Man and His Quest for Energy

A Story for Everyone

Professor J S Rao

President Academics

Kumaraguru College of Technology

Coimbatore
About 15000 years ago, the ice age In tropical and temperate forest
ended and men began to move around and regions, Paleolithic tools were chipped to
venture out protect themselves and gather food by
killing animals.

In this period, man found that a section

of the tree trunk was able to move under
gravity because it was round.

If the branches and twigs of the trunk

were removed, the speed of the rolling
log improved. The sledge was invented as
a forerunner for the cart.
Men then began to combine the roller
and the sledge. As the sledge moved
forward over the first roller, a second
roller was placed under the front end to
carry the load when it moved off the
first roller.
With the newly acquired skills of
mobility men began to settle and develop
agriculture 10000 years ago; Stone tools
became highly polished and varied in this
period of Neolithic or New Stone age.

People began to settle and built During this time the slow potter’s
villages 5000 years ago as in ancient wheel, was invented by Egyptians which
Indus Valley Civilization. developed into the fast wheel, first
used at Ur in Mesopotamia.
The wheel is probably the most to automobiles
important mechanical invention of all
time. From tiny watch gears

to jet engines and computer disk drives, the principle

is the same.
The first use of the wheel for
transportation was probably on
Mesopotamian chariots in 3200 BC.
1500 years ago the wheel became
widely used for war machines. The
grinding wheel was introduced in
Arabia that greatly improved the
effect of bladed combat weapons.
The wheel was furthered and improved
by the Egyptians around 2000 BC, who
made wheels with spokes. In Ancient
India, chariots with spoked wheels
were also discovered around 1500 B.C.
In ancient times, Religion and
superstition ruled in different parts of
the world.
There is very little or no evidence that
suggests philosophical or scientific
thinking existed till the tracing of
Algebra to ancient Babylonian
mathematicians roughly 4000 years
ago, who developed a positional number
system.
Ancient Egyptian algebra dealt mainly
with linear equations while the
Babylonians found these equations too
elementary and developed mathematics
to a higher level than the Egyptians.

The Rhind Papyrus, is an ancient

Egyptian papyrus written 3800 years
ago by Ahmes, It is the most extensive
ancient Egyptian mathematical
document known to historians.

Sushruta was an ancient Indian Sushruta was the first to make use of
surgeon around this time and is the the magnet for surgical purposes.
author of the book Sushruta Samhita,
in which he describes over 300 surgical
procedures and 120 surgical
instruments and classifies human
surgery in 8 categories. He lived,
taught and practiced his art on the
banks of the Ganges in the area that
corresponds to the present day city of
Benares in North India.
Thales of Miletus (624 BC – 546 BC)
was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of
the 7 Sages of Greece. He attempted
to explain natural phenomena without
reference to mythology and was
tremendously influential in this
respect. Thales used geometry to solve
problems such as calculating the height
of pyramids and the distance of ships
from the shore.
About 2700 years ago geometry from
Egypt was imported and Greeks began
to develop it and arithmetic into
separate branches of mathematical
science. In the next several hundred
years, Socrates (469-399 BC),
Hippocrates (460- 370 B.C.), Plato
(428-348 B.C.), Aristotle (384-322
B.C.), Euclid (323-285 B.C.), and others
systematized what was then known
about geometry and arithmetic.
Use a stick to
measure height
of pyramid?
Dark ages or medieval period follow
after these golden years of beginnings
on thinking in a logical manner. Over a
millennium would be lost and science
takes a backward seat to religion and
superstition. Renaissance will take
place as precursor to a revolution on
science in 17th century that will see an
unprecedented growth and awakening
in the future of world.
Is the earth It should
fixed? be so …
Socrates was a Classical Greek
Athenian philosopher and is credited
as one of the founders of Western
philosophy, He developed “logic” in
which a series of questions are asked
not only to draw individual answers, but
also to encourage fundamental insight
into the issue at hand, and this
approach remains strong in providing a
foundation for much western
philosophy that followed.

Socrates lived during the time of the
transition from the height of the
Athenian hegemony to its decline with
the defeat by Sparta and its allies in
the Peloponnesian War. Despite the
troublesome and chaotic period,
Socrates was able to make profound
influence on Philosophy and Logic that
laid the foundations for next two and
half millennia of scientific and
technological development.
Philosophy and Logic from Socrates
may have given to birth to Science in
this transition period of human
settlements that were raged on one
hand by religion and superstition and
wars on the other hand. Can we expect
that even from birth that science shall
be perfect? Evidently not. It would
take another two painful millennia to
develop and perfect an understanding
of science during scientific revolution.
Hippocrates is credited with being the
God has
first person to believe that diseases The boy
nothing to
were caused naturally and not as a is sick
do with this
result of superstition, and Gods. He
separated the discipline of medicine
from religion, believing and arguing
that disease was not a punishment
inflicted by the gods but rather the
product of environmental factors, diet,
and living habits.

Plato was a Classical Greek philosopher,

mathematician, writer of philosophical
dialogues, and founder of the Academy
in Athens, the first institution of
higher learning in the Western world.

Along with his mentor, Socrates, and

his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to
lay the foundations of Western
philosophy and science.

Plato and his Academy in Athens

Aristotle was credited to be the first
to conceive the idea of organized
research. However, from the
standpoint of the physical sciences, no
fundamentally sound principles are
produced, but the ancient philosophers
such as Aristotle and his school
teachings gave for centuries their
authority to many false premises such
as

Substances are divided into corruptible In the absence of science that got
and incorruptible. developed in 17th century, these are
deductions based on some kind of logic
Bodies are classified as absolute heavy
and perception.
bodies & absolute light bodies and seek
their places, the light bodies on top. Unfortunately they have been the root
cause for retarding progress in science
Motions are classified as natural
and in particular mechanics which is
motions and violent motions.
necessary to develop machines.
Large bodies fall quicker than small
ones.
Archimedes (287-212 BC) of Syracuse
Eureka
in Sicily is believed by many to be the
first mathematical genius the world
has so far produced.

He is also believed by many to put his

accomplishments into written form. He
systematized simple machines and
propounded the theory of their
functions.

It was probably he who invented the

compound pulley, a device for
increasing traction or lifting power and
he propounded the theory of lever
both one- and two-armed. He regarded
the wheel as the circular figure
described by the rotating one-armed
lever, and the screw as the circular
analogy of the inclined plane.

