So Now You Know... Early Aeroplanes George Cayley was the first person to move from designs involving flapping like birds to a “fixed wing” design. Another engineer called Otto Lilienthal then used a lot of these ideas to create gliders with fixed wings. Information and data obtained from testing them produced the basis that helped the Wright brothers to develop their own designs and build prototypes. Additionally, the Wright brothers were able to use another recent invention from the same time; the internal combustion engine used in automobiles. They were around at just the right time when these became available. Their true innovation was their design which allowed the plane to be steered and controlled that was previously impossible to do.
Grand Pianos The inventor of the piano, Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731), came from Padua, Italy. He was an expert harpsichord maker and was very familiar with creating stringed keyboard instruments. Three pianos of his survive today and they all date from the 1720s. The invention of the piano was able to combine the loudness of the harpischord with the dynamics of the softer clavichord. Gottfried Silbermann was an organ builder and copied Cristofori’s except that he invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal that lifts all the dampers from the strings at once, giving a sustained sound. The English John Broadwood company brought out a larger and powerful “grand” piano in a horizontal harpsichord case in 1777.
Elisha Otis Devices capable of lifting people in tall buildings have existed since the ancient Egyptians. As the industrial revolution and the growth of cities led to taller buildings being constructed, people became tired of having to climb multiple flights of stairs. Lifts or elevators were invented, using steam or electric motors which pulled them up with ropes. Because ropes have a tendency to break, being in a lift only a few storeys high would result in at least a severe injury, if not death, if the rope snapped. Elisha Otis invented the safety break, a device which stopped the lift from crashing down if a rope failed. This removed a major risk of death from buildings taller than a few storeys, and spurred on the building of the first skyscrapers.
40
