Inventions

The Strange And The Interesting

Since the beginning of human existence, inventors have created some very interesting things including things that some may consider to be quite strange, such as the invention by John Logie Baird of the self-warming socks which didn't quite work. He was succesful with the invention of semi-mechanical analogue television which he eventually introduced to the public in 1926.

As far back as 1596, a different kind of flushing toilet was used by the wealthy but they had no toilet paper because it had not yet been invented till 261 years later in 1857, other things and sponges were used in place of the tissue paper.

In 1776 the first submarine was a one man only device which was made of wood.It was used in America during the American War of Independance and appropriately named the Turtle for its look.

Believe or not but before people used bicycles to get around, they used a special machine called a Hobby Horse. It was made out of a long thick piece of wood covering two spoked wheels. The riders would sit down on the piece of wood and push the ground with their feet.

The first dentist drill was a wind-up drill that worked like a mechanical clock and lasted for two minutes as it unwound. If one did not regularly visit the dentist and then subsequently ended up with missing teeth, one could always sport false teeth with the arrival of the first false teeth invention in 1774. It consisted of porcelaine teeth in coiled springs to keep them in place. If one was missing limbs, replacement limbs made of iron was invented in the 1600s.

Isaac Singer improved upon previously invented sewing machines by building a more practical one in 1851. That certainly made the sewing of clothes easier and quicker. Women who wanted to have that great figure effect of Cinderella-like ballgowns were quite pleased with the 1856 invention of the Crinoline. It was a flexible frame made of steal hoops that they wore under their dresses.

When traffic became quite the problem with pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages and the ever growing popularity of motor vehicles, a strange but effective cable-operated arm & hand dummy device was invented to try and keep the streets less chaotic. It was clipped onto the car to give hand signals rather than the light signals we use today. Using it at night posed no problem because it lit up in the dark.

The list of the millions of inventions that were made and continue to be made goes on and on including the invention of the automobile. Germany had an incredible amount of inventors. One of the first cars invented to have massive sales was the 3 wheeler by automobile engineer Karl Benz in 1885. He was inspired by another car inventor named Gottlieb Daimler. Benz named the 3 wheeler car the Benz velo. It was built in some of the first car factories in the world and had a speed of 32 kph.

Gottlieb Daimler invented the first four-wheeled automobile in 1886 and collaborated with Wilhelm Maybach to invent the first motorbike in 1885 as well as the four-stroke engine. In the 1920s he merged his company with Karl Benz. They had a production line of cars and trucks. The name Mercedes was taken from car racer dealer, Emil Jellinek daughter's name - a name that Daimler already had started using for his earlier car productions.

One of the world's four biggest other car productions was still yet to come... Germany's volkswagen, also known as the Beetle and the Bug which was proposed by car designer Ferdinand Porsche who was inspired by the advanced Tatra car design of Hans Ledwinka. Cars, which led to other motorised vehicles such as buses, are certainly one of the many inventions that trillions of people could not imagine getting around without in today's world.