One of Archimedes famous sayings is
“Give me a place to stand and I will
move the earth”.
Ancient Indian legend has it that the
Vamana avatar was taken by Lord
Vishnu to punish the demon king
Mahabali. Given a promise of three
steps of land, Vamana grows so huge
that he could cover from heaven to
Archimedes used “Hydrostatics”
principle (known as Archimedes’
principle) “a body immersed in a fluid
experiences a buoyant force equal to
the weight of the fluid it displaces” to
solve this problem.
Archimedes received his education at
the University of Alexandria, where
groups of mathematicians and
scientists worked, devoting themselves
to the construction of numerous
fascinating machines. The greatest and
Meanwhile, Babylonian mathematics
which had a sophisticated sexagesimal
(sixty as base) positional numeral
system suffered the lack of a
positional value (or zero) which was
indicated by a space between
The Babylonian placeholder was not a
true zero because it was not used
alone. Nor was it used at the end of a
number. Thus numbers like 2 and 120
(2×60), 3 and 180 (3×60), 4 and 240
(4×60), looked the same because the
Sunya
Zero
The religion dominated in what follows
called dark ages or medieval period.
The excellent contributions from
Babylonian, Egyptian, Greeks and
Indian schools have abruptly come to
an end until renaissance began with
Leonardo da Vinci in 15th century with
some exceptions in the medieval
periods.
Approximately 2,000 years ago
humankind began to harness water-
power to turn the stones that ground
its grain. It was probably the first tool
for creating mechanical energy to
replace direct human and animal power.
The first description of a water wheel
is from Vitruvius, a Roman engineer
about 2100 years ago; this is in the
form of an Overshot Wheel
One of the most remarkable Roman
applications of a waterwheel was at
Barbegal in southern France. Dating
from the 4th Century AD, the factory
was an immense flour mill which
employed 16 overshot water wheels
Tu Shih a Chinese engineer in 31 AD
invented a water-powered reciprocator
for the casting of [iron] agricultural
implements
Aryabhatta might have been the head
of the Nalanda university; he had the
knowledge of zero was implicit in
Aryabhatta’s place-value system as a
place holder for the powers of ten
with null coefficients.
Aryabhatta believed that the earth
rotates about its axis and states that
the movement of the stars is a relative
motion caused by earth’s rotation.
Aryabhatta (476-550 A.D.) was a
great Indian scholar and original
thinker even in the medieval period.
The concept of zero as a number and
not merely a symbol for separation is
attributed to India where by the 9th
century AD practical calculations were
carried out using zero, which was
treated like any other number, even in
case of division. This was indeed a
great invention that makes modern
mathematics possible.
Prototypes of windmills were probably
known in Persia (present day Iran) as
early as the 7th century AD with their
sails mounted on a vertical axis
Thus there were delays in the
ascendancy of scientific thinking, but
eventually it surfaced as a scientific
revolution which, in turn, paved the
way to the industrial revolution. While
scientific theories explained such
phenomena as beam bending, which was
a precursor for understanding of
rotors, the industrial revolution
provided the need for development of
high-speed rotors.
Various religions evolved in different
parts of the world in an independent
manner at different times, all of them
with a common purpose and approach,
viz, inculcation of good behavior in
humans that had been elevated from
the mammal kingdom. Any belief
preached in these religions was
vehemently opposed if a thinker
expressed a different opinion based on
scientific evidence.
The reawakening of scientific thought
was brought about during the
Renaissance Period (1400-1600) and
carried into the period of the
scientific revolution. Leonardo da Vinci
(1452-1519) a famous painter, sculptor,
architect, musician, has recently been
credited for some fundamental
contributions to solid mechanics, fluid
mechanics and mechanical design much
before the scientific revolution.
One of his major contributions is
related to engineering practices as we
know today
Technology was the realm of
craftsmen working by rough rules of
trial and error. The knowledge base
was confused in the absence of the
understanding on the behavioral motion
of solids and fluids. The man of
knowledge is a philosopher rather than
a scientist. In 1543 Nicolaus
Copernicus (1473 – 1543) of Frombork
in Poland ushered the scientific
revolution.
He correctly concluded that, in
bending of beams due to transverse
loads, plane cross-sections remain
plane before and after bending and
rotate
Some time before 1514, Copernicus
wrote an initial outline of his
heliocentric theory.
The event which most historians of
science call the scientific revolution
can be dated roughly as having begun in
1543, the year in which Nicolaus
Copernicus published his De
revolutionibus orbium coelestium
before his death,
Copernicus announced his heliocentric
theory opposing Ptolemy (90-168 AD)
proposal which made earth stationary
and at the center.
In it you maintain that the earth
moves; that the sun occupies the
lowest and thus the central, place in
the universe... Therefore with the
utmost earnestness I entreat you,
most learned sir, unless I
inconvenience you, to communicate this
discovery of yours to scholars, and at
the earliest possible moment to send
me your writings on the sphere of the
universe together with the tables and
whatever else you have that is relevant
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) made the
first attempts at developing a theory
of beams. He recognized the Principle
of Virtual Work as a general law.
His work reached Archbishop of Capua
and he wrote to Copernicus in 1536
from Rome: “Some years ago word
reached me concerning your
proficiency, of which everybody
constantly spoke. At that time I began
to have a very high regard for you...
For I had learned that you had not
merely mastered the discoveries of
the ancient astronomers uncommonly
well but had also formulated a new
cosmology.
Despite urgings from many quarters,
Copernicus delayed publication of his
book, perhaps from fear of criticism—
a fear delicately expressed in the
subsequent dedication of his
masterpiece to Pope Paul III. Scholars
disagree on whether Copernicus'
concern was limited to possible
astronomical and philosophical
objections, or whether he was also
concerned about religious objections.
The legend has it that Copernicus
received his publication just before his
death in Frombork in 1543.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) made the
first attempts at developing a theory
of beams. He recognized the Principle
of Virtual Work as a general law.
Fire or Heat is fundamental to
machines where energy is converted
into useful mechanical work.
Galileo (1564-1642) was amongst the
first to argue in Il saggitore and in
Discorsi that the sensation of heat is
caused by the rapid motion of certain
specific atoms (Galilean atomic model).
Galileo however made an incorrect
assumption in the development of the
theory of beams; he did not recognize
that at any section of the beam there
was equilibrium of the tensile and
compressive stresses. This equilibrium
of the tensile and compressive
stresses was not discovered until years
later, by Mariotte in 1686 at Paris,
this is almost two centuries later of
Leonardo da Vinci.
Biblical references Psalm 93:1, 96:10,
and 1 Chronicles 16:30 include text
(depending on the translation) stating
that "the world is firmly established,
it cannot be moved." In the same
manner, Psalm 104:5 says, "The Lord
set the earth on its foundations; it can
never be moved." Further, Ecclesiastes
1:5 states that "And the sun rises and
sets and returns to its place" etc. Such
writings impeded scientific thought.
By 1616 the attacks on the ideas of
Copernicus had reached a head, and
Galileo went to Rome to try to
persuade the Catholic Church
authorities not to ban Copernicus'
ideas. Galileo was advised to give
arguments for and against
Heliocentrism in the book “Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World
Systems, published in 1632”, and to be
careful not to advocate Heliocentrism.
Aryabhatta in 5th century AD had
already discussed about rotation of
earth about its axis and seems to imply
that the earth is not at the center of
universe. Copernican heliocentric
theory is not well taken by the church
and Galileo tried to defend by saying
that the writers of the Scripture
wrote from the perspective of the
terrestrial world and from that
vantage point the sun does rise and set
Galileo was ordered to stand trial on
suspicion of heresy in 1633 and
sentenced him for life to be under
house arrest.
Thus it is nearly a century of
retardation in scientific thinking and
Galileo paid heavily for defending
Copernicus.
The world had to wait for another
century to have scientific revolution.
René Descartes (1596 – 1650) was a
French philosopher, mathematician,
physicist, and writer who spent most
of his life in the Dutch Republic.
Amongst various things he studied
include algebra and vision. He has been
dubbed the "Father of Modern
Philosophy", and much subsequent
Western philosophy is a response to
his writings, which are studied closely
to this day.

