This curious phil started playing with electricity systems from childhood; created FUSOR & had 165 patents!!!

Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor and television pioneer. He made many contributions that were crucial to the early development of all-electronic television. He is perhaps best known for inventing the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device (video camera tube), the "image dissector", as well as the first fully functional and complete all-electronic television system. He was also the first person to demonstrate such a system to the public. Farnsworth developed a television system complete with receiver and camera, which he produced commercially in the firm of the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation, from 1938 to 1951.

In later life, Farnsworth invented a small nuclear fusion device, the Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor, or simply "fusor", employing inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC). Although not a practical device for generating nuclear energy, the fusor serves as a viable source of neutrons. The design of this device has been the acknowledged inspiration for other fusion approaches including the Polywell reactor concept in terms of a general approach to fusion design. Farnsworth held 165 patents, mostly in radio and television. Read more...

To mark his way from Morse code to Bar code; he quit his job & developed it in a year!!!

Norman Joseph Woodland (also known as N. Joseph Woodland and N. J. Woodland; September 6, 1921 – December 9, 2012) was best known as one of the inventors of the barcode, for which he received US Patent 2,612,994 in October 1952. Woodland was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey on September 6, 1921 to Jewish parents, the elder of two boys.

After graduating from Atlantic City High School, Woodland went on to earn his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) from Drexel University (then called Drexel Institute of Technology) in 1947. During his military service in World War II, Woodland worked as a technical assistant with the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. From 1948-1949, he worked as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Drexel. Read more...

These guys back rubbed incorrectly spelt googol to a mammoth search engine; which began as a project in college!!!

Posted by Vasubandhu Manke · 4 September 2014 at 16:36

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol", the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. 

Its mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil." Originally, Google ran under Stanford University's website, with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank; it determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.

The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in the garage of a friend (Susan Wojcicki) in Menlo Park, California. Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee. The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of US$100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. Early in 1999, while graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had developed was taking up too much time and distracting their academic pursuits. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for US$1 million. He rejected the offer. Read more...

He discovered Hydra's regenerative properties while teaching students & was connoted as father of biology by some!!!

Abraham Trembley (3 September 1710 – 12 May 1784 Geneva) was a Swiss naturalist. He is best known for being the first to study freshwater polyps or hydra and for being among the first to develop experimental zoology. His mastery of experimental method has led some historians of science to credit him as the "father of biology".

Trembley came from an officer's family from Geneva, Switzerland. Trembley acted as tutor to the children of Count Willem Bentinck (1704-1774), a prominent Dutch politician at the time. Trembley, during his lessons, discovered the regenerative powers of the Hydra with the boys. Those were conducted at the Count's summer residence of Sorgvliet nearby. The Hague. Sketches and drawings of his experiments with the children, made by Cornelis Pronk, are kept in the archives of the town of The Hague, the Netherlands.

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A passionate amatuer painter who coined the word,'mole'; was one of the founders of Modern Physical Chemistry!!!

Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (2 September 1853 – 4 April 1932) was a Baltic German chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities. Ostwald, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, and Svante Arrhenius are usually credited with being the modern founders of the field of physical chemistry.

Ostwald was born ethnically Baltic German in Riga, to master-cooper Gottfried Wilhelm Ostwald (1824–1903) and Elisabeth Leuckel (1824–1903). He was the middle of two brothers, Eugen (1851–1932) and Gottfried (1855–1918). Ostwald graduated from theUniversity of Tartu, Estonia, in 1875, received his Ph.D. there in 1878 under the guidance of Carl Schmidt, and taught at Co-Arc from 1875 to 1881 and at Riga Polytechnicum from 1881 to 1887. Read more...

Starting with music, shifting on chemistry & finishing on botany, he pioneered CYCLE OF LIFE concept & researched extensively!!

Sergei Nikolaievich Winogradsky (1 September 1856 – 25 February 1953) was a Ukrainian microbiologist, ecologist and soil scientist who pioneered the cycle of life concept. Winogradsky discovered the first known form of lithotrophy during his research with Beggiatoa in 1887. This research provided the first example of lithotrophy, but not autotrophy. His research on nitrifying bacteria would report the first known form of chemoautotrophy, showing how a lithotroph fixes carbon dioxide (CO2) to make organic compounds.

