WHERE DO NEW INVENTIONS COME FROM

1
WHERE DO NEW INVENTIONS COME FROM? Not
telescopes and CAT-scans, I mean, every day
things? Like, forks? Or, like tin cans! But,
what if there is an argument about which new
invention is best. Edison vs Westinghouse.
2
(No Transcript)
3
A blade from a Saxon scramasax knife of about
1000 CE, and a reproduction blade made for
collectors. The inscription reads Gebereht owns
me as this would have been a prized possession.
4
Thomas Coryate, an Englishman who travelled in
Italy around 1600 published this account of his
travels in 1611. He notes that while English
polite society eats meats by slicing off portions
with their table knife while steadying the meat
with their fingers, in Italy they do always at
their meals use a little fork when they cut their
meatso that whosoever he be that stting in the
company of any others should unadvisedly touch
the meat with his fingershe will give occasion
of offense unto the company as having
transgressed the laws of good manners, insomuch
that for his error he shall be at least brow
beaten if not reprehended in words (see
Petroski The Evolution of Useful Things)
5
(No Transcript)
6
Professor Petroskis hypothesis that devices
evolve the way they do because of a
dis-satisfaction on the part of the user in the
way the current system works. Or, to use the
authors words, form follows failure. His
second thesis is that luxury not necessity is
the mother of invention We can eat without
forks, but if we are going to have a fork, then
we want a good one!
7
Professor Petroskis hypothesis that devices
evolve the way they do because of a
dis-satisfaction on the part of the user in the
way the current system works. Or, to use the
authors words, form follows failure. His
second thesis is that luxury not necessity is
the mother of invention We can eat without
forks, but if we are going to have a fork, then
we want a good one! What causes new ideas or
inventions to be created? Petroski suggests
that the traditional explanation of why we have
new inventions generally has amounted to two
points 1) that new designs and objects require
new tools to make and operate them, and the new
tools then lead to new objects in a kind of
evolutionary circle 2) that inventors are
artists and create new inventions as an artist
makes art, as a kind of creative outlet or skill.
But, do we really need hundreds of different
kinds of forks, or as existed as early as the
19th century, over 500 different kinds of
hammers, as noted by Karl Marx, or over 130
different kinds of knives as were advertised in
the Montgomery Wards mail order catalog in the
mid 1800s. Rather, he tends to the ideas of
David Pye who says, Nothing we design ever
works. All designs are in some degree
failures.. The designer and his client have to
choose in what degree and where there shall be
failure. Then, we notice the failure and we try
to eliminate or fix it. We cant. but in doing
so, we find new compromises that work better in
some ways. One of the most interesting books
ever written about inventing and creativity is
Inventing for Fun and Profit by Jacob Rabinow.
A son of Jewish immigrant parents, Rabinow
studied at City College of New York, eventually
got a job in the National Bureau of Standards and
eventually owned over 200 patents on a wide
variety of different kinds of machines. He said,
Inventors are people who not only curse, but who
also start to think of what can be done to
eliminate the bother When I see something that I
dont like, I try to invent a way around
it. Another famous inventor is Marvin Camras, a
Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology
who hold over 500 patents in electrcal devices.
Petroski notes that when Camras was asked what he
noticed about inventors, he said, They tend to
be dissatisfied with what they see around them
in my case, when I see something that is clumsy
or inelegant, I always wonder why it was made
that way a lot of things seem clumsy to me. I
like to have things simplified.
8
Thomas Edison 1847 - 1931 Genius? Nothing!
Sticking to it is the genius! Any other
bright-minded fellow can accomplish just as much
if he will stick like hell and remember nothing
thats any good works by itself. Youve got to
make the damn thing work! I failed my way to
success.
9
L'Art de conserver pendant plusieurs années
toutes les substances animales et végétales.
Nicolas Appert
Nicolas Appert 1749 1841 While imprisoned
during the Terror of the French Revolution he
was able to carry out some experiments on food
and discovered a way to preserve food in bottles.
