Week 10 Summary Essay

             In week ten, I learned about the electric clock, and its inventor, Alexander Bain. I also learned about John Herschel, who invented the blueprint, Samuel Slocum, who accidentally invented the stapler, and finally, Joseph Dart, the inventor of the grain elevator. Here is a short summary of each of them.

            The first person I learned about this week was Alexander Bain, and how he invented the electric clock. As a young boy, Alexander did not do well in school, so instead he became the apprentice to a clock maker. When he knew everything he needed to know, he moved to London and started his own clock shop, and that is what led him to invent the electric clock. He went to ask for advice from Charles Wheatstone. Bain showed his electric clock to Wheatstone, but he declined it. A few months later, however, Wheatstone made a copy of Bain’s clock and tried to get a patent in his name. Thankfully, Bain had already patented his ideas before he went to Wheatstone. The electric clock is a clock that uses electromagnetism to tell time. We still use electric clocks to this day.

              The next lesson was about an invention that I find very interesting. It was the blueprint, invented by John Herschel. Does the last name sound familiar? He was the son of a very successful man: William Herschel, who discovered Uranus, most of its moons, and the polar caps of Mars. Because of this, John was interested in science, astronomy, mathematics and much more. He went to college and became friends with Charles Babbage, the inventor of the mechanical calculator. Later in life Hershel traveled to Africa with his wife and became interested in botany. It was there he invented the blueprint. You see, he and his wife had to draw out pictures of plants, by hand. Blueprinting allows you to mix the two chemicals ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide together, put it on a specific surface that will soke in the liquid, shine ultra-violet light upon it, and press a negative image which will create a positive image on the surface. This process allowed Herschel and his wife to avoid drawing images of each plant, which took quite a bit of time. Of course, the blueprinting process has evolved over time, and is now used through computer programs to plan projects all over the world.

               In the next lesson, I learned about the stapler. Many people have improved it, but Samuel Slocum actually invented it. Although, he wasn’t trying to. Slocum invented a machine that could make pins with round heads. He knew someone that invented round-headed pins and started his own business making them with this invention. There was, however, a problem. Slocum could not figure out how to send them to customers. Then he thought that if he pinned them neatly to a piece of paper, then they would stay put during shipping. Later, he invented a hand-powered machine that would punch in the pins for him. Over time, the pins became staplers, and that is how the stapler was invented. Now, we have electric staplers, that obviously work more efficiently than the human hand can, but we still use handheld stapler all the time.

               Finally, the last thing I learned about this week was the grain elevator. It is powered by steam, and can move two thousand bushels of wheat every hour, while with hundreds of men, it would take about eight hours. Joseph Dart had the idea of the grain elevator, but his engineer, Robert Dunbar and more construction workers built it. The grain elevator plays a big roll in feeding people and animals. Today, we have about twenty grain elevators spread around the country.

              I love learning about all inventions, especially through RPC. Sometimes, however, I like to learn about some inventions more than others, like most people. The larger the paragraphs are, the more interesting I found the invention. For example, the blueprint. These inventions are very extraordinary; I cannot wait to see what inventions I am going to learn about next week.