Inventions that Russians "forgot" to patent

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-10 19:46

The ideas of Russian inventors transformed the world, but: somewhere our "Kulibins" lacked agility, once they were ashamed to disturb "important" people, something prevented them from getting a patent.

Automobile

In 1751, Leonty Shamshurenkov, a skillful mechanic from among the people, made a "self-running wheelchair" according to the state order, moving without any extraneous force.

Shamshurenkov was awarded fifty rubles. The further fate of the carriage is unknown to historians.

18 years later, in 1769, the Frenchman Nicola Cugno presented a similar device to the whole world. It's a shame, the whole world knows the Frenchman Cugno, and the name of our designer has been forgotten!

Locomotive

The first in Russia two-cylinder vacuum steam engine, simply speaking a steam locomotive, was designed by mechanic Ivan Polzunov in 1763.

James Watt was present at the tests of the car, which took place in Barnaul just a year later. He really liked the idea …

In April 1784 in London he managed to obtain a patent for a steam engine with a universal engine. A member of the commission for the acceptance of Polzunov's invention, James Watt is considered its inventor.

Narcosis

The phrase "I woke up - gypsum" - perfectly illustrates the medical practice of Nikolai Pirogov.

In 1850, this great surgeon, for the first time in the history of medicine, began to operate on the wounded with ether anesthesia in the field. In total, Pirogov performed about 10,000 operations under ether anesthesia. He was also the first in Russian medicine to start using plaster of Paris to treat fractures.

A bike

In 1801, the serf inventor Efim Artamonov at the Nizhniy Tagil plant built the first two-wheeled all-metal pedal scooter, which would later be called a bicycle …

Then, in 1818, when a patent for this invention was issued to the German Baron Karl Drais!

Robot

The great Russian mathematician Pafnutiy Chebyshev succeeded in 1860, as it seemed incredible then: to calculate and develop "the design of the straight-line movement of mechanisms without wheelsets, according to the step principle."

The apparatus was called a plantigrade machine. This car can be considered with complete confidence the grandmother of today's Japanese robots!

Radio

The chronicle of the Russian history of radio looks like this: on May 7, 1895, Alexander Popov for the first time publicly demonstrated the reception and transmission of radio signals at a distance.

In 1896 he transmitted the world's first radiotelegram. And already in 1897 - he established the possibility of radar using a wireless telegraph. However, in Europe and America, it is believed that the radio was invented by the Italian Guglielmo Marconi in the same 1895. And try to prove the opposite!

Incandescent lamp

The device known as "Edison's light bulb" is nothing more than an improved invention of Alexander Lodygin.

A member of the Russian Technical Society, back in 1870, proposed using tungsten filaments in lamps and twisting a filament in the form of a spiral. Edison did this only in 1879, which did not prevent him from obtaining a patent for an incandescent lamp. Sergey Pakhomov

12 Russian inventions that turned the world upside down

Electrotype

We so often come across products that look like metal, but in fact are made of plastic and are only covered with a layer of metal that we no longer notice them. There are also metal products coated with a layer of another metal - for example, nickel. And there are metal products that are actually a copy of a non-metallic base. We owe all these miracles to the genius of the Russian physicist Boris Jacobi - by the way, the elder brother of the great German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacobi.

Jacobi's passion for physics resulted in the creation of the world's first electric motor with direct rotation of the shaft, but one of his most important discoveries was electroforming - the process of metal deposition on a form that allows you to create perfect copies of the original object. In this way, for example, sculptures on the naves of St. Isaac's Cathedral were created. Electroforming can be used even at home.

The electroforming method and its derivatives have found numerous applications. With its help, what has not been done and is still not doing, right down to the clichés of state banks. Jacobi received the Demidov Prize for this discovery in Russia, and a large gold medal in Paris. Perhaps made by this very method too.

Electric car

In the last third of the 19th century, the world was seized by a uniform electric fever. Therefore, electric cars were made by all and sundry. This was the "golden age" of electric cars. The cities were smaller and the 60km mileage on a single charge was perfectly acceptable. One of the enthusiasts was the engineer Ippolit Romanov, who by 1899 had created several models of electric cabs.

But this is not even the main thing. Romanov invented and created in metal an electric omnibus for 17 passengers, developed a scheme of city routes for these progenitors of modern trolleybuses, and received a work permit. True, at your own personal commercial risk.