He created a factory in 1802, wrote out his
method in an 1810 treatise, and by 1811 had been
awarded a major cash prize of 12,000 francs from
Napoleons government. His factory was destroyed
during the war and he retired to Paris where he
continued to experiment with food, inventing
condensed milk before his death. Appert
successfully preserved food by partially cooking
it, sealing it in bottles with cork stoppers and
immersing the bottles in boiling water. His
theory of canning was all his ownPasteur's
discoveries regarding bacteria were still almost
a half-century away. But Appert assumed that, as
with wine, exposure to air spoiled food. So food
in an airtight container, with the air expelled
through the boiling process, would stay fresh. It
worked. Samples of Appert's preserved food
were sent to sea with Napoleon's troops for a
little over four months. Partridges, vegetables,
and gravy were among 18 different items sealed in
glass containers. All retained their freshness.
"Not a single substance had undergone the least
change at sea," Appert wrote of the trial. He was
awarded the prize in 1810 by the Emperor himself.
Like all good national heroes, Appert soon wrote
a book called The Book of All Households or The
Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances
for Many Years. It described in detail the
process for canning more than 50 foods and was
widely relied upon. (from Can Manufacturers
Institute website)
10
Peter (or Pierre) Durand learned the art of
preserving food by heating and sealing containers
from the work of Nicolas Appert, but he was aware
that the bottles used by Appert were fragile and
could not stand up to the rough environment of a
military campaign or a sea voyage. He replaced
the bottles with strong metal cans made of iron
covered with tin plate to resist rusting. He
received a patent from the English government in
1811 at the same time that Appert was receiving a
prize from the French government for his
invention. Durand sold his patent to two
businessmen, In 1812, Bryan Donkin, a successful
engineer and inventor, and his partner John
Hall, established Britain's first canned-food
factory in Bermondsey. According to the
website of the Can Manufacturers Institute, by
1813, Donkin's tins of preserved food were
supplying the British army and navy. The Royal
Navy used as many as 24,000 large cansnearly
40,000 poundson its ships each year by 1818.
The father of the can manufacturing industry in
the United States was an Englishman who
immigrated to the new country and brought his
newfound canning experience with him. Thomas
Kensett set up a small canning plant on the New
York waterfront in 1812 and began producing
America's first hermetically sealed salmon,
lobsters, oysters, meats, fruits and vegetables.
Kensett began his operation using glass jars but,
finding glass expensive, difficult to pack and
easily broken, soon switched to tin. He and his
father-in-law, Ezra Daggett, were awarded the U.
S. patent for preserving food in "vessels of tin"
by President James Monroe in 1825.
http//www.cancentral.com/hist_empire.cfm
11
It was the gruesome fate of the Donner party in
1846, an 87-member group reduced to cannibalism
when deep snow trapped them in the Sierra Nevada
mountains, that set one determined inventor to
work on a canned food innovation. Gail Borden was
inspired by the need of travelers for nutritious
food that took up little space. He first tried a
meat biscuitcondensed meat and vegetableswhich
was a culinary and financial disaster. Borden
became an overnight success however when he hit
upon canning condensed milk. Not only was
Borden's Eagle Brand the most palatable, it was
the most promoted. In 1856, he set up a cannery
in Connecticut and began to target the New York
City market. In those early days of urbanization,
the milk that reached the city was often of poor
quality. Cows at dairies on the outskirts of the
city were fed waste from liquor distilleries and
other dubious sources. The milk often required
adulteration to make it look more like milk.
What's more, it was sold in bulk in open barrels
in crowded, dirty stores and transported to
market in uncovered containers on the back of a
horse-drawn wagon amid the filth and dust of city
streets. Borden advertised his product as
cleaner, purer and fresher than anything else New
York residents could buy. (Can Manufacturers
Institute)
12
(No Transcript)
13
Early cans were very heavy and thick, and were
very difficult to open. The instructions on many
cans simply said, Use a hammer and chisel to
open. When steel became available the iron was
replaced with steel which could be made thinner,
but was more flexible and subject to bending.
Ezra Warners 1858 design is basically the same
as many hand can openers sold today, say, on
this deluxe pocket knife
14
And the popularity of the new cans and openers
led directly to
15
(No Transcript)
16
Two problems existed with steel cans they needed
openers and they started to get expensive. Tin
plated steel rose dramatically in price in the
1950s so several companies started researching
the production of aluminum cans. After years of
research the aluminum cans can now be made very
efficiently one pound of aluminum can yield
over 30 cans and the metal can be
recycled. However, after using cheaper aluminum,
there was still a problem. What if you are at the
family picnic with plenty of beer and no opener?
You can try to open a can using the bumper of
your car and get sprayed with foam and shout out
There must be a better way! Thats exactly
what happened to Ermal Fraze in Dayton, Ohio in
1959. Petroski reports that Fraze went home and
in 1963 earned a landmark patent for the tab
opening aluminum can.
17
Edison 1890 60w bulb
18
Edison vs Westinghouse As everyone knows, Thomas
Edison invented the modern light bulb in 1879,
and in order to be able to sell light bulbs he
had to invent the entire rest of the electrical
apparatus that would be needed for creating,
distributing and managing the electricity, from
generators to wiring to sockets to fuses
Electricity had been a popular interest since
the days of the Shelleys! And interest focused
even more on electricity when Michael Faraday
developed the concept of the dynamo or generator
starting in 1831. When asked by an important
English government official (William Gladstone)
what possible use could be made of electricity,
Faraday replied, Why, you soon may be able to
tax it! The practical knowledge of electricity
advanced rapidly after Samuel Morse started his
telegraph company in 1845 and electrical
installations, wiring and batteries were part of
the structure of every self-respecting town in
America and Europe. Edison foresaw that
electricity and electric lights and devices would
be a giant industry one day. He favored
simplification in design, but he forgot a
cardinal rule you should make everything as
simple as possible, but not simpler. Everyone
had known since Faradays time that electric
motors and generators for direct current DC
were easy to make and maintain, and light bulbs
could be powered by DC currents. So, Edison
designed his entire system for DC power. This
idea was opposed by several inventors, notably
Nicolas Tesla. Tesla and the others felt that AC
alternating current was the smarter choice
for powering practical electricity projects.
What was the argument?
19
George Westinghouse 1846 1914 (left) shown here
with Lord Kelvin the electrical scientist.
Westinghouse first great invention was his 1869
design for air powered brakes to replace manual
brakes on railroad cars. He invented more than
300 different devices for railroads, many
involved with safety. Within 25 years his air
brake was required by law on all US trains. By
that time Westinghouse had become involved with
electrical engineering, had formed Westinghouse
Electric in 1886 to develop his ideas, and had
hired the brilliant but eccentric Nicolas Tesla
to lead the research.
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
AC vs DC DC easy to generate, simple
generators and motors. The electricity flows
constantly in one direction. AC harder to
generate requires more complicated generator
and motors, but works OK for incandescent
lightning. Does not work for fluorescent or some
other devices. So, you must be able to convert
the AC to DC to use it in many devices. The AC
electricity flows alternately in opposite
directions, changing direction about 100 times
per second (cycles) back and forth. A special set
of devices is needed to deal with this
change. ------------------------ Electricity
leaks out of wires, it leaks out proportionately
less if the voltage is very high. So high voltage
is needed to prevent leakage, but high voltage is
very dangerous in a home. AC can easily be
converted from higher to lower voltage. DC
cannot. So, AC has the advantage that it can be
produced at the electric power plant at a high
voltage (today often 400,000 volts) and then
stepped down to a lower voltage (usually 11,000)
in a neighborhood, and then stepped down again to
220 or 110 volts in a home. DC cannot be handled
the same way. It leaves the power plant and
arrives at the home at the high voltage. To
transfer it a long distance, it would have to be
a very high voltage, and that would not be safe
at the home, so the plan with DC is to produce it
in many neighborhood power plants and only
transport the electricity a short distance that
way a lower voltage can be used. This was
Edisons plan. Keep things simple, but to keep
things safe, local power production of DC would
be needed. Tesla and Westinghouse said, use more
complicated machinery, but use safer, more
efficient AC.
