History is not made by politicians nor generals. The poeple who moved forward humanity were always enterprising individuals and inventors. Dreamers and adventurers, scientists and enterpreneurs who dared to create something new and to invest into them. Thanks to them and the investors supporting them humanity learned more about the world surrounding us, about the laws of nature and about how to make them serve us.
From Greek
fire to the steam engine
In
possession of Greek fire Constantinople
ensured the stability required for the advancement of culture and science.
Through centuries the Byzantines utilized the culture of their neighbours,
primarily the knowledge of the Greeks and Arabs and passed on medical,
mathematical, philosophical and scientific knowledge. Byzantine scientist
contributed in conserving ancient Greek texts such as the classical sciences. That knowledge is a treasure!
In
the 15th century more and more scientist left Constantinople and journeyed to
the West, towards Italy. These Byzantine „exiles” played a pivotal role in the
intellectual revolution of Italy which delivered Europe out of the dark ages of
medieval times into a new direction of scientific development like mathematics,
astronomy and physics.
This
is the dawn of the modern era, the renaissance. The renaissance is the rebirth
of the ancient western civilizations. Rediscovering knowledge from Greek and
Roman texts left a great impression on how art and science developed. In this
era art and science went hand in hand and nothing represents this better than
the renaissance garden. According to renaissance thinking a garden represents
the balance of human ingenuity and the beauty of nature. And this balance is
embodied by renaissance fountains. The fountains of Villa d’Este near Rome are regarded as a masterpiece of
engineering. Anywhere you look hundreds of jets of water sprinkle into pools,
wells and troughs.
The
powerful dynasties of the late renaissance, including the Medici family from Tuscany flaunted their wealth and influence by
building majestic water constructs. When the fountains of the grand prince of
Tuscany suddenly ran dry they asked the greatest scientist of their time to
determine the cause of it. This scientist was none other than Galileo Galilei. He was a blind old man
by then who was kept under house arrest because of his radical views about the
nature of the universe. However not even Galilei
who is regarded as the father of physics could find a satisfactory explanation.
So he handed the problem over to his youngprotégée, the evangelist Torricelli.
Torricelli had a great idea and
devised a surprisingly good theory that helped us better understand a substance
around us all: air. What is more important that he proved the existence of
something that was denied by everyone since the birth of the natural sciences.
For centuries people thought that air is weightless. Up until the 17th century,
when Torricelli the Italian
physicist ascertained that not only air has weight but it also generates
pressure that derives from a downwards force coming from its weight. Toricelliproved this by filling a tube
with mercury and when he filled it up he sealed one end of the tube. He then
put the other end of the tube into a bowl of mercury and opened it. The fact
that mercury did not pour out of the tube into the bowl is because some kind of
force had to affect the surface of the bowl of mercury. And this force could
not be nothing else but the weight of air. What’s more important to this story
is that this experiment unveiled another secret about nature which was also
denied. Since air could not come into the tube the space created by the descending
mercury was not filled with it. And this is what Torricelli
was looking for, vacuum.
Today
vacuum is available everywhere. We
use it to clean, to illuminate, to pack food and it also keeps our coffee warm
in our thermoses. But in the 17th century the idea of vacuum was the turning point of the renascence of scientific
thinking. We will see here that it also played a pivotal role in another
process which reformed the whole of human society, the industrial revolution.
Von Guericke, a German scientist,
inventor and politician calculated that vacuum created like this could lift
thousands of kilograms. To prove this point he used workhorses. The experiment
he conducted showed the immense power of „nothing”. Using this force is a
pivotal point in our story.
This
story started with waterproof cement
which led to double action pumps feeding
aqueducts. These pumps combined with
Greek fire helped defend
Constantinople. The local scientists helped unfold the renascence which led to
the creation of beautiful fountains. These inspiredproving the existence of vacuum.
The
discovery of vacuum is the result of the practical need to defend the
population. In the 18th century mining was the most dangerous job of the world.
As mineshafts went deeper and deeper the danger grew. The lives of the miners
were not just threatened by collapses or explosions but they were also at risk
of encountering hidden water reservoirs that could flood
the whole shaft. The question was how to create a vacuum powerful enough to suck out all the water from the depths of
the mines. The question was answered by resourceful British engineers. You only
need to boil water to create steam. We are of course talking about the steam engine. The cooling steam creates
a vacuum which can be used to work
water pumps. This machine had great power in this era. It could pump 3.5
million litres of water in only 4 hours. The steam engine became the most important invention of the industrial revolution. It not just
revolutionised mining but also factories and transportation. It changed the
world.
A
Scottish entrepreneuringenuity made using the power of steam even more
efficient. In 1763 mechanic James Watt was
commissioned to repair the model of an early steam engine. Watt was
frustrated how he couldn’t make the engine work for more than a few rotation so
he started completely redesigning it. He worked for more than 4 years which
resulted in a newer steam engine
that was four times as powerful as its predecessor. Keeping this surplus power
in check however was difficult.
Finding
a solution to regulate the power of steam brought a break through that not just
revolutionized industry but warfare as well. Thanks to James Watt people could completely utilize the potential of the steam
engine. Watt now only had to find a
way to keep the power in check. For that he needed two copper balls. The point
was what happened between the objects revolving around the central axle. Physicists called it centrifugal force and James
Watt used it as the basis of his new instrument. This became the centrifugal governor.
The
faster the axle spins the higher the objects rise. When they reach a certain
height the throttle closes and the engine slows. As the weights descend they
reach a new level where they open the throttle and the engine accelerates. This
is how the centrifugal governor keeps
a consistent speed. A simple yet ground-breaking innovation.Watt endowed engines with the capability to regulate themselves.
The
Watt governor made workers unnecessary
to supervise steam engines at mills
and factories. Every factory worker was helped by dozens of governors in the background. If the steam engine was the driving force
behind the industrial revolution then
the governor was the brain.
This
was all the consequence of a simple principle which is called feedback loop.
The point is that a system can work between predefined parameters. Feedback
loop soon became used in different types of mechanical system for example in
ships, planes, trains and cars. At the dawn of the era of electricity the
principal of a feedback loop was used when creating the telephone, the
amplifier and operating electrical networks. Feedback loop soon became a matter
of life and death.
Author: Béla Molnár
Tags: enterprising, inventors, scientists, invest
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