Topic 36: Inventions

In 2000, Honda created a walking robot after two decades of developing humanoid robots. Currently, it is displayed in Miraikan museum in the Japanese capital city of Tokyo.

At 1.3 meters tall, with a shiny white helmet instead of a face, Asimo (whose name comes from English initials or words Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) is the world’s cleverest robot. He can walk, talk and carry out (1) _____ complicated jobs. His latest challenge has been to direct the (2) _____ of a full orchestra in a performance of the tune “The Impossible Dream”.

Using both hands, Asimo led the musicians confidently and (3) _____ to make them slow down for a strong finish. He ended the piece with a powerful, long note before turning to the audience. Asimo’s realistic movements were based on (4) _____ of the orchestra’s director, who had filmed himself playing the same piece six months (5) _____. Asimo was then ‘taught’ by his programmers to copy the movements on the film. Fortunately, Asimo’s battery runs out after 20 minutes, so the orchestra’s regular director need not worry about Asimo taking over his job!

(https://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp)

Sandwiches make a delicious snack any time. They are a common sight a picnics and teas. Interestingly enough, the sandwich is (1) _______ invention of an 18th-century English Earl called John Montagu. Montagu was addicted to card games. He would play these games with his friends for long stretches of time. Often, he even found it too (2) _______ to stop his games for meals.

One day, in the middle of a game, Montagu was served a meal of sliced meat with bread. At the time, Montagu was playing the game that (3) _______ its players to cover cards one on top of another. As Montagu looked at both the game and his food, an idea came to his mind.

“I can do the same with my food as well,” he thought. He took a slice of bread, placed a (4)______ of meat on it and covered that with another slice of bread. Montagu was very pleased with his invention because it allowed him to play cards with one hand and eat his meal with the other.

Montagu’s friends quickly (5) _______ to his idea and they named the new invention after him. As Montagu’s full title was “the Earl of Sandwich”, the new invention became known as a “sandwich”.

Technology has become a fantastic and useful tool in the classroom. Teachers are expected to make (1) _________________ if it to enhance the learning experience and information dissemination. However, knowledge of the different tools available, what they can do, and their impact allows teachers to use them (2) _____________. With numerous technology users actively involved in developing gadgets of the future, we can only specular what new advances will be making their way (3) _______________ classrooms in the coming days.

Following the evolution of technology, educational capabilities are changing and growing daily. The internet is a vast library of data that is useful in (4) _________________ the landscape of education as we know it. All in all, technology alone will not change education. Good grades and practical knowledge are as important as ever. Technology in education is therefore simply a catalyst, a tool for conveying lessons (5) _______________ effectiveness cannot be overlooked.

(Adapted from http://www.usetechnology.com)

Modern technology, in all its various forms, has changed the way we live our lives, but unfortunately, (1) _______ has not always been for the better. A number of things we used to value highly are gradually disappearing or have disappeared altogether. Take punctuality, for example; before mobile phones, people had to keep their appointments and get to meetings (2) _______ time. Now, it seems, it is perfectly acceptable to send a text five minutes before you are due to meet, telling your friend or colleague not to expect you for another half an hour or so.

The Internet, too, has had a negative effect on our (3) _________. Rudeness seems to be the language of debate on any site which (4) ________ users to give their opinions. Anonymity makes it easier for people to insult anyone that has views which are different from their own. They lose all sense of politeness and restraint, safe in the knowledge that they (5) _______ never be identified.

(Source: Macmillan Exams. Roy Norris, Ready for First, 3rd Edition)

Prosthetic body parts have been around in many shapes and forms for thousands of years. But up until just a few decades ago, they were often uncomfortable, provided little to no control for the user and didn’t look all that great either. Fast-forward to the present day and thanks to advances in medicine, robotics and neuroscience, a number of bionic body parts have been developed that have the power to be truly life-changing for those who need them the most, from a bionic eye to an artificial kidney to a thought-controlled robotic leg.

Many of these bionic body parts are still in the early stages of production and are far from being rolled out to those that need them. That’s because there are all kinds of challenges to consider – not only the materials the body part is made from, but also integrating it into our bodies so it isn’t rejected, as well as developing ways for it to become part of our nervous system, so it behaves like any other limb or organ. Add to that the huge raft of financial, ethical, moral and political implications of enhancing our bodies with the help of technology. But it’s easy to overlook all of these concerns when the tech sounds so exciting, promising and like the robotic hands, arms and whole bodies of our sci-fi dreams.

“The public perception of bionics is vastly different from the reality of prosthetics,” Kia Nazarpour, director of expertise in bio and environmental engineering, at Newcastle University, told us. "That’s thanks to science writers and researchers who showcase their work in a sci-fi oriented way to increase publicity."

