American Science and Invention: A Pictorial History

1
American Science and Invention A Pictorial
History

• Summary by David E. Goldberg
• Department of General Engineering
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Urbana, IL 61801

2
Text

• Wilson, M. (195x). American science and
  invention. New York, NY Bonanza Books.
• Author novelist and assistant to Enrico Fermi.

3
Organization

• Giants in the wilderness
• The shock of freedom
• Bright dreamdark fulfillment
• The tools of war
• The new era
• Last individualists
• The new dimension

4
Boundaries of America

• Awareness of the wilderness.
• Common thread throughout the colonies.
• English laws against manufacture.

5
Trades

• American trades no where as skilled as European.
• Jack of all trades because of extent of the
  market.
• Yankee ingenuity unknown in colonies.
• Fishing/Whaling
• Ship and sailmaking 2000 privateers/90,000men

6
American Men of Science

• Franklin Electrical work known worldwide.
• Ben Thompson Lord Rumford, modern fireplace.
• Joseph Priestley Oxygen.

7
Surveyors of Land and Sea

• Lewis and Clark
• 1803 Ratification of Louisiana Purchase.
• Collected specimens but lost
• Nathaniel Bowditch
• New practical navigator (1802)
• Lunar navigation

8
Engineers Inventors

• Military meaning men who erected engines of war,
  catapults, storming towers, fortifications.
• Mechanical philosophy mechanics
• Craftsmen respected.
• Inventors considered lunatics

9
Fitch before Fulton

• Oar driven steamboat in 1790s John Fitch of CT
• Tried sidewheels, screw.
• Died in despair.
• Fulton Katherine of Clermont

10
Oliver Evans

• Developed reduced size steam engine in which
  steam pushed (rather than condensed as in
  Newcomen engine).

11
Stevens Dynasty

• John Stevens and Robert Livingston
  (brother-in-law)
• Worked on railroad and improved steam engines.
• Fultons folly Clermont, 150ft long, 18 ft beam,
  100 tons

12
Erie Canal

• Doomed by railroad.
• Wealth of New York as harbor to inland.
• First engineering school of US.
• Profession of Civil Engineering born in states
• Canvass White found hydraulic cement concrete
  for use in canal.

13
Eli Whitney

• Cotton gin spurred growth of cotton and
  reinvigorated slavery.
• Slave price doubled after gin.
• Whitney not compensated.

14
Mass Production

• Whitney
• Rifle assembly from standardized parts.
• First milling machine.
• 8 years to fill order for 10,000 rifles.
• Order for 15,000 more (1811) in two years
• Samuel Slater
• Imported English textile factory
• Reproduced machinery from memory.

15
Long Morton Anasthesia

• Crawford Long discovered anasthetic use of ether
  in 1840s.
• Did not publish
• William Thomas Green Morton, 1846.

16
Joseph Henry

• Induction of electricity in wire caused by moving
  magnetic field.
• First electric motor, telegraph (ahead of Morse)
  1831
• Understood electromagnetics as wave phenomenon.
• Director of Smithsonian.

17
Yankee Ingenuity

• New heroes men of inventiveness.
• Patent law of 1838, notion of patent search.
• Legend grew after 1830s or so.

18
Telegraph Takes Off

• Samuel Morse Early demo 1837, 1700 feet of wire.
• Backer Stephen Vail, 2000, if son Alfred could
  be assistant.
• Vail worked out many of Morses details.
• DC to Baltimore test case.

19
Early 1800s Hall of Fame

• Charles Goodyear Vulcanization of rubber.
• Walter Hunt sewing machine and safety pin.
• Elias Howes Isaac Singer reinvented the sewing
  machine.

20
Agriculture Equipment

• John Deere, 1833, first steel plow.
• Robert Cyrus McCormick demo of reaper machine
  in 1831
• Sold first two machine 1841, 1000 in 1851.
• Legal problems. Widespread copying.

21
Transportation

• The railroads. Stevens family.
• Clipper ships American ships held most speed
  records. John Griffiths.
• Lightning record to Liverpool in 19.5 hours (18.5
  knots) 1854.

22
Forge, Pan, and Derrick

• Iron Henry Bessemer and William Kelly
  (Kentucky). Air bubbled through, results in high
  grade steel.
• Kelly perfected process in 1851, 6 years before
  Bessemer.
• Kelly assigned patent to father-in-law, wife
  withheld it for his own good.

23
Gold

• James Marshall building sawmill noticed yellow
  mineral in 1848.
• Gold rush was on.
• Clipper ships and wagon trains brought new people
  to west.

24
Oil

• Needed a substitute for expensive whale oil.
• E. L. Drake partner of Bissell and Eveleth.
• Invented modern method of drilling.
• Struck oil in 1859.

25
War Tools

• Telegraph
• Balloons
• Gatling gun
• Iron ships
• Torpedoes
• Submarines

26
Big Business Cometh

• George Pullman dining and sleeping cars 1858,
  after raising Chicago..
• Refrigerator Cars George Henry Hammond had a car
  built in 1867.
• Farm equipment revisited
• Machine tools.

27
More, more, more

• Typewriter, C. L. Sholes 1867, to Remington in
  1873.
• Air brakes widespread collisions, George
  Westinghouse, at age 23.
• Photography George Eastman

28
Invention of the RD Lab

• Thomas A. Edison,
• Newark (1870)
• Menlo Park 1876)
• Phone improvements
• Lightbulb
• Phonograph

29
Invention of the Assembly Line
30
Triodes before Transistors

• Lee De Forest 1873-
• Triode or audion
• Oscillators and amplifiers depended on it.

31
Bell and the Telephone

• 1875 accident on harmonic telegraph.
• Bell lived 1847-1922