Zipper

It was a long way up for the humble zipper, the mechanical wonder that has kept so much in our lives 'together.' On its way up the zipper has passed through the hands of several dedicated inventors, none convinced the general public to accept the zipper as part of everyday costume. The magazine and fashion industry made the novel zipper the popular item it is today, but it happened nearly eighty years after the zipper's first appearance.

Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine received a patent in 1851 for an 'Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure.' Perhaps it was the success of the sewing machine, which caused Elias not to pursue marketing his clothing closure. As a result, Howe missed his chance to become the recognized 'Father of the Zip.'

Forty-four years later, Mr. Whitcomb Judson (who also invented the 'Pneumatic Street Railway') marketed a 'Clasp Locker' a device similar to the 1851 Howe patent. Being first to market gave Whitcomb the credit of being the 'Inventor of the Zipper', However, his 1893 patent did not use the word zipper. The Chicago inventor's 'Clasp Locker' was a complicated hook-and-eye shoe fastener. Together with businessman Colonel Lewis Walker, Whitcomb launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture the new device. The clasp locker had its public debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and met with little commercial success.

Swedish-born (who later immigrated to Canada), Gideon Sundback, an electrical engineer, was hired to work for the Universal Fastener Company. Good design skills and a marriage to the plant-manager's daughter Elvira Aronson led Sundback to the position of head designer at Universal. He was responsible for improving the far from perfect 'Judson C-curity Fastener.' Unfortunately, Sundback's wife died in 1911. The grieving husband busied himself at the design table and by December of 1913, he had designed the modern zipper.

Gideon Sundback increased the number of fastening elements from four per inch to ten or eleven, had two facing-rows of teeth that pulled into a single piece by the slider, and increased the opening for the teeth guided by the slider. The patent for the 'Separable Fastener' was issued in 1917. Sundback also created the manufacturing machine for the new zipper. The 'S-L' or scrapless machine took a special Y-shaped wire and cut scoops from it, then punched the scoop dimple and nib, and clamped each scoop on a cloth tape to produce a continuous zipper chain. Within the first year of operation, Sundback's zipper-making machinery was producing a few hundred feet of fastener per day.

The popular 'zipper' name came from the B. F. Goodrich Company, when they decided to use Gideon's fastener on a new type of rubber boots or galoshes and renamed the device the zipper, the name that lasted. Boots and tobacco pouches with a zippered closure were the two chief uses of the zipper during its early years. It took twenty more years to convince the fashion industry to seriously promote the novel closure on garments.

In the 1930's, a sales campaign began for children's clothing featuring zippers. The campaign praised zippers for promoting self-reliance in young children by making it possible for them to dress in self-help clothing. The zipper beat the button in the 1937 in the "Battle of the Fly," when French fashion designers raved over zippers in men's trousers. Esquire magazine declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" and among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray." Obviously, the new zippered trouser owners had not yet discovered the experience of forgetting to zip-up.

The next big boost for the zipper came when zippers could open on both ends, as on jackets. Today the zipper is everywhere, in clothing, luggage and leather goods and countless other objects. Thousands of zipper miles produced daily, meet the needs of consumers, thanks to the early efforts of the many famous zipper inventors.

Electricity

 

Electricity is a form of energy and it occurs in nature, so it was not “invented.” As to who discovered it, many misconceptions abound. Some give credit to Benjamin Franklin for discovering electricity, but his experiments only helped establish the connection between lightning and electricity, nothing more.The truth about the discovery of electricity is a bit more complex than a man flying his kite. It actually goes back more than two thousand years.

Long before any knowledge of electricity existed people were aware of shocks from electric fish. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BC referred to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile", and described them as the "protectors" of all other fish.In about 600 BC, the Ancient Greeks discovered that rubbing fur on amber (fossilized tree resin) caused an attraction between the two – and so what the Greeks discovered was actually static electricity. Additionally, researchers and archeologists in the 1930’s discovered pots with sheets of copper inside that they believe may have been ancient batteries meant to produce light at ancient Roman sites. Similar devices were found in archeological digs near Baghdad meaning ancient Persians may have also used an early form of batteries.

