Russell Colley invented aviation stuff

Piloting aircrafts can be a daunting task but Russell Colley invented aviation stuff that would make the aviators flight safer.

Who was Russell Colley ?

Alan B. Shepard Jr, the American astronaut should be able to tell you that Russell Colley invented the pressurized suit. But that was just one of the this American inventor's invention. Try gadgets like the Riv-nut, the rubberized pneumatic deicer and other such devices.

Russell Colley was born in 1899, in Stoneham, Massachusetts. Surprinsingly enough Colley had shown interest in becoming a fashion designer early on in life. He also was showing himself to be very mechanically inclined. Supposedly, peer pressure led him to the Wentworth Institute of Mechanical Engineering where he graduated in 1918.

image found on taxistrip.com

Wiley Post and Russell S. Colley testing a pressure suit in 1934.

In 1928 the mechanical engineer was working in Akron, Ohio, for BF Goodrich the rubber people.

Russell Colley witnessed the entire birth of the aircraft industry and the massive WW1 aircraft innovations and then more. By 1935 he was married and using his wife's craft kits to put together a flight suit for a pilot called Wiley Post.

Russell Colley invented aviation stuff but he also designed. How much better can one combine his skills.

Wiley Post on the other hand was more of a dare devil and broke altitude and distance records for a living.

After his work at BF Goodrich Russell Colley joined NASA where he continued to innovate on his designs and invent new ones. In 1994 he received the Distiguished Public Service Award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

His love for form and design never left him. Until his death in Springfield, Ohio, in 1996 Colley continued to dabble in the creative process.

He left behind many artifacts of his existence including water colour paintings, unique jewelery which he'd designed, and a list of 65 patents accredited to Russell Colley who invented aviation stuff.




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Bushnell invents the submarine

The Revolutionary war is on and David Bushnell invents the submarine.

Bushnell was an American inventor who lived from 1742 to 1824.

A David Bushnell biography states that in 1639 Francis Bushnell came to the American continent and settled at a New Haven colony. He voyaged to America from England and co-founded a settlement which became Guilford, Connecticut. The son of Francis, the father of David Bushnell was farming in Saybrook, Connecticut when David was born. By the age of 24 both of David's parents had passed away and he and a brother inherited the farmland.

David Bushnell gives up his farmland opting to pursue some studies. By 1775 he'd graduated from Yale University. His interest in chemistry led him to experiment with gunpowder and he learned that this explosive could detonate under water.

He designed, again in 1775, the shell for what would come to be known as Bushnell's Turtle. This was the invention of the submarine. When he demonstrated this invention to the Connecticut Council of Safety they approved his idea and showed their appreciation by giving him grants for further innovations of the Bushnell Turtle concept.

The extra money granted to him did not lead to a torpedo launching submarine capable of destroying enemy targets and vessels.

By 1781 David Bushnell finds himself in the employ of General Washington where he holds a post of captain lieutenant for the sappers and miners. He is a commander of the Corps of Engineers at Westpoint by 1783. This position did not last very long and Bushnell disappeared from public life for about a decade.

The year is now 1795 and he is relocated in Columbia County, Georgia, where he is living under the alias of Dr. Bush and he is a school master. During this period he had learned the skills of a medicine man and opened up a private practice in Warrenton, Georgia.

In 1824 he dies after having practiced medicine for many years.

To summarize. Bushnell invents the submarine, becomes an exile, changes his name to Dr Bush and dies in Georgia.    

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As a side note - Chaining the Hudson is a book by Lincoln Diamant which gives the birth date of David Bushnell as 1740 - in this book we learn that "the water machine", the world's first submersible was also how the Bushnell Turtle was called. We are also told that Bushnell learned medicine while at Yale along with physics and advanced mathematics.

In another much older book called A history of American manufacturers we are told that while David Bushnell contrived a submersible vessel that submarine inventions were not new. In this book the Bushman submersible is called the American Turtle. Again from the same book we are told that while Bushnell invented other curious machines for annoying the enemy that none met any great success.





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1975 Dahl Invention

Here's a little information on a 1975 Dahl invention.

The pet rock made it's inventor Gary Dahl a lot of money when it started a buyer's trend in April of 1975. Gary was 63 years old and in the advertising business working as an advertisement copywriter out of Califormia.

How much money did the inventor of the pet rock make ?

According to chacha.com Dahl sold enough pet rocks in six months to earn about 15 million dollars.

By some accounts Dahl got his pet rock idea into the market from a couple of investors who speculated on his idea. The venture was capitalized in part by Georges Coakley and John Heagherty.

