Inventors and Remarkable People

Photonics set to revolutionise the revolution

By Mike Hanlon

Just as the transistor and microelectronics transformed communications and human society in the 20th century, "light" transistors and microphotonics are about to revolutionise the way we communicate in the 21st century. We are on the verge of a new revolution in computing and communications thanks to the breakthrough advances by a Sydney based research team led by Professor Benjamin Eggleton.

A Federation Fellow and Research Director of the CUDOS Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, Professor Eggleton recently received the prestigious 2004 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year for his pioneering work in the field of optical physics and photonics.

Optical fibres carry gigabytes of data across oceans and to our streets, hospitals, schools and businesses. Read More

Buckminster Fuller honoured on stamp

By Mike Hanlon

A commemorative postage stamp honoring the legendary inventor, architect, engineer, designer, geometrician, cartographer and philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller has been issued by the US Postal Service. The stamp artwork is a painting which originally appeared on the cover of Time magazine on 1964, depicting Fuller's head in the pattern of a geodesic dome. Geodesic domes and a number of his other inventions surround Fuller, including the Dymaxion Car, the 4D Apartment House and several objects and models that reflect the geometric and structural principles he discovered. The stamp artwork is a painting of Fuller by Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965). The painting, which originally appeared on the cover of Time magazine on Jan. 10, 1964, depicts Fuller's head in the pattern of a geodesic dome. Read More

Stephen Hawking chooses a new voice

By Mike Hanlon

Celebrated Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has selected and is using NeoSpeech's Text-to-Speech engine, VoiceText, as his new voice. VoiceText is integrated into Dr. Hawking's communicator, E Z Keys, enabling him to clearly communicate with the outside world. Dr. Hawking has a computer screen mounted on the arm of his wheel chair, which runs communicator software. The software enables him to press a switch in his hand to create words and sentences easily and intuitively. Once he has built up a sentence, he sends it to NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesizer, which turns it into speech. The technology enables Dr. Hawking to communicate, including writing scientific books and papers, and giving lectures. Read More

Australian Student wins International Award

By Mike Hanlon

Australian Saul Griffith, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral candidate, has won the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a machine which quickly tests vision and a desktop machine which manufactures low-cost eyeglass lenses. These machines could dramatically improve life for billions of people in developing countries who cannot access, nor afford, prescription glasses.” Merton Flemings, director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, which sponsors the annual award for inventiveness, cited Griffith’s innovative device eyeglass manufacturing and his work creating comic strips that inspire children to learn about science and engineering as important reasons he was chosen this year. Read More

Man vs Machine World Chess Championship a draw

By Mike Hanlon

Thursday November 20, 2003 After treading a delicate path in game four, Garry Kasparov has drawn both the final game and the match against X3D Fritz in the latest Man vs Machine World Chess Championship. The first and last games of the match were drawn with X3D Fritz winning game two and Kasparov winning game three. The result still earns Kasparov $175,000 and the golden trophy - although X3D Fritz is storing a copy of the trophy in virtual reality given that it was a draw according to reports from x3DChess. Game four was the shortest game of the match. Kapsarov said after the game that despite outplaying the machine overall, a critical mistake in game two had cost him the match. Read More

Garry Kasparov takes game three against X3D Fritz

By Mike Hanlon

Garry Kasparov has bounced back from his loss on Friday to win game three against the awesome processing power of X3D Fritz. Kasparov played a "picture-perfect" game forcing the computer - which can see almost four million positions per second - to submit after five hours of play. The result ties the match with one decisive game to go, on Tuesday 11/18 at 1PM. Read More

Man-Machine World Champion chess match in VR

By Mike Hanlon

Friday November 14, 2003: The world's number one chess player Garry Kasparov is locked in another Man-Machine World Champion chess match against a computer known as X3D Fritz. The games are being played in X3D virtual reality - the board floats in the air in front of Kasparov who executes his moves using voice recognition. Read More

The ultimate voyage to Antarctica with the ultimate guide

By Mike Hanlon

Friday September 19, 2003: It's not strictly a gizmo, but we thought this Antarctic tour conducted by New Scientist with multi award winning (and very funny) author Bill Bryson as the escort for the voyage might warrant our readers attention. Read More

The AcceleGlove - Capturing Hand Gestures in Virtual Reality

By Mike Hanlon

A glove that translates the hand movements of sign language into written text or speech is just one on the incredible benefits that will flow from developments in VR technology like the AcceleGlove.In constant development since the summer of 2000 the prototype uses a glove system that enables 'Whole Hand Input' using accelerometers attached to a leather glove.

