Tribute to SHOEMAKER'S apprentice who INVENTED ELECTRIC MOTOR,A GALVANOMETER!!!

William Sturgeon (22 May 1783 – 4 December 1850) was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets, and invented the first practical English electric motor. Sturgeon was born in Whittington, near Carnforth, Lancashire, and apprenticed to a shoemaker. He joined the army in 1802 and taught himself mathematics and physics. In 1824 he became Lecturer in Science and Philosophy at the East India Company's Military Seminary at Addiscombe, Surrey, and in the following year he exhibited his first electromagnet. 

He displayed its power by lifting nine pounds with a seven-ounce piece of iron wrapped with wire through which a current from a single battery was sent. In 1832 he was appointed to the lecturing staff of the Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science in London, where he first demonstrated the DC electric motor incorporating a commutator.

In 1836 Sturgeon established the journal Annals of Electricity, Magnetism and Chemistry, and in the same year he invented a galvanometer. Sturgeon was a close associate of John Peter Gassiot and Charles Vincent Walker and the three were instrumental in founding the London Electrical Society in 1837.

In 1840 he became superintendent of the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Sciencein Manchester. He formed a close social circle with John Davies, one of the Gallery's promoters, and Davies' student James Prescott Joule, a circle that eventually extended to include Edward William Binney and John Leigh. The Gallery closed in 1842, and he earned a living by lecturing and demonstrating. He died in Prestwich in 1850.

An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by electric current. The magnetic field disappears when the current is turned off. Electromagnets are widely used as components of other electrical devices, such as motors, generators, relays, loudspeakers, hard disks, MRI machines, scientific instruments, and magnetic separation equipment, as well as being employed as industrial lifting electromagnets for picking up and moving heavy iron objects like scrap iron.

An electric motor is an electric machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. In normal motoring mode, most electric motors operate through the interaction between an electric motor's magnetic field and winding currents to generate force within the motor. In certain applications, such as in the transportation industry with traction motors, electric motors can operate in both motoring and generating or braking modes to also produce electrical energy from mechanical energy.

A galvanometer is a type of sensitive ammeter: an instrument for detecting electric current. It is  n analog electromechanical actuator that produces a rotary deflection of some type of pointer in response to electric current flowing through its coil in a magnetic field.

Links:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sturgeon,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_motor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanometer

The HARD LUCK-SCHEELE discovred oxygen, tungsten & many other things he was not credited for!!!

Carl Wilhelm Scheele (9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) was a Swedish Pomeranian pharmaceutical chemist. Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" because he made a number of chemical discoveries before others who are generally given the credit. For example, Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten,barium, hydrogen, and chlorine before Humphry Davy, among others. Scheele discovered organic acids tartaric, oxalic, uric, lactic, and citric, as well as hydrofluoric, hydrocyanic, and arsenic acids. He preferred speaking German his whole life, and German was commonly spoken among Swedish pharmacists.

Scheele was born in Stralsund, in western Pomerania, which was at the time part of Sweden. Scheele's father Joachim (or Johann) Christian Scheele, was a grain dealer and brewer from a respected German family. His mother was Margaretha Eleanore Warnekros. Friends of his parents taught him the art of reading prescriptions and the meaning of chemical and pharmaceutical signs. Then in 1757, at age fourteen, Carl was sent to Gothenburg as an apprentice pharmacist with another family friend and apothecary, Martin Andreas Bauch. He retained this position for eight years. During this time he ran experiments late into the night and read the works of Nicolas Lemery, Caspar Neumann, Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel and Georg Ernst Stahl (the champion of the phlogiston theory). Much of his later theoretical speculations were based upon Stahl.

Scheele arrived in Stockholm some time between 1767 and 1769 and worked as a pharmacist. During this period he discovered tartaric acid, and with his friend Retzius, studied the relation of quicklime to calcium carbonate. In the fall of 1770 he became director of the laboratory of the great pharmacy of Locke, at Uppsala. The laboratory supplied chemicals to professor of chemistry Torbern Bergman, and a friendship developed after Scheele analyzed a reaction which Bergman and his assistant Johan Gottlieb Gahn could not resolve. The reaction was between melted saltpetre and acetic acid, producing a red vapor. Further study of this reaction later led to Scheele's discovery of oxygen. 

By the time he was a teenager, Scheele had learned the dominant theory of gases in the 1770s, the phlogiston theory. Phlogiston, classified as "matter of fire", was supposed to be released from any burning material, and when it was exhausted, combustion would stop. When Scheele discovered oxygen he called it "fire air" because it supported combustion, but he explained oxygen using phlogistical terms because he did not believe that his discovery disproved the phlogiston theory.

Before Scheele made his discovery of oxygen, he studied air. Air was thought to be an element that made up the environment in which chemical reactions took place but did not interfere with the reactions. Scheele's investigation of air enabled him to conclude that air was a mixture of "fire air" and "foul air;" in other words, a mixture of two gases. 

