Thomas Edison was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, but grew up in Port Huron, Michigan,
after the family moved there in 1854.[] He was the seventh and last child of Samuel
Ogden Edison Jr. (1804–1896, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia) and Nancy Matthews
Elliott (1810–1871, born in Chenango County, New York).[9][10] His patrilineal family line
was Dutch by way of New Jersey;[11] the surname had originally been "Edeson". His
grandfather John Edeson fled New Jersey for Nova Scotia in 1784, his father moved to
Vienna, Ontario, and fled after his involvement in the Rebellion of 1837.
Edison was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother, who used to be a
school teacher. He attended school for only a few months. However, one biographer
described him as a very curious child who learned most things by reading on his
own. As a child, he became fascinated with technology and spent hours working on
experiments at home
Thomas Edison used this carbon-filament bulb in the
first public demonstration of his most famous invention
—the light bulb, the first practical electric incandescent
lamp. The light bulb creates light when electrical
current passes through the metal filament wire, heating
it to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament
is protected from air by a glass bulb that is filled with
inert gas. The demonstration took place at Edison’s
Menlo Park, N.J., laboratory on New Year's Eve, 1879.
Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847. The
family home was at South Charlotte Street, and has a stone
inscription marking it as Bell's birthplace. He had two brothers:
Melville James Bell (1845–1870) and Edward Charles Bell
(1848–1867), both of whom would die of tuberculosis. His
father was Alexander Bell, a phonetician, and his mother was
Eliza Grace Bell (née Symonds). Born as just "Alexander Bell", at
age 10, he made a plea to his father to have a middle name like
his two brothers. For his 11th birthday, his father acquiesced
and allowed him to adopt the name "Graham", chosen out of
respect for Alexander Graham, a Canadian being treated by his
father who had become a family friend. To close relatives and
friends he remained ""BeAleckll and his siblings attended a
Presbyterian Church in their youth.
A telephone is a telecommunications device that
permits two or more users to conduct
a conversation when they are too far apart to be
easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound,
typically and most efficiently the human voice, into
electronic signals that are transmitted
via cables and other communication channels to
another telephone which reproduces the sound to
the receiving user. The term is
derivedfrom Greek: τῆλε (tēle, far) and φωνή
(phōnē, voice), together meaning distant voice. A
common short form of the term is phone, which
came into use early in the telephone's history.
James Watt was born on 19 January 1736 in Greenock,
Renfrewshire, the eldest of the five surviving children of Agnes
Muirhead (1703–1755) and James Watt (1698–1782).[3] His
mother came from a distinguished family, was well educated
and said to be of forceful character, while his father was a
shipwright, ship owner and contractor, and served as the
Greenock's chief baillie in 1751.[3][4] The Watt family's wealth
came in part from Watt's father's trading in slaves and slave-
produced goods.[5] Watt's parents were Presbyterians and
strong Covenanters,[6] but despite his religious upbringing he
later became a deist.[7][8] Watt's grandfather, Thomas Watt
(1642–1734), was a teacher of mathematics, surveying and
navigation[3] and baillie to the Baron of Cartsburn.[9]
A steam engine is an engine that uses steam from boiling water to make it
move. The steam pushes on the engine parts to make them move. Steam
engines can power many kinds of machines including vehicles and electric
generators.
Steam engines were used in mine pumps starting in the early 1700s
century and were much improved by James Watt in the 1770s. They were
very important during the industrial revolution where they replaced
horses, windmills and watermills to work machines.
The first steam engines were piston engines. The steam pressure pushed
on a piston which made it move along a cylinder and so they had a
reciprocal (back-and-forth) motion. This could move a pump directly or
work a crank to turn a wheel and work a machine. They operated at low
pressure and had to be very big to make a lot of power.
Steam engines were used in factories to work machines and in mines to
move pumps. Later smaller engines were built that could move railway
locomotives and steam boats.
Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but according to the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography he was most likely
born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England.
[8] A blue plaque on the junction of Larcom Street and
Walworth Road commemorates the event.[9]
His date of birth was given in his obituary in The Times as 26
December 1792; but then a nephew wrote to say that
Babbage was born one year earlier, in 1791. The parish
register of St. Mary's, Newington, London, shows that
Babbage was baptised on 6 January 1792, supporting a birth
year of 1791
The idea of mechanically calculating mathematical tables first came to
Babbage in 1812 or 1813. Later he made a small calculator that could
perform certain mathematical computations to eight decimals. Then in
1823 he obtained government support for the design of a projected
machine, the Difference Engine, with a 20-decimal capacity. The
Difference Engine was a digital device: it operated on discrete digits
rather than smooth quantities, and the digits were decimal (0–9),
represented by positions on toothed wheels rather than binary digits
(“bits”). When one of the toothed wheels turned from nine to zero, it
caused the next wheel to advance one position, carrying the digit. Like
modern computers, the Difference Engine had storage—that is, a place
where data could be held temporarily for later processing. Its
construction required the development of mechanical engineering
techniques, to which Babbage of necessity devoted himself. In the
meantime (1828–39), he served as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at
the University of Cambridge. However, the full engine, designed to be
room-sized, was never built, at least not by Babbage.
Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398 – February 3, 1468) was a German
blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, and publisher who invented the world’s
first printing press. Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionised the
creation of books and helped make them affordable, ushering in a new
era of affordable books and literature.
Gutenberg was born in the German city of Mainz. He started his
working life as a merchant but then moved into work as a blacksmith
and goldsmith. Sometime in his 30s, Gutenberg moved, with his family
to Strasbourg.
At one point, Gutenberg became heavily indebted due to a failed
investment in holy mirrors. It is said he promised his creditors that
they could have a share in the new printing press that he was working
on. It is also said the idea for the printing press, came like a flash of
light, though this may have been an embellished story – added at a
later day.
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface
resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the
ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the
cloth, paper or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the
transfer of ink, and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention
and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in
the second millennium.
Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance movable-
type printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to
forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying
Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance movable-
type printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to
forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying
