h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The problem here is to connect three inventions and one discovery that come together to reveal something we now use every day.....

NB. The inventions have all had to be modified..... It is the principles that are important...

Here we go.....In no particular order....

An Italian Savante invents a device for testing explosive gasses...
An English Mining engineer invents a way of draining mines...
An Italian Hydraulics Engineer invents a device that is useful to the French Perfumieres....

These three were brought together by a German Engineer...

Which would have been useless if it were not for the activities of a bogus 'Colonel' in Pennsylvania. His discovery and activities killed off the Greenland whaling industry, almost at a stroke!

It was the 'waste' from the 'Colonel's' business that is a key!!

There are klaxons of course for obvious guesses!!!!!

So THINK!!!!



GT

- great question.

Would the German Engineer be Karl Benz, perchance?

B

and the English Mining Engineer would be James Brindley who designed a machine for draining mines (I believe it was originally used in coal pits)

I imagine the explosive gas detector would have evolved into the spark plug, and the perfumery device became the carburettor.

B

I'm guessing the Colonel in Philly was the guy who invented modern oil drilling. If the waste is the key, did he do it by accident?

Is the answer cars?

Replies time!

Post 3 Mu Beta Benz. Obvious answer, obvious -5

Post 4 Feisor Brindly. No! (But not a klaxon as I had forgotten him!!!

Post 5 Yes spark plug, yes carburettor. Any ideas who for more marks? +6 up to now!!

Post 6 pedro Who was he, and what was first regarded as waste? +1 DGI for oil drilling!

Keep it up, folks!!



GT

Ooops!

Post 5 is Mu Beta, of course!!



GT

The reciprocating engine was the invention of Herr _____ Otto but I get that much by remembering about the 'Otto cycle'. I'd have to use wiki to be able to tell you his first name.

Is that only 1/2 points?


EYG

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that the diesel engine was invented first.

Technologically speaking, maintaing heat in a <./>glow plug</.> is easier than the dynamo/discharge coil and spark plug combination.

Of course the spark plug is pretty useless until you've got the hang of oil refining(*) and you've developed a consistent octane/benzine fraction (aka petrol/gasoline) as heavier compounds will coat it in soot and stop it working.

Diesel engines will bang away with any old ***t. Heck, you can even run them on cooking oil...

Hopefully, I have racked up sufficient DGI points to name-drop Colonel Sanders, at this juncture.


EYG
(*) I have a feeling that the business of <./>oil refining</.> had to have started before oil drilling did. In order to deploy sperm whale oil on everything from pocket-watch bearings to lamps, to axle grease, you need a way to separate and purify the multitude of chemical compounds it is made up of.

Well done, EatYerGreens! (Post 9)

The name 'Otto' and reciprocating engine is all you needed to say!!

His first name, BTW was Nicolaus!

+3 Otto
+3 Reciprocating (4 stroke) engine.

EYG Post 10.

+3 DGI for info on deisel engines.

The 'Colonel' did in fact start refining surface 'oil sludge' before he started drilling. His primary concern was for 'lamp oil', for which Sperm Whale oil had been used previously. Once he had this, Whales were no longer needed.

The highly volatile, lighter fractions of his refining were useless to him, so they were originally thrown away as 'waste!!!'

Another +3DGI for refining, EYG!

However............Colonel Sanders is an obvious klaxon! Sorry! -5





GT

Sorry!!!!

pedro Post 6

Not a car! EYG has got the answer!



GT

As a side note, and a matter of Canadian nationalist pride, I need to mention:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Pineo_Gesner

Mostly forgotten today he discovered, refined and named 'kerosone'.

To insiders he is considered the father of the modern petroleum industries,
his 'Kerosene Gaslight Company' installed the first public lighting in Halifax in
1850 and then in New York. The company later became Standard Oil (ESSO).

As a medical doctor he also performed some of the earliest surgeries using
anesthetics he developed, mainly 'ethers'.


~jwf~

Thanx for that link, ~jwf~...

Never knew that!!!

Must be worth +3 DGI!!



GT

OK.

It seems that this one has died...

So here are the answers.

The start was Thomas Savery, a mining engineer came up with a method for draining mines in 1708. This became the steam engine, that was further modified by Thomas Newcomen in 1722, and James Watt in 1769. Joseph Etienne Lenoir used a Watt engine, powered by a mixture of coal gas and air in 1860 when he found that the mixture readily exploded when a spark was introduced.......

This was provided by the development of the Eudiometer, invented by Alessandro Volta in 1776. He used this instrument for testing explosive gasses that were found in marshes. He obtained his electrical charge from an invention of an Englishman, Joseph Priestly, who invented an electrostatic generator he called the Electrophore.......

Our 'Bogus' Colonel was Edwin Drake, who discovered a sludge that came to be known as oil at Oil Creek, Pensylvania. He distilled this originally to produce Kerosine, which was in great demand for lamp oil. This discovery, as I said, just about killed off the Greenland whaling indestry. Again, Drake also found lighter fractions of the distillation process that were too unstable for lamp oil. These were originally thrown away.....(Petrol!!)


A German Engineer, Nicolaus Otto became interested in things, and modified the machines to produce the now commonly used 'Otto 4 Stroke' engine, but at that time was still using gas and air, to produce machines that could run factories......

Enter Italian hydraulics engineer Giovanni Battista Venturi, who in 1870, discovered that if a liquid is forced into a constricted tube, it undergoes a sudden drop in pressure, and emerges as a spray. Just what the Parisian perfumiers were waiting for!!

Enter Gottleib Daimler, who put the jigsaw together in 1880.....

To be finally refined by Wilhelm Maybach, who refined the perfume spray into the carburettor that we know today....

The end result of all this hard work is, of course, the automobile engine.....


Points Later..



GT

Sorry.

3AM.

Date for Edwin Drake is 1859...


GT

Bug*er!!

Nikolaus Otto, 1876...


GT

the diesel engine was originaly the peanut engine and ran on peanut oil

today deisel engines only require a tiny modification to run on peanut oil again, or any other cooking oil

anybody????

i would have been involved in this one sooner, but saw it was connect 4 and assumed it was one of those bloody awfull word grid things that now seem to be the norm instead of a nice stimulating question

Sorry Taff!!!!!!!

Look before you leap springs to mind!!!!




GT