What is an Invention?
• "An act of creativity that results in a device,
What did these people invent?
process, or technique unique enough to produce a significant change in technology."
Thomas Edison – Light Bulb, Phonograph Alexander Bell – Telephone Henry Bessemer – Process for making steel faster and cheaper
Age of Inventions
• Thomas Edison - Wizard of Menlo Park • Credited with over 1,100 inventions, including the light bulb, phonograph, tickertape machine, mimeograph machine, motion picture projector, electric power plant, etc.
Age of Inventions
• Thomas Edison • The phonograph was developed from work
done on the telegraph and on the telephone.
Age of Inventions
• Thomas Edison • In 1913, the Kinetophone was introduced,
which attempted to synchronize motion pictures with the sound of a phonograph cylinder record.
Age of Inventions
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Communication Cyrus Field –Trans-Atlantic Cable –In 1854 the
American financier Cyrus Field, formed a company to promote the idea of an ocean cable between Newfoundland and Ireland. The cable, with the insulation and an outer sheet of iron strands was made in London, and weighed a ton per mile.
Age of Inventions
• Alexander Graham Bell - Telephone – 1876
– Western Union refused to buy his telephone
– Bell formed his own company - Bell Telephone
Age of Inventions
• Granville T. Woods • Patented devices to improve telephone and
telegraph systems; allowed for communication between moving trains
Age of Inventions
•
sped up communications between businesses
Latham Sholes Typewriter- 1867
Age of Inventions
• Technology Takes Command • Gustavus Swift - refrigerator railroad car
1878- enabled the shipment of fresh meat to all markets
Age of Inventions
• Technology Takes Command
• George Eastman- photography
1888 - introduced the lightweight Kodak camera
Age of Inventions
• Automobile • Henry Ford-
• 1913- introduced the assembly line - (product moves
along a conveyer belt; workers add parts as it moves to complete the product) • Enabled cars to be produced quickly and cheaply
Age of Inventions
• Automobile • William Durant- General Motors • Used practice of vertical integration (having
control over all the steps needed to produce automobile products)
Age of Inventions
• Airplane • Orville and Wilbur Wright – • Developed the first sustained ''flying machine"
(1903, Kitty Hawk, NC)