The inventor could not find the required amount, much to the delight of competitors - horse-drawn car owners and numerous cabbies. However, the working electromnibus aroused great interest among other inventors and remained in the history of technology as an invention killed by the municipal bureaucracy.

Pipeline transport

It's hard to say what is considered the first real pipeline. We can recall the proposal of Dmitry Mendeleev, dated back to 1863, when he proposed to deliver oil from production sites to the seaport at the Baku oil fields, not in barrels, but through pipes. Mendeleev's proposal was not accepted, and two years later the first pipeline was built by the Americans in Pennsylvania. As always, when something is done abroad, they start doing it in Russia as well. Or at least allocate money.

Arc welding

Nikolay Benardos comes from Novorossiysk Greeks who lived on the Black Sea coast. He is the author of more than a hundred inventions, but went down in history thanks to electric arc welding of metals, which he patented in 1882 in Germany, France, Russia, Italy, England, USA and other countries, calling his method "electrohephaestus".

Benardos' method spread across the planet like wildfire. Instead of fiddling with rivets-bolts, it was enough to just weld pieces of metal. However, it took about half a century for welding to finally take the leading position among assembly methods. A seemingly simple method is to create an electric arc between the consumable electrode in the hands of the welder and the pieces of metal that need to be welded. But the solution is elegant. True, it did not help the inventor to meet his old age with dignity; he died in poverty in 1905 in an almshouse.

Multi-engine aircraft

Ilya Muromets multi-engine aircraft

It's hard to believe now, but a little over a hundred years ago, it was believed that a multi-engine aircraft would be extremely difficult and dangerous to fly. The absurdity of these statements was proved by Igor Sikorsky, who in the summer of 1913 flew into the air a twin-engine aircraft, called Le Grand, and then its four-engine version - "Russian Knight".

On February 12, 1914, the four-engine "Ilya Muromets" took off in the air at the training ground of the Russian-Baltic plant in Riga. There were 16 passengers on board the four-engine aircraft - an absolute record at that time. The plane had a comfortable cabin, heating, a bath with a toilet and … a promenade deck. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of the aircraft in the summer of 1914, Igor Sikorsky made a flight on the Ilya Muromets from St. Petersburg to Kiev and back, setting a world record. During World War I, these aircraft became the world's first heavy bombers.

Helicopter and quad

Quadrolet of Botezat

Igor Sikorsky also created the first production helicopter, the R-4, or S-47, which Vought-Sikorsky began producing in 1942. It was the first and only helicopter to take part in World War II, in the Pacific theater of operations, as a staff transport and for the evacuation of the wounded.

However, it is unlikely that the US military department would have let Igor Sikorsky boldly experiment with helicopter technology if it were not for the amazing rotary-wing aircraft of Georgy Botezat, who in 1922 began testing his helicopter, which was ordered by the American military. The helicopter was the first to actually take off from the ground and could stay in the air. The possibility of vertical flight has thus been proven.

The Botezat helicopter was called the "flying octopus" because of its interesting design. It was a quadrocopter: four propellers were placed at the ends of metal trusses, and the control system was located in the center - just like in modern radio-controlled drones.

Color photo

Color photography appeared at the end of the 19th century, but the images of that time were characterized by a shift in one or another part of the spectrum. Russian photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky was one of the best in Russia and, like many of his colleagues around the world, dreamed of achieving the most natural color reproduction.

In 1902, Prokudin-Gorsky studied color photography in Germany with Adolf Mite, who by that time was the world star of color photography. Returning home, Prokudin-Gorsky began to improve the chemistry of the process and in 1905 he patented his own sensitizer, that is, a substance that increases the sensitivity of photographic plates. As a result, he managed to obtain negatives of exceptional quality.

Prokudin-Gorsky organized a number of expeditions across the territory of the Russian Empire, photographing famous people (for example, Leo Tolstoy), and peasants, temples, landscapes, factories, thus creating an amazing collection of colored Russia. Demonstrations by Prokudin-Gorsky aroused great interest in the world and pushed other specialists to develop new principles of color printing.

Parachute

Gleb Kotelnikov with his invention

As you know, the idea of a parachute was proposed by Leonardo da Vinci, and several centuries later, with the advent of aeronautics, regular jumps from under balloons began: parachutes were suspended under them in a partially open state. In 1912, the American Barry was able to leave the plane with such a parachute and, importantly, he landed alive.

