Today in History – February 1, 1972 – First scientific hand-held calculator, the HP-35, introduced for $395. I was an undergraduate in engineering when the HP-35 was released. I couldn’t afford to buy one and stuck with my slide rule. But the next year, I gave in and bought the next model, the HP-45 and it was well worth the money at the time. The calculators were easy to use, portable and reliable. The market responded by developing cheaper calculators, while Hewlett Packard kept the cost high and increased the functionality.

Check out the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on the electronic calculators and history of computing. For more educational resources, see our electrical engineering education and computer engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Today in History – December 22, 1885 – LaMarcus Thompson patents first Gravity Switchback Railway roller coaster. It was built at Coney Island and became the precursor to the modern roller coaster. At the top of one platform, riders climbed into cars and then rode them down a 600 foot track and up to another tower, where they were switched to another track. Thompson’s installation at Coney Island was also a business innovation a it was one of the first “pay per ride”, offering people a short escape from the real world to enjoy themselves for a short thrill. This started a tradition and business model that forms the basis for today’s theme and amusement parks.

See the Engineering Pathway’s resources on theme parks and roller coaster design. For curricular resources, visit the Mechanical Engineering Education, the Engineering Mechanics Education or the Engineering Management Education community sites.

Today in History – December 13, 1928 – Today is Clip-on Tie Day. That’s right, on this day, 79 years ago, someone (and I couldn’t find out who) invented the clip-on tie. This fine fashion accessory often gets a bad wrap. People belittle it as the tie for people that don’t know how to tie a tie themselves.

If you are somehow unfamiliar with what a clip-on tie is, it is essentially a bow tie or four in hand tie which is permanently tied into its knot with a dimple just below the knot. Instead of looping around the neck, this tie is simply fixed to the front of the shirt collar with a metal clip. Though it doesn’t look as much like a real tie to fool everyone, and may accidentally come off with a too-hard tug, many people use clip-on ties every day.

The fact that a clip-on tie is likely to come off should it be tugged is actually a wonderful safety feature, especially for people such as police, paramedics, and engineers. Many of these occupations require personnel to use clip-on rather than full ties. Others might be mocked for wearing clip-ons because they don’t know how to tie a tie, or because they feel it is less restrictive, but the good old clip-on redeems itself by helping many wearers stay out of harms way. So here’s to that mysterious inventor of the clip-on tie. Harrah!

Meanwhile, to help make sure you’re never caught out not knowing what knot to tie, check out the Engineering Pathway’s resources on knot design and mathematics.

Today in History – November 21, 1877 – Edison announces the invention of his “talking machine”, the phonograph. Also on this date in 1995, Disney releases “Toy Story”, the first full-length movie created entirely by computer animation.

Thomas Alva Edison, nicknamed the “Wizard of Menlo Park”, had 1,093 patents to his name. Some of Edison’s inventions were so advanced that many disbelieved his claims. When he announced the phonograph in 1877, a Yale University professor told the New York Sun that “The idea of a talking machine is ridiculous”. While working to improve the efficiency of a telegraph transmitter, Edison noted that the tape of the machine gave off a noise resembling spoken words when played at a high speed. He wondered if he this could be used to record a telephone message. He began experimenting with the diaphragm of a telephone receiver by attaching a needle to it. He reasoned that the needle could prick paper tape to record a message. His experiments led him to try a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder, which, to his great surprise, played back the short message he recorded, “Mary had a little lamb.” The phonograph would ultimately lay the groundwork for future generations of audio recording technology such as magnetic tape, compact discs and audio compression standards like MP3. Today, the public is offered a wide selection of exciting new products associated with digital music and videos. The iPod represents the next generation of digital music players and has inspired copycats and extensions.

Toy Story was the first feature-length computer-animated film. Released on this date in 1995, this Academy-award winning film helped create a new age of digital cinema and 3D computer graphics. Toy characters proved easier to animate than people, which explains the sparse human subjects in the film. The Toy Story characters used hundreds of features to control movement and facial expressions, whereas, robots in the recent Transformers film use well over a million features. Toy Story would eventually pave the way for motion-capture, simulations of skin, hair and cloth and many advanced computer animation technologies. Later computer graphics movies such as Shrek and Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within would improve upon the photo realism of human characters. The latest big test of motion-capture technology is the recently released ‘Beowulf‒. This film represents the most advanced attempt to show realistic-looking humans with computer generated imagery.

