The Moon landing was part of the Apollo project.

Glenn, John Jr   (1921– )

US astronaut and politician. On 20 February 1962, he

became the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth, doing so three times in the spacecraft Friendship 7.

The flight lasted 4 hours 55 minutes.

On 29 October 1998, Glenn became the oldest person in space when, at the age of 77, he embarked on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery.

Glenn, John Jr   (1921– ) Glenn was elected to the US

Senate as a Democrat from Ohio in 1974; and re-elected in 1980 and 1986.

Glenn unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. He left the Senate in 1999, the year NASA renamed its Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, as the John H Glenn Research Center.

Mae Jemison

First African-American woman in space

Ride, Sally (Sally Kristen Ride)   (1951– )

US astronaut and astrophysicist. In 1983 she became the first US woman in space, working aboard the space shuttle Challenger as a mission specialist.

She was also mission specialist on two further shuttle flights in 1984 and 1985.

She served on a presidential commission investigating the Challenger accident in 1986.

Carl (Edward) Sagan(1934–96),

U.S. astronomer. He showed that amino acids can

be synthesized in an artificial primordial soup irradiated by ultraviolet light, as a model for a possible mechanism of the origin of life on Earth.

He wrote several popular science books and coproduced the television series Cosmos (1980).

Hawking, Stephen  William (b.1942),

English theoretical physicist. Despite being afflicted with a

degenerative nervous disease, he has made major contributions to the theory of space-time, quantum mechanics, and black holes, and his book A Brief History of Time (1988) has proved a popular bestseller.