Greatest Inventions of the last 100 years

Color Television 1940

Color television is a television transmission technology that includes information on

the color of the picture, so the video
image can be displayed in color on the
television screen. It is an improvement on
the
earliest
television
technology,
monochrome or black and white
television, in which the image is
displayed in shades of grey (greyscale).
Television broadcasting stations and
networks in most parts of the world
upgraded from black and white to color
transmission in the 1960s and 1970s, and today virtually all television besides
some inexpensive closed-circuit surveillance video systems is color television, so
the term is becoming redundant and is not used much. The invention of color
television standards is part of the history of television, and is described in the
technology of television.
The basic idea of using three monochrome images to produce a color image had
been experimented with almost as soon as blackand-white televisions had first been built.
Among the earliest published proposals for
television was one by Maurice Le Blanc in 1880
for a color system, including the first mentions in
television literature of line and frame scanning,
although he gave no practical details. Polish
inventor Jan Szczepanik patented a color
television system in 1897, using a selenium
photoelectric cell at the transmitter and an
electromagnet controlling an oscillating mirror and
a moving prism at the receiver. But his system
contained no means of analyzing the spectrum of colors at the transmitting end,

and could not have worked as he described it. An Armenian inventor, Hovannes
Adamian, also experimented with color television as early as 1907. The first color
television project is claimed by him, and was patented in Germany on March 31,
1908, patent 197183, then in Britain, on April 1, 1908, patent 7219, in France
(patent 390326) and in Russia in 1910 (patent 17912).
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the
world's first color transmission on July 3, 1928, using
scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends
with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with filters
of a different primary color; and three light sources at
the receiving end, with a commutator to alternate
their illumination.Baird also made the world's first
color broadcast on February 4, 1938, sending a
mechanically scanned 120-line image from Baird's
Crystal Palace studios to a projection screen at
London's Dominion Theatre.
Mechanically scanned color television was also
demonstrated by Bell Laboratories in June 1929 using three complete systems of
photo electric cells, amplifiers, glow-tubes, and color filters, with a series of mirrors
to superimpose the red, green, and blue images into one full color image.

Artificial Heart -1941

An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically
used to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart
in
case
heart transplantation is impossible. Although other similar
inventions preceded it going back to the late 1940s, the first
artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was
the
Jarvik-7 in 1982, designed by a team including Willem
Johan Kolff and Robert Jarvik.
An

device
and
are
cardiac surgery.

artificial heart is distinct from a ventricular assist device

designed to support a failing heart. It is also distinct from a
cardiopulmonary bypass machine, which is an external
used to provide the functions of both the heart and lungs
only used for a few hours at a time, most commonly during

The first artificial heart was made

by Vladimir Demikhov in 1937. It was
transplanted to a dog.
A heart-lung machine was first used in
1953 during a successful open heart
surgery. John Heysham Gibbon, the
inventor of the machine, performed the
operation and developed the heart-lung
substitute himself.
Although Jarvik created the idea and
rough draft for the artificial heart, his
models were not created of a material that
the human body would accept. Dayton,
Ohio's Ival O. Salyer, along with various
colleagues, developed a polymer material
that the human body would not
necessarily reject.
On July 3, 1952, 41-year-old Henry Opitek, suffering from shortness of breath,
made medical history at Harper University Hospital at Wayne State University in
Michigan. TheDodrill-GMR heart machine, considered to be the first operational
mechanical heart, was successfully used while performing heart surgery.
Forest
Dewey
Dodrill,
working
closely
with Matthew Dudley, used the machine in 1952
to bypass Henry Opitek's left ventricle for 50
minutes while he opened the patient's left atrium
and worked to repair the mitral valve. In Dodrill's
post-operative report, he notes, "To our
knowledge, this is the first instance of survival of a
patient when a mechanical heart mechanism was
used to take over the complete body function of
maintaining the blood supply of the body while the
heart was open and operated on."

Jet Engine 1930

A jet
engine is
a reaction
engine discharging
a
fast
moving jet that
generates thrust by jet propulsion in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This
broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets,
and pulse jets. In general, jet engines are combustion engines but non-combusting
forms also exist
By the 1950s the jet engine was almost universal in combat aircraft, with the
exception of cargo, liaison and other specialty types.

By this point some of the

British designs were already
cleared for civilian use, and
had appeared on early
models like the de Havilland
Comet and Avro
Canada
Jetliner. By the 1960s all
large civilian aircraft were
also jet powered, leaving
the piston engine in lowcost niche roles such
as cargo flights.

The efficiency of turbojet engines was still rather worse than piston engines, but by
the 1970s, with the advent of high-bypass turbofan jet engines (an innovation not
foreseen by the early commentators such as Edgar Buckingham, at high speeds
and high altitudes that seemed absurd to them), fuel efficiency was about the same
as the best piston and propeller engines.

