3 Technologies and How It All Began
Education3 Technologies and How It All Began
Before we were all swallowed by technology at the tip of our fingers to push the button or spare our hands of the effort and make use of voice commands or motion sensors to activate lighting or flushing the toilet, things started out in a fairly tedious pace. If our forefathers were then living in the past century to witness the crude beginnings you could very well guess they will be the first ones to scoff at any of those efforts. However so, we the descendants were ironically confined to patronize the fruits of those efforts in the present not because we are firm believers of how these technologies work but because we simply want less burden in our daily living which these technologies mend to leave the hardest part of the work for us to switch the on/off buttons. Consider these technologies and imagine our present life if we have to live without them.
Light Bulb – Could you imagine a life without light bulb? Even that will be quite dark and hopeless to imagine. Could you last the night by lighting candles in your lifetime? Although the end credit was often attributed to Thomas Alva Edison of the United States, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan of the United Kingdom was way ahead of former in the quest for the light bulb. Swan was able to produce a crude electric light from a filament of carbonized paper in a glass bulb. He was able to refine the method which led to the practical light bulb the same year it was improved and perfected by Thomas Edison (1880) who happened to rely on his work in improving the carbon filament.
Photocopying – Consider the significance of producing copies of documents and reading materials from a costly reference book or a copy of a contract from a single original. Imagine having a copy of the outline of your professor’s subject for lecture in school without further trouble in copying endless notes on the blackboard. Photocopying is indeed an indispensable technology of the present that sees wide use in business, education and private sectors. The start of xerography as the technology was popularly called (from Greek words which mean “dry writing”) was traced back from 1937 as developed by American physicist Chester F. Carlson. The method only reached refinement for commercial use in 1950.
Vacuum Cleaner – As necessity is often called the mother of invention, the origin of the portable vacuum cleaner came to being because a janitor in 1907 was suffering from asthma and having to deal with dust in his job was something he couldn’t do away without to keep himself at work. To save himself from health risks while at work, James Spangler devised a way of collecting dust and dirt into an old pillowcase by connecting a fan motor through a broom handle. After claiming patent for the concept, Spangler however lacked funds to improve the technology that he sold the patent rights to his cousin’s husband, William Henry Hoover. As the rest of the story goes, Hoover successfully carried on and improved the concept that earned his name in the household today so that if you need to use a vacuum cleaner in the UK you will be referred as involved in an act of hoovering.
References:
Edison, Thomas Alva. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
photocopying machine. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
Carlson, Chester F. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
The Book of Origins, pp. 167-169 by Trevor Homer