Invention and discovery of social science. Great inventions of mankind

A discovery is recognized as the establishment of previously unknown objectively existing patterns, properties and phenomena of the material world, introducing fundamental changes in the level of knowledge on a global scale.

Many discoveries contain a theoretical justification for a pattern, property or phenomenon, but this feature is not mandatory. It is enough if the discovered pattern, phenomenon or property is experimentally confirmed. In this case, the subject of discovery can be not only phenomena that exist in nature and have not previously been established, but also artificially created ones, for example, the production of certain elements in the Mendeleev system that have not yet been discovered in nature.

The creation of such elements is not an invention, since in this case the problem was solved purely scientifically and the purpose of the research was exclusively educational. But the devices and methods that were used in these studies can be recognized as an invention. Or, if an open element exhibits properties that are useful in technology, then the proposed method of using this element in production can be recognized as an invention.

Objects of the invention

A technical solution in any field related to a product or method is protected as an invention. The object of the invention is a product. The product as an object of the invention is, in particular, a device, substance, microorganism strain, plant or animal cell culture (line), genetic construct.

Devices include structures and products. Substances include, in particular: chemical compounds, including nucleic acids and proteins; compositions (compositions, mixtures); products of nuclear transformation. Strains of microorganisms include, in particular, strains of bacteria, viruses, bacteriophages, microalgae, microscopic fungi, and consortia of microorganisms. Plant or animal cell lines include cell lines of tissues, organs of plants or animals, and consortia of corresponding cells. Genetic constructs include, in particular, plasmids, vectors, stably transformed cells of microorganisms, plants and animals, transgenic plants and animals.

Object of the invention is a method

The method as the object of the invention is the process of performing actions on a material object using material means.

In particular, the following are not considered inventions:

• discoveries, as well as scientific theories and mathematical methods;
• decisions relating only to the appearance of products and aimed at satisfying aesthetic needs;
• rules and methods of games, intellectual or economic activities;
• programs for electronic computers;
• decisions involving only the presentation of information.

The following are not recognized as patentable:

• plant varieties or animal breeds;
• topologies of integrated circuits;
• decisions that are contrary to public interests, principles of humanity and morality.

An invention is considered a technical solution and must contain an indication of the technical means (methods) for its solution and be operational, i.e. have the quality of repeated reproduction of the achieved result.

A technical solution is often embodied as a result of its implementation in a certain machine, alloy, or medicinal product; however, it is not the material object itself that is protected, but the technical idea expressed in it. A technical solution can be recognized as an invention if it is novel, has significant differences and gives a stable positive result. Moreover, a technical solution is considered new provided that before the priority date of the application, the essence of this or an identical solution was not disclosed in the Russian Federation or abroad. If a technical solution has become known only to a certain, narrow circle of people, for example, a technical commission, the author’s employees, or the head of a higher body, then the novelty of the solution is protected. Thus, the discovery represents a solution scientific problem, and the invention provides a practical means for directly satisfying some social need. The novelty of an invention belongs to the field of technology, and the novelty of a discovery belongs to the field of scientific knowledge.

Regulations on scientific discoveries

General provisions

• A discovery is recognized as the establishment and proof of previously unknown objectively existing patterns (laws), properties or phenomena of the material world, which are not deduced as a consequence from existing knowledge and introduce fundamental changes in the level of knowledge. This Regulation does not apply to geographical, archaeological, paleontological discoveries and discoveries in the field of social sciences.
• A declared discovery is considered previously unknown if it has not been published in the Russian Federation or abroad or brought to the attention of third parties in any other official way within five years before the date of filing the application for a diploma for the discovery (hereinafter referred to as the application for discovery).
• The declared discovery cannot be deduced as a consequence from existing knowledge if it is not based on known scientific and practical knowledge of the laws, properties or phenomena of the material world.
• The declared discovery is recognized as introducing fundamental changes in the level of knowledge if, on its basis, new directions in the development of science and technology are opened, known theoretical concepts are fundamentally changed, and scientific facts and experimental data that have not previously found a scientific explanation are explained.
• The claimed discovery must be proven, i.e. theoretically justified or confirmed experimentally.
• The phenomenon of the material world, as a subject of discovery for which a diploma is issued, is a previously unknown objectively existing qualitative characteristic of an object of the material world, the establishment of which introduces fundamental changes in the level of cognition.
• The property of the material world, as a subject of discovery for which a diploma is issued, is a previously unknown, objectively existing form of manifestation of the essence of an object of the material world (nature), the establishment of which introduces fundamental changes in the level of cognition.
• The pattern (law) of the material world, as a subject of discovery for which a diploma is issued, is a previously unknown objectively existing stable connection between the phenomena or properties of the material world, the establishment of which introduces fundamental changes in the level of cognition.
• The following are not recognized as discoveries:
• • scientific theories and hypotheses;
  • results clarifying known scientific principles;
  • detection of morphological structures, comets, planets and other spatial formations;
  • breeding and discovery of new species of plants, animals and microorganisms;
  • other research results that do not meet the requirements provided for in paragraph 1 of these Regulations.
• The author of the discovery is an individual creative work which the claimed discovery was revealed. If several persons participated in identifying the specified discovery, all of them are considered its authors. The right of authorship is an inalienable personal right and is protected indefinitely. Foreign citizens may be recognized as the authors of discoveries and enjoy the rights provided for by these Regulations and other legislative acts of the Russian Federation, on an equal basis with its citizens in cases where the discovery was made jointly with citizens of the Russian Federation or when performing work at enterprises, institutions, organizations located on the territory of the Russian Federation Federation or in joint use, unless otherwise provided by international treaties.
• The discovery diploma is issued in the name of the author by the Ministry of Science and Technical Policy of the Russian Federation (hereinafter referred to as the Ministry of Science). In the case of co-authorship, a discovery diploma is issued to each of the co-authors indicating the other co-authors.
• The priority of a discovery is established by the date when the discovery was first formulated and proven, or by the date of its publication in the press, or by the date of bringing it to the attention of third parties in another official way. If it is impossible to confirm the specified date, the priority of opening is established by the date of receipt of a correctly completed application for opening. If the date when the discovery was first formulated and the date when evidence of its reliability was presented, complementing and substantiating the essence of the discovery, do not coincide, the priority dates are indicated, respectively, the date when the discovery was first formulated and the date the evidence of reliability was presented results contained in the discovery formula.

Preparation and examination of an application for opening

• An application for a discovery, drawn up in accordance with these Regulations, is submitted to Rospatent by the author of the discovery. The application, at the request of the author, can be submitted by a legal entity or an individual on the basis of a power of attorney issued to him by the author.
• An application for discovery must relate to only one discovery and include the following documents:
• • an application for a diploma for opening, and in the case of an application from an organization - a certificate for opening;
  • description of the discovery with the discovery formula;
  • documents confirming the priority of the discovery, if the essence and evidence of its reliability were known before filing the application for discovery;
  • an abstract containing a summary of what is disclosed in the description of the discovery, indicating the scientific or practical significance of the discovery;
  • a document confirming payment of the fee for filing an application for opening.
• The application for the issuance of a diploma for the opening must indicate the surname, name, patronymic of the author (co-authors), information about his (their) education, scientific degree, place of residence (work), citizenship (for foreigners), name of the discovery, as well as characteristics of the creative contribution of each co-author in establishing the discovery. The description of the discovery must provide evidence of the reliability of establishing a pattern (law), property or phenomenon of the material world, as well as a formula for the discovery that concisely, clearly and comprehensively expresses its essence. Application documents are submitted in Russian in printed form.
• Examination of an application for discovery includes preliminary consideration by Rospatent and scientific examination in the Academies of Sciences of the Russian Federation, the State Committee of the Russian Federation for Higher Education (Goskomvuz), the Higher Attestation Committee of the Russian Federation (VAK), and the Ministry of Science.
• Preliminary consideration of the application for opening is carried out within a month from the date of its receipt. During the preliminary review, the compliance of application materials with the requirements imposed on them by these Regulations is checked.
• Based on the results of the preliminary review, the application for discovery is sent to the relevant Academy of Sciences or the State Committee for Higher Education for scientific examination, or is rejected if it does not comply with the requirements of Article 9 of these regulations with the application materials being returned to the author. Rospatent publishes in the official bulletin information about applications for discoveries sent for scientific examination.
• Rospatent may invite the author to supplement or clarify the application materials. To clarify the application or supplement it with missing materials, the author is given a 2-month period from the date of receipt of this proposal. If the author has not made corrections to the application within the specified period or has not submitted additional materials, the application is considered unsubmitted and its materials are returned to the author.
• The Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation and the State Committee for Higher Education, within 6 months from the date of receipt of the application for discovery, check the compliance of the declared discovery with the requirements set out in Article 9 of these Regulations, establish its priority, clarify the discovery formula, coordinate it with the author, and send their conclusion on the existence of the discovery to Rospatent with the recommended formula for the discovery and an assessment of its scientific and practical significance, or about the absence of a discovery, indicating the motives confirming this conclusion.
• If within 6 months from the date of publication in the official bulletin of information about the application for discovery it is not protested, Rospatent, on the basis of positive conclusions from the academies of sciences of the Russian Federation or the State Committee for Higher Education, within a month makes a decision to issue a diploma for the discovery, coordinates it with the Russian Academy of Sciences, and registers the discovery and sends the decision to the Russian Ministry of Science. The Ministry of Science of Russia, within a month from the date of receipt of the decision from Rospatent, presents diplomas and the “Author of the Discovery” badge to the author of the discovery, and also pays remuneration.
• If a decision is made to refuse to recognize the declared provision as a discovery, Rospatent sends a copy of the decision to the author within a month.
• The author has the right to submit a reasoned objection to Rospatent within 2 months against the decision to refuse to recognize the declared provision as a discovery if there are conflicting conclusions on it.
• If the author fails to reach agreement on the decision made on the application, Rospatent sends materials on the claimed discovery to the Higher Attestation Commission.
• Within 2 months, the Higher Attestation Commission reviews the submitted materials and sends its conclusion to Rospatent, which notifies the author about it. If the author or Rospatent disagrees with the conclusion of the Higher Attestation Commission, materials on the claimed discovery are sent to the Ministry of Science for final decision.
• The decision made by the Ministry of Science on an application for discovery is final and cannot be appealed.
• The author of the declared discovery and the applicant have the right to participate in the consideration of the application for discovery at all stages of preliminary consideration and scientific examination.

Funding for discovery work

• Funding for work related to the protection and use of discoveries is carried out from budget funds allocated by the Ministry of Science and corresponding fees.
• Determination of the amount and payment of royalties, payment of expenses for preparing conclusions on applications for discoveries, payment of fees for their submission and carrying out scientific examination on them are carried out in accordance with the rules and prices established by the Ministry of Science.

Inventor and Innovator Day is celebrated in Russia on the last Saturday of June. At the suggestion of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Inventor and Innovator Day was introduced in the late 1950s. Initially, Inventor and Innovator Day was a Soviet version of the Nobel Prize. On June 25, the Academy of Sciences considered all rationalization proposals put forward over the past year, selected the best and awarded their authors.

History of invention

With the passage of time, the original meaning of Inventor and Innovator Day was lost; since 1979, this day has become simply a “professional” holiday of all inventors and innovators. Now Inventor and Innovator Day is celebrated in our country. In Russia, many technical means were invented that changed the history of mankind: the talented Russian scientist D.I. Vinogradov discovered the secret of making porcelain, Russian agronomist A.T. Bolotov proposed the use of multi-field systems in agriculture instead of the patriarchal three-field system, world-renowned scientist V.N. Ipatiev worked in the field of organic chemistry and discovered heterogeneous catalysis, N.I. A few days before his execution, Kibalchich developed a project for a jet flying vehicle for space flight; the personal computer, according to some authors, was invented in 1968 by the Soviet designer A.A. Gorokhov, which was called a “programming device” and many other discoveries and inventions.

In the history of the development of Soviet invention, the period 1924 - 1931. - the so-called “patent period” - takes special place. In connection with the transition from war communism to the new economic policy, a new economic mechanism arose in our country, based on the independence of the enterprise, on the further development of commodity-money relations, on competitive relations between enterprises. It demanded its consolidation in the form of new patent protection for inventions. Developed in 1921-1924. and adopted on September 12, 1924, the Law “On Patents for Inventions” was adapted to the conditions of production with the involvement of private capital in economic construction and on the terms and within the boundaries established by the Soviet government. The Patent Law of 1924 provided for only one form of protection for inventions - a patent; the right to the invention was assigned to the patent holder.

A patent is a document certifying the recognition of a proposal as an invention, the priority of the invention, authorship of the invention, and the exclusive right of the patent holder to the invention.

In 1924-1931 a whole network of inventive bodies has emerged - Higher (all-Union and republican) governing bodies for invention, mid-level management inventive bodies (at regional, regional councils of economy, trusts, main departments, syndicates), local inventive bodies (at production and transport enterprises).

A major role in the development of invention belonged to mass public organizations - the All-Union Society of Inventors (VOIZ) (1932-1938), the All-Union Society of Inventors and Innovators (VOIR) - from 1959 to 1992, and since 1992 - the All-Russian Society inventors and innovators.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated January 24, 1979, the annual All-Union Day of Inventor and Innovator was established, which is celebrated on the last Saturday of June, and this holiday has not yet been canceled.

Currently, the Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks is responsible for issuing patents. The honorary titles “Honored Inventor of the Russian Federation” and “Honored Innovator of the Russian Federation” are awarded. In 2005, Rospatent received about 24 thousand applications for patents from Russian inventors, and 19.5 patents for inventions were issued.

Intellectual property

The concept of “intellectual property” is general in relation to a number of legal institutions, of which the most significant are the institution of trade secrets, patent law, copyrights and trademarks. Trade secret laws and patent law promote research and development of new ideas. Copyright promotes the creation of literary, artistic and musical works, as well as software for computers. Trademark law “links” a product to its manufacturer.

Trade secrets in the form of trade secrets have existed since time immemorial. The ancient craftsmen undoubtedly guarded the techniques by which they turned stones into tools. These masters, long before any legal protection arose, knew the advantage they received from knowing these secrets. However, the possession of secrets, in essence, provides only limited protection. It was only millennia later that the right to protect trade secrets arose. Keeping secrets has evolved into an industry of unprecedented importance, and technical knowledge and trade secrets have become the most essential assets of many business sectors.

Patent law began to develop relatively recently. It can be said that patent law serves as a certain recognition of the imperfection of the market economic system, for the market economy, while well suited to ensure the production and distribution of goods, is of little use for inducing the creation of new and better goods. This is because when a new product is invented in a purely market system, competitors immediately copy it and reduce its price to the cost of production, thereby reducing profits to a level at which it is impossible to recover the costs of research and development that led to the invention. Patent law arose precisely to solve this problem. By ensuring that an invention is protected from competitors for many years to come, a patent increases the chances of making a profit and thereby stimulates invention.

Just as the institution of patenting promotes the development and research of new things, copyright promotes the creation of literary works. Writing a book can take years. In a pure market system, if a book sells successfully, other publishers will immediately publish the same book. Such competition will lead to lower prices, which, accordingly, will make authors and publishers unwilling to spend a lot of time and money required to write and publish a book. By providing protection for the rights of the author and publisher, copyright creates an economic incentive to create new works.

A trademark has a completely different function. When trade was still carried out at the village market level, with simple goods, buyers personally knew the sellers and could easily assess the quality of the goods (for example, feel the fruit). Over time, markets developed to national and international levels, mass production of goods, often expensive and complex, arose, and identifying the manufacturer of a particular product became an extremely important issue. The trademark served both the manufacturer and the buyer usefully. Manufacturers of high-quality goods began to put their trademark on them, and since they already had an established reputation, they could charge higher prices. The buyer could treat the product with confidence, because he knew the reputation of a particular manufacturer.

The history of the discovery of a new cell

Cell theory or cellular doctrine states that all organisms are composed of similar organized units called cells. The idea was formally formulated in 1839 by Schleiden and Schwann and is the basis of modern biology. This idea was preceded by other biological paradigms, such as Darwin's Theory of Evolution (1859), Mendel's Theory of Heredity (1865), and the creation of comparative biochemistry (1940).

In 1838, Theodor Schwann and Matthias Schleiden were enjoying afternoon coffee while talking about cell research. It is believed that Schwann, having heard Schleiden's description of plant cells with a nucleus, was simply amazed by the similarity of these plant cells with the cells that he discovered in animal tissues. Both scientists immediately headed to Schwann's laboratory to look at his samples. IN next year Schwann published a book on animal and plant cells (Schwann 1839), but this treatise did not name others who contributed to this knowledge, including Schleiden (1838). He summarized his observations in three conclusions about cells:

Today we know that the first two theses are correct, but the third is completely wrong. The correct interpretation of cell formation by division was eventually formulated by other scientists and officially proclaimed in the famous dictum of Rudolf Virchow: “All cells arise only from pre-existing cells.”

