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Inventions

A marine chronometer is a clock that is precise and accurate enough to be used as a portable time standard; it can therefore be used to determine longitude by means of celestial navigation. When first developed in the 18th century, it was a major technical achievement, as accurate knowledge of the time over a long sea voyage is necessary for navigation, lacking electr.. Read More..

An anemometer or windmeter is a device used for measuring wind speed, and is a common weather station instrument. The term is derived from the Greek word anemos, meaning wind, and is used to describe any air speed measurement instrument used in meteorology or aerodynamics. The first known description of an anemometer was given by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450.Anem.. Read More..

Gutenberg's early printing process, and what tests he may have made with movable type, are not known in great detail. His later Bibles were printed in such a way as to have required large quantities of type, some estimates suggesting as many as 100,000 individual sorts.Setting each page would take, perhaps, half a day, and considering all the work in loading the p.. Read More..

A Pocket Watch is a watch which is made to be carried in a pocket. They were the most common type of watch in the 16th century. A pocket watch may have a visible bezel, or it can be encased, usually in a metallic cover of silver or gold. The case might be finely polished, engraved, include a relief, or other artistic design, such as the once-popular train. The pocket .. Read More..

William Lee (was born 1563 – died 1614) was an English clergyman and inventor who devised the first stocking frame knitting machine in 1589, the only one in use for centuries. Its principle of operation remains in use.Lee was born in the village of Calverton, Nottinghamshire. He entered Christ's College, Cambridge in 1579 as a sizar and graduated from St. John&#.. Read More..

A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation (such as visible light). The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th century, using glass lenses. They found use in terrestrial applications and astronomy.The earliest recorded working telescopes wer.. Read More..

A vernier scale is a device that lets the user measure more precisely than could be done unaided when reading a uniformly-divided straight or circular measurement scale. It is scale that indicates where the measurement lies in between two of the marks on the main scale. Verniers are common on sextants used in navigation, scientific instruments used to conduct experime.. Read More..

The word micrometer is a neoclassical coinage from Greek micros, meaning ""small"", and metron, meaning ""measure"". The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary says that English got it from French and that its first known appearance in English writing was in 1670. Neither the metre nor the micrometre nor the micrometer (device) as we know them today existed at that tim.. Read More..

A barometer is a scientific instrument used in meteorology to measure atmospheric pressure. Pressure tendency can forecast short term changes in the weather. Numerous measurements of air pressure are used within surface weather analysis to help find surface troughs, high pressure systems and frontal boundaries.Although Evangelista Torricelli is universally credited wi.. Read More..

A vacuum pump is a device that removes gas molecules from a sealed volume in order to leave behind a partial vacuum. The first vacuum pump was invented in 1650 by Otto von Guericke, and was preceded by the suction pump, which dates to antiquity.The predecessor to the vacuum pump was the suction pump, which was known to the Romans. Dual-action suction pumps were found .. Read More..

A universal joint, (universal coupling, U-joint, Cardan joint, Hardy-Spicer joint, or Hooke's joint) is a joint or coupling in a rigid rod that allows the rod to 'bend' in any direction, and is commonly used in shafts that transmit rotary motion. It consists of a pair of hinges located close together, oriented at 90° to each other, connected by a cross sh.. Read More..

Thomas Savery (c. 1650–1715) was an English inventor and engineer, born at Shilstone, a manor house near Modbury, Devon, England. He is famous for his invention of the first commercially used steam powered engine.Savery became a military engineer, rising to the rank of Captain by 1702, and spent his free time performing experiments in mechanics. In 1696 he took out .. Read More..

During a period spanning the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries,the Slovalian mining town of Banska Stiavnica rose to fame both as a major source of gold and silver and as a center of excellence in the technologies needed to extract those precious metals.The area became synonymous with advances in ore extraction and processing.Fundamental among the many problems that .. Read More..

The spinning jenny is a multi-spindle spinning frame. It was invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England. The device reduced the amount of work needed to produce yarn, with a worker able to work eight or more spools at once. This grew to 120 as technology advanced.The spinning jenny is attributed to James Hargreaves. He was b.. Read More..

The water frame is the name given to a water-powered spinning frame developed by Richard Arkwright, who patented the technology in 1769. The design was partly based on a spinning machine built for Thomas Highs by clock maker John Kay, who was hired by Arkwright.For each spindle, the water frame used a series of four pairs of rollers, each operating at a successively h.. Read More..

