Category: Inventions

Yorkshire-born Dr. John Venn (1834-1923) had two obsessions ~ logic and Cambridge University. His deep interest and skill in mathematics, probability and logic led to his development of what later became known as Venn diagrams. Venn spent most of his life at Cambridge, initially as a student, then a lecturer, professor and compiler of the University’s history.

Whereas ‘Eulerian circles’ show only the known commonalities between categories/sets/classes, Venn diagrams display all possible commonalities, even the non-existent or unlikely ones. Sometimes this results in an empty area in the centre, where all the circles overlap, or there may be less crucial, outer segments that have no takers. Whatever the case, a Venn diagram is an excellent visual aid to sorting out the nuts and bolts of a situation and can be used alongside or even instead of algebra to pinpoint a desired state, taking everything into account.

Venn owned a huge collection of publications on the subject of logic and himself wrote ‘The Logic of Chance’ (1866) and ‘Symbolic Logic’ (1881), the latter containing the first illustrations of his diagrams. He also wrote a history of his College at Cambridge and, with his son John A. Venn (1883-1958), published several volumes detailing all of Cambridge’s alumni.

(Top right image of John Venn [cropped]: Bradford Timeline at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)

The flash rate of Belisha beacons (0.75 seconds on, 0.75 seconds off) might have been chosen by a psychologist, as it is both reassuring for pedestrians and a calm alert for drivers simultaneously. For their invention we have to thank Lord Isaac Leslie Hore-Belisha (1893-1957) from Devon. When he was appointed Minister for Transport in 1934, crossing the road had become rather hazardous, particulary since 1930, when all speed limits were abolished for non-compliance!

Hore-Belisha’s Road Traffic Act (1934) introduced the all-important driving test and established the 30mph speed limit for built-up areas. These new safety measures were part of the updates in the second edition of ‘The Highway Code’ (1935) and they have saved untold thousands of lives and injuries.

Belisha beacons today have posts up to 16½ft. tall that are manufactured from steel or aluminium and applied with anti-corrosion paint in black and white bands similar to the zebra crossings by which they stand, one on each side. The globes are made of polyethylene and the whole item is designed to be weather- and vandal-proof. Additional spotlights may be fitted to illuminate the pavement and there may even be an LED halo around the globe to make it even more conspicuous in brightly-lit municipalities.

(Top images L to R [cropped]: W. Bellamy at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 & Rossographer at geograph.ie / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Dr. Edmund Halley (1656-1742), of comet fame, lived in the era of seafaring buccaneers who sometimes sank to a watery grave with their treasure. If this happened near the coast, adventurers might dive for salvage but this was dangerous. Halley’s development in 1691 of a diving bell with an air replenishment system allowed divers to explore for up to 90 minutes at depths of 20-60ft..

The ‘bell’ was a lead-covered wooden cone, open at the bottom, with a bench around the inside. Due to water being held at bay by the trapped  air, two men in ordinary clothes could sit inside and operate the weighted barrels of air and leather tubes for a third man, the diver. Along with his diving gear was a helmet, also designed by Halley, which was supplied with air by the tubes. The barrels were relayed up to a boat where they were refilled. Messages could be sent with the barrels on a lead block inscribed with an iron stylus.

In 1788/9, Yorkshireman John Smeaton (1724-92) added a force pump at the top to mechanise the air supply. Smeaton was ‘the father of civil engineering’ and had many bridge-building projects, so the issue cropped up as a matter of efficiency.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)

Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was once the UK’s largest manufacturing company and from the 1930s to the 1960s its Plastics Division was a hub of innovation, some by design, some by accident (e.g. polythene). Other departments were also involved in producing new plastics that are still in use today, such as Perspex (ICI brand name).

In 1931 Dr John W.C. Crawford (1901-87) of the Explosives Division devised a synthesis (later known as the Stevenston Process) that led to the first commercial production of clear, tough PMMA sheets, named ‘Perspex’ in 1934. He had developed research from ICI’s Dyestuffs Division ~ an unlikely combination at first glance.

In 1933 Eric Fawcett (1927-2000) and Reginald Gibson (1902-83) at ICI’s Cheshire plant, found a white waxy  substance resulting from one of their explosive experiments in which they heated ethylene and benzaldehyde to 170°C in high pressure. This was the first polyethylene (a.k.a. polythene) synthesis but their work was halted by safety concerns.

However, in 1935, ICI colleagues including Sir Michael Perrin (1905-88) and W.R. Dermot Manning (1903-84) resumed the project with better equipment. Another fluke, whereby oxygen leaked into their ethylene mixture, created a white powder which was more amenable to mass production. Its insulation properties enabled the first airborne radar in WW2.