Chronology of events

1858 – Rudolf Virchow (physician, pathologist and anthropologist) utters his famous phrase “omnis cellula e cellula”, which means that each cell can only be formed from an already existing cell.

1957 – Meselson, Steel and Winograd are developing density gradient centrifugation of cesium chloride for the separation of nucleic acids.

1965 – Ham represents the serum-free carrier. Cambridge Instruments produces the first commercial scanning electron microscope.

1976 – Sato and his colleagues publish papers showing that different cell lines require different compositions of hormones and various factors growth in serum medium.

1981 – The first transgenic mice and fruit flies were grown. The first mouse embryonic stem cell line was obtained.

1999 – Hamilton and Bolcomb discover small interfering RNAs as a post-transcriptional suppression of gene expression in plants.

History of the Taming of Electricity

The power of an electric discharge has been known for a long time, but it was not possible to capture it and put it to the service of humanity. At the beginning of the 19th century, experiments with electric current attracted the attention of scientists from different countries. In 1820, the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted described the phenomenon of deflection of the magnetic needle of a compass under the influence of an electric current flowing through a nearby conductor. Later, this and a number of other discoveries served as the basis for the creation of three main electrical engineering devices - an electric generator, an electric transformer and an electric motor.

Vasily Vladimirovich Petrov (1761-1834), a professor at the Medical and Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, stood at the origins of lighting using electricity. He was the successor and continuer of the works of M.V. Lomonosov. While exploring light phenomena caused by electric current, V.V. Petrov made his famous discovery - an electric arc, accompanied by the appearance of a bright glow and high temperature. This happened in 1802 and was of great historical significance. Petrov's observations and analysis of properties electric arc formed the basis for the creation of electric arc lamps, incandescent lamps, electric welding of metals and much more.

Already in 1872, Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin proposed using an incandescent filament instead of carbon electrodes, which glowed brightly when an electric current flowed. In 1874, Lodygin received a patent for the invention of an incandescent lamp with a carbon rod and the annual Lomonosov Prize of the Academy of Sciences. The device was also patented in Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Austria-Hungary. In 1875, Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov (1847-1894) created an electric candle consisting of two carbon rods located vertically and parallel to each other, between which kaolin (clay) insulation was laid. To make the burning (glow) last longer, four candles were placed on one candlestick, which burned sequentially (in time).

In 1876, Pavel Yablochkov completed the design of an electric candle, begun in 1875, and on March 23 received a French patent containing a brief description of the candle in its original forms and an image of these forms. “Yablochkov’s candle” turned out to be simpler, more convenient and cheaper to use than A. N. Lodygin’s lamp. Under the name “Russian light”, Yablochkov’s candles were later used for street lighting in many cities around the world. Yablochkov also proposed the first practically used alternating current transformers with an open magnetic system.

At the same time, in 1876, the first power plant was built in Russia at the Sormovo Machine-Building Plant; its ancestor was built in 1873 under the leadership of the Belgian-French inventor Z.T. Gram for powering the plant lighting system, the so-called block station.

At that time, the mass consumers of electricity were light sources - arc lamps and incandescent lamps. The first power plants in St. Petersburg were initially located on barges at the piers of the Moika and Fontanka rivers. The power of each station was approximately 200 kW.

The world's first central station was put into operation in 1882 in New York, it had a power of 500 kW.

History of the invention of radio

The Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi (1896) is traditionally considered the creator of the first successful system for exchanging information using radio waves (radiotelegraphy). However, Marconi, like most authors of major inventions, had predecessors. In Russia, A.S. is considered the “inventor of radio”. Popov, who created a practical radio receiver in 1895. In the USA, this is considered to be Nikola Tesla, who patented a radio transmitter in 1893, and a receiver in 1895; his priority over Marconi was recognized in court in 1943. In France, the creator of the coherer (1890), Edouard Branly, has long been considered the inventor of wireless telegraphy. The first inventor of methods for transmitting and receiving electromagnetic waves
(which for a long time were called “Hertzian Waves”), is their discoverer himself, the German scientist Heinrich Hertz (1888).

Principle of operation

The transmission occurs as follows: a signal with the required characteristics (frequency and amplitude of the signal) is generated on the transmitting side. The transmitted signal is then modulated by a higher frequency oscillation (carrier). The resulting modulated signal is radiated into space by the antenna. On the receiving side of the radio wave, a modulated signal is induced in the antenna, after which it is demodulated (detected) and filtered by a low-pass filter (thus getting rid of the high-frequency component - the carrier). Thus, the useful signal is extracted.

Radio propagation

Radio waves propagate in vacuum and in the atmosphere; the earth's surface and water are opaque to them. However, due to the effects of diffraction and reflection, communication is possible between points on the earth's surface that do not have a direct line of sight (in particular, those located at a great distance).

History of the invention of photography

Photography like other greats inventions XIX century, was not discovered immediately. For a long time, people have known the ability of a dark room to reproduce the light patterns of the outside world. With the help of pinhole cameras in Russia, for example, in the 18th century, views of St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Peterhof were documented. This was “photography before photography”: the draftsman no longer needed to think about maintaining proportions; his work was greatly simplified. But people continued to think about how to completely mechanize the drawing process, learn not only to focus the optical pattern on a plane, but also to securely fix it chemically.

Science provided such an opportunity in the first third of the nineteenth century. In 1818, the Russian scientist H. Grothus pointed out the connection between photochemical transformations in substances and the absorption of light. Soon the same feature was established by the American chemist D. Draper and the English scientist D. Herschel. This is how the fundamental law of photochemistry was discovered.

The world's first photograph was taken by N. Niepce. It showed an image of the roof of a neighboring house. This photograph back in 1826 confirmed the possibility of “mechanical drawing” using the sun.

The date of birth of light painting is considered to be 1839. And historians recognize not only N. Niepce as the author of the invention of photography, but also L. Daguerre and F. Talbot, whose first photographs appeared much later.

This happens due to the fact that N. Niepce’s heliographic method was imperfect and unsuitable for practical photography due to the shutter speed of 8 hours. In addition, N. Niepce did not publish his method during his lifetime. Only L. Daguerre knew about it, with whom Niepce entered into a contractual relationship to improve the photographic process. It was Dagger who glorified his name as the man who invented photography!

A camera (photographic apparatus, camera) is a device that generates and subsequently records a static image of a real scene.

Principle of operation

Conversion of luminous flux.

The luminous flux from the real scene is converted by the shooting lens into real image; calibrated by intensity (lens aperture) and exposure time (shutter speed); Color balanced with light filters.

Fixation of light flux.

In a film camera, the image is stored on photographic material (film, photographic plate, etc.).
In a digital camera, the image is perceived by an electronic matrix, the signal received from the matrix is ​​digitized, stored in a buffer RAM and then stored on some medium, usually removable. In simple or specialized cameras, the digital image can be immediately transferred to a computer.

History of the invention of the car

The first known drawings of a car (with a spring drive) belong to Leonardo da Vinci (p. 812R Codex Atlanticus), but neither a working example nor information about its existence has survived to this day. In 2004, experts from the Museum of the History of Science from Florence were able to restore this car from the drawings, thereby proving the correctness of Leonardo's idea. During the Renaissance and later in a number of European countries, “self-propelled” carts and carriages with a spring engine were built in single quantities to participate in masquerades and parades.

In 1769, the French inventor Cugnot tested the first example of a steam-powered machine, known as the “little cart of Cugnot,” and in 1770, the “grand cart of Cugnot.” The inventor himself called it the “Fire Cart” - it was intended for towing artillery pieces.

The “Cugno Trolley” is considered the predecessor of not only the automobile, but also the steam locomotive, since it was driven by steam power. In the 19th century, steam-powered stagecoaches and routieres (steam tractors, that is, trackless steam locomotives) for ordinary roads were built in England, France and used in a number of European countries, including Russia, but they were heavy, voracious and inconvenient, so they were not widely used .

The emergence of a light, compact and fairly powerful internal combustion engine opened up wide opportunities for the development of the automobile. In 1885, the German inventor G. Daimler, and in 1886 his compatriot K. Benz, manufactured and patented the first self-propelled carriages with gasoline engines. In 1895, K. Benz produced the first bus with an internal combustion engine. In 1896, G. Daimler produced the first taxi and truck. The last decade of the 19th century saw the birth of the automobile industry in Germany, France and England.

A significant contribution to the widespread use of automobile transport was made by the American inventor and industrialist G. Ford, who widely used the conveyor system for assembling automobiles.

Cars appeared in Russia at the end of the 19th century. (The first foreign car appeared in Russia in 1891. It was brought from France by ship by the publisher and editor of the newspaper “Odessa Listok” V.V. Navrotsky). The first Russian car was created by Yakovlev and Frese in 1896 and shown at the All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod.

In the first quarter of the 20th century, electric cars and cars with steam engines became widespread. In 1900, approximately half of the cars in the United States were powered by steam; in the 1910s in New York, up to 70 thousand electric vehicles operated in taxis.

In the same 1900, Ferdinand Porsche designed an electric car with four drive wheels, which housed electric motors that drove them. Two years later, the Dutch company Spyker released a racing car with all-wheel drive, equipped with a center differential.
In 1906, a Stanley steam car set a speed record of 203 km/h. The 1907 model lasted 50 miles on a single fill of water. The steam pressure required for movement was achieved within 10-15 minutes from starting the machine. These were the favorite cars of New England police officers and firefighters. The Stanley brothers produced about 1,000 cars a year. In 1909, the brothers opened Colorado's first luxury hotel. A steam bus transported guests from the railway station to the hotel, which was the actual beginning of automobile tourism. The Stanley company produced steam-powered cars until 1927. Despite a number of advantages (good traction, multi-fuel capability), steam cars disappeared from the scene by the 1930s due to their inefficiency and difficulties in operation.

In 1923, the Benz company produced the first truck with a Diesel engine.

In Russia in the 1780s, the famous Russian inventor Ivan Kulibin worked on a car project.

In 1791, he made a scooter cart, in which he used a flywheel, brake, gearbox, rolling bearings, etc.
A significant contribution to the widespread use of automobile transport was made by the American inventor and industrialist G. Ford, who widely used the conveyor system for assembling automobiles.

History of the invention of the computer

Back in February 1946, the world learned that the world's first electronic computer, ENIAC, had been launched in the United States, the construction of which cost almost half a million dollars.

The unit, the equipment for which was installed over three years (from 1943 to 1945), amazed the imagination of contemporaries with its size. Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) - an electronic digital integrator and computer weighed 8 tons, consumed 140 kW of energy and was cooled by Chrysler aircraft engines. This year the ENIAC computer will celebrate its sixty-fourth anniversary.

All computers invented before him were only its variants and prototypes and were considered experimental. And ENIAC itself, equal in power to thousands of adding machines, was first called an “electronic calculator.”

The “grandmother” of the birthday boy and the “great-grandmother” of today’s modern computers could with full confidence be called Babbage’s analytical machine, before the invention of which more than one mechanical calculating machine had already been created: Kalmar’s adding machine, Blaise Pascal’s device, Leibniz’s machine.

But they can only be classified as ordinary “calculators,” while Babbage’s analytical device was, in fact, a full-fledged computer, and astronomer (and even the founder of the Royal Astronomical Society) Charles Babbage went down in history as the inventor of the first prototype of a computer.

Driven by the desire and need to automate his work, which involved a lot of routine mathematical calculations, Babbage sought a solution to this problem. And although by 1840 he had made great progress in theoretical reasoning and had almost completely completed the development of the analytical engine, he was never able to build it due to many technological problems.

His ideas were too far ahead of the technical capabilities of that time, and therefore it was impossible to build similar, even fully designed devices in that era. The number of machine parts was more than 50,000. The device had to be powered by steam energy, which did not require the presence of people, and therefore the calculations would be completely automated. The Analytical Engine could execute a specific program (a specific set of instructions) and record it on punched cards (rectangles of cardboard).

The machine had all the basic components that make up a modern computer today. And when in 1991, for the bicentenary of the inventor’s birth, employees of the London Science Museum created “Difference Engine No. 2” according to his drawings, and a few years later a printer (weighing 2.6 and 3.5 tons, respectively; using mid-range technologies XIX century), - both devices worked perfectly, which clearly demonstrated: the history of computers could have begun a hundred years earlier. But, as already mentioned, during the life of the inventor, his brainchild was never destined to see the world. It was only after Babbage's death, when his son Henry assembled the central block of the Analytical Engine, that it was obvious that the machine was operational. However, many of Charles Babbage's ideas made significant contributions to computer science and found their way into future designs by other engineers.

And yet, the first computer that actually worked on practical tasks was ENIAC, developed specifically for the needs of the army and then intended to calculate ballistic tables for artillery and aviation. At that time, this was one of the most important and serious tasks. The power and productivity of the “computing army resource”, which consisted of people, became catastrophically insufficient, and therefore, at the beginning of 1943, cybernetics scientists began developing a new computing device - the ENIAC computer (later the supercomputer was used, in addition to ballistics, for the analysis of cosmic radiation, and also for the design of the hydrogen bomb).

History of the discovery of Penicillin

In 1928, Alexander Fleming conducted a routine experiment as part of a long-term study devoted to studying the human body's fight against bacterial infections. After growing colonies of Staphylococcus cultures, he discovered that some of the culture dishes were contaminated with the common mold Penicillium, a substance that causes bread to turn green when left standing for a long time. Around each mold patch, Fleming noticed an area that was free of bacteria. From this he concluded that mold produces a substance that kills bacteria. He subsequently isolated the molecule now known as "penicillin". This was the first modern antibiotic.

During the 1930s, unsuccessful attempts were made to improve the quality of penicillin and other antibiotics by learning how to obtain them in sufficiently pure form. The first antibiotics were similar to most modern cancer drugs—it was unclear whether the drug would kill the pathogen before it killed the patient. It was only in 1938 that two Oxford University scientists, Howard Florey (1898-1968) and Ernst Chain (1906-79), managed to isolate a pure form of penicillin. The first injections of the new drug were given to a person on February 12, 1941. After a few months, scientists managed to accumulate such an amount of penicillin, which could be more than enough to save a human life. The lucky one was a fifteen-year-old boy suffering from blood poisoning that could not be treated. This was the first person whose life was saved by penicillin. At this time, the whole world had been engulfed in the fires of war for three years. Thousands of wounded people died from blood poisoning and gangrene. A huge amount of penicillin was required. Flory went to the United States of America, where he managed to interest the government and large industrial concerns in the production of penicillin. Zinaida Vissarionovna Ermolyeva has achieved a lot in studying the properties of penicillin and obtaining this drug. In 1943, she set out to master the preparation of penicillin, first in the laboratory and then in the factory. By modifying the methods proposed by foreign authors, Ermolyeva received active penicillin. Without waiting for it to be manufactured at the factory, she flew to East Prussia so that together with the chief surgeon Soviet army N. N. Burdenko tested the effect of penicillin on the wounded. Soviet penicillin gave excellent results in treating the wounded. Only during the first two months of using it in Moscow hospitals, out of 1,420 wounded and sick people, 1,227 recovered. Penicillin marked the beginning of a new era in medicine - the treatment of diseases with antibiotics. For their enormous services to humanity, Fleming, Chain and Florey were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945. Penicillin and other antibiotics have saved countless lives. In addition, penicillin was the first medicine to demonstrate the emergence of microbial resistance to antibiotics.

Invention of the phonendoscope

The method of diagnosis by listening to the chest was known to Hippocrates. In 1816, Dr. Laennec noticed the children playing around the logs of the scaffolding. Some children scratched and hit one end of the log with sticks, while others listened with their ears to the other. The sound was conducted through the tree. Laennec tightly rolled up the notebook and, placing one end of it to the patient’s chest and the other to his own ear, with surprise and joy he heard the heartbeat much louder and more clearly than before. The next day, the doctor successfully used this method in his clinic at Necker Hospital.

Currently, the stethoscope (its improved version - the phonendoscope) is considered a classic symbol of the medical profession.

