Tip 1: Soap: history and modernity

Tip 1: Soap: history and modernity



Soap for the first time began to cook even in ancient times. Therefore, scientists can only put forward hypotheses about who really created the soap. Of course, in ancient times soap was significantly different from modern.





Soap: history and modernity

















History of soap

One version ascribes the discovery of soap to tribesgalls. The Roman scholar Pliny in his works told that the Gauls used a special ointment for hair cleansing and skin treatment. They made it from bacon and beech. With the help of this ointment galls also dyed hair. According to this researcher, the Gallic tribes in the second century AD adopted the soap recipe from the Romans, adding to it and their own ingredients. In the Roman Empire, ash was used as soap, which was brewed in boiling water with the addition of the juice of the soap plant. According to another historical version, the invention of soap belongs still to the ancient Romans. From this theory it follows that, after the rain, a mixture of ash from the fires and fat from the animals sacrificed fell into the Tiber River. As a result, the water began to foam, and the clothes that were washed in the waters of this river, it became better to clean. However, for hygiene purposes, the Romans began using soap only 167 AD. As the Roman physician Galen wrote, soap was then made from a solution of lime with ash. A foam appeared due to the addition of fat. Later, the soap profession appeared. However, these theories were nevertheless refuted. During the excavations, Sumerian tablets made of clay were found. They eloquently described the whole process of cooking soap, its discovery and creation. And since the tablets were dated 2500 BC, it means that neither the Romans nor the Gauls were the first inventors of soap. A second invention of soap occurred in England and France in the thirteenth century. However, it was an individual preparation of soap for members of noble families. This procedure was trusted only by pharmacists. They became the inventors of soap with backlash. Bathing at the time was considered an obligatory procedure.

Modern history of soap

At present, the useful properties of soapare undeniable by history itself. However, today consumers and their compilers began to return to the ancient soap recipes, which was made only by hand and using exclusively natural ingredients. The soap-making process becomes a mysterious procedure. For individual customers, soap can be made according to an individual recipe. A piece of handmade soap is now an exclusive work, for the success of which you need natural oils for the base and essential oils, as well as natural extracts.
























Tip 2: Where, when and by whom was invented the ballpoint pen



Ballpoint pen invented a long time differentpeople in different countries. The correct principle of action was found by the American John Laud, the first workable model was made by the Hungarian László Bíró, and Japanese engineers created the perfect design.





The device of the writing unit of the ballpoint pen







The history of the ballpoint pen is not as simple as it may seem, and is much older than officially documented.

Prehistory

The idea of ​​a ball-writing unit working onpasty ink on an oil base, can be traced to ... Holland XVII in! The sailors of the then "mistress of the seas" needed writing materials unbreakable, not spilling, and which could be used in a storm when rolling. The Netherlands was almost the first-born of the European industrial revolution. However, the level of development of the then engineering and chemical technology did not allow the creation of a device suitable for the needs of practice. Like the marine chronometer for precise longitude determination. Hans Christian Huygens himself worked on it in vain, but the idea, true in principle, was realized only in the XIX century. Then, when the accuracy of metal working reached an acceptable value, and chemists could accurately develop substances of complex composition, the principle of the ball-point pen was patented. The exact name, date, and country - October 30, 1888, John Laud, USA. Laud correctly formulated the main highlight of the "ball": the forces of viscous friction and surface tension in a thick liquid will not allow the ball to press into the upper neck of his hole, and close the ink flow. Also, Laud defined the physicochemical requirements for ink: they must be thixotropic, that is, they should be diluted by mechanical loads-friction, pressure. The ball-writing unit will never dry out only when it is filled with thixotropic inks. A good example of a thixotropic substance is pine rosin. If you move a finger with pressure by its piece, then at first you feel a roughness, as if you are driving on a solid body. But then the finger begins to slide, like paraffin or soap, although the piece has not warmed to softening yet.

Start

Further, the efforts of the inventors went more along the wayimprovements in the composition of ink. The first efficient construction, suitable for mass production, was created in 1938 by Hungarian journalist László József Bíró, who lived in Argentina. In Argentina, ballpoint pens are still called "biromas". However, the Anglo-Saxons dispute his priority, referring to the US patent of June 10, 1943, issued to Milton Reynolds. Reynolds, it seems, did not know about the handle of Biro, and developed a similar design and ink himself. He worked for the US Air Force and England. Their bomber armies flew at high altitudes, the hermocabine was not there then, the pilots spent many hours in oxygen masks. Ordinary pens with low atmospheric pressure flowed, and using pencils was inconvenient. In essence, there is no reason for a patent dispute, the "ball" was invented by Biro. But it is unattractive that the priority of Biro was disputed on the grounds that he was a citizen of fascist Hungary and lived in a formally neutral but secretly and actively assisting Argentina to Hitler. Of course, no one denies and does not detract from the crimes of Nazism, but technology is not to blame for them. Next, the "ball" was simplified and cheapened by Marcel Bich in France in 1953. He suggested carrying out the ampule with ink - with thickened walls, and use it as the body of the handle. So appeared widespread until now disposable cheap pens BIC, only the surname of the inventor is written already in the English transcription. For quite a long time ballpoint pens were forbidden to use in the elementary classes of schools. They were still not very well written, often clogged with villi from the paper, and the kids, who immediately started to write with "balls", permanently tore off the handwriting.

Modernity

The last point in improving the ballhandles were put by the specialists of the Japanese company Ohto Co in 1963. They started the rolling hole in which the ball was placed, not circular in cross section, but in the form of three converging channels. The design of the writing unit of a modern ballpoint pen is shown in the figure. Such a pen can write on almost any ink-retaining material, and it does not clog, even if it draws a large clout of cotton. Unfortunately, the names of inventors are unknown: according to Japanese corporate rules, all intellectual property developed by the company belongs to the firm. A genuine inventor, under the threat of severe punishment, can not claim his authorship even in private conversation.

Improvements

In 1984 another Japanese company, Sakura Color Products Corp., replaced the oil ink with gel synthetic ones, while increasing the ball diameter to 0.7 mm. So there was a pen-roller, a sister of a "ball". Roller can be written literally without pressure, even on glass, polished metal and wet cardboard, and the ink trace is clearer than from the "ball." With the beginning of space flights, astronauts encountered a problem: handles, including ball-type ones, were not written in weightlessness, and graphite pencils gave chips and conductive dust. Soviet cosmonauts used wax pencils for a long time, American astronauts, up to flights to the moon - special mechanical ones, $ 100 apiece at that time. However, back in 1967, entrepreneur Paul Fisher offered NASA his Zero Gravity Pen, or Space Pen (a zero-gravure pen or cosmic pen). The ball was made of tungsten carbide (we know it as a winner). The entire writing unit was manufactured with precision precision. The ampoule with ink (cartridge) is hermetically sealed, it contains nitrogen at a pressure of 2.4 atm. Inks with a pronounced thixotropy, they are separated from the gas by a viscous moving stopper. The development of the handle of the model AG7 Space Pen is one of NASA's legends, an excuse for his accusations and anecdotes about him. AG7 has managed to ... $ 1,000,000! Although Fisher's prototype has not caused any claims of astronauts. Currently, the widely available models cost from $ 6 to $ 100. Write on anything in the temperature range from -30 to +120 degrees Celsius in the air, in a vacuum and under water. Guaranteed service life is 120 years.

So who, after all?

In the history of great inventions can be traceda clear tendency: as a rule, it is impossible to name the name of one particular inventor. Exceptions, like the inventor of Charles Goodyear's rubber, literally at random "puffed up" sulfur in raw rubber, are extremely rare. Experts in most of their priority discussions simply avoid. S. Popov and Guglielmo Marconi, for example, did not address their priority issues in the correspondence, they discussed the problems of radio engineering. Only once Marconi said in a public report: his English patent gives him the right to commercial use of radio in the UK, and the first radio message in the world was passed and accepted by Popov. So with a ballpoint pen. It will be most correct to say: it is the fruit of the many years of collective creativity of people who worked to meet the basic needs of mankind.