How James Watt Invented the Copier: Forgotten Inventions of Our Great Scientists

178 Pages·2012·6.692 MB·English

by  René Schils (auth.)

How James Watt Invented the Copier

René Schils
How James Watt Invented
the Copier
Forgotten Inventions of Our Great Scientists
Translated by Andy Brown
René Schils
Haneweg 25
8181 RZ Heerde
The Netherlands
[email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4614-0859-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-0860-4
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0860-4
Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011941218
Translation from the Dutch language edition: Einsteins koelkast: en andere vergeten ontdekkingen van grote
wetenschappers by René Schils, © Veen Magazines 2008. All rights reserved
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
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Contents
Johannes Kepler ............................................................................................. 1
Kepler’s Laws
Snow Crystals
Robert Hooke ................................................................................................. 7
Hooke’s Law
Land Surveyor and Architect
Edmond Halley ............................................................................................... 13
Comet
The Price of a Life Annuity
Daniel Bernoulli ............................................................................................. 19
Bernoulli’s Principle
Utility Function
Benjamin Franklin ......................................................................................... 25
Electricity
Gulf Stream
Joseph Priestley .............................................................................................. 31
Oxygen
Soda Water
James Watt...................................................................................................... 37
Steam Engine
Copying Machine
Edward Jenner ............................................................................................... 43
Smallpox Vaccine
Cuckoo Chicks
John Dalton ..................................................................................................... 49
Atoms
Color Blindness
v
vi Contents
Thomas Young ................................................................................................ 55
Light
Rosetta Stone
Justus von Liebig ............................................................................................ 63
Fertilizer
Bouillon
Charles Darwin .............................................................................................. 71
Theory of Evolution
Earthworms
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) .................................................................. 77
Absolute Temperature
Transatlantic Cable
James Clerk Maxwell .................................................................................... 83
Maxwell’s Equations
Color Photograph
Alexander Graham Bell ................................................................................. 89
Telephone
Artifi cial Respiration
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz ............................................................................... 95
Electron Theory
Enclosure Dam
Svante Arrhenius ........................................................................................... 103
Ions
Greenhouse Effect
Pierre Curie .................................................................................................... 111
Radioactivity
Piezoelectric Effect
Walther Nernst ............................................................................................... 117
Thermodynamics
Neo-Bechstein Grand Piano
Albert Einstein ............................................................................................... 123
Theory of Relativity
Refrigerator
Harlow Shapley .............................................................................................. 131
The Center of the Milky Way
Ants
Erwin Schrödinger ......................................................................................... 137
Wave Equation
What Is Life?
Contents vii
Enrico Fermi ................................................................................................... 143
Nuclear Reaction
The Fermi Paradox
Rosalind Franklin .......................................................................................... 151
DNA
Carbon
George Gamow ............................................................................................... 159
Big Bang
Genetic Code
Illustration Credits ........................................................................................... 167

Johannes Kepler
The astronomer Johannes Kepler is
most well known for his three laws
describing the motion of planets
around the Sun. Symmetry was an
overriding principle in Kepler’s work,
not only at the macroscopic scale of
the universe but also at the micro-
scopic scale of a snowfl ake. He was
the fi rst to try to explain the sixfold
symmetry of snow crystals.
R. Schils, How James Watt Invented the Copier: Forgotten Inventions 1
of Our Great Scientists, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0860-4_1,
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
2 Johannes Kepler
Kepler’s Laws
While studying at the German university of Tübingen, Johannes Kepler became
acquainted with Copernican astronomy, which claimed that the Sun, rather than the
Earth, was at the center of the solar system. His talents were soon recognized and, at
the early age of 23, he was teaching mathematics at a Lutheran high school in Graz.
During his stay in Graz, Kepler published M ysterium Cosmografi cum, his fi rst great
work on astronomy, in which he described a model of the solar system based on the
fi ve Platonic solids. These are regular polygons with 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20 faces, known
as the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron, respectively.
Kepler was convinced that this symmetry revealed God’s geometric plan for structur-
ing the universe. The orbits of the planets pass over the spheres that fi t exactly within
or around the regular polygons. His model produced remarkably good results, except
for the innermost planet, Mercury. Notwithstanding this magnifi cent model, the
dimensions of the planetary orbits are today considered to be random.
I n 1600, as the assistant of Tycho Brahe, Kepler had the opportunity to conduct
new calculations of the planetary orbits, this time using Brahe’s observations, which
were very accurate for the time. Their collaboration unfortunately came to an abrupt
end in 1601, when Brahe died unexpectedly. Two days later, Kepler was appointed
his successor and was entitled to call himself the “imperial mathematician.” In 1609,
Kepler published his most famous work, A stronomia Nova , which contained his fi rst
two laws. What started as an analysis of the orbit of Mars, eventually led to a gen-
eral description applicable to the orbits of all the then known planets. Kepler’s fi rst
law states that planets follow an elliptical orbit, with the Sun at one of the two foci.
His second law says that a line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas
during equal intervals of time. That means that the closer a planet is to the Sun, the
greater its velocity. Kepler published his third law, which describes the relationship
between planets’ orbital periods and their distance from the Sun, 10 years later in
his Harmonices Mundi .
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Johannes Kepler