History of the invention of the microscope

It is impossible to determine exactly who invented the microscope. The Dutch spectacle maker Hans Jansen and his son Zacharias Jansen are believed to have invented the first microscope in 1590, but this was a claim made by Zacharias Jansen himself in the mid-17th century. The date is, of course, inaccurate, as it turns out that Zachary was born around 1590. Another contender for the title of inventor of the microscope was Galileo Galilei. He developed the "occhiolino", or compound microscope with convex and concave lenses, in 1609. Galileo presented his microscope to the public at the Accademia dei Lincei, founded by Federico Cesi in 1603. Ten years later, Galileo Cornelius Drebbel invents a new type of microscope , with two convex lenses. Christian Huygens, another Dutchman, invented a simple two-lens eyepiece system in the late 1600s that was achromatically adjusted. Huygens eyepieces are still produced today, but they lack a wide field of view and the eyepiece placement is uncomfortable on the eyes compared to modern wide-field eyepieces. In 1665, Englishman Robert Hooke designed his own microscope and tested it on a cork. As a result of this research, the name "cells" was born. Anton Van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) is credited with being the first to bring the microscope to the attention of biologists, even though simple magnifying lenses had been in production since the 1500s, and the magnifying properties of water-filled glass vessels had been mentioned by the ancient Romans (Seneca). Handcrafted, Van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes were very small products with one very strong lens. They were inconvenient to use, but they made it possible to examine images in great detail only because they did not take over the shortcomings of a compound microscope (several lenses of such a microscope doubled the image defects). It took about 150 years of development in optics for a compound microscope to be able to produce the same image quality as simple Leeuwenhoek microscopes. So, although Anton Van Leeuwenhoek was a great master of the microscope, he was not its inventor, contrary to popular belief.

In the group of the German scientist Stefan Hell from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Göttingen), in collaboration with the Argentine scientist Mariano Bossi, an optical microscope called Nanoscope was developed in 2006, which allows one to overcome the Abbe barrier and observe objects with a size of about 10 nm (and as of 2010 year and even less), remaining in the range visible radiation, while obtaining high-quality three-dimensional images of objects previously inaccessible to conventional light and confocal microscopy.

History of the invention of the spyglass

The name of the inventor of the telescope is not known for certain; it has sunk into the centuries, and the device itself is surrounded by many legends and the most incredible stories. The earliest document dates back to 1268 and was written by the Englishman Roger Bacon, a monk of the Franciscan order, in which he theoretically describes its action. At the beginning of the 16th century, the Dutch optician Lippershey, and after him Galileo, put into practice the research of their predecessors and created a real telescope for observing distant objects on land and at sea. A few years later, Galileo improved his instrument by constructing the first telescope.

Invention of glass glasses

Although glasses as such were invented only in the 13th century, even in ancient Rome, rich people used specially cut precious stones to look through them at the sun. The first glass glasses appeared in the 13th century in Italy. At this time, Italian glass masters were considered the most skilled glass makers, grinders and polishers in the world. Venetian glass was especially famous, products from which often had a very complex, intricate shape. Constantly working on spherical, curved and convex surfaces, constantly bringing them to the eyes, the craftsmen eventually noticed the optical capabilities of glass. The inventor of glass glasses is considered to be the master Salvino Armati from Florence. In 1285, he came up with the idea of ​​connecting two lenses using a frame. Long-focal convex, convex lenses were inserted into the very first glasses, and they served to correct farsightedness. Much later it was discovered that using the same glasses, by inserting concave diverging lenses into them, myopia can be corrected. The first descriptions of such glasses date back only to the 16th century. For a long time, glasses were very expensive, which was explained by the difficulty of making truly clean and transparent glasses. Along with jewelry, kings, princes and other rich people included them in their wills. The very first image of glasses is attributed to Tomaso Da Modena - in a fresco of 1352 he painted a portrait of Cardinal Hugo de Provence, writing with glasses on his nose. The next step in the history of spectacle optics There was the invention of a two-focal (bifocal) spectacle lens. It is believed that this invention was made in 1784-1785. made by the famous American figure and inventor Benjamin Franklin, who suffered from poor eyesight and constantly carried with him two pairs of glasses - one for viewing distant objects, the other for reading. He implemented his invention at the ripe old age of 78, having realized that in order to correct age-related farsightedness, it was desirable to have zones of different refraction in spectacle lenses. To do this, he simply inserted the halves of two lenses into the frame. In a letter to his friend, he reported that he had invented glasses through which one could clearly see objects both far and near.

Invention of the telescope

The invention of the first telescope is often attributed to Hans Lipperschlei of Holland, 1570-1619. Most likely, his merit is that he was the first to make the new telescope device popular and in demand. It was he who applied for a patent in 1608 for a pair of lenses placed in a tube. He called the device a spyglass. In August 1609, Galileo made the world's first full-fledged telescope. At first it was just spotting scope- a combination of spectacle lenses, today it would be called a refractor. Thanks to the device, Galileo himself discovered mountains and craters on the Moon, proved the sphericity of the Moon, discovered four satellites of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and made many other useful discoveries.

Invention of the cell phone

On April 3, 1973, the head of Motorola's mobile communications division, Martin Cooper, was walking in downtown Manhattan, 10 years before the advent of commercial cellular telephony, calling his competitor and saying that he was calling from the street using a “handheld” cell phone. The first sample looked like a kilogram brick, 25 cm high, about 5 cm thick and wide. The basic principles of mobile telephony were developed by AT&T Bell Labs back in 1946. Then this company created the world's first radiotelephone service. It was a hybrid of a telephone and a radio transmitter - using a radio station installed in a car, it was possible to transmit a signal to a telephone exchange and make a regular telephone call. Calling a radiotelephone was much more difficult: the subscriber had to call the telephone exchange and provide the telephone number installed in the car. The capabilities of such radiotelephones were limited: interference and the short range of the radio station interfered. Until the early 1960s, many companies refused to conduct research in the field of creating cellular communications, because they came to the conclusion that it was in principle impossible to create a compact cellular telephone device. At this time, AT&T decided to develop cellular telephony in the style of car radios. The 12-kilogram device was placed in the trunk of the car, the control panel and handset were in the cabin. For the antenna we had to drill a hole in the roof. Despite the fact that owners did not have to carry heavy objects in their hands, the communication device did not achieve significant commercial success. The first commercial cell phone did not appear on the market until March 6, 1983. On this day, Motorola introduced the DynaTAC 8000X device - the result of 15 years of development, on which more than $100 million was spent. The first “mobile phone” weighed much less than the prototype - 794 grams and was sold for three and a half thousand dollars. Even despite the high price, the idea of ​​​​being always connected inspired users so much that thousands of Americans signed up to buy the DynaTAC 8000X. In 1983, there were 1 million subscribers in the world, in 1990 - 11 million. The spread of cellular technologies made this service increasingly cheaper, high-quality and accessible. As a result, according to the International Telecommunication Union, in 1995 there were already 90.7 million cell phone owners in the world, over the next six years their number increased more than 10 times - to 956.4 million. As of September 2003, there were 1.29 billion people in the world. handset users, and at the beginning of 2011 the number of mobile subscribers exceeded 5 billion.

Invention of the screw-cutting lathe

Russian mechanic Andrei Nartov developed the design of the world's first screw-cutting lathe with a mechanized support and a set of replaceable gears (1738). While working in the artillery department, Nartov created new machines, original fuses, and proposed new methods for casting guns. He invented the original optical sight. The significance of Nartov’s inventions was so great that on May 2, 1746, a decree was issued to reward A.K. Nartov for artillery inventions five thousand rubles, in addition, several villages in the Novgorod district were assigned to him.

Invention of X-ray

In 1896, the world community of scientists was excited by sensational news: a certain German professor discovered rays that were inaccessible to the human eye, but they acted on a photographic plate. This professor's name was Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. He made this amazing discovery while studying the phenomena occurring in a Crookes tube (a glass tube with air evacuated). Metal electrodes are soldered into the tube at both ends, supplying current to them, and an electrical discharge occurs in the rarefied air. Because of this, the air in the tube and its walls glow with a cold light. The discovery happened like this: one day Roentgen was working with a Crookes tube wrapped in black paper. After completing the work, leaving the laboratory, the scientist turned off the light, but discovered that he had forgotten to turn off the induction coil, which was attached to the Crookes tube. And then he noticed that not far from the tube something was glowing with a dim, cold light - it was a sheet of paper coated with barium platinum oxide (a phosphorescent substance capable of emitting its own cold light). The tube was wrapped in opaque paper, and the cathode rays could not pass through it. So this means this is a new type of ray, still completely unknown to science? So, the scientist is on the verge of a major discovery? From that moment on, Roentgen worked in the laboratory for almost a year and a half without leaving it. At that time, he did not even suspect that his discovery would become the beginning of a new science - nuclear physics. The professor wrote to his friend, the zoologist Boveri: “I discovered something interesting, but I still don’t know if my observations are accurate.” And in 1896, the public was excited by the message about X-rays. It took Roentgen a year and a half of persistent research to prove that X-rays are absorbed by objects and have ionizing ability. He made the discovery that the rays can freely pass through wood, paper, metal, etc., but are held back by lead. Roentgen described the sensational experience: “If you hold your hand between the discharge tube and the screen, you can see the dark shadows of the bones in the faint outlines of the shadow itself hands". This was the first fluoroscopic examination of the human body. The scientist described the effect of rays and proposed the design of an X-ray tube, which has survived to this day, absolutely unchanged. Roentgen himself was a modest man and forbade calling X-rays X-rays, as the whole world now calls them.

Hippocratic Oath

Every doctor takes the Hippocratic oath upon receiving his diploma. Hippocrates (about 460 years old - about 370 BC) is an ancient Greek doctor, reformer of ancient medicine, materialist.

The works of Hippocrates, which became the basis for the further development of clinical medicine, reflect ideas about the integrity of the body; individual approach to the patient and his treatment; concept of anamnesis; doctrines about etiology, prognosis, temperaments.

The name of Hippocrates is associated with the idea of ​​a high moral character and example of ethical behavior of a doctor. Hippocrates' merit was the liberation of medicine from the influences of priestly and temple medicine and the determination of the path of its independent development.

Hippocrates taught that the doctor should not treat the disease, but the patient.

Invention of the compass

The compass, like paper, was invented by the Chinese in ancient times. In the 3rd century BC. The Chinese philosopher Hen Fei-tzu described the structure of his contemporary compass this way: it looked like a pouring spoon made of magnetite with a thin handle and a spherical, carefully polished convex part. With this convex part, the spoon was mounted on an equally carefully polished copper or wooden plate, so that the handle did not touch the plate, but hung freely above it, and at the same time the spoon could easily rotate around the axis of its convex base. The plate contained designations of the countries of the world in the form of cyclic zodiac signs. By pushing the handle of the spoon, it was set into rotation. Having calmed down, the compass pointed with its handle (which played the role of a magnetic needle) exactly to the south. This was the most ancient device for determining the cardinal directions. In the 11th century, a floating compass needle made of an artificial magnet first appeared in China. Usually it was made in the shape of a fish. This fish was lowered into a vessel with water. Here she swam freely, pointing her head in the direction where the south was. Several types of compass were invented in the same 11th century by the Chinese scientist Shen Gua, who worked hard to study the properties of the magnetic needle. He suggested, for example, magnetizing an ordinary sewing needle on a natural magnet, then attaching it with wax in the center of the body to a freely hanging silk thread. This compass indicated the direction more accurately than a floating one, since it experienced much less resistance when turning. Another compass design, proposed by Shen Gua, was even closer to the modern one: a magnetized needle was mounted on a pin. During his experiments, Shen Gua established that the compass needle does not point exactly to the south, but with some deviation, and correctly explained the reason for this phenomenon by the fact that the magnetic and geographical meridians do not coincide with each other, but form an angle. At the beginning of the 13th century, the “floating needle” became known to Europeans. At first, the compass consisted of a magnetized needle and a piece of wood (cork) floating in a vessel with water. Soon they figured out how to cover this vessel with glass to protect the float from the wind. In the middle of the 14th century, they came up with the idea of ​​placing a magnetic needle on a point in the middle of a paper circle (card). Then the Italian Flavio Gioia improved the compass by equipping it with a card divided into 16 parts (points of reference), four for each part of the world. This simple device was a big step in improving the compass. Later the circle was divided into 32 equal sectors. In the 16th century, to reduce the impact of pitching, the arrow began to be mounted on a gimbal, and a century later the compass was equipped with a rotating ruler with sights on the ends, which made it possible to more accurately measure directions.

First sound recording. Phonoautograph.

When: April 9, 1860, found in 2008. The culprit of the event: Book publisher and businessman Edward-Leon Scott de Martinville. Who was ahead of: Thomas Edison with his phonograph (1877). The work of the Frenchman de Martinville, the author of the first sound recording, pursued the goal of understanding how sound works from the point of view of physics. His device scratched curves on paper covered in soot. There was no way to listen to such a recording, but the inventor did not need one: Martinville intended to draw all conclusions about the nature of sound by looking at the curves. In this sense, Edison’s device was more sophisticated: he could both write and read music - and it is from him that the history of sound recording as we know it is rightly measured.

Blood transfusion.

The idea of ​​directly introducing fluid into the bloodstream arose from the English physician-physiologist and anatomist William Harvey (1578-1657), who in 1628 created the doctrine of the circulatory system. W. Harvey's discovery was of great importance for the activities of English scientists at Oxford University, the main inspirer of which was Robert Boyle (1627-1691). In 1656, a scientist, architect, astronomer, one of the founders of the Royal Scientific Society of England, a member of the Oxford group, Christopher Wren, connecting a goose feather with a removed pig bladder, poured beer, wine and opium into dogs. K. Ren was one of the founders of infusion therapy. In 1666, the anatomist and physician Richard Lover (1631-1691), also a member of the Oxford Group, performed the first blood transfusion in dogs. The activities of these great English naturalists provided the impetus for attempts at human blood transfusions. In 1667, the physician Jean-Baptiste Denis (1640-1704) in France made the first attempt to transfuse blood from a sheep to a bled human. He also noted the first complications during blood transfusion. Surgeon M. Purman in 1670 decided to conduct an experiment on himself, instructing one of his assistants to administer to him an infusion mixture he had personally composed. However, these experiments did not always end successfully for patients and researchers, since only in 1907 Y. Jansky first discovered the four main blood groups, and in 1940 K. Landsteiner and A. Winner discovered new system group blood antigens - Rhesus. In Russia, this problem also worried many naturalists. Therefore, in 1796, the Russian Academy of Sciences announced a competition topic: “On the chemical composition of blood and the possibility of creating an artificial substitute.” In the more than 200 years that have passed since then, no one has become a laureate of this competition, although there has been some success in solving this problem. In Russia, the first research on blood transfusion is associated with the name of G. Khotovitsky, who in 1830 proposed blood transfusion to save women in labor dying from bleeding. Further, in 1847, the Russian scientist I.M. Sokolov performed the world's first transfusion of human blood serum. In 1874, for the first time in Russia, Dr. N.I. Studensky performed an intra-arterial blood transfusion. It is worth noting the creation in 1926 in Moscow of the world's first Research Institute of Blood Transfusion (now PC State Scientific Center RAMS). But, nevertheless, the first human-to-human blood transfusion was performed by the English surgeon and obstetrician James Blondell (1790-1877) in 1819.

Outstanding teachers of the province

(October 11 (23), 1846, village of Old Tezikovo, Narovchatsky district, Penza province - November 16, 1924, Prague) - Russian choral conductor, composer and teacher. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1921).

In 1880 he organized a mixed choir in St. Petersburg, which had an extensive repertoire (arrangements of folk songs, choral classics, works by modern composers) and high musical culture. In the practice of church singing, Arkhangelsky made innovations by replacing the children's voices of boys with women's voices in church choirs.

Arkhangelsky entered the history of music as a choral reformer and outstanding teacher. This became the basis for naming the Penza College of Music after Arkhangelsky in 2002.

(January 16 (28), 1841, Voskresenovka village, Penza province - May 12 (25), 1911, Moscow) - an outstanding Russian historian and teacher. Academician (1900), honorary academician (1908) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Author of numerous scientific works, including the fundamental “Complete Course of Russian History,” which has not lost its relevance as a teaching aid to this day. In his scientific work, when considering Russian history, he brought political and economic events to the fore.

He was known for his active public position. Participated in the work of the Press Law Review Commission and in meetings on the establishment project State Duma and its powers. But he refused to join the State Council, because he did not consider participation in the council “independent enough for free... discussion of emerging issues of state life.”

On October 11, 2008, in Penza, opposite the building of the School of Culture and Arts, the first monument to V. O. Klyuchevsky in Russia was erected.

(14 (26) July 1831, Astrakhan - 12 (24) January 1886, Simbirsk) - statesman, teacher. He is mainly known as the father of the founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. At the same time, his own activities aimed at achieving universal, equal education for all nationalities remained in the shadows. The beginning of the teaching career of Ilya Ulyanov is connected with the Penza land, who after university took up the position of senior mathematics teacher in the upper classes of the Penza Noble Institute. His main achievements are associated with his activities as inspector and director of public schools in the Simbirsk province. Thanks to his energy, city councils and rural communities increased the allocation of funds for school needs by more than 15 times. More than 150 school buildings were built, and the number of students in them increased to 20 thousand people. And this despite the fact that the quality of education began to meet accepted standards, schools received competent teachers and buildings acceptable for the educational process and accommodation of teachers.

Outstanding scientists of the province

Hero of the High Latitudes

Badigin Konstantin Sergeevich(November 29, 1910, Penza - March 17, 1984, Moscow) famous Arctic explorer, captain long voyage. In 1937, he became captain of the research vessel Sedov and was responsible for the successful drift through the Northern Arctic Ocean, lasting 812 days. While conducting oceanological research in the Laptev Sea, the Sedov was delayed and was unable to return to port in a timely manner. The same thing happened with the icebreaking steamships Sadko and Malygin. For mutual assistance, all three ships united and tried to break through the freezing sea, but were trapped by ice. Sedovites experienced ice compression 153 times. The legendary drift of the Sedov made a most valuable contribution to the science of the North. For his feat, Konstantin Badigin was awarded the Order of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Founder of vegetation geography

Beketov Andrey Nikolaevich(November 26 (December 8), 1825, Alferyevka village, Penza province - July 1 (14), 1902, Shakhmatovo, Moscow province) - Russian botanist, teacher, popularizer and organizer of science. Brother of the famous chemist N.N. Beketov and the grandfather of the poet A. A. Blok.

He put forward the idea of ​​“biological complexes” as groups of plants that spread under the influence of the sum of external conditions to which one or another type of plant has adapted in the process of its historical development. He established an independent zonal subtype of vegetation “pre-steppe” (that is, forest-steppe). Distinguished between botanical and geographical aspects of geobotany. He worked on many issues of the ecological geography of plants: ecological variant, the influence of light on the formation of life forms of plants, etc. Author of the first complete systematic textbook on botany and a textbook on plant geography in Russia.

- (January 1 (13) 1827, Alferyevka (Novaya Beketovka), Penza province - November 30 (December 13), 1911, St. Petersburg) - one of the founders physical chemistry and chemical dynamics, laid the foundations of the principle of aluminothermy. Russian physical chemist, academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1886). He discovered the displacement of metals from solutions of their salts by hydrogen under pressure and established that magnesium and zinc at high temperatures displace other metals from their salts. In 1859-1865 he showed that at high temperatures aluminum reduces metals from their oxides. Later, these experiments served as the starting point for the emergence of aluminothermy. Beketov’s great merit is the development of physical chemistry as an independent scientific and educational discipline. At Beketov’s suggestion, a physicochemical department was established at the Kharkov Imperial University, where, along with lectures, a workshop in physical chemistry was introduced and physicochemical research was carried out.

In the fight against blindness

Bellarminov Leonid Georgievich(1859, Serdobsky district of Saratov province, now Penza region - 1930, Leningrad) - founder of the school of ophthalmologists, doctor of medicine, professor. For many years he taught at the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy. In 1893-1914, on the initiative of Bellarminov, “flying eye units” were organized to combat blindness in Russia. More than 250 scientific papers were published under his leadership. Leonid Bellarminov was co-editor of the collective guide “Eye Diseases”. For 32 years he was chairman of the St. Petersburg, then Leningrad Ophthalmological Society.

Radiologist on the battlefield

Belov Nikolay Petrovich(December 19, 1894, Nizhny Lomov - March 17, 1953, Penza) - radiologist. Graduated from the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy. Participant of the 1st World War, Civil War, Great Patriotic War. In 1924 he organized and headed the X-ray room at the Penza Red Cross Hospital (now the Semashko Hospital). During the war, Nikolai Belov served as lieutenant colonel of the medical service in hospitals on the Western, Stalingrad, and Baltic fronts. He was one of the first to develop a technique for performing operations in front of an X-ray screen in the field. IN post-war period Belov worked as a radiologist at the garrison hospital. Awarded the Order Patriotic War, 2nd degree, Order of the Red Star.

(May 22 (June 3), 1876, Kamenka village, Nizhnelomovsky district, Penza province - November 11, 1946, Moscow) - Russian and Soviet surgeon, health care organizer, founder of Russian neurosurgery. Nikolai Burdenko created a school of experimental surgeons, developed methods for treating oncology of the central and autonomic nervous system, pathologies of the cerebrospinal fluid circulation, cerebral circulation, etc. He performed operations to treat brain tumors, which before Burdenko were rare throughout the world. He was the first to develop simpler and more original methods for carrying out these operations, making them widespread, and developed operations on dura shell spinal cord, transplanted nerve sections. He developed a bulbotomy - an operation in the upper part of the spinal cord to cut the nerve pathways that were overexcited as a result of brain injury.

In the name of Vladimirov

Vladimirov Vladimir Dmitrievich(1837 – 1903). The greatest success for Penza was the appointment in 1874 of Doctor of Medicine Vladimir Dmitrievich Vladimirov to the position of senior physician at the provincial hospital. In 1860 he graduated from Kazan University. In 1872 he was approved for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. In the city on Sura, Vladimirov for the first time in Russia introduced the practice of students of a paramedic school and performed intra-abdominal and intrathoracic operations. He gained worldwide fame for his surgery for tuberculosis of the ankle and heel tumor. In 1885, this operation was named Vladimirova-Mikulich.

In cosmic rays

Dobrotin Nikolay Alekseevich(June 18, 1908, N. Lomov - 2002, St. Petersburg) - Russian physicist. Together with D.V. Skobeltsyn and G.T. Zatsepin discovered (1949) and studied electron-nuclear showers caused by cosmic rays and the nuclear cascade process (USSR State Prize, 1951), discovered asymmetric showers. He established a characteristic feature of multiple generation of secondary particles through the formation and decay of clusters. Creator of the Pamir High-Altitude Observatory for the Study of Cosmic Rays and the Tan-Shan Observatory. Author of more than 20 scientific papers.

(July 25, 1915, Bolshaya Sadovka, Sosnovoborsky district Penza region– October 2, 1990) - mathematician, prominent Soviet geometer. At the Penza Pedagogical Institute, heading the department higher mathematics, Egorov I.P. created the Penza mathematical school on motions in generalized spaces. Since 1960, the institute has operated a graduate school under his leadership. More than 70 scientific works of the scientist received wide popularity and recognition not only in the USSR, but also abroad, causing the emergence of new research in Japan, Romania, the USA and other countries.

Ivan Petrovich Egorov was twice elected as a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1962 - 1970), was a member of the permanent commission of the Union Council of the Supreme Council for Youth Affairs, and was a member of the Bureau of the Geometric Seminar at VINITI of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1963).

Healthcare Basics

Yeshe Egor Bogdanovich(1815 -1876). Student N.I. Pirogov, is rightfully considered one of the founders of healthcare in the Penza province. In 1846-1855, he worked as a senior doctor at the Penza hospital of public charity, which later became known as the provincial zemstvo hospital, and then the regional one. Yegor Bogdanovich performed operations available only to the leading clinics of that time. He was one of the organizers of the scientific and medical society. In 1847, he, together with resident A.I. Zimmerman introduced ether anesthesia into surgical practice. In Penza, 5 reports on the work of the hospital and 100 scientific articles were published.

Founder of the clinical school

Zakharyin Grigory Antonovich(1829, Penza -1898, Moscow) - an outstanding Russian general practitioner, founder of the Moscow clinical school, honorary member of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1885). Zakharyin was one of the most outstanding clinical practitioners of his time and made a huge contribution to the creation of an anamnestic method for studying patients. He outlined his diagnostic techniques and views on treatment in “Clinical Lectures”, which became widely known. These lectures have gone through many editions, including in English, French, and German, and are still considered exemplary. The research methodology according to Zakharyin consisted of a multi-stage questioning of the patient by the doctor, “raised to the height of art” (A. Yushar), and which made it possible to get an idea of ​​the course of the disease and risk factors. Name G.A. Zakharyin is worn by the City Clinical Emergency Hospital in Penza.

Fourth state of matter

Boris Borisovich Kadomtsev(November 9, 1928, Penza - August 19, 1998) - Russian physicist. The main research is devoted to plasma physics and the problem of controlled thermonuclear fusion. He predicted certain types of plasma instability and laid the foundations for the theory of transport phenomena (diffusion and thermal conductivity) in turbulent plasma. He discovered the instability of plasma on the so-called “trapped particles”. Gave a quantitative explanation of the phenomenon of anomalous behavior of plasma in a magnetic field. A number of works are devoted to the problem of thermal insulation of plasma in toroidal magnetic chambers - tokamaks.

He developed a theory of weak turbulence that takes into account the scattering of waves on particles and the so-called wave decay processes. Created the theory of plasma self-organization in a tokamak.

(July 19, 1849, Bekovo - October 6, 1908) - Russian doctor, ophthalmologist. In 1873 he became a doctor of medicine for his dissertation “Objective color perception on the peripheral parts of the retina.” In 1874, together with the German scientist Leber, he published the work “On the penetration of liquids through the cornea.” Kryukov published 38 independent works in Russian and German and for many years, in excellent abstracts, introduced foreign literature to Russian works on ophthalmology. In addition, he was known as an excellent practitioner: the hospital for eye diseases, which came to him from Doctor Voinov, which he was in charge of, was widely known in its time. He published “Fonts and tables for the study of vision” (1882), “Course of eye diseases” (1892, went through 12 editions). Kryukov made a particularly significant contribution to the study of glaucoma.

Expert in human thinking

Ladygina-Kots Nadezhda Nikolaevna(May 6, 1889 Penza - September 3, 1963, Moscow) Soviet zoopsychologist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1960). She graduated with a gold medal from the 1st Penza Women's Gymnasium, Moscow Higher Women's Courses (1916) and Moscow University (1917). She worked at the Darwin Museum as a senior researcher in the psychology sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed a section of the All-Union Society of Psychologists, and was a representative of the USSR in the section of animal psychology of the International Association of Biological Sciences. The ideas of Ladygina-Cotts played an important role in the study of the human psyche. She has developed original research methods that have received wide recognition in Russia and abroad.

Studying the history of our native land

Lebedev Vitaly Ivanovich(b. February 28, 1932, Penza - 1995, Penza) - historian. In 1967 he defended his dissertation for the title of Candidate of Historical Sciences, and in 1985 he became an associate professor. Since 1992, Vitaly Lebedev has been a professor at PSPI. He made a significant contribution to the study of serrated monuments of Russian fortification art of the 16th and 17th centuries. Professor Lebedev conducted field research in Penza, Ryazan, Tambov, Nizhny Novgorod, Ulyanovsk and other regions, as well as in Mordovian, Tatar and Chuvash republics. He took part in the creation of the Penza Encyclopedia. The scientist published more than 100 scientific works, including 5 monographs. In memory of the historian, scientific Lebedev readings have been held since 2000.

Matveev Boris Pavlovich(born 1934, Kerensk (presently Vadinsk)) - founder of the oncourological direction in the Russian Federation, founder of the oncourological department at the Scientific Center named after. N.N. Blokhina. Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, President of the All-Russian Society of Oncourologists, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of Urology of the Russian Cancer Research Center named after. N.I. Blokhin RAMS. Author of many medical works “Clinical oncourology”, Moscow, 2003, “Diagnostics and treatment of oncourological diseases” 1987.

Thanks to Matveev’s work, great successes have been achieved in the treatment of diseases such as bladder cancer, prostate cancer and many others.

Nemchinov Vasily Sergeevich(January 2, 1894, the village of Grabovo, Penza province - November 5, 1964, Moscow) - economist, statistician, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Under his leadership in 1929–1931. The first comprehensive surveys of state and collective farms were carried out. The author of the method of instrumental measurement of yield using a small number of samples - “meters”, which replaced the methods of subjective assessment of yield.

Author of the Nemchinov–Peregudov scheme in mathematical statistics. One of the founders of economic and mathematical statistics. One of the founders of the economic and mathematical direction of domestic economic science. Organized the country's first Laboratory for the Application of Statistical and mathematical methods in Economic Research and Planning.

(b. March 14, 1914 in the village of Chernyshevo, Chembar district, Penza province) Russian soil scientist-agrochemist, academician of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (since 1967), its vice-president (since 1969). Since 1969 - Director of the All-Union Institute of Fertilizers and Agricultural Soil Science. The main scientific works relate to agronomic soil science, agriculture and agrochemistry. Conducted comparative studies of chernozems and forest-steppe soils. He established that without the use of mineral fertilizers, the humus content in soils in the arable land of the forest-steppe zone decreases, and humus accumulates under deciduous forests. He showed the evolution of forest-steppe soils and their agrochemical nature, and proposed methods for increasing their fertility. He worked on the problems of chemicalization of agriculture. He studied the effectiveness of using mineral fertilizers in various soil and climatic zones of the country. Head of the geographical network of experiments on the use of fertilizers in the USSR. Author of the first textbook on geology for agricultural universities.

Pustygin Mikhail Andreevich(born November 16, 1906, the village of Polyanshchina, now the village of Treskino, Kolyshleysky district), Doctor of Technical Sciences (1946), Professor (1949), Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1968). In 1946, in collaboration with I.S. Ivanov creates the design of the first Soviet self-propelled harvester (moving at a speed of 2 hectares of crops). For this work he was awarded the title of laureate of the Stalin Prize (1947). Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1952), October Revolution (1971), Order of Honor (1996).

RameevBashir Iskandarovich(May 1, 1918 - May 16, 1994) – first Soviet designer Computer Science, Doctor of Technical Sciences. As the chief designer, the inventor, together with his team, created and launched into production one and a half dozen universal and specialized computers and more than a hundred different peripheral devices. In 1940, Bashir ended up in Moscow, where he got a job as a technician at the Central Research Institute of Communications. While working at the institute, he made two inventions: he proposed a method for detecting darkened objects from an airplane using infrared radiation passing through curtained windows, and he also created a relay device for turning on loudspeakers in the event of an air raid. Participant of the Great Patriotic War (signal troops). In 1944, he was recalled from the army and sent to work at Central Research Institute-108, which was headed by Academician A.I. Berg. The work was related to the design and calculation of electronic elements of radar devices. In December 1948, B. I. Rameev and I. S. Bruk prepared and sent an application for the invention “Automatic digital computer” and received copyright certificate No. 10475 with priority dated December 4, 1948 - the first certificate in our country for electronic digital computers cars. It is on this day that Informatics Day is celebrated in our country. Within the walls of the Penza NIIMM, now NPP Rubin, one of the founders of which is Bashir Rameev, he proposed and implemented the concept of a number of second-generation computers (Ural-11, Ural-16), which was developed in the EU Computers. Already the first "Ural", released in Penza in 1957, became a "workhorse" in many computer centers of the country. Transistor "Urals" - "Ural-P", "Ural-14" and "Ural-16" - worked in every second computer center and many other organizations of the Soviet Union in the 60-70s. Author of a number of monographs and more than 100 inventions. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, a gold medal from the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements, and a Stalin Prize laureate. Installed on the Rubin Scientific and Production Enterprise building Memorial plaque Bashir Iskandarovich Rameev.

First antiseptic

(1834-1897). The strengthening of the reputation of Penza as one of the scientific centers of the Russian province was facilitated by the doctor of medicine Ernest Karlovich Rosenthal, who in 1864 took the post of senior physician of the Penza provincial zemstvo hospital. In 1866, his articles “On the statistics of stone disease, endemic in the Penza province”, “On the structure and maintenance of hospitals in Western Europe" In 1870, the article “Mortality after surgery in the hospital of the Penza provincial zemstvo” was published. The great success of Penza surgeons E.K. Rosenthal, D.Ya. Diotropova, N.G. Slavinsky, I.I. Malnitsky had stone cutting operations, the methodology of which was covered in the article by E.K. Rosenthal "Statistics of 150 stone cuttings." In 1867, following the example of the English surgeon D. Lister, he introduced antiseptics.

Innovator of Penza medicine

Savkov Nikolay Mokievich(1878 - 1938, Penza) - famous Penza surgeon, author of 35 scientific works, published incl. in Berlin and Paris. In Penza he developed gastric surgery. In 1929 he had his first blood transfusion. In 1931 he opened an emergency room. And in 1933, on a voluntary basis, he created a cancer center, which laid the foundation for the regional oncology clinic.

Strengthening the country's defense

Safronov Pavel Vasilievich(January 21, 1914, Olenevka village, Penza province - May 5, 1993, Penza), design engineer, inventor. In 1931 he graduated from the FZU school and worked at the Penza Frunze Plant as a mechanic, foreman, and foreman. In 1940, after graduating from the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute, he returned to the plant. In 1942 he invented a highly reliable fuse and modernized several types of defense products. In 1947, he was awarded the Stalin Prize for the creation of a new product (together with A.D. Muzykin and G.A. Okun). In 1957-1963 - Ch. designer of the Penza SNH, one of the organizers of the Research Institute of Electromechanical Devices, where he worked as deputy director and director from 1968 to 1971. In 1971-1974. deputy Head of the design department of the Era association.

