The Ts also Have It

Taxi   
In 1640 Paris, Nicolas Sauvage offered horse-drawn carriages and drivers for hire.

Two hundred years later 1891 Germany, Wilhelm Bruhn invented the taximeter. It is an instrument which measures the distance a vehicle travels, and allows an accurate fare to be determined.

On 16 June 1897 Friedrich Greiner started the Daimler Victoria taxi fleet. He was a Stuttgart entrepreneur who started the world's first motorized taxi company.

In 1907 Harry Allen start a taxicab service in New York and repainted them all yellow to be visible from a distance.

Telephone   
In the 1870s, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically.

Both men registered their designs at the patent office within hours of each other. Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone first. Elisha Gray entered into a legal battle over the invention of the telephone. Bell won and the rest was history.

Television  
Television was not invented by a single inventor. In 1831 Joseph Henry and Michael Faraday tinkered with electromagnetism and began the era of electronic communication.

The title as to who was the inventor of modern television narrows down to Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, a Russian-born American emplyee of Westinghouse, and Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a farm boy from the state of Utah.

In 1930 American Charles Jenkins broadcasts the first TV commercial.

Trains
Rails called wagonways were being used in Germany as early as 1550.

By 1776, iron had replaced the wood in the rails. Wagonways evolved into tramways and spread thoughout Europe. Horses still provided the pulling power.

In 1825 George Stephenson built the locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in England, which was the first steam railway in the world.

The American rail network began with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1828.

The Cs Have It

Concrete
Early Romans invented concrete by mixing volcanic dusts, lime and small rocks.

In 1877, Frenchman Joseph Monier invented reinforced concrete. Concrete is a mixture of stones, sand and cement and reinforced by embedded steel bars.

The modern day concrete made possible the skyscapers we see today.


Car
In 1886 Karl Benz invented the first petrol powered car, or auto mobile.

On June 28 1926 Benz merged with Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) and produced the first Mercedes Benz.


Clock
Clocks have been around since the beginning of civilisation.

A German man called Peter Henlein, invented the Spring powered clock in 1510.

He produced a watch which was nothing more than a portable clock. But that was enough to revolutionised time keeping.


Computer
On April 4 1975, Paul Allen and Bill Gates established Microsoft.

On April Fool's Day 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs started Apple Computers.

This blog and its readers, will not be possible without their inventions.


Credit Card
Credit cards originated in the United States during the 1920s.

The inventor of the first bank's credit card was John Biggins of the Flatbush National Bank of Brooklyn in 1946.

Diners Club issued their credit card in the United States in 1950 followed by American Express in 1958.

Originally promoting to traveling salesmen, it became a huge overnight success.


Camera
Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a French inventor credited as the inventor of photography in 1827. Bitumen that was exposed would react to the light, creating an image.

George Eastman refined the idea and during the 1940s, color photography was created. Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company in 1892. The first true digital camera was created in 1986 by Kodak.

Man Terrain

 


Joseph C. Wilson in 1906 founded Haloid Company in New York. The company became Xerox in 1961.






Apple Computer was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen formed a partnership called Microsoft.

Yahoo begin life in a Stanford University campus trailer. It was founded in January 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo.






Google began in March 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley.













On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook" during his second year at Harvard University, Massachusetts.





YouTube was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. It began as a venture-funded technology startup situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.




Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey who attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology and subsequently at New York University, where he first came up with the idea for Twitter.




Amazon started as an online bookstore by Jeff Bezos in July 1994 in Seattle, Washington.

eBay was founded in San Jose, California, on September 3, 1995 by French-born computer programmer Pierre Omidyar. It was meant to be a marketplace for the sale of goods and services for individuals.

Adobe Systems Inc begin in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who formed the company after leaving Xerox. The pdf format hit the market in 1993.

Ladies. Where Art Thou ?

When Giants Fight

By now the Apple Samsung patent infringement suits has inflicted bruises along the very wide global battle front.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh sums it all up "“Samsung may have cut into Apple’s customer base somewhat, but there is no suggestion that Samsung will wipe out Apple’s customer base, or force Apple out of the business of making smartphones,”

With this, Apple was awarded $450.5 million, nearly half of the $1 billion damage awarded earlier before Samsung appealed.

Judge Lucy Koh of Korean descent was born 1968 in Washington DC. Awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College in Social Studies in 1990 and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School in 1993.

