- Rotary Printing Press
- Kerosene
- Antiseptics
- Gas Mask
Rotary Printing Press
The printing press‘ use had already spread and was being used worldwide. Improvements on Gutenberg’s invention included adding a handle, and replacing the wood frame with an iron one. Richard Hoe had lots of experience with the printing press. Hoe invented the rotary printing press from this experience. The rotary press puts type on a drum, and paper is always being run through the press so that it gets stamped on by the type. It was powered by steam, and it was overall, very effective and efficient. The new press’ use spread quickly, and so newspapers were soon spreading across the country, and then across the world.
Kerosene
Kerosene was discovered before 1300 by Al-Razi, but was then lost to time. Abraham Gesner reinvented kerosene as a clear fuel that was extracted from coal in the 1800’s. Petroleum was also discovered to contain kerosene, and so kerosene could be extracted from petroleum, as well as coal. Kerosene is used in jet-fuel (✈ï¸-⛽), as well as heaters and lamps.The use of kerosene spread quickly, thanks to Rockefeller, who invented Standard Oil Co. and became the richest man in the American history due to kerosene sales.
Antiseptics
Ignaz Semmelweis was a doctor at the Vienna General Hospital in Austria. Here there were two clinics for ladies giving birth. One clinic had a very high death rate, of at least 10% of all women that came in. Clinic 2 had a less than 4% death rate. Why? That was the question Semmelweis became determined to answer. He eliminated everything but the staff as the problem. So he examined the staff’s jobs. He found the difference between the 1st and 2nd clinic. The first clinic (the high death rate one) had people who dealt with and dissected dead bodies. The 2nd did not. Semmelweis thought that there was some sort of disease on the corpses, and that was being transferred to the women, killing them and sometimes their babies. Semmelweis thought that he could get rid of the disease by washing hands in a chlorine mixture. The first clinic’s death rate dropped once hand washing was incorporated. Semmelweis had trouble getting other doctors to believe his theory, but eventually the problem was solved.
Gas Mask
Most people know that humans need oxygen to survive. If you breathe in too much of a bad air, like smoke or dust, you can’t get enough oxygen, and your life is in danger. The gas mask filters the bad air out and leaves only oxygen behind. There is a kind of filter in the mask that lets oxygen through, but not other particles. This is very helpful in mining and firefighting. Before it, firefighters could only get so close for so long, and mining was very unpleasant. The gas mask was originally intended for mining, but later spread to the army to avoid gas bombs in WWI. Gas masks were implemented into firefighting. US soldiers are trained to use gas masks in boot camp to protect against chemical warfare.