Great Inventors

                Great Inventors

F Many of the world’s greatest inventions, such as the wheel and the stirrup, are so old that nobody knows who invented them. The creators of more recent inventions are better known. But it is not always easy to say who invented what. Most of the machines in use today were invented by more than one person, with different inventors making small improvements.

        BUSY INVENTOR

The American inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) made over 1,000 new inventions, some of which changed the world for ever. They include the electric light bulb and sound recording.

        MASTER OF STREAM

James Watt (1736-1819) was a Scottish engineer who began his working life as a marker of mathematical instruments. His successful reinvention of the steam engine made him a wealthy man in later life.

        HIGH-FLYING AMERICAN

A famous politician as well as an inventor, Benjamin Franklin (1709-90) went to school for just two years.

He once flew a kite in a thunderstorm to show that lightning is electricity. He then invented the lightning conductor, a metal rod to carry lightning away from buildings .

AMAZING FACTS

Edison thought his phonograph would be used for dictating letters. He never thought it might eventually record and play music, perhaps because he could not hear very well


 

MORE GREAT INVENTORS

PI SHENG (11th  century)

Between 1041 and 1048.pi sheng of china invented the world’s first movable type for printing. Words carved out of wooden blocks were put in a frame to make sentences, then printed. Afterward the words could be separated and used again.

ALFRED NOBEL (1833-96)

The Swedish inventor of dynamite, Alfred noble, was upset that his work caused so much destruction. When he died he left his fortune to pay for noble prize. They are awarded every  year for literature, chemistry, physics, medicine, and peace.