Great Inventions part 6

Great Inventions part 6

Telescope:
Lenses were used for cenruries until someone found out that combining two lenses together enlarge the image. Probably the first one who did it was one of Dutch glasses maker in XVII century. Hans Lippershey, Zacharias Jenssen and Jacob Metius are the three whom the development of refracting telescope is credited. Hans patented his project in 1608 and started to manufacture it. Dutch government bought them for army because they quickly realized how usefull it is for marine. In 1609 Galileo heard about Dutch telescope, within a month he built his own and improved it in the following year. In the same year he become the first pearson who point the telescope skyward in order to make telescopic obeservations of the celestial object. Using the telescope Galileo made some crucial discoveries for astronomy and changed the point of view about the structure of the universe. In 1668 Isaac Newton using not only lenses but also mirrors created a reflecting telescope in which do not occure chromatic aberrations (colors distortions) unlike in the refracting ones. Invetion of achromatic lenses in 1733 which partialy corrected color aberrations enabled to produce shorter and more functional refracting telescopes.

Newtonian Telescope:  

Chromatic Aberration:

     

Great Inventions part 5

Great Inventions part 5

According to the comment below the previous post about Steam engine - James Watt introduced some crucial improvements to steam engine and because of that he is said to be the one who started the Industrial age. Maybe that's why he comes to your mind when You think about the steam engine.

Refirigerator:
Before the invention of refrigerator people used icehouses to storage food for the most of the day. Basically it was a hole below the ground level filled with snow and ice where you store food to keep it fresh for longer. The first who invented something like refrigerator was professor William Cullen in 1755. He used a pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which then boiled, absorbing heat from the surrounding air. This experiment created a small amount of ice but have no practical usage at that time. In 1805 Oliver Evans described a closed vapor-compression refrigeration cycle for the production of ice. Thanks to the British scientist Michael Faraday (the same one who is known from his Faraday cage) who liquified ammonia and other gases by using high pressures and low temperatures in 1820, 14 years later Jacob Perkins invented the first vapor-compression refrigerator system which could operate continously. The refrigerators for home and domestic use was created in 1913. The first company that succeed in commercialising fridges was Electrolux.
                             Scheme of refrigerator:

Great Inventions part 4

Great Inventions part 4

Steam engine:

It's a heat engine that uses steam as working fluid to perform mechanical work. The first steam engine was aeolipile (also known as Heron's Engine) created in the 1st century AD  by Heron from Alexandria. His invention was a cupola rotated by vapor stream from bent metal tubes. It didn't have any practical use back then but in fact it was a complete model of steam turbine. In 1690 Denis Papin created a cylinder with piston and little amount of water on the bottom, which was heated to pull up the piston and after removing the source of heat steam was condensing and the piston was moving. Due to too low thermal efficiency his machine couldn't work properly but the year of his invention is considered as the birth of steam engine. The first useful steam- powered machine was a pump for dewatering mines created by Thomas Savery in 1690. His invention had the power of 1 horsepower (750W). In 1712 Thomas Newcomen improved Savery's machine to piston atmospheric steam engine. In 1883 Carl Lavar created action turbine and year later Charles Parsons  created reaction engine.