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a

notable disciple of Descartes. His Pressure ×
major contribution to heat remains his Volume =
Constant
association with chemistry and his
famous law relating the pressure to
the volume of an elastic fluid, or gas.
Generally speaking, 17th century
theories of heat combined the idea of
a subtle fluid with that of motion of
its constituent corpuscles or atoms.
Although his research clearly has its
roots in the alchemical tradition, he is
largely regarded today as the first
modern chemist, and therefore one of
the founders of modern chemistry. But
the atoms remained scientifically
inscrutable until Daltonian chemistry in
1808 was accepted and the unknown
function of their motions was not
understood until the concept of energy
was established in the 19th century.
It is earth’s gravity
that makes the apple
fall down!
Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727) was an
English physicist, mathematician,
astronomer, natural philosopher,
alchemist, and theologian, and is
considered by many scholars and
members of the general public to be
one of the most influential people in
human history. His "Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy",
published in 1687, is probably the most
important scientific book ever written.
It is said that Newton in 1663, when
he was just 20 years old, bought a
book on astrology out of a curiosity to
see what is there in it.
When he could not understand an
illustration in this book, he bought a
book on Trigonometry, and to follow
the geometry in this book in turn, he
bought the book of Euclid's elements
of geometry.
Armed with these books, he
discovered in 1665, differential
calculus, while he was still an
undergraduate student at Cambridge.
In 1696 Johann Bernoulli posed
Brachistochrone problem, specifying
the curve connecting two points
displaced from each other laterally,
along which a body, acted upon only by
gravity, would fall in the shortest time.
It is Newton’s laws of motion and
Calculus of Variations that have
revolutionalized “Mechanics”, the
fundamental subject based on which all
machine dynamics is understood that
has led to the ushering of industrial
revolution and development of modern
machines.
Newton was borne exactly a century
after Copernicus died.
He extended his initial dead line at the
request of fellow mathematicians. It is
said that the challenge was delivered
to Newton at 4.00 pm on January 29,
1697. Newton before leaving for work
next morning invented calculus of
variations to solve this problem and
sent off the solution for anonymous
publication. When Bernoulli saw this
solution, he commented: "We recognize
the lion by his claw".
Galileo lived and struggled through
these 100 years and fought for
Copernicus and Heliocentric theory and
died a year before Newton is borne.
Though the Church dropped the
general prohibition of books advocating
Heliocentrism in 1758, 15 years after
Galileo’s death, it did not rescind the
decisions issued by the Inquisition in
its judgment of 1633 against Galileo.
Only in 1992 Galileo was vindicated. In 2000, Pope John Paul II formally
“Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant apologized for all the mistakes in the
physicist and by relying on different last 2,000 years, including the trial of
arguments, he understood why only the Galileo among others.
sun could function as the centre of the
The beginnings in 17th century ushered
world (planetary system). The error of
rapid and continuous growth of all
the theologians of the time was to
branches in science from 18th century
think that our understanding of the
till today. The scientific thinking was
physical world's structure was, in some
unparalleled in the history of the
way, imposed by the literal sense of
mankind since then.
Sacred Scripture....

Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 - 1716) was a

German mathematician and
philosopher. He occupies a prominent
place in the history of mathematics
and philosophy and developed the
infinitesimal calculus independently of
Newton, and Leibniz's mathematical
notation has been widely used ever
since it was published. Leibniz also
developed the binary number system,
which is at the foundation of virtually
all digital computers.
Bernoullis was a famous family of
scholars in Switzerland; Jacob (1654-
1705) and Johann (1667-1748) are
brothers and Daniel Bernoulli (1700-
1782) is son of Johann Bernoulli.

Jacob Bernoulli became familiar with

calculus through a correspondence with
Leibniz and became the first person to
develop the technique for solving
separable differential equations.

Johann Bernoulli (1667 – 1748) was one

of the many prominent mathematicians
in the Bernoulli family. He is known for
his contributions to infinitesimal
calculus and educated Leonhard Euler
in his youth.

Both the brothers were in intense

competition, e.g., in solving Catenary
problem and of the Brachistochrone,
problem.
Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) is son of
Johann Bernoulli. He is one of the many
prominent mathematicians in the
Bernoulli family.

He is particularly remembered for his

applications of mathematics to
mechanics, especially fluid mechanics,
and for his pioneering work in
probability and statistics.

Leonhard Euler (1707 – 1783) was a

pioneering Swiss mathematician and
physicist. He made important
discoveries in fields as diverse as
infinitesimal calculus and graph theory.
He also introduced much of the
modern mathematical terminology and
notation, particularly for mathematical
analysis, such as the notion of a
mathematical function. He is also
renowned for his work in mechanics,
fluid dynamics, optics, and astronomy.
Daniel Bernoulli and Euler were the
first to put together a useful beam
theory in 1750. At that time, science
and engineering were generally seen as
very distinct fields, and there was
considerable doubt that a
mathematical product could be trusted
for practical applications, until the late
19th century, when the Eiffel Tower
and Ferris wheel demonstrated the
validity of the theory on large scales.

Euler equations describing fluid

behavior appeared in 1757. They were
among the first partial differential
equations to be written down. At the
time Euler published his work, they
consisted of the momentum (from
Newton’s law) and continuity equations.
An additional equation, which was later
to be called the adiabatic condition,
was supplied by Pierre-Simon Laplace
in 1816.
Humphry Davy (1778 – 1829) was a
British chemist and inventor. He
discovered several alkali and alkaline
earth metals and made contributions
to the discoveries of the elemental
nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy
worked on Chemical Agencies of
Electricity. In 1815 he invented the
Davy lamp, which allowed miners to
work safely in the presence of
flammable gases.

Michael Faraday, (1791 – 1867) was an

English chemist and physicist who
contributed to the fields of electro-
magnetism and electro-chemistry.