Radar -1935

Radar is an object-detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range,
altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships,
spacecraft,
guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and
terrain. The
radar dish (or antenna) transmits pulses of radio waves or
microwaves that bounce off any object
in
their path. The object returns a tiny
part of the wave's energy to a dish or
antenna that is usually located at the
same site as the transmitter.
Radar was secretly developed by
several

nations before and during World War II. The term

RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States
Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection And
Ranging. The term radar has since entered
English and other languages as a common
noun, losing all capitalization.

A helicopter is
a
type
of rotorcraft in
which lift and thrust are supplied by rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off
and land vertically, tohover, and to fly forward, backward, and laterally. These
attributes allow helicopters to be used in congested or isolated areas wherefixedwing aircraft and many forms of VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft cannot
perform.

The word helicopter is adapted from the French language hlicoptre, coined by
Gustave Ponton d'Amcourt in 1861, which originates from the Greek helix ()

"helix, spiral, whirl, convolution" and pteron () "wing". English-language

nicknames for helicopter include "chopper", "copter", "helo", "heli", and "whirlybird".
Helicopters were developed and built during the first half-century of flight, with
the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 being the first operational helicopter in 1936. Some
helicopters reached limited production,
but it was not until 1942 that a
helicopter designed by Igor Sikorsky reached
full-scale production, with 131 aircraft
built. Though most earlier designs used
more than one main rotor, it is the
single main rotor with anti-torque tail
rotor configuration that has become the
most
common
helicopter
configuration. Tandem rotor helicopters
are
also
in
widespread
use
due
to
their
greater
payload
capacity. Coaxial helicopters, tiltrotor aircraft, and compound helicopters are all
flying today. Quadcopter helicopters pioneered asearly as 1907 in France, and
other types of multicopter have been developed for specialized applications such
as unmanned drones.
The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic
control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems; marine radars
to locate landmarks and other ships; aircraft anticollision systems; ocean
surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems;
meteorological precipitation monitoring; altimetry and flight control systems; guided
missile target locating systems; and ground-penetrating radar for geological
observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing
and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.

Breathalyzer 1955

A breathalyzer or breathalyser (a portmanteau of breath and analyzer/analyser) is

a device for estimating blood alcohol content(BAC) from a breath
sample. Breathalyzer is the brand name for the instrument developed by
inventor Robert Frank Borkenstein. It was registered as a trademark on May 13,
1958, and is active as of 2015 but the word has become a generic trademark.

In 1967 in Britain, Tom Parry Jones developed and marketed the first electronic
breathalyser.
He established Lion Laboratories in Cardiff with his
colleague, electrical engineer Bill Dulcie. The Road
Safety Act 1967 introduced the first legally
enforceable maximum blood alcohol level for
drivers in
the UK, above which it became an offence to be in
charge of
a motor vehicle; and introduced the roadside
breathalyser, made available to police forces
across the
country. In 1979, Lion Laboratories' version of the
breathalyser, known as the Alcolyser and
incorporating crystal-filled tubes that changed
colour
above a certain level of alcohol in the breath, was
approved
for police use. Lion Laboratories won the Queen's
Award for
Technological Achievement for the product in
1980, and
it began to be marketed worldwide.

The Alcolyser was superseded by the Lion Intoximeter 3000 in 1983, and later by
the Lion Alcolmeter and Lion Intoxilyser. These later models used a fuel cell alcohol
sensor rather than crystals, providing a more reliable curbside test and removing
the need for blood or urine samples to be taken at a police station. In 1991, Lion
Laboratories was sold to the American company MPD, Inc

Power Steering-1951

In automobiles, power steering (also known as power assisted steering

(PAS) or steering assist system) helps drivers steer by augmenting steering effort
of the steering wheel. Hydraulic or electric actuators add controlled energy to the
steering mechanism, so the driver needs to provide only modest effort regardless
of conditions. Power steering helps considerably when a vehicle is stopped or
moving slowly. Also, power steering provides some feedback of forces acting on
the front wheels to give an ongoing sense of how the wheels are interacting with
the road; this is typically called "rad feel".

The

drive

first power steering system on an automobile was

apparently installed in 1876 by a man with the
surname of Fitts, but little else is known about
him. The next power steering system was put on
Columbia 5-ton truck in 1903.
Robert E. Twyford, a resident of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, USA, included a mechanical power
steering mechanism as part of his patent (U.S. Patent
646,477) issued on April 3, 1900 for the first four wheel
system.

Francis W. Davis, an engineer of the truck division of Pierce Arrow began exploring
how steering could be made easier, and in 1926 invented and demonstrated the
first practical power steering system. Davis moved
to General Motors and refined the hydraulicassisted power steering system, but the
automaker calculated it would be too expensive to
produce. Davis then signed up with Bendix, a
parts manufacturer for automakers. Military needs
during World War II for easier steering on heavy
vehicles boosted the need for power assistance
on armored cars and tank-recovery vehicles for
the British and American armies.
Chrysler
Corporation introduced
the
first
commercially available passenger car power
steering system on the 1951 Chrysler Imperial under the name "Hydraguide". The
Chrysler system was based on some of Davis's expired patents. General
Motors introduced the 1952 Cadillac with a power steering system using the work
Davis had done for the company almost twenty years earlier. Charles F. Hammond,
an American, born in Detroit, filed several patents for improvements of power
steering with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office in 1958.

