Category: Inventions

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (1955-) is responsible for helping to usher in the digital age with his revolutionary invention of the World Wide Web. Born in London to parents who themselves were computer scientists, Berners-Lee graduated in physics at the University of Oxford in 1976. Whilst there, he constructed his first computer using an old television set.

He then went into the computing industry, including a stint at CERN in Switzerland. By the time he returned there in 1984 with a Fellowship, it was clear to him that a program was needed to facilitate easier communication and sharing of documents among the thousands of CERN employees, associates and partner organisations. He proposed a global hypertext system in 1989 and devised the ‘WorldWideWeb’ program the following year.

The TCP/IP protocol had already been developed in the USA, but Berners-Lee came up with the first server (with a handwritten warning note adjacent to the switch!) the first browser and editor, http, html and much of the web jargon. He made the world’s first website, at info.cern.ch. Knighted in 2004, he has received many distinguished awards. He is now involved in institutes which “advance the open web as a public good and a basic right“.

(Image: Athanasios Kasampalis at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The first car designed and made by Sir Henry Royce (1863-1933) was a 2-cylinder 10HP model in 1904, closely followed by the 3-cylinder 15HP, the 4-cylinder 20HP,  the 6-cylinder 30HP and the powerful V-8. The sports version successfully raced in the Isle of Man in 1905-6. Royce’s mechanical expertise, his very high standards and his keenness to learn from each new distance and time trial, meant that innovative additions were made quickly and effectively to successive models.

On teaming up with Charles Rolls (1877-1910), the company of Rolls-Royce was born and proceeded to give us the most prestigious, reliable and elegant cars in the world. For example, from 1950 to 1956, just eighteen Rolls-Royce Phantoms were produced and almost all were sold to heads of state, including Queen Elizabeth II. Their smoothness and quiet ride made them ideal for parading.

Rolls-Royce represents the pinnacle of motor manufacturing, with models such as the Silver Ghost (dubbed ‘the best car in the world’ in the 1910s/20s), the Phantom, the Silver Shadow and the Corniche still revered and treasured by enthusiasts. In 1998 Rolls-Royce came under German ownership, but it is still being produced in the UK at Goodwood in the south of England.

(Image: Jack Snell at Flickr.com / CC BY-ND 2.0)

Robert Recorde (1510-58) was born in Tenby and, astonishingly, died in debtors’ prison, but he had had a glittering academic career at Oxford and Cambridge universities, studying both mathematics and medicine. In his notes he would write two parallel lines as his own shorthand for ‘is equals to’, reasoning that this is a graphic representation of two things that are exactly the same.

He decided to introduce this into his 1557 book, ‘The Whetstone of Witte’, which was the first book in English to use a range of algebraic symbols. His equals sign did not become universally accepted immediately, as there were several alternatives, but by the 1700s these had been completely discarded for the more elegant =. Recorde’s original version was quite wide, a style he applied to + and – as well, as can be seen in the image above.

Recorde’s simple innovation is perfect for its purpose. However, many students today are not taught its correct meaning and they automatically place it in front of each line in a stepped calculation. This inevitably leads to errors and omissions. Fortunately, there are those who do have a grasp…

(Top image: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

Born in Hillsborough, near Lisburn, Professor J. Frank Pantridge, CBE, MC (1916-2004) is regarded as a pioneer of emergency medical treatment. He was a prisoner-of-war in WW2 and narrowly survived but with a heart condition for the rest of his life. On returning to Northern Ireland he began studying cardiology, including an invaluable year on electrocardiography in the USA.

He became a cardiac consultant at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast and a professor at the nearby affiliated Queen’s University. He set up a specialist cardiology unit but saw that having patients transported into the Hospital in order to treat them with a defibrillator wasted too much time and many died in the ambulance. One day in 1964, he and his colleagues were called to treat a man having a heart attack on the pavement outside the Hospital. Professor Pantridge used a trolley to wheel out the 11-stone defibrillator, plugged in inside. This undoubtedly sparked the idea for the portable defibrillator.

The first one was powered by two car batteries and saw its first successes in 1966. In the years that followed, it reduced to less than 7lbs. in weight and is now computerised, user-friendly and available in many public locations.