The spinning mule, is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere. They were used extensively from the late 18th to the early 20th century. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of two boys: the little piecer and the big or side piecer. The carriage carried up to 1,320 spindles and could be 150 feet (46 m) lo.. Read More..

A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.The fibers are processed into clothing or other cotton goods, and any undamaged seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil and meal.Although simple handheld roller gins have been used i.. Read More..

The organ is one of the oldest instruments still used in European classical music that has commonly been credited has having derived from Greece. Its earliest predecessors were built in Ancient Greece in the 3rd century BCE. The word organ is derived from the Latin organum, an instrument similar to a portative organ used in ancient Roman circus games. Organum is deriv.. Read More..

Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation).The world's first known movable type system for printing was made of ceramic materials and created in China around A.D 1040. by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127);Whe.. Read More..

The world's first water-driven astronomical clock tower was by far the most advanced astronomical instrument of its day,Its designer was Su Song(1020-1101),who oversaw the project with the aid of mathematician Han Gong-lian.The elaborate,40-foot (12 m),.water-powered,mechanically driven clock had bronze castings,precision gears,gear rings,and pinions.A bronze armi.. Read More..

The history of the single-lens reflex camera (SLR) begins with the use of a reflex mirror in a camera obscura described in 1676, but it took a long time for the design to succeed for photographic cameras: the first patent was granted in 1861, and the first cameras were produced in 1884 but while elegantly simple in concept, they were very complex in practice. One by o.. Read More..

A domestic ice cream maker is a machine used to make small quantities of ice cream for personal consumption. Ice cream makers may prepare the mixture by employing the hand-cranking method or by employing an electric motor. The resulting preparation is often chilled through either pre-cooling the machine or by employing a machine that freezes the mixture.An ice cream m.. Read More..

A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer; a device which converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound.The first crude loudspeakers were invented during the development of telephone systems in the late 1800s, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube beginning around 1912 made loudspeakers truly practical. By the 1920s they were used in radios.. Read More..

Lithography is a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water.Printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by German author and actor Alois Senefelder as a cheap method of publishing theatrical works.Lithography can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or other sui.. Read More..

Endoscopy means looking inside and typically refers to looking inside the body for medical reasons using an endoscope, an instrument used to examine the interior of a hollow organ or cavity of the body. Unlike most other medical imaging devices, endoscopes are inserted directly into the organ. There are many different types of endoscope, and depending on the site in t.. Read More..

A pyrometer is a type of thermometer used to measure high temperatures. Various forms of pyrometers have historically existed. In the modern usage, it is a non-contacting device that intercepts and measures thermal radiation, a process known as pyrometry. The thermal radiation can be used to determine the temperature of an object's surface.Principle of operationA .. Read More..

Magnetometers are measurement instruments used for two general purposes: to measure the magnetization of a magnetic material like a ferromagnet, or to measure the strength and, in some cases, the direction of the magnetic field at a point in space.The first magnetometer was invented by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1833 and notable developments in the 19th century included .. Read More..

A standard diving dress consists of a metallic (copper and brass or bronze) diving helmet, an airline or hose from a surface supplied diving air pump, a canvas diving suit, diving knife and weighted boots.An important part of the equipment is the lead weights, generally on the chest, back and shoes, to counteract the buoyancy of the helmet and diving suit.This type of.. Read More..

The daguerreotype was not the first photographic process to be invented; however, it was the first to come into widespread use during the early 1840s having been invented sometime around 1835. Later processes which were less expensive and produced more easily viewed images had almost entirely replaced it by the early 1860s. A small-scale revival of daguerreotype among.. Read More..

A camera lens is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or electronically.There is no major difference in principle between a lens used for a still camera, a video camera, a telescope, a microscope, or other.. Read More..

In late 1886, Reginald A. Fessenden began working directly for Thomas Edison at the inventor's new laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. Fessenden quickly made major advances, especially in receiver design, as he worked to develop audio reception of signals. The United States Weather Bureau began, early in 1900, a systematic course of experimentation in wireless .. Read More..

One of the greatest life saving inventions ever made was the EKG. To this day, variations of the original EKG machine help to discover heart disease and prevent heart attacks. An EKG machine picks up electrical pulses from the heart and records them in wave tracings. These waves help physicians diagnose cardiac abnormalities. The development of the first practical EKG.. Read More..

The arc converter, sometimes called the arc transmitter or Poulsen arc after Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen who invented it in 1903,was an early type of radio transmitter. The arc converter used an electric arc to convert direct current electricity into radio frequency alternating current. It was used as a radio transmitter from 1903 until the 1920s before it was re.. Read More..

An X-ray tube is a vacuum tube that produces X-rays. They are used in X-ray generators. X-rays are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, an ionizing radiation with wavelengths shorter than ultraviolet light. X-ray tubes evolved from experimental Crookes tubes with which X-rays were first discovered in the late 19th century, by Wilhelm Röntgen and the availability of .. Read More..

Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and then improved over several decades.It was the second major color process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952. Technicolor became known and celebrated for its saturated levels of color, and was initially most commonly used for filming m.. Read More..

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. In 1919, American inventor Lee De Forest was awarded several patents that would lead to the first optical sound-on-film technology with commercial application. In De Forest's system, the sound track was photographically recorded on to .. Read More..

The Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph (UVC) was one of the experiments deployed on the lunar surface by the Apollo 16 astronauts. It consisted of a telescope and camera that obtained astronomical images and spectra in the far ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum.The main goals of the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph spanned across several discipline.. Read More..

Adaptive optics is a technology used to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of wavefront distortions: it aims at correcting the deformations of an incoming wavefront by deforming a mirror in order to compensate for the distortion. It is used in astronomical telescopes and laser communication systems to remove the effects of atmospheric di.. Read More..

Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948,with subscription services following in 1949. Data by SNL Kagan shows that as of 2006 about 58.4% of all American homes subscribe to basic cable television services. Most cable viewers in the U.S. reside in the suburbs and tend to be middle class; cable television is less common in low income, urban,.. Read More..

Multitrack recording is a process where the tape is divided into multiple tracks parallel with each other. Because they are carried on the same medium, the tracks stay in perfect synchronisation. The first development in multitracking was stereo sound, which divided the recording head into two tracks. First developed by German audio engineers ca. 1943, 2-track recordi.. Read More..

Land Cameras are instant cameras with self-developing film named after their inventor, Edwin Land, while working for Research Row in Boston, Massachusetts and manufactured by Polaroid between the years of 1947 and 1983. Though Polaroid continued producing instant cameras after 1983, the name 'Land' was dropped from the camera name since Edwin Land retired in 1.. Read More..

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses a pickup to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical impulses. The most common guitar pickup uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker. Since the output of an electric gu.. Read More..

A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantially unused oxygen content of each breath. Oxygen is added to replenish the amount metabolised by the user. This differs from an open-circuit breathing apparatus, where the exhaled gas is discharged directly into th.. Read More..

Seismometers are instruments that measure motions of the ground, including those of seismic waves generated by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other seismic sources. Records of seismic waves allow seismologists to map the interior of the Earth, and locate and measure the size of these different sources.Seismographs are equipped with electromagnetic sensors that t.. Read More..

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video, by cr.. Read More..

Fluoroscopy is an imaging technique that uses X-rays to obtain real-time moving images of the interior of an object. In its primary application of medical imaging, a fluoroscope allows a physician to see the internal structure and function of a patient, so that the pumping action of the heart or the motion of swallowing, for example, can be watched. This is useful for.. Read More..

The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph. It was invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., United States.Alexander Graham Bell, his cousin Chichester Bell, and assistants including Charles S. Tainter in 1880 began investigating the nature of sound in a new laboratory in Washing.. Read More..

The glass harmonica, also known as the glass armonica, bowl organ, hydrocrystalophone, or simply the armonica is a type of musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction (instruments of this type are known as friction idiophones).The Armonica, also called the glass harmonica was invented .. Read More..

A photocopier (also known as a copier or copy machine) is a machine that makes paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply. Most current photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process that uses electrostatic charges on a light sensitive photoreceptor to first attract and then transfer toner particles (a powder) onto paper in t.. Read More..

Spirograph is a geometric drawing toy that produces mathematical roulette curves of the variety technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. It was developed by British engineer Denys Fisher and first sold in 1965.Bruno Abakanowicz is widely credited as inventor of Spirograph which is kind of very important instrument in mathematics. It can be considered as to.. Read More..

