It Started With da Vinci

There’s a good reason for that, though: there is no single inventor. Many different people designed and built precursors to modern automobiles. Some may say the idea should be credited to Leonardo da Vinci, who made models of various transport vehicles. However, because he never successfully built a full version, it’s harder to say he “invented” it. Da Vinci merely laid the groundwork for others to follow.

In 1769, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot from France built the first self-propelled, steam-powered vehicle. It was a three-wheeled tractor meant for military use and reached a top speed of 2.5 MPH. While not a car, it was an automobile that could be driven on the roads. Cugnot was followed by Robert Anderson, a Scotsman who created an electric carriage sometime between 1832-1839. During that period, American Thomas Davenport worked on his own electric vehicle.

Three Wheels or Four?

However, all three men are largely overshadowed by Karl Friedrich Benz, who unveiled his gas-powered vehicle in around 1885-1886. This is largely considered the first “real” automobile, with an internal combustion engine that is still widely used today. It had three wheels, four cycles, and the engine and chassis formed a single unit. In other words, it most closely resembled what we consider to be a modern car, just minus one wheel.

Around the same time, also in Germany, Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built their own gasoline-powered automobile. This one did have four wheels and was named the “Cannstatt-Daimler.” They would reuse the engine for many other vehicles over the years, including trolleys and the world’s first motorboat. Eventually, Benz and Daimler merged their companies, becoming what is today known as Mercedes-Benz.

From that point onwards, most early automobiles used gasoline as fuel. For instance, George Baldwin Selden patented a carriage with a built-in combustion engine in 1895. It was never manufactured, but Selden did collect royalties. Two years prior, Charles and Frank Duryea made the first successful gas-powered car and set up America’s first car manufacturing company.

Henry Ford and the Future

Of course, all these men have been greatly overshadowed by Henry Ford and his Model T. While Ford did not invent the automobile, he’s widely considered to have perfected it (for the time) and made it accessible to the greater public. The Model T itself was awarded Car of the Century in 1999, and standardized many features we now take for granted, like different speed gears and parking brakes. For this reason, fairly or not, Henry Ford is believed to be the father of the modern automobile.

Plenty of other advancements have happened in the world of automobiles. Pickup trucks and vans became available and eventually commonplace. Station wagons grew in prominence before falling out of fashion. Peugeot produced the first hardback convertible in 1934. Tesla has released a line of plug-in, all-electric vehicles, with the Tesla Model S being named the new Car of the Century. (Time will tell if it’ll keep that title.)

The history of the automobile is complex, with no one person behind it. Perhaps that’s why it has evolved and changed greatly over the years. Whether you credit its invention to Ford, Benz, da Vinci, or somebody else, one thing is agreed upon: the world would be drastically different without it. For that, we have a long list of names to thank.

The post Inventing the Automobile appeared first on Inventionland.

In this tech-focused world that we live in, we are constantly connected; whether it’s through our phones or tablets, we always have our hands wrapped around what’s trending.  But, just as we are constantly connected, the bane of most people’s existence is a dying phone and no way to charge it!

This is where the story begins…

Tejas Shastry, Mike Geier and Alex Smith, all met at NUvention Energy, an entrepreneurship course at Northwestern University. It was during this course that they were tasked with inventing a product for the sustainable energy or clean tech industry.

This inventor-trio had a couple of things in common.  To begin, they loved to work out and they also used their cell phones frequently which led to their phone batteries dying. It was these similarities among the three PhD students that prompted them to invent the AMPY.

Inventions are usually created to solve a problem and the AMPY was invented to solve the problem of a dead smartphone before the day was over.

This small, square, wearable device receives energy from human motion. The energy is then turned into a portable charger for a phone or USB-powered device.

The AMPY encourages its users to be active, so they decided to create a device that would recharge their smartphones as a person burns calories through walking, biking or running.  They would be recharge their smartphones through that energy.

This portable charger can generate enough energy to charge a smartphone for three hours. That means for every hour of biking, 30 minutes of running or 10,000 steps of walking, it can create enough energy to charge a smartphone for three hours!

The AMPY works with Androids, iPhones and other devices that utilize a USB port to charge.

Portability is the main feature and the AMPY weighs in at about 0.3 pounds and is half the size of an iPhone 5; this design maximizes its ability to be taken anywhere.

The AMPY also comes with an armband, clip and sleeve to be worn on the go.  However, if you’d rather not have this invention visible, it can still collect energy while in a person’s pocket.

Check out this portable charger in action, here!

In short, the AMPY motivates people to get moving in order to get charging! A simple concept that the inventors hope will resonate with the public in the near future!

Copyright Inventionland, 2014

Sources:

https://college.usatoday.com/2014/10/25/northwestern-students-invention-charges-phones-conserves-energy/

Media:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vis3IxkkuPM

The post Portable Charger Gets People Moving appeared first on Inventionland.

The idea behind this new technology is that it can turn any object into a musical instrument. How so? By converting the vibrations that are made as a person touches it into sound.

Here’s a quick rundown of this latest invention. Let’s say you place the small sensor onto the surface of a cereal box. Once you connect this sensor to your smartphone, an app will begin running on your phone that both detects and analyzes the vibrations and transforms them into musical notes. You can either keep your musical cereal-playing talents to yourself or you can hook up your smartphone to speakers for everyone to hear; and, depending on your musical skills, this could or couldn’t be a good thing for your neighbors!

The best thing about this invention is that the sound that a person hears is actually coming from the object!

So, who can we credit for this invention? The answer is a music technology researcher by the name of Bruno Zamborlin, who offers a better explanation for his invention:

“It’s a principle called physically inspired sound system. When you play a real instrument, like a guitar, the sound is created by the combination of an exciter and a resonator. The exciter is the plectrum in your hand that hits the strings, and the resonator is the combination of the strings and the body of the guitar. Mogees works in a similar way: everything that is picked up by the sensor — your gestures, the object itself — is the exciter, and the resonator is emulated through the software. We just modify the signal to respect musical rules. We augment it.”

This invention’s app is very hands on and gives the user the chance to select the musical notes and tones that they want to be associated with their gesture. If a person makes the same gesture more than once, they will get the same sounds, thanks to the invention’s functionality.

If you can’t quite picture how this invention works, take a look at this trailer:

We must admit that this “sounds” like one very cool invention!

Copyright Inventionland 2014

Sources:

https://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/tech/innovation/mogees-make-music-from-anything/index.html

Media:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPMqAEIBfJM#t=48

The post This Invention Can Turn Any Object into Music appeared first on Inventionland.