"Discovery consists in seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought."
Albert Szent-Györgyi
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
Leonardo Da Vinci
Da Vinci Biography
Da Vinci Drawings
And Inventions in Applied Physics
Graphic Design by Erik Wunstell © 2007
"Hell, there are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something!"
Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
Graphic Design by Erik Wunstell © 2007
"All big things in this world are done by people who are naive and have an idea that is obviously impossible."
Charles Hamilton (1876–1961)
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Applied Physics
Department of Applied Physics - Columbia University
Image Courtesy of the Thomas Edison House & Historic Homes Foundation © 2003
"Thomas Edison was more responsible than any one else for creating the modern world.
No one did more to shape the physical and cultural makeup of present day civilization.
Accordingly, he was the most influential figure of the millennium."
(The Heroes of the Age: Electricity and Man)
"He led no armies into battle, he conquered no countries, and he enslaved no peoples.
Nonetheless, he exerted a degree of power - the magnitude of which no warrior ever dreamed".
Edison Biography
Edison House
Edison Inventions
Thomas Edison Inventions
BAD TECHNO PREDICTIONS
First reations to Edison's invention of electric light.
"Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure."
Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology (on Edison's light bulb - 1880).
"It is good enough for our transatlantic friends, but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men."
British Parliamentary Committee (referring to Edison’s light bulb - 1878).
"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science
and mischievious to its true progress."
Sir William Siemens (on Edison's light bulb - 1880).
Graphic Design by Erik Wunstell © 2007
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world."
Margaret Mead
Timeline of Scientific Discoveries
Recent Science Discoveries 1997-2007
The Nature of Invention
Graphic Design by Erik Wunstell © 2007 / Center Image Courtesy of 'Magazine Invention' (France).
INVENTION: (a): something invented: as (1) : a product of the imagination;
(2) : a device, contrivance, or process originated after study and experiment.
An invention is an object, process, or technique which displays an element of novelty or usefulness. An invention may
sometimes be based on earlier developments, collaborations or ideas, and the process of invention requires at least
the awareness that an existing concept or method can be modified or transformed into a new invention. However, some
inventions also represent a radical breakthrough in science or technology which extends the boundaries of human knowledge.
Timeline of Invention
Famous Inventions from A-Z
Inventions and Discoveries: From Adrenalin to the Zipper
Top Ten Inventions
19th Century Inventions
20th Century Inventions
21st Century Inventions
Engineering – How Stuff Works
Editorial Cartoon © 2003
Courtesy of Cox & Forkum
"If everyone was normal, there'd be no art."
Inventive Considerations
"You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative;
the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers."
Walter Lippmann
"The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing,
self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology."
E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973
"The greatest task before civilization is to make machines what they
ought to be, the slaves of men, instead of the masters of men."
Havelock Ellis
"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of
nature but plunges him more deeply into them."
Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
Elbert Hubbard 1923
"This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant
with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology
which now constitute the slave of man - if man is not enslaved by it."
Jonas Salk
"Technology can do little for people who have nothing to say."
Eric Auchard
"Technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand
and it stabs you in the back with the other."
-C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971
"The most important problems of today's technology are no longer just
the satisfactions of our needs and wishes, but the repair of the damages
by the technology of yesterday."
Dennis Gabor, Innovations: Scientific, Technological and Social, 1970
"A healthy ecology is the basis for a healthy economy"
Claudine Schneider, U.S. Representative
"The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men,
but that men will begin to think like computers."
Sydney J. Harris
"We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action, of the machine
we have created to serve us."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"When a machine begins to run without human aid, it is time to scrap it,
whether it be a factory or a government."
Alexander Chase, Perspectives, 1966
Reflections for the Inventor & Developer
"They took all the trees - put 'em in a tree museum
and they charged the people - a dollar and a half just to see 'em.
Don't it always seem to go - that you don't know what you've got
till it's gone. They paved paradise - and put up a parking lot.
Hey farmer farmer - put away that DDT now.
Give me spots on my apples
but leave me the birds and the bees. "
Joni Mitchell 'Big Yellow Taxi' © 1970
The Scream of the Butterfly
NOW!
"What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her.
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
and tied her with fences and dragged her down.
I hear a very gentle sound
with my ear down to the ground.
We want the world and we want it...
Now. Now? Now!
See the light, babe
Save us! Jesus! Save us!"
Jim Morrison 'When the Music's Over' © 1967
The Science of Ethics
ETHICS: (1) the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation,
(2) a system of moral principles or values, (3) the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group,
(4) expressing right behavior, (5) good, proper, fair, just, upright, truthful, genuine.
Left-'Turin Shroud' Reversed Enhancement. Center & Right by Heinrich Hofmann 1892-94 ('Christ & the Rich Young Ruler' & 'The Lord's Image').
Go and do thou likewise.
“With our thoughts we make the world.”
Buddha - Founder of Buddhism (c. 563-c. 483 B.C.)
"To know just what has to be done, then to do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life."
Sir William Osler, Canadian medical pioneer. (1849-1919).
"You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."
Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. president (1809-1865)
Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.”
Charles-Louis de Secondat, French political philosopher (1689-1755)
“What do I owe to my times, to my country, to my neighbors, to my friends?
Such are the questions
which a virtuous man ought often to ask himself.”
Johann Kaspar Lavater, German poet (1741-1801)
"Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful,
or to discover something that is true."
William Inge, American playwright (1913-1973)
“Public virtue is a kind of ghost town into which anyone can move and declare himself sheriff."
Saul Bellow, American novelist (b. 1915)
“As long as I can conceive something better than myself
I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence.”
George Bernard Shaw, Anglo-Irish dramatist and wit (1856-1950)
"It's easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be
independent
when you haven't got a thing — that's the Lord's test."
Mahalia Jackson, gospel singer (1911-1972)
“The future enters into us, in order to transform us, long before it happens.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet (1875-1926)
“To protect those who are not able to protect themselves is a duty which every one owes to society.''
Edward Macnaghten
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
Chinese proverb
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
Unknown
"It is in the shelter of each other that people live."
Irish proverb
"Leaders are visionaries with no concept of the odds against them.
They make the impossible happen."
Dr. Robert Jarvik, 20th-century American heart surgeon
“We are all angels with only one wing. We can only fly while embracing each other.”
Luciano de Crescenzo, Italian writer (b. 1928)
"Politics is the art of controlling the environment."
Hunter S. Thompson, 20th-century American journalist
"Make no little plans! They have no magic to stir men’s blood."
Daniel Burnham, 19th-century Chicago architect
The Earth Ecology Foundation's Quarterly
Spotlight on Invention
' TELEVISION'
Images Courtesty of TVHistory.tv
A Look at Television's History and Future
" In London, a concern called Television Ltd. obtained licenses to retail the 'televisor,'
a picture-radio device (invented by John L. Baird of Glasgow) that permits 'looking in'
as well as listening in. Broadcasting from a televisor station in London was to begin at once."
From 'Inventions'
Feb. 22, 1926
"For centuries men have dreamed of the eye that would penetrate stone walls and
miles of space. Last week 'sight at a distance' (television) came true."
From 'Television'
Apr. 18, 1927
"Television, last spring a Bell Telephone laboratory accomplishment,
last week a GE and RCA practical device."
From 'Practical Television'
Jan. 23, 1928
"The 1926 introduction of television enabled us to bring the whole world into our living rooms.
The fact that we choose to watch 'Jerry Springer' is not TV's fault."
Erik Wunstell
"Do you realize if it weren't for Edison we'd be watching TV by candlelight?"
Al Boliska - Humorist
Television
Radio & Television History
A Timeline of Television History
U.S. Television Chronology 1875-1970
Television History
Television Timeline
FCC History of Television
Images Courtesty of TVHistory.tv
"In 1948 only one American in ten had seen a television, but everyone was talking about it.
TV's enthusiasts predicted that "children will go to school in their own living rooms, presidential candidates
will win elections from a television studio. Housewives will see on the screen the dresses and groceries
they want, and shop by phone."
Just two years later that new-fangled invention was getting so popular, radio comedian
Fred Allen warned, that television "threatened to change Americans into creatures with eyeballs
as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all."