Winogradsky was born in Kiev (then in the Russian Empire) and entered the Imperial Conservatoire of Music in St Petersburg in 1875 to study piano. However, after two years of music training, he entered the University of Saint Petersburg in 1877 to study chemistry under Nikolai Menshchutkin and botany under Andrei Sergeevich Famintzin. He received a diploma in 1881 and stayed at the St. Petersburg University for a degree of master of science in botany in 1884. Read more...

Starting a farmhand, this clock-maker invented things, revolutionized mining & virtually contributed to Swedish development!!!

Christopher Polhammar (18 December 1661 – 30 August 1751), better known as  Christopher Polhem was a Swedish scientist, inventor and industrialist. He made significant contributions to the economic and industrial development of Sweden, particularly mining. Polhem was born on the island of Gotland in the small village of Tingstäde, situated northeast of Visby.

When Polhem was 8, his father died and his mother, Christina Eriksdotter Schening from Vadstena, Östergötland remarried. As a result of conflicts with his stepfather, his private tuition was no longer paid for and Polhem was sent to live with his uncle in Stockholm. In Stockholm he attended a German school until the age of 12 when his uncle died; once again Polhem was left without the possibility of education. He took a job as a farmhand on Vansta, a property in Södertörn, Stockholm. Read more...

One of the earliest inventors who reinvented the wheel in two & added pedals and crank mechanism to it!!!

Pierre Lallement (October 25, 1843 - August 29, 1891) is considered by some to be the inventor of the bicycle. In 1862 while Lallement was employed building baby carriages in Nancy he saw someone riding a dandy horse(The dandy horse is a human-powered vehicle that, being the first means of transport to make use of the two-wheeler principle, is regarded as the forerunner of the bicycle. The dandy horse was invented by Baron Karl Drais in Mannheim, Germany and patented in January 1818), a forerunner of the bicycle that required the rider to propel the vehicle by walking. Lallement modified what he had seen by adding a transmission comprising a rotary crank mechanism and pedals attached to the front-wheel hub, thus creating the first true bicycle. Read more...

Fascinated by electric gadgets in childhood, he applied his skills develop a CT scanner; a good tool for physiology & medicine!!

Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield, CBE, FRS, (28 August 1919 – 12 August 2004) was an English electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan McLeod Cormack for his part in developing the diagnostic technique of X-ray computed tomography (CT). His name is immortalised in the Hounsfield scale, a quantitative measure of radio density used in evaluating CT scans. The scale is defined in Hounsfield units (symbol HU), running from air at −1000 HU, through water at 0 HU, and up to dense cortical bone at +1000 HU and more.Read more...

Aspiring actor in youth, this mycologist published novel to pay for education & revolutionized breweries by his work on yeast!!

Emil Christian Hansen (May 8, 1842 – August 27, 1909) was a Danish mycologist and fermentation physiologist. Born in Ribe, Hansen’s large family and poor circumstances often made it necessary for Emil Hansen to help his father. In 1850 he entered school and showed himself to be a diligent pupil and an avid reader. He wished to become an actor, but his father would not allow it. In 1860 he became a journeyman house painter; he also sought to become an artist, but the Academy of Fine Arts refused his application for admission.

Hansen became a private tutor in 1862 at the estate of Holsteinborg, where he prepared to become a teacher. During his stay at Holsteinborg the botanist Peder Nielsen, at that time schoolmaster in Ørslev, aroused Hansen’s interest in botany and gave him emotional and financial support. In spite of illness Hansen completed a three-year teaching course at Copenhagen Polytechnical High School in 1869, earning money by publishing novels. Read more...

The duo invented & pioneered to fly with hot air in eighteenth century!!!

Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (26 August 1740 – 26 June 1810) and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier (6 January 1745 – 2 August 1799) were the inventors of the Montgolfière-style hot air balloon, globe aérostatique. The brothers succeeded in launching the first manned ascent, carrying Étienne into the sky.  The brothers were born into a family of paper manufacturers in Annonay, in Ardèche, France. Their parents were Pierre Montgolfier (1700–1793) and his wife, Anne Duret (1701–1760), who had sixteen children. 