His inventions of electromagnetic

rotary devices formed the foundation
of electric motor technology, and it
was largely due to his efforts that
electricity became viable for use in
technology.
The scientific revolution thus gave us a
basic understanding on the physical
behavior of solids, fluids, heat,
magnetism and electromagnetism and
chemistry of materials. Without
dwelling further, it is sufficient for us
to understand how science progressed
rapidly with the religion and
superstition losing upper hand and
making mankind free to think and
produce new scientific results.
To achieve a useful machine to do his
chores, man had learnt science to
understand what he sees in his life and
utilize this knowledge and put the
natural resources around him to
accomplish what he had been looking
for.
Heat engines and conversion of heat
energy to useful work had been his
first goal.
Ever since the end of ice-age and the
mobility of the man and settling down
to agricultural villages, he had been
looking for freeing himself. He
domesticated the animals first and
made them several chores around him,
but that was slow. Man was looking for
a better source of power than animal
power and was always looking for
machines such as Hero produced in
Alexandria school over 2200 years ago.
Gunpowder is a mixture of sulfur,
charcoal, and potassium nitrate. It can
be made just using potassium nitrate
and charcoal, but without the sulfur
(or coal), the powder is not as strong.
It burns rapidly, producing a volume of
hot gas made up of carbon dioxide,
water, and nitrogen, and a solid residue
of potassium sulfide. It had been
widely used as a propellant in firearms
Gunpowder was invented, documented,
and used in ancient China where the
Chinese military forces developed
gunpowder-based weapons technology.
Medieval and Renaissance Europe
possessed only one effective heat
engine, the combustion engine in the
form of the cannon, e.g., 17th century
forge-welded iron cannon in Thanjavur
It is difficult to assess how ancient
the gunpowder has been in use; Mongol
invasions of Japan after founding the
Yuan Dynasty, 1281 used such bombs.
The first major break-through in this
regard had been an understanding of
atmosphere and its pressure.
The credit for making pressure
exerted by the atmosphere entirely
explicit belongs to Otto von Guericke
who described his air pump and the
experiments that he made with it from
the mid-1650s onwards.
 He demonstrated his experiment with
teams of horses trying unsuccessfully
to pull apart vacuum-filled copper
spheres in Magdeburg.

Once it was understood that

atmosphere exerts pressure, it was a
matter of creating a vacuum and
allowing the atmospheric pressure to
move the piston in a cylinder.

Denis Papin (1647 - 1712) a Frenchman

used this principle and invented the
steam digester which is the forerunner
of the steam engine.
Papin first visited London in 1675, and
worked with Robert Boyle from 1676
to 1679, publishing an account of his
work in Continuation of New
Experiments (1680). During this
period, Papin invented the steam
digester, a type of pressure cooker
with a safety valve. He first addressed
the Royal Society in 1679 on the
subject of his digester, and remained
mostly in London until about 1687,

While in Marburg in 1690, having

observed the mechanical power of
atmospheric pressure on his 'digester',
Papin built a model of a piston steam
engine, the first of its kind.

In 1705 he developed a second steam

engine with the help of Leibniz and
installed in Kassel gardens of the Duke
of Hesse but this used steam pressure
rather than atmospheric pressure
Captain Thomas Savery, a military
engineer patented an early steam
engine in 1698, "A new invention for
raising of water and occasioning motion
to all sorts of mill work by the
impellent force of fire, which will be of
great use and advantage for draining
mines, serving towns with water, and
for the working of all sorts of mills
where they have not the benefit of
water nor constant winds.

His machine installed in mines

consisted of a closed vessel filled with
water into which steam under pressure
was introduced. This forced the water
upwards and out of the mine shaft.
Then a cold water sprinkler was used
to condense the steam. This created a
vacuum which sucked more water out
of the mine shaft through a bottom
valve,
Thomas Newcomen developed his
steam engine in 1710, combining the
ideas of Savery and Papin. His was the
first practical device to harness the
power of steam to produce mechanical
work and installed at a coal mine at
Dudley Castle in Staffordshire in 1712.
Newcomen thus rightly deserves the
majority of the credit for widespread
introduction of steam power.

It is a little over 100 years from the

time Otto von Guericke demonstrated
the atmospheric pressure to have a
beam engine working in mines to pump
out water.

In cold and damp England and Europe

coal was essential to have comfort at
home and heating. Newcomen machines
were working everywhere until Joseph
Black discovered latent heat in 1761.
Joseph Black (1728 – 1799) was a
Scottish physician, known for his
discoveries of latent heat, specific
heat, and carbon dioxide. He was
professor of Medicine at University of
Glasgow. James Watt, who was
appointed as philosophical instrument
maker at the same university (1756),
became involved in Black's works and
conducted experiments on steam with
Black.

James Watt (1736 – 1819) was a

Scottish inventor and mechanical
engineer whose improvements to the
Newcomen steam engine were
fundamental to the changes brought by
the Industrial Revolution in the world.

Once James Watt realized the loss of

latent heat in Newcomen engines, the
reciprocating steam engine reigned
supreme in the 19th century.
Glasgow University had one of the
Newcomen engines for its natural
philosophy class. In 1763, one hundred
years after the birth of Newcomen,
this apparatus went out of order and
James Watt while experimenting with
it was struck by the enormous
consumption of steam because, at
every stroke, the cylinder and piston
had to be heated to the temperature
of boiling water and cooled again.
This prevented the apparatus from
making, with the available boiler
capacity, more than a few strokes
every minute. He became obsessed
with the idea of finding some remedy.
He deduced that the loss of latent
heat was the most serious defect in
the Newcomen engine. James Watt’s
work is thus the key application of
science to engineering which led to the
birth of the industrial revolution.

James Watt (1736 – 1819) was a

Scottish inventor and mechanical
engineer whose improvements to the
Newcomen steam engine were
fundamental to the changes brought by
the Industrial Revolution in the world.

Once James Watt realized the loss of

latent heat in Newcomen engines, the
reciprocating steam engine reigned
supreme in the 19th century.
While the reciprocating steam engine
pump was adequate to work in mines
and pump out water, the world was
always looking for a rotating machine
to replace the animal labor.

James Watt’s Steam Engine with

Rotary Motion for Factories came up in
1788 that has revolutionalized the
world’s workshops and made rapid
strides for an industrial revolution.

Reciprocating machinery has inherent The internal combustion engines could

disadvantages at high speeds, they run at higher speeds with a multi
have practically disappeared in the cylinder arrangement and reciprocating
modern day world; there are still parts balancing. However, they are not
steam locomotives operating in a few vibration free engines.
places, e.g., Fairy Queen, the oldest
running vintage steam locomotive in the
world, built in the year 1855 by the
British firm Kinston, Thompson &
Hewitson for the British firm East
India Railways
While the reciprocating steam engine
pump was adequate to work in mines
and pump out water, the world was
always looking for a rotating machine
to replace the animal labor.

James Watt’s Steam Engine with

Rotary Motion for Factories came up in
1788 that has revolutionalized the
world’s workshops and made rapid
strides for an industrial revolution.

Reciprocating machinery has inherent The internal combustion engines could

disadvantages at high speeds, they run at higher speeds with a multi
have practically disappeared in the cylinder arrangement and reciprocating
modern day world; there are still parts balancing. However, they are not
steam locomotives operating in a few vibration free engines.
places, e.g., Fairy Queen, the oldest
running vintage steam locomotive in the
world, built in the year 1855 by the
British firm Kinston, Thompson &
Hewitson for the British firm East
India Railways
Richard Trevithick (1771 – 1833) was a
British inventor and mining engineer.
His most significant success was the
high pressure steam engine built to
drive a hammer in 1802.

