Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Invention of the Submarine






The Submarine was designed to be an underwater warship but was kept secret by it's creater Leonardo da Vinci. It was kept secret because da Vinci simpely didn't want war to be any more terrifying then it already was. In 1578 William Borne began drawing plans for his own submarine but it was never built just like da Vinci's but this submarine had tanks to fill up and empty to rise and sink. In 1620 Cornelis Drebbel Built a submarine which was a rowboat with a leather cover and oars with watertight seals. 12 people could ride in this submarine. Drebbel was an engineer who worked for the brittish navy and was the first person to discuss the problem of air repenishment well the the submarine was under water. Though he never solved this probelm his submarine could only go 15 feet underwater and stay under for only a couple hours. In think this is a pretty good invention because it leads to today deep sea exploration.

Monday, May 24, 2010

The Invention of Glasses

Nobody knows for certain who first created the spectacles. They do however know around when they were created because they started to appear in paintings with people holding or wearing them, and through these paintings we also know that they were invented in Italy. Sometime in the 1300's the Venetian Glassmaker's Guild made regulations on how to make glasses. In 1352 glasses were only worn by well educated and very wealthy noblemen, or members of the clergy. In 1456 Gutenberg invented the printing press and books became widespread then you started to find glasses in the hands of the common people. Glasses also started to be made with a lot of different matrials aswell. A couple centuries after this in 1623 the Spanish invented the first graded lenses. This improved the method of trail and error that people used to fing glasses to help them see better. As some one who uses glasses today I have to call them a great invention. Without them being invented then we would have had nothing to improve on and we would not have the glasses we have today that help millions of people every day.

Friday, May 21, 2010

The Invention of the Remaissance Clock

The clock was invented in the 1300's and after this people started to keep track of time with 24 hours equaling a day. When Galileo, who was an Italian scientist discovered the pendulum in 1581. The pendulum greatly improved the cloock. The pendulum constant steady motion of the pendulum helped the clock hands, so instead of the clock error being 10-15 minutes a day it was only seconds. Also, in the 1600's metallic gears, or toothed wheels, were first used in the assemble of clock's as well as screws. And with out all this our time would not be as accurate as it is today and we would have nothing to base our digital clocks off so, obviously think this improvements made in the renaissance are great.



Thursday, May 20, 2010

The invention of Wallpaper

In 1496 the first paper mill was built and not long after that artists started to decorate the paper with hand painted designs, stencils, and wood-block prints. For the next 200 years England was a large producer of the wallpaper in Europe. I think this is a great invention because before this only the rich could decorate the walls of their castles and even then, they used large woven tapestries which did have more then one purpose they also kept the walls warmer. This invention really was the first stepping stone to modern house hold design in my opinion, because bofore that the only thing the lower classes had to decorate their homes was cheap painted cloths. Also, with out this invetion we wouldn't have designs like this today.