|
| |
Inventing the Turn of the Century: 1900-1909
From: The British Library
| By:
Stephen van Dulken |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
From the airplane to the safety razor, inventions of the past hundred years have transformed modern life, and to a great extent determined the social and political history of the 20th century. Drawing on the British Library's vast and comprehensive collection of patents, expert curator Stephen van Dulken gives a lively introduction to several early 20th-century inventions. |
 great chemist of the century, Linus Pauling, said of innovation, 'The way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away', while the inventor, Trevor Baylis, remarked, 'Invention isn't some impenetrable brand of magic; anyone can have a go'. Certainly no century has accelerated change, nor built on innovative successes, nor rectified failures as quickly as the 20th century did. |
It was the high tide of the imperial age, with expansionist empires and increasing industrial capacity. A fifth of the world's land was occupied by the British Empire embracing 400 million people, three-quarters of them in India. Britain had long been called 'the workshop of the world' but by the end of the decade and the start of the next Germany had overtaken Britain in output of coal and steel and the USA was advancing to outstrip all. Though the major regimes of Europe appeared outwardly stable there was much internal unrest, especially rioting and mutiny in Russia in 1905. There were acute tensions between Austria-Hungary and the Balkan states and ethnic massacres in the Turkish Empire. Unemployment encouraged the emergence of a vigorous labour movement in Britain. But there David Lloyd George's 'people's budget' and the introduction of old age pensions and health/unemployment insurance were to prove landmarks towards a more equal society down the century. |
Transport and communication saw particular progress. The trans-Siberian railway was completed and the Hejaz railway in Arabia begun. The first electronically powered underground trains appeared in London and New York and Berlin built its first underground railway. The Zeppelin airship and the early aeroplanes of the Wright brothers and Bleriot flew. The great motor companies of General Motors, Rolls-Royce and Ford--with its remarkable Model T (selling at $900)--were all founded (and, incidentally, disc brakes and car seat belts invented). Henry Ford showed his genius for cost-saving allied with an eye to marketing by saying that anyone could buy a Model T in 'any colour, so long as its black'. Building the Panama Canal began and the river Nile's Aswan Dam was completed but a Channel Tunnel Bill was aborted by Parliament in London. |
While some of the ruling imperial families seemed trapped like flies in amber within 19th-century horizons, the discoveries of Einstein, Planck and Freud changed concepts of the physical universe and understanding the human mind. Marconi sent a radio signal across the Atlantic and Fessenden transmitted voice by radio for the first time. Villard discovered gamma rays, Bayliss and Starling hormones, and Landsteiner the blood groups A, B and O. John Fleming designed the diode valve that converted radio waves into electronic signals; this became important for radio and television. Heaviside traced the presence of an atmospheric layer that had consequences for the later development of radar. Nobel Prizes began to be awarded in 1901 and were won by the Curies and Becquerel for their work on radium and radioactivity, by Koch who identified the bacillus causing tuberculosis and by Pavlov for his work on the digestive system--though he and his dogs also became famous for his discovery of conditioned reflexes responding to stimuli. It was the body's endurance as well as the mind's strength which carried Peary on to reach at last the North Pole. |
The aeroplane
 Wilbur Wright was born in 1867 and Orville Wright in 1871. The brothers ran a printing shop together before switching to running a bicycle repair shop and later designing bicycles. The revenue helped to support them when they worked on aeronautical research. Wilbur became interested in flight when he read about Otto Lilienthal's fatal accident while experimenting with gliding in 1896. At the time much research into flight involved emulating the flapping of birds' wings. In 1899 Wilbur was watching buzzards in flight and realised that, besides using gliding, they twisted their wings to turn to one side. Flight control was vital besides the obvious need for propulsion. An aeroplane had to be able to bank, climb or descend and to steer left or right. Two or all three of these activities had to be done simultaneously. |
The brothers resolved to sort out the problems of flight control before thinking of propellers and a light engine. They wrote to the Smithsonian Institution asking for material on aeronautical research and read all they could find. In 1899 they designed a biplane kite which had wings that could be mechanically twisted so that one wing had more lift and the other less lift. They then designed three biplane gliders during 1900-02, using a wind tunnel in Dayton to help their research. |
The actual flights were tried out at a beach called Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It was chosen after the Weather Bureau supplied them with a list of windy sites. The sand would protect the gliders from damage and the loneliness gave them privacy. The final version of the gliders had rear rudders for going to the left or right, forward elevators for going up and down, and the wings could be warped. Once they were happy with the gliders they designed a propeller and built their own 4 cylinder, 12 horsepower engine. The illustrated patent was filed 9 months before the first flight by Orville (chosen on the toss of a coin) on 17 December 1903. The beginning of the 12-second flight was photographed as was much of their previous research. |
They then tried to sell the aeroplane to the American, French and British armies. Large sums of money were asked for but no demonstration was offered and they met with disbelief. It was not until 1908 that they began demonstration flights, having previously been scared of espionage, and the world realised that manned flight was possible. In a few years European aviation had surpassed their efforts. Wilbur died in 1912 and Orville in 1948. They both remained bachelors, flight being their only passion. |
Air conditioning
 Air conditioning is perhaps the most important influence in making businesses function in hot climates such as the American West and South. The basic idea of using water to cool the air was known in Roman times. The Romans noticed that cooled vapour rose when water was thrown onto hot stones. In the 19th century, fans were sometimes used to drive air over ice. Besides temperature, humidity and dust had to be controlled. |
