The GLASSBLOWER blew new standards of temperature scale by his name!!!

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was a German physicist, engineer, and glass blower who is best known for inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer (1714), and for developing a temperature scale now named after him. Fahrenheit was born in 1686 in Danzig (Gdańsk), the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but lived most of his life in the Dutch Republic. The Fahrenheits were a German Hanse merchant family who had lived in several Hanseatic cities. 

Fahrenheit's great-grandfather had lived in Rostock, and research suggests that the Fahrenheit family originated in Hildesheim. Daniel's grandfather moved from Kneiphof in Königsberg to Danzig and settled there as a merchant in 1650.  Daniel was the eldest of the five Fahrenheit children (two sons, three daughters) who survived childhood.

Daniel Gabriel began training as a merchant in Amsterdam after his parents died on 14 August 1701 from eating poisonous mushrooms. However, Fahrenheit's interest in natural science led him to begin studies and experimentation in that field. From 1717, he traveled to Berlin, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Copenhagen, and also to his hometown, where his brother still lived. During that time, Fahrenheit met or was in contact with Ole Rømer, Christian Wolff, and Gottfried Leibniz. 

In 1717, Fahrenheit settled in The Hague as a glassblower, making barometers, altimeters, and thermometers. From 1718 onwards, he lectured in chemistry in Amsterdam. He visited England in 1724 and was the same year elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Fahrenheit died in The Hague and was buried there at the Kloosterkerk (Cloister Church).

According to Fahrenheit's 1724 article, he determined his scale by reference to three fixed points of temperature. The lowest temperature was achieved by preparing a frigorific mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride (a salt), and waiting for it to reach equilibrium. The thermometer then was placed into the mixture and the liquid in the thermometer allowed to descend to its lowest point. The thermometer's reading there was taken as 0 °F. 

The second reference point was selected as the reading of the thermometer when it was placed in still water when ice was just forming on the surface. This was assigned as 32 °F. The third calibration point, taken as 96 °F, was selected as the thermometer's reading when the instrument was placed under the arm or in the mouth.

Fahrenheit came up with the idea that mercury boils around 600 degrees on this temperature scale. Work by others showed that water boils about 180 degrees above its freezing point. The Fahrenheit scale later was redefined to make the freezing-to-boiling interval exactly 180 degrees, a convenient value as 180 is a highly composite number, meaning that it is evenly divisible into many fractions. 

It is because of the scale's redefinition that normal body temperature today is taken as 98.2 degrees, whereas it was 96 degrees on Fahrenheit's original scale. Until the switch to the Celsius scale, the Fahrenheit scale was widely used in Europe. It is still used for everyday temperature measurements by the general population in the United States and Belize and, less so, in the UK and Canada.

Fahrenheit (symbol°F) is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. On Fahrenheit's original scale the lower defining point was the lowest temperature to which he could reproducibly cool brine (defining 0 degrees), while the highest was that of the average human core body temperature (defining 100 degrees). 

The scale is now usually defined by two fixed points: the temperature at which water freezes into ice is defined as 32 degrees, and the boiling point of water is defined to be 212 degrees, a 180 degree separation, as defined at sea level and standard atmospheric pressure.

Links:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Gabriel_Fahrenheit, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

This EDISON OF FRANCE created NEON industry by using byproduct & was freed from prison acknowledging his RESEARCH in OTEC!!!

Georges Claude (24 September 1870 – 23 May 1960) was a French engineer and inventor. He is noted for his early work on the industrial liquefaction of air, for the invention and commercialization of neon lighting, and for a large experiment on generating energy by pumping cold seawater up from the depths. Considered by some to be "the Edison of France", he was an active collaborator with the German occupiers of France during the Second World War, for which he was imprisoned in 1945 and stripped of his honors.

In 1902 Claude devised what is now known as the Claude system for liquifying air. The system enabled the production of industrial quantities of liquid nitrogen, oxygen, and argon; Claude's approach competed successfully with the earlier system of Carl von Linde (1895). Claude and businessman Paul Delorme founded L'Air Liquide, S.A. (Air Liquide), which is presently a large multinational corporation headquartered in Paris, France.

Georges Claude studied at the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI). He then held several positions. He was an electrical inspector in a cable factory and the laboratory manager in an electric works. He founded and edited a magazine, L'Étincelle Électrique (The Electric Spark); his important friendship with Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval apparently dates from this time. About 1896, Claude learned of the explosion risk for bottled acetylene, which was used at the time for lighting. Acetylene is explosive when stored under pressure. Claude showed that acetylene dissolved well in acetone, equivalent to storing it under 25 atmospheres of pressure, which reduced the risk in handling the gas.

Inspired by Geissler tubes and by Daniel McFarlan Moore's invention of a nitrogen-based light (the "Moore tube"), Claude developed neon tube lighting to exploit the neon that was produced as a byproduct of his air liquefaction business. These were all "glow discharge" tubes that generate light when an electrical current is passed through the rarefied gas within the tube. 

Claude's first public demonstration of a large neon light was at the Paris Motor Show (Salon de l'Automobile et du Cycle), 3–18 December 1910. Claude's first patent filing for his technologies in France was on 7 March 1910. Claude himself wrote in 1913 that, in addition to a source of neon gas, there were two principal inventions that made neon lighting practicable. 

First were his methods for purifying the neon (or other inert gases such as argon). Claude developed techniques for purifying the inert gases within a completely sealed glass tube, which distinguished neon tube lighting from the Moore tubes; the latter had a device for replenishing the nitrogen or carbon dioxide gases within the tube. 

The second invention was ultimately crucial for the development of the Claude lighting business; it was a design for minimizing the degradation (by "sputtering") of the electrodes that transfer electrical current from the external power supply to the glowing gases within the sign.

The terms "neon light" and "neon sign" are now often applied to electrical lighting incorporating sealed glass tubes filled with argon, mercury vapor, or other gases instead of neon. In 1915 a U.S. patent was issued to Claude covering the design of the electrodes for neon lights.

In 1923, Georges Claude and his French company Claude Neon, introduced neon gas signs to the United States, by selling two to a Packard car dealership in Los Angeles. Earle C. Anthony purchased the two signs reading "Packard" for $1,250 apiece. Neon lighting quickly became a popular fixture in outdoor advertising. Visible even in daylight, people would stop and stare at the first neon signs for hours, dubbed "liquid fire."

Claude's mentor and friend was Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval, the inventor of the "Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion" (OTEC) concept. Claude was also the first person to build prototype plants of that technology. Claude built his plant in Cuba in 1930. The system produced 22 kilowatts of electricity with a low-pressure turbine.

Following the Allied liberation of France in 1944, Claude was taken into custody on 2 December 1944 because of his collaboration with the Axis Powers. He was removed from the French Academy of Sciences. In 1945 he was tried and convicted of propaganda work favoring collaboration, but was cleared of another charge that he helped design the V-1 flying bomb. He was condemned to life imprisonment, and was imprisoned. In 1950 he was released from prison, with acknowledgment of his research on ocean thermal energy conversion.

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

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