Of the two brothers, it was Joseph who first contemplated building machines as early as 1777 when he observed laundry drying over a fire incidentally form pockets that billowed upwards. Joseph made his first definitive experiments in November 1782 while living in the city of Avignon. He reported some years later that he was watching a fire one evening while contemplating one of the great military issues of the day—an assault on the fortress of Gibraltar, which had proved impregnable from both sea and land. 

Joseph mused on the possibility of an air assault using troops lifted by the same force that was lifting the embers from the fire. He believed that contained within the smoke was a special gas, which he called Montgolfier Gas, with a special property he called levity. Read more...

The blacksmith & bookbinder's apprentice; despite a nervous breakdown became one of the most influential scientists in history!!

Michael Faraday, FRS (22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include those of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis.

Faraday was born in Newington Butts, which is now part of the London Borough of Southwark, but which was then a suburban part of Surrey. His family was not well off. James Faraday moved his wife and two children to London during the winter of 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been an apprentice to the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, who was the third of four children, having only the most basic school education, had to educate himself. 

At fourteen he became the apprentice to George Riebau, a local bookbinder and bookseller in Blandford Street. During his seven-year apprenticeship he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. At this time he also developed an interest in science, especially in electricity. Faraday was particularly inspired by the book Conversations on Chemistry by Jane Marcet. Read more...

This clock repairman's son, an engineer, learnt psychiatry, was thrown off the staff; developed Choice theory & Reality therapy!

 William Glasser (May 11, 1925 – August 23, 2013) was an American psychiatrist. Glasser was the developer of Reality Therapy and Choice Theory. His ideas, which focus on personal choice, personal responsibility and personal transformation, are considered controversial by mainstream psychiatrists, who focus instead on classifying psychiatric syndromes as "illnesses", and who often prescribe psychotropic medications to treat mental disorders. Read more...

This Denis Captured the steam & enabled us to cook quickly since 17th century!!!

Denis Papin (22 August 1647 – c. 1712) was a French physicist,mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the steam engine, and of the pressure cooker. Born in Chitenay (Loir-et-Cher, Centre Région), Papin attended a Jesuit school there, and from 1661 attended University at Angers, from which he graduated with a medical degree in 1669. In 1673, while working with Christiaan Huygens and Gottfried Leibniz in Paris, he became interested in using a vacuum to generate motive power.

Papin first visited London in 1675, and worked with Robert Boyle from 1676 to 1679, publishing an account of his work in Continuation of New Experiments (1680). During this period, Papin invented the steam digester, a type of pressure cooker with a safety valve. He first addressed the Royal Society in 1679 on the subject of his digester, and remained mostly in London until about 1687, when he left to take up an academic post in Germany. In Germany he was able to live with fellow Huguenot exiles from France. 

In 1689, Papin suggested that a force pump or bellows could maintain the pressure and fresh air inside a diving bell. While in Marburg in 1690, having observed the mechanical power of atmospheric pressure on his 'digester', Papin built a model of a pistonsteam engine, the first of its kind. Papin continued to work on steam engines for the next fifteen years. 

In 1695 he moved from Marburg to Kassel. In 1705 he developed a second steam engine with the help of Gottfried Leibniz, based on an invention by Thomas Savery, but this used steam pressure rather than atmospheric pressure. Details of the engine were published in 1707. During his stay in Kassel in Hesse, in 1704, he constructed a ship powered by his steam engine, mechanically linked to paddles. 

This made him the first to construct a steam-powered boat (or vehicle of any kind).Then he has poured the first steam cylinder of the world in the iron foundry Veckerhagen. Today this place is known as Reinhardshagen-Veckerhagen. Steam-driven water-lifting machine by Papin in 1707, reconstruction, from Nouvelle manière d'élever l'eau par la force du feu. Musée des Arts et Métiers.

Papin returned to London in 1707, leaving his wife in Germany. Several of his papers were put before the Royal Society between 1707 and 1712 without acknowledging or paying him, about which he complained bitterly. Papin's ideas included a description of his 1690 atmospheric steam engine, similar to that built and put into use by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, thought to be the year of Papin's death.

The last surviving evidence of Papin's whereabouts came in a letter he wrote dated 23 January 1712. At the time he was destitute, and it is believed he died that year and was buried in an unmarked pauper's pit.