(Images: pipes by publicdomainpictures.net and 1956 Rolls Royce with perspex sunroof by Brian Snelson at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

Dr. Brian Mercer (1927-98) was born in Blackburn towards the end of the British textile industry’s golden age. Fortunately, he was inspired to convert the resources of the cotton mill he inherited to the manufacture of his 1956 ‘geotextile’ invention called Netlon. This utilised up-and-coming plastics technology to make strong netting that provided an easy, cost-effective solution for both commercial and domestic activities. For example, building contractors use it for soil retention alongside motorways while gardeners protect their plants and ponds with it.

Mercer continued to experiment and in 1978 invented Tensar geogrids, the rigid version of Netlon. Having the high tensile strength of steel, this has a vast range of applications in solidifying the ground for railways, roads, pavements, housing estates, stadia, runways, warehouses and office blocks, to name a few. The aggregate is pressed into the spaces of the grid and locks together, making it even stronger.

The Tensar company is still based in Blackburn today. It produces systems for any situation where stabilisation of a weak or uneven ground is required, including coastal locations subject to erosion. Mercer’s ingenuity, reflected in the hundreds of patents registered in his name, was rewarded with an OBE in 1981, among many other honours.

(Image: Robin Stott at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The motivation behind the first plastic was to conserve natural resources, such as rubber and timber, and reduce the exploitation of animal parts, such as ivory and tortoiseshell. So it was that in 1862 Alexander Parkes (1813-90) and his brother Henry (1824-1909) from Birmingham used their knowledge of chemistry to formulate a heat-softened gunge that was the first celluloid plastic. They named it ‘Parkesine‘ (“park-seen”).

It was not totally synthetic ~ that came later with ‘Bakelite’ in the USA ~ but its recipe of nitric and sulphuric acids, nitrocellulose, castor oil and organic solvents went some way to providing a man-made material to satisfy growing consumer demand. It was used to manufacture items such as combs, brushes, buttons, cutlery handles, fishing rod components, pens and billiard balls.

The Science Museum holds many examples of these but over the years they have become extremely fragile. Indeed, even in the Parkesine Company’s short-lived existence in 1866-8 there were complaints of items becoming misshapen or even catching fire. This is thought to have been due to Alexander Parkes’s drive to cut costs. After the company closed, an employee, Daniel Spill (1832-87) took on the assets and relaunched the product as Xylonite. Spill improved the quality, resulting in more durable products.

(Image: pixnio.com / Public domain)

When the British Museum asked their local building contractor, Rawlings Brothers, to attach electrical fittings to the walls with minimal damage to the masonry, they cannot have imagined the revolutionary invention this would produce. The iconic Museum building was the first to benefit from the ingenious yet simple rawlplug, a small, expandable insert which tightly grips an embedded screw and can support incredible weight.

London-born John Joseph Rawlings (1860-1942) filed the patent in 1911. Previously, builders would chisel a hole and pack it with wood, so the time-saving, compact, ready-made rawlplug was an immediate success. The first version was made of brass strips but this was soon changed to fibre, a material ideally suited to the task. The business was re-named Rawlplug Co. Ltd. in 1919. The plastic rawlplug was introduced in the 1960s and its design was developed to include anti-rotation lugs.

Rawlplug Co. Ltd. now manufactures various types of fixings, including the rawlbolt for heavy-duty construction purposes. The massive do-it-yourself market has made a pack of rawlplugs an essential part of every toolkit. It is inestimable how many rawlplugs there are in our homes today. From securing a bookshelf to fitting a kitchen, rawlplugs are an indispensable aid.

(Image: pxhere.com / CC0)

Edwin Beard Budding (1796-1846) from Gloucestershire was a mechanical engineer with a knack for devising improvements, repairs and solutions to various types of machinery issues. Whilst employed at the local Phoenix Iron Works, owned by John Ferrabee (1789-1853), he upgraded the machine for shaving protruding fibre ends from the surface of woven textiles. This set him thinking about another application for such a device, namely the cutting of grass, and in 1830 he patented his design for the first lawnmower.

He went into partnership with Ferrabee, who provided the finance and the production facilities. The first sales were to head gardeners appreciative of an alternative to the exhausting work of scything large areas of grass. Budding’s cast iron lawnmower had three blades on a rotating cylinder, a large rear roller, a clippings collection tray on the front and an extra handle so that one man could push while another pulled.

This innovation was licenced in 1832 to J.R.&A. Ransomes in Suffolk, who had great success in expanding the market and produced the first petrol mower in 1902. By 1926 the Atco Standard motor mower, manufactured by Charles H. Pugh Ltd of Birmingham, was the first to be mass-produced to meet the increase in demand after WW1.

