PURPOSE

January 25, 2023

Engineering Magazine

A Recognition
we thought
we own
-Emila Isabel Ligan

With Pure The Start of a

Objective Technological
- Kent Jomar Doyuhim Revolution
- Kaia Ksena Pilapil

The Chip That Koncepto

Popularized Milenya: Mic Test 1 2 3
the Internet Flying Car - Meglloyd Ewican
- Nino Christian Pagaran - Khirbee Marie Coyoca
 An Engineer’s Motto

If it is not broken, take it apart and fix it.

Members:

Kaia Ksena Pilapil

Emila Isabel Ligan
Kent Jomar Doyuhim
Meglloyd Ewican
Nino Christian Pagaran
table of
contents
01 1927 Agapito Flores
Flourescent Lamp

02 1941 Dr. Fe Del Mundo

Medical Incubator

03 1952 Dr. Gregorio Zara

Videophone

04 1975 Roberto Del Rosario

Videoke

05
1990 Diosdado Banatao
Graphic User Interface
Accelerator

06 2018 Kyxz Mendiola

Flying Car
1

A Recognition We
Thought We Own
I grew up thinking Filipinos created the fluorescent lamp,
a remarkable modern marvel, much like many of our kababayan.

As what we have known, Agapito Flores created the fluorescent lamp, a Bulacan na-
tive, as proudly recounted in our elementary and high school text-
books, and its very name is ir- refutable evidence of its creator.

However, I was div- sappointed to learn that the
Agapito Flores legend will be a myth in the future. Science
journalist Queena Lee-Chua stated in a 2001 article for the
Inquirer that Flores cannot be given credit for the invention of
the fluorescent lamp since the- re is no credible scientific evi-
dence to support it. The word fluorescent originates from
the Latin fluorspar (a mine- ral) and opalescence - not
from Flores. Despite our ef- forts to rectify this error,
the media, and our text- books continue to use the
Flores example. When Agapito Flores was just
four years old, Peter Cooper had already pa-
tented a prototype for the fluorescent lamp.

Despite the- se historical inaccu-
racies, this “inven- tion” are still widely
used in textbooks, on the internet, and
even in newspa- per columns. Which
lessons are contai- ned in this “tale”?
On the surface, they discuss how poorly our
textbooks are written, a problem that crusa-
der Antonio Go diligent- ly worked to bring to the
public’s attention. According to Niels Mulder, “Go highli-
ghted the senseless material and factual mistakes that are tightly
woven into present Philippine schoolbooks for a long time, and with substantial publicity...
However, after fourteen years of campaigning, he ultimately gave up in 2010. The stan-
dard of public education offered appears to be a non-issue to the general populace, but tho-
se who detested him are still after his skin. Mulder contends that the lack of critical thin-
king required in our civic culture is both a cause and an effect of these factual mistakes.

And this gets us to a more critical topic that is now more relevant than ever.
In truth, what is at stake in these errors is not merely the inconsequential knowled-
ge that a Filipino produced a lamp but also our ability to assess what is true and
what is false on a communal and personal level. How is it that no one cared to in-
vestigate those stories that defy reason and could have been readily verified?

Is it a wonder that fake news exists today and that deceptive marketing and fraudulent
therapeutic claims are unchallenged? Mocha Uson shouldn’t be seen as a standalone issue; ins-
tead, we should consider her as a sign of a more significant problem: our lack of critical thinking.