3D graphics are now pervasive in entertainment and education. First-person computer games and 3D movies represent the latest developments in immersive entertainment. Computer animation is also an engaging and intuitive tool for collegiate and K-12 education. 3D computer simulations provide visualization to complex systems in such fields as aeronautics, materials science, mechanical engineering, signal processing and data mining. Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing in K-12 or college and it is helpful in broadening diversity in computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience. The software is a free open source object-oriented educational programming language with an associated development environment developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, including Randy Pausch.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on Edison, digital music, or the Toy Story and computer animations.

Also on this date in history in 1977, the first commercial flight of Concorde, London to New York.

Today in History – “ November 18, 1963 – “Bell Telephone introduces push button telephone, eventually to replace the rotary dial telephone that had dominated the market since its invention in 1891 when Almon Strowger patented the twin inventions of the automatic telephone exchange and the pulse-driven telephone in the home. Although early prototypes had been built earlier by Bell Labs in 1941 in a 302-style case with F1 handset with two rows of five keys on the front that plucked reeds to produce two tones for each digit. The design was shelved during World War II and forgotten until many years later after the transistor was developed and tones could be produced with electronic oscillators.

Henry Dryfus, an industrial designer working for Bell Telephone, is credited with inventing the interface notion of the pushbutton, working as a consultant to Bell Telephone. One of the first prototypes of the design was made of wood (second photo above) showing how early prototypes can be quite effective in communicating new concepts and getting customer feedback. The version that Bell Systems / Western Electric introduced in 1962 at a World’s Fair in Seattle and as a commercial product on November 18, 1963 was based on this wooden model (third photograph above). They replaced the basic design language from a circle to square to visibly highlight the change from dial to pushbutton design.

The pushbutton concept was considered as the seed for revolutionary telecommunications concepts, such as the one pictured in the right-most image above for the videophone concept published as an advertisement in 1963. The “button” continues to be a winning design concept for telecommunication devices and is used in the recent introduction of a new generation of phones and advanced button designs inspired by Apple Computers’ iPhone.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on push buttons and telephone design or our resources on industrial design. For related educational resources, visit the Computer Engineering Education, the Electrical Engineering Education, the Computer Science Education disciplinary communities or the Design Education and the Industrial Design Education interdisciplinary communities.

Today in History – November 17, 1970 – Invention of the computer mouse. In 1970, a U.S. patent was issued for the computer mouse – an “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System” (No. 3541541). Doug Engelbart’s invention changed the way humans were to work with computers. The invention transformed computers from specialized tools for technologists to user-friendly computational systems that anyone can use. Engelbart and his colleagues called this invention the “mouse,” after its long tail-like cable. The first mouse was a simple hollowed-out wooden block, with a single push button on top, designed to select and manipulate text. The “mouse” was part of a larger project called the NLS (oN Line System) based on work at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), which allowed two or more users to work on the same document from different workstations. This work built on Engelbart’s overarching visions for augmenting human intellect, improvement infrastructure, co-evolution of artifacts with social-cultural language-practices, and bootstrapping. Christina Engelbart, Doug Engelbart’s daughter and co-founder of the Bootstrap Institute, maintains an in-depth biography of Engelbart and his inventions. I was struck by the vision, passion and humbleness inherent in this quote from the site: “He remains bewildered as to why it has taken so long for society to catch up to him. “The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate. I have tolerated a lot,” says Engelbart of his life. Reader’s Digest paid Engelbart $35 to publish that quote, more than he was paid for many of his revolutionary inventions.” Doug Englebart was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2000.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Doug Engelbart and the computer mouse. For related educational resources, visit the Computer Engineering Education, the Electrical Engineering Education or the Computer Science Education disciplinary communities.

Today in History – November 16, 1965 – Walt Disney launches the EPCOT Center: Prototype Community of Tomorrow. As Walt Disney originally envisioned it, the EPCOT Center (which stood for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”) would be the key component of Walt Disney World – a working “city of the future” with residential, shopping and industrial districts that would showcase the latest technologies available. Walt’s vision included forward thinking ideas such as clean (read: electric) transportation systems, and a city dominated by the pedestrian (all automobile traffic was to be underground). In his own words, “It’s like the city of tomorrow ought to be. A city that caters to the people as a service function. It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities… [It] will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.”

Walt Disney died approximately a year after the launch of the EPCOT project, and without his vision and drive the EPCOT Center took a very different direction. Instead of a working city, Epcot (no longer an acronym) is now a theme park with two different themes in one: a showcase of the future (a legacy of EPCOT’s original design) and the World Showcase (where you can tour the world by foot in under two hours). The theme park officially opened on October 1st, 1982 and 2007 marks it’s 25th year of operation. See the Engineering Pathway’s resources on theme parks and roller coaster design.

