Radio

The invention: The first radio transmissions of music and voice
laid the basis for the modern radio and television industries.
The people behind the invention:
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), an Italian physicist and
inventor
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932), an American radio
pioneer
True Radio
The first major experimenter in the United States to work with
wireless radio was Reginald Aubrey Fessenden. This transplanted
Canadian was a skilled, self-made scientist, but unlike American inventor
Thomas Alva Edison, he lacked the business skills to gain the
full credit and wealth that such pathbreaking work might have merited.
Guglielmo Marconi, in contrast, is most often remembered as
the person who invented wireless (as opposed to telegraphic) radio.
There was a great difference between the contributions of Marconi
and Fessenden. Marconi limited himself to experiments with
radio telegraphy; that is, he sought to send through the air messages
that were currently being sent by wire—signals consisting of dots
and dashes. Fessenden sought to perfect radio telephony, or voice
communication by wireless transmission. Fessenden thus pioneered
the essential precursor of modern radio broadcasting.

Radar

The invention: An electronic system for detecting objects at great
distances, radar was a major factor in the Allied victory ofWorld
War II and now pervades modern life, including scientific research.
The people behind the invention:
Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973), the father of radar who
proposed the chain air-warning system
Arnold F. Wilkins, the person who first calculated the intensity
of a radio wave
William C. Curtis (1914-1976), an American engineer
Looking for Thunder
Sir RobertWatson-Watt, a scientist with twenty years of experience
in government, led the development of the first radar, an acronym
for radio detection and ranging. “Radar” refers to any instrument
that uses the reflection of radio waves to determine the
distance, direction, and speed of an object.
In 1915, during World War I (1914-1918), Watson-Watt joined
Great Britain’s Meteorological Office. He began work on the detection
and location of thunderstorms at the Royal Aircraft Establishment
in Farnborough and remained there throughout the
war. Thunderstorms were known to be a prolific source of “atmospherics”
(audible disturbances produced in radio receiving apparatus
by atmospheric electrical phenomena), andWatson-Watt
began the design of an elementary radio direction finder that
gave the general position of such storms.

Pyrex glass

The invention: Asuperhard and durable glass product with widespread
uses in industry and home products.
The people behind the invention:
Jesse T. Littleton (1888-1966), the chief physicist of Corning
Glass Works’ research department
Eugene G. Sullivan (1872-1962), the founder of Corning’s
research laboratories
William C. Taylor (1886-1958), an assistant to Sullivan
Cooperating with Science
By the twentieth century, Corning GlassWorks had a reputation
as a corporation that cooperated with the world of science to improve
existing products and develop new ones. In the 1870’s, the
company had hired university scientists to advise on improving the
optical quality of glasses, an early example of today’s common practice
of academics consulting for industry.
When Eugene G. Sullivan established Corning’s research laboratory
in 1908 (the first of its kind devoted to glass research), the task
that he undertook withWilliam C. Taylor was that of making a heatresistant
glass for railroad lantern lenses. The problem was that ordinary
flint glass (the kind in bottles and windows, made by melting
together silica sand, soda, and lime) has a fairly high thermal expansion,
but a poor heat conductivity. The glass thus expands
unevenly when exposed to heat. This condition can cause the glass
to break, sometimes violently. Colored lenses for oil or gas railroad
signal lanterns sometimes shattered if they were heated too much
by the flame that produced the light and were then sprayed by rain
or wet snow. This changed a red “stop” light to a clear “proceed”
signal and caused many accidents or near misses in railroading in
the late nineteenth century.

Propeller-coordinated machine gun

The invention: A mechanism that synchronized machine gun fire
with propeller movement to prevent World War I fighter plane
pilots from shooting off their own propellers during combat.
The people behind the invention:
Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker (1890-1939), a Dutch-born
American entrepreneur, pilot, aircraft designer, and
manufacturer
Roland Garros (1888-1918), a French aviator
Max Immelmann (1890-1916), a German aviator
Raymond Saulnier (1881-1964), a French aircraft designer and
manufacturer
French Innovation
The first true aerial combat ofWorldWar I took place in 1915. Before
then, weapons attached to airplanes were inadequate for any
real combat work. Hand-held weapons and clumsily mounted machine
guns were used by pilots and crew members in attempts to
convert their observation planes into fighters. On April 1, 1915, this
situation changed. From an airfield near Dunkerque, France, a
French airman, Lieutenant Roland Garros, took off in an airplane
equipped with a device that would make his plane the most feared
weapon in the air at that time.
During a visit to Paris, Garros met with Raymond Saulnier, a French
aircraft designer. In April of 1914, Saulnier had applied for a patent on
a device that mechanically linked the trigger of a machine

Polystyrene

The invention: A clear, moldable polymer with many industrial
uses whose overuse has also threatened the environment.
The people behind the invention:
Edward Simon, an American chemist
Charles Gerhardt (1816-1856), a French chemist
Marcellin Pierre Berthelot (1827-1907), a French chemist
Polystyrene Is Characterized
In the late eighteenth century, a scientist by the name of Casper
Neuman described the isolation of a chemical called “storax” from a
balsam tree that grew in Asia Minor.

Polyethylene

The invention: An artificial polymer with strong insulating properties
and many other applications.
The people behind the invention:
Karl Ziegler (1898-1973), a German chemist
Giulio Natta (1903-1979), an Italian chemist
August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818-1892), a German chemist
The Development of Synthetic Polymers
In 1841, August Hofmann completed his Ph.D. with Justus von
Liebig, a German chemist and founding father of organic chemistry.

Polyester

The invention: Asynthetic fibrous polymer used especially in fabrics.
The people behind the invention:
Wallace H. Carothers (1896-1937), an American polymer
chemist
Hilaire de Chardonnet (1839-1924), a French polymer chemist
John R. Whinfield (1901-1966), a British polymer chemist
A Story About Threads
Human beings have worn clothing since prehistoric times. At
first, clothing consisted of animal skins

Polio vaccine (Salk)

The invention: Jonas Salk’s vaccine was the first that prevented polio,resulting in the virtual eradication of crippling polio epidemics.The people behind the invention:
Jonas Edward Salk (1914-1995), an American physician,
immunologist, and virologist
Thomas Francis, Jr. (1900-1969), an

Polio vaccine (Sabin)

The invention: Albert Bruce Sabin’s vaccine was the first to stimulate
long-lasting immunity against polio without the risk of causing
paralytic disease.
The people behind the invention:
Albert Bruce Sabin (1906-1993), a Russian-born American
virologist
Jonas Edward Salk (1914-1995), an American physician,
immunologist, and virologist
Renato Dulbecco (1914- ), an Italian-born American
virologist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine
The Search for a Living Vaccine
Almost a century ago, the first major poliomyelitis (polio) epidemic
was recorded. Thereafter, epidemics of increasing

Pocket calculator

The invention: The first portable and reliable hand-held calculator
capable of performing a wide range of mathematical computations.
The people behind the invention:
Jack St. Clair Kilby (1923- ), the inventor of the
semiconductor microchip
Jerry D. Merryman (1932- ), the first project manager of the
team that invented the first portable calculator
James Van Tassel (1929- ), an inventor and expert on
semiconductor components
An Ancient Dream
In the earliest accounts of civilizations that developed number
systems to perform mathematical calculations,