The dust has hardly settled and Apple is now all set to launch  the 60-inch iTV this year. This is in direct confrontation with Samsung and LG 55-inch OLED TV expected in stores this year.

Walls

The dikes of Holland. Built 1000 AD to keep the water out.




The great Wall of China. Built 700 BC to keep the barbarians out.




The sea wall of Japan. Built after the 1933 earthquake and associated tsunami.



Prison walls. First built in 1625 and obviously to keep the prisoners in.




The Israeli wall. Built primarily to keep the suicide bombers out.

Mighty Mouse

1979, Steve Jobs, twenty-four-year-old co-founder of a small computer startup called Apple visit a research center in Silicon Valley called Xerox.

Xerox engineer Larry Tesler demonstrate the cursor across the screen with the aid of a “mouse” and Jobs decided there and then that "This is revolutionary!"




He met Dean Hovey, one of the founders of the industrial-design company IDEO.

Steve Jobs design specifications to Hovey: the mouse needs to be manufacturable for less than fifteen bucks.



Dean Hovey went to Walgreens, bought all the underarm deodorants, because they had that ball in them.

The LED TV Race

Sony first announced plans to introduce a large screen OLED TV in 2009.

But it will be LG that is rolling out the first OLED TV, not Sony.



LG plans to introduce a 55 inch OLED-TV in Q2 2012.

Samsung is also planning similiar size TV for the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 10 to January 13 2012.




Mitsubishi Electric Building at Alexandra Road installed a large screen located in the lobby.

The 3.1m width by 1.9 m height screen is Singapore's first Diamond Vision (OLED) screen.

The latest TV technology is coming your way.

People Bonding

Karaoke was invented in 1973 in Kobe, Japan.



40 years on, it is still as popular as the day Japanese, tone deaf or otherwise took to the microphone.



Community bonding using karaoke competitions is a good way of getting the people together regardless of skin colour or language.

Music is a universal language.

Wireless

Wireless. Every kind of gadgets are going wireless.

It began with the telephone.



Then rock bands go wireless. No more tripping on cables on stage.

guitar transmitter

note the cable-free stage

Of course singers are not going to miss the technology boat.





And of course the internet.

TV Technology

It was not too long ago that Japanese television sets dominate the world. Sony, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sharp to name a few.

Today Korean TV sets are top sellers worldwide.

Samsung, LG and Sony are now the top three best sellers in that order.



The current battle plans by TV manufacturers is to become leader in 3D display sets. Television viewers will be carried into a new dimension.

There are concerns that the special glasses cause eye fatigue and dizziness.

But for such cutting edge technology within reach, who cares.



3D glasses do not come cheap. One powered with a replaceable coin-sized battery cost $150.
The glasses power up with the touch of a button and power down after a minute after you fold the arms.

Are you catching up ?

Buying a new TV

Flat screen televisions are now the rage.

From plasma to LCD and now LED.



The LED TVs you see in the showroom is actually an LCD TV that uses LEDs to illuminate the display. There are two types of display. Back Lit and Edge Lit.

Back Lit have LEDs placed across the entire back of the display, while placing LEDs just around the perimeter, is called “edge lit” display.

Sony was the first to introduce Edge LED lighting.



Samsung and many other TV makers have incorrectly called the new range “LED TVs".

They are not LED TV. Samsung drop the term “LCD” which is a smart marketing move.

After all, “LED” does match a technology that’s all the rage as a new lighting source.

To put it accurately, it is an expensive LCD set.



Is the extra money worth it ?

Well firstly both techniques use less power than plasma TVs and LCD TVs which use fluorescent tubes.

Edge-lit LCDs can be ultra-thin, because the LED sources are on the side and is less expensive than LED backlit technology.

R & R Inventions

The Ferris Wheel was designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr as a landmark for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

The roller coaster was patented by LaMarcus Adna Thompson on January 20, 1885.
In 1959 the Disneyland theme park introduced the first roller coaster to use tubular steel track, unlike conventional rails set on wooden railroad ties.



Hotels began in America during the first two centuries of European settlement. In 1889 the Savoy Hotel in London set a new standard, with its own electricity and a host of special services.



Universal Studio was founded by Carl Laemmle, a German Jewish immigrant. On June 8, 1912, Laemmle formed the Universal Film Manufacturing Company. Shortly after Music Corporation of America took over Universal Pictures in 1962, Universal Studios Hollywood grew over the years into a full-blown theme park.