(Image of vintage Ransomes, Webb and Qualcast lawnmowers: Evelyn Simak at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Northumberland-born Bryan Donkin (1768-1855) was an extraordinarily creative engineer whose inventions included the world’s first commercial canning process. This was operated in a small factory in London from 1813, next-door to his paper-making factory. He ran both of these enterprises with partners John Hall and John Gamble and their company would later merge with food producers Crosse & Blackwell Ltd.

Peter Durand (1766-1822) of London had patented a method for preserving food by heating it in tin cans, rather than the glass jars used in a similar French idea. Donkin purchased Durand’s patent for £1,000 and developed it over the next two years before production began. Compared to today’s output of millions of cans per day, the initial six cans per hour were ‘baby-steps’ and as the cans were made from tin-plated iron soldered with lead, they were also much heavier. Nevertheless, royalty, the military, explorers and eventually the public, were delighted with this ingenious aid to a healthier and more varied diet.

Meanwhile, both Durand and Thomas Kensett (1786-1829) from Middlesex had separately taken the invention to the USA, where machinery modifications sped up the process enormously. Robert Yeates, also from Middlesex, patented the first can opener in 1855, removing the need for hammer and chisel!

(Image of vintage tinned food at a historic British base in Antarctica: Serge Ouachée at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The London Underground, or ‘the Tube’, was the world’s first subterranean railway network and without it and its 270 stations, London would be engulfed by cars and extra roads. Of its 253 miles, 45% are below ground, as much as 221ft. down. During WW2, Tube stations doubled up as air raid shelters and even housed makeshift factories for the manufacture of aircraft components.

It opened in 1863 with the Metropolitan line. The trains were steam-powered and had three classes of carriage. In 1890 the first electric railway was introduced as more lines were added. In 1900 the Central line was the first to lie entirely underground. The whole system was unified in the early 1900s and the flat rate fare was launched. The Art Deco design of stations and signs became the corporate style and journey time was cut by installing a driver’s cab at each end of the train.

Inevitably, tunnel construction disturbed cemeteries and goodness-knows-what-else from centuries past. This, along with disused stations and the many suicides committed on Tube tracks, has led to numerous accounts of ghostly sightings and strange noises! These generally occur when the almost 4 million passengers per day have left and the Tube is shut, 12am-5am, for maintenance and cleaning.

(Top image: Rossographer at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

William Addis (1734-1808) from London is the protagonist of a story about the invention of the toothbrush which seems to merge two different events. Addis was a rag trader for the paper-making industry and rags dipped in grit were also used in those days to clean teeth. However, the increasing inclusion of sugar in people’s diets had a disastrous effect on dental health.

At some point Addis found himself in jail for starting a riot, cause unknown. It is said that whilst there, he put together his toothbrush prototype with the assistance of a guard. The fact that this involved drilling small holes in a bone, inserting boar bristles and gluing the back infers that the guard must have been a friendly, co-operative and resourceful sort of chap. Alternatively, Addis’s jail-time may have merely provided the inspiration for his new product.

Nonetheless, this saw the introduction of the toothbrush as we know it today and Addis went on to establish a hugely successful manufacturing business in 1780 which remained in the family until 1996, having incorporated Wisdom Toothbrushes Ltd in 1993. Around 70 million toothbrushes are produced per year by Wisdom and Addis Housewares Ltd now focuses on other types of brush and household accessories.

(Top image: Karolina Grabowska at pexels.com / Public domain)

Londoner Sir Peter Mansfield (1933-2017) was among several developers of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technique and one of two physicists who were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for bringing it to fruition. In 1973 his assistant’s finger was the first body part to be scanned and in 1977 Mansfield himself had the first whole-body MRI scan.

He began working on an imaging system in 1972 and, unlike his co-awardee Paul Lauterbur who was looking at a slow ‘projection-reconstruction’ method, Mansfield’s innovation was ‘slice selection’ in which linear magnetic field gradients are measured. Still researching in his later years, he was always concerned with reducing the time required to take a scan, which can be up to 90 minutes depending on what is under investigation. Since the patient must lie still throughout, children and people with claustrophia sometimes have to be given a general anaesthetic, unfortunately.

MRI is selected over another technique such as ultrasound when more detail is needed or the issue is over a large area or it is behind bone, e.g. in the brain. MRI is more expensive; a scanner is large and has its own room where no metal is allowed, as there are super-magnets in the machine.

(Image of mobile MRI scanner unit parked outside hospital: Robin Webster at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)