[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Never lick a steak knife.

Dave Barry

 

About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a
prayer and closes with an investigation.

Will Rogers

 

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package. 

John Ruskin

 

Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like
trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele. 

Bagdikian's Observation

 

There is a big controversy on the Jewish view of when life begins. In Jewish
tradition, the fetus is not considered viable until it graduates from
medical school.

 

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Andre Gide

 

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7 Historical Figures You Didn't Know Were Inventors

 

When they weren't serving as politicians, writing works of literature or
starring in Hollywood movies, many historical figures also found time to
tinker with new inventions. Their creations were often mere novelties, but a
few were groundbreaking technologies that are still in use today. From
America's sixteenth president to the world's most famous aviator, get the
facts on seven historical heavyweights who had second careers as inventors. 

 

Abraham Lincoln

 

Thomas Jefferson usually gets credited as America's inventor-in-chief, but
Abraham Lincoln is the only president to hold a U.S. patent. In 1849,
shortly after the end of his lone term as a U.S. congressman, the Great
Emancipator was issued U.S. Patent No. 6,469 for a device for "Buoying
Vessels Over Shoals." Lincoln had come up with the idea a year earlier after
watching crewmen try to free a steamboat that had run aground on the Detroit
River. Upon returning home to Illinois, he drew up plans for a pair of
buoyant air chambers that could be attached to the sides of a boat and used
to lift the vessel over shallow sections of river. Lincoln spent several
weeks writing a description of the device and even built a scale wooden
model, but while he received his patent, the invention was never put to use.


 

Albert Einstein

 

It's hard to imagine the genius behind the Theory of Relativity tinkering
with something as mundane as a kitchen appliance, but Albert Einstein did
just that in 1926, when he began collaborating on a design for a
refrigerator. Einstein was inspired to make the device after reading a news
story about a Berlin family who had been killed by poisonous fumes leaking
from their fridge. Along with fellow physicist Leo Szilard, he developed a
safer absorption refrigerator that used no moving parts or electricity.
Instead, it employed a small heat source and a cocktail of ammonia, butane
and water to create a cooling chemical reaction. Einstein and Szilard
received a patent for their fridge in 1930. While it was largely ignored
during their lifetimes, recent research suggests that similar coolers might
be an eco-friendly alternative to modern refrigerators that use freon. 

 

Thomas Paine

 

In the late-1780s, a few years after he helped fuel the American Revolution
with pamphlets such as "Common Sense," the writer and political philosopher
Thomas Paine finally found time to pursue his passion for scientific
innovation. He experimented with a smokeless candle, early steam engines and
a concentric wheel, and conducted an investigation into the causes of yellow
fever. Still, he was most excited by the prospect of building iron bridges.
"The European method of bridge architecture, by piers and arches, is not
adapted to many of the rivers in America on account of the ice in the
winter," he argued in a 1786 letter to Benjamin Franklin. With this in mind,
Paine drew up plans for a single arch iron bridge that employed a lattice
support structure modeled after a spider's web. He patented the design and
tirelessly promoted it on both sides of the Atlantic, but proposed bridges
over Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, the Thames in London and the Seine in
Paris all failed to materialize. The closest Paine came to getting one built
was in 1797, when elements of one of his prototypes were incorporated into a
bridge over England's River Wear. 

 

Roald Dahl

 

Though best known as the author of children's books such as "Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory" and "James and the Giant Peach," Roald Dahl lived a
varied life that also included stints as a World War II fighter ace, a
British intelligence agent and-in the early 1960s-a pioneer in new
neurosurgical technology. Dahl's interest in medicine came after a car
accident left his four-month-old son with hydrocephalus, or "water on the
brain." Determined to ease his child's suffering, the writer teamed with
pediatric neurosurgeon Kenneth Till and toymaker and hydraulic engineer
Stanley Wade in the development of a device to more effectively drain fluid
from the brain. The result was the Wade-Dahl-Till Valve, a type of cerebral
shunt that was cheaper, easier to sterilize and less prone to blockages than
earlier units. Dahl's son's condition had improved by the time the device
was put into production in 1962, but the valves were later used to treat
some 3,000 children worldwide. 

 

Hedy Lamarr

 

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler-better known by her stage name Hedy Lamarr-became a
big screen legend in the 1930s and 40s for starring in such Hollywood films
as "Algiers," "Comrade X" and "Samson and Delilah." But while the
Vienna-born actress was often dubbed the "most beautiful woman in the
world," she also possessed a sharp mind that she put to use as an inventor.
In the 1940s, she teamed with avant-garde composer George Antheil in
pioneering a new method of "frequency hopping," a technique for disguising
radio transmissions by making the signal jump between different channels in
a prearranged pattern. Lamarr devised her "Secret Communications System" as
a potential guidance tool for Allied torpedoes in World War II, but the U.S.
Navy ignored the technology after she handed over her patent in 1942. Other
inventors later expanded on her groundbreaking ideas, however, and similar
"spread-spectrum" systems are now used in everything from communications
satellites to cellular phones. 

