(1939- ) Far ultraviolet camera and spectragraph. Deployed on the moon by Apollo 16 astronauts, it delivered breakthroughs in astronomy.
Frank Cepollina(1936- ) Satellite servicing techniques. As manager of NASA’s maintenance program for the Hubble Space Telescope, Cepollina uses his pioneering techniques to continually upgrade and renew the system.
RICHARD WHITCOMB IS OFTEN ASKED WHAT MAKES HIM unique, how he has repeatedly managed to come up with conceptual breakthroughs that have cluded other talented aeronautics engineers. The answer, he believes, lies in his power of visualization. For some reason he can digest equations and wind tunnel data and turn them into a mental image, of air molecules flowing over airfoils for instance.
HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT methods exist for making microcapsules of varying sizes and compositions. The choice is governed by the substance being encapsulated, the coating material, the intended use, and economic and quality-control factors, among others. To illustrate some general principles of the technology, here is a description of one process that is used to microencapsulate ibuprofen. It was developed by Sambasiva Rao Ghanta and Robert Edmon Guisinger of Eurand America, Inc., in Vandalia, Ohio, and is set forth in full in U.S.
THE LEVELS OF EXPERTISE THAT our Invention & Technology authors achieve within the confines of a few thousand words often make us wonder what they could do on a larger canvas. As the works listed below prove, good magazine writers lose none of their effectiveness in the transition to book form.
IN 1905 THE WRIGHT BROTHERS enjoyed a complete monopoly on heavier-than-air aviation. They had the world’s only working airplane, were the only two pilots able to fly it, and had applied for a formidable patent that would cover any plane with three-axis control. Yet within five years they would regularly be surpassed by competitors at home and abroad, and before what was remembered as the Golden Age of Aviation arrived in the 1920s, they would be out of the aircraft business entirely. What happened?
THAT WAS AN EXCELLENT article on the substance that fixes anything and everything, duct tape (“Object Lessons,” by Curt Wohleber, Summer 2003). A student in my heat-transfer class last spring semester made a book bag entirely out of the tape, complete with pockets for a calculator and pencils. I found it a classic example of the innovative spirit. Here is a picture.
Tom Lawrence
LAFAYETTE, IND.
LAST NOVEMBER 24, AT A FORTRESS IN THE NORTH OF AFGHAN istan, a group of Taliban prisoners rose in revolt against their captors. They had pretended to surrender but had not been searched, and when brought to the fort in trucks, they proved to be well armed. Overpowering their guards, they seized additional weapons and freed several hundred other Taliban prisoners who were Bbeing held in cells. They took control of much of the fort, forcing troops of the pro-American Northern Alliance to retreat to a corner.
IT WAS A EUREKA! MOMENT. THE DAY HADN’T STARTED well for Logan O’Keefe, age six. It was the summer between first and second grades, and on this particular day Logan looked perplexed. She was participating in a daycamp program called Camp Invention. Her teacher showed the students a pile of old appliances—radios, toasters, mixers, blenders—and told them to take them apart to learn how they worked, then see if they could use the pieces to invent something new.
SCHOLARS LOVE GRAND IDEAS that neatly tie together everything in history. One of the more intriguing theories of this type comes from Jonathan Coopersmith of Texas A&M, who has written that much of the history of communications, from printing to VCRs to the Internet, was determined by the need to distribute pornography more efficiently.
GAME-SHOW AFICIONADOS FONDLY REMEMBER THE CONSU merist orgasm that closed every episode of “Let’s Make a Deal.” As a lovely hostess seductively stroked the merchandise, prize after prize was paraded before the lucky winner, starting with “Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat,” and invariably climaxing with “ your … new … CAR!!!! ”
IN 1995 JOHN H. WHITE , Jr., whose article on Robert Fulton appears in this issue, wrote in our pages: “The fate of most abandoned railroads is a speedy dismemberment. … The weeds and trees move in, and soon even those who worked on the line can no longer point out just where it ran.” This description was not meant to apply to urban railroads, of course, especially not to elevated lines, whose dismemberment can be as complicated an engineering and logistical problem as their construction.
I WAS FASCINATED BY Deirdre Barrett’s article about dreams begetting inventive insights (“In Dreams Begin Technologies,” Fall 2001). In my 40-plus-year career as a physicist in IBM’s development laboratories, I’ve had the experience numerous times. In fact, I’ve learned to count on it. Not that I go to sleep on any given night expecting solutions to my problems; they just seem to appear on their own.
SOLAR CELLS POWER EVERY SATELLITE, AND SATELLITES ARE indispensable. In the military arena they direct battle operations for America; they collect and send GPS (Global Positioning System) data and other intelligence used to plan precision bombing and Special Forces missions; they carry high-speed communications between troops in the field and those in command. In the words of Gen.
DURING THE 1960s PROFESSOR BILLIE Wolfe at Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, taught a course called “Housing Design for Family Living.” She took photographs of ranches and farms for use in her class, and she noticed that many of them in- eluded derelict or unused windmills. Seeing those pictures, she realized that the machines were disappearing from the Western landscape.
I’VE BEEN AN AVID reader of the magazine for more than 10 years, but no article has captured my attention like Mark Bernstein’s “Thomas Midgley and the Law of Unintended Consequences” in the Spring 2002 issue. I would not likely have obtained a degree in mechanical engineering and become a professional engineer if I hadn’t been fortunate enough to be one of 17 undergraduates Mr. Midgley financed.
AS SOON AS THE PEARL HARBOR RAID BROUGHT America into World War II, one of our chief concerns was protecting and reinforcing Alaska. In December of 1941, the territory contained few American troops, but Alaska looked strategically important for two reasons: It could help secure control of the northern reaches of the Pacific and it offered a promising route for getting Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet Union.
I WAS FASCINATED BY Deirdre Barrett’s article about dreams begetting inventive insights (“In Dreams Begin Technologies,” Fall 2001). In my 40-plus-year career as a physicist in IBM’s development laboratories, I’ve had the experience numerous times. In fact, I’ve learned to count on it. Not that I go to sleep on any given night expecting solutions to my problems; they just seem to appear on their own. Picking up on the concept of the incubus and succubus in classical literature, I call my nocturnal tutor my “techcubus.”
WHEN JOHN F. Kennedy challenged America to send a man to the moon and bring him back, he made no mention of what the man might do while he was up there. Early planners envisioned activities appropriate for a beach vacation: Go for a walk, snap some pictures, pick up a few rocks. It took persistent nagging from a group of NASA geologists, physicists, engineers, and others to make sure that the Apollo program would be more than a cruise to nowhere.
THE STORY OF THE BIRTH OF THE COMPUTER MOUSE is often told, and it is often told like this: Douglas Engelbart and his associates at the Stanford Research Institute invented the mouse in the 19605; innovators at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center refined it in the 19705; and Steve Jobs saw it there in 1979, and his Apple Computer company then took it and brought it to market in the 19805.