23
Edison began design work on the light bulb in
1878 funded by a 42,000 capital investment from
the JP Morgan bank. After testing over 6000
models, he had a working bulb. He then had to
design all the other components of the system. A
brilliant engineer who had done some work for the
Edison company in Europe, fixed an important
problem for them and been shabbily treated,
Nicolas Tesla. However, after arriving in
America, Tesla agreed to go to work for Edison.
He wanted to design AC equipment, but there was
no opportunity for that in Edisons lab. He was
again assigned a very difficult problem and
solved it brilliantly, having been promised a
50,000 reward. Edison reneged and paid him
nothing. He left the room and never spoke to
Edison again. For a year Tesla worked as a
common laborer in New York, but he bumped into a
businessman, A.K. Brown who wanted to start a
company to compete with Edison. Brown and Tesla
became partners and Tesla started work on the AC
system he had been thinking about for years.
Within one year Tesla gave a talk to the American
Institute of Electrical Engineers. Brown had
arranged that in the audience was the millionaire
inventor George Westinghouse. They became great
friends and Westinghouse offered Tesla a 1
million advance for his machines and a very
lucrative contract for royalties from future
inventions which if it had not been squashed by
legal technicalities in later course cases would
easily have made Tesla the richest man in the
world. The sordid story of the competition
between Westinghouse and Edison is recounted in a
book by Michael White Acid Tongues and Tranquil
Dreamers. While Tesla was enjoying his new-found
wealth and fame, Edison had been influenced by
another engineer, Harold Brown, to try to
discredit Tesla and Westinghouse machines. Brown
organized a series of lecture demonstrations in
which he demonstrated the killing power of AC
currents. At the Columbia School of Mines and in
other sites he repeatedly showed how dogs could
be killed with AC currents. Over the protests of
the audiences and the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, he killed more dogs, a
calf, and a horse in public demonstrations. Back
at Edisons labs hundreds of dogs were killed in
experiments with electrocution that sent howls of
agony echoing through the neighborhood. In 1888
Brown wrote a book financed by Edison The
Comparative Danger to Life of the Alternating and
Continuous Current. A few months later
Westinghouse published a book, Safety of the
Alternating System of Electrical
Distribution White reports how the low point of
this entire demeaning series of events was
reached in August 1890. The previous November
Harold Brown published a magazine article in
which he described a painless new method for
executing prisoners, using AC current, of course.
Brown then persuaded the NY superintendent of
prisons, Austin Lathrop, to authorize an
experimental execution by electricity. Twenty-six
witnesses watched the axe murderer William
Kremmler strapped into the chair. The description
of the execution is gruesome witnesses vomited
and fainted while the prisoner was burned to
death - his hair flaming alight and the smell of
roasting human flesh filled the room as black
smoke poured from his ears. Edison and Browns
demonstration had backfired. People did not want
to hear anymore about the dangers of electricity.
They wanted lights and electricity, and
Westinghouse was giving it to them in an
inexpensive, efficient form.
24
The end of the battle between Edison and
Westinghouse came with two decisions in 1893 and
1895. First, Westinghouses AC system was chosen
to light the fabulous White City at the gigantic
1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. It was the
ultimate demonstration of both the effectiveness
and safety of electricity, as 96,620 bulbs were
illuminated in an unprecedented display. Then in
1895 Westinghouse and General Electric won the
contracts to provide power for the city of
Buffalo using generators at Niagara Falls. AC
had won over DC. Tesla had revenged himself, and
although a series of business complications led
him to sell back the royalty contracts he had
earlier received, he still had a large amount of
money, if only he could manage to hold on to it.
25
In 1893 the White City was lit by 10,000s of
bulbs. In 2003 I was in Guatemala and drew this
sketch of a local woman grinding corn on a stone
mortar and baking her corn bread in a small mud
oven over wooden coals. Her family pig looks on
in front of their stick and straw home.