History lesson 35

  1. Combine Harvester- William Morgan was a resident of Batavia, New York, whose disapearence and presumed murder in 1826 ignited a powerful movement against the Freemasons, a fraternal society that had become influential in the United States. After Morgan announced his intention to publish a book exposing Freemasonry’s secrets, he was arrested on trumped-up charges he disappeared soon after, and was believed to been kidnapped by and killed by masons from western New York.
  2. Solar Compass- Burt, a United States Deputy Surveyer, began government Surveying lands in Michigan in 1833. While working in Wisconsin, where there were large deposits of iron ore, Burt experienced great difficulty in using his standard vernier compass. This motivated him to find a solution that was not dependant on magnetism and would not be influenced by Earth’s ore materials. With his mechanical abilities, he then devised and built the solar compass.
  3. Propeller-The origin of the screw propeller starts with achimedes, who used a screw to lift water for irrigation and bailing boats, so that it famously became known as archimedes’, screw. It was probably an application of spiral movement in space to a hollow segmented water wheel used for irrigation by Egyptions for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci adopted the principle to drive his theorical helicopter.
  4. Mechanical Computer-The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage’s difference engine, a design for a successful mechanical computer.

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