Inventors, Geniuses and Visionaries

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Inventors, Geniuses and Visionaries

• Presentation by Charlotte Wieck, Kirsti
  Berghäuser and Jan Krewega

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• What makes an inventor?

When do we call someone a genius?
What characteristics does a visionary have?
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Inventor

• Makes or creates something that has not existed
  before

Inventions typically are machines or other
devices of practical use
Most base their work on discoveries of others,
improving the existing devices
Discover to find or learn about an object for
the first time, to find something unexpectedly
Inventors deliberately try to find solutions to a
given problem
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Genius

• In roman mythology genii refers to spirit

Today someone with exceptionally great mental or
creative ability
Geniuses make huge original leaps in their field,
rather than just extending the previous body of
work
In contrast to a prodigy, a genius must have
created or brought in something new in an
established field
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Visionary

• Vision apparition or revelation that appears in
  sleep or
• trance

Latin visio seeing
Also something experienced powerfully in the
imagination, esp. concerning the future (ex. a
political or economic vision
A visionary is someone who has or shows the
ability to think about or plan the future with
great imagination or wisdom
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Johann Gutenberg (1390 1468)

• Metal-worker and inventor, lived in Mainz and
  Strasbourg
• Famous for his contributions to the technology of
  printing
• Invented movable type for Europe (Buchdruck mit
  beweglichen Lettern), an improvement on the block
  printing
• It has been used for over 300 years

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Johann Gutenberg

• Koreans and Chinese already knew about block
  printing and even movable metal types
• Unclear whether Gutenberg knew of these
  techniques or invented them independently
• Introduced efficient methods into book
  production, which caused a boom in the production
  of texts in Europe
• Gutenbergs most famous work, the Gutenberg
  Bible was the first mass-produced work.

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Johann Gutenberg

• Printing with movable type is one of the
  foundations of modern culture
• It has been spread all over the world
• Printed books and pamphlets were cheaper than the
  old handwritten ones, they facilitated the
  education of the lower classes as well as the
  higher ones
• Printing intensified and accelerated all great
  historical developments, such as Humanism,
  Renaissance and Reformation.
• Education as well as scientific discussions,
  politics, music, art and literature were
  supported by the increasing amount of newspapers,
  pamphlets, books and journals available.

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Otto Lilienthal 1848 - 1896

• Lilienthal was a pioneer of human aviation.
  Building the first successful human-carrying
  glider, the Derwitzer Gliderin 1891.
• But this distinction in fact belongs to Sir
  George Cayley who accomplished this feature
  nearly forty years previously.

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• Nevertheless, Lilienthal's contributions to the
  development of heavier-than-air flight remain
  significant. He made over 2000 flights in gliders
  of his design between 1891 and his death five
  years later. Lilienthal helped to prove that
  heavier-than-air flight was practical without
  flapping wings, laying the groundwork for the
  Wright brothers a few years later to build the
  first successful powered airplane.
• Lilienthal suffered a number of crashes in his
  experiments, but his aircraft could only reach
  low speeds and altitudes. On 9 August 1896, a
  gust of wind fractured his wing and he fell from
  a height of 17 m, breaking his spine. He died the
  next day, saying, "Opfer müssen gebracht werden!"
  ("Sacrifices must be made!")

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Thomas Alva Edison (1847 1931)

• US-American inventor and businessman
• 1,093 patents
• Worked as telegraph operator, pig slaughterer,
  selling snacks on train and started a business
  selling vegetables
• Foundation of Menlo Park research lab, the
  first institution set up with the specific
  purpose of producing constant technological
  innovation and improvement

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Thomas Alva Edison

• Edison did not invent the electric light bulb, he
  just developed further ideas from earlier
  inventors as Joseph Swan and William Sawyer
• By 1879 they could successfully mass-produce
  long-lasting light bulbs
• Lewis Lattimer, an African American did much of
  the work leading to the improvement of the light
  bulb

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Thomas Alva Edison

• During the War of Currents era, Edison
  constructed the first electrical chair for the
  state of New York
• Edison promoted his own direct current (DC)
  against his adversary Nikola Teslas more
  efficient alternating current (AC)
• In order to prove the danger of AC, Edison (who
  actually was against the death penalty) invented
  and used the electrical chair to execute several
  animals (including Topsy the Elephant)