The latest design incorporates a two-link arm section to accommodate the recognition of a wider range of gestures.The system captures the four distinctive components of hand gestures -handshape, hand orientation, location, and movement - all measured relative to the position of the users' body. Read More

David Warren - Inventor of the Black Box Flight Recorder

By Mike Hanlon

September 7, 2003 Behind many great inventions there is a tale of stubborn perseverance, clear foresight, lateral thinking and sometimes sheer coincidence that in the end brings benefit to many people. The story of "Black Box" flight recorder and its Australian inventor, Dr David Warren, is no exception. The "Black Box" is a device that records in-flight conversations and data. The term did not yet exist more than 50 years ago when Dr Warren first conceived the idea of recording the flight crew's conversation on a device that could be protected to increase its chances of surviving the crash. Read More

Spray on stockings released in Japan

By Mike Hanlon

July 19, 2003 Japanese company Nissin Medico has released "spray on Stockings" that provide a run-proof, water-proof covering for the legs. One can of stocking spray provides enough coverage for 10-15 "stockings" and the ultra-fine silk particles that make up the spray are easily removed with soap.Two types are available, the "Air Stocking (50g)" and "Powder Stocking (90g)", both of which breathe well, wont wash off because of sweat or rain and have passed allergy tests according to the manufacturer. Once applied the spray dries so that it wont stick to your (or anyone else's) clothes.The Spray on Stockings are available in Japan at a cost of around US$20. Read More

Rotational dining table

By Mike Hanlon

One of the problems with sitting at a table full of interesting people is that you can only ever sit next to two of them at a time. It takes a disciplined and insistent host to make sure people keep moving "rotational dinner" style and in these times of fast dating and networking, it seems it's either finger food or wait until after dinner to meet all those people. Now there's a high-tech alternative designed with the vision of actively engaging fresh communication and alleviating all the physical and emotional barriers commonly associated through introductions. This revolutionary dining table from Contab moves you, your seat, and your food slowly around the its perimeter... so you get to meet everybody at the table several times during a two hour period. Watch the time-lapse video to see how this ingenious device works. Read More

Australian Invention of the Year Award Winners Announced

By Mike Hanlon

Joint winners of the Australian Design Awards' Invention of the Year Award 2003 were announced last week in Melbourne. Tim Straatmans received the honour for his Coconut Net in conjunction with Ron Kukler, whose invention of an environmentally friendly diesel engine injector Read More

Creating the clean diesel engine

By Mike Hanlon

Ron Kukler has spent 30 years as a combustion engineer, before he had a specific need - he wanted a lightweight diesel engine for a high-speedboating application and available motors were too heavy, too noisy, too expensive, or vibrated too much... so he decided to create his own Read More

Enviromission Solar Project

By Mike Hanlon

An Australian plan to construct the world's first large-scale solar thermal power station is taking shape at Barooga, 23km northeast of Mildura. The first 200MW power station in the 'Solar Mission' project will produce enough electricity to power 200,000 households... Read More

Australian science aids America's Cup Victory

By Mike Hanlon

When Swiss yacht Alinghi won the 2003 Americas cup from Team New Zealand, it wasn't just the result of a badly timed snapped mast or New Zealand sailors on the opposing side - behind the scenes Australian science played a critical role in providing accurate weather predictions for the Swiss team Read More

Refrigeration efficiency breakthrough

By Mike Hanlon

Kelix Energies has developed a heating and cooling system that performs effectively without the use of a refrigeration compressor. Read More

Aerogel: The World's lightest solid

By Mike Hanlon

Aerogel is 99.8% air and 1,000 times less dense than glass yet it can withstand high temperature, is robust enough to survive a space launch and delivers 39 times more insulation than the best fibreglass. This exotic substance was invented in the 1930s but recently refined by NASA for the purpose of catching space-dust, Aerogel was used on the Mars Pathfinder rover and its latest assignment is to capture both cometary samples and interstellar particles aboard the Stardust mission. Read More

The rise and rise of the Internet

By Mike Hanlon

Tim Berners-Lee took the disparate threads of the "Internet" and created the level playing field "World Wide Web", allowing browser based surfing of documents stored on servers all over the world for the first time... Read More

Extra help for oil stricken seabirds

By Mike Hanlon

A more efficient method of cleaning oil from seabirds' feathers has been invented using a magnetic-cleansing technology devised by scientists at Victoria University... Read More

Charles Babbage: the brain that invented the computer

By Mike Hanlon

Though Silicon Valley may be the heart of the commercialisation of all things digital, it is the British who can proudly boast having invented the computer. Indeed, so proud are the British of the work done by eccentric British mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, that the Science Museum in London has subsequently built the machines he conceived and the Royal College of Surgeons has preserved his brain - the brain that invented the computer. Babbage proposed the first computer, a machine he called "the difference engine", in 1822 - it was the size of a house, could store a program, was powered by steam and could even print results. Read More

All of a sudden, old fashioned wind-up energy makes sense

By Mike Hanlon

Only in the last decade has the seemingly obvious connection between wind-up energy generation and power reliant modern devices been made... Read More

Douglass Engelbart - father of the mouse

By Mike Hanlon

At a Computer Conference in 1968, Engelbart demonstrated a personal computer with a one-handed keyboard, word processing, split windows, shared documents, e-mail filtering, desktop conferencing and a mouse. Read More

Lemelson-MIT Prize won by eyeglass printing machine

By Tim Hanlon

Australian Saul Griffith, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral candidate, has won the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a machine which quickly tests vision and a desktop machine which manufactures low-cost eyeglass lenses. These machines could dramatically improve life for billions of people in developing countries who cannot access, nor afford, prescription glasses.” Read More