In 1803 he built a steam-powered

road vehicle called the London Steam
Carriage, which attracted much
attention from the public and press
when he drove it that year in London
from Holborn to Paddington and back.
It was uncomfortable for passengers
and proved more expensive to run than
a horse-drawn carriage and was
abandoned.
On 21 February 1804 the world's first
locomotive-hauled railway journey took
along the tramway of the Penydarren
Ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in
Wales.
George Stephenson (1781 – 1848) was
an English civil engineer and mechanical
engineer built the first public railway
line in the world to use steam
locomotives, and he is renowned as
being the "Father of Railways".
Stephenson designed his first
locomotive in 1814 and built in a
workshop behind his home Dial Cottage
in West Moor, Killingworth.
The Stockton and Darlington Railway
opened on 27 September 1825. Driven
by Stephenson, Locomotion hauled an
80-ton load of coal and flour 15 km in
two hours, reaching a speed of
39 km/h on one stretch. The first
purpose-built passenger car was
attached, and carried dignitaries on
the opening journey. It was the first
time passenger traffic had been run on
a steam locomotive railway.
 Liverpool and Manchester Railway
opened on 15 September 1830 using
Stephenson’s “Rocket” engine.

The railways have made history since

then and continue to play a major role
in transportation.

The locomotive credited for being the

first steam engine in America was also
a British train, shipped to New York
from England in 1829. It was the first
locomotive to operate on American soil
in Pennsylvania. This locomotive was
the Stourbridge Lion, and it marked
the official beginning of an American
industry that would lead to vast
advancements in the decades that
followed.
The first steam locomotive to run in
India was ‘Thomason’ with two wagons
for carrying earth from Roorkee to
Piran Kaliyar in 1851,
The first passenger train between Bori
Bunder, Bombay and Thane covering a
distance of 34 km was inaugurated on
April 16, 1853, formally heralding the
birth of railways in India.

The era of the steamboat began in

1787 when John Fitch (1743-1798)
made the first successful trial of a
forty-five-foot steamboat on the
Delaware River,
Reciprocating steam engines were
mainly responsible for the industrial
revolution; however the production of
steam mainly depended initially on coal
which raised steam from water in
boilers. These are clumsy and require
considerable space. Locomotives using
steam engines are designed to carry
their own boilers; however this
becomes difficult in design of road
transport vehicles.
Instead of external combustion to
generate steam, internal combustion
and conversion of heat energy to
mechanical energy became practical
with the availability from extraction of
petroleum. The first modern oil
refineries were built by Ignacy
Łukasiewicz near Jasło in the
dependent Kingdom of Galicia and
Lodomeria in Central European Galicia,
Poland from 1854–56.
The first person to build a working
four stroke engine, a stationary engine
using a coal gas-air mixture for fuel (a
gas engine), was German engineer
Nicolaus Otto (1832 – 1891) in 1862.
That is why the four-stroke principle
today is commonly known as the Otto
cycle and four-stroke engines using
spark plugs often are called Otto
engines.
The Diesel cycle is the thermodynamic
cycle which approximates the pressure
and volume of the combustion chamber
of the Diesel engine, invented by
Rudolph Diesel (1858 – 1913) a German
inventor and mechanical engineer in
1897.

Internal combustion engines based on

Otto cycle (petrol engines) and Diesel
cycle (Diesel engines) are ubiquitous in
the modern day world. They dominate
our roads and will exist as long as the
petroleum products are available in the
world. Once they are exhausted, these
engines will die. We then have to find
alternate ways of individual
transportation, perhaps by battery
operated electric vehicles.
The reciprocating engine is inherently Different multi-cylinder arrangements
poor in design because of reciprocating were designed for automotive and
parts that have to come to rest and aircraft engines; In-line, V- engines
reverse in direction of motion at the and Radial engines, e.g., Ford T model
end of each stroke. They are heavily four cylinder engine of early 1900s.
unbalanced and therefore their speeds
are restricted; otherwise there will be
lot of vibration and noise and possibly
fracture of machine parts. Therefore
multicylinder arrangements are sought
to make the operations more even.

The first electric generator was Stephen Ányos Jedlik (1800 – 1895)
invented by Michael Faraday in 1831, a was a Hungarian inventor, engineer and
copper disk that rotated between the physicist and formulated the concept
poles of a magnet. of the self-excited dynamo in 1861.
Ernst Werner von Siemens (1816 –
1892) was a German inventor and
industrialist.

On January 17, 1867, Siemens

announced to the Berlin academy a
"dynamo-electric machine" (first use
of the term) which employed self-
powering electromagnetic field coils
rather than permanent magnets to
create the stator field.

Charles Wheatstone (1802 – 1875),

was an English scientist and inventor of
many scientific breakthroughs. On the
same day Siemens’ announcement in
Berlin, Wheatstone read a paper to the
Royal Society describing a similar
design with the difference that in the
Siemens design the stator
electromagnets were in series with the
rotor, but in Wheatstone's design they
were in parallel.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931) was
an American inventor, scientist, and
businessman who developed many
devices that greatly influenced life
around the world, including the
phonograph, the motion picture
camera, and a long-lasting, practical
electric light bulb. With the dynamo
already developed, he turned his
attention to generate electricity for
masses.

Pearl Street Station was the first This is hardly 130 years ago and power
central power plant located at 255- generation has revolutionalized the
257 Pearl Street in Manhattan on a world; The world is never the same. It
site measuring 50 by 100 feet. It
is hard to imagine that there was no
started generating electricity on
electric power just over a century ago.
September 4, 1882, serving an initial
load of 400 lamps at 85 customers. By
1884, Pearl Street Station was serving
508 customers with 10,164 lamps. It
was built by the Edison Illuminating
Company, which was headed by Thomas
Edison.
The achievement of Hero of
Alexandria nearly 2200 years ago in
demonstrating a rotating machine, a
reaction steam turbine, much before
the renaissance period still remained a
distant dream. There was little
understanding of a rotor and it was
unfortunately postulated by William
Rankine in 1861 that there is a
threshold of speed beyond which the
rotor cannot be run.
About the year 1837 several reaction
steam wheels were made by Avery at
Syracuse, New York, and by Wilson at
Greenock, for driving circular saws and
cotton gins. Steam was introduced into
it through a hollow shaft, and, by the
reaction of the jets at the
extremities, caused rotation.
Despite this, there were several
attempts in obtaining a pure rotating
machine which would be free of
vibrations as the case of reciprocating
machines. Huge amounts of energy are
required to make mankind free of
animal labor and also provide lighting,
heating amongst other luxuries that we
know today like air-conditioning. These
efforts paid rich dividends in 1883-84
and the world is never same.
This effort is similar to Hero and as
yet there was no understanding of
extracting this energy in large
quantities. Moreover, the principle of
electric dynamo or generator is not yet
demonstrated by that time. Despite
the scientific revolution, James Watt,
while attempting to build a steam
turbine, came to the conclusion that it
could not be built given the state of
contemporary technology.
Karl Gustaf Patrik de Laval (1845 -
1913) was a Swedish engineer who built
the first steam turbine (impulse
turbine). High pressure steam was
blown through nozzles and expanded to
low pressure. Its velocity was then
greatly increased, and when the steam
jets hit the turbine wheel’s bent vanes,
the wheel was set in motion. The
turbine axle is mounted in its bearings
fixed in spherical segments.