 

Harry Houdini

 

The master magician behind the "milk can escape" and the "Chinese Water
Torture Cell" made a career out of extricating himself from tight spots. In
1917, he put his unique knowledge to use by patenting a new type of deep-sea
diving suit that could be easily removed if an underwater malfunction forced
the wearer to return to the surface. The suit's secret was that it was made
out of two interlocking sections instead of just one piece. Along with
allowing the wearer to get into the rig without the help of a second person,
the design ensured that they could pull a lever near their waistline,
wriggle out of the suit and make a Houdini-esque getaway in the event of any
danger. Houdini was partially inspired to make the suit after a close friend
drowned in a diving accident in Australia, but he was also driven by his
support for the American military in World War I. After completing the
invention, he supposedly donated it to the U.S. Navy. 

 

Charles Lindbergh

 

The man known as the "Lone Eagle" became an aviation icon for his 1927 solo
flight between New York and Paris, but he also made an unlikely contribution
to biomechanics. After his sister-in-law struggled with heart disease in the
early 1930s, Lindbergh-who had a lifelong fascination with science-pondered
the idea of a machine that would keep organs functioning long enough for
them to be repaired outside the body. "Why could not a part of the body be
kept alive indefinitely if a mechanical heart was attached to it?" he mused.
Lindbergh's obsession with the idea led him to strike up a partnership with
the Nobel Prize-winning surgeon Alexis Carrel. Together, the two men spent
several years perfecting a glass perfusion pump that was capable of
circulating a sterile, nutrient-rich fluid through organs to keep them alive
outside the body. The device helped pave the way for the creation of the
first artificial hearts, and though largely forgotten today, it won the
publicity-shy Lindbergh heaps of praise from his contemporaries. Carrel was
even quoted as saying that the flier's medical legacy would be "as
illustrious as that in aviation."

 

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According to tradition, the first engineer to build a bridge across the
Tiber in Ancient Rome was given the name Pontifex, meaning "bridge builder."
The Pontifex was seen as someone who "connects" people, and that symbolism
was so powerful that Roman high priests--including Julius Caesar--later
adopted the title Pontifex Maximus. During the Roman Imperial age, the
emperor was always the Pontifex Maximus. The title eventually passed from
Roman emperors to the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Today, the Pope
still carries the title Pontifex Maximus. 

 

During the US Civil war, 200,000 blacks served in the Union Army; 38,000
gave their lives; 22 won the Medal of Honor. 

 

Emperor Nero's lust for excess was most evident in his elaborate parties.
According to the ancient writer Seutonius, Emperor Nero's Domus Aurea had a
circular main dining room with a roof that revolved day and night, in time
with the sky. In what remains of the palace today, there is a large
octagonal room with a domed ceiling that some believe is this dining room.
The octagonal room has a large dome with an oculus in the middle. It
predates the Pantheon--and was probably the inspiration for it. The
architects of the Domus Aurea developed an innovative mechanism cranked by
slaves, that made the ceiling underneath this dome revolve like the heavens.
While the ceiling revolved, perfume was sprayed from the ceiling and rose
petals were dropped on the diners. Legend has it there were so many rose
petals falling at one dinner that one of the guests was asphyxiated. 

 

Emperor Trajan, who ruled from 98--117 A.D., was celebrated as the greatest
of Roman emperors. In fact, for the rest of Roman history, new emperors were
honored by the Roman senate with the prayer felicior Augusto, melior
Traiano, meaning "may he be more fortunate than Augustus and better than
Trajan." In Dante's Divine Comedy, Trajan is the only emperor allowed into
heaven. 

 

Everyone in the Middle Ages believed -- as Aristotle had -- that the heart
was the seat of intelligence. 

 

For decades after Emperor Nero's death, people all over the Roman empire
claimed to have spotted him. Several men even claimed to be him, and started
popular movements to be reinstated as emperor. Because of his notoriety and
the questionable circumstances under which he died (he purportedly stabbed
himself to death in hiding outside of Rome), Nero was the Elvis Presley of
ancient Rome. 

 

Former President Cleveland defeated incumbent Benjamin Harrison in 1892,
becoming the first (and, to date, only) chief executive to win
non-consecutive terms to the White House.