-Emila Isabel Ligan


“A kind gesture
can reach a wound that
only compassion can
heal” – a quote by Steve
Maraboli that reflects
how Dr. Fe del Mundo
was a woman of power,
intellect, and compas-
sion with her outstanding
and famous invention.
With people who
suffered during the World
War II, poor health and
malnutrition have trended
over years in several coun-
tries, including the Philip-
pines, especially during
the Japanese occupation.
This is due to the poverty
and slavery that entangle
the Filipinos, especially
the youth, which caused
them to catch endem-
ic diseases such as den-
gue and dysentery. One
challenge that they face
during the occupation is
the regulation of the envi-
ronment for the health of
the babies, a primary ne-
cessity that is almost de-
prived of them. With this,
infants are also at risk of
malnourishment and var-
ious illnesses, not until Dr.
Fe Del Mundo returned to
the Philippines from the
United States of America.
With Pure
Objective
Dr. Fé Primitiva
del Mundo y Villanueva,
also known as Dr. Fe del
Mundo, was a leading Fil-
ipina pediatrician and an
exemplary humanitarian,
that her character was to
be the moving force of
medical institutions in
the Philippines during
her time. She spent years
in her further studies in
America, as she is the first
Asian student who was
admitted to Harvard Med-
ical School. Right after her
return to the Philippines,
she immediately joined
the International Red
Cross where she volun-
teered to take care of the
child internees that are de-
tained in the University of
Santo Tomas internment
camp. She also devoted
herself to child hospitals
in which her concern for
infants during the Japa-
nese occupation led to her
research about poliomy-
elitis, rubella, and varicel-
la which are referred for
various immunizations
and vaccination, and her
famous invention, which
is the Bamboo Incubator.
The Bamboo
Incubator, invented in
1941, was used to help
rural communities with-
out electricity to sup-
ply infants with proper
temperature regulation,
which helps with illness
prevention such as diar-
rhea, a disease that caused
infant and child morbid-
ity and mortality during
the occupation. Countless
young lives are saved be-
cause of Dr. del Mundo’s
intellect and invention.
According to the Phil-
ippine Center for Inves-
tigative Journalism, the
bamboo incubator was
made of two native laun-
dry baskets composed of
bamboo. These baskets
were made of different
sizes with which one bas-
ket will be placed inside
of the other, and bottles of
hot water are positioned
between these baskets to
help in regulating the in-
fants’ temperature. More-
over, Dr. del Mundo also
put a hood on this incu-
bator, so that oxygen will
be attached to the babies.
This gesture of Dr.
Fe del Mundo drove her to
be the head of a children’s
hospital two years after.
Under the auspices of the
2
government, this becomes
a full-care medical center
to increase the hospital’s
capacity to take care of the
well-being of young Fili-
pinos during World War
II. A report from Philip-
pine Center for Investi-
gative Journalism stated
that Dr. del Mundo’s ob-
jective was to create in-
expensive inventions for
the rural communities
that have limited access to
medical centers to utilize
and reproduce for their
health and well-being
This pure purpose
of Dr. del Mundo was
filled with love and hope
to sustain the health of the
youth. Without her inven-
tion, the Bamboo Incuba-
tor, the babies’ lives back
then will be been at high
risk of diseases and even
mortality. Its capacity to
be reproduced as much
as the Filipinos need was
a way to direct the path to
the improvement of pedi-
atrics in the Philippines.
With her pure objective,
sustainability in health is
regulated among children.
- Kent Jomar Doyuhim
 v
The Start of a Technological
Revolution
by Kaia Pilapil

Today, anyone can perform the activity of video calling

thanks to modern technology. To engage in live video chat
with a person anywhere in the world, all that is required
is a smartphone with a camera and an internet connec-
tion. Numerous chatting apps already exist that can
use this function. But prior to becoming what it is
today, video calling had a slow start, perhaps be-
cause the technology was far ahead of its time.
Video calls originated in the Philip-
pines in the middle of the 1950’s, well be-
fore the advent of the digital age. Gre-
gorio Zara, an engineer and physicist
from the Philippines, was the first to
record a videophone, or a two-way
television-telephone. The de-
vice was taken out of science
fiction in 1955 when he first
introduced it and patent-
ed it as a “photophone signal
separator network.” Evidently, it
did not prove to be a commercial
success. In any case, the videophone
developed by Zara was not intended
for commercial use. It was not until the
1960’s that AT&T began to develop a public
video telephone or “picturephone.” The com-
pany released the video phone in 1964 at the
New York World’s Fair. This did not go well for
AT&T, as the device was perceived as impractical
at the time. It made a comeback just as the digital age
started late in the 1990s. Video phones took off as a device
that made distance learning and video conferencing easier
than ever, in addition to it being helpful to the hearing im-
paired. No matter what, Zara started a technological revolution.
In his lifetime, Gregorio Zara amassed 30 patents. He was a sci-
ence and engineering prodigy who won numerous awards and recog-
nitions from different institutions. But perhaps the most important was
the National Scientist award conferred by former President Ferdinand
Marcos in 1978. In the same year, however, Zara died of heart failure at the
age of 76. Nevertheless, he will be remembered as the engineer who devel-
oped the first ever videophone, the ancestor of all video calling devices.
 v
Mic Test 123
by Meglloyd Ewican

It’s safe to say that we Filipinos love to sing anywhere, especially in gatherings or
any other occasions. Singing is more than just a meager hobby for many Filipinos.
The Philippines is renowned for turning forth some of the world’s best singers.

Speaking of singing, did you know that Roberto del Rosario, a Filipi-
no inventor, created his own karaoke machine? Between 1975 and 1977,
he described his sing-along system as a convenient, multi-purpose,
compact device that includes an amplifier speaker, one or two tape
mechanisms, an optional tuner or radio, and a microphone mix-
er with features to enhance one’s voice, such as the echo or
reverb to simulate an opera hall or a studio sound. He also
described it in his patents (UM-5269 on June 2, 1983,
and UM-6237 on November 14, 1986). One cabinet
case served as the enclosure for the entre system.

