Essay #33 History Of Inventions
Hello, in today’s essay I will be talking about the smallpox vaccine, the voltaic pile, the ark light, and Dalton’s atomic theory. All right let’s get started.
The smallpox vaccine
Edward Jenner was born in 1749, in Berkeley England. He noticed something interesting about milkmaids when he was 13. General apprenticed with a pharmacist and later a surgeon. Jenner noticed that milkmaids did not get smallpox. He then made a vaccine for smallpox; he vaccinated people with the cowpox virus, because he realized that the milkmaids which got infected with the cowpox virus did not get smallpox. Vaccines are generally weakened versions of the actual disease, in this case it was a different disease that provided immunity to the stronger disease. Jenner’s vaccine was introduced in America in the 1780s. Smallpox was globally dead by 1979. Others began making different vaccines after Jenner.
The voltaic pile
A man named Alessandro Volta, was born in Italy in 1745; he was interested in electricity. He invented the voltaic pistol and the voltaic pile that delivered continuous electric current. The voltaic pile was the first electrical battery that generated continuous current through a circuit. He stacked copper and zinc plates and electrolyte; the electrolyte could be a wet piece of paper or a wet piece of cardboard. As you know batteries have plus and minus terminals; electrons flow from minus to plus, and since he had zinc in his voltaic pile, positive ions would accumulate on the zinc, and loose electrons would recombine with positive ions. Chemical reactions produce electricity. The word voltage was named after Volta. One drawback of the voltaic pile was corrosion and also the electrolytes would drip and create short circuits.
The Ark light
Humphry Davy was born in England in 1778, he became interested in chemistry and electricity. He experimented with laughing gas, and he built his own voltaic piles to do experiments. Eventually he invented the arc light using very strong batteries. The arc light is extremely bright; the light is bright enough to light up streets and very large buildings. With the arc light you didn’t need to have 4 million of them, I’m over exaggerating, to light up a building, you only needed a few. The arc light was the precursor of electricity, it was used in search lights and movie projectors. After World War II the arc light became obsolete.
Daltons atomic theory
John Dalton was born in England in 1766, and he loved education. He became a teacher and private tutor, he was fascinated by meteorology. After many years of study and experimentation he finally devised the atomic theory. It was founded upon two laws, one being all matter is made of atoms, and the second being atoms of the same element are the same. He published his theory in a book in 1808, and he advertised it himself by sending letters to his friends to buy his book. He joined the French Academy of science in 1816 and then he also joined the Royal Society of London in 1822 and he was recognized as an honorary board member of the American Academy of arts and sciences in 1834. His theory has been revised overtime, but he did provide a starting point upon which knowledge could steadily accumulate.
Thank you for reading today’s essay, I hope you enjoyed. What did you find interesting in today’s essay? Bye and see you next time.
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