Pressure cooking is the process of cooking food, using water or other cooking liquid, in a sealed vessel—known as a pressure cooker, which does not permit air or liquids to escape below a pre-set pressure. Pressure cookers are used for cooking food more quickly than conventional cooking methods, which also saves energy.

Living example 'Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication', most sought chairman by global businesses seldom needs introduction!

Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy CBE (born 20 August 1946), commonly referred to as Narayana Murthy was born on 20 August 1946 in Sidlaghatta, Karnataka. After completing his school education, he appeared for the Indian Institute of Technology entrance test but could not attend. Instead he went to the National Institute of Engineering and graduated in 1967 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. In 1969 he received his master's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. He is an Indian IT industrialist and the co-founder of Infosys, a multinational corporation providing business consulting, technology, engineering, and outsourcing services. 

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This curious phil started playing with electricity systems from childhood; created FUSOR & had 165 patents!!!

Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor and television pioneer. He made many contributions that were crucial to the early development of all-electronic television. He is perhaps best known for inventing the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device (video camera tube), the "image dissector", as well as the first fully functional and complete all-electronic television system. He was also the first person to demonstrate such a system to the public. Farnsworth developed a television system complete with receiver and camera, which he produced commercially in the firm of the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation, from 1938 to 1951.

In later life, Farnsworth invented a small nuclear fusion device, the Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor, or simply "fusor", employing inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC). Although not a practical device for generating nuclear energy, the fusor serves as a viable source of neutrons. The design of this device has been the acknowledged inspiration for other fusion approaches including the Polywell reactor concept in terms of a general approach to fusion design. Farnsworth held 165 patents, mostly in radio and television.

Philo T. Farnsworth was born August 19, 1906, the eldest of five children of Lewis Edwin Farnsworth and Serena Amanda Bastian, a Mormon couple then living in a small log cabin built by Lewis's father in a place called Indian Creek near Beaver, Utah.  Philo was excited to find his new home was wired for electricity, with a Delco generator providing power for lighting and farm machinery. He was a quick study in mechanical and electrical technology, repairing the troublesome generator, and upon finding a burned out electric motor among some items discarded by the previous tenants, proceeding to rewind the armature and convert his mother's hand-powered washing machine into an electric-powered one. 

Philo developed an early interest in electronics after his first telephone conversation with an out-of-state relative and the discovery of a large cache of technology magazines in the attic of the family’s new home, and won a $25 first prize in a pulp-magazine contest for inventing a magnetized car lock.

Farnsworth excelled in chemistry and physics at Rigby High School. In 1924 he applied to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he was recruited after he earned the nation's second highest score on academy tests. Farnsworth was prepared to show his models and drawings to a patent attorney who was nationally recognized as an authority on electrophysics. Everson and Gorrell agreed that Farnsworth should apply for patents for his designs, a decision which proved crucial in later disputes with RCA. 

Most television systems in use at the time used image scanning devices ("rasterizers") employing rotating "Nipkow disks" comprising lenses arranged in spiral patterns such that they swept across an image in a succession of short arcs while focusing the light they captured on photosensitive elements, thus producing a varying electrical signal corresponding to the variations in light intensity. Farnsworth recognized the limitations of the mechanical systems, and that an all-electronic scanning system could produce a superior image for transmission to a receiving device. On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, to a receiver in another room of his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco.

Many inventors had built electromechanical television systems before Farnsworth's seminal contribution, but Farnsworth designed and built the world's first working all-electronic television system, employing electronic scanning in both the pickup and display devices. He first demonstrated his system to the press on September 3, 1928, and to the public at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on August 25, 1934.

The Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor is an apparatus designed by Farnsworth to create nuclear fusion. Unlike most controlled fusion systems, which slowly heat a magnetically confined plasma, the fusor injects high temperature ions directly into a reaction chamber, thereby avoiding a considerable amount of complexity. When the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor was first introduced to the fusion research world in the late 1960s, the fusor was the first device that could clearly demonstrate it was producing fusion reactions at all. Hopes at the time were high that it could be quickly developed into a practical power source. However, as with other fusion experiments, development into a power source has proven difficult. Nevertheless, the fusor has since become a practical neutron source and is produced commercially for this role.