The problem was solved by who in what way. For example, American Stefan Banich made a parachute in the form of an umbrella with telescopic spokes that were attached around the pilot's torso. This design worked, although it was still not very convenient. But the engineer Gleb Kotelnikov decided that it was all about the material, and made his parachute out of silk, packing it in a compact knapsack. Kotelnikov patented his invention in France on the eve of the First World War.

But besides the knapsack parachute, he came up with another interesting thing. He tested the deployment of the parachute, opening it while the car was moving, which literally stood rooted to the spot. So Kotelnikov invented a brake parachute as an emergency braking system for aircraft.

Thereminvox

The history of this musical instrument, which emits strange, "cosmic" sounds, began with the development of alarm systems. It was then that the descendant of the French Huguenots, Lev Theremin, in 1919, drew attention to the fact that a change in the position of the body near the antennas of oscillatory circuits affects the loudness and tonality of the sound in the control dynamics.

Everything else was a matter of technique. And marketing: Theremin showed his musical instrument to the leader of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, an enthusiast of the cultural revolution, and then demonstrated it in the States.

The life of Lev Termen was difficult, he knew both ups, fame, and camps. His musical instrument lives on to this day. The coolest version is Moog Etherwave. Theremin can be heard among the most advanced and quite pop singers. This is truly an invention of all time.

Color television

Vladimir Zvorykin was born into a merchant family in the city of Murom. From childhood, the boy had the opportunity to read a lot and stage all sorts of experiments - this passion for science was encouraged by his father in every way. Having started his studies in St. Petersburg, he learned about cathode-ray tubes and came to the conclusion that the future of television lies in electronic circuits.

Zvorykin was lucky, he left Russia on time in 1919. He worked for many years and at the beginning of the 30s patented a transmitting television tube - an iconoscope. Even earlier, he designed one of the options for the receiving tube - a kinescope. And then, already in the 1940s, he split the light beam into blue, red and green colors and got color TV.

In addition, Zvorykin developed a night vision device, an electron microscope and many more interesting things. He has been inventing all his long life and even in retirement continued to amaze with his new solutions.

Video recorder

The AMPEX company was founded in 1944 by the Russian emigrant Alexander Mikhailovich Ponyatov, who took three letters of his initials for the name and added EX - short for "excellent". At first, Ponyatov produced sound recording equipment, but in the early 50s he focused on the development of video recording.

By that time, there were already experiments in recording television images, but they required a huge amount of tape. Poniatov and colleagues suggested recording the signal across the tape using a rotating head unit. On November 30, 1956, the first recorded CBS news was broadcast. And in 1960, the company, represented by its leader and founder, received an Oscar for outstanding contribution to the technical equipment of the film and television industry.

Fate brought Alexander Ponyatov together with interesting people. He was a competitor to Zworykin, Ray Dolby, the creator of the famous noise reduction system, worked with him, and the famous Bing Crosby was one of the first clients and investors. And one more thing: by order of Ponyatov, birches were necessarily planted near any office - in memory of the Motherland.

Tetris

A long time ago, 30 years ago, the Pentamino puzzle was popular in the USSR: it was necessary to place various figures consisting of five squares on a square lined field. Collections of problems were even published, and the results were discussed.

From a mathematical point of view, this puzzle was an excellent test for the computer. And so a researcher at the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences Alexei Pazhitnov wrote such a program for his computer "Electronics 60". But the power was not enough, and Alexey removed one cube from the figures, that is, made a "tetrimino". Well, then the idea came to make the figures fall into the "glass". This is how Tetris was born.

It was the first computer game because of the Iron Curtain, and for many people the first computer game in general. And although many new toys have already appeared, Tetris still attracts with its seeming simplicity and real complexity.

P. S. 80% of inventions belong to the Slavs

The idea that everything in the world was invented by Americans and Europeans is being introduced to today's youth, as well as to the older generation, through the brainwashing and substitution of information. The Russians have never created anything and are not able to create anything. All the best and necessary things were created by the Americans and Europeans, and the Russians just buy everything from them. This is the greatest LIE! In fact, 80% of all world inventions belong to the Slavs (Rus).