(Source: https://www.wareable.com/)

In the past, technology and progress was very slow. People “invented” farming 12,000 years ago but it took 8,000 years for the idea to go around the world. Then, about 3,500 years ago, people called “potters” used round wheels to turn and make plates. But it took hundreds of years before some clever person thought, if we join two wheels together and make them bigger, we can use them to move things.

In the last few centuries, things have begun to move faster. Take a 20th-century invention like the aeroplane, for example. The first aeroplane flight on 17 December 1903 only lasted 12 seconds, and the plane only went 37 metres. It can’t have been very exciting to watch, but that flight changed the world. Sixteen years later, the first plane flew across the Atlantic, and only fifty years after that, men walked on the moon. Technology is now changing our world faster and faster. So what will the future bring?

One of the first changes will be the materials we use. Scientists have just invented an amazing new material called grapheme, and soon we will use it to do lots of things. With grapheme batteries in your mobile, it will take a few seconds to charge your phone or download a thousand gigabytes of information! Today, we make most products in factories, but in the future, scientists will invent living materials.

Then we won’t make things like cars and furniture in factories - we will grow them!

Thirty years ago, people couldn’t have imagined social media like Twitter and Facebook. Now we can’t live without them. But this is only the start. Right now, scientists are putting microchips in some disabled people’s brains, to help them see, hear and communicate better. In the future, we may all use these technologies. We won’t need smartphones to use social media or search the internet because the internet will be in our heads!

More people will go into space in the future, too. Space tourism has already begun, and a hundred years from now, there may be many hotels in space. One day, we may get most of our energy from space too. In 1941, the writer Isaac Asimov wrote about a solar power station in space. People laughed at his idea then, but we should have listened to him. Today, many people are trying to develop a space solar power station. After all, the sun always shines above the clouds!

(https://tuhoc365.vn/qa)

How fit are your teeth? Are you lazy about brushing them? Never fear: An inventor is on the case. An electric toothbrush senses how long and how well you brush, and it lets you track your performance on your phone.

The Kolibree toothbrush was exhibited at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. It senses how it is moved and can send the information to an Android phone or iPhone via a Bluetooth wireless connection.

The toothbrush will be able to teach you to brush right (don’t forget the insides of the teeth!) and make sure you’re brushing long enough. “It’s kind of … like having a dentist actually watch your brushing on a day-to-day basis,” says Thomas Serval, the French inventor.

The toothbrush will also be able to talk to other applications on your phone, so developers could, for instance, create a game controlled by your toothbrush. You could score points for beating monsters among your teeth. “We try to make it smart but also fun.” Serval says he was inspired by his experience as a father. He would come home from work and ask his kids if they had brushed their teeth. They said “yes,” but Serval would find their toothbrush heads dry. He decided he needed a brush that really told him how well his children brushed.

The company says the Kolibree will go on sale this summer, for $99 to $199, developing on features. The U.S. is the first target market.

Serval says that one day, it’ll be possible to replace the brush on the handle with a brushing unit that also has a camera. The camera can even examine holes in your teeth while you brush.

During droughts water is scarce but is it possible to make it rain to provide water. Experiments in cloud seeding suggest that it may be possible to artificially create rainfall.

Rainfall occurs when supercooled droplets of water – those that are still liquid but are at a temperature below the usual freezing point of zero centigrade – form ice crystals. Now too heavy to remain suspended in the air, these then fall, often melting on their way down to form rain.

Even in dry areas the air usually contains some water. This can be made to come together and form ice crystals by seeding the atmosphere with chemicals such as silver iodide or dry ice. They work to promote rainfall by inducing nucleation – what little water is in the air condenses around the newly introduced particles and crystallises to form ice. The ‘seeds’ can be delivered by plane or simply by spraying from the ground.

But does it work? It’s hard to tell for sure. As is often the case with weather and climate, it’s impossible to carry out a controlled experiment – so, in areas of increased precipitation, we can’t know whether it would still have rained even if the clouds hadn’t been seeded.

Success has been claimed for trials in Australia, France, Spain and the US. In the United Arab Emirates, the technique is credited with the creation of 52 storms in the Abu Dhabi desert, while China boasts of having used the technology in reverse to keep the Beijing Olympic Games of 2008 dry. Recent research, however, suggests that it’s not as effective as was previously believed.

(Source: http://www.physics.org/)

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are now considered the future of lighting due to a lower energy requirement to run, a lower monthly price tag, and a longer life than traditional incandescent light bulbs.

Nick Holonyak, an American scientist at General Electric, accidently invented the red LED light while trying to create a laser in the early 1960s. As with other inventors, the principle that some semiconductors glowed when an electric current was applied had been known since the early 1900s, but Holonyak was the first to patent it for use as a light fixture.