(Top image of Professor Pantridge statue: Albert Bridge at geograph.ie / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Catseye, trademark of Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd, was invented by Percy Shaw, OBE (1890-1976) who was born in Yorkshire. He was prompted by the difficulty of driving home on foggy nights down an unlit, winding road. Shiny tram lines and gleaming cats’ eyes stood out in the darkness, leading to his ‘light-bulb moment’.

Developing the idea of reflective lenses invented by Richard Hollins Murray in 1927, Shaw designed a round cast iron casing with a vulcanised rubber insert to hold two pairs of lenses with mirrored backs. He also included a rainwater collection chamber which cleans the lenses whenever the domed top is depressed by a car’s tyres. The casing is held in place by bitumen grout. He patented his idea in 1934 and set up Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd the following year.

As fate would have it, the blackouts of WW2 proved the immense life-saving value of the ‘Catseye’ and by 1947 they were officially adopted throughout the UK and were exported all across the world. The most common are the white ones, used for the centre of the road and lane marking. Red is for hard shoulders, green for slip roads and lay-bys, amber for central reservations and blue for emergency services areas.

(Image: Chris Downer at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sir Frank Whittle (1907-96) invented the turbojet engine. A brilliant mathematician and engineer, he became an RAF officer in his twenties. He realised the limitations of piston engines and came up with an idea for turbine-powered aircraft that could fly at high altitudes at greater speeds and over longer distances. He filed a patent in 1930 for turbojet propulsion, but the Air Ministry apparently did not see the need to classify it.

In 1936 Whittle and two friends set up Power Jets Ltd. With the start of WW2, the Air Ministry finally realised the potential and funded a prototype, the Gloster E.28/39. Whittle’s design was a linear system of air intake, combustion chamber, turbine and exhaust which provided thrust and a loop back to the start, ensuring uninterrupted power. The Gloster Meteor fighter jets went into action in 1944.

With Whittle’s collaboration, the USA produced the Bell XP-594 Airacomet in 1942. Jet engines have been in production ever since and have made a huge difference to world travel. Sir Frank was later to experience flying on Concorde, which used Whittle-based Rolls Royce Olympus 593 engines with after-burners. His son, Ian, went on to become a Boeing 747 pilot, directly benefitting from his father’s genius.

(Images LtoR: Steve Knight at Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0 & Robert Sullivan at Flickr.com / Public domain)

Two Scotsmen played significant roles in the invention of the television, albeit in opposite directions. The route taken by the older of the two, Alan Campbell Swinton, FRS (1863-1930), proved to be the most productive. However, the younger man, John Logie Baird, FRSE (1888-1946), is more famous, even though his mechanical televisions soon became obsolete.

Campbell Swinton set out his ideas for constructing an electronic television using cathode ray tubes, in a letter entitled ‘Distant Electric Vision’ published in 1908. He gave more details in a lecture in 1911. Several engineers had been looking into developing a device for transmitting still and moving images, without much success, and Campbell Swinton gave them the way forward, omitting to patent any of his proposals.

He recognised the disadvantages of mechanical sets and advised the BBC against their use. Nevertheless, Baird was pioneering their production and was the first to demonstrate a working television, in 1926, on the basis of which he formed a manufacturing company. Two years later it was the first to broadcast to a ship and to New York. It also demonstrated the first colour and stereo images, but Philo Farnsworth in the USA was quickly overtaking the field with his Campbell Swinton-inspired electronic TV.

(Image: maxpixel.net)

Radar stands for ‘Radio Detection and Ranging’ and there were two Scottish physicists who had key roles in its invention. The first was James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79), highly praised by Einstein for his contribution to mathematical physics. He devised the equations for the electro-magnetic field, paving the way for numerous applications. The second, Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973), is usually credited as being the inventor of radar, although the stars were aligned for several others to play their part in the same era.

Watson-Watt coined the word ‘ionosphere’ in the course of combining range- and direction-finding techniques using ionospheric layers. The resulting prototype was, ironically, tested on exactly the same day ~ 26th February 1935 ~ on which Hitler secretly authorised the establishment of the Luftwaffe, in breach of the Treaty of Versailles.

In 1940, Watson-Watt and his assistants invented the cavity magnetron which extended the range of the radar systems, then in full production for World War 2. It is said that the invention of radar enabled the Royal Air Force to beat off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain from July to October 1940. Today it has many navigational, geological and meteorological uses.

(Image of air traffic and weather radar domes: Philip Halling at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)