THE TELEGRAPH WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2009

3 e

Eureka Moments
Some scientific
inventions come
about after
years of
research. Some
come about like
a bolt from the
blue. That's the
Eureka moment
when
everything
becomes crystal
clear. Take a
look at these
defining
moments in the
world of science

Archimedes

(287 BC -212 BC): King Heiro II of Syracuse, Italy, wanted

Archimedes, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, to find
out if his new crown was made of solid gold. But
he had to do it without damaging the crown.
Archimedes was wracking his brains to find the
answer when, one day, as he stepped into a
bathtub for a bath, he saw how his body displaced the water. Suddenly, it occurred to him
that he could determine the density of the crown
by noting how much water it displaced.
Archimedes was so excited that off he ran
through the streets naked, (remember, he was in
his bath) shouting,Eureka! I have found it!

(1643-1727):
One day, Newton
was walking in his garden in Lincolnshire, England, when he saw an
apple fall to the ground from a tree.That
set him thinking about the theory of
gravitation. He realised that it was the
gravitational pull of the earth which
pulled objects towards it and prevented them from floating in the air.
Subsequently, he found that maybe
gravity was not just limited to the earth
and the objects on it.That one apple
had spurred Newton into making
one of the most important discoveries of all time.

Isaac Newton

James Watt

(1736-1819): Legend has it that when

Watt was a child in

Greenock, Scotland,
he would sit by the
kitchen range and
watch the kettle boil.
He saw that the steam
created so much
pressure that the kettle lid was pushed up.

That interesting observation stood him in

good stead when he grew up. He devised
a way to harness the power of steam and
that is what finally gave birth to steam engines.
(1856 -1943): Austrian inventor Nikola
Tesla, who was trying to find a better and
cheaper alternative to direct current (DC),
got the idea for alternating current (AC)
while out on
a walk. He
used his
walking
stick to
draw a picture on the
ground, explaining
how alternating current would
work. He
went on to partner with George Westinghouse to come up with alternating current which has, since then, become the
norm everywhere.

Nikola Tesla

s
u
o
Fam tors K
inven

(1879-1955):
The world
reveres Albert Einstein for his theory of
relativity. Einstein had for long been trying to prove
two seemingly
contradictory
theories of
space and
time.While riding home in a
streetcar one
day, he was
struck by the
sight of the famous clock
tower in Bern,
Switzerland.
And the answer came to
him in a flash
that time
can beat at different rates
throughout the universe, depending on
how fast you moved.

Albert Einstein

(1873-1961): We
now know that nerve
impulses in our body are transmitted
chemically. But German chemist Otto
Loewi made that discovery in a dream!
The story goes that just before Easter
Sunday, in 1920, Loewi dreamed of an experiment he could do that would prove
how nerve impulses were transmitted. He
woke up in the middle of the night, scribbled the experiment down and went back
to sleep.When he woke up, he couldnt
read his notes. Luckily, he had the same
dream the next night.The experiment and
his later work earned him the title, the
Father of Neuroscience.

Otto Loewi

Their historic inventions changed our lives

ARL BENZ: The German mechanical engineer, is acknowledged

as the inventor of the modern automobile. Although several other German engineers, including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm
Maybach and
Siegfried Marcus, were
working on cars at about the
same time, Benz designed not only the engine, but the
whole vehicle. The automobile designed by him the
Motorwagen was powered by four-stroke gasoline engines and was built in 1885.
ILLEM JOHAN KOLFF: Dutch medical
researcher Willem J. Kolff was a pioneer in
the field of artificial organs. He helped develop and refine the heart-lung machine, making openheart surgery possible. This led him to work on an artificial heart and an intra-aortic balloon pump that helps
patients with heart disease. He has also worked with Dr Robert Jarvik
in developing a series of mechanically efficient implantable hearts. In 1982,
the first fully artificial heart was implanted in a human patient.

