- Ether
- Fax Machine
- Iron Steam Ship
- Ice Cream Maker
Ether
Before ether, surgery was so painful, people would sometimes rather die than deal with it. Crawford Long rediscovered ether as an anesthetic (a drug used to lower pain in surgery). Ether is a chemical that makes people forget an injury if it is inhaled before the injury. For a long time no one knew for a long time who actually discovered it first, but Long had been decided on. It spread rapidly after its first public demonstration. Ether has been replaced with a lot of other anesthetics since then.
Fax Machine
Before blueprints, the only way to make copies of anything was by hand. Blueprints were a step up, but there was still room for improvement. Alexander Bain invented the fax machine after inventing the electric clock. He tried to apply electricity to some practical applications, and the fax machine was one of his results. Fax machines used to run sound over a telephone line and receiving unit would transmit the sounds into words and pictures. Also, the fax machine led to the digital scanner, which can turn paper documents into emails, and those emails can go further than the longest telephone line in the world, and also to more people, more simply. Bain improved his own version, and other inventors covered it too.
Iron Steam Ship
Up until the iron steam ship, there was no good way to connect Europe to America, except the long, treacherous, 40-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Marc Isambard Brunel invented the iron steam ship after discovering that a large steam ship is more efficient than a small one. He built the S.S. GREAT BRITAIN for trips across the Atlantic to America, and across the Indian and Southern Oceans to Australia. The 40 day trip to America was now 15 days. This spurred settlement.
Ice Cream Maker
Ice cream and its ancestors was expensive treats for a long time. Nancy Johnson invented the first simple ice cream maker in America. You have ice and salt, which you put in the outer part of the maker. You put your ingredients in the middle, and when you crank, a blade un-sticks the ice cream from the wall of the chamber. after a few minutes you take the ice cream out of the chamber, and serve it. The ice cream maker makes making ice cream faster and easier. Nancy Johnson sold her ice cream patent.