(May 7, 1873 - February 10, 1942, Penza) - botanist, nature researcher of the Middle Volga region, Penza region, Central Asia and Kazakhstan, one of the founders of environmental protection in Russia. In 1919, he achieved the organization of a reserve in the province - “Poperechenskaya Steppe” (in terms of the time of its establishment, it was the third reserve in Russia). In Penza, Ivan Sprygin organized a natural history museum, Botanical Garden, herbarium. He worked on the classification of plant steppe communities, plant variability, their polymorphism, and influence on speciation processes. He developed the concept of relict plants of the Volga Upland, as well as a methodology for compiling maps of restored (existing before the beginning of agriculture) vegetation cover. He became the first director of the Middle Volga Nature Reserve, which now bears his name. A complete inventory of the reserve's flora was made, and 5 new plant species were discovered. The I.I. Prize is awarded. Sprygin for the best work in the field of theory and practice of conservation and protection of biological diversity.

Stankevich Apollinariy Osipovich(1834-15.09.1892, Gorodishche), forester of the Gorodishche district of the Penza province. From brief newspaper reports we know about his work since the summer of 1881 on the creation of an aircraft. In 1883 his model was completed and an attempt was made to test it in action.
However, technical problems in the design delayed the launch time, and sharply deteriorating weather damaged the apparatus itself. On March 2, 1885, there was a publication about the results of his labors in the Petersburg Newspaper, which said: “Stankevich, serving in the Penza province, invented a method of free floating in the air,” demonstrated his apparatus - “A bird of enormous size with paper wings.” The project was reviewed by the military department and received positive feedback. Subsequently, the project drowned in bureaucratic archives, and the name of the author himself remained in oblivion.

Overtaking time.

Vladimir Evgrafovich Tatlin(December 28, 1885, Kyiv - May 31, 1953, Moscow) - painter, graphic artist, designer and theater artist. A prominent figure in constructivism and futurism. From 1905 to 1910 he studied at the Penza Art School. A new mixed-type business incubator in Penza is named after Tatlin. Vladimir Tatlin became famous for projects that, unfortunately, were not realized. The most famous project is the Tatlin screw tower. The main idea of ​​the monument was formed on the basis of an organic synthesis of architectural, sculptural and pictorial principles. The monument project consists of three large glass rooms built using a complex system of vertical rods and spirals. These rooms are located one above the other and are enclosed in various harmoniously connected forms.

X-ray on Penza land

Trofimov Vladimir Kirillovich(1872 - 1944) - famous doctor. Since 1905 he worked in Penza. Since 1912 - chief physician of the Penza community of nurses of the Red Cross and assistant to the Penza provincial medical inspector. After the revolution, he became the organizer of medical treatment in the city. Since 1923 - in exile.

He has priority in operations on the kidneys, ureter, bile ducts, and wandering kidneys. Introduced surgical interventions for gallstone disease into practice. He was one of the first to raise the issue of combating surgical tuberculosis. In 1908, together with another famous Penza doctor D.S. Shchetkin organized an X-ray room in Penza and became the first radiologist in Penza.

(February 27 (15), 1875, Mikhailovka village, Protasovsky volost, Penza province - October 30, 1956, Odessa) - ophthalmologist, laureate of the USSR State Prize, academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1944) and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1939), Hero of Socialist Labor. Special lime is used in the method of corneal transplantation developed by Filatov, in which the transplant material is a donor cornea. In the field of reconstructive surgery, he proposed a method of skin grafting using the so-called migrating round skin stalk. He developed and introduced into the practice of surgical ophthalmology methods for transplanting the cornea of ​​the eyes of corpses.

He proposed his own methods of treating glaucoma, trachoma, injuries in ophthalmology, etc.; invented many original ophthalmic instruments; created the doctrine of biogenic stimulants and developed methods of tissue therapy (1933), which is widely used in medicine and veterinary medicine. In 1951 he was awarded a large gold medal named after. Mechnikov.

Yuriev Vasily Yakovlevich(02/21/1879, village of Ivanovskaya Virga, Penza province - 02/08/1962) - breeder, twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1954, 1959), full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1945), honorary member of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1947). The main direction in the breeding work of V.Ya. Yuryev was the creation of high-yielding varieties of winter and spring wheat, barley, oats, and corn. In 1946, on the initiative of V.Ya. Yuryev, the Institute of Genetics and Selection of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is organized in Kharkov, which he headed for 10 years. More than 100 scientific papers have been published by the scientist. In 1962, his name was given to the Ukrainian Research Institute of Plant Growing, Breeding and Genetics. In 1965, the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine established the Prize named after. V.Ya. Yuryev for achievements in the field of biology.

Outstanding inventors of the province

(1910-1934) stratonaut, physicist, third member of the crew of the Osoaviakhim-1 stratospheric balloon, which reached a record altitude of 22 km. Died in its fall. He spent his childhood and teenage years in Penza. Studied at school named after. Belinsky, which he graduated from in 1926, at the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology and at the Moscow Institute. Bauman. He was a student of Academician A.F. Ioffe. Since 1932 associate professor of Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology. One of the first scientists to begin studying cosmic rays. He created a special device, which he tested during a flight on the Osoaviakhim-1 stratospheric balloon. In 1995, the administration of the Classical Gymnasium No. 1 named after. V.G. Belinsky established the Prize named after. I.D. Usyskin in the field of physical and mathematical sciences to high school students at the end of the year.

Chernov YakoV(early 1800s, Buturlinka village, Petrovsky district, Saratov province, now Shemysheysky district, Penza region), peasant, self-taught chemist, artisan, founder of the pencil industry in the region (1860s). He worked as a carpenter and cooper. He made sulfur matches. “An accidentally broken pencil gave him the idea of ​​preparing them at home, as a more profitable craft than matches.” I achieved their satisfactory quality experimentally. He taught fellow villagers how to make pencils and organized the supply of goods to Moscow and other cities.

(1847-1894, village of Zhadovka, Serdobsky district, Saratov province, now the village of Yablochkovo, Serdobsky district, Penza region). Russian inventor in the field of electrical engineering, military engineer, entrepreneur. The main invention is an arc lamp without a regulator. “Electric candle”, “Yablochkov candle”, patented on March 23, 1876, made fundamental changes in electrical engineering. The triumphant demonstration of the “Yablochkov candle” at the Paris World Exhibition of 1878 and the creation of a syndicate for the exploitation of Yablochkov’s patents led to the widespread use of electric lighting throughout the world.

February 7, 1832– Nikolai Lobachevsky presents the first work on non-Euclidean geometry to the Academy of Sciences. Its historical significance lies in the fact that by its construction Lobachevsky showed the possibility of geometry different from Euclidean, which marked a new era in the development of geometry and mathematics in general. Lobachevsky's geometry found a remarkable application in the general theory of relativity. If we consider the distribution of matter masses in the Universe to be uniform (this approximation is acceptable on a cosmic scale), then it turns out that under certain conditions space has Lobachevsky geometry. Thus, Lobachevsky's assumption about his geometry as a possible theory of real space was justified.

February 8, 1724– (January 28, old style) By decree of the government Senate, by order of Peter I, the Academy of Sciences was founded in Russia. In 1925 it was renamed the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1991 - the Russian Academy of Sciences. On June 7, 1999, by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the Day of Russian Science was established with the date of celebration on February 8. The Decree states that the holiday was established “taking into account the outstanding role of domestic science in the development of the state and society, following historical traditions and in commemoration of the 275th anniversary of the founding of the Academy of Sciences in Russia.”

February 8, 1929- Soviet aircraft designer Nikolai Ilyich Kamov gives the aircraft he created the name “helicopter”. Nikolai Kamov, together with Nikolai Skrzhinsky, created the first Soviet gyroplane Kaskr-1 “Red Engineer”. In 1935, under the leadership of Kamov, the A-7 combat gyroplane was created, which was used during the Great Patriotic War. In 1940, Kamov became the chief designer of the helicopter design bureau. Under the leadership of Kamov, the Ka-8 (1948), Ka-10 (1953), Ka-15 (1956), Ka-18 (1960), Ka-25 (1968), Ka-26 (1967) helicopters, and Ka rotorcraft were created -22 (1964), snowmobiles Sever-2 and Ka-30, glider.

February 12, 1941- birthday of penicillin. A drug that made it possible to treat diseases previously considered incurable and saved the lives of thousands of people during the war. In the USSR, the first samples of penicillin were obtained in 1942 by microbiologists Z. V. Ermolyeva and T. I. Balezina. Zinaida Vissarionovna Ermolyeva actively participated in the organization industrial production penicillin. The drug penicillin-crustosin VI EM created by her was obtained from a strain of the fungus Penicillium crustosum. Penicillin is used to treat lobar and focal pneumonia, meningitis, tonsillitis, purulent infections of the skin, soft tissues and mucous membranes, diphtheria, scarlet fever, anthrax, syphilis, etc.

February 22, 1714- by decree of Peter I, the Apothecary Garden was founded in St. Petersburg for scientific, educational and practical purposes. The main purpose of the garden was to grow medicinal herbs. Gradually, the territory of the garden expanded due to the purchase and annexation of individual plots. In 1823, the Apothecary Garden was reorganized into a botanical garden; and since 1934 it became a scientific department of the Botanical Institute. Komarova RAS. Today the garden area is 22.6 hectares, including 16 hectares of the park-arboretum. The collection includes over 80 thousand samples. The museum's exposition is dedicated to the vegetation of the Earth, the history and evolution of plants, plant resources of Russia, and the relationship between plants and humans.

March 7, 1899- The first ambulance station in Russia opens. Until this time, victims, who were usually picked up by police officers, firefighters, and sometimes cab drivers, were taken to emergency rooms at police houses. The medical examination required in such cases was not available at the scene of the incident. Often people with severe injuries were kept in police houses for hours without proper care. Life itself demanded the creation of ambulances. The first 5 ambulance stations were opened on March 7, 1899 on the initiative of surgeon doctor N.A. Velyaminov in the city of St. Petersburg.

March 11, 1931- the GTO (Ready for Labor and Defense) physical training complex was introduced in the USSR. GTO is a physical education program in general education, professional and sports organizations in the USSR, fundamental in a unified and state-supported system of patriotic education of youth. Existed from 1931 to 1991. Covered the population aged 10 to 60 years. The GTO objectively contributed to the physical development and health of the country's population.

March 19, 1869– at a meeting of the Russian Chemical Society N.A. Menshutkin, on behalf of D.I. Mendeleev, made a report on the discovery of the relationship between the properties of elements and their atomic weights. The development of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (Mendeleev's table) was initiated. Thanks to her, the modern concept of a chemical element was formed, and ideas about simple substances and compounds were clarified. The predictive role of the periodic table, shown by Mendeleev himself, in the 20th century was manifested in the assessment chemical properties transuranium elements. The appearance of the periodic system opened a new, truly scientific era in the history of chemistry and a number of related sciences- instead of scattered information about elements and compounds, a harmonious system appeared, on the basis of which it became possible to generalize, draw conclusions, and predict.

March - April 1866- publication of I.M. Sechenov’s book “Reflexes of the Brain”. One of the landmark books in the history of world scientific thought. In it, Sechenov substantiated the reflex nature of conscious and unconscious activity, proving that the basis of all mental phenomena are physiological processes that can be studied by objective methods. “A brilliant stroke of Sechenov’s thought,” that’s what the great Russian scientist Pavlov called this peak scientific creativity“father of Russian physiology.

April 1, 1946– the Arzamas-16 nuclear center is being formed in the Soviet Union. Now - the federal nuclear center "Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics". Initially, the center had a specific task - the creation of an atomic bomb. But later developments related to the “peaceful atom” began to be carried out there. In 1962, the unique problem of ignition and combustion of thermonuclear fuel in the absence of fissile materials was solved. The center is expanding the scope of research and development and quickly mastering new areas of high technology, obtaining world-class scientific results, and conducting unique fundamental and applied research.

April 26, 1755- Moscow University opened in the building of the Apothecary House at the Resurrection Gate on the site of the current Historical Museum on Red Square. The creation of the university was proposed by I. I. Shuvalov and M. V. Lomonosov. The decree on the creation of the university was signed by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna on January 12 (23), 1755. Although officially the Founding Day of the first Russian university, and at the same time the Day of all Russian students, is celebrated on the famous Tatiana’s Day (the day the decree on its creation was signed), the first lecture at the first Russian university was given on April 26.

June 2, 1864- Russia's first zoological garden was opened in Moscow. Contrary to popular belief, zoos or zoos are not only intended to display animals to citizens, but also have important scientific significance. Studying the biology and psychology of their collections, as well as the conservation and reproduction of species, followed by reintroduction into natural habitats, helping to restore and preserve endangered representatives of the animal world in the wild. Penza Zoo has one of the richest history in Russia. Although it was opened in 1981, it actually existed since the mid-19th century as the Bishop's Garden. Today it is the only one where there is positive experience in raising bustard chicks, one of the rarest steppe birds, which has almost completely disappeared in the wild.

June 5, 1744- The Porcelain Manufactory was founded in St. Petersburg - the first porcelain production in Russia and one of the oldest in Europe. Since 1925 - the Leningrad Porcelain Factory, and since 2005 again the Imperial Porcelain Factory. The creator of Russian porcelain was Lomonosov's associate Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov. Soon Russian porcelain became widely known in Europe and, thanks to its high quality, was able to compete with the famous Saxon porcelain.

June 8, 1761- during his experiments, Mikhail Lomonosov discovered the atmosphere of the planet Venus. And 200 years later, on August 17, 1970, the Soviet spacecraft Venera-7 was launched, the first to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet - Venus.

June 8, 1843- construction of the St. Petersburg-Moscow (later Nikolaevskaya, and then Oktyabrskaya) road began - the first double-track railway in the country. The movement was opened in 1851. And although the initial volumes of cargo transportation were insignificant (0.4 million tons compared to 1.3 million tons brought to St. Petersburg by waterways), very soon the economic efficiency of railway communication became obvious. By the end of the century, railroads had become one of the main factors determining the country's rapid economic growth.

June 17, 1955– the first flight of TU-104 took place. This is the first jet passenger aircraft in the USSR and the fourth in the world to take off. Designed by the Tupolev Design Bureau and manufactured at the Kharkov Aviation Plant. TU-104 were in operation until 1979. The introduction and development of the new aircraft required a restructuring of the entire airfield structure. It was with the appearance of the Tu-104 on the highways that special vehicles began to be widely introduced - powerful tankers, tractors, water refilling vehicles, luggage vehicles, and finally, self-propelled ladders. The now familiar ticketing and baggage check-in systems began operating at airports, and buses for passengers appeared. On the Tu-104, the level of comfort for passengers has increased compared to piston and turboprop vehicles.

June 19, 1919- in the midst civil war, on the initiative of the Academy of Sciences, the State Hydrological Institute is being created. The institution is being created with the aim of comprehensively studying natural waters, developing methods for hydrological research, calculations and forecasts, solving theoretical problems of hydrology, and providing economic sectors with hydrological information and products. The State Hydrological Institute today provides an assessment and forecast of the state and rational use of water resources.

July 3, 1835- the main building of the Pulkovo Observatory on Pulkovo Mountain was laid. Today, the scientific activities of the observatory cover almost all priority areas of fundamental research in modern astronomy: celestial mechanics and stellar dynamics, astrometry (geometric and kinematic parameters of the Universe), the Sun and solar-terrestrial connections, physics and evolution of stars, equipment and methods of astronomical observations. The Pulkovo Observatory is included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

July 5, 2000– an improved three-stage Proton-K launch vehicle launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which launched the Cosmos satellite into orbit for the needs of the Russian Ministry of Defense. A similar launch vehicle carried the Russian Zvezda service module to the International Space Station on July 12.

July 6, 1885– Louis Pasteur successfully tested the rabies vaccine on a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog. 9-year-old Joseph Meister became the first person to survive infection with rabies, and remained grateful to his savior for the rest of his life, working as a watchman at the Pasteur Institute until the end of his days and caring for the scientist’s grave. After Nazi troops invaded France in 1940, Meister chose to commit suicide rather than allow Nazi marauders to desecrate Pasteur's grave.

July 7, 1932– The Leningrad Research Institute of the Dairy Industry was the first in the country to develop a method for processing milk into powder. Mass production of this product made a great contribution to the food supply of the country's population.

July 8, 2000- a group of scientists led by Dr. Maria McDougal from the American University Research Center in San Antonio (Texas) announced that they have managed to create a human tooth using genetic engineering, although so far only in the laboratory. "We discovered new genes that are located on chromosome four that are responsible for normal dental development," McDougall said. Scientists have long studied the specialized cells that form human and animal teeth and produce tissues such as dentin and enamel, hoping to understand the process of dental tissue formation and the events that lead to tooth loss. It turned out that some of the keepers hereditary information, located in these cells, “work” only during the period of tooth formation, and then “turn off.” If the genes are “turned on” again, a new tooth will grow in place of the old one. “We believe that our work will mark the beginning of a new generation of dental surgery: over time, a person who has lost a tooth will be able to grow a new one in his mouth or transplant a donor one into himself. Moreover, this will not cause a reaction of rejection,” said Dr. McDougle.

July 11, 1874- Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin received privilege No. 1619 for an incandescent lamp. His invention was patented in several European countries, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences awarded him the Lomonosov Prize this year, and at the end of the year the Electric Lighting Partnership of A. N. Lodygin and Co. was created.

July 12, 1937– the non-stop flight Moscow - North Pole - USA started. The crew of the ANT-25 aircraft, consisting of pilots M. Gromov, A. Yumashev and navigator S. Danilin, landed after 62 hours and 17 minutes in San Jacinto on the border with Mexico, setting a new world record for straight-line flight distance. The crew could continue the flight further, but there was no agreement to cross the US-Mexico border.

July 13, 1882– the telephone began to operate in Moscow. On the opening day there were only 26 subscribers. The station was built by the Bella International Telephone Society.

July 15, 2001– Academician Valerian Sobolev announced fundamental discoveries made by Russian energy scientists. A special electrochemical process was experimentally discovered (scientists called it the “depletion process”), in which the product is high-temperature materials in a new state. Thanks to the discovery of new energy sources, current sources for domestic and industrial purposes will be developed that can operate continuously, producing electrical energy without using any fuel or polluting the environment. Based on the “depletion process,” the latest technologies will be developed for producing ultra-strong new materials for automobile, aircraft, rocket and mechanical engineering, and construction.

July 16, 1896- the first Russian car was presented to the public at the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, driven by its creators - retired lieutenant of the Russian Navy Evgeny Yakovlev and the owner of carriage workshops Peter Frese.

August 7, 1907- Russian physicist B. Rosing received a patent for the invention of the first system for obtaining television images. Rosing invented the first mechanism for reproducing a television image, using a scanning system (line-by-line transmission) in the transmitting device and a cathode ray tube in the receiving device, that is, he was the first to “formulate” the basic principle of the design and operation of modern television

August 26, 1770– the first scientific article on the topic of potatoes, “Notes on Potatoes,” appeared in the Proceedings of the Free Economic Society. The name potato was first introduced into Russian speech by the agronomist Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov, who was the first in Russia to begin growing the crop in the garden (and not in flower beds), thereby marking the beginning of the mass distribution of “second bread” in Rus'.

September 14, 1896- on the initiative of Pyotr Frantsevich Lesgaft, Courses for teachers and leaders of physical education were opened in St. Petersburg (now the Institute of Physical Culture named after P. F. Lesgaft) - the prototype of modern higher educational institutions of physical education. Now it is the St. Petersburg State University of Physical Culture named after P. F. Lesgaft. It was from this moment that regular teaching of physical education in educational institutions in Russia began. It is curious that, unlike all previous innovations in Russian education, this one initially affected not male, but female educational institutions.

September 20, 1878- Higher Bestuzhev Courses opened in St. Petersburg - the first women's university in Russia. Until then, Russian women could only receive education abroad. It was “the need for effective measures to distract Russian women from studying at foreign universities” that the Russian government justified the opening of such courses. They are named after the surname of the founder and first director, Professor K. N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin. In just 32 graduations (the first graduation was in 1882, and the 32nd in 1916), about 7,000 people graduated from the Bestuzhev courses, and the total number of students - including those who various reasons could not complete the training - exceeded 10 thousand. The courses had three departments: verbal history, physics and mathematics and special mathematics (the last two initially differed only from the second year and were subsequently combined), and in 1906 a legal department was opened. Among the teachers of the courses was the flower of Russian science - A. M. Butlerov, D. I. Mendeleev, L. A. Orbeli, I. M. Sechenov. In 1918, the Bestuzhev Courses were transformed into the Third Petrograd University, which was included in the Petrograd State University in September 1919.

October 1, 1984- in Kuanda (on the BAM highway) the laying of the last, “golden” link of the highway took place. BAM is one of the largest railways in the world. The main route Taishet - Sovetskaya Gavan was built with long interruptions from 1938 to 1984. The vital importance of such transport artery for the country was realized a long time ago. In 1888, the Russian Technical Society discussed a project to build a Pacific railway through the northern tip of Lake Baikal. But at that time the project was considered technically impossible. The Baikal-Amur Mainline gave impetus to the development of a number of industries, and also plays a significant geopolitical role, stitching together our vast spaces with steel stitches.

October 4, 1957- The first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR. Sputnik 1 was launched into orbit in the USSR on October 4, 1957 at 19:28:34 GMT. The code designation of the satellite is PS-1 (Simple Sputnik-1). The launch was carried out from the 5th research site of the USSR Ministry of Defense "Tyura-Tam" (which later received the open name Baikonur Cosmodrome), on a Sputnik (R-7) launch vehicle. Scientists M.V. Keldysh, M.K. Tikhonravov, N.S. Lidorenko, V.I. Lapko, B.S. Chekunov, A. worked on the creation of an artificial Earth satellite, led by the founder of practical cosmonautics S.P. Korolev. V. Bukhtiyarov and many others. The launch date is considered the beginning space age humanity, and in Russia it is celebrated as a memorial day of the Space Forces.

Some of the most significant discoveries occurred during periods called New and Contemporary times. When does the countdown of these periods begin? What discoveries were made during this time?

Beginning of the New Time

Modern times are called the period when humanity stepped to a new stage in the development of its potential. But when exactly did this happen?

Modern times are usually referred to as the period between the Middle Ages and modern history. Some suggest starting from the 17th century, when the English Revolution began in 1640. But breakthroughs in achievements and changes in society begin in the 15th century, so many researchers consider this the beginning of a new era or the early modern period.

Even at the end of the Middle Ages, important discoveries and inventions were made. In 1440 Johannes Gutenberg invents printing press, and books on not only religious, but also scientific and entertainment topics are gradually developing. In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovers America and European colonization begins.

Society is changing its views and turning to the essence of the human personality. In England, the supremacy of the Catholic Church was moving away, the reformation movement and Protestantism were emerging. Science begins to develop, the first scientific communities are created: the Royal Society, the French Royal Army of Sciences. Inventions of modern times since the 16th century: mechanical calculator, vacuum pump, barometer, pendulum clock. Galileo Galilei invents the telescope, Descartes creates a coordinate system. A microscope, a telescope and glass glasses appeared.

time since the 18th century

More from late XVII century, the bourgeoisie is born. gives impetus to the development of capitalism and industrial society.

Technical discoveries and inventions of modern times are sometimes made completely by accident. So, John Watt was visited by the thought of a steam engine when he looked at the bouncing lid of a boiling kettle. Thomas Newkman built the first reciprocating steam engine in 1712.

Other inventions of the New Age: parachute, steamboat, piano, tuning fork, hot air balloon. In the 18th-19th centuries, the kaleidoscope, stereoscope, arc welding, steam locomotive, lighter and matches were also invented (and the lighter was much earlier).

Inventions of modern times

Modern times begin their countdown from the 20th century, namely from 1918. At that time, technological progress made significant progress. The first vehicles with engines were invented, allowing them to easily cover significant distances. Many mechanisms were improved, and humanity was burning electricity with all its might.

The time has come for the development of natural sciences. Special meaning chemistry and physics are acquired. In the 20th century, K. Lansteiner discovered the blood group for the first time, Freud worked on the theory of psychoanalysis, and P. Ehrlich discovered the possibilities of chemotherapy. A. Fleming discovers penicillin in 1929 - the world's first antibiotic.

Wars and conflicts between states contribute to the active study of physics and nuclear energy. In 1905, A. Einstein discovered the theory of relativity, N. Bohr worked on the quantum theory of atoms. The atomic nucleus is discovered 1911), artificial radioactivity (F. and I. Joliot-Curie, 1934), the nuclear nucleus of uranium is split for the first time (O. Hahn, F. Stassman, 1938).

Outer space is being studied and new discoveries are being made in astronomy. Cosmic rays are discovered (W. Hess, 1911-1913), Hubble's law about the expansion of the Universe (E. Hubble, 1929). It becomes known about cosmic radio emission (K. Jansky, 1931).

Bright inventions and discoveries of the 20th century

The discoveries and inventions of modern times significantly exceed previous eras. During the Cold War, America and the USSR competed both in the creation of nuclear weapons and in space exploration. The first rocket developments, space stations and ships appear. The Soviet Union releases the first artificial satellite of the Earth, takes the first steps towards traveling to the Moon - space stations and lunar rovers are launched onto the surface of the satellite.

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel into space. In 1969, American Neil Armstrong lands on the moon.

It would not have been possible to see Armstrong walking on the moon if television had not been invented in the same century. Vladimir Zvorykin, Philo Farnsworth and others contributed to the development of this miracle of technology.

In 1946, the first ENIAC computer was created in the USA; its predecessor inventions were more like a calculator. Charles Babbage is considered the inventor of the first prototype of a computer.

Important inventions of modern times are also J. I. Cousteau's scuba gear (1943), A. M. Cheremukhin's helicopter (1930), V. P. Glushko's jet engine (1930), Theodore Meiman's laser (1960) and the atomic bomb (1945) , the name of the creator of which is kept in the strictest confidence.

Conclusion

During the period of New and Contemporary times in history, many great discoveries and inventions that were necessary for humanity were made. We still use many of them today.

The history of mankind is closely connected with constant progress, development of technology, new discoveries and inventions. Some technologies are outdated and become history, others, such as the wheel or sail, are still in use today. Countless discoveries were lost in the whirlpool of time, others, not appreciated by their contemporaries, waited for recognition and implementation for tens and hundreds of years.

Editorial Samogo.Net spent own research, designed to answer the question of what inventions are considered the most significant by our contemporaries.

Processing and analysis of the results of online surveys showed that there is simply no consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, we managed to form an overall unique rating of the greatest inventions and discoveries in human history. As it turned out, despite the fact that science has long moved forward, basic discoveries remain the most significant in the minds of our contemporaries.

Fire undoubtedly took first place.

People early discovered the beneficial properties of fire - its ability to illuminate and warm, to change plant and animal food for the better.

The “wild fire” that broke out during forest fires or volcanic eruptions was terrible for man, but by bringing fire into his cave, man “tamed” it and “put” it into his service. From that time on, fire became a constant companion of man and the basis of his economy. In ancient times, it was an indispensable source of heat, light, a means of cooking, and a hunting tool.
However, further cultural conquests (ceramics, metallurgy, steelmaking, steam engines, etc.) must integrated use fire.

For many millennia, people used “home fire”, maintaining it year after year in their caves, before they learned to produce it themselves using friction. This discovery probably happened by accident, after our ancestors learned to drill wood. During this operation, the wood was heated and, under favorable conditions, ignition could occur. Having paid attention to this, people began to widely use friction to make fire.

The simplest method was to take two sticks of dry wood, and make a hole in one of them. The first stick was placed on the ground and pressed with the knee. The second one was inserted into the hole, and then they began to quickly and quickly rotate it between the palms. At the same time, it was necessary to press hard on the stick. The inconvenience of this method was that the palms gradually slid down. Every now and then I had to lift them up and continue rotating again. Although, with some skill, this can be done quickly, yet due to constant stops, the process was greatly delayed. It is much easier to make fire by friction, working together. In this case, one person held the horizontal stick and pressed on top of the vertical one, and the second quickly rotated it between his palms. Later, they began to clasp the vertical stick with a strap, moving it to the right and left to speed up the movement, and for convenience, they began to put a bone cap on the upper end. Thus, the entire device for making fire began to consist of four parts: two sticks (fixed and rotating), a strap and an upper cap. In this way, it was possible to make fire alone, if you pressed the lower stick with your knee to the ground and the cap with your teeth.

And only later, with the development of mankind, other methods of producing open fire became available.

Second place in the responses of the online community they ranked Wheel and Cart

It is believed that its prototype may have been rollers that were placed under heavy tree trunks, boats and stones when dragging them from place to place. Perhaps the first observations of the properties of rotating bodies were made at the same time. For example, if for some reason the log roller was thinner in the center than at the edges, it moved more evenly under the load and did not skid to the side. Noticing this, people began to deliberately burn the rollers in such a way that the middle part became thinner, while the sides remained unchanged. Thus, a device was obtained, which is now called a “ramp.” In the course of further improvements in this direction, only two rollers at its ends remained from a solid log, and an axis appeared between them. Later they began to be made separately and then rigidly fastened together. Thus the wheel in the proper sense of the word was discovered and the first cart appeared.

In subsequent centuries, many generations of craftsmen worked to improve this invention. Initially, solid wheels were rigidly attached to the axle and rotated with it. When traveling on a flat road, such carts were quite suitable for use. When turning, when the wheels must rotate at different speeds, this connection creates great inconvenience, since a heavily loaded cart can easily break or overturn. The wheels themselves were still very imperfect. They were made from a single piece of wood. Therefore, the carts were heavy and clumsy. They moved slowly, and were usually harnessed to slow but powerful oxen.

One of the oldest carts of the described design was found during excavations in Mohenjo-Daro. A major step forward in the development of transportation technology was the invention of a wheel with a hub, mounted on fixed axis. In this case, the wheels rotated independently of each other. And so that the wheel rubs against the axle less, they began to lubricate it with grease or tar.

To reduce the weight of the wheel, cutouts were cut out in it, and for rigidity they were reinforced with transverse braces. It was impossible to think of anything better in the Stone Age. But after the discovery of metals, wheels with a metal rim and spokes began to be made. Such a wheel could rotate tens of times faster and was not afraid of hitting rocks. By harnessing fleet-footed horses to a cart, man significantly increased the speed of his movement. It is perhaps difficult to find another discovery that would give such a powerful impetus to the development of technology.

Third place rightfully occupied Writing

There is no need to talk about how great the invention of writing was in the history of mankind. It is impossible to even imagine what path the development of civilization could have taken if, at a certain stage of their development, people had not learned to record the information they needed with the help of certain symbols and thus transmit and store it. It is obvious that human society in the form in which it exists today simply could not have appeared.

The first forms of writing in the form of specially inscribed characters appeared about 4 thousand years BC. But long before this, there were various ways of transmitting and storing information: with the help of branches folded in a certain way, arrows, smoke from fires and similar signals. From these primitive warning systems, more complex methods of recording information later emerged. For example, the ancient Incas invented an original “writing” system using knots. For this purpose, wool laces of different colors were used. They were tied with various knots and attached to a stick. In this form, the “letter” was sent to the addressee. There is an opinion that the Incas used such “knot writing” to record their laws, record chronicles and poems. “Knot writing” was also noted among other peoples - it was used in ancient China and Mongolia.

However, writing in the proper sense of the word appeared only after people invented special graphic signs to record and transmit information. The oldest type of writing is considered pictographic. A pictogram is a schematic drawing that directly depicts the things, events, and phenomena in question. It is assumed that pictography was widespread among various peoples during the last stage of the Stone Age. This letter is very visual, and therefore does not require special study. It is quite suitable for transmitting small messages and for recording simple stories. But when the need arose to convey some complex abstract thought or concept, the limited capabilities of the pictogram were immediately felt, which was completely unsuited to recording what could not be depicted in pictures (for example, such concepts as vigor, courage, vigilance, good sleep, heavenly azure, etc.). Therefore, already at an early stage in the history of writing, pictograms began to include special conventional icons that denote certain concepts (for example, the sign of crossed hands symbolized exchange). Such icons are called ideograms. Ideographic writing also arose from pictographic writing, and one can quite clearly imagine how this happened: each pictorial sign of a pictogram began to become increasingly isolated from others and associated with a specific word or concept, denoting it. Gradually, this process developed so much that primitive pictograms lost their former clarity, but gained clarity and definiteness. This process took a long time, perhaps several thousand years.

The highest form of ideogram was hieroglyphic writing. It first appeared in Ancient Egypt. Later, hieroglyphic writing became widespread in the Far East - in China, Japan and Korea. With the help of ideograms it was possible to reflect any, even the most complex and abstract thought. However, for those not privy to the secrets of the hieroglyphs, the meaning of what was written was completely incomprehensible. Anyone who wanted to learn to write had to memorize several thousand symbols. In reality, this took several years of constant exercise. Therefore, in ancient times, few people knew how to write and read.