Within a few years, yellow and green LEDs were added to the mix and used in several applications including indicator lights, calculator displays, and traffic lights, according to the DOE. The blue LED was created in the early 1990s by Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura, a group of Japanese and American scientists, and for which they won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. The blue LED allowed scientists to create white LED light bulbs by coating the diodes with phosphor.

Today, lighting choices have expanded and people can choose different types of light bulbs, including compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs work by heating a gas that produces ultraviolet light and LED bulbs.

Several lighting companies are pushing the boundaries of what light bulbs can do, including Phillips and Stack. Phillips is one of several companies that have created wireless light bulbs that can be controlled via smartphone app. The Phillips Hue uses LED technology that can quickly be turned on or off or dimmed by a flick on a smart phone screen and can also be programmed. The higher-end Hue light bulbs can even be set to a large range of colors (only about sixteen million) and synced with music, movies, and video games.

Stack, begun by engineers from Tesla and NASA, developed a smart light bulb using LED technology with a wide range of functions. It can automatically sense the ambient lighting and adjust as needed, it turns off and on via motion sensor when someone enters the room, can be used as a wake up alert, and even adjusts color throughout the day to fit with human’s natural circadian cycles and patterns of natural light. The light bulbs also have a built-in learning program that adapts to inputs given by residents over time. And all of these functions can be programmed or monitored from any smart phone or tablet. It is estimated that Stack smart light bulbs can use about sixty percent less energy than a typical LED light bulb and lasts between twenty and thirty thousand hours depending on the model.

These light bulbs are compatible (or soon will be) with many of the options for turning an entire home into a smart home including usage with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit.

(Source: https://www.livescience.com)

It was at this time, 1876–1877, that a new invention called the telephone emerged. It is not easy to determine who the inventor was. Both Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray submitted independent patent applications concerning telephones to the patent office in Washington on February 14, 1876. Bell, in Boston at the time, was represented by his lawyers and had no idea that the application had been submitted. Gray’s application arrived at the patent office a few hours before Bell’s, but Bell’s lawyers insisted on paying the application fee immediately; as a result, the heavily burdened office registered Bell’s application first.

Bell’s patent was approved and officially registered on March 7, and three days later the famous call is said to have been made when Bell’s summons to his assistant confirmed that the invention worked. Alexander Graham Bell, one year younger than Lars Magnus Ericsson, had been born in Edinburgh. Bell’s interest in telephony came through his mother, who was deaf, and his father, Alexander Melville Bell, who was a teacher of elocution, famous for the phonetic transcription system he had developed to help the deaf learn to speak. The Bell family migrated to Canada in 1870; two years later Alexander Melville Bell was offered a teaching post at a school for the deaf in Boston in the United States, but he successfully recommended his son for the post instead. Father and son were at this time working together to try to discover whether sound could be made visible for the deaf with the help of telegraphy.

But many others had already been pursuing the idea of telephony for years. A resolution of the US House of Representatives in June 2002 claimed that Bell had nefariously acquired and exploited an apparatus, the “teletrophono”, invented by Antonio Meucci long before Bell and Gray. One damaging piece of evidence for Bell was that Meucci’s material had disappeared without trace from the very laboratory at which Bell was carrying out his experiments. In the 1880s, proceedings initiated by the American government charged Bell with “fraudulent and dishonest conduct” and claimed that his patent should be revoked. These proceeding were discontinued after Meucci’s death in 1889 and the expiry of Bell’s patent in 1893.

A later investigation, published by A. Edward Evenson in 2000, claims that Bell’s attorneys acquired technical details from Gray’s attorneys that are said to have been added to Bell’s patent after it had been submitted. The whole saga has elements reminiscent of a thriller. One salient fact was that Bell saw no need to take out patents for the telephone in the Nordic countries. This meant that anyone anywhere there was free to manufacture and sell telephones.

Bell presented the telephone before a large audience for the first time at the World Exhibition in Philadelphia in June 1876. In the audience was the physicist William Thomson, who in August that year presented Bell’s telephone to the British Association in Glasgow. In Sweden, on September 30 that year, Dagens Nyheter became the first newspaper to refer to “the speaking telegraph”, an apparatus that “plainly and clearly conveyed the words uttered at one end of the telegraph line to the other”.

The first version of Bell’s telephone, as it was described in the patent application, was not suitable for practical purposes. Only after “a relatively thorough reconstruction”, to quote Hemming Johansson, could a telephone be designed for large-scale production. The Bell Telephone Company began operating on July 11, 1877. In the same month, the first useable Bell telephone arrived in Europe to be presented in Plymouth to the British Association by the chief engineer of the General Post Office, William H. Preece, in the presence of Bell himself.

(Source: https://www.ericsson.com)