Mindless Crap Science, Technology & Inventions Trivia

Weekly Droppings

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Crap About Science, Technology & Inventions

The following are all of the Weekly Droppings that have appeared on Mindless Crap, dating back to the first one posted on October 1, 2000.

Giuseppangelo Fonzi, an Italian dentist practicing in Paris, introduced porcelain teeth, mounted on gold bases. These replaced the more traditional false teeth that were made from bone, ivory or sheep teeth.

The shoestring was invented in England in 1790. Prior to this time shoes were fastened with buckles.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone while searching for a way to help the deaf by means of electronic transmission of sound.

After Sir Isaac Newton died, a sealed trunk was found among his belongings containing nearly 100,000 pages he had written on the subjects of alchemy, astrology and the occult.

The abacus was not an Asian invention. It originated in Egypt in 1000 BC, almost 1,000 years before it reached the Orient.

The width of a bolt of lightning is only about six inches, on average.

The kitchen dishwasher was invented by the socialite wife of an Illinois politician, not because she was fed up with the chore of cleaning dirty dishes, but because she was angry with the careless servants who too frequently broke her expensive china while washing it.

Among Thomas Edison's lesser known inventions was wax paper, the dictating machine and an electric railway car.

A bubble is round because the air within it presses equally against all its parts, thus causing all surfaces to be equidistant from its center.

Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, also invented plywood.

Benjamin Franklin invented the rocking chair.

If hot water is suddenly poured into a glass the glass is more likely to break if it is thick rather than if it is thin. This is why test tubes and beakers are made of thin glass.

The parachute was invented long before the creation of the airplane. Louis Lenormand, a Frenchman, designed it in 1783 to save people who had to jump from burning buildings.

The first manufactured item ever exported from the United States was tar. It was sent from Jamestown, Virginia to the colony's sponsors in England in 1608.

The speed of sound is different at different heights. At sea level, it's 760 miles per hour. Above 36,000 feet, Mach 1 is reached at about 660 miles per hour.

Scientists have been measuring the speed of light for three centuries, and they have it down to n accuracy of half a foot per second. The speed of light is 186, 282.3959 miles per second.

In 1899, a pharmacist named George Bunting blended his own cold cream, which, in addition to removing makeup and relieving sunburn, gained popularity for its ability to cure eczema. The product's claim of "No Eczema" led to its name, Noxzema.

Luther Crowell invented the paper bag in 1867.

When Alexander Graham Bell Was working on the telephone in 1876, he spilled battery acid on his pants and called out to his assistant, "Watson, please come here. I want you." Watson, who was on another floor, heard the call through the instrument he was hooking up, and ran to Bell's room. Bell's words became the first ever successfully communicated using a telephone.

Thanks to the electric light, the average American today sleeps 1.5 hours less each day than Americans of 60 years ago.

Blaise Pascal's father was a French tax collector who had trouble keeping track of his collections. So in 1642, young Pascal designed and built a mechanical adding machine to help. It was the first mechanical calculator in history.

Cornelius van Drebel, a Dutch physician, built and successfully demonstrated the first submarine in 1620. It was a wooden framework covered with greased leather. The propulsion was provided by oars worked from the inside. It was tested in the Thames River in London.

Victor Mills, an inventor with Proctor & Gamble, invented the disposable diaper in 1961 because he didn't want to deal with his daughter's soiled (crapped) diapers. You know them as Pampers.

Brigham Young invented the department store. Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI as it's known to those in Utah) is still in operation in Salt Lake City.

While fighting with the French underground during World War II, Jacques-Yves Cousteau invented the aqualung, the self-contained device that supplies air under pressure for underwater divers.

Detroit policeman William L. Potts is credited with inventing the modern street traffic light in 1920. He worked out an electric light system that allowed him to control three street intersections from one tower He picked the red, yellow and green because railroads used them.

The works of Gregor Mendel, father of the science of genetics, went undiscovered for sixteen years after his death.

Gottfried Daimler of Stuttgart, Germany, is generally regarded as the father of the automobile because he was the first to come up with a workable gasoline engine.

Humphrey O'Sullivan invented the rubber heel because he was tired of pounding the pavements of Boston looking for a job.

Joseph Priestley not only discovered oxygen, but he also discovered ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, sulphur dioxide, and nitrous oxide. He was also the first person to isolate chlorine.

The rapid rate of expansion of gas is what gives steam its power. One volume of water, at normal atmospheric pressure and at the boiling point, yields 1,670 volume of steam.

A device invented sometime around the time of the birth of Jesus as a primitive steam engine by the Greek engineer Hero is used today as a rotating sprinkler.

Whitcomb L. Judson, the inventor of the zipper, originally intended his invention to save people the trouble of buttoning and unbuttoning their shoes every day. He named it the "Clasp locker and unlocker for shoes."

Only one of the 88 stable chemicals are named after a person - gadolinium. It's named after Finnish chemist Johan Gadolin.

If a substance is burned and all of the results of its burning (smoke, ash, soot and gas) are captured and weighed, they will be a little heavier than the original substance because they have been combined with oxygen.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match. In 1816, a German chemist named J.W. Dobereiner devised a way of automatically igniting a jet of hydrogen. Unfortunately, it required powdered platinum to act as a catalyst.

Robert William Thomson, a Scottish engineer, invented the first rubber tire in 1845.

Close to two million people who go to hospitals in the United States for one ailment wind up catching another.