An Integraph is an instrument used in mathematics for plotting the integral of a graphically defined function.An integraph consists of a rectangular carriage which moves left to right on rollers, two sides of which run parallel to the x axis on the Cartesian plane. The other two sides are parallel to the y axis. Along the trailing vertical (y axis) rail, slides a smal.. Read More..

The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician Charles Babbage.It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, a design for a mechanical computer. The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and i.. Read More..

The piano is a musical instrument played using a keyboard.It is widely employed in classical and jazz music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, and for composing and rehearsal. Although the piano is not portable and often expensive, its versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical instruments.The pianoforte, more co.. Read More..

A cash register, also referred to as a till in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries, is a mechanical or electronic device for registering and calculating transactions. It is usually attached to a drawer for storing cash and other valuables. The cash register is also usually attached to a printer, that can print out receipts for record keeping purposes.I.. Read More..

The Geiger–Müller counter, also called a Geiger counter, is an instrument used for measuring ionizing radiation.In 1928, German physicist Hans Geiger co-invented the Geiger Counter, a portable machine that counted (detected) alpha particles. His co-inventor was fellow German physicist Walther Müller. Hans Geiger began his research on equipment to count alpha parti.. Read More..

Metal detectors use electromagnetic induction to detect metal.In 1881, Alexander Graham Bell constructed a crude metal detector in an attempt to find an assassin's bullet in President James Garfield. Gerhard Fischar patented a portable version in 1931.Upright "archway" detectors are used at entrances to secured buildings, such as courthouses or airports, to detect.. Read More..

Stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that creates an illusion of directionality and audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two or more independent audio channels through a configuration of two or more loudspeakers (or stereo headphones) in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.Thus the.. Read More..

A crescograph is a device for measuring growth in plants. It was invented in the early 20th century by Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose - an Indian polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist.Jagadish Chandra Bose is widely known as the inventor of crescograph and that was just this invention which led him to be a famous name of the field. Crescrograph is a compl.. Read More..

Cinematography is the science or art of motion picture photography by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as film stock.William Friese-Greene constructed a camera for taking a series of photographs on a roll of perforated film moving intermitten.. Read More..

A speedometer or a speed meter is a gauge that measures and displays the instantaneous speed of a vehicle. Now universally fitted to motor vehicles, they started to be available as options in the 1900s, and as standard equipment from about 1910 onwards.Speedometers for other vehicles have specific names and use other means of sensing speed. For a boat, this is a pit l.. Read More..

Xerography is a dry photocopying technique invented by Chester Carlson in 1938, for which he was awarded U.S. Patent 2,297,691 on October 6, 1942. Carlson originally called his invention electrophotography. It was later renamed xerography.XerographyBy 1948, Haloid realized that it would have to make a public announcement about electrophotography in order to retain its.. Read More..

A taximeter is a mechanical or electronic device installed in taxicabs and auto rickshaws that calculates passenger fares based on a combination of distance travelled and waiting time. It is the shortened form of this word that gives the "taxi" its name.HistoryThe modern taximeter was invented by German Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn in 1891,and the Daimler Victoria�.. Read More..

Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and has been used on music recordings to play bass lines, melody lines, chords, or textures. Designed as a fully polyphonic chordal instrument, it can also cover several of t.. Read More..

Minox is a manufacturer of cameras, known especially for its subminiature camera.The first product to carry the Minox name was a subminiature camera, conceived in 1922, and finally invented and produced in 1936, by Baltic German Walter Zapp.The Latvian factory VEF (Valsts elektrotehnisk? fabrika) manufactured the camera from 1937 to 1943.After World War II, the camera.. Read More..

Many biological objects of interest consist of cell structures such as nuclei that are almost transparent; they transmit as much light as the mounting medium that surrounds them does. Because there is no colour or transmission contrast in such an object, it is not possible to observe the structure using a conventional optical microscope.Frits ZernikeDutch physicist, w.. Read More..

The Iconoscope was the first practical video camera tube to be used in early television cameras. The iconoscope produced a much stronger signal than earlier mechanical designs, and could be used under any well-lit conditions. This was the first fully electronic system to replace earlier cameras, which used special spotlights or spinning disks to capture light from a s.. Read More..