Only at the end of 2 thousand BC. The ancient Phoenicians invented a letter-sound alphabet, which served as a model for the alphabets of many other peoples. The Phoenician alphabet consisted of 22 consonant letters, each of which represented a different sound. The invention of this alphabet was a big step forward for humanity. With the help of the new letter it was easy to convey any word graphically, without resorting to ideograms. It was very easy to learn. The art of writing has ceased to be the privilege of the enlightened. It became the property of the entire society, or at least a large part of it. This was one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the Phoenician alphabet throughout the world. It is believed that four-fifths of all currently known alphabets arose from Phoenician.

Thus, from a variety of Phoenician writing (Punic) Libyan developed. The Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek writing came directly from Phoenician. In turn, on the basis of the Aramaic script, Arabic, Nabataean, Syriac, Persian and other scripts developed. The Greeks made the last important improvement to the Phoenician alphabet - they began to denote not only consonants, but also vowel sounds with letters. The Greek alphabet formed the basis of most European alphabets: Latin (from which French, German, English, Italian, Spanish and other alphabets in turn originated), Coptic, Armenian, Georgian and Slavic (Serbian, Russian, Bulgarian, etc.).

Fourth place, takes after writing Paper

Its creators were the Chinese. And this is no coincidence. Firstly, China, already in ancient times, was famous for its book wisdom and complex system of bureaucratic management, which required constant reporting from officials. Therefore, there has always been a need for inexpensive and compact writing material. Before the invention of paper, people in China wrote either on bamboo tablets or on silk.

But silk was always very expensive, and bamboo was very bulky and heavy. (An average of 30 hieroglyphs were placed on one tablet. It is easy to imagine how much space such a bamboo “book” must have taken up. It is no coincidence that they write that a whole cart was required to transport some works.) Secondly, only the Chinese for a long time knew the secret of production silk, and papermaking developed from one technical operation of processing silk cocoons. This operation consisted of the following. Women engaged in sericulture boiled silkworm cocoons, then, laying them out on a mat, dipped them into water and ground them until a homogeneous mass was formed. When the mass was taken out and the water was filtered out, silk wool was obtained. However, after such mechanical and thermal treatment, a thin fibrous layer remained on the mats, which, after drying, turned into a sheet of very thin paper suitable for writing. Later, workers began to use rejected silkworm cocoons for purposeful paper production. At the same time, they repeated the process that was already familiar to them: they boiled the cocoons, washed and crushed them to obtain paper pulp, and finally dried the resulting sheets. Such paper was called “cotton paper” and was quite expensive, since the raw material itself was expensive.

Naturally, in the end the question arose: can paper be made only from silk, or can any fibrous raw material, including plant origin, be suitable for preparing paper pulp? In 105, a certain Cai Lun, an important official at the court of the Han emperor, prepared a new type of paper from old fishing nets. It was not as good as silk, but was much cheaper. This important discovery had enormous consequences not only for China, but also for the whole world - for the first time in history, people received first-class and accessible writing material, for which there is no equivalent replacement to this day. The name of Tsai Lun is therefore rightfully included among the names of the greatest inventors in the history of mankind. Over the following centuries, several important improvements were made to the papermaking process, allowing it to develop rapidly.

In the 4th century, paper completely replaced bamboo tablets from use. New experiments have shown that paper can be made from cheap plant materials: tree bark, reed and bamboo. The latter was especially important since bamboo grows in huge quantities in China. The bamboo was split into thin splinters, soaked in lime, and the resulting mass was then boiled for several days. The strained grounds were kept in special pits, thoroughly ground with special beaters and diluted with water until a sticky, mushy mass was formed. This mass was scooped out using a special form - a bamboo sieve mounted on a stretcher. Thin layer The masses along with the mold were placed under a press. Then the form was pulled out and only a sheet of paper remained under the press. The compressed sheets were removed from the sieve, piled, dried, smoothed and cut to size.

Over time, the Chinese have achieved the highest art in paper making. For several centuries, they, as usual, carefully kept the secrets of paper production. But in 751, during a clash with the Arabs in the foothills of the Tien Shan, several Chinese masters were captured. From them the Arabs learned to make paper themselves and for five centuries sold it very profitably to Europe. Europeans were the last of the civilized peoples who learned to make their own paper. The Spaniards were the first to adopt this art from the Arabs. In 1154, paper production was established in Italy, in 1228 in Germany, and in 1309 in England. In subsequent centuries, paper became widespread throughout the world, gradually conquering more and more new areas of application. Its significance in our lives is so great that, according to the famous French bibliographer A. Sim, our era can rightfully be called the “paper era.”

Fifth place occupied Gunpowder and Firearms

The invention of gunpowder and its spread in Europe had enormous consequences for the subsequent history of mankind. Although the Europeans were the last of the civilized peoples to learn how to make this explosive mixture, they were the ones who were able to derive the greatest practical benefit from its discovery. Rapid development firearms and the revolution in military affairs were the first consequences of the spread of gunpowder. This, in turn, entailed profound social changes: armor-clad knights and their impregnable castles were powerless against the fire of cannons and arquebuses. Feudal society was dealt such a blow from which it could no longer recover. IN a short time many European powers overcame feudal fragmentation and became powerful centralized states.

There are few inventions in the history of technology that would lead to such grandiose and far-reaching changes. Before gunpowder became known in the West, it already had a long history in the East, and it was invented by the Chinese. The most important component of gunpowder is saltpeter. In some areas of China it was found in its native form and looked like flakes of snow dusting the ground. Later it was discovered that saltpeter is formed in areas rich in alkalis and decaying (nitrogen-delivering) substances. When lighting a fire, the Chinese could observe the flashes that occurred when saltpeter and coal burned.

The properties of saltpeter were first described by the Chinese physician Tao Hung-ching, who lived at the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries. Since that time it has been used as component some medications. Alchemists often used it when conducting experiments. In the 7th century, one of them, Sun Sy-miao, prepared a mixture of sulfur and saltpeter, adding to them several shares of locust wood. While heating this mixture in a crucible, he suddenly received a powerful flash of flame. He described this experience in his treatise Dan Jing. It is believed that Sun Si-miao prepared one of the first samples of gunpowder, which, however, did not yet have a strong explosive effect.

Subsequently, the composition of gunpowder was improved by other alchemists, who experimentally established its three main components: coal, sulfur and potassium nitrate. The medieval Chinese could not scientifically explain what kind of explosive reaction occurs when gunpowder is ignited, but they very soon learned to use it for military purposes. True, in their lives gunpowder did not have the revolutionary influence that it later had on European society. This is explained by the fact that for a long time the craftsmen prepared the powder mixture from unrefined components. Meanwhile, unrefined saltpeter and sulfur containing foreign impurities did not give a strong explosive effect. For several centuries, gunpowder was used exclusively as an incendiary agent. Later, when its quality improved, gunpowder began to be used as an explosive in the manufacture of landmines, hand grenades and explosive packages.

But even after this, for a long time they did not think of using the power of the gases generated during the combustion of gunpowder to throw bullets and cannonballs. Only in the 12th-13th centuries did the Chinese begin to use weapons that were very vaguely reminiscent of firearms, but they invented firecrackers and rockets. The Arabs and Mongols learned the secret of gunpowder from the Chinese. In the first third of the 13th century, the Arabs achieved great skill in pyrotechnics. They used saltpeter in many compounds, mixing it with sulfur and coal, adding other components to them and setting up fireworks of amazing beauty. From the Arabs, the composition of the powder mixture became known to European alchemists. One of them, Mark the Greek, already in 1220 wrote down in his treatise a recipe for gunpowder: 6 parts of saltpeter to 1 part of sulfur and 1 part of coal. Later Roger Bacon wrote quite accurately about the composition of gunpowder.

However, another hundred years passed before this recipe ceased to be a secret. This secondary discovery of gunpowder is associated with the name of another alchemist, the Feiburg monk Berthold Schwartz. One day he began to pound a crushed mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and coal in a mortar, which resulted in an explosion that singed Berthold’s beard. This or other experience gave Berthold the idea of ​​using the power of powder gases to throw stones. He is believed to have made one of the first artillery pieces in Europe.

Gunpowder was originally a fine flour-like powder. It was not convenient to use, since when loading guns and arquebuses, the powder pulp stuck to the walls of the barrel. Finally, they noticed that gunpowder in the form of lumps was much more convenient - it was easy to charge and, when ignited, produced more gases (2 pounds of gunpowder in lumps gave a greater effect than 3 pounds in pulp).

In the first quarter of the 15th century, for convenience, they began to use grain gunpowder, which was obtained by rolling the powder pulp (with alcohol and other impurities) into a dough, which was then passed through a sieve. To prevent the grains from grinding during transportation, they learned to polish them. To do this, they were placed in a special drum, when spun, the grains hit and rubbed against each other and became compacted. After processing, their surface became smooth and shiny.

Sixth place ranked in the polls : telegraph, telephone, Internet, radio and other types of modern communications

Until the middle of the 19th century, the only means of communication between the European continent and England, between America and Europe, between Europe and the colonies was steamship mail. Incidents and events in other countries were learned about with a delay of whole weeks, and sometimes months. For example, news from Europe to America was delivered in two weeks, and this was not the longest time. Therefore, the creation of the telegraph met the most urgent needs of mankind.

After this technical novelty appeared in all corners of the world and telegraph lines encircled the globe, it took only hours, and sometimes minutes, for the news to travel along electrical wires from one hemisphere to the other. Political and stock market reports, personal and business messages could be delivered to interested parties on the same day. Thus, the telegraph should be considered one of the most important inventions in the history of civilization, because with it the human mind achieved its greatest victory over distance.

With the invention of the telegraph, the problem of transmitting messages to long distances. However, the telegraph could only send written dispatches. Meanwhile, many inventors dreamed of a more advanced and communicative method of communication, with the help of which it would be possible to transmit the live sound of human speech or music over any distance. The first experiments in this direction were undertaken in 1837 by the American physicist Page. The essence of Page's experiments was very simple. He assembled an electrical circuit that included a tuning fork, an electromagnet, and galvanic elements. During its vibrations, the tuning fork quickly opened and closed the circuit. This intermittent current was transmitted to an electromagnet, which just as quickly attracted and released a thin steel rod. As a result of these vibrations, the rod produced a singing sound, similar to that produced by a tuning fork. Thus, Page showed that it is in principle possible to transmit sound using electric current, it is only necessary to create more advanced transmitting and receiving devices.

And later, as a result of long searches, discoveries and inventions, the mobile phone, television, Internet and other means of communication of mankind appeared, without which it is impossible to imagine our modern life.

Seventh place ranked in the top 10 according to survey results Automobile

The automobile is one of those greatest inventions that, like the wheel, gunpowder or electric current, had a colossal influence not only on the era that gave birth to them, but also on all subsequent times. Its multi-faceted impact extends far beyond the transport sector. The automobile shaped modern industry, gave birth to new industries, and despotically restructured production itself, giving it a mass, serial, and in-line character for the first time. It transformed the appearance of the planet, which was surrounded by millions of kilometers of highways, put pressure on the environment and even changed human psychology. The influence of the car is now so multifaceted that it is felt in all spheres of human life. It has become, as it were, a visible and visual embodiment of technological progress in general, with all its advantages and disadvantages.

There have been many amazing pages in the history of the car, but perhaps the most striking of them dates back to the first years of its existence. One cannot help but be amazed by the speed with which this invention has gone from inception to maturity. It only took a quarter of a century for the car to turn from a capricious and still unreliable toy into the most popular and widespread vehicle. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, it was identical in its main features to a modern car.

The immediate predecessor of the gasoline car was the steam car. The first practical steam car is considered to be a steam cart built by the Frenchman Cugnot in 1769. Carrying up to 3 tons of cargo, it moved at a speed of only 2-4 km/h. She also had other shortcomings. The heavy car had very poor steering control and constantly ran into the walls of houses and fences, causing destruction and suffering considerable damage. The two horsepower that its engine developed were difficult to achieve. Despite the large volume of the boiler, the pressure dropped quickly. Every quarter of an hour, to maintain pressure, we had to stop and light the firebox. One of the trips ended in a boiler explosion. Fortunately, Cugno himself remained alive.

Cugno's followers were luckier. In 1803, Trivaitik, already known to us, built the first steam car in Great Britain. The car had huge rear wheels about 2.5 m in diameter. A boiler was attached between the wheels and the rear of the frame, which was served by a fireman standing on the back. The steam car was equipped with a single horizontal cylinder. From the piston rod, through the connecting rod and crank mechanism, the drive gear rotated, which was meshed with another gear mounted on the axis of the rear wheels. The axle of these wheels was hinged to the frame and turned using a long lever by the driver sitting on a high beam. The body was suspended on high C-shaped springs. With 8-10 passengers, the car reached speeds of up to 15 km/h, which, undoubtedly, was a very good achievement for that time. The appearance of this amazing car on the streets of London attracted a lot of onlookers who did not hide their delight.

Car in modern sense This word appeared only after the creation of a compact and economical internal combustion engine, which made a real revolution in transport technology.
The first gasoline-powered car was built in 1864 by the Austrian inventor Siegfried Marcus. Fascinated by pyrotechnics, Marcus once set fire to a mixture of gasoline vapor and air with an electric spark. Amazed by the force of the ensuing explosion, he decided to create an engine in which this effect could be used. In the end, he managed to build a two-stroke gasoline engine with electric ignition, which he installed on an ordinary cart. In 1875, Marcus created a more advanced car.

The official glory of the inventors of the car belongs to two German engineers - Benz and Daimler. Benz designed two-stroke gas engines and owned a small factory for their production. The engines were in good demand, and the Benz business flourished. He had enough money and leisure for other developments. Benz's dream was to create a self-propelled carriage powered by an internal combustion engine. Benz's own engine, like Otto's four-stroke engine, was not suitable for this, since they had a low speed (about 120 rpm). When the speed dropped slightly, they stalled. Benz understood that a car equipped with such an engine would stop at every bump. What was needed was a high-speed engine with a good ignition system and an apparatus for forming a combustible mixture.

Cars were rapidly improving Back in 1891, Edouard Michelin, owner of a rubber products factory in Clermont-Ferrand, invented a removable pneumatic tire for a bicycle (a Dunlop tube was poured into the tire and glued to the rim). In 1895, production of removable pneumatic tires for cars began. These tires were first tested in the same year at the Paris - Bordeaux - Paris race. The Peugeot equipped with them barely made it to Rouen, and then was forced to retire from the race, as the tires were continuously punctured. Nevertheless, experts and car enthusiasts were amazed at the smooth running of the car and the comfort of driving it. From that time on, pneumatic tires gradually came into use, and all cars began to be equipped with them. The winner of these races was again Levassor. When he stopped the car at the finish line and stepped onto the ground, he said: “It was crazy. I was doing 30 kilometers per hour!” Now at the finish site there is a monument in honor of this significant victory.

Eighth place - Light bulb

In the last decades of the 19th century, electric lighting entered the life of many European cities. Having first appeared on the streets and squares, it very soon penetrated into every house, into every apartment and became an integral part of the life of every civilized person. This was one of the most important events in the history of technology, which had enormous and varied consequences. The rapid development of electric lighting led to mass electrification, a revolution in the energy sector and major shifts in industry. However, all this might not have happened if, through the efforts of many inventors, such a common and familiar device as the light bulb had not been created. Among the greatest discoveries human history it undoubtedly belongs to one of the most honorable places.

In the 19th century, two types of electric lamps became widespread: incandescent and arc lamps. Arc lights appeared a little earlier. Their glow is based on such an interesting phenomenon as a voltaic arc. If you take two wires, connect them to a sufficiently strong current source, connect them, and then move them apart a few millimeters, then between the ends of the conductors something like a flame with a bright light will form. The phenomenon will be more beautiful and brighter if, instead of metal wires, you take two sharpened carbon rods. When the voltage between them is high enough, a light of blinding power is formed.

The phenomenon of a voltaic arc was first observed in 1803 by the Russian scientist Vasily Petrov. In 1810, the same discovery was made by the English physicist Devi. Both of them produced a voltaic arc using a large battery of cells between the ends of charcoal rods. Both of them wrote that the voltaic arc can be used for lighting purposes. But first we had to find more suitable material for electrodes, since charcoal rods burned out in a few minutes and were of little use for practical use. Arc lamps also had another inconvenience - as the electrodes burned out, it was necessary to constantly move them towards each other. As soon as the distance between them exceeded a certain permissible minimum, the light of the lamp became uneven, it began to flicker and went out.