Ketchup was once sold as a patented medicine. In the 1830s it was marketed in the United States as Dr. Miles's Compound Extract of Tomato.

The electric automobile self-starter was invented to make it possible for women to drive without a companion, who was previously needed to crank the engine.

There are only 81 stable chemical elements. Rhenium was the last one to be found in 1925. Fifteen other elements have been discovered since then, but they are all radioactive.

The first computer, the steam-driven calculating machine, was built in 1823 by Charles Babbage. It failed to work due to poor workmanship in the intricate parts. When rebuilt by the London Museum of Science in 1991, it worked.

98% of the weight of water is made up from oxygen.

Paper was invented in the early second century by a Chinese eunuch.

Pedals were added to the bicycle in 1839.

Sugar was first added to chewing gum in 1869. Ironically, a dentist named William Semple was behind the decision.

The computer programming language ADA was named in honor of Augusta Ada King. The U.S. Defense Department named the language after the Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Lord Byron because she helped finance and program what is thought to be the first computer, the �analytical engine� designed by Charles Babbage.

Pearls melt in vinegar.

According to an Old English system of time units, a moment is considered to be one and a half minutes.

Boiled grape juice was the fluid used as a lubricant for the first contact lenses. Eugene Flick, who invented contact lenses in 1887, chose boiled grape juice over sugar water to lubricate the thick glass lenses that covered the entire eye.

Anthropologists use a standard height of 4 feet 11 inches to determine if a group of people are pygmies. The average adult male must be less than 59 inches in height.

Johnson & Johnson created the Band-Aid in 1899 because Robert Wood Johnson attended a lecture concerning the prevention of infection in wounds during surgical operations. The company created the zinc oxide adhesive bandage for surgeons, and launched the consumer version, Band-Aids, in 1921.

Marie and Irene Curie are the only mother and daughter to win Nobel prizes with their husbands. Marie and Pierre Curie won the Physics prize in 1903. Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie won in 1935 for chemistry. Incidentally, Marie Curie also won the 1911 Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Sterling silver contains 7.5% copper.

The average marathon runner's heart beats about 175 times per minute during a race. A typical adult's heart beats 68 times a minute at rest.

Aspirin was the first drug offered as a water-soluble tablet in 1900.

Minus forty degrees Celsius is exactly the same temperature as minus forty degrees Fahrenheit.

The first flight of the Wright Brothers was a distance less than the wing span of a Jumbo Jet.

The wind must be below one mile an hour in order for the National Weather Service to rate the weather as "calm."

An artificial hand , with fingers moved by cogwheels and levers, was designed in 1551 by Frenchman Ambroise Par�. It worked so well that a handless cavalryman was able to grasp the reins of his horse.

Joseph Priestly is credited with discovering oxygen, ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, sulphur dioxide, and nitrous oxide. He was also the first to isolate chlorine.

In July, 1950, a patent was issued for an automatic spaghetti-spinning fork.

Balneology is the science of swimming pools. Balneologists study problems of heating, cleaning, maintenance, and construction.

The first plastic ever invented was celluloid in 1868. It's still used today to make billiard balls.

Electrical stimulation of certain areas of the brain has been proven to revive long-lost memories.

Roulette was invented by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal. It was a by-product of his experiments with perpetual motion.

It is estimated that a plastic container can resist decomposition for as long as 50,000 years.

Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1846.

James Ramsey invented a steam-driven motorboat in 1784. He ran it on the Potomac River in an event witnessed by George Washington.

All snow crystals are hexagonal.

The drug thiopentone can kill a human being in one second if it's injected directly into the blood stream.

Even when all the molecules in a single breath of air have been dispersed evenly in the earth's atmosphere, there will still be one or two of the same ones taken into the lungs with every subsequent breath. Every time you breathe in, you inhale one or two of the same molecules that you inhaled with the first breath you took as a baby.

Thomas Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter.

The highest man-made temperature - 70 million degrees Celsius - was generated at Princeton University in a fusion-power experiment.

Scientists have figured out that the speed of nerve impulses in the brain is 404 feet per second. If an idea is complex enough to take 100 nerve messages from one side of the brain to the other, the thought could be completed in less than a tenth of a second.

German chemist Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus while he was examining urine for a way to turn baser metals into gold.

Putty is a cement compound of fine powdered chalk or oxide of lead mixed with linseed oil.

The first U.S. patent for an animal was issued to Harvard University in 1988 for an oncomouse, a genetically engineered mouse that's susceptible to breast cancer. It's used to test anti-cancer therapies.

The name of the Russian space station, Mir, means "peace."

Waldo Hanchett invented the modern dentist's chair in 1848.

In 1938, Hewlett-Packard became the first corporation to move to Silicon Valley.

Vaseline was created by Robert Chesebrough in 1870. He developed it after visiting Titusville, PA in 1859. While there he noticed that workers were treating cuts and burns with grease that accumulated on drill rods from the oil fields.

Lee De Forest, the inventor of the radio tube, was tried for fraud in 1913. He was accused of tricking the public into buying stocks in his company, the Radio Telephone Company, by making "absurd and deliberately misleading" claims about the possibility of transmitting the human voice across the Atlantic Ocean.

Joseph Swan invented the light bulb in 1879, one year before Thomas Edison did. However, Swan didn't patent the idea and was widely accused of copying Edison - who did patent the idea and was therefore recognized as its inventor. Swan continued to be denied recognition until some time later when it was shown that both light bulbs were produced using different processes. Edison and Swan later formed a joint company using the best of both technologies.