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Guess what each of these famous scientists were famous for by reading their responses to a party invitation?
And after you play the game, visit our song pages for the "Mother Necessity" song about famous inventors.
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most prolific inventors of the late 19th century. He is most famous for his development of the first commercially practical incandescent lamp (1879). Perhaps his greatest contribution, however, was the development (1882) of the world's first central electric light power station (see POWER, GENERATION AND TRANSMISSION OF). His early
laboratories were forerunners of the modern industrial research laboratory, where skilled researchers jointly solve technological problems.
(Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)
James Watt
James Watt was a Scottish engineer and
inventor who played an important part in the development of the STEAM ENGINE as a practical power source. He studied instrument making and in 1755 went to
London (at the age of 18) to study further and practice his trade. The unit of power is called the Watt, named after James Watt, who also happened to invent the first practical steam engine design. The Watt symbol is W, and it is equal to 1/746 of a horsepower,
or one Volt times one Amp. Although Watt did not invent the steam
engine itself, his improved engine was really the first useful device for
efficiently converting heat into useful work and was a key stimulus to the
Industrial Revolution.
(Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)
George Stephenson
George Stephenson, extremely poor as a young man, worked in local collieries
and taught himself to read and write in his spare time. In 1812, he became a
colliery engine builder, and in 1814 he built his first locomotive. When the
Stockton and Darlington Railway was projected, George Stephenson was retained
as company engineer. He convinced the owners to use steam motive power and
built the line's first locomotive, the Locomotion. In 1825, Stephenson moved
to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. He and his son Robert built
(1826-29) the Rocket, which won the competition held to design a suitable
steam locomotive for that railroad.
(Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)
The Wright Brothers
The Wright brothers' interest in aviation started in 1896, when they learned of
early European experiments in sustained FLIGHT. They began a program for
building an airplane by first conducting tests with kites and then gliders.
Before attempting powered flight, they solved the essential problems of
controlling a plane's motion in rising, descending, and turning. An isolated
beach near Kitty Hawk, N.C., was selected for flight tests on the advice of
the U.S. Weather Bureau. After making more than 700 successful glider flights
at Kitty Hawk in 1902, the Wright brothers faced the problem of finding an
engine light enough and powerful enough to get their plane off the ground. No
automobile manufacturer would accept the assignment, so the Wright brothers,
along with Charles Taylor, designed and built their own 12-to-16 horsepower
engine and propeller for their plane, which was originally named Flyer I, and
commonly called Kitty Hawk. On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville achieved the first
successful flight ever made in a self-propelled heavier-than-air craft. In 1907, the Wright brothers contracted with the U.S. Army Signal Corps to
build a plane capable of carrying two men on flights of up to 200 km (125
mi). The plane was delivered and tests were completed in June 1909. Their
first commercial success was with a French syndicate in 1908; in 1909, the
American Wright Company was formed.
(Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The idea for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) came to its
author, Robert Louis STEVENSON, in a dream. In the story, a
respectable physician, Dr. Jekyll, can chemically transform himself into a monster, Mr. Hyde, who reflects the worst side of Dr.
Jekyll's personality. Jekyll is fatally attracted to becoming Mr. Hyde, and Mr. Hyde takes over completely. The personality division suggests Sigmund FREUD'S duality of id and
superego and the inevitable conflict between them. There are many movies available based on this work.
(Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)
Isaac Newton
Newton's greatest achievement was his work in physics and CELESTIAL
MECHANICS, which culminated in the theory of universal GRAVITATION. It is not true that he discovered universal gravitation in 1666 while watching an apple fall from a
tree in his garden. That story is simply a myth. By 1666, Newton had formulated early versions
of his three LAWS OF MOTION. He had also discovered the law stating the
centrifugal force (or force away from the center) of a body moving uniformly
in a circular path.
(Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)
Samuel Morse
Samuel Finley Breese Morse achieved distinction both as an artist, particularly as a painter of
miniatures, and as an inventor. Morse was educated at Yale College but also went to Europe for art training. It
was during the return voyage from one such trip (1832) that he conceived of
an electromagnetic signaling system.
Although Morse continued with his artistic activities in New York and
became first president of the National Academy of Design, his main activity after 1837 was the development of an electric
TELEGRAPH. Morse's important contribution was that he based his
receiver on the ELECTROMAGNET. This feature ultimately ensured the universal
adoption of his system. When the electromagnet was energized by a pulse of
current from the sender, a soft iron armature was attracted to the magnet and it produced marks, or variations, in a straight line that was being recorded on a
moving strip of paper. The grouping of such marks symbolized the words of a message.
Morse soon devised a code whereby letters and numbers were represented
by combinations of dot and dash symbols, which corresponded to signals of
short and long duration. With the aid of Alfred Vail, the
original receiver was greatly improved and adapted to print the dot-and-dash
symbols. Such a system was used in the first U.S. telegraph link that Morse
set up in 1844 between Baltimore and Washington.
(Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)
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