Life without Biotechnology Engineers -- Team 1

Activity #2 Technological Innovation

DIGITAL CAMERA

The digital camera is a device that has evolved and is a clear example of technology changing now underway in our days. Since its inception in 1974 with the invention of the CCD and the modification of lens and memories, the digital camera has been modified and evolved into the gadget we have. Starting from 1969 The Bell’s laboratories in the USA, invented the CCD able of transmitting electrical charges. This allowed the scientists to modify it in order to make a CCD able of taking images and keep them.

For 1974 many companies had done with the rights of the CCD, which offered pixels 100x100.This was thanks to Willard Boyle and George Smith. Although the Sony Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera) is considered by many the first digital camera, during the decade of the 70 Texas Instruments patented the system electronics and photography pioneer Kodak entered the scene by presenting the prototype of the first operating chamber with a CCD.

In 1975 the engineer Steve Sasson created the first digital camera, initiating a revolution on digital images, this one kept pictures on a tape cassette and took, 23 seconds to capture its first photograph in December , also it integrated electronic systems, visual sensors, backup systems and digital information processing, in cassettes. The “Mavica camera” was developed by SONY in 1981; they used removable disks as their main recording media.

Following this, many manufacturers interest in new sensors, such like Casio and Panasonic, Fujifilm ES-1 and Nikon SVC presented this one’s as their first prototypes inventions. The Fujifilm DS-1P also introduced flash-removable memory for storing images in 1988 also they were the first to replace magnetic storage of images on a memory card that stored the digitized data.The tiny Sony DSC-F55 (2.1 MP), meanwhile, is the first camera that used Memory Stick as a storage mass. In 2000 the Nikon D1, integrates the best digital technology of time.

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Video of the Digital Camera :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl0lDp2qjK0

Activity#2 Technological Innovations

Barcode

The barcode is one of the most important technologic
innovations in the world. And this invention is used worldwide to have a better
organization and a better selling system in the entire world. And every day
barcodes are used for a faster and easier way to manage things and to transfer
in quick way information that will describe the thing that is being scanned. We
can mention the most known example that is the barcode used for selling product
of any type of industry, or the use of the barcode for scanning the “pin” from
a blackberry.

At first it was for military use only, having a better
administration in weapons. But then it was applied in normal life, having a
revolutionary change in the way the people could administrate, manage, and
manipulate things or processes.

The way Bernard Silver (developer/creator) started
thinking a result for the problem his chief had planned him, make this
invention very interesting because by his creative thinking he developed a new
way to have a better system in product information during the checkout of the
company. That some years later became
very common in everyone’s daily life. 

Brief Video of how they work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6aR1k-ympo

Activity#2 Technological Innovations

Lens

A lens is an optical object with approximate or perfect axial symmetry which reflects and transmits light. It can diverge or converge the light beam. A simple lens, also called elements, consists of a single optical element made of glass or transparent plastic. In other hand a compound or complex one is a series or simple lenses or elements with a common axis.

The monocles were the first type of lens. The biggest innovation about monocles was the convenience they had, since they were compact and, unlike what most people believed, comfortable if properly customized. They lens were held by a metal frame which later on received its own modifications in order to make it even more comfortable. One of these improvements included a little extension which allowed the monocle to be held in place without touching the eyelashes. Finally one of the last improvements made was in fact to make the monocles frameless therefore making them cheaper thanks to the absence of an expensive metal frame.

Then they appear the glasses …

Glasses are frames holding lenses worn in front of the eyes. They are normally used for vision correction or eye protection. Safety glasses are a kind of eye protection against flying debris or against visible and near visible light or radiation. Sunglasses allow better vision in bright daylight, and may protect against damage from high levels of ultraviolet light. Other types of glasses may be used for viewing visual information or simply just for fashion purposes.

Finally contact lens appear…

A contact lens is a corrective, cosmetic, or therapeutic lens usually placed on the cornea of the eye. Leonardo da Vinci is credited with describing and sketching the first ideas for contact lenses in 1508, but it was more than 300 years later before contact lenses were actually fabricated and worn on the eye.

n 1887, the German engineer Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick constructed and fitted the first successful contact lens. While working in Zürich, he described fabricating afocal scleral contact shells. Experimentally fitting them: initially on rabbits, then on himself, and lastly on a small group of volunteers. These lenses were made from heavy blown glass and were 18–21mm in diameter.

Functions

Corrective contact lenses- designed to improve vision.

Cosmetic contact lens- is designed to change the appearance of the eye. These lenses may also correct the vision, but some obstruction of vision may occur as a result of the color or design.

Types

Daily wear (DW) - designed to be removed when you go to sleeping.

Extended wear (EW)- contact lens is designed for continuous overnight wear, typically for 6 or more consecutive nights.

Intraocular lenses- are special small corrective lenses surgically implanted in the osterior chamber behind the iris and in front of the lens to correct higher degrees of myopia and hyperopia.

Activity#2 Technological Innovations

The Hybrid Car

A hybrid Car consists in a vehicle that uses two sources of power: a fueled power source, and a rechargable enegy storgae system. This makes the vehicle less polluting and more fuel efficient.

This system was created to satisfy the demand for a car that would be available and economical, but at the same time it had to be ecologically friendly.

In 1889, Ferdinand Porsche created the first working hybrid car, but since then, there has been a continuos improvement of this invention. In 1960´s Victor Wouk developed a new design of the same thing: a car that would run on gasoline and electricty and cut to the half the amount of gasoline this car consumed.

Despite this, until late in the twentieth century, no major manufacturer of automobiles begun massively producing it. It was until 1990 that Toyota Prius and Honda Insight were succesfully introduced into the automobile market being autentic pioneers in the filed of hybrid cars.

Finally there still is a long way until cars are completely environmentally friendly, but in this precise moment there are lots of engineers taking care of that.

Activity#2 Technological Innovation

Advances in coputers are a significant innovation. Just imagine that at this moment your computer was like the old one, with a very small storage capacity or a very slow system. We would waste a lot of time in one job.

Now we have lot of program that help us in any activity we need to do.

Activity#2 Technological Innovations

An artificial Pacemaker is a device that helps to regulate the beating of the heart through electrical impulses. When the rhythm of the heart is very slow or when there are long pauses between the heartbeats; after detecting those problems the pacemaker stimulates the heart.

As any other technological innovation, the artificial pacemaker helps to improve the quality of human’s life; for example the main diseases that a pacemaker solves are the cardiac arrhythmias which are irregularities in heart rhythm. Cardiac arrhythmias can cause to the patient some symptoms like weakness, fatigue, palpitations, low blood pressure, dizziness and fainting. Even worse than the previous symptoms cardiac arrhythmias can cause the patient’s dead. Taking in account all the previous information, this technological innovation saves many lifes and nowadays it is a very important device.

Since 1958, Jorge Reynolds, an electronic engineer that also discovered that the hearts of cetaceans are similar to humans, has been working in artificial pacemakers; in fact the first pacemaker's battery was Reynolds's own car, a Triumph sports car. Since then, he’s been working in it and recently he had created a new artificial pacemaker using nanotechnology and it does not need batteries.

Pacemakers of our time are the size of a matchbox and are used by more than 48 million people in the world.

Nevertheless, there are somthing that can afect them, like MRI machines, radiation machines used for cancer treatments, strong magnets and machines for weld.

Activity#2 Technological Innovations

The Ballpoint Pen

The ballpoint pen, known in Spanish as “bolígrafo, lapicero, pluma”, is an important and innovating writing tool that, nowadays, is the most used writing instrument. Millions of people use ballpoint pens every day, making easier to write in many kinds of surfaces, especially on paper. It substituted the fountain pens, which used to be the most common before ballpoint pens.

It was officially invented in 1938 by the Hungarian inventor and journalist László József Bíró (Ladislao José Biro) who got the Argentine nationality after the Second World War. Even though, before him there were similar patents that looked like the ballpoint pen. The first one was one made by John Loud in 1888, was a leather tanner and looked for an instrument that could write on leather.

As Wikipeda had written, László Bíró, a Hungarian newspaper editor, was frustrated by the amount of time that he wasted in filling up fountain pens and cleaning up smudged pages, and the sharp tip of his fountain pen often tore the paper. Bíró had noticed that inks used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge free. He decided to create a pen using the same type of ink. Since, when tried, this viscous ink would not flow into a regular fountain pen nib, Bíró, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to work on designing new types of pens. Bíró fitted this pen with a tiny ball in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. Bíró filed a British patent on 15 June 1938.

Most of the pens had problems with the viscosity of the ink, but Biro’s pens used an special technology that fixed this. First, he used a piston and capillary action, but with the time he changed them using a spring that kept pressure on the piston, and still later the Biro pens used just gravity and capillary action.

Lásló and George Biró had to fle from Hungary in 1940 to Argentina, which accepted because they had met before the Argentine president Agustín Pedro Justo. The president met them at Yugoslavia in a congress, and considered Biro’s invention amazing. Also, Meyne, a friend and partner, help them to flee to Argentina. He started a company called “Birome”, with only 40 workers. The first product was expensive, and it could compete with other brands of pens. But the student edition was the one that won lots of prizes. It was economic, so the people accepted it really well, selling thousands of it. In this regard, at his last interview before he died, he stayed that the pen was “ My Toy” which only left 37 millions of dollars in the Argentine treasury, money earned by selling products not of the land but of the brain.

Why is it an innovative gadget?

Because the usage of the ink & feather, and the fountain pen made writing difficult in relation with neatness and comfort, hence, Laslo Biró and his brother Geroge Biró, design a useful and helpful gadget in order to correct this two problems and have a longlasting duration with quick dry.

Brief video about the history of the ballpoint pen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1c-13IhgfI

Prueba en clase

Rollo ..

mar rolloo

etc.