Just one year after Laval’s turbine,

Charles Parsons (1911) in 1884 came up
with the first reaction turbine. Charles
Algernon Parsons, (1854 – 1931) was a
British engineer, best known for his
invention of the steam turbine.
Because of heavy vibrations in
reciprocating machines with severe
torque and speed fluctuations, these
turbines are hailed “vibration free
engines” for that time at least.
The steam turbine revolutionalized the The steam turbine became a workhorse
world’ it is a dream come true after 21 for power generation; In less than a
centuries and since then mankind has century few KW capacity machines
never seen a rapid growth in became giants producing 1500 MW.
prosperity. Man has forgotten that he
lived in caves first and then
settlements under the stars and
moonlight. Man has also learnt to have
luxury in air-conditioning and
refrigeration and travel across seas
and countryside.
Man was limited in his movement and
confined to land and to some extent
seas near land. He always dreamt of
flying like birds. Leonardo was
fascinated by the phenomenon of
flight, producing many studies of the
flight of birds, including his 1505
Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as
plans for several flying machines,
including a light hang glider and a
machine resembling a helicopter.

500 years later man’s dream came true

with Wright brothers’ first successful
airplane and making the first
controlled, powered and sustained
heavier-than-air human flight, near the
Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south
of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, U.S. on
December 17, 1903. A sprocket chain
drive, borrowing from bicycle
technology, powered the twin
propellers made by hand.
 Orville Wright (1871 – 1948) Wilbur Wright (1867 - 1912)

Wright brothers used a four cylinder The twin propellers are driven by
internal combustion gasoline engine to sprocket chain drives from bicycle
power their flight technology
Steam turbines and Internal
Combustion engines prevailed as prime
movers even till date; however gas
turbines remained a dream until jet
engines were invented. Until then
aviation was also limited to piston
engines. The Second World War has
seen a race to develop the jet engine in
1940s; Von Ohain in Germany and
Frank Whittle in England succeeded in
this effort.
Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain (1911 –
1998) was a German-American
engineer; he designed the first self-
contained jet engine to run, and he was
the first to power an all-jet aircraft.
Although none of his designs entered
production, his contributions to the
development of the jet engine in
Germany are invaluable.
Heinkel He-178 was the world’s first
turbojet-powered aircraft in 1939
with Ohain’s jet engine.
Frank Whittle (1907 – 1996) was a
British Air Force engineer. In 1935 he
secured financial backing and, with
RAF approval, Power Jets Ltd was
formed. They began constructing a
test engine in July 1936. It took
considerable time and failures of
turbine blades and by April 1941 the
engine W.2., was ready for tests and it
produced 1600 lb thrust.

This has revolutionalized the world and

the way we travel across the globe.
The jet engines were improved in
design and capacity and in just six
decades later, General Electric GE-90
115-B engine, is designed for a thrust
rating of 115,000 pounds (511 kN),
making it the most powerful jet engine
in the world, 75 times that of W.2 in
1941.
Rolls-Royce developed its first three-
shaft engine, the RB211, in the late
1960s/early 1970s for the Lockheed
TriStar. It went on to power the
Boeing 747 jumbo jet, Boeing 757 and
Boeing 767.

The jet engine technology was

immediately used for power generation
on the land. The Industrial version of
the RB211 entered service in 1972.

Gas turbines when used for power

generation leave considerable heat
energy in the exhaust; this heat
energy is used for generating steam
which in turn can be used for running
steam turbines. Together gas and
steam turbines are employed for
maximum efficiency and these plants
are called combined cycle power plants
– an example is GMR Barge Mounted
Power Plant in Kakinada, India.

GMR Barge Mounted Combined Cycle
Power Plant Kakinada
Because of this slowness progress was
also limited in generating new designs.
While the machine advances are taking
place using the fruits of scientific
revolution, there was another factor
that helped in accelerating modern
efforts is design; they are computers.
Man had used Logarithmic Tables to
perform complex numerical operations
and then Slide Rules were developed to
ease this process. Computations were
very slow and limited.
The ENIAC, Electronic Numerical
Integrator And Computer, was the
first general-purpose electronic
computer built in 1946 at University of
Pennsylvania. It was a digital computer
capable of being reprogrammed to
solve a full range of computing
problems and designed to calculate
artillery firing tables for the U.S.
Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory.

In 1947, John Bardeen and Walter
Brattain at AT&T's Bell Labs in the
United States observed that when
electrical contacts were applied to a
crystal of germanium, the output
power was larger than the input. Solid
State Physics Group leader William
Shockley saw the potential in this, and
over the next few months worked to
greatly expand the knowledge of
semiconductors.
ENIAC used vacuum tubes or
thermionic valves which are used to
amplify, switch, otherwise modify, or
create an electrical signal by
controlling the movement of electrons
in a low-pressure space. This tube is
essentially used to adopt binary
system using 0 and 1 and make
mathematical computations. This
process has revolutionalized our way of
dealing with numbers and calculations.
The semiconductor transistors
gradually replaced the electronic
valves in computer applications. They
are smaller in size and produced less
heat, therefore the computer memory
could be increased quickly and higher
computational speeds obtained. Second
generation IBM computers 7000 series
used transistors in late 1969-70.
These computers are tiny when
compared with what we see today.
On September 12, 1958, Jack Kilby
demonstrated his invention of an
Integrated Circuit, a sliver of
germanium, with protruding wires,
glued to a glass slide. It was a rough
device, but when Kilby pressed the
switch, an unending sine curve
undulated across the oscilloscope
screen. His invention is tiny and
replaced the transistors in a short
period of time.
Robert Noyce also came up with his
own idea of an integrated circuit half a
year later than Kilby. Noyce's chip
solved many practical problems that
Kilby's had not. Noyce's chip, made at
Fairchild Semiconductor, was made of
silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made
of germanium. Noyce’s chip made mass
production easier.
This integrated circuit, popularly
known as chip revolutionalized the way
we use computers and computations.
In the early days of integrated
circuits, only a few transistors could
be placed on a chip, as the scale used
was large because of the contemporary
technology. As the degree of
integration was small, the design was
done easily. Later on, millions, and
today billions, of transistors could be
placed on one chip.
Today supercomputers, Tianhe-1A They also help in designing advanced
located at National Supercomputing aircraft structures and engines with
Center in Tianjin, China has a minimum weight and maximum life
theoretical peak performance of 4.701 through simulation.
petaflops, (a petaflop is thousand
million million or thousand billion)
floating point operations per second.
They can be used to ease scientific
problems like climate change enabling
scientists to test global climate models
with accuracy.