Kinescope is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor.Typically, the term can refer to the process itself, the equipment used for the procedure (a 16 mm or 35 mm movie camera mounted in front of a video monitor, and synchronized to the monitor's scanning rate), or a film made using the process. Kinescopes were the only p.. Read More..

Roichi Yazu (1874-1905) was a very clever inventor in many fields ranging from the dictionary to airplanes.  In 1902 he invented a mechanical calculating machine and a patent was granted to him in 1903. This machine was a kind of hybrid between the pinwheel type and the Soroban.In 1902 he incorporated the company YAZU JIDO SOROBAN ( Yazu Automatic Soroban) in Tokyo. .. Read More..

The acoustic suspension (or air suspension) woofer is a type of loudspeaker that reduces bass distortion caused by stiff mechanical suspensions in conventional loudspeakers. It was invented in 1954 by Edgar Villchur, and brought to commercial production by Villchur and Henry Kloss with the founding of Acoustic Research in Cambridge, Mass.Villchur recognized that the w.. Read More..

The Pedal Radio (or Pedal Wireless) is a radio powered by a pedal-driven generator. It was developed by Alfred Traeger in 1929 as a way of providing radio communications to remote homesteads in the Australian outback. At the time there was no mains or generator power available, and batteries to provide the power required would have been too expensive. HistoryThe peda.. Read More..

The Maksutov is a catadioptric telescope design that combines a spherical mirror with a weakly negative meniscus lens in a design that takes advantage of all the surfaces being nearly "spherically symmetrical".The negative lens is usually full diameter and placed at the entrance pupil of the telescope (commonly called a "corrector plate" or "meniscus corrector shell").. Read More..

Confocal microscopy is an optical imaging technique for increasing optical resolution and contrast of a micrograph by means of adding a spatial pinhole placed at the confocal plane of the lens to eliminate out-of-focus light.It enables the reconstruction of three-dimensional structures from the obtained images. This technique has gained popularity in the scientific an.. Read More..

The saxophone is a family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet.The saxophone family was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1840.Adolphe Sax wanted to create a group or series of instruments that would be the most powerful and vocal of the woodwinds, a.. Read More..

The saxotromba is a valved brasswind instrument invented by the Belgian instrument-maker Adolphe Sax around 1844.It was designed for the mounted bands of the French military, probably as a substitute for the French horn. The saxotrombas comprised a family of half-tube instruments of different pitches. By about 1867 the saxotromba was no longer being used by the French.. Read More..

The saxhorn is a valved brass instrument with a conical bore and deep cup-shaped mouthpiece. The sound has a characteristic mellow quality, and blends well with other brass.Saxhorn,  any of a family of brass wind instruments patented by the Belgian instrument-maker Antoine-Joseph Sax, known as Adolphe Sax, in Paris in 1845. Saxhorns, one of many 19th-century developm.. Read More..

The saxtuba is an obsolete valved brasswind instrument conceived by the Belgian instrument-maker Adolphe Sax around 1845.The design of the instrument was inspired by the ancient Roman cornu and tuba. The saxtubas, which comprised a family of half-tube and whole-tube instruments of varying pitches, were first employed in Fromental Halévy's opera Le Juif errant (Th.. Read More..

A Schmidt camera is a catadioptric astrophotographic telescope designed to provide wide fields of view with limited aberrations. Other similar designs are the Wright Camera and Lurie–Houghton telescope.Invention of Schmidt cameraThe Schmidt camera was invented by German-Estonian optician Bernhard Schmidt in 1930.Its optical components are an easy-to-make spherical p.. Read More..

The first practical Japanese typewriter was invented by Kyota Sugimoto in 1929.Out of the thousands of kanji characters, Kyota's original typewriter used 2,400 of them. He obtained the patent rights to the typewriter that he invented in 1915. Until the popularization of word processor technology, the Japanese typewriter contributed greatly to increased efficiency .. Read More..

Starting blocks are a device used in the sport of track and field by sprint athletes to hold their feet at the start of a race so they don't slip as they push out at the sound of the gun. For most levels of competition, including all high level International competition, starting blocks are now mandatory equipment for the start of sprint races.The invention of sta.. Read More..

Celsius temperature scale, also called centigrade temperature scale,  thermometer [Credit: © Myotis/Shutterstock.com]scale based on 0° for the freezing point of water and 100° for the boiling point of water. Invented in 1742 by the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, it is sometimes called the centigrade scale because of the 100-degree interval between the defined .. Read More..