But by the 17th century, many electricity-related discoveries had been made, such as the invention of an early electrostatic generator, the differentiation between positive and negative currents, and the classification of materials as conductors or insulators.In the year 1600, English physician William Gilbert used the Latin word “electricus” to describe the force that certain substances exert when rubbed against each other. A few years later another English scientist, Thomas Browne, wrote several books and he used the word “electricity” to describe his investigations based on Gilbert’s work.

In 1752, Ben Franklin conducted his experiment with a kite, a key, and a storm. This simply proved that lightning and tiny electric sparks were the same thing. Italian physicist Alessandro Volta discovered that particular chemical reactions could produce electricity, and in 1800 he constructed the voltaic pile (an early electric battery) that produced a steady electric current, and so he was the first person to create a steady flow of electrical charge. Volta also created the first transmission of electricity by linking positively-charged and negatively-charged connectors and driving an electrical charge, or voltage, through them.

In 1831 electricity became viable for use in technology when Michael Faraday created the electric dynamo (a crude power generator), which solved the problem of generating electric current in an ongoing and practical way. Faraday’s rather crude invention used a magnet that was moved inside a coil of copper wire, creating a tiny electric current that flowed through the wire. This opened the door to American Thomas Edison and British scientist Joseph Swan who each invented the incandescent filament light bulb in their respective countries in about 1878. Previously, light bulbs had been invented by others, but the incandescent bulb was the first practical bulb that would light for hours on end.

Swan and Edison later set up a joint company to produce the first practical filament lamp, and Edison used his direct-current system (DC) to provide power to illuminate the first New York electric street lamps in September 1882. During  1800’s and early 1900’s Serbian American engineer, inventor, and all around electrical wizard Nikola Tesla became an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity. He worked with Edison and later had many revolutionary developments in electromagnetism.

Electricity travels to our house over power lines from a big power plant somewhere far away. We actually have to pay for how much electricity is used. There is an electric meter outside of your house that keeps track of this.One of the first great uses of electricity was for communication using Morse Code and the Telegraph in 1840. This allowed messages to be sent long distances in an instant. After that came the telephone and the radio and, in 1880, electric light. These inventions and the use of electricity changed the world. Electricity continued to change the world with new inventions such as the TV and, even more recently, the personal computer and the cell phone. Without electricity, we'd be bored, hot, and sitting in the dark.

Printing Press

A printing press is a device for printing ink evenly onto a print medium such as cloth or paper. An inked surface on which rests a movable type of device that applies pressure to a print medium, the ink transfer occurs.

Before the printing press the writing and drawings were created by hand which was tedious and time consuming. Only the educational institutions, monasteries, and extremely rich people usually owned books during the middle ages. Thus there was intellectual darkness and economic regression so that time was also known as Dark Ages.

  

It was during the 2nd century when the ancient Chinese began to use wooden blocks to imprint the images of flowers on silk. In Roman Egypt around the 4th century, woodblock printing on cloth was practiced. The 7th century marked the use of paper for printing, the Diamond Sutra, the first complete printed book, in 868 by Chinese.

     

During the years 1041 and 1048, Han Chinese printer Bi Sheng invented and developed the world’s first movable type printing technology. In the early thirteenth century in Korea the movable metal type printing technique was invented during the reign of Goryeo Dynasty which applied the typecasting method that was used in coin casting. 

About the year 1450 in Germany an improved movable type mechanical printing technology was invented by Johannes Gutenberg.  This German man wanted to find a way to make money. Gutenberg used metal instead of wood, the letters of the metal block could was movable and could be used to create new sentences and words. The reproduction of the Bible known as Guttenberg Bible on September 30, 1452, a treasured item for its historical legacy.

                          

The printing press has greatly reduced the required time of printing. It's due to the invention of the printing press that we have newspapers, books, magazine, guides, pamphlets, brochures, flyers, posters, and mailers etc. It allows us to share large volumes of information. The printing press is recognized as one of the greatest inventions of the era. It altered the evolution of the society.