Otázka: Science and technology
Jazyk: Angličtina
Přidal(a): Barbora
The development of science and technology is as old as mankind. I think that it starts in prehistory when people found out how to make a fire. We can see inventions everywhere – but most of them we are taking as a sure thing – a lift or water closet. The inventions are born in human´s heads – memories and ideas are giving concrete image for all of products.
The birth of technology (2 million years BC)
Tools: The birth of technology was when the first human made sharp cutting edges from stone. Then cave menu sed tools and weapons.
Metals:
- Lead – soft metal, It was beeing extracted from rock in 6500 BC (in today´s Turkey)
- Copper: three thousand years later in Mesopotamia
- Iron: on this strong and versatile metal was bulit an Iron Age
The wheel:
- Around 4500 BC – the wheel and axle combination became the most important invention and carts came into common use
- 2000 BC: wheels had spokes and waterwheels and windmills were developed to provide power
New inventions (9th – 18th century)
Arab alchemy: they discovered many chemicals that we use today
Gunpowder:
- substance used in guns to propel (move forward) the bullet
- 1242: the recipe appeared in a book in Europe
- Roger Bacon – an English friar and philosopher was the first who describe its formula
Printing:
- Johannes Gutenberg developed the first mechanical printing machine in the 1440s
- The first printed book was the Bible in 1456
The telescope:
- It was invented by Dutchman Hans Lippershey
- Thanks to this invention Galileo Galilei was able to prove that then Earth revolved around the Sun – it angered the Catholic Church, because they were thinking that the Earth is centre of everything
The microscope:
- Hans Janssen (dutch maker of spectacles) and his son put glass lenses together and created primitive microscope in 1590
- Anton van Leeuwenhoek took this invention a step futher with a magnification of 270 times
Lightning conductor:
- 1752 – American statesman, philosopher and scientist Benjamin Franklin proved that the lightning was a form of elektricity (kite in a thunderstorm)
- 1754: Franklin and Prokop Diviš independently developed the lightning conductor to protect buildings from being hit and damaged by lightning
The first industrial revolution (1760 – 1840)
Steam power: development of steam engines to power faktory machinery (pumps, locomotives, steam ships, steam lorries)
- major advance: rating water in a boiler to make steam to power a vehicle
- James Watt is recognised as the inventor of the steam engine in 1765
- George Stephenson´s Rocket was the first locomotive to pull heavy loads a long distance: rapid expansit of railways throughout Britain and the Word
- Engineering projects of Isambard Kingdom Brunel: bridges, tunnels, viaducts and ships
Photography:
- 1826 – French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce: he produced the first permanent picture – by using ,,bitumen of Judea“ (a black sticky substance, such as asphalt, from Death Sea) spread on a pewter plate and an exposure in bright sunlight
- the basis of modern photo: Louis Daguerre improved Niépce´s technice by using compounds of silver
The second industrial revolution (19th century – 1945)
The electric light: Thomas Edison´s electric light bulbs (the first he made from bamboo fibres) were the best and they would last for hundreds of hours, they were cheep – to sell bulbs, energy was needed, so Edison´s Electric Illumination Company built thein own power station in NY – finály he persuaded the public to opt for electric light rather then gas lights
The telephone: an invention that made money
- Alexander Graham Bell: was the first in the race to patent a machine that you could use to talk to someone on the other side of the world in 1876 (but from the beginning it was just from one room to another)
The motor car: until 1860s all prototype motor cars were steam driven
- Nicolas Otto (german): created internal combustion engine in 1876
- Karl Benz developed first car , the Benz Petent Motorwagen
- petrol and cleaning fluid were only available from the chemist
- Rolls Royce and Henry Ford developed the technology: RR for the rich and HF for the man in the street
The movies: first film (The Arrival of a Train at Ciotat Station) was shown by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiére in 1895 at the Grand Café in Paris
- 1889: George Eestman pioneered celluloid film with holes punched in the side – the camera could after that show the film much better
X-Rays: Wilhelm Rontgen (german physicist) – 1895: he was working with electrical discharges in glass tubes and he noticed that there was a faint glow on a nearby screan – these rays were invisible and could pass through most materials, he recorded them on photographic paper – the first X – ray image was developed