Time Magazine - 1958
Encyclopedia of Television
(Museum of Broadcast Communications)
Images Courtesty of TVHistory.tv
Library of TV Ads (50 Years of Commercials)
Early Television History
Time Magazine: History of TV Archive
Images Courtesty of TVHistory.tv
The History of Color TV
NBC'S First Coast to Coast Colorcast
Firsts in Color TV
History of Documentary TV
American Museum of the Moving Image
TV News History
TV and the Kennedy Assasination
Television and the U.S. Space Program
TV & the Apollo Space Program
National Geographic Television
Outrageous Firsts in Television History
Images Courtesty of TVHistory.tv
"As a better-informed public has demanded more and more information about current events,
TV news programs have changed from loss leaders and have begun to start paying their way.
And as the networks have made the most of them, news shows like Cronkite's have become one
of the most important and influential molders of public opinion in the U.S."
Time Magazine - 1966
"All media are extensions of some human faculty -- psychic or physical. The wheel ... is an
extension of the foot ... the book is an extension of the eye ... clothing, an extension of the
skin ... electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system.
Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions.
The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act -- the way we perceive the world.
When these ratios change, men change."
Marshall McLuhan
The Medium is the Message - 1967
"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room
by people you wouldn't have in your home."
David Frost - Satirist
The Earth Ecology Foundation's Guide to the
TOP 50 TV CHANNEL WEBSITE LINKS
The Good Things About Television
The Benefits of Television
Proof That TV Doesn’t Harm Children
Children & TV
Image Courtesty of HDTV Magazine
How Television Works
How Cable TV Works
Guide to HDTV
CNET Guide to HDTV
CNET Future of TV
NY Times Ultra-High Definition Video
Classic Paintings for HDTV
Image Courtesty of Panasonic
Space Technology Video Feed
The Evolution of Human Flight
Using 'aeronautics' as an example of the scientific progression of invention.
Aeronautics
From Da Vinci to The Discovery - In 500 Years
Graphic Design by Erik Wunstell © 2006
Da Vinci's 1488 airplane glider (ornithopter) and helicopter designs.
* Aviation records mention manned gliders in China by AD 500.
'Gongshu BanGongshuzi constructed a bird from bamboo and wood
and when
it was completed he flew it. It stayed up (in the air) for three days.'
* In 852 a daredevil named, Armen Firman, decided to fly off a tower in Córdoba
using a huge
winglike cloak to break his fall. He survived with minor injuries, and the young Ibn Firnas was
there to see it. This was considered to be the first parachute.
In 875 - Ibn Firnas built his own glider, and launched himself from a mountain.
The flight was largely successful, and was widely observed by a crowd that he had invited. However,
the landing was bad. He injured his back, and left critics saying he hadn't taken proper account of
the way birds pull up into a stall, and land on their tails. He'd provided neither a tail, nor means for
such a maneuver. He died twelve years later.
"Ibn Firnas was the first man, in history, to make a scientific attempt at flying."
Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs.
* Unknown Chinese manned kites were common as reported by Marco Polo 1290.
There are records of early, short-distance glider flights from the 10th and 11th centuries and
possibly earlier human-carrying kites from China, but practical human aviation began in 1783
with the first untethered human flight, in a hot air balloon - designed by the Montgolfier brothers.
* EEF Research Notes on 'Pre-Wright Brothers' Flight History *
Rocketry
From Chinese Fire Arrows to The Apollo - In 1500 Years
Graphic Design by Erik Wunstell © 2006
The 400 B.C. Roman & Chinese invention of fireworks led to war rockets of 1200 A.D. - 1900 A.D.
the 1940 - 1968 missle programs and eventual flights to the moon.
{EDIT HERE}
On September 19, 1783, in Versailles, the Montgolfier Brothers flew 'the first air passengers' in a basket suspended below a hot-air balloon
(a sheep, a rooster, and a duck). The flight, which lasted eight minutes, took place in front of the French court,as well as a crowd of
about 130,000. The balloon flew nearly 2 miles before returning the occupants safely to earth.
The next aviation milestone occurred on October 15, 1783, when the brothers constructed a hot-air balloon that, at the end of a tether, rose
84 feet into the air with its first human passenger, Jean-François Pil&tre de Rozier.
The balloon stayed aloft for almost four minutes.
On November 21, 1783, the first confirmed aeronauts, de Rozier and d'Arlandes, made a free ascent in a balloon and flew from the center of
Paris to the suburbs, about 5.5 miles in 25 minutes. On January 19, 1784, a huge hot-air balloon (built by the Montgolfiers) carried a total of
seven passengers to a height of 3,000 feet over the city of Lyons.
