Invention: The Master-key to ProgressFiske, Bradley A. (Bradley Allen)
History
Invention: The Master-key to Progress
Fiske, Bradley A. (Bradley Allen)
Inventions -- History
In 1890, Krag-Jorgensen invented the famous rifle of that name. In the
following year, Branly invented the coherer mentioned on page 305, and
Parsons invented his rotary steam turbine. The steam turbine was an
improvement over the reciprocating steam engine for many classes of
work, great and small. The first steam engine invented by Hero was a
rotary engine, but it was of course, most uneconomical of steam. The
first steam engine that was really efficient was the reciprocating
engine produced by Watt. The greatest single defect of rotary engines
has always been the loss of steam in going by the rotating parts
without doing any work, a defect existing in only a small degree with
the closely fitting pistons of reciprocating engines. In the turbines
invented by Parsons and others about the same time, wastage of steam
was prevented by various means that need not be detailed here, and
smooth motion of the rotary engine at the same time secured. The
greatest benefit accrued probably to ocean steamships, in which the
absence of vibration, and the saving in weight, space and number of
attendants required were features of great practical importance.
About 1890, Edison invented the kinetograph and kinetoscope, after
a long series of investigations and experiments. These followed the
experiments made by Dr. Muybridge some years before, in which he had
taken many successive pictures of horses at very short intervals, by
means of as many separate cameras, (twelve pictures in one stride
for instance), and afterwards reproduced them in such a way as to
show horses in rapid motion. They came also after Eastman's kodak,
in which pictures could be taken successively, on a traveling film.
In the kinetograph, only one object glass was used; and the film was
drawn along behind it in such a way that, at predetermined intervals,
the film was stopped and a shutter behind the object glass or lens
was moved away, and a picture taken. The moving mechanism (at first
the human hand) continuing in motion, the shutter was closed and the
film was moved along a short distance, so as to bring another part
behind the object glass. Then the same operation was repeated--and
so on. In the kinetoscope, the operation was reversed, in the sense
that the pictures taken were presented successively to the eye of the
observer. In the first form, the observer looked at them through a
peep-hole: but in the latter forms, the pictures have been thrown upon
a screen--somewhat as from a magic lantern, and become the "movie" of
today.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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