The first arc lamp with manual adjustment of the arc length was designed in 1844 by the French physicist Foucault. He replaced charcoal with sticks of hard coke. In 1848, he first used an arc lamp to illuminate one of the Parisian squares. It was a short and very expensive experiment, since the source of electricity was a powerful battery. Then various devices were invented, controlled by a clock mechanism, which automatically moved the electrodes as they burned.
It is clear that from the point of view of practical use, it was desirable to have a lamp that was not complicated by additional mechanisms. But was it possible to do without them? It turned out that yes. If you place two coals not opposite each other, but in parallel, so that an arc can form only between their two ends, then with this device the distance between the ends of the coals always remains unchanged. The design of such a lamp seems very simple, but its creation required great ingenuity. It was invented in 1876 by the Russian electrical engineer Yablochkov, who worked in Paris in the workshop of academician Breguet.

In 1879, the famous American inventor Edison took up the task of improving the light bulb. He understood: in order for the light bulb to shine brightly and for a long time and have an even, unblinking light, it is necessary, firstly, to find a suitable material for the filament, and, secondly, to learn how to create a very rarefied space in the cylinder. Many experiments were carried out with various materials, which were carried out on a scale characteristic of Edison. It is estimated that his assistants tried at least 6,000 various substances and compounds, while over 100 thousand dollars were spent on experiments. First, Edison replaced the brittle paper charcoal with a stronger one made from coal, then he began to experiment with various metals and finally settled on a thread made from charred bamboo fibers. That same year, in the presence of three thousand people, Edison publicly demonstrated his electric light bulbs, illuminating his home, laboratory, and several surrounding streets with them. It was the first long-life light bulb suitable for mass production.

penultimate, ninth place in our top 10 occupy Antibiotics, and in particular - penicillin

Antibiotics are one of the most remarkable inventions of the 20th century in the field of medicine. Modern people They are not always aware of how much they owe to these medicinal drugs. Humanity in general very quickly gets used to the amazing achievements of its science, and sometimes it takes some effort to imagine life as it was, for example, before the invention of television, radio or steam locomotive. Just as quickly, a huge family of various antibiotics entered our lives, the first of which was penicillin.

Today it seems surprising to us that back in the 30s of the 20th century, tens of thousands of people died annually from dysentery, that pneumonia in many cases was fatal, that sepsis was a real scourge of all surgical patients, who died in large numbers from blood poisoning, that typhus was considered a most dangerous and intractable disease, and pneumonic plague inevitably led the patient to death. All these terrible diseases (and many others that were previously incurable, such as tuberculosis) were defeated by antibiotics.

Even more striking is the impact of these drugs on military medicine. It’s hard to believe, but in previous wars, most soldiers died not from bullets and shrapnel, but from purulent infections caused by wounds. It is known that in the space around us there are myriads of microscopic organisms, microbes, among which there are many dangerous pathogens.

Under normal conditions, our skin prevents them from penetrating into the body. But during the wound, dirt entered the open wounds along with millions of putrefactive bacteria (cocci). They began to multiply with colossal speed, penetrated deep into the tissues, and after a few hours no surgeon could save the person: the wound festered, the temperature rose, sepsis or gangrene began. The person died not so much from the wound itself, but from wound complications. Medicine was powerless against them. IN best case scenario the doctor managed to amputate the affected organ and thereby stopped the spread of the disease.

To deal with wound complications, it was necessary to learn to paralyze the microbes that cause these complications, to learn to neutralize the cocci that got into the wound. But how to achieve this? It turned out that you can fight microorganisms directly with their help, since some microorganisms, in the process of their life activity, release substances that can destroy other microorganisms. The idea of ​​using microbes to fight germs dates back to the 19th century. Thus, Louis Pasteur discovered that anthrax bacilli are killed by the action of certain other microbes. But it is clear that resolving this problem required enormous work.

Over time, after a series of experiments and discoveries, penicillin was created. Penicillin seemed like a real miracle to seasoned field surgeons. He cured even the most seriously ill patients who were already suffering from blood poisoning or pneumonia. The creation of penicillin turned out to be one of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine and gave a huge impetus to its further development.

And lastly, tenth place ranked in survey results Sail and ship

It is believed that the prototype of the sail appeared in ancient times, when people just started building boats and ventured out to sea. In the beginning, simply stretched animal skin served as a sail. The person standing in the boat had to hold and orient it relative to the wind with both hands. It is unknown when people came up with the idea of ​​strengthening a sail with the help of a mast and yards, but already in the oldest images of ships that have come down to us Egyptian queen Hatshepsut can see wooden masts and yards, as well as stays (ropes that keep the mast from falling back), halyards (gear for raising and lowering sails) and other rigging.

Consequently, the appearance of a sailing ship must be attributed to prehistoric times.

There is much evidence that the first large sailing ships appeared in Egypt, and the Nile was the first high-water river on which river navigation began to develop. Every year from July to November, the mighty river overflowed its banks, flooding the entire country with its waters. Villages and cities found themselves cut off from each other like islands. Therefore, ships were a vital necessity for the Egyptians. They played a much greater role in the economic life of the country and in communication between people than wheeled carts.

One of the earliest types of Egyptian ships, which appeared about 5 thousand years BC, was the barque. It is known to modern scientists from several models installed in ancient temples. Since Egypt is very poor in timber, papyrus was widely used for the construction of the first ships. The features of this material determined the design and shape of ancient Egyptian ships. It was a sickle-shaped boat, knitted from bundles of papyrus, with bow and stern curved upward. To give the ship strength, the hull was tightened with cables. Later, when regular trade with the Phoenicians was established and large quantities of Lebanese cedar began to arrive in Egypt, the tree began to be widely used in shipbuilding.

An idea of ​​what types of ships were built then is given by the wall reliefs of the necropolis near Saqqara, dating back to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. These compositions realistically depict the individual stages of the construction of a plank ship. The hulls of ships, which had neither a keel (in ancient times it was a beam lying at the base of the ship’s bottom) nor frames (transverse curved beams that ensured the strength of the sides and bottom), were assembled from simple dies and caulked with papyrus. The hull was strengthened by means of ropes that covered the ship along the perimeter of the upper plating belt. Such ships hardly had good seaworthiness. However, they were quite suitable for river navigation. The straight sail used by the Egyptians allowed them to sail only with the wind. The rigging was attached to a two-legged mast, both legs of which were installed perpendicular midline vessel. At the top they were tightly tied. The step (socket) for the mast was a beam device in the hull of the ship. In the working position, this mast was held by stays - thick cables running from the stern and bow, and it was supported by legs towards the sides. The rectangular sail was attached to two yards. When there was a side wind, the mast was hastily removed.

Later, around 2600 BC, the two-legged mast was replaced by the one-legged one that is still in use today. The single-legged mast made sailing easier and gave the ship the ability to maneuver for the first time. However, the rectangular sail was an unreliable means that could only be used with a fair wind.

The main engine of the ship remained the muscular power of the rowers. Apparently, the Egyptians were responsible for an important improvement in the oar - the invention of rowlocks. They weren't there yet Ancient kingdom, but then the oar began to be secured with rope loops. This immediately made it possible to increase the stroke force and speed of the vessel. It is known that selected rowers on the ships of the pharaohs made 26 strokes per minute, which allowed them to reach a speed of 12 km/h. Such ships were steered using two steering oars located at the stern. Later they began to be attached to a beam on the deck, by rotating which it was possible to select the desired direction (this principle of steering a ship by turning the rudder remains unchanged to this day). The ancient Egyptians were not good sailors. They did not dare to go out to the open sea with their ships. However, along the coast, their trading ships made long journeys. Thus, in the temple of Queen Hatshepsut there is an inscription reporting on the sea voyage carried out by the Egyptians around 1490 BC. to the mysterious land of incense Punt, located in the region of modern Somalia.

The next step in the development of shipbuilding was taken by the Phoenicians. Unlike the Egyptians, the Phoenicians had an abundance of excellent building material for their ships. Their country stretched in a narrow strip along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Vast cedar forests grew here almost right next to the shore. Already in ancient times, the Phoenicians learned to make high-quality dugout single-shaft boats from their trunks and boldly went to sea with them.

At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, when maritime trade began to develop, the Phoenicians began to build ships. A sea vessel is significantly different from a boat; its construction requires its own design solutions. The most important discoveries along this path, which determined the entire subsequent history of shipbuilding, belonged to the Phoenicians. Perhaps the animal skeletons gave them the idea to install stiffening ribs on single-tree poles, which were covered with boards on top. Thus, for the first time in the history of shipbuilding, frames were used, which are still widely used.

In the same way, the Phoenicians were the first to build a keel ship (initially, two trunks connected at an angle served as the keel). The keel immediately gave the hull stability and made it possible to establish longitudinal and transverse connections. Sheathing boards were attached to them. All these innovations were the decisive basis for the rapid development of shipbuilding and determined the appearance of all subsequent ships.

Other inventions in various fields of science were also recalled, such as chemistry, physics, medicine, education and others.
After all, as we said earlier, this is not surprising. After all, any discovery or invention is another step into the future, which improves our lives, and often prolongs it. And if not every, then very, very many discoveries deserve to be called great and extremely necessary in our lives.

Alexander Ozerov, based on the book by Ryzhkov K.V. "One Hundred Great Inventions"
The greatest discoveries and inventions of mankind © 2010

Over the past few centuries, we have made countless discoveries that have helped to significantly improve the quality of our Everyday life and understand how the world around us works. Assessing the full importance of these discoveries is very difficult, if not almost impossible. But one thing is for sure - some of them literally changed our lives once and for all. From penicillin and the screw pump to x-rays and electricity, here is a list of 25 of mankind's greatest discoveries and inventions.

25. Penicillin

If Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming had not discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928, we would still be dying from diseases such as stomach ulcers, abscesses, streptococcal infections, scarlet fever, leptospirosis, Lyme disease and many others.

24. Mechanical watch


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There are conflicting theories about what the first mechanical watch actually looked like, but most often researchers adhere to the version that they were created in 723 AD by the Chinese monk and mathematician Ai Xing (I-Hsing). It was this seminal invention that allowed us to measure time.

23. Copernican heliocentrism


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In 1543, almost on his deathbed, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus unveiled his landmark theory. According to the works of Copernicus, it became known that the Sun is ours. planetary system, and all its planets revolve around our star, each in its own orbit. Until 1543, astronomers believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe.

22. Blood circulation


Photo: Bryan Brandenburg

One of the most important discoveries in medicine was the discovery of the circulatory system, which was announced in 1628 by the English physician William Harvey. He became the first person to describe the entire circulatory system and the properties of the blood that the heart pumps throughout our body from the brain to the tips of the fingers.

21. Screw pump


Photo: David Hawgood / geographic.org.uk

One of the most famous ancient Greek scientists, Archimedes, is considered the author of one of the world's first water pumps. His device was a rotating corkscrew that pushed water up a pipe. This invention advanced irrigation systems to new level and is still used in many wastewater treatment plants.

20. Gravity


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Everyone knows this story - Isaac Newton, the famous English mathematician and physicist, discovered gravity after an apple fell on his head in 1664. Thanks to this event, we learned for the first time why objects fall down and why planets revolve around the Sun.

19. Pasteurization


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Pasteurization was discovered in the 1860s by French scientist Louis Pasteur. It is a heat treatment process during which pathogenic microorganisms are destroyed in certain foods and drinks (wine, milk, beer). This discovery had a significant impact on public health and the development of the food industry around the world.

18. Steam engine


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Everyone knows that modern civilization was forged in factories built during the Industrial Revolution, and that it all happened using steam engines. The steam engine was created a long time ago, but over the last century it has been significantly improved by three British inventors: Thomas Savery, Thomas Newcomen and the most famous of them, James Watt.

17. Air conditioning


Photo: Ildar Sagdejev / wikimedia

Primitive climate control systems have existed since ancient times, but they changed significantly when the first modern electric air conditioner was introduced in 1902. It was invented by a young engineer named Willis Carrier, a native of Buffalo, New York.

16. Electricity


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The fateful discovery of electricity is attributed to the English scientist Michael Faraday. Among his key discoveries, it is worth noting the principles of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. Faraday's experiments also led to the creation of the first generator, which became the forerunner of the huge generators that today produce the electricity we know in everyday life.

15. DNA


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Many believe that it was the American biologist James Watson and the English physicist Francis Crick who discovered it in the 1950s, but in fact this macromolecule was first identified in the late 1860s by the Swiss chemist Friedrich Maischer Miescher). Then, several decades after Maischer's discovery, other scientists conducted a series of studies that finally helped us clarify how an organism passes its genes to the next generation and how the work of its cells is coordinated.

14. Anesthesia


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Simple forms of anesthesia, such as opium, mandrake and alcohol, have been used by people for a long time, and the first mention of them dates back to 70 AD. But pain management moved to a new level in 1847, when American surgeon Henry Bigelow pioneered the introduction of ether and chloroform into his practice, making extremely painful invasive procedures much more tolerable.

13. Theory of relativity

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Comprising Albert Einstein's two related theories, special and general relativity, the theory of relativity, published in 1905, transformed the entire theoretical physics and astronomy of the 20th century and eclipsed the 200-year-old theory of mechanics proposed by Newton. Einstein's theory of relativity has become the basis for much of modern scientific work.

12. X-rays


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German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen accidentally discovered X-rays in 1895 when he observed fluorescence produced by a cathode ray tube. For this pivotal discovery, the scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1901, the first of its kind in the physical sciences.

11. Telegraph


Photo: wikipedia

Since 1753, many researchers have experimented with establishing long-distance communication using electricity, but a significant breakthrough did not come until several decades later, when Joseph Henry and Edward Davy invented the electrical relay in 1835. Using this device they created the first telegraph 2 years later.

10. Periodic table of chemical elements


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In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev noticed that if chemical elements are ordered by their atomic mass, they tend to fall into groups with similar properties. Based on this information, he created the first periodic table, one of the greatest discoveries in chemistry, which was later nicknamed the periodic table in his honor.

9. Infrared rays


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Infrared radiation was discovered by British astronomer William Herschel in 1800 when he studied the heating effect of different colors of light, using a prism to separate the light into a spectrum, and measuring the changes with thermometers. Today, infrared radiation is used in many areas of our lives, including meteorology, heating systems, astronomy, tracking heat-intensive objects and many other areas.

8. Nuclear magnetic resonance


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Today, nuclear magnetic resonance is continually used as an extremely accurate and effective diagnostic tool in the medical field. This phenomenon was first described and calculated by American physicist Isidor Rabi in 1938 while observing molecular beams. In 1944, the American scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

7. Moldboard plow


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Invented in the 18th century, the moldboard plow was the first plow that not only dug up the soil, but also stirred it, making it possible to cultivate even very stubborn and rocky soil for agricultural purposes. Without this weapon Agriculture, as we know it today, would not have existed in northern Europe or central America.

6. Camera obscura


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The forerunner of modern cameras and video cameras was the camera obscura (translated as dark room), which was an optical device used by artists to create quick sketches while traveling outside their studios. A hole in one of the walls of the device served to create an inverted image of what was happening outside the chamber. The picture was displayed on the screen (on the wall of the dark box opposite the hole). These principles have been known for centuries, but in 1568 the Venetian Daniel Barbaro modified the camera obscura by adding converging lenses.

5. Paper


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The first examples of modern paper are often considered to be papyrus and amate, which were used by ancient Mediterranean peoples and pre-Columbian Americans. But it would not be entirely correct to consider them real paper. References to the first production of writing paper date back to China during the reign of the Eastern Han Empire (25-220 AD). The first paper is mentioned in chronicles dedicated to the activities of the judicial dignitary Cai Lun.

4. Teflon


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The material that keeps your pan from burning was actually invented completely by accident by American chemist Roy Plunkett when he was looking for a replacement refrigerant to make household life safer. During one of his experiments, the scientist discovered a strange slippery resin, which later became better known as Teflon.

3. Theory of evolution and natural selection

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Inspired by his observations during his second voyage of exploration in 1831-1836, Charles Darwin began writing his famous theory of evolution and natural selection, which, according to scientists around the world, became a key description of the mechanism of development of all life on Earth

2. Liquid crystals


Photo: William Hook / flickr

If the Austrian botanist and physiologist Friedrich Reinitzer had not discovered liquid crystals during testing physical and chemical properties various cholesterol derivatives in 1888, today you would not know what LCD televisions or flat panel LCD monitors are.

1. Polio vaccine


Photo: GDC Global / flickr

On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Jonas Salk announced that he had successfully tested a vaccine against polio, a virus that causes severe chronic illness. In 1952, an epidemic of the disease diagnosed 58,000 people in the United States and claimed 3,000 innocent lives. This spurred Salk on a quest for salvation, and now the civilized world is safe at least from this disaster.