Modern man owes his life to the inventors of the past 20 centuries
(Part III – ‘Catching-up to meet the UN Millennium Development Goal 2015’)
Using the classroom chart of the Totem Pole of Civilizations, we see nine men standing on top of one another. Over the Primitive Man at the bottom stands the River Settler who discovered fire, Above him is the ancient civilized Egyptian (representing the ancient civilizations of Greece, China, India, etc.), who formulated the laws of governance. Next is the Medieval Man, who became aware of life’s spiritual mores while studying alchemy healing; then the Renaissance Man, who mastered arts, crafts and architecture; above him is the Explorer-Colonizer, who chartered the maps of the “New World,” and finally, the Modern Man trying to reach life in outer space. Yes, we owe to all these men in the past what we are today.
The Department of Science and Technology (DOST), which just held its annual Science exhibit at SMX, bannered the theme “Philippines: A Science Nation Meeting Global Challenges.” If so, perhaps the DOST office quarters should have a permanent section visually depicting the time scroll of these great scientists and inventors whose trail we are trying to follow in our search for a better life in the country.
Building a new age
Improvements in steel and concrete helped restructure the world. The skyscraper construction was innovated by William Le Baron Jenney, whose attention was caught by the Southeast Asian homes made of reed matting strung on a framework of tree trunks or the ”nipa” house. He envisioned ‘an internal steel frame on which the fabric would be strung like flesh upon a skeleton.’ Steel frames were inserted into concrete slabs. The result was the 1913 ten-storey Home Insurance Building, ancestor of all high-rise structures. With the hydraulic lifts, the Otis elevator helped construct a 20-storey building. The motorized concrete mixer was invented and was even mounted on trucks. This helped construct the giant Grand Coulee Dam in 1927, using 19 metric tons of concrete for its 550 ft. wall.
French engineer Eugene Freyssinet perfected the German version of “pre-stressed” concrete. It used 70% less steel and 40% less concrete. Across the ocean in the USA, the plasterboard to cover walls and ceiling was invented. By 1924, American inventor William Mason discovered the first plywood, when a leaky steam valve cooked and compressed sawmill waste into tough weather resistant sheet marketed within the year as Masonite. Fusing together traditional architectures with the new technology the 55-storey Woolworth Building was erected in New York prodding corporations by 1920 to vie with each other to construct even higher buildings on Manhattan Island.
However, the Wall Street stock market crashed and construction ceased. A beacon of hope was the brainchild of architect William Lamb’s handsome 102-storey Empire State Building completed in 1931. It was the last of the world’s big-boned steel frame giants. Then architects went in search of lighter materials. German born Ludwig Mies Van Rohe, whose shiny “curtain wall” structure became a signature image of the 50’s, perfected the fusion of glass and steel.
From the horseless carriage to the dream motor car
Setting the pace for the industrial development of the 20th century was the assembling of the modern car. Many of the components of the modern car were invented sometime in the 19th century, long before their development and adoption. It was only in the 20th century that they were fully developed.
The more cylinders, the smoother and more powerful is the motorized vehicle; and so was born the “multi-cylinder” car engine. The 1900 De Dion Bouton had a single cylinder; Daimler’s Mercedes of 1901 had four; the 1903 Dutch Spyker had six cylinders and the French V-8 had eight. For fuel injection, a system of vaporizing and spraying fuel into the cylinders without a carburetor was developed in Britain. Spark plugs and cooling fan were developed, while the ‘distributor’ that was a device for applying electric current to the spark plugs, was invented in 1908 by Edward Deeds and Charles Kettering. Car batteries followed. Chromium plate first appeared on the 1925 Oldsmobile while the London firm of Simms first patented the rubber bumper. The mechanical windshield wiper was invented in the USA, which was then improved 5 years later in Britain into the automatic wiper using compressed air from the engine. In 1906, Frenchman Alfred Faucher patented the rear-view mirror.
When he was 40, Henry Ford envisioned cars for the masses. His supreme creation, the “Model T,” was born in 1908. Using the principle of the assembly line, inspired by the overhead trolley that Chicago packers used in dressing beef, he was able to produce 15 million cars by 1927. He stated: “The average worker wants a job in which he does not have to think.” It sold for as little as $290, and was rugged enough to negotiate the roads. It was so simple that rural folk could fix it.