Because of the availability of high Commercial rugged solvers have been

speed computers, scientists have
developed in the last five decades
methods that can handle most
intricate machine part geometries and
complex supersonic and hypersonic
flows with turbulence and chemical
reactions, machine parts that can
operate above their melting point using
complex and intricate cooling methods,
called finite element methods.
developed to ease design processes
coupled with pre-processors that
handle inputs of the design problem
and post-processors to display the
results convenient to the designer.
Today design problems in aerospace,
marine and naval architecture, energy,
and civil engineering … can all be
handled using these technologies.
Empedocles (490 – 430 BC) a pre-
Socrates Greek philosopher is
attributed to have named the
“elements” into Air, Water, Fire and
Earth which amounts to a little more
than a geographical ordering of the
familiar around us.

Democritus (460 – 370 BC) was

another influential Greek philosopher.
He held that everything is composed
of "atoms", which are physically, but
not geometrically, indivisible; that
between atoms lies empty space; that
atoms are indestructible; have always
been, and always will be, in motion; that
there are an infinite number of atoms,
and kinds of atoms, which differ in
shape, and size.

2400 years ago Charaka, a great

Indian scholar described The Pancha
Mahabhuta, or "five great elements";

They are Prithvi or Bhumi (Earth), Ap

or Jala (Water), Agni or Tejas (Fire),
John Dalton (1766 – 1844) was an
English chemist, meteorologist and
physicist. He is best known for his
pioneering work in the development of
modern atomic theory, He postulated
that all matter consists of indivisible
particles called atoms.

This is the first advance from Greek,

Indian and Chinese observations to
modern atomic theory.

One change to Dalton’s atomic theory

is that atoms are divisible into
subatomic particles; Electrons,
protons, and neutrons are examples of
these fundamental particles. There are
many other types of particles.

J. J. Thomson, (1856 – 1940) was a

British physicist at Cambridge
University credited for the discovery
of the electron and of isotopes,
Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937) was a
New Zealand-born British chemist and
physicist who became known as the
father of nuclear physics. He
established the nuclear structure of
the atom; in 1911, he postulated that
atoms have their positive charge
concentrated in a very small nucleus.
He is widely credited with first
"splitting the atom" in 1917. All this
happened just a century ago.

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) the most

famous physicist has shown in 1905
that mass and energy are both but
different manifestations of the same
thing -- a somewhat unfamiliar
conception for the average mind. His
famous equation E = mass, multiplied by
the square of the velocity of light,
showed that very small amounts of
mass may be converted into a very
large amount of energy and vice versa.
"Fission" is a nuclear process in which
an atom is split (or decays) to form
two smaller atoms while releasing a
quantity of energy. Prior to the 1930's,
it was considered impossible to "split"
an atom until the neutron was
discovered in 1932 by English physicist
James Chadwick (1891 – 1974) by
bombarding beryllium with alpha
particles and the entire sub-atomic
world literally went to pieces.

The concept of a nuclear chain

reaction was first hypothesized by
Hungarian scientist Leó Szilárd (1898-
1964) in 1933 soon after neutron had
been discovered in 1932. Szilard
realized that if a nuclear reaction
produced neutrons, which then caused
further nuclear reactions, the process
might be self-perpetuating.
Fission reaction was discovered
accidentally in 1938 by two German
physicists, Otto Hahn (1879–1968) and
Fritz Strassmann (1902–1980). They
had been doing a series of experiments
in which they used neutrons to
bombard various elements. When they
bombarded copper, for example, a
radioactive form of copper was
produced. Other elements became Otto Hahn Fritz Strassmann
radioactive in the same way.

Hahn and Strassmann work with

uranium, however, produced entirely
different results. In fact, the results
were so unexpected they were unable
to offer a satisfactory explanation for
what they observed. That explanation
was provided, instead, by German
physicist Lise Meitner (1878–1968) and
her nephew Otto Frisch (1904–1979).
Lise Meitner Otto Frisch
On 2 December 1942 researchers
under the leadership of Enrico Fermi
(1901 – 1954) managed to maintain the
first controlled nuclear chain reaction
in an experimental device called
Chicago Pile 1. This was a very huge
composite of uranium and graphite.
The reaction was maintained for 28
minutes.

Oppenheimer (1904 – 1967) was an

American theoretical physicist and
professor of physics at the University
of California, Berkeley. He is best
known for his role as the scientific
director of the Manhattan Project, the
World War II project that developed
the first nuclear weapons, for which he
is often referred to as the "father of
the atomic bomb".

In reference to the Trinity test in The Trinity explosion, 0.016 second

New Mexico on July 16, 1945, where after detonation; the fireball is about
the first atomic bomb was detonated, 200 m wide.
Oppenheimer famously recalled the
Bhagavad Gita:
The world's first nuclear power plant
becomes operational on June 27, 1954
in Obninsk, outside of Moscow.

Since the plant opened in 1954, most

of the industrialized west, along with
countries like India and China, have
embraced nuclear power.

Steam turbines are driven by steam

from nuclear reactors instead of that
from burning fossil fuels.

In the case of "Fusion", two smaller On earth a common fusion reaction

atoms are fused together to form a
larger atom, also resulting in the
release of an even larger quantity of
energy.
involves two isotopes of hydrogen in a
deuterium-tritium reaction but it
takes a bit more than just slamming
atoms together. Intense pressure on
the sun helps initiate the reaction,
Houtermans (1903 – 1866), in 1929,
with Atkinson (1898 – 1982), made the
first calculation of stellar
thermonuclear reactions in which
energy is liberated by the fusing of
light nuclei in accordance with
Einstein's formula of mass-energy
equivalence.
Hans Bethe (1906 – 2005) was a
German-American physicist; in 1939 he
showed how fusion powers the stars
First kilo-ampere plasma was created
by Cousins and Ware at Imperial
College in a doughnut-shaped glass
vacuum vessel in 1947. Plasmas are
unstable and only last fractions of
seconds.

Edward Teller (1908 –2003) was a

Hungarian-born American theoretical
physicist, is known colloquially as "the
father of the hydrogen bomb,"
Together with Stanislaw Ulam (1909 –
1984) in 1951 they developed Hydrogen
Bomb using fission chain reaction for
fusion.
Edward Teller Stanislaw Ulam
Andrei Sakharov (1921 – 1989) was an
eminent Soviet nuclear physicist and
together with Igor Tamm (1895 – 1971)
designed in 1951 what would later be
called a tokamak (toroidalnya kamera ee
magnetnaya katushka - toroidal chamber
with magnetic coils) a machine producing
a toroidal magnetic field for confining a
plasma at 100 million degrees centigrade
in vacuum. In this way we can take out
heat energy through radiation to make Andrei Sakharov Igor Tamm
steam. We also thus can bring sun to
earth.