He performed numerous experiments in which he burned substances such as saltpeter (potassium nitrate), manganese dioxide, heavy metal nitrates, silver carbonate and mercuric oxide. In all of these experiments, he isolated gas with the same properties: his "fire air," which he believed combined with phlogiston in materials to be released during heat-releasing reactions.

However, his first publication, Chemische Abhandlung von der Luft und dem Feuer, was delivered to the printer Swederus in 1775, but not published until 1777, at which time both Joseph Priestley and Lavoisier had already published their experimental data and conclusions concerning oxygen and the phlogiston theory. The first English edition, Chemical Observation and Experiments on Air and Fire was published in 1780, with an introduction "Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire".

In 1775 he was elected as  a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and also managed a pharmacy for a short time in Köping, and between the end of 1776 and the beginning of 1777, established his own business there. On October 29, 1777, he took his seat for the first and only time at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, and on November 11 he passed the examination as apothecary before the Royal Medical College, with highest honors. After his return to Köping he devoted himself, outside of his business, to scientific researches resulting in a long series of important papers.

In addition to his joint recognition for the discovery of oxygen, Scheele is argued to have been the first to discover other chemical elements such asbarium (1774), manganese (1774), molybdenum (1778), and tungsten (1781), as well as several chemical compounds, including citric acid, lactic acid, glycerol, hydrogen cyanide (also known, in aqueous solution, as prussic acid), hydrogen fluoride, and hydrogen sulfide(1777). In addition, he discovered a process similar to pasteurization, along with a means of mass-producing phosphorus (1769), leading Sweden to become one of the world's leading producers of matches.

Scheele made one other very important scientific discovery in 1774, arguably more revolutionary than his isolation of oxygen. He identified lime, silica, and iron in a specimen of pyrolusite (impure manganese dioxide) given to him by his friend, Johann Gottlieb Gahn, but could not identify an additional component (this was the manganese, which Scheele recognized was present as a new element, but could not isolate). When he treated the pyrolusite with hydrochloric acid over a warm sand bath, a yellow-green gas with a strong odor was produced. He found that the gas sank to the bottom of an open bottle and was denser than ordinary air. 

He also noted that the gas was not soluble in water. It turned corks a yellow color and removed all color from wet, blue litmus paper and some flowers. He called this gas with bleaching abilities, "dephlogisticated muriatic acid" (dephlogisticated hydrochloric acid, or oxidized hydrochloric acid). Eventually, Sir Humphry Davy named the gas chlorine.

 Scheele had a bad habit of sniffing and tasting any new substances he discovered. Cumulative exposure to arsenic, mercury, lead, their compounds, and perhaps hydrofluoric acid which he had discovered, and other substances took their toll on Scheele, who died at the early age of 43, on 21 May 1786, at his home in Köping. Doctors said that he died of mercury poisoning .

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Wilhelm_Scheele

The CONGREVE ROCKETS & its roots in INDIA!!!

Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet (20 May 1772 – 16 May 1828) was an English inventor and rocket artillery pioneer distinguished for his development and deployment of Congreve rockets, and a Tory Member of Parliament (MP). The Congreve Rocket wasa British military weapon designed and developed by Sir William Congreve in 1804.

The rocket was developed by the Royal Arsenal following the experiences of the Second, Third and Fourth Mysore Wars. The wars fought between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore in India made use of rockets as a weapon. After the wars, several Mysore rockets were sent to England, and from 1801, William Congreve set on a research and development programme at the Arsenal's laboratory. The Royal Arsenal's first demonstration of solid fuel rockets was in 1805. The rockets were used effectively during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.

The Indian rocket experiences, including Munro's book of 1789, eventually led to the Royal Arsenal beginning a military rocket R&D program in 1801. Several rocket cases were collected from Mysore and sent to Britain for analysis. The development was chiefly the work of Col. (later Sir) William Congreve, son of the Comptroller of the Royal Arsenal,Woolwich, London, who set on a vigorous research and development programme at the Arsenal's laboratory; after development work was complete, the rockets were manufactured in quantity further north, near Waltham Abbey, Essex. 

He was told that "the British at Seringapatam had suffered more from the rockets than from the shells or any other weapon used by the enemy". "In at least one instance", an eye-witness told Congreve, "a single rocket had killed three men and badly wounded others". Congreve prepared a new propellant mixture, and developed a rocket motor with a strong iron tube with conical nose, weighing about 32 pounds (15 kg). Congreve published three books on rocketry.

