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:

This talented HARPIST invented first working radio communication system!!!

David Edward Hughes (16 May 1831 – 22 January 1900), was a Welsh-American scientist and musician. Hughes invented the first working radio communication system, the first semiconductor diode crystal radio receiver, the first teleprinter modem, and the first microphone. He was also a harpist, and a professor of music.

Hughes was born to Welsh parents in Bala in 1831 and emigrated to the United States at the age of seven. He was an experimental physicist, mostly in the areas of electricity and signals. He also invented an improved microphone, which was a modification of Thomas Edison's carbon telephone transmitter. He revived the term "microphone" to describe the transmitter's ability to transmit extremely weak sounds to a Bell telephone receiver. He invented the induction balance (later used in metal detectors). Despite Hughes' facility as an experimenter, he had little mathematical training. He was a friend of William Henry Preece.

Hughes came from a Welsh musical family. At only six years old, he is known to have played the harp to a very high standard. At an early age, Hughes developed such musical ability that he is reported to have attracted attention of Herr Hast, an eminent German pianist in America who procured for him a professorship of music at St. Joseph’s College in Bardstown, Kentucky.

In 1855 Hughes designed a printing telegraph system, essentially a Morse code modem, and in less than two years, a number of small telegraph companies, including Western Union in early stages of development, united to form one large corporation — Western Union Telegraph Co. to carry on the business of telegraphyon the Hughes system. In Europe, the Hughes Telegraph System became an international standard.

In 1879, Hughes discovered that sparks would generate a radio signal that could be detected by listening to a telephone receiver connected to his new microphone design. He developed his spark-gap transmitter and receiver into a working communication system using trial and error experiments, until eventually he could demonstrate the ability to send and receive Morse code signals out to a range limited to 500 yards (460 m). His substantial contributions to science achieved wide recognition during his lifetime, from his peers within the scientific community.

Hughes demonstrated his technology to representatives of the Royal Society in February 1880, but they were not convinced that it was truly radio, and not merelyinduction. While Hughes was continuing his wireless telegraphy research, Hertz's papers were published, and then he thought it was too late to bring forward these earlier experiments.

Notably, the radio receiver technology of David E. Hughes surpassed the simplistic spark-gap device that would first be studied by later radio researchers. He discovered that his microphone design exhibited unusual properties in the presence of radio signals. He experimented with the discovery, and described his creation of both the device classically known as a "coherer", and an improved semiconductor carbon and steel point-contact rectifying diode, which he also called a "coherer". The point-contact diode version of the device is now known as a crystal radio detector, and was the key component of his sensitive crystal radio receiver.

Point-contact diodes had been independently discovered by other scientists. They were later studied and described in detail by J.C. Bose, in his research on their use in radio receivers. John Ambrose Fleming earned a Hughes Medal after he improved the Hughes diode receiver component with his invention of a vacuum tube diode, which could be operated more reliably than the semiconductor technology of the time. Fleming's U.S. patent for the vacuum tube rectifier diode was invalidated due to the prior art of the other diode researchers who preceded him.

Elihu Thomson recognized the Hughes claim to be the first to transmit radio. Hughes himself said "with characteristic modesty" that Hertz's experiments were "far more conclusive than mine", and that Marconi's "efforts at demonstration merit the success he has received... the world will be right in placing his name on the highest pinnacle, in relation to aerial electric telegraphy".

Patents

• U.S. Patent 14,917 Telegraph (with alphabetic keyboard and printer) issued May 20, 1856
• U.S. Patent 22,531 Duplex Telegraph issued January 4, 1859
• U.S. Patent 22,770 Printing Telegraph (with type-wheel) issued January 25, 1859

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edward_Hughes

MICKEY MOUSE debuted today on screen!!!

Mickey first was seen in a single test screening (Plane Crazy). Mickey officially debuted in the short film Steamboat Willie (1928), one of the first sound cartoons. He went on to appear in over 130 films, including The Band Concert (1935), Brave Little Tailor (1938), and Fantasia (1940). Mickey appeared primarily in short films, but also occasionally in feature-length films. Ten of Mickey's cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, one of which, Lend a Paw, won the award in 1942. In 1978, Mickey became the first cartoon character to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Mickey Mouse is a funny animal cartoon character and the official mascot of The Walt Disney Company. He was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at the Walt Disney Studios in 1928. An anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves, Mickey has become one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world.