Willis Carrier was born in Angola, New York state, in 1876. He worked for the Buffalo Forge Company in the engineering department. One day in 1902 a Brooklyn printer, Sackett-Williams, told him that he had a problem with colours blurring, since changes in temperature and humidity meant that the paper would expand and contract, so that each colour registered differently. That problem was sorted out with the first air conditioning unit, which weighed 30 tonnes, and the patent followed. The term 'air conditioning' was only coined in 1906, by Stuart Crawer, who added a dust filter to control dust in cotton mills. |
The patent specifically states that it could be used for ventilating buildings and for other 'commercial' purposes. Its main use did in fact turn out to be on factory premises for many years. For example, there was a problem in a South Carolina cotton mill in 1906 where the 5000 spindles spun so fast that for several minutes after they ceased operating they were so hot that they would inflict burns if touched. Another use was in drying off newly made macaroni. In other cases as in textile mills it was important to remove impurities from the air. The image above shows a fan B drawing the air into the trunk with a device H spraying water into the air. Next the air enters series of vertically arranged baffle plates where particles in the air are thrown by centrifugal force onto the plates. The water runs down the baffles through a sieve into a receptacle. Pipe-coils in this area convey a medium which can be adjusted if it is necessary to heat or cool the air. |
Carrier's company decided to close its engineering department in 1914, apparently not having faith in the new invention. Carrier, his business partner-to-be Irvine Lyle, and four others moved to his new Carrier Engineering Corporation. Initially they concentrated on being inventors rather than manufacturers as they continued to improve the product. It was not until after World War II that prices came down enough for air conditioning to be considered a standard item in housing, so that now over seventy percent of American homes have air conditioning. In 1965 four massive Carrier units were installed to cool the Houston Astrodome. Willis Carrier died in 1950 in New York City with over 80 patents on air conditioning in his name. |
The safety razor
 Gillette was born in 1855 in Wisconsin. His family soon moved to Chicago, where they lost everything in the great fire of 1871. The young Gillette tried to earn a living as a travelling salesman. He also came up with some minor inventions as a sideline. He began selling a new idea, cork-lined bottle caps. One day he met its (successful) inventor, William Painter. In their conversation, Painter suggested that Gillette invent something that was used, thrown away and bought again--perfect for a salesman. |
The idea of a razor with a cheap disposable blade came to him 'in a flash' one morning while shaving. It was a risky business shaving yourself, with imminent danger of cuts, and the blades themselves had to be repeatedly sharpened, or a barber had to be visited. Gillette went out and bought pieces of brass, steel ribbon used for clock springs, a small hand vice and some files. He built an initial, primitive safety razor. For six years he worked on the idea. He needed to make a cheap blade from sheet steel that would harden and temper suitably to take a keen edge. He knew nothing of steel (and indeed had little engineering background) yet was confident that a viable product could be made when the experts said that it was impossible. |
He managed to find some financial backers. The syndicate included an inventor named William Nickerson, who suggested making the razor handle heavy enough to facilitate accurate adjustment between the edge of the blade and the protecting guard. By 1902 endless experimenting resulted in determining the proper size, shape and thickness, a process for making the proper steel, a T-shaped handle so that it could be turned around for use on both sides, and equipment for making and sharpening the steel. The firm was by now in debt, but sales soon took off. In 1903 168 blades were sold but in 1904 over 12 million were sold. Gillette's own face was on the wrapper of each one. |
Gillette soon became a millionaire and retired from active management in 1913, although he stayed on as President until 1931. He moved to California to grow fruit and to spend more time on his other passion, establishing a new economic order. Since 1894 he had been writing about abolishing wasteful competition and allowing engineers to run the world. There would be huge communal dining halls to eliminate the waste of each household cooking its own food, and Niagara Falls would power all industry. In 1910 he offered ex-president Theodore Roosevelt $1 million to head his World Corporation in the then Arizona Territory. King Camp Gillette died in 1932 in Los Angeles. |
The vacuum cleaner
 Booth was an engineer who visited a demonstration at the Empire Music Hall in London. An American was showing his new cleaning machine which blew dust away from itself into a collecting box. The result was not very good. Booth asked him why he didn't change it to a suction machine so that the dirt could be more effectively drawn out and then trapped. The reply was that such a device was impossible. A few days later Booth was having dinner with friends in a restaurant. He had been mulling over the cleaning problem and suddenly placed his handkerchief over the antimacassar cover of the armchair and sucked as hard as possible. He nearly choked himself--but the handkerchief now had a patch of dirt on it, showing that the principle worked. |
Booth then developed his machine. Electricity was rarely available in houses so it was designed with a motor and a pump mounted on a 'portable frame or carriage' in the street, while a flexible hose went into the room to be cleaned. Workmen in white uniforms operated the machine. The pump was so big that it had to be taken around on a horse-drawn cart. It was also very noisy, so horses were easily startled. When the carpets under the thrones at Westminster Abbey were found to be filthy before Edward VII's coronation in 1902, the vacuum cleaner carried out an excellent job of cleaning them. The King was so impressed that he ordered vacuum cleaners for both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. With this royal seal of approval, society organised tea parties to watch vacuum cleaning being done. |
If Booth were so important, why do people frequently say that they will 'hoover' the carpet? James Murray Spangler was an asthmatic janitor working in a Canton, Ohio department store. He hated rising dust when he used a brush or carpet sweeper, and combined a small motor, a rotating brush, a pillowcase and a brush handle to make the first portable, if primitive-looking, vacuum cleaner with his US 889823, published in 1908. He took his invention to his cousin, who happened to be married to William Hoover, who ran a small company making saddles--a declining trade when cars were fast replacing horses. |
By this time American homes were beginning to be electrified, so a growing number of households were potential buyers. Hoover purchased the rights and his company flourished, constantly improving the principle. Booth himself tried to rival him with his British Vacuum Company, but without much success, so the name Hoover is associated with the invention rather than Booth or even Spangler. |
|
| |
