Strange inventions you haven't seen for sure

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

More than once or twice the Kramola portal talked about inventions that could change the world, but for some reason they did not. There are several more similar developments in this article. Some of them will seem ridiculous, some are too breakthrough for our time, let's be surprised. And we will start with Holman's absurdity.

Holman's absurdity

In the late 19th century, America's railroad business, which was developing its railroad network at an unprecedented rate, was so competitive that small companies were closed one after another. William Holman's little company was doing very badly. And then William came up with a truly ingenious move - instead of developing new systems for steam locomotives, he decided to surprise everyone by complicating the design of the old one.

Holman bought an ordinary steam locomotive “for the last money” and “improved” it - the wheels of the resulting mechanism stood on additional bogies, the clutch system transferred the force from them to the driving wheels, but those were already on the rails. The inventor received a patent for his invention in 1895.

The amazing steam locomotive looked very unusual, the front wheels were located in two floors, the rear ones were in three. Holman's advertisements all over America extolled the "newest steam locomotive" as best they could. They promised a three-fold increase in speed, a decrease in wheel slip by increasing the points of contact with the rails, a reduction in coal consumption … And, the most attractive - any old steam locomotive Holman's company was ready to convert into a new one!

The miracle that appeared on the New Jersey railroad in 1887 attracted attention with its strange appearance, aggressive advertising and blind belief of people that this is, without a doubt, the future of steam locomotive building.

On the wave of success, the "inventor" issued shares for a huge amount at that time - ten million dollars and sold almost everything! Only a year later, the experts involved, horrified, presented evidence that all the promised advantages of the Holman steam locomotive were pure hoax: there could be no increase in speed and a decrease in coal consumption, the design of the wheels only became more complicated. And William Holman disappeared from the business.

The amazing steam locomotive was rebuilt and operated for several more years under the name "Absurd Holman".

But that's not all! In 1894, Holman returned with a new company and a new idea for steam locomotive carts. Three locomotives of the "new system" were ordered, but only one was completed. When the next batch of shares was sold out profitably, the inventor disappeared, now forever.

Rotary steam engine of Tverskoy

The creator of the first rotary steam engine, which was used for this work, was the Russian mechanical engineer Nikolai Nikolaevich Tverskoy. Throughout his life, the inventor connected with the sea, where he rose to the rank of officer, and where he tried to use his devices.

The very first invention (it was, of course, a ship) Tverskoy proposed to equip his own design with an engine based on a rotary machine powered by a boiler with a sealed furnace. The fuel, however, was offered "unpopular": liquid ammonia, lime and sulfuric acid. Nevertheless, the project impressed the representatives of the Technical Committee and even received a grand of one thousand rubles "for the development of the idea."

And the idea evolved: two years later, Tverskoy offered his "rotary machine", which today can be called the first real rotary steam engine, which was not only a working model, but actually "worked". The car turned out to be strong, durable, and efficient enough. And also had a powerful torque from the bottom, and a rotational speed from one thousand to three thousand revolutions per minute.

The use of such a device did not require a gearbox and made it possible to connect directly through a shaft to a dynamo or a pump, or a propeller … "Standard". The emperor himself, after inspecting the installation, ordered the support of N. N. Tverskoy.

The coming 20th century brought oblivion to this amazing mechanism. Steam engines with pistons were easier to use, steam turbines developed more power. And, despite a number of advantages, the "rotary" machines were forgotten.

Boilerplate - Victorian era robot

At the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century, the very "Victorian" era "about which steampunkers and lovers of adventure novels like to remember, the first mentions of" robots "appear (recall that the term itself appeared only in 1920).

The beginning should, apparently, be considered the release in 1865 of the book "The Giant Hunter, or Steam Man on the Prairie", in which the author Edward Ellis talked about the inventor who designed the "steam man". After that, all the real inventors and "homemade products" simply had to make something like that.

At the very end of the century, in 1893, Archibald Campion, having spent five years on his work, shows the public a miracle device - the Boilerplate robot. It happened at an international exhibition in Colombia.

Since childhood, the inventor was immersed in the atmosphere of the unusual - his father ran a company that produces mechanical computers in Chicago. Archie's choice is obvious - he studies hard, and then gets a job in order to be closer to technical innovations and to gain experience in the Chicago telephone company.

There he not only works well, but begins to come up with his own improvements, which he patents. These are specially designed pipelines and electrical systems used, in particular, by Westinghouse Electric. It is the patent licensing royalties that allow Archibald Campion to make a fortune and retire to a private laboratory where Boilerplate is born.

Campion confesses that he created his robot so that people do not die in military conflicts, i.e. speaks directly of him as a mechanical soldier. For such an invention, Kempion was inspired by a story that happened to him in childhood - one of his relatives died in the war.

Well, did you believe in this robot? And in vain. American journalist Paul Guinen, with whom this whole story began, admitted that in 1999 he invented this amazing robot himself. This story is very similar to a medieval bicycle, sensational materials about which were also swept by major media, take a look at this on our website, it will be interesting: Test" resistance to manipulation".

Lukyanov's hydrointegrator - analog "water" computer

Who has heard of such a device? But this is the world's first analog "computer" that could, for example, solve partial differential equations. Mathematics and mathematical physics - a hydrointegrator could do a lot.

This mechanism was created by Vladimir Sergeevich Lukyanov, an outstanding Soviet scientist. Lukyanov felt the need for such a device when the young scientists faced problems on the construction of the railway: the concrete cracked. In the 1920s and 1930s, this was a real disaster for reinforced concrete structures.

Then Vladimir Sergeevich suggested that the matter was in temperature stresses (which can be described using differential equations, but calculations using such equations would take an awful lot of time). And, in the process of developing his version, Lukyanov drew attention to the similarity of equations for describing heat transfer and equations for describing the flow of liquids.

And he modeled the first process using the second! The water was supposed to "simulate" the temperature. In 1936, Lukyanov created the IG-1 hydrointegrator to solve exactly this problem - to calculate the temperature stresses of concrete. The inventor created the next model in 1941 - there it was possible to solve "two-dimensional" problems, and later a "three-dimensional" hydrointegrator appeared. Moreover, the devices began to be mass-produced. And even supply abroad - to China, Czechoslovakia, Poland …

With the help of such mechanisms, calculations were made for truly great projects: the Karakum canal, the BAM, the Saratov hydroelectric power station … One hundred and fifteen organizations in our country were equipped with Lukyanov's devices, which worked until the 80s, successfully coping with tasks that were "too complex" then for digital COMPUTER. Visibility, ease of use and "construction" of the device - these are the main advantages of the IGL.

Today, two such devices can be seen at the Moscow Poly. The mechanisms are really wonderful, made by a talented inventor and have brought great benefits, they deservedly take their place in the museum of analog machines.