HE WRIGHT BROTHERS: Americans

Wilbur and Orville Wright are credited with inventing and building the worlds first successful
airplane. Having spent a considerable time observing
birds in flight, they used the birds technique to obtain roll
control, or wing warping. They first built a small glider that
flew like a kite. Then they went on to build an aircraft with a
motor. This craft came to be known as the Flyer. After two attempts, Orville took the Flyer for a 12-second, sustained flight in 1903 the
first powered, piloted flight in history.

TTO HAHN: German chemist Otto Hahn discovered many a radioactive substance, pioneering the discovery of nuclear fission. In 1938,
when looking for transuranium elements in a uranium sample that had
been bombarded with neutrons, Hahn found traces of barium. This led to the discovery of nuclear fission: Hahn concluded that the uranium nucleus had burst
into the atomic nuclei of medium weight. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry in 1944.

LEXANDER FLEMING: Scottish biologist and pharmacologist Fleming is best

known for the discovery of the antibiotic
penicillin in 1928. Penicillin has helped save thousands
of lives since. Fleming identified a mould that had contaminated his culture plates as penicillin, paving the way
for modern antibiotics. For this discovery he was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1945.

HE LUMIRE BROTHERS: French brothers Auguste Lumire and

Louis Lumire were the first inventors of cinema as a mass medium.
They patented a number of significant processes including their film
camera the cinmatographe. The first footage ever to be recorded using it was
shot in 1895.

IM BERNERS-LEE: A British engineer, computer scientist and MIT professor, Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990. His goal was
to facilitate the sharing of information among researchers.
With a little help from Belgian informatics engineer Robert
Cailliau, he built a prototype system, which formed the basis
for the World Wide Web. He also wrote the first server client
programme, wrote the first version of the document formatting
language HTML (hyper text mark-up language), and initiated the
specifications for URLs (universal resource locators), HTTP (hyper text transfer
protocol), and HTML.

Patently
absurd
Some inventions are momentous. Some are plain
goofy. Check out these odd
contraptions
 Windy wheels: Forget pedalling
this bicycle will allow to literally sail
through. Patented in the US in the
1980s, Windy Wheels
is a bicycle with a sail
attached. If there is
sufficient wind, the
self-adjusting sail will
speed you down the
road. What if you
want to stop when
theres a sudden gust
of wind? Theres no
need to apply those brakes. Simply ram
the cycle against something big!
 Power
glasses: Have
you ever been out on
the streets when its
pitch dark? How
about a pair of glasses that come with battery-powered
lights? This 1930s invention allowed one
to simply switch on the lights when it got
really dark. The only drawback, however,
was that there was a long wire attached
to it. No wonder few cared to wear them!
 Hat tipper: If you belonged to the
Victorian era you would have had quite a
time tipping your hat to everyone you
met. Well, a resourceful inventor came
up with a hat tipper to save that weary
arm. One could just give a slight nod to
get the arm and pendulum mechanism
to work, thus tipping the hat
automatically.
 Gluttons, beware:
This one is a fork that blinks
red if you get carried away,
bingeing on those lovely oily
foods. Patented in the US in
1995, the alarm fork comes
equipped with a green and a
red light. You are allowed to
eat only while the green light
is on. The moment the fork
senses that you are eating
more than is good for you, it
will turn on the red light,
warning you to stop being such a glutton. But going by the fact that many people in US have a serious obesity problem, the fork is clearly not doing its job!
 Rain dome: Do you find it a bother to carry an umbrella around? The rain
dome, invented in
1999, relieves you
from the burden of
carrying that brolly, as
it stays flat on your
head like a cap and
pops open the moment it feels a rain
drop. It also has air
vents that allow fresh air in while it keeps
the rain out. Thats kinda cool, eh?
 Rise and shine: Forget the shrill
racket made by an ordinary alarm clock.
The Wake n Bacon Alarm Clock will
rouse you by giving off the oh-so-heavenly smell of sizzling bacon. One whiff
and, so goes the theory, and youll be out
of the bed in a jiffy. Its a device invented
fairly recently,
in 2006, in the
US. Maybe the
inventors
could be
coaxed to
come up with an alarm clock that emits
the smell of biryani, or frying luchis. We
wouldnt mind that, would we?