Flight
1953

Recorder-

A flight
recorder,
colloquially
called black
box,
although it
is
now
orangecoloured, is an
electronic recording device
placed in anaircraft for the purpose of facilitating the
investigation of aviation accidents and incidents.

still

Any type of aircraft in any condition of flight can be viewed in terms of

its input parameters (e.g. control instructions) and output parameters (e.g.
flight sensors), without any knowledge of its internal workings, as a black box
model. The flight data recorder (FDR) is an independent device that preserves the
recent history of the flight through
the recording of dozens of parameters

collected several times per second. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) preserves
the recent history of the sounds in the cockpit including the conversation of the
pilots. The two recorders give a testimony, narrating the flight history with accuracy
and impartiality, to assist in an investigation.

The first modern flight recorder,

called "Mata Hari", was created in
1942 by Finnish aviation engineer
Veijo Hietala. This black high-tech
mechanical box was able to record all
important aviation details during test
flights
of World
War
II fighter
aircraft that the Finnish army repaired
or built in their main aviation factory
in Tampere, Finland. The "Mata Hari"
black box is displayed in the Vapriikki
Museum in Tampere, Finland.

Pacemaker -1958
A pacemaker (or artificial pacemaker, so as not
to
be
confused
with
the heart's
natural pacemaker) is a medical device that uses
electrical
impulses,
delivered
by electrodes contracting the heart muscles, to
regulate the beating of the heart.
The primary purpose of a pacemaker is to
maintain an adequate heart rate, either because
the heart's natural pacemaker is not fast enough,
or there is a block in the heart's electrical
conduction system. Modern pacemakers are externally programmable and allow
the cardiologist to select the optimum pacing modes for individual patients. Some
combine a pacemaker and defibrillator in a single implantable device. Others have
multiple electrodes stimulating differing positions within the heart to
improve synchronization of the lower chambers (ventricles) of the heart.

In 1932, American physiologist Albert Hyman, working independently, described an

electro-mechanical instrument of his own, powered by a spring-wound hand-

cranked motor. Hyman himself referred to his invention as an "artificial

pacemaker", the term continuing in use to this day.
An

of
For
the
because of

apparent hiatus in publication of research conducted

between the early 1930s and World War II may
be attributed to the public perception
interfering with nature by "reviving the dead".
example, "Hyman did not publish data on
use of his pacemaker in humans
adverse publicity, both among his fellow
physicians, and due to newspaper
reporting at the time. Lidwell may have
been aware of this and did not
proceed with his experiments in

humans

The Internet-1969

The Internet is a global system of

interconnected computer networks that
use the standard Internet protocol
suite (TCP/IP) to link several billion
devices worldwide. It is a network of
networks that consists of millions of
private, public, academic, business, and
government networks of local to global
scope, linked by a broad array of
electronic,
wireless,
and
optical
networking technologies. The Internet
carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the
inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW),
the infrastructure to support email, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing and
telephony.
Research into packet switching started in the early 1960s and packet switched
networks such as Mark I at NPL in the UK, ARPANET,CYCLADES, Merit
Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s

using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the development of

protocols for internetworking, where multiple separate networks could be joined
together into a network of networks.
The first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected
between Leonard Kleinrock's Network Measurement Center at the UCLA's School
of Engineering and Applied Science and Douglas Engelbart's NLS system at SRI
International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969. The third site on
the ARPANET was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics center at the University
of California at Santa Barbara, and the fourth was the University of Utah Graphics
Department.
In an early sign of future growth, there were already fifteen sites connected to the
young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the
1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.

Mobile Phone-1988

A mo

bile phone (also known as a cellular phone, cell phone, hand phone, or
simply
a phone)
is
a phone that
can
make
and
receivetelephone calls over a radio link while moving around a
wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular
network provided by amobile phone operator, allowing access
to the public telephone network. By contrast, a cordless
telephone is used only within the short range of a single,
private base station.

In

addition to telephony, modern mobile phones also support a

wide
variety
of
other services such
as text
messaging, MMS, email,
Internet
access,
short-range
wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business
applications, gaming, and photography. Mobile phones that offer
these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.
The first hand-held cell phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Dr. Martin
Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing around 4.4 pounds (2 kg). In
1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first to be commercially available. From 1983 to
2014, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from zero to over 7 billion,
penetrating 100% of the global population and reaching the bottom of the
economic pyramid. In 2014, the top cell phone manufacturers
were Samsung, Nokia, Apple, and LG.

Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala

Technical Language I
Ing. Tatty Vallejo
Section B

Greatest Inventions of the last 100 years

Mara Cecilia Monroy Zamora

ID Number 201504384