Life saving devices
For almost all of human history, diagnosis of diseases has been impossible. The rough techniques of physical examination — feeling, listening, tapping — were first refined in the 17th century, when doctors began to record the pulse rate and temperature with pendulum and thermometer. It was in the beginning of the 20th century that doctors could identify and quantify illnesses — or at least some of them. In Germany, a chance discovery by Physics professor Wilhelm Roentgen happened. While tinkering with cathode-ray tube and a fluorescent screen, he discovered a new type of radiation he referred to as X-ray that could view human bones. Over the next half of a century, X-rays were routinely used to ‘photograph’ just about anything in the human body.
In 1965, Prof. Harold Hopkins of Reading University used wafer thin glass fibre endoscope, making internal examinations almost routine. Meanwhile, Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven discovered the prototype of the electro-cardiograph. It revealed that each heartbeat produces five main electrical pulses, which can provide an astonishingly detailed portrait of the heart by pinpointing any irregularity. With Horace Darwin, younger son of Charles, he produced further a portable version that could record data on paper.
Massive investments in technological advances during World War II led to several breakthroughs in diagnostic equipment. The wartime sound echo machine used to detect submarines struck Ian Donald, professor of Midwifery at Glasgow University. He realized that if sonar could tell the position and shape of a submarine and even show the image on the screen, then a pregnant woman can also see the image of her unborn baby on the screen — the ultrasound scanner was discovered. With a ‘transducer’ passed across the abdomen, images of the fetus are transmitted to a monitor.
Soon after World War II, in came ambitious young inventors determined to heal fearful wounds, infection and pains. Their new inventions allowed surgeons to heal massive wounds — even rejoin severed limbs – and operate directly on the human heart. Further on in the 1970s, the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR or MRI) also allowed the scanning of the human brain, or the generating of 3-dimensional images of the internal organs. Like the CAT Scanner, the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR) is also good at recording biochemical processes without use of radiation, making it ideal for monitoring muscular dystrophy and transplant operations.
Containing the chaos created by cars
The gradual replacement of the horse carriage was soon found to be a mixed blessing for something had to be done to improve the road surface. The problem was solved in Britain by spreading them with coal tar. With white showing well against a black surface, the white road markings in 1911 started in the USA, becoming the “center line safety strip.” Another British contribution to road safety was the ‘”cat’s eyes.” In 1934, road contractor Percy Shaw was driving home in heavy fog one night, and he was saved from going out of the road by a cat whose eyes were reflected in his head lights. Shaw’s eyes consist of a pair of glass prisms fitted over an aluminum reflector and encased in a rubber pad.
By the 1930s, the Germans were already speeding over a growing network of “autobahns” or motorways, first designed by Karl Fritsch and appropriately doubled as racetracks. The American version was the “parkway,” which encircled urban areas with entrance and exit roads instead of intersections. The first was the Bronx Parkway, which opened in New York In 1925. The British network was slow to adapt so that the London Birmingham MI opened in 1959, 40 years after it had been proposed.
One of the factors driving these changes was the development of increasingly heavy transporters. The development of the diesel engine in 1930 by British Cedric Bernard Dicksee was followed in 1934 by the advent of 8 wheeler trucks. Despite all the new roads, the increased volume of traffic posed problems particularly in towns. In 1914 a concerned citizen of Cleveland, Alfred Benesch, became responsible for the creation of the first traffic lights. After the red-green sets had proved too abrupt for the crisscross street grid of the city, yellow was added. Then, where to put so many cars became another problem until the multi-story car park was the brainwave of a Massachusetts garage owner, while an Oklahoma newspaper editor thought of the parking meter.
The difficult attempt of the Philippines to catch up with the new millennium development
Never have we Filipinos faced the height of gridlock in our lives as we try to wade through the Metro Manila traffic, or the increasing floods everywhere. The same situations that hamper all life’s activities are occurring in the other major cities. Is there hope for thousands of Filipino babies born every minute, to help unravel and find the key to untangle these problems? YES. Quality parenting and quality education should be able to help them discover the rich throve of knowledge and practices that caring scientists, explorers and inventors in the past have bequeathed to all of us today. Their great sacrifices must not be in vain. Let’s pray that the Genie of Science will reveal Aladdin’s treasures hidden in every Filipino child.
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