- medical potencial: especially in examining the skeletal system but they can aslo identify pneumonia and lung cancer
- 1896: Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity while trying to find more out about x-rays
- Marie Curie (polish born french chemist and physicist) – 2 Nobel Prizes, research into radioactivity and new radioactive elements
- also was this metode used in the art – compositions (Man Ray – rayographs)
Communications: Heinrich Hertz was the first who prove that radio waves existed
- Guglielmo Marconi set up the world´s first radio stations to transmit and receive Morse code (1896 – first message from Cornwall to Newfoundland)
- John Logie Baird transmitted the first clear television pictures, he founded the Baird Television Company Limited and worked on programmes for the BBC
Flight: 1903 – Wilbur and Orville Wright built and flew the first successful aeroplane – rapid progress
Rockets and space Flights: 11th century, China – the earliest rockets
- 19th cen: speed and accuracy were much improved
- Knowledge of relative movements of the planets in relation to the Earth
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (Russian mathematics teacher): he draw up plans for space stations and air locks (a chamber in which the air is kept under pressure, premitting passage to or from a space) to allow space walks, he calculated that the rocket would have to travel at 8km per second to leave tha atmosphere and taht liquid rocket fuel would be essential (Robert Goddard independently developed liquid fuelled rockets too)
- Russians were the first who put a man into orbit: Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in 1961
- 1969: moon landing (NASA scientists)
The atomic bomb: 1932 – John Cockcroft (physicist) and Earnest Walton: they split the atom, proved Albert Enstein´s theory of relativity and unlocked the secrets of the atomic nucleus
- this knowledge allowed scientists to develop the atomic bomb (1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
- mushroom cloud: the cloud of smoke and flame produced by nuclear explosion
The third scientific – technical revolution (1945 – )
After WWII: huge rise of discoveries
- plastic were developed
- computers (in the beginning they were mostly used for mathematical operations), 1946: fist computer was built by Eckertand Mauchly), in 1960´s computers became smaller and more powerful
- 1984: the CD was born – digital revolution began
- worlwidw web: informations, images, online shopping, banking..
- mobile telephone technology: instant contact with friends and family
- 1953: discovery of the structure of DNA
- biotechnology and genetic engineering: fast growth trends and good business
Scientists
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955): German theoretical physicist is ,,father of modern physics“
- special theory of relativity and then he extended this principle to gravitation
- 1916: general theory of relativity – revolution on a field of physics
- famous equation: E=mc2
- 1921: NP in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect
- 1940: he became US citizen (bcs of Adolf Hitler)
- in the midst of the Cold war he and philosopher Bertrand Russel signed the Russel-Einstain Manifesto – the dangerous of the nuclear weapons
- until his death he worked at Princeton
Alexander Fleming (1881 – 1955): the Scottish biologist and pharmacologist
- 1928: the discovery of the antibiotic substance penicillin, the discovery occured by accident when he came back from holidays to the untidy laboratory where he found that one culture of staphylococci was contamined with a fungus that destroyed the bacteria
- Penicillin was able to conquer many diseases: syphilis, gangrene and tuberculosis, scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis and diphtheria
- Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain first concentrated the substance
- the mass – production of penicillin was started after the bombing of Pearl Harbour
Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931): American prolific inventor and businessman – he applied principles of mass production and created the first industrial research laboratory with large-scale team
- he developed many devices: phonograph (record player and gramophone), the motion picture camera
- light bulb: long lasting, carbonized bamboo filament
- Mahen Theatre in Brno was the public building where were Edison´s light bulb used for fist (in front of it was in 2010 erected a sculpture of three giant bulbs)
- 1882 – he started distributing electricity
- Nicola Tesla developed alternating current instead of direct current
Resume: me and technology – I use mobile phone, computer and many of the established inventions….
- can speak about theme you are interested in (medicine, art, sport..) – prepare three tenses about it