Beginning in 1930, Mickey has also been featured extensively as a comic strip character. His self-titled newspaper strip, drawn primarily by Floyd Gottfredson, ran for 45 years. Mickey has also appeared in comic books and in television series such as The Mickey Mouse Club (1955–1996) and others. He also appears in other media such as video games as well as merchandising, and is a meetable character at the Disney parks.

Mickey generally appears alongside his girlfriend Minnie Mouse, his pet dog Pluto, his friends Donald Duck, and Goofy, and his nemesis Pete, among others (see Mickey Mouse universe). Originally characterized as a mischievous antihero, Mickey's increasing popularity led to his being rebranded as an everyman, usually seen as a flawed, but adventurous hero. In 2009, Disney began to rebrand the character again by putting less emphasis on his pleasant, cheerful side and reintroducing the more mischievous and adventurous sides of his personality, beginning with the video game Epic Mickey.

Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier cartoon character created by the Disney studio for Charles Mintz, a film producer who distributed product through Universal Studios. Walt Disney got the inspiration for Mickey Mouse from a tame mouse at his desk at Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney. These inspired Ub Iwerks to create a new mouse character for Disney. "Mortimer Mouse" had been Disney's original name for the character before his wife, Lillian, convinced him to change it, and ultimately Mickey Mouse came to be.

Ub Iwerks designed Mickey's body out of circles in order to make the character simple to animate. Disney employees John Hench and Marc Davis believed that this design was part of Mickey's success – it made him more dynamic and appealing to audiences. Mickey's circular design is most noticeable in his ears, which in traditional animation, always appear circular no matter which way Mickey faces.This made Mickey easily recognizable to audiences and made his ears an unofficial personal trademark.

In 1994, four of Mickey's cartoons were included in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons which listed the greatest cartoons of all time as voted by members of the animation field. The films were The Band Concert (#3), Steamboat Willie (#13), Brave Little Tailor (#26), and Clock Cleaners (#27).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse

This inventor of a system for gaining solar power from sea by large floating algea fields producing biofuel is also a violinist

Frederik Hendrik Kreuger (Amsterdam 14 May 1928), is a Dutch high voltage scientist and inventor, lives in Delft, the Netherlands, and is professor emeritus of the Delft University of Technology. He is also a professional author of technical literature, nonfiction books, thrillers and a decisive biography of the master forger Han van Meegeren. Frederik H. Kreuger stems from an old Amsterdam family where his maternal grandfather ran a small tobacco factory "Het Wapen van Spanje" in the Weteringstraat, in the old town near the Rijksmuseum.

He was educated in Haarlem HBS B (a bèta-oriented secondary school), took his Engineer's degree at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and received there his Ph.D. degree in 1961. He worked as a high voltage scientist in Sweden, England and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands he was employed by the electrical industry and became later managing director of the Nederlandse Kabelfabriek in Delft. In 1986 he became a high voltage professor of his Alma mater in Delft and worked there until 1995.

He is the inventor of several constructions for high voltage cable systems and of equipment for the detection of partial discharges. Some examples are:

• balanced detection of partial discharges (P.D.s) (also called Kreuger bridge)
• discharge standard for partial discharge (P.D.) measurements.
• the (now usual) elastomeric joints in solid H.V. cables (also called bi-manchet)
• the (now usual) elastomeric terminals for solid H.V. cables

His book Partial Discharge Detection was for twenty-five years the leading text book in this field. He has also published books about Management and Mismanagement in Research and Disadvantages of Wind Energy. His high voltage laboratory in Delft became a centre of knowledge for partial discharge detection and for the study of Direct current high voltage.

Kreuger is also the inventor of a system for gaining solar power from sea by large floating algea fields producing biofuel (European Patent EP07110895 – 22 June 2007). This project is managed by the Botanical Garden of the Department Biotechnology of the Delft University of Technology; several departments of the University are cooperating herein.

Kreuger plays the leading violin in the amateur gipsy orchestra Siperkov Ensemble. He made a study of Gipsy or Romanimusic and published a book in Dutch about the history and perception of Gipsy music. An excerpt of this book appeared as the article "Zigeunermuziek" in the Dutch version of Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_H._Kreuger