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Thomas Alva Edison

• Most of Edisons inventions were improvements of
  already existing ideas
• Even more of his inventions are said to have
  actually been made by his numerous employees
• Edison used an industrial approach and team-based
  development
• He showed unique skills in winning the patents
  and beating his opponents by influence and better
  marketing

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Thomas Alva Edison

• List of contributions
• Phonograph
• Kinetoscope
• Dictaphone
• Radio
• Electric bulb
• Autographic printer
• Tattoo gun

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Henry Ford
1863 - 1947

• Interested in
• engineering from an
• early age on

1903 Incorporation of Ford Motor Company Ford
plans to build a car that his own workers can
afford
1908 Model T as America Everyman Car
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To meet the growing demand, Ford combined
precision manufacturing, standardised and
interchangeable parts, division of labour and in
1913 the continuously moving assembly line.
The assembly line revolutionised automobile
production by significantly reducing assembly
time per vehicle and thus lowering the costs.
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Mahatma Gandhi (1869 1948)

• Born in Porbandar, India.
• One of the founding fathers of the modern Indian
  state
• Gandhi supported satyagraha (non-violent protest)
  as a means of revolution
• Studied law at the University of London, became
  leader of the Indian movement for independence
  after WW I

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Mahatma Gandhi

• Gained worldwide publicity through his policy of
  civil disobedience and the use of fasting as a
  form of political protest
• One of his most striking actions was the salt
  march from March 12, 1930
• Gandhis principle of satyagraha (way of truth
  or pursuit of truth has inspired generations of
  democratic and anti-racist activists including
  Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela

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Mahatma Gandhi

• Gandhis philosophies and his ideas of satya
  (truth) and ahimsa (non-violence) were drawn
  from traditional Hindu beliefs
• The concept of non-violence is a central
  element in Indian religion
• Gandhi had great influence among the Hindu and
  Muslim communities of India
• On January 30, 1948 Gandhi was shot by a Hindu
  radical

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Albert Einstein 1879 - 1955

• Theoretical physicist, widely regarded as
  greatest scientist of the 20th century.
• Theory of relativity, major contributions to the
  development of quantum mechanics, statistical
  mechanics and cosmology.
• 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation
  of the photoelectric effect and "for his services
  to Theoretical Physics".
• In popular culture, Einstein has become
  synonymous with someone of very high intelligence
  or the ultimate genius. His face is also one of
  the most recognizable the world-over.

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• In 1902 obtain employment as a technical
  assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office. He
  occasionally rectified their design errors while
  evaluating the practicality of their work.
• In 1904, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent
  Office was made permanent. He obtained his
  doctorate after submitting his thesis "On a new
  determination of molecular dimensions" in 1905.
• What makes his work remarkable is that, in each
  case, Einstein boldly took an idea from
  theoretical physics to its logical consequences
  and managed to explain experimental results that
  had baffled scientists for decades.

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• Brownian motion
• Photoelectric effect
• Special relativity
• Energy equivalency
• E mc2.
• General relativity
• Einstein became increasingly isolated in his
  research over a Generalized Theory of Gravitation
  (being characterized as a "mad scientist" in
  these endeavors) and was ultimately unsuccessful
  in his attempts at constructing a theory that
  would unify General Relativity and quantum
  mechanics.
• He died at Princeton in 1955, leaving the
  Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. His
  brain was preserved in a jar.

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Tim Berners-Lee (1955)

• Inventor of the World Wide Web and head of the
  World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees
  its continued development.

• Born in London, England.
• Caught hacking with a friend and was banned from
  using the university computer soon after.
• The first web-site was first put online on August
  6, 1991.
• No royalties His greatest single contribution,
  was to make his idea available freely, with no
  patent and no royalties due.

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• In 1994 he founded World Wide Web Consortium
  (W3C) and in 2003, the organization decided that
  their standards must be based on royalty-free
  technology so they can be easily adopted by
  anyone.
• It is just as important to be able to edit the
  web as browse it.
• Computers can be used for background tasks that
  enable humans to work better in groups.
• Every aspect of the Internet should function as a
  web, rather than a tree structure.
• Computer scientists have a moral responsibility
  as well as a technical responsibility.