Mysorean rockets were used against the British East India Company by the armies of Tipu Sultan and his father, Hyder Ali, rulers of the kingdom of Mysore in India, during the Battle of Pollilur in 1781. An alternative suggestion is that Congreve adapted iron-cased gunpowder rockets for use by the British military from prototypes created by the Irish nationalist Robert Emmet for use during Emmet's Rebellion in 1803.Congreve first demonstrated solid fuel rockets at the Royal Arsenal in 1805. He considered his work sufficiently advanced to engage in two Royal Navy attacks on the French fleet at Boulogne, France, one that year and one the next. 

Parliament authorized Congreve to form two rocket companies for the army in 1809. Congreve subsequently commanded one of these at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. Congreve rockets were used for the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the War of 1812—the "rockets' red glare" in the American national anthem describes their firing at Fort McHenry during the latter conflict. They remained in the arsenal of the United Kingdom until the 1850s. He organized the impressive firework displays in London for the peace of 1814 and for the coronation of George IV in 1821.

Besides his rockets, Congreve was a prolific (if indifferently successful) inventor for the remainder of his life. Congreve invented a gun-recoil mounting, a time-fuze, a rocket parachute attachment, a hydropneumatic canal lock and sluice (1813), a perpetual motion machine, a process of colour printing (1821) which was widely used in Germany, a new form of steam engine, and a method of consuming smoke(which was applied at the Royal Laboratory). 

He also took out patents for a clock in which time was measured by a ball rolling along a zig-zag track on an inclined plane; for protecting buildings against fire; inlaying and combining metals; unforgeable bank note paper; a method of killing whales by means of rockets; improvements in the manufacture of gunpowder; stereotype plates; fireworks; and gas meters. Congreve was named as comptroller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich from 1814 until his death.

Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Congreve,_2nd_Baronet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congreve_rockets

Father of Indian Industry !!!

Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (March 1839 – 19 May 1904) was an Indian pioneer industrialist, who founded the Tata Group, India's biggest conglomerate company.  Jamsetji Tata is regarded as the legendary "Father of Indian Industry". He founded what would later become the Tata Group of companies. He was born to a Parsi Zoroastrian family in Navsari then part of the princely state of Baroda. Tata was the first businessman in a family of Parsi Zoroastrian priests. It was only natural that Nusserwanji, would, as usual join the family priesthood, but the enterprising youngster broke the tradition to become the first member of the family to try his hand at business. He started trading in Bombay. Jamsetji joined his father in Mumbai at the age of 14 and enrolled at the Elphinstone College completing his education as a ‘Green Scholar’ (equivalent of today’s graduate).

He was married to Hirabai Daboo while he was still a student. He graduated from college in 1858 and joined his father's trading firm. It was a turbulent time to step into business as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 had just been suppressed by the British government.Jamsetji's knowledge expansion happened through successive trips abroad, mainly to England, America, continental Europe, and other places that convinced him that there was tremendous scope for Indian companies to forge through and make a foray in the British dominated textile industry. Jamsetji worked in his father's company until he was 29. He founded a trading company in 1868 with Rs. 21,000 capital. 

He bought a bankrupt oil mill at Chinchpokli in 1869 and converted it to a cotton mill, which he renamed Alexandra Mill. He sold the mill two years later for a profit. He set up another cotton mill at Nagpur in 1874, which he christened Empress Mill when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India on 1 January 1877. He devoted his life to four goals: setting up an iron and steel company, a world-class learning institution, a unique hotel and a hydro-electric plant. Only the hotel became a reality during his lifetime, with the inauguration of the Taj Mahal Hotel at Colaba waterfront in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 3 December 1903 at the cost of 42 million rupees (about 11 billion or 1100 crore rupees at 2010 prices). At that time it was the only hotel in India to have electricity.

His successors' work led to the three remaining ideas being achieved:

• Tata Steel (formerly TISCO — Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited) is Asia's first and India's largest steel company. It became world's fifth largest steel company, after it acquired Corus Group producing 28 million tonnes of steel annually.
• Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the pre-eminent Indian institution for research and education in Science and Engineering.
• Tata Hydroelectric Power Supply Company, renamed Tata Power Company Limited, currently India's largest private electricity company with an installed generation capacity of over 8000MW.

Their sons, Dorabji Tata and Ratanji Tata, succeeded Jamsetji as the chairman of the Tata group.

Tata's sister Jerbai, through marriage to a Bombay merchant, became mother of Shapurji Saklatvala, who Jamsetji employed to successfully prospect for coal and iron ore in Bihar and Orissa. Saklatvala later settled in England, initially to manage Tata's Manchester office, and later became a Communist Member of the British Parliament.

While on a business trip in Germany in 1900, Tata became seriously ill. He died in Nauheim on May 19, 1904, and was buried in the Parsi burial ground in Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, England. Tata's iron and steel plant was set up at Sakchi village in Bihar. The village grew into a town and the railway station there was named Tatanagar. Now it is a bustling metropolis known as Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, named in honor of the Jamshetji. The old village of Sakchi (now urbanized) still exists within the city of Jamshedpur, as its suburb.

The Family tree of the Tatas: