John Logie Baird: Inventor of the first television (and also socks)
Today, Google used a doodle to remind us that the mechanical television was invented 90 years ago.
In reality, 1926 marks the first public demonstration of the technology. Its inventor, John Logie Baird, first successfully transmitted a grayscale image in October of 1925. Also called the televisor, the mechanical television relied on a mechanical scanning device like a rotating disc to generate video and receive the picture, as opposed to the electronic scanning methods of modern TVs.
But despite being known for pioneering modern television—and broadcasting was certainly Baird’s life and legacy—the Scotsman was responsible for a slew of other inventions, many created initially from simple household items.
At one point, Baird attempted to make diamonds out of carbon and a lot of electricity. His job at the time was to repair electrical breakdowns, so he simply borrowed electricity from his employer. The scheme obviously didn’t work and took down Glasgow’s electricity supply in the process.
He also invented a glass razor, which may have been inspired from his days as a razor blade salesman. The new razor didn’t rust, but it also had an unfortunate tendency to shatter, and never took off.
One of his more successful pre-television inventions was the undersock (or the Baird undersock). Baird had notoriously cold feet, and he found that a sock sprinkled with borax wicked the extra moisture and kept his feet warm.
After placing an ad in a local magazine, he made just one sale. But some clever marketing (which involved walking around with a plywood tank) helped Baird find his niche: Soldiers serving in the trenches in World War I, where constantly wet conditions often led to trench foot and even amputation.
Thanks to testimonials from soldiers, the sale of undersocks really took off. This allowed Baird to quit his job—a move which put him on the long and winding path towards inventing the mechanical television.
Benjamin Franklin: Founding Father of swim fins?
Before his work on electricity, mapping the Gulf Steam and becoming one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin considered opening a swimming school.
Franklin, who learned to swim in Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, was an avid swimmer. On a 1726 trip to England, when he was 19, Franklin leaped off a boat in the Thames River and proceeded to swim about 3.5 miles from Chelsea to Blackfriars.
Earlier in his life, in a bid to improve his technique, Franklin invented a pair of swim fins. While modern iterations go on the feet, Franklin’s fins consisted of two wooden pallets worn on the hands. They were successful in improving his speed but were never commercially popular.
Alfred Ely Beach: Proving that it’s not that hard to build a secret subway in New York City
Alfred Ely Beach, an American publisher, inventor and patent lawyer first gained notoriety when he bought a floundering six-month-old publication called Scientific American.
Aside from running what would become one of the world’s most prestigious science magazines, Beach was also a massive supporter of the pneumatic tube—a system that propels cylinders with compressed air. He originally saw it as a quick way to deliver mail in cities. But after successful pneumatic train tests in England proved that they were safe for people, Beach set his sights much, much higher: He wanted to build one for public transportation under Broadway in New York City.
But opposition from the infamous William Magear Tweed—a New York political boss whose name is now synonymous with corruption and who managed to triple the city’s debt during his time in power—forced Beach to go underground, literally.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Beach obtained a charter for a 4-foot pneumatic tube but actually dug an 8-foot tunnel 300 feet under Broadway, funding most of it on his own dime.
Beach’s pneumatic tube, which ran from Warren Street to Murray Street, was officially unveiled on February 26th, 1870, to great accolades. Sadly, Tweed’s opposition and the rise of the altogether better electric train eventually stymied expansion of the pneumatic system.
But Beach’s vision isn’t totally dead—Elon Musk’s rumored Hyperloop is a callback to pneumatic power.
