Tag: airplane

Inventions and Discoveries Developed Simultaneously Throughout History

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In 1922, a pair of Columbia University sociologists named William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas published a paper entitled “Are Inventions Inevitable?” which stated that Ogburn and Thomas discovered 148 examples of documented simultaneous invention. This phenomena occurred in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray filed for a patent for the telephone on the same day with Bell’s unit having a separated listening and talking piece whilst Gray’s unit having a single listening and talking unit built into a conical structure. Other notable examples include Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace who came up with the Theory of Evolution simultaneously, Carl Scheele and Joseph Priestly who discovered oxygen at the same time, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz who discovered and developed calculus at the same time, Dmitri Mendeleev and Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois who discovered and developed the periodic table at the same time, and Orville and Wilbur Wright and Samuel Langley who invented the airplane during the same period of time. Knowing this, it would seem that the phenomena of simultaneous invention and discovery seems to be exceedingly common for human beings throughout history

Technological Advances in Film During the Past Few Decades

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Until the 1980’s, nature documentarians like a David Attenborough, could only film underwater for 10 minutes at a time before rising to the surface to swap out the film roll which had just been used, as it would be full after such time. Video tapes solved this issue as they permitted the person using it to film for 30 minutes. Video tapes were also more sensitive than traditional film reels and therefore low light conditions could be filmed for the first time, making artificial lights unnecessary. The security industry developed infrared cameras within the coming decades which made filming nocturnal animals possible for the first time, without the use of artificial lights which disturbed the nocturnal animals natural processes. Soon after cameras which use neither artificial light nor infrared light but rather low light provided by the stars and the moon became available which made it possible to record animals in blue and white hues, similar to infrared but not the same, as eyes are not reflective as is the case with infrared. These star and moonlight cameras make nighttime appear more natural, making the night appear as it does to human beings during the latter part of dusk. During this time, optical probes were invented which made possible the ability to dive into the world of burrowed animals and insects. Macro and micro lenses as well as the ability to slow down and speed up the perception of time are not new concepts, but they have been vastly improved in the most recent decades and because of this, distinguished details can be recorded which are impossible to see with the naked eye. Aerial photography gained leaps and bounds in its ability to fit into tightly enclosed spaces by moving from airplanes, to helicopters, to hot air balloons, and finally to drones. Animated figures both static and dynamic helped illustrate when narrating about historical figures like dinosaurs, and models created by hand led to further this style of narrative, but the technique of after shot animation did not truly get its wings until the technology of computer animation caught up to movie special effects and then surpassed them by looking more realistic than any model which could be designed by hand