History Of Technology

Ice-making Machine(1865)

*Lowe revolutionizes food storage... it is with great pleasure and satisfaction that we welcome proof of [Lowe's] genius."
(The manufacturing of ice was a major commercial activity until the advent of electric refrigerators)

Thaddeus Lowe (1831-1913) did not only invent the mble ke making machine, he also made waves in eronautics, engineering, and chemistry In the course of his work on the cooling properties of compressed gases, he became interested in carbon dioxide specifically and, putting his research into practice, developed the "Compression Ice Machine" in 1865.After the American Civil War, Lowe began extensive research on the properties of gas Refrigeration is essentially a process whereby heat is renoved from an enclosed space and ejected somewhere else.

Professor Joseph Henry, Smithsonian Institution systems work by using a chemical, usually gas, to remove the heat. As the gas expands heat is turned into kinetic energy, cooling the air.

In 1869 Lowe and other investors purchased an old steamship equipped with refrigeration units and began shipping fresh fruit and meat from Texas to New York. The business failed, largely due to the group's lack of shipping knowledge and the public's skepticism about eating meat that had been so long out of the packing house Despite this setback refrigeration became massively popular and has revolutionized the way the world preserves food.

Torpedo (1864)
*Giovanni Luppis creates the self-propelled uncderwater missile.
*"Damn the torpedoes.... Captain Crayton, go ahead! Joucett, full speed!"

Admiral David Farragut, Battle of Mobile Bay, 1864

"Torpedoes are examined on the derk of a target ship after a test firing from HMS Snapper in 1940 The British 7,000-ton steamer Beluchistan sank after this torpedo strike by the German U-boat U-68 in 1942".

NDespite its notoriety as a naval weapon, the fir modem torpedo was developed in landincked Austa or rather by a retired army officer in what was then the Austrian Empire stretching down to the Adriatic Sea 1864 Giovanni Luppis (1813-1875) presented his idea of using small, unmanned boats carrying explosives against enemy ships to Robert Whitehead (1823 1905), an English engineer producing stram engines for the Austrian Navy Similar devices (spar torpedoes) were also employed in the American Civil War taking place at the same time. However, those contraptions consisted of manually driven steam launches with explosives hanging from a long pole in order to set them off the crew would ram the end of the spar into the target vessel and then back off agan thus pulling a mechanical trigger by disconnecting the cable linking the boat to the weapon.

Luppis's torpedo, on the other hand, was self propelled and navigated from the tand by ropes attached to it, thus greatly reducing the risk for those using the weapon Whitehead was initially sceptical about the design's feasibility, fearing that a remotely controlled surface device powered by a clockwork motor would be too slow and clumsy to work efficiently. But he continued to mull over the concept. and two years later he created an improved automobile torpedo driven by compressed air and launched from an underwater tube that determined its trajectory.

Luppis and Whitehead thus had a major impact on the outcome of the two world wars, turning submarines into a terrifying prospect. Like an electric ray for torpedo, the fish it has been named after their explosive projectile weapon is capable of delivering a stunning shock to its target and is responsible for over 25 million tons of shipping rusting on the seabed DaH.
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Machine Gun (1862)

*Gatling revolutionizes warfare with rapid fire.

*Gatling submitted this detailed drawing of his "battery gun" to the U.S. patent office in 1865.

The invention of the machine gun by Richard J. Gatling (1818-1903) irreversibly changed the face of battle. Gatling took advantage of the newly invented brass cartridge (which, unlike the earlier paper cartridges, had its own percussion cap) to produce the first rapid- fire weapon in about 1862. The Gatling gun consisted of ten parallel barrels that could fire and reload brass cartridges at rapid speeds through the rotation of a hand-operated crank. With each rotation the firing and loading mechanism of each barrel came into contact with a series of cams. The first cam opened the bolt on the barrel, allowing the bullet to fall into a chamber, while another closed the bolt. A further cam released the firing pin with the final one opening the bolt and ejecting the spent case. The first successful model was deployed in a limited capacity during the American Civil War by Union troops.

The American inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim utilized the power of the cartridge explosion to design the first automatic machine gun in 1884. By using the recoil power of the fired bullet, the empty cartridge is expelled and the barrel reloaded. Both reliable and easily transportable, with a firing capacity of 600 rounds per minute, the Maxim was adopted by European armies.

Machine guns based on Maxim's design dominated fighting during World War I. In the static environment of trench warfare, the weapon caused heavy loss of life, earning the machine gun a fearsome reputation. It continued to produce deadly results in World War II, but found its popularity supplanted by the lighter and
more mobile sub-machine gun.

SEE ALSO: ARQUEBUS, CANNON, GUN, MUSKET, PORTABLE AUTOMATIC MACHINE GUN

Single-Lens Reflex Camera (1861)
ushers in modern photography with a new camera.
The modern era of photography began in 1861 with the invention and patenting of the world's first single- lens reflex (SLR) camera by photography expert Thomas Sutton (1819-1875). His prototype led to the creation of the first batch of SLR cameras in 1884, with a design that is still in use today. Sutton also assisted James Clerk Maxwell in his successful demonstration of color photography in 1861

In non-SLR cameras, light enters the viewfinder at a slightly different angle to that at which it enters the lens, so the resulting photo can appear different to the intended composition. in SLR cameras, a mirror is positioned in front of the lens and directs light up into a pentaprism. The light bounces between its edges until it enters the viewfinder with correct orientation, as if the viewer is looking directly through the camera lens. When a photograph is taken, the mirror moves out of the way allowing light to reach the film or, with digital SLRs (DSLRs), the imaging sensor.
Now the most popular professional camera format the SLR camera was the culmination of decades of photographic innovations that began with the production of Louis Daguerres daguerrotype and Josef Maximilian Petzval's lens systems, which led to the first mass-produced cameras

Although no record of the first production model exists, the camera was first commercially produced in the mid-1880s By the 1930s it was extremely populat with photographers, allowing an undistorted view of the subject from the correct perspective, DSLRs have all but replaced the traditional SLR, but the principle that Sutton pioneered is still used today.

*With decreasing costs single-lens reflex cameras like this 1911 Adam's Minex became more popular...