DISCOVERIES AND INVENTIONS

PENICILLIN : Sir Alexander Fleming was born in Scotland on August 6,1881.He discovered penicillin while working at St Marys Hospital in London in 1928.He observed that a plate of culture Staphylococcus had been contaminated by a blue green mold and a colony of bacteria opposite to the mold was been dissolved. He then grew the mold in a pure culture and found it produced a substance that killed a number of disease causing bacteria. He named it penicillin, noted it had therapeutic value and can be produced in large quantity. So if ever you have an infection it can be used as an antibiotic against it.

TELEPHONE: Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. In Boston on June 2, 1825, he discovered he could hear sound over the wire while experimenting with his technique called harmonic telegraph. This was based on the principle that several notes could be sent simultaneously along same wire if the notes signals differ. On March 10, 1876 he succeeded with his experiment with the telephone by speaking through the instrument to his assistant Thomas A. Watson in the next room. His first words was Mr. Watson come here I want to see you. This paved the way for communication as we know it today and everyone has an access to a phone.

AUTOMOBILE: Karl Frederick Benz was born in Germany in 1844.He is credited by many as the creator of the first true automobile. Between the years 1885/1886 he invented the first gasoline automobile powered by an internal combustion engine .It was a three wheeled, four cycled with the engine and chassis forming a single unit. Today anyone can own a car and it is the most widely used mode of transport.

AIRPLANE; Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17, 1903 successfully powered and piloted their invention the airplane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Dubbed the flyer it flew for 12 seconds. Prior to that they designed and tested a series of gliders added movable tails for stability and studied the propeller. They designed a motor and added it to a sturdier air craft that could accommodate its weigh and vibration. That single flight ushered in the dawn of human flight. Today the aircraft is ubiquitous and is used globally for travel because it is faster and reliable without it the world would not be so connected.

DIESEL: Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858.His profession was that of a refrigerator engineer. However his true love lay in engine design. In 1893 he published a paper describing an engine with combustion within a cylinder, the internal combustion engine. In 1894 he filed a patent for his new invention called the diesel engine. He was almost killed by this engine when it exploded. However this was the first to prove that fuel could be ignited without a spark. He tested his successful engine in 1897.The diesel engine is mostly used by heavy trucks that move our goods