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niverse
the whole cosmic system of matter and energy of which Earth, and
therefore the human race, is a part. Humanity has traveled a long road
since societies imagined Earth, the Sun, and the Moon as the main
objects of creation, with the rest of the universe being formed almost
as an afterthought. Today it is known that Earth is only a small ball of
rock in a space of unimaginable vastness and that the birth of the solar
system was probably only one event among many that occurred
against the backdrop of an already mature universe. This humbling
lesson has unveiled a remarkable fact, one that endows the minutest
particle in the universe with a rich and noble heritage: events that
occurred in the first few minutes of the creation of the universe 13.7
billion years ago turn out to have had a profound influence on the
birth, life, and death of galaxies, stars, and planets. Indeed, a line can
be drawn from the forging of the matter of the universe in a primal
“big bang” to the gathering on Earth of atoms versatile enough to serve
as the basis of life.
Even prehistoric people must have noticed that, apart from a daily
rotation (which is now understood to arise from the spin of Earth), the
stars did not seem to move with respect to one another: the stars
appear “fixed.” Early nomads found that knowledge of the
constellations could guide their travels, and they developed stories to
help them remember the relative positions of the stars in the night sky.
These stories became the mythical tales that are part of most cultures.
When nomads turned to farming, an intimate knowledge of the
constellations served a new function—an aid in timekeeping, in
particular for keeping track of the seasons. People had noticed very
early that certain celestial objects did not remain stationary relative to
the “fixed” stars; instead, during the course of a year, they moved
forward and backward in a narrow strip of the sky that contained 12
constellations constituting the signs of the zodiac. Seven such
wanderers were known to the ancients: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Foremost among the wanderers was
the Sun: day and night came with its rising and setting, and its motion
through the zodiac signaled the season to plant and the season to reap.
Next in importance was the Moon: its position correlated with the
tides, and its shape changed intriguingly over the course of a month.
The Sun and Moon had the power of gods; why not then the other
wanderers? Thus probably arose the astrological belief that the
positions of the planets (from the Greek word planetes, “wanderers”)
in the zodiac could influence worldly events and even cause the rise
and fall of kings. In homage to this belief, Babylonian priests devised
the week of seven days, whose names even in various modern
languages (for example, English, French, or Norwegian) can still easily
be traced to their origins in the seven planet-gods.
The application of the methods of Euclidean geometry to planetary
astronomy by the Greeks led to other schools of thought as well.
Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 490 BCE), for example, argued that the world
could be understood on rational principles (“all things are numbers”);
that it was made of four elements—earth, water, air, and fire; that
Earth was a sphere; and that the Moon shone by reflected light. In the
4th century BCE Heracleides Ponticus, a follower of Pythagoras,
taught that the spherical Earth rotated freely in space and that
Mercury and Venus revolved about the Sun. From the different lengths
of shadows cast in Syene and Alexandria at noon on the first day of
summer, Eratosthenes (c. 276–194 BCE) computed the radius of Earth
to an accuracy within 20 percent of the modern value. Starting with
the size of Earth’s shadow cast on the Moon during a lunar eclipse,
Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310–230 BCE) calculated the linear size of
the Moon relative to Earth. From its measured angular size, he then
obtained the distance to the Moon. He also proposed a clever scheme
to measure the size and distance of the Sun. Although flawed, the
method did enable him to deduce that the Sun is much larger than
Earth. This deduction led Aristarchus to speculate that Earth revolves
about the Sun rather than the other way around.