The simplest karaoke machine available to-

day features an audio output and a micro-
phone for adjusting the pitch of recorded
song. In entertainment hotspots, you
can find increasingly complex mod-
els, such as karaoke boxes, which are
tiny to medium-sized enclosed chambers
that can be rented by the hour or half-hour
in hotels, pubs, clubs, lounges, and restaurants.

Society benefits from this excellent idea by making

people more sociable. Since singing needs one to think,
which implies that the person doing it has to engage their
brain, singing in the videoke helps stimulate the brain. Every
time you sing, you have to keep up with the song’s beat, melody, and
lyrics. The feelings evoked by the song you could be singing also tie you
to the performance. Because karaoke raises the bar on all of the things
you typically do when singing alone or to yourself, it stimulates your brain.

It serves to reduce tension. The amount of stress that karaoke singing

relieves is one of its greatest advantages. Since singing typically makes people
joyful, it naturally lowers stress levels in the body. Additionally, it makes breath-
ing easier. Usually, when singing karaoke, one must engage their entire body. This
forces us to breathe more easily and effectively as a result. Finally, it makes your mem-
ory better. You have to use your memory when singing along to a song. Even if the song’s
lyrics are in front of you, your brain will still instinctively retrieve your memories of it.

Roberto del Rosario described his sing-along system as a convenient multi-purpose com-
pact machine that includes an amplifier speaker, one or two tape mechanisms, an optional radio
tuner, and a microphone mixer with features to improve one’s voice, such as the echo or reverb
to simulate an opera hall or a studio sound, with the entire system housed in one cabinet casing.
THE CHIP THAT
POPULARIZED THE
INTERNET
by Nino Pagaran
Diosdado Banatao, an
electrical engineering gradu-
ate from Manila’s Mapua In-
stitute of Technology and an
Iguig, Cagayan native, is rec-
ognized with eight significant
contributions to informa-
tion technology. One of the
technologies is used by hun-
dreds of engineers, and none
of these are claimed to have
been created or innovated by
the author.
He created the first
single-chip graphical user
interface accelerator in 1972,
while not being the first to
work with chip sets. He cre-
ated a microprocessor-based
calculator for the business he
was working for at the time,
Mostron. With his idea, Ba-
natao was able to signifi-
cantly speed up and improve
the functionality of comput-
ers. What’s more significant,
though, is that he made it
possible for computers to go
smaller, more inexpensive,
and quicker by developing
faster yet smaller microchips.
His innovations made it pos-
sible for more individuals
to own personal computers
at home. The creation of the
Ethernet controller chip that
enabled the Internet was aid-
ed by this single-chip graph-
ic user interface accelerator.
Banatao’s innovations are
thought to account for up to
30% of modern computers.
KONSEPTO
MILENYA:
FLYING CAR
by Khirbvvee Coyoca
The “Koncepto Milenya”
flying vehicle had a maximum
height of 6.1 meters (20 feet) and
a top speed of 60 kilometers per
hour (37 mph), although its ini-
tial flight only lasted a little over
10 minutes. (Lopez, 2018). 12
years ago, (Mendiola) He made
the decision that he was sick of
dealing with traffic, so he did
what anyone in his circumstance
would do: he began building a
flying car.
Kyxz Mendiola, a Filipino
drone enthusiast, developed the
Milenya ultralight aircraft in the
year 2010. Mendiola, who taught
himself engineering and air-
craft design, cited his “extreme”
feeling for the idea of flying as
his motivation for pursuing the
project. He was further inspired
as he learned about efforts being
made in other nations to devel-
op similar endeavors. Milenya’s
creator called his invention a
“flying sports vehicle” and cited
the worsening traffic in Metro
Manila as inspiration for creating
it. He imagined people flying to
their destinations instead of tak-
ing standard road transportation,
which takes two to three hours,
and arriving in minutes.
In order to develop the
vehicle further and produce it
in large quantities, Mendiola is
collaborating with the Australian
business Star8. According to the
CEO of Star8, he plans to com-
mercialize the flying sports car in
Australia, Hong Kong, and Eu-
rope.
Only one person can fit in
the contraption, weighing up to
100 kilograms, can fit in Koncep-
to Milenya (220 pounds). Its 16
rotary motors are powered by six
lithium-ion batteries, enabling
the vehicle to achieve a height
of 6.1 meters (20 feet) and a top
speed of 60 kph (37 mph).The
vehicle’s single occupant can op-
erate a handheld radio frequency
controller to control it; a button
controls the vehicle’s altitude,
and a steering stick controls its
movement.