My Science School

On July 25, 1854, American inventor Walter Hunt received his patent for a paper shirt collar-"Improvement in shirt collars". This was one of Hunt's many inventions, the more popular of which are the safety pin and the sewing machine.

When you use a safety pin or see the paper collar in a shirt do you ever stop to think about how it came to be in the first place? There are many such inventions that silently go about doing their roles effectively, without pomp and fanfare. When it concerns the safety pin or the paper collar, they are probably taking a leaf out of their inventors book. For American inventor Walter Hunt spent a lifetime inventing without becoming a household name despite his successes.

Born in 1796 in the rural part of New York, very little is known about Hunt's early childhood. His obituary mentions that he was more interested in people and what he could do for them rather than his own welfare, right from childhood. It was a trait that he had throughout his life as he devoted himself to his dear ones, often giving away everything in his possession, even if that meant he didn't have enough to provide for himself.

Hunt's first patent

Hunt's family worked in a textile mill in the town of Lowville. With his ability to provide mechanical solutions to even complex problems, Hunt was able to work with Willis Hoskins, the mill owner, inventing and patenting a machine for spinning flax and hemp. This patent, which they obtained in 1826, was Hunt's first.

In 1833, Hunt invented a sewing machine that used a lockstitch - the first time an inventor had not tried to replicate a hand stitch with their machine. There's reason to believe that Hunt never patented it at the time as his daughter talked him out of commercialising the device, warning that its success would leave a lot of seamstresses unemployed.

This meant that the first patent for a lockstitch sewing machine went to American inventor Elias Howe in 1846. In the aftermath, Hunt applied a patent for his sewing machine in 1853. While the Patent Office recognised Hunt's precedence and he therefore received public credit for the invention. Howe raked in the money as his patent continued to be valid owing to certain technicalities.

Repaying a debt

Between the time he invented and patented his sewing machine, there was once a time when Hunt found himself owing a man a $15 debt. Eager to invent something that would allow him to erase the debt. Hunt is believed to have twisted an ordinary metal wire until he ended up with a device he called the "dress pin".

Even though the idea wasn't entirely novel and the concept can even be dated back to the Roman empire, Hunt was able to bring in innovations that made a lasting impact. With a clasp to keep the pin's point inside a protective case and a spring at one end that forced the other end in place. Hunt's dress pin had all the features now found today in every safety pin.

Hunt received a patent for his dress pins on April 10, 1849 and sold its rights for just $400 off his own volition. The money helped him repay his debt, even though it was only a minute fraction of the substantial fortune that his invention created.

Muslin and paper

A little over five years later, on July 24, 1854, Hunt received a patent for his paper shirt collar - "Improvement in shirt collars". He used a base of thin white cotton muslin and pasted very thin white paper on both its sides. These collars could be pressed between heated forms to make the shape of the neck. These collars were then varnished, thereby guarding it against the effects of sweat and also allowing it to be wiped clean with a damp cloth.

Until his death in 1859, Hunt continued to invent and patent devices, which included a knife sharpener, heating stove, ice boat, fountain pen, and a reversible metallic heel for shoes, to name a few. Even though he sold the rights to most of his patents, allowing others to enjoy the financial rewards that his devices brought, he was respected and recognised as someone who had spent his entire lifetime inventing.

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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an infrared space observatory that launched on Dec 25, 2021, from ESA's launch site at Kourou in French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT; 9:20 a.m. local time in Kourou), aboard an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket. 

NASA released the first scientific images from Webb at a live event on July, 12. Explore the first images in more detail and what it means for JWST science in our recently published article.

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope — NASA's largest and most powerful space science telescope — will probe the cosmos to uncover the history of the universe from the Big Bang to alien planet formation and beyond. It is one of NASA's Great Observatories, huge space instruments that include the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the cosmos.

The release of the first full-colour images and spectroscopic data will mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb will help answer questions about the earliest moments of the universe and allow astronomers to study exoplanets in greater detail than ever before. James Webb was launched in December to succeed the revolutionary - but now ageing-Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope uses a 19.7-foot-tall primary mirror to collect light. That light is bounced to a smaller secondary mirror, which then redirects it onto the telescope's instruments, including a camera that records an image.

While Hubble looks mostly in the visual and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, Webb will look at longer wavelengths in the infrared, to see what the universe looked like around 100 to 250 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies were formed.

Early alignment imagery already demonstrated the unprecedented sharpness of Webb's infrared view. However, these new images will be the first in full colour and the first to showcase Webb's full science capabilities.

Credit : Space.com 

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Researchers from Weizmann Institute of Science have developed an advanced, innovative method to detect non-visual traces of fire. Using this method, they have discovered one of the earliest known pieces of evidence for the use of fire, dating back at least 8,00,000 years. Their results have been published in an article late in June in PNAS.

Ancient hominins are a group that includes humans and some of our extinct family members. The controlled use of fire by this group dates back at least a million years. Archaeologists believe that this was the time when Homo habilis began its transition to Homo erectus.

Cooking hypothesis

A working theory called the "cooking hypothesis", in fact, postulates that the use of fire was instrumental in our evolution. Controlled fire not only allowed for staying warm, crafting tools, and warning off predators, but also enabled cooking, paving the way for the growth of the brain.

Traditional archaeological evidence relying on visual identification of modifications resulting from combustion has provided widespread evidence of fire use no older than 2,00,000 years. Sparse evidence of fire dating back to 5,00,000 also exists.

The team of scientists involved in this research had pioneered the application of Al and spectroscopy in archaeology to find indications of controlled burning of stone tools. For this research, they developed a more advanced Al model capable of finding hidden patterns across a multitude of scales. Output of the model could thus estimate the temperature to which the stone tools were heated.. providing insights into past human behaviours.

Assess heat exposure

The researchers took their method to Evron Quarry, an open-air archaeological site first discovered in the 1970s. The site is home to fossils and tools dating back to between 8,00,000 and 1 million years ago, but without any visual evidence of heat. With their accurate Al, the team assessed the heat exposure of 26 flint tools. The results showed that these tools had been subjected to a wide range of temperatures, with some even being heated to over 600 degree Celsius. The presence of hidden heat puts the traces of controlled fire to at least 8,00,000 years ago.

Apart from identifying non-visual evidence of fire use, the scientists hope that their newly developed technique will provide a push toward a more scientific, data-driven archaeology that uses new tools. The researchers believe that this will help us understand the behaviour of our early ancestors and the origins of the human story.

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