At about four bucks a rock and hardly no markup one wonders how the Dragon Den guru's would have reacted to an appearance by the pet rock invention.

Face it. Dahl walks on stage and says to Arlene Dickinson of Kevin O'Leary, as he shows them a tiny rock with eyes painted on it, " I can see sales taking off to 10 million within a year".

O'Leary's flame would likely have been, " Look, I can't see a market for your pet rock but I might definitely see you in a straight jacket and having one of these in your recovery room. "

"I'm Out".................

Inventions don't have to be great they just have to stir up emotions sometimes.

If this 1975 Dahl invention is any proof of the saying "invention is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration" then I would have to think the work here went into picking pebbles.

What did you get if you bought a Dahl rock in 1975 ?

The original pet rock came in a box and had some straw added for the comfort of your stony buddy.

These fad pets were found stranded on a Baja Beach in California. And if you adopted one for $3.95, you would also recieve an owners manual with instructions to care for it.







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Frederick Koolhoven F K Series

Invention by design.

Frederick Koolhoven and the F K series of airplanes, like so many other early airplane designs and inventions in aeronautics, offer great insight into the methods of war which have shaped our modern civilization.

Koolhoven started out by buying a Hanriot aircraft in 1910 at the age of 24. From here he would combine his engineering training which he learned while working as an automobile engineer for Minerva Automobile and later the automobile factory called Spyker with his design concepts for air ships.

The Frederick Koolhaven F K Series follows up on his initial design of the Dutch Heidevogel.

Anthony Fokker was another airplane enthusiast from the Netherlands where Kool Haven was operating. Fokker came up with his first airplane called the Spider in 1911. Fokker would go on to dominate in this field in later years but first he had to relocate to a better market and found it in Germany where he founded a factory in Berlin.

FK or Fritz was designing airplanes for a British company called Deperdussin in 1912. In 1914 he moved on to Armstrong Whitsworth Aircraft where his name gained momentous popularity. The Armstrong Withworth Sissit was a single engined biplane and it stands as the F K 1. This airplane never left the prototype stage but set up a series of innovations for fighter aircrafts that would be contributed to the first World War by Armstrong Withworth.

The FK series continued to be produced when Frits returned to the Netherlands from England in 1920. Here he met up with the Fokker who would send him back to work as an automobile engineer for a while.

However within a few years he was back in the aircraft business with some shareholders. By 1938 the Second World War was at the doorsteps of humanity and the Fokker's  operation continued to hold major market shares, the FK series was well received as a war plane.

Frederick Koolhoven died in 1946 and the N V Koolhoven Aeroplanes company became a holdings operation and 10 years later the Frederick Koolhaven FK series legacy ended as the company liquidated it's assets and closed.

Today the FK series lives on in replica models, in full size artifacts or museum pieces, and in pictures.

See Koolhoven Aeroplanes Foundation for an historical pictorial history of the Frederick Koolhaven F K Series.



Aviation expert competitors were putting out similar aircraft designs such as the Bristol Scout, the Martinsyde S1, and the Sopwith Tabloid which were proving to be superior in commerciability.

The FK 1 or single bay tractor biplane was a 1913 design in aviation. 

Armstrong Withworth were commissioned by the Royal Flying Corps and in 1914 WW1 commenced.  

A hero of productive ability

A hero of productive ability. That's how Georges Eastman was described on a youTube video named Happy 150th birthday Georges Eastman.

Why a hero ?

Try his contributions to education. He contributed to the development of several schools in the domain of music, dentistry, medicine. He was a hero of productive ability in Rochester.

Eastman knew how to make gelatine emulsion plates but by discovering that sulphur added to this emulsion could make a much better and longer lasting photo he had an edge on the competition.

He was making money from his inventions and innovations in photography and converting these funds to help his community.

Georges Eastman was born on July 12, 1854. He was not deemed much of an academic during his early schooling. His father moved the family to Rochester when Georges was only five. Here Georges Washington Eastman, the father worked on establishing a College. Perhaps George the son got his inspiration for his heroism in the passing of his father who hadn't had a chance to complete the College project.

The fathers passing left the family poor and George went to work at 3$ weekly for an insurance company. Some years later he tried banking and then grew fond of photography. By the age of 24 he was convinced that he would find a better and simpler process of photography at a time when photographers made their own gelatin emulsion plates.

A cow of an accident wrote the next chapter of the George Eastman story.

He passed away in 1932. The hero of productive ability, the inventor, the marketer, the philanthropist, the visionary, was chronically ill and took his life.

Richard Lovell Edgeworth

Richard Lovell Edgeworth

From 1744 to 1817 this inventor used his engineering knowledge to innovate on mechanical instruments. Lovell was born in Bath Somerset, England and died in Ireland. From a four whealed open carriage to a simple turnip cutter he could think big and small.  Maria Edgeworth was one of his 22 children and she was a novel writer who found inspiration in her inventor father. Richard Lovell Edgewater was married four times.

Some of his inventions

the caterpillar track

a machine to measure the size of a plot of land

velocipede - bicycle, tricycle

pedometer - to measure walking distance

semaphore - signaling device with mechanical moving arms

My father invented plywood

Who wouldn't give a million dollars to say " My father invented plywood " ?

That's part of the foundation behind the inventor Alfred Bernhard Nobel.

Not to be outdone perhaps or just because he was a genius more likely the son of Immanuel and Andriette goes on to invent dynamite and receives an early epithet as "Le marchant de la mort" or "The merchant of Death" from a French newspaper that mistakenly wrote up an obituary about Alfred Nobel. His brother Ludwig had indeed died in 1888.

Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden on October 21, 1833 and died of complication from a stroke in Italy on December 10, 1896.

His father was also the owner of a torpedo factory which he operated out of Saint Petersburg in Russia.

As an academic he started out as a protege of Professor Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin. He followed up by travelling to the US where he furthered is knowledge of chemistry while working for John Ericsson the Swedish-American inventor.

By 1847 Alfred Nobel had thrown his energy towards explosives. In this same year  Ascanio Sobrero discovered nytroglycerine. This substance along with some sawdust likely from the plywood factory led to the invention of dynamite by Alfred while in Krummel, Germany. He received a patent for dynamite in 1867.

This was only one of 355 different patents that he was awarded.

Long story short, Nobels inventions made him filthy rich. Part of his fortune was a company called Bofors, a major armaments factory located in Sweden. This company was founded some years earlier but the Boofors legacy within the iron industry spanned back to no less than 1646. Nobel owned Bofors for a few year from 1894 to his death in 1896.

Today Nobel's name is associated with high achievement and creative people are honoured with the Nobel prize. Sometimes the prize is controversially awarded such as was the case with the recent judgement of awarding serving US President Obama with the Nobel Peace Award.

The money left behind in trust by Alfred Nobel is the foundation of the Nobel Prize and it was a last will and testament of the inventor of dynamite.

My father invented plywood. Le Marchand de la Mort est mort. Everything is a bit controversial in it's own way. As another US president once said while caught up in controversy, "It depends on the meaning of what is, is."

Inventor William Kelly

Who is the inventor William Kelly ?

The pneumatic process of steelmaking was an invention brought forth by this American ironmaster Kelly and an associate named Bessemer
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August 22, 1811 - February 11, 1888

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In the industrial age this novelty steel was more affordable and was well accepted by builders of bridges, buildings, and other foundations. The years previous to the invention of air infusion into molten metal steelworkers worked mostly with cast iron.

Kelly was born in Pittsburgh. His father owned a foundry. Upon graduating from Metallurgy studies at Western U in Pennsylvania he opts to go into business with his brother and brother in law. They form McShane and Kelly in a warehouse which later burns down.

In 1846 the two brothers purchase a iron working factory in Eddyville and move to Eddyville, Kentucky in 1847. This new company in the iron industry is renamed Kelly & Company and this is where William Kelly begins experimenting with the process of air boiling steel. Henry Bessemer was working on a similar process and beat Kelly to a patent. Another contender for this inventive method of blasting iron into steel was approached by Robert Forester Mushet.

By some accounts Kelly reports that insider information might have brought his secret into the labs of Bessemer.

Regardless, Kelly did receive patent no. 17, 628 in 1857 for an innovative iron industry product which he described as

 " Blowing blast of air, either hot or cold, up or through a mass of liquid iron, the oxygen in the air, combining with the carbon in the iron, causing a greatly increased heat and boiling commotion in the fluid mass and decarbonizing and refining the ore."

This patent was a joint ownership with Bessemer.

Bessemer Steel got the best of the steel industry market but the faith of both parties was not so great.

In 1871 Kelly's patent was renewed by the US Patent Office while the rights of ownership of the two others was rejected.

Kelly sold the patent rights in later years due to financial instabilities. He relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, and went on to work as an ax manufacturer, with interest in real estate and banking.