Category: Inventions

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)

Sir John Harington invented the flushing toilet for his own manor house in Somerset and his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, requested one for herself when she visited him in 1592. However, this did not become a brilliant business opportunity for Harington, whose main interest was writing. People continued to use their chamber pots for many years after that.

Eventually, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the population in burgeoning cities, necessity stepped in. In 1775, Alexander Cummings patented the S-bend in a re-vamped version of Harington’s idea. With massive break-outs of cholera and typhoid, caused largely by dirty brown tap water, the authorities decided to build sewage systems. These were completed in the mid-19th century.

From that point on, manufacturers such as Twyford put flushing toilets into mass production. Thomas Crapper was the first manufacturer to have a toilet showroom but, contrary to popular belief, he did not actually invent the toilet.

(Image: Thomas Twyford Co. at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

A ‘mac’ is a generic name for a waterproof coat, shortened from ‘mackintosh’. In the early 19th century Charles Macintosh (no ‘k’), a chemist in Scotland, came up with a process for sandwiching rubber between two layers of fabric. He patented his rubberised material in 1823 and his company used it to make coats that were glued and taped together at the seams. The problem was that these first macs were heavy, stiff and tended to melt in hot sun!

Meanwhile, Thomas Hancock in England also had a company working on rubber goods, including recycling rubber left-overs. Macintosh and Hancock started to collaborate as Hancock’s rubberised fabric was made in a way that solved the previous issues. Hancock filed a patent for his vulcanised rubber in 1843.

The British Army made use of this invention and, in rainy UK, macs were very popular with the public. Later competition saw a downturn in sales, but today, Mackintosh Ltd and Hancock Vulcanised Articles Ltd both operate in the up-market rainwear sector.

(Image: pixabay.com)

The concept of a supersonic aeroplane was first discussed in Britain in the late 1950s. By 2003, after forty years of having the stunningly beautiful sight of Concorde in our skies, the venture was over. This is a sad case of the onward march of technology, coupled with economic and environmental realities, seeing off an iconic, never-to-be-forgotten marvel.

Concorde was a joint project between British Airways and Sud Aviation of France. Assembly began in 1963 with Britain producing 60% of the engine and 40% of the airframe. The prototype made its appearance six years later and achieved Mach-1 (the speed of sound) the same year. Some people complained about the ‘sonic boom’ which could be heard from the ground.

Concorde was actually capable of flying at Mach-2 and inevitably broke speed records for crossing the Atlantic. However, it could only take one hundred passengers and the passenger-fuel ratio was very poor compared to the Boeing 747. Maintenance costs were high and sales to other countries flopped after the oil crises of the 1970s. In July 2000 a Concorde in Paris suffered a fatal crash when one of its tyres was punctured by debris. This was the final straw for the British and French governments.

(Image: Eduard Marmet at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)

There were three people involved in the invention of tarmac (or tarmacadam), not counting John McAdam (1756-1836) from Ayrshire, who had previously come up with the ‘macadam’ road surfacing material. This was fine for horse-drawn carriages but not for cars, as the broken-up stones were loose and easily scattered.

The first person in the tarmac story is unknown, but it was his idea to cover up some spilled tar on a macadam road in Denbigh with slag. The second person was Edgar Purnell Hooley (1860-1942), from Glamorgan, who in 1901 saw how effective this covering had been in making that road durable enough for cars, albeit unintentionally. The next year he patented his own mixture, initially called ‘Tar Macadam’. This was smoothed over by a steam-roller.

The third man was Sir Alfred Hickman (1830-1910) from Staffordshire, who had sufficient finances and business acumen to buy Hooley’s company in 1905 and greatly expand its reach. Today, even surfaces which are not made of tarmac may be referred to as ‘the tarmac’, as it became so well-known.

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

Sir Isaac Pitman of Wiltshire, England, invented the Pitman shorthand system in 1837 when he was 24. He was an English teacher and saw the difficulties caused by the peculiarities of English spelling. He initially called his system ‘Sound-hand‘ because it is a phonetic system not based on spelling at all.

He gave similar sounds similar strokes, only differing in their thickness ~ for example, ‘v’ and ‘f’ are the same curved stroke but ‘v’ is heavier. Vowel sounds are represented by dots, dashes and other symbols, but an advanced writer can omit them altogether.

This invention helped people such as secretaries and reporters to write quickly, at speeds of 120 words per minute or more, without needing to think about spelling (and then decipher it later!). Pitman shorthand became the most widely used shorthand method in the world in the 1900s, but it has now been superseded by recording devices, as well as newer shorthand systems.

(Image: Flamenco108 at Wikimedia Commons / CC0)

Publicly recognised as a war hero long after his death, Alan Mathison Turing was born in London in 1912 and by age nine was already being hailed as a “genius” by his schoolteachers. He studied advanced science in his leisure time, took his mathematics degree at Cambridge and his PhD at Princeton.

He published a paper in 1936 on ‘computing machines’ and at the start of World War 2 in 1939 began working at Bletchley Park, where he and a small team of codebreakers used such machines on the enemy’s secret communications. He famously broke the Enigma code used for messages to German submarines in the Atlantic. It is estimated that this saved millions of lives and shortened the War by as much as two years.

He continued in the field of computer science and machine intelligence post-War at the National Physical Laboratory and the University of Manchester, and is often called ‘the father of modern computing’ for laying down the theory. Sadly, he took his own life in 1954. He is featured on the new £50 note first issued on his birthdate in 2021.

(Images LtoR: TedColes at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain & unknown at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)