Also today in 1904, the electron tube was invented by John Ambrose Fleming. Electron tubes (known more commonly as vacuum tubes) are used to control or create an electrical signal by restricting the movement of electrons in a low-pressure space. They were the key devices that enabled the early development of technologies such as radios, televisions, and radar, which led to the electronics of today.

Today in History – November 13, 1913 – Mary Phelps Jacobs invents modern bra. After tiring of barbaric corsets with whaleback bones and steel rods, Mary Phelps Jacobs, a New York socialite, took two silk handkerchiefs and some pink ribbon and fashioned herself the very first backless bra.  She used the natural bias of the silk to provide the elasticity. On November 3, 1914, she was awarded a patent for the “Backless Brassiere”. Later she sold the brassiere patent to the Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut for $1,500, who is reported to have made $15 million dollars from the bra over the next 30 years. Anne L. Macdonald, author of Feminine Ingenuity: How Women Inventors Changed America, notes that Jacobs was a descendant of inventor Robert Fulton and quotes Jacobs’ autobiography on this: “I believe my ardour for invention springs from his [Fulton's] loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as grat a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”

See the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on women inventors and gender equity.

Also on this date in 1971, Mariner 9 becomes the first spaceprobe to orbit another planet.

Today in History – June 5, 1977 – Apple II goes on sale. Steve Wozniak designed the Apple II personal computer that was released in 1977, featuring a central processing unit (CPU), keyboard, floppy disk drive, and a $1,300 price tag. The Apple II launched the personal computer revolution. He left Apple in 1981 and went back to the University of California at Berkeley and finished his degree in electrical engineering and computer science there. Since then, he has been involved in various business and philanthropic ventures, including improving computer capabilities in schools.

So how do you build one of the first personal computers? Wozniak says when he teaches Personal Computer 101 he asks students to go to the Apple I Owners Club, founded in 1977 by Joe Torzewski. The site contains over 120 pages detailing the Apple I computer. It shows you what it was like to actually buy and assemble one. If you’ve never seen an Apple I or II, check this site out and see how the personal computer revolution began. Want to know more, read Wozniak’s book: iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It.

Check out the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on Apple computers and history of computing. For more educational resources, see our electrical engineering education, computer science education and computer engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Today in History – February 18, 1901 – First vacuum cleaner patented by Hubert Cecil Booth, an English structural engineer. This design had the disadvantage that it had no way to collect the dust and never became a commercial success. In 1907, James Spangler, a janitor working in Canton, Ohio, was not aware of this Booth’s design, but was motivate to clean floors and carpets more effectively as he suffered from asthma. He built the first motorized vacuum cleaner using an old motor fan attached to a soap box and broom handle, using a pillowcase as a dust collector. Spangler is credited with building the first commercially successful vacuum cleaner and obtained his patent in 1908. One of his first customers was his cousin and her husband William H. Hoover, who eventually formed the Hoover Company in 1922. For the next one hundred years the basic operation of a vacuum cleaner remained the same – dirt was collected in a dust bag that required replacing and cleaning out a filter.

Then a British industrial designer and engineer, James Dyson, made it his mission to build a better vacuum cleaner. He used a high speed motor to produce a constant suction through centrifugal force and used the volume of the cleaner to replace the bag. Hoover and Electrolux did not take his invention seriously and refused to consider the idea when Dyson first discussed it with them. Instead Dyson formed his own company. His ‘vacuum cleaner that doesn’t lose suction’ is a market leader, one that excels in quality products, as well as cutting edge industrial design. I am always struck by James Dyson’s claim that he built 5,127 prototypes before he got it right. This reminds me of IDEO‘s philosophy of “fail early and often to succeed at the end”. Dyson argues that there is more we can learn from failures than from successes.

Another recent vacuum cleaner innovation is the iRobots series called “Roomba” that uses artificial intelligence and robotics to “automatically” vacuum, even when no humans are in the room. The co-inventors were Rodney Brooks, Helen Greiner, and Colin Angle.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on the James Dyson, vacuum cleaner design, and industrial design. For related educational resources, visit the Mechanical Engineering Education and the Engineering Management community sites. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Also on this date in 1930, Tombaugh discovers the dwarf planet Pluto.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on the Pluto and space exploration. For related educational resources, visit the Aerospace Engineering Education Community site.