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List of Inventions & Discoveries
Invention/Discovery Name of the Inventor Year of Invention
Automatic Calculator Wilhelm Schickard 1623
Air Conditioner Willis Carrier 1914
Amplitude Modulation Reginald Fessenden –
Anemometer Leon Battista Alberti 1450
Animation Emile Reynaud 1892
Atom Bomb Julius Robert 1945
Oppenheimer
Aspirin Dr. Felix Hoffman 1899
Airplane Wilber and Orville 1903
Wright
Adhesive tape Richard G. Drew 1923
Bifocal Lens Benjamin Franklin 1784
Barometer Evangelista Torricelli –
Barbed Wire Joseph F. Glidden 1873
Blood Group Karl Lansdsteiner 1900
Ball Point Pen John Loud 1888
Bicycle Tyres John Boyd Dunlop 1888
Bicycle Kirkpatrick Macmillan 1839
Celluloid Alexander Parkes 1861
Chloroform E. Soberran 1831
Cine Camera Wm. Friese-Greene 1889
Circulation of blood William Harvey 1628
Clock Mechanical Hsing and Ling-Tsan 1725
Diesel Engine Rudolf Diesel 1892
Centigrade Scale Anders Celsius 1742
Chlorine Karl Wilhelm Scheele 1774
Dynamite Alfred B. Nobel 1867
Diesel Engine Rudolf Diesel 1895
Electric stove/cooker William S. Hadaway 1896
Electroscope Jean Nollet 1748
Electric Fan Wheeler 1882
Electric Battery Volta 1800
Elevator Elisha G. Otis 1852
Electric Motor (DC) Zenobe Gramme 1873
Electromagnet William Sturgeon 1824
Fountain Pen Lewis Edson Waterman 1884
Fluorine Ferdinand Frederick 1886
Henri Moissan
Gramophone Thomas Edison 1878
Hydrogen Henry Cavendish 1766

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 Helicopter Igor Sikorsky 1939
Hovercraft Christopher Cockerell 1959
Hot Air Balloon Josef & Etienne 1783
Montgolfier
Helium William Ramsay 1868
Insulin Sir Frederick Banting 1923
Jet Engine Hans Von Ohain 1936
Lightning Conductor Benjamin Franklin 1752
Locomotive Richard Trevithick 1804
Laser Dr. Charles H. Townes 1960
Light Bulb Heinrich Goebel 1854
Motorcycle Edward Butler 1848
Microscope Zacharis Janssen 1590
Microphone Alexander Graham Bell 1876
Machine Gun Richard Gaffing 1861
Neon Lamp Georges Claude 1915
Oxygen Antoine Laurent 1775
Lavoisier
Ozone Christian Schonbein 1839
Piano Bartolomeo Cristofori 1700
Printing Press Johannes Gutenberg 1440
Parachute Jean Pierre Blanchard 1785
Polio Vaccine Jonas Edward Salk –
Periodic Table Dmitri Mendeleev 1869
Penicillin Alexander Fleming 1928
Pacemaker Dr. Paul Zoll 1952
Petrol for Motor Card Karl Benz 1885
Refrigerator James Harrison 1851
Radium Marie & Pierre Curie 1898
Radar Dr. Albert H. Taylor & 1922
Leo C. Young
Rubber (vulcanized) Charles Goodyear 1841
Rocket Engine Robert H. Goddard 1926
Radio Guglielmo Marconi 1894
Richter Scale Charles Richter 1935
Ship (Turbine) Charles Parsons 1894
Steam Ship J.C Perier 1775
Steam Boat John Fitch 1786
Safety Match J.E. Lundstrom 1855
Submarine David Bushnell 1776
Stethoscope Rene Laennec 1816
Saxophone Adolphe Sax 1846
Sewing Machine Elias Howe 1846
Steam-Powered Airship Henri Giffard 1852
Soft Contact lenses Otto Wichterle 1961

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 Synthesizer Dr. Robert Arthur Moog 1964
Thermometer Galileo 1593
Theory of Evolution Charles Darwin 1858
Typewriter Peter Mitterhofer 1841
Transistors John Bardeen, William 1948
Shockley & Walter
Brattain
Telephone Graham Bell 1874
Valve. Radio Sir J.A Fleming 1904
Vacuum Cleaner Ives McGuffey 1869
Vitamin A Frederick Gowland 1912
Hpokins
Vitamin B Christiaan Eijkman 1897
Vitamin C Albert Szent-Gyorgi –
Vitamin K Henrik Dam 1929
Vitamin E Herbert McLean Evans &
Katherine Scott Bishop
Windshield wipers Mary Anderson 1903
World Wide Web Tim Berners Lee with 1989
Robert Cailliau
X-ray Wilhelm Conrad 1895
Roentgen
Xerox Machine Chester Carlson 1928