Task I. Read and translate the text

 

Science has been a driving force behind the evolution of the modern world. The hard work and dedication of scientists have led to the evolution of sophisticated devices and better facilities. Scientists belonging to countries like Britain have made immense contributions in many fields.. Some of the discoveries and inventions of these scientists have even inspired many people to embrace science as a career.

Here are some really important inventions made by British scientists.

REFLECTING TELESCOPE

Invented: 1668
Inventor: Isaac Newton

As a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, Sir Isaac Newton took the idea of a reflecting telescope and turned it into reality. This huge leap forward in telescope technology made astronomical observation much more accurate.

TOOTHBRUSH

Invented: 1770
Inventor: William Addis

William Addis was a rag trader who was sent to prison in 1770. While there, he decided that the way people were brushing their teeth (rubbing soot and salt over them with a rag), could be improved. He saved a small animal bone from a meal, made a hole and tied some bristles through it. After his release, Addis set up a business to mass-produce toothbrushes. His company, Wisdom Toothbrushes, still exists.

STEAM ENGINE

Invented: 1801
Inventor: Richard Trevithick

Trevithick’s invention would become the father of the steam train and the father of portable steam power. On Christmas Eve 1801 he tested a steam car, known as the Puffing Devil, which successfully climbed the Camborne Hill in Cornwall. Trevithick became the first person to power a piston using high-pressure steam – and in doing so he transformed the world.

LIGHT BULB

Invented: 1880
Inventor: Joseph Swan

Cheap and reliable electric lighting was a holy grail for 19^th-century inventors. But didn’t Thomas Edison get there first? No! He was beaten by to it by Britain’s very own Joseph Swan. Swan got his patent - and started manufacturing and selling his bulbs - in 1880. The first bulbs lasted little more than 12 hours but, unlike gas lamps, there was no flame or dirty smoke and they soon caught on.

MODERN FIRE EXTINGUISHER

Invented: 1818
Inventor: George William Manby

The first modern extinguisher was invented after Manby saw firemen struggling to put out a blaze on the top floors of a house fire in Edinburgh. His solution was a portable copper cask containing three to four gallons of potassium carbonate, which dispersed by compressed air via a stopcock.

ELECTRIC MOTOR

Invented: 1821

Inventor: Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday was working at the Royal Institution when he demonstrated electromagnetic rotation for the first time. A free-hanging wire was dipped into a pool of mercury that had a fixed magnet in it. When an electric current was passed through the wire, it rotated around the magnet – the electricity produced a magnetic field around the wire, which interacted with the magnet in the mercury. This was the world’s first electric motor.

WATERPROOF MATERIAL

Invented:1823
Inventor: Charles Macintosh

Charles Macintosh, an amateur chemist, was experimenting with coal-tar napthan, a chemical waste product, and realized that it could make a solution from rubber. He coated a thin fabric with the sticky solution and sandwiched it between two layers of fabric to make waterproof material. His family started selling the coats as the “Macintosh”.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Invented: 1835
Inventor: William Henry Fox Talbot

It’s hard to say who was the inventor of photography – the first fixed image was made by Joseph Niépce in 1826 but took eight hours to expose. In 1835, Fox Talbot made another breakthrough by using silver iodide on paper and found a way to produce a translucent negative that could be used to make any number of positives by contact printing – a system used until the advent of digital cameras.

ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH

Invented: 1837
Inventors: Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke

The electric telegraph was a world-shrinking technology like no other. The first fully operational telegraph ran from 1839 between Paddington and West Drayton railway stations, but at first it was slow to catch on. That is, until New Year’s Day 1845 when the telegraph system helped catch murderer John Tawell. It was a sensation and telegraph cables were soon everywhere.

MODERN TORPEDO

Invented: 1866
Inventor: Robert Whitehead

It was British engineer Richard Whitehead who first designed a torpedo launched from a ship in an underwater tube, powered by compressed air and with an internal mechanism that adjusted itself to stay at a constant depth. The first ship to be sunk by his invention was the Turkish steamer Intibah in 1878, after being hit by a torpedo launched from a Russian warship.

 

TELEPHONE

Patented: 1876
Inventor: Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone model just hours before a rival inventor. The telephone came about thanks to a discovery that a thin metal sheet vibrating in an electromagnetic field produces an electrical waveform that corresponds to the vibration. The invention was first publically demonstrated in 1876 in Philadelphia.

STEAM TURBINE

Invented: 1884
Inventor: Charles Parsons

After the invention of the electrical motor – which transforms rotation into electrical power – the next step was to find a device to drive it. Piston engines vibrated too violently, so the steam turbine was the answer. Three quarters of the world’s power stations still use steam – and whether steam-powered or not, every station uses the theory behind Parsons’ innovation.

PNEUMATIC TYRE

Invented: 1887
Inventor: John Boyd Dunlop

In 1845, railway engineer Robert William Thomson patented the world’s first pneumatic tyres but there was no real market for them. Forty years later, Dunlop came up with pneumatic tyres to stop his son getting headaches from riding his bumpy tricycle. This time around, the invention handily coincided with the new bicycle craze.

 

ELECTRIC VACUUM CLEANER

Invented:1901
Inventor: Hubert Cecil Booth

Hubert Cecil Booth was watching a railway carriage being cleaned by a machine that blew the dust away when he had the idea for a machine that sucked the dust up instead. To test his theory, he placed a handkerchief on a chair and sucked through it, finding that dust collected on either side. He set up a cleaning service using hoses from vans on the street going through the windows of buildings.

 

STAINLESS STEEL

Invented: 1913
Inventor: Harry Brearley

In 1912 steelworker and researcher Harry Brearley was tasked by a small-arms manufacturer to find a material that could prolong the life of their gun barrels. He found corrosion-resistant steel instead. The story goes that he threw out some experimental steel and a few weeks later found it in the yard still shiny as new. Stainless steel is now used in everything from surgical instruments and turbine blades to cutlery and architectural cladding.

 

MILITARY TANK

Invented: 1914
Inventor: Ernest Swinton

The idea of the “tank” was first thought up by Britain’s official war correspondent, Ernest Swinton, who suggested the crawler tractors used to pull artillery on the Western Front could be used as offensive weapons with the capability to climb a five-foot obstacle, span a five-foot trench, resist small arms fire and travel at 4mph.

TELEVISION

Invented: 1925
Inventor: John Logie Baird

It’s hard to credit just one person with the invention of television, but it’s indisputable that John Logie Baird was the first to transmit moving pictures in October 1925. But his mechanical system ultimately failed – with a rival being developed at the same time able to produce a visibly superior picture. Baird, it was said at the time, was “doomed to be the man who sows the seed but does not reap the harvest”.

 

JET ENGINE

Invented: 1937
Inventor: Frank Whittle

24-year-old fighter pilot Frank Whittle first patented a new kind of aircraft - the turbojet - in 1930, but his new design was so radical that the military wouldn’t fund it, nor would any manufacturers, until in 1937 he found a few private backers and in 1941 a 17-minute test flight took place at Cranwell in Lincolnshire.