The main problem in power generation

from fusion is the magnetic field to
confine the plasma in a vacuum vessel
and make it go around without touching
any walls. This magnetic field is
required to be highly intense of the
order of one million times that of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853 – 1926)
earth’s magnetic field. This needs discovered in 1911 superconductivity in
more power to energize mercury when he cooled it to the
electromagnets than that can be temperature of liquid helium, -2690C;
produced from fusion. then its resistance disappeared.
The first widely-accepted theoretical
understanding of superconductivity
was advanced in 1957 by American
physicists John Bardeen (1908 – 1991),
Leon Cooper (born 1930), and John
Schrieffer (born 1931).

In 1962 scientists at Westinghouse

developed the first commercial
superconducting wire, an alloy of
niobium and titanium (NbTi).
John Bardeen

Leon Cooper John Schrieffer

In 1997, the largest experiment Joint
European Torus (JET) produced a peak
of 16.1 megawatts (21,600 hp) of
fusion power (65% of input power),
with fusion power of over 10 MW
(13,000 hp) sustained for over 0.5 sec.

In June of 2005, the construction of

a new experimental reactor, ITER, was
announced by the six parties involved
in the project; U.S., China, European
Union (EU), India, Japan, the Russian
Federation, and South Korea. ITER is
designed to produce ten times more
fusion power than the power put into
the plasma over many minutes, 50MW
of input energy to produce 500MW of
output energy.
What we will witness in the near
future, fusion reactors bringing solar
reactions right on to earth – we are
taming the ultimate and bring abundant
energy out there in space to our feet.
He learnt to stand upright on his legs
and made his hands free to do several
chores and walk on his legs.

Man is poised to achieve the ultimate.

Over millions of years he worked hard
and evolved to become a super life
form by taming the nature to his
needs.

He used naturally available stones as He is weakest animal in strength and

tools in his hands needs a few years to gain full mobility,
yet he is the cleverest of animals and
learnt to master over them.
 He learnt to live in caves and top of
trees during the night while sleeping
and avoid powerful animals.
Man observed nature over long periods
and gathered information about stars
and planets in the sky. For a long time
he believed (erroneously) that his
earth is at the center of universe and
other celestial objects went around.
Time Line Event
13000 BC End of Ice Age
8000 BC New Stone Age
6000 BC Indus Valley Civilization
He became highly mobile first using
animals and then by wheels on vehicles.
He is weakest animal in strength and
needs a few years to gain full mobility,
yet he is the cleverest of animals and
learnt to master over them.
Religion and Superstition ruled the
World
3500 BC Slow Potter's Wheel
3200 BC Use of Wheel in Transportation
2000 BC Spoked Wheels and Chariots
Babylonia Positional Number
2000 BC System
1800 BC Egyptian Papyrus
1500 BC - 800 BC (?) Sushruta Samhita and surgery
600 BC Greek philosopher from Miletus
Pingala - Binary numbers and Sunya
500 BC - 200 BC (?) (Zero)
Empedocles - Air, Water, Fire and
450 BC Earth
Socrates, Hippocrates and Plato
400 BC Early Greek Philosophers
Democritus - atoms
300 BC Aristotle and Euclid
Caraka - Pancha Mahabhuta
Archimedes first mathematical
250 BC genius
Hero and Aelopile first steam Golden years of beginnings on
150 BC turbine thinking in a logical manner
Vitruvius and Tu Shih - Water
20 AD Wheel
470 AD Grinding Wheel
Aryabhatta - Zero and Place Value
500 AD system
700 AD Wind mills Dark Ages and Medieval Period
Choo-He - wood, fire, earth, metal,
1150 AD and water
1280 AD Gun Powder
1400 AD - 1600 AD Leonardo da Vinci - Beams Renaissance Period
Nicolaus Copernicus – Helio-Centric
1543 AD theory
Galileo Heliocentric theory and
1600 AD Beams
1650 AD Robert Boyle - Heat Scientific Revolution begins
1687 AD Isaac Newton - Laws of Motion
Wilhelm Leibniz - Calculus
Jacob Bernoulli - solving differential
equations
Johann Bernoulli - infinitesimal
calculus
Otto von Guericke - Vacuum
Denis Papin - Steam Digester Scientific Revolution
 Thomas Savery - raising water from
mines

Thomas Newcomen - Beam engines

1720 AD Daniel Bernoulli - Fluid Mechanics

Leonhard Euler - Fluids and Beams

1761 AD Joseph Black - Latent Heat
1785 AD James Watt - Steam Engine
1787 AD John Fitch - First Steam Boat
Humphry Davy - Chemistry and
1800 AD Davy lamp
Michael Faraday - Electricity
John Dalton - matter consists of
indivisible particles called atoms
Richard Trevithick - Steam Powered
1803 AD Road Vehicle

1804 AD George Stephenson - First Railway

Avery - Reaction Turbine similar to
1837 AD Hero
Stephen Ányos Jedlik - Self Excited
1861 AD Dynamo
Nicolaus Otto - First Coal Gas
1862 AD Internal Combustion Engine
Siemens - Dynamo - Electric
1867 AD Machine
1882 AD Edison and Pearl Street Station
1883 AD de Laval - Impulse Turbine

1884 AD Charles Parsons - Reaction Turbine

Thomson - discovered electrons
1890 AD and isotopes
1897 AD Rudolph Diesel - Diesel engine
1903 AD Wright Brothers - First flight
Albert Einstein E = mass, multiplied
by the square of the velocity of
1905 AD light
Ernest Rutherford - atomic
1911 AD structure
Kamerlingh Onnes -
superconductivity Scientific and Industrial Revolution
 Houtermans and Atkinson - Stellar
1929 AD Thermo nuclear reactions

1932 AD James Chadwick - Atomic Fission

1933 AD Leó Szilárd - Chain Reaction
1939 AD von Ohain - First Jet Engine
Hans Bethe - Fusion in stars
1941 AD Frank Whittle - Jet Engine
Enrico Fermi - First controlled
1942 AD nuclear chain reaction
Oppenheimer Trinity Test and
1945 AD nuclear fissile bomb
ENIAC, Electronic Numerical
1946 AD Integrator And Computer
John Bardeen and Walter Brattain -
1947 AD Transistors

Teller and Ulam - Thermonuclear or

1951 AD Hydrogen Bomb (Fusion)
Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm -
TOKAMAK

1954 AD Obninsk - First Nuclear Power Plant

John Bardeen Leon Cooper and
John Schrieffer - Superconductivity
1957 AD explained
1958 AD Jack Kilby Integrated Circuit
Westinghouse - first commercial
1962 AD superconducting wire
1992 AD Galileo vindicated
Joint European Torus produced a
1997 AD peak of 16.1 megawatts
2000 AD Apology to Galileo
U.S., China, European Union (EU),
India, Japan, the Russian
Federation, and South Korea form
ITER and begin design for 500 MW
2005 AD Fusion Reactor