介绍:
Industrial Revolution
In Britain, every student learns about the important advances in steam power, textiles and iron making during the world’s first Industrial Revolution. But the list of UK innovations is much longer.
Essential innovations
Who has not used a bicycle or stopped at traffic lights? The smallpox vaccine, blood transfusion and penicillin have saved many lives. Imagine your daily life without the telephone, the cash machine or the worldwide web, and how many people enjoy football, golf or tennis?
The little things
Everyday objects like the lawn mower, the pram and the fire extinguisher are also British inventions. So are the raincoat and the crossword puzzle. But who are the innovators behind them?
Brilliant young mathematician
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron. She designed a flying machine when she was only 13, and became friends with a mathematics professor at Cambridge University, Charles Babbage. While she was writing notes about Charles’ design for an “Analytical Machine”, an early mechanical computer, she saw its potential. She wrote the world’s first computer program, and there is now even a programming language named after her.
Driving safely
Percy Shaw was coming home in the fog when his car lights were reflected in the eyes of a cat. This gave him the idea of putting reflectors in the middle of the road for drivers to see at night — “cat’s eyes”. He started his own factory, sold millions of the devices and became a wealthy man.
Radio with a difference
Trevor Baylis was watching a television programme about the AIDS crisis in Africa. He realized that people needed a way to find out about the disease quickly and cheaply. He produced a design for a wind-up radio. He combined a normal radio, a toy motor and the mechanism from a music box. No batteries were necessary.
Another young inventor
While still at school, Emily Cummins designed a device to make it easier for her grandfather to get toothpaste from the tube, who was suffering from arthritis. At age 17, she thought of a water container for African countries which people could pull easily instead of carrying.