The concept for Disneyland began one Sunday, when Walt Disney was visiting Griffith Park with his daughters Diane and Sharon and opened to the general public on July 18, 1955.


The first cruise ship was the Prinzessin Victoria Luise built in 1900.
Modern day ships has passenger capacity of between 2000 to 5000.


Gambling, in some way or another, has been seen in almost every society in history. One of the first known casinos was the Casinò di Venezia, established in Venice Italy around 1638 and is still in operation.

In 1931, Las Vegas became America's first legalized casinos followed by Atlantic City, America's second largest gambling city.
The casino industry in Macau took form in 1962 when the government granted the Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau (STDM), a syndicate jointly formed by Hong Kong and Macau businessmen, the monopoly rights to all forms of gambling.



Beer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea and is recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt.

Great Inventions Too

Tower cranes first started appearing in Europe in the first half of the 1900s.
In 1908, Maschinenfabrik Julius Wolff & Co. introduced the first series of tower cranes specifically designed for the construction industry.
Potain and Liebherr followed during the second world war.
In 1975, the Danish company Kroll became manufacturer of the world’s tallest and biggest tower crane, the K-10 000.




One of the first hydraulic excavators, was produced by Poclain France, in 1951.
The Ferwerda brothers, who moved from the Netherlands to the U.S. produced the excavation motion and was launched in 1941.



The idea for the concrete pump was patented in the US in 1913. It wasn’t until 1927 in Germany when chief engineer Fritz Hell began the first successful design of a concrete pump. A Dutchman named J.C. Kooyman further developed the pump.
By 1959, another German firm, Schwing, had manufactured a fully hydraulic pump.

On March 23, 1857 the first Otis passenger elevator was installed at 488 Broadway in New York City. The first construction hoist was introduced in 1951 by Alimak of Sweden.



The U.S. crane manufacturer Northwest Engineering mounted it first crane on crawler tracks in the 1920s.
In 1935, Ruston-Bucyrus introduced the 22-RB crawler crane, which remained popular for decades.
In 1941 Manitowoc designed the M3900 heavy crawler crane, capable of lifting 103.5 tons.

Reinforced concrete was invented by Joseph Monier in 1849 and received a patent in 1867.
Early 1900s saw buildings that used reinforced concrete in their construction began popping up all over the world, especially in the United States and Europe.



John MacAdam, a Scottish developed the bituminous material for road-paving applications in 1815.
The first mechanical asphalt paver was introduced in the United States in 1931 by Barber-Greene Co.



The Diesel engine was invented by German engineer Rudolf Diesel, 1858 to 1913.
After R. Diesel death the petroleum industry was rapidly developing and produced a cheap by-product "diesel fuel".

Great Inventions

You come home after a stressful day at work and head for the fridge for a cool comforting drink.
The fridge, or refrigerator was invented by the Europeans.

Next you turn on the hi-fi for some relaxing music to calm aching muscles.
The radio was invented by the Americans and Europeans.

The music is not to your taste, switch it off and turn on the television.
TV was invented by the Europeans, Germany being the first to broadcast the 1936 Olympics games.

The phone rings.
The telephone was invented by Europeans and Americans. Alexander Bell being the first to successfully transmit clear speech 1876.

After answering the call, you turn on the PC to check email inbox.
The American, namely Apple, IBM and Microsoft were pioneers.

There is a message instructing you to fly to Hongkong to meet a VIP client. You book the ticket and head to the airport the next day.
The aeroplane was first mooted by a British, then the Americans Wright Brothers

While in HK, you report the progress of the meeting by mobile phone.
The mobile phone was started by the Swedes, then Motorola of USA.

You fly home, and wanting to save money, ride the MRT.
The train was invented in 1822 by an English inventor named George Stephenson. The elevated tracks use prestressing technology invented by a Frenchman.

The next day you hop into your car to the office.
The car, the modern automobile was invented by a German.

Before you step out of the house into the harsh world, you check yourself in the mirror.
The centre of mirror production was Venice in the 1500s until the Germans perfected the making process for the mass market.

All the modern household gadgets will not work without electricity.
Electricity was discovered by the Italians, and later by Americans.

So what has Asians been doing the past 200 years ?