Beaufort scale, in full Beaufort wind force scale, scale devised in 1805 by Comdr. (later Admiral and Knight Commander of the Bath) Francis Beaufort of the British Navy for observing and classifying wind force at sea. Originally based on the effect of the wind on a full-rigged man-of-war, in 1838 it became mandatory for log entries in all ships in the Royal Navy. Alte.. Read More..

The octant, also called reflecting quadrant, is a measuring instrument used primarily in navigation. It is a type of reflecting instrument.octant HistoryTwo men independently developed the octant around 1730: John Hadley (1682–1744), an English mathematician, and Thomas Godfrey (1704–1749), a glazier in Philadelphia. While both have a legitimate and equal claim to.. Read More..

The Myriad year clock was a universal clock designed by the Japanese inventor Hisashige Tanaka in 1851. It belongs to the category of Japanese clocks called Wadokei. This clock is designated as an Important Cultural Asset by the Japanese government.The clock is driven by a spring. Once it is fully wound, it can work for one year without another winding. It can show th.. Read More..

In 1969, George Smith and Willard Boyle invented the first CCDs or Charge Coupled Devices at Bell Labs. A CCD is an electronic memory that can be charged by light. CCDs can hold a charge corresponding to variable shades of light, which makes them useful as imaging devices for cameras, scanners, and fax machines. Because of its superior sensitivity, the CCD has revolut.. Read More..

A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying motion picture film by projecting it onto a screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras.Motion PicturesCharles Francis Jenkins started experimenting with movie film in 1891, and eventually quit his job and concentrated full.. Read More..

Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively charged cylindrical drum to define a differentially-charged image.The drum then selectively collects electrically charged powdered ink (toner), and transfers the i.. Read More..

A keypunch is a device for precisely punching holes into stiff paper cards at specific locations as determined by keys struck by a human operator.Invention HistoryThe first-generation Type 001 keypunch used 45 columns and round holes. In 1923, Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR) (renamed IBM in 1924) introduced the first electric keypunch, the Type 011 Electr.. Read More..

A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer (at IBM Zürich), the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986.For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and 0.01 nm depth resolution.With this resolution, individual atoms .. Read More..

A gamma camera, also called a scintillation camera or Anger camera,Its Speciality is a device used to image gamma radiation emitting radioisotopes, a technique known as scintigraphy. The applications of scintigraphy include early drug development and nuclear medical imaging to view and analyse images of the human body or the distribution of medically injected, inhaled.. Read More..

Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music through the use of written symbols, including ancient or modern musical symbols. Types and methods of notation have varied between cultures and throughout history, and much information about ancient music notation is fragmentary.Although many ancient cultures used symbo.. Read More..

A magnifying glass is a convex lens that is used to produce a magnified image of an object. The lens is usually mounted in a frame with a handle.A sheet magnifier consists of many very narrow concentric ring-shaped lenses, such that the combination acts as a single lens but is much thinner. This arrangement is known as a Fresnel lens.The magnifying glass is an icon of.. Read More..

The Brannock Device is a measuring instrument invented by Charles F. Brannock for measuring a person's shoe size. The son of a shoe industry entrepreneur, Brannock attended Syracuse University, New York. Brannock spent two years developing a simple means of measuring the length, width, and arch length of the human foot. He eventually improved on the wooden RITZ St.. Read More..

DAT (Digital Audio Tape) is a standard medium and technology for the digital recording of audio on tape at a professional level of quality. A DAT drive is a digital tape recorder with rotating heads similar to those found in a video deck. Most DAT drives can record at sample rates of 44.1 kHz, the CD audio standard, and 48 kHz. DAT has become the standard archiving te.. Read More..

MIDI(Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a protocol, digital interface and connectors and allows a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers and other related devices to connect and communicate with one another.A single MIDI link can carry up to sixteen channels of information, each of which can be routed to a s.. Read More..

A camcorder is a portable consumer electronics device for recording video and audio using a built-in recorder unit. It contains both a video camera and a video recorder in one unit, hence its compound name.The earliest camcorders employed analog recording onto videotape. Since the 1990s, digital recording has become the norm, but tape remained the primary recording me.. Read More..

A gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rotation is free to assume any orientation. When rotating, the orientation of this axis is unaffected by tilting or rotation of the mounting, according to the conservation of angular momentum. Because of this, gyroscopes are useful for measuring or maintaining orientation.Invention HistoryThe gyroscope was i.. Read More..

Radio control is the use of radio signals to remotely control a device. Radio control is used for control of model vehicles from a hand-held radio transmitter. Industrial, military, and scientific research organizations make use of radio-controlled vehicles as well.Invention HistoryIn 1898 at an exhibition at Madison Square Garden Nikola Tesla demonstrated a small unm.. Read More..

A sun valve is a form of flow control valve, notable because it earned its inventor Gustaf Dalén the 1912 Nobel prize in physics.The valve formed part of the Dalén light which was used in lighthouses from the 1900s through to the 1960s by which time electric lighting came to dominate.Many prominent contemporary engineers, including Thomas Edison, initially doubted t.. Read More..

A Nipkow disk is a mechanical, geometrically operating image scanning device, invented by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow. This scanning disk was a fundamental component in mechanical television through the 1920s and 1930s.Paul Gottlieb Nipkow conceived the idea of using a spiral-perforated disk (Nipkow disk), to divide a picture into a mosaic of points and lines. Accounts of it.. Read More..

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the optical diffraction limit.HistoryAFM was invented by IBM Scientists in 1986.The precursor to the AFM, the scanning tunneling micro.. Read More..

A vehicle horn is a sound-making device used to warn others of the approach of the vehicle or of its presence. Automobiles, trucks, ships, and trains are all required by law in some countries to have horns. Bicycles in many areas are also legally required to have an audible warning device in many jurisdictions, but not universally, and not always a horn.KlaxonKlaxon i.. Read More..

The multiplane camera is a special motion picture camera used in the traditional animation process that moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another. This creates a three-dimensional effect, although it is not actually stereoscopic.HistoryA predecessor to the multiplane camera was used by Lotte Reinige.. Read More..

A paper clip is an instrument used to hold sheets of paper together, usually made of steel wire bent to a looped shape. Most paper clips are variations of the Gem type introduced in the 1890s or earlier, characterized by the almost two full loops made by the wire. Common to paper clips proper is their utilization of torsion and elasticity in the wire, and friction bet.. Read More..

A radiosonde is a small weather station coupled with a radio transmitter. The radiosonde is attached to a helium or hydrogen-filled balloon, generally called a weather balloon, and the balloon lifts the radiosonde to altitudes exceeding 115,000 feet. During the radiosonde’s ascent, it transmits data on temperature, pressure, and humidity to a sea, air, or land-based.. Read More..

Moog synthesizer may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for older-generation analog music synthesizers. The Moog company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer systems in the mid 1960s. The technological development t.. Read More..

A foghorn is a fog signal that uses sound to warn vehicles of navigational hazards, or boats of the presence of other vessels, in foggy conditions. The term is most often used in relation to marine transport. When visual navigation aids such as lighthouses are obscured, foghorns provide an audible warning of rock outcrops, shoals, headlands, or other dangers to shippi.. Read More..

A tachistoscope is a device that displays an image for a specific amount of time. It can be used to increase recognition speed, to show something too fast to be consciously recognized, or to test which elements of an image are memorable. Projection tachistoscopes use a slide or transparency projector equipped with the mechanical shutter system typical of a camera. The.. Read More..

The Hellschreiber or Feldhellschreiber is a facsimile-based teleprinter invented by Rudolf Hell. Compared to contemporary teleprinters that were based on typewriter systems and were mechanically complex and expensive, the Hellschreiber was much simpler and more robust, with only two moving parts. It has the added advantage of being capable of providing intelligible co.. Read More..

An actinometer is a device that is used to measure the intensity of solar radiation. It is a chemical system that determines the number of photons by measuring the rate of change of photoinduced responses in a chemical system.The actinometer was first invented by John Herschel in 1825. It works based on the principle that the rate of photolytical conversion of molecul.. Read More..

The ANS synthesizer is a photoelectronic musical instrument created by Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin from 1937 to 1957. The technological basis of his invention was the method of graphical sound recording used in cinematography (developed in Russia concurrently with USA), which made it possible to obtain a visible image of a sound wave, as well as to realize the oppo.. Read More..