Pencil, a derivative of the Latin word pencillus for "little tail," originally described a small, fine, pointed brush.
N. J. Conte, in 1795, successfully produced pencils, after the later famed Faber family of Nuremberg, Germany, failed to do so, by using a pulverized graphite base to create a substandard, crude prototype of a pencil. Conte's method, the basic recipe used by all pencil manufacturers today, differed from the failed Faber fiasco, as he ground graphite, mixed it with certain types of clay, pressed the "dough" into sticks, and finished them in a kiln. The Faber family followed suit, and achieved the fame and fortune that previously eluded it.

The recipe used by modern pencil manufacturers, calls for dried, ground graphite, a form of carbon, mixed with clay and water in varying proportions. Pencils made with more clay produce a harder pencil, and, conversely, pencils made with more graphite produce a softer pencil. In either case, the ingredients are mixed until they reach a doughy consistency, then pass through a forming press, which presses the dough into a "pencil thin," smooth, glossy rope. After workers straighten the rope, they cut it into the desired lengths, and bake them in industrial ovens.

While the mixture is prepared and baked, workers prepare the casing that will house the lead. They shape the wooden casings, made from either red cedar or pine, into halves, and carve grooves in them to encase the graphite-based leads. The workers then carefully insert the finished leads into the grooves, glue the two wooden halves together, run the resulting slats through a saw that cuts them into single pencils, and finish them with a shaping machine that smoothes the pencils' surfaces.

Modern pencils come in over 350 flavors, each designed for a specific use, and may be purchased in over 72 colors. "Black pencils," graphite-based pencils, come in 19 degrees of hardness and of intensity. Specialty pencil leads are crafted to write on surfaces such as cloth, cellophane, plastics, and movie film. Architects, engineers, and those doing out door construction work primarily purchase these specialty leads, as they possess non-fade, weatherproof qualities. The versatility of Conte's brainchild, the pencil, makes it the essential, indispensable tool of these trades.

The history of the light bulb reads like a story straight out of a tabloid magazine. Contrary to what schools have taught for years, the American icon, Thomas Edison, neither invented the light bulb, nor held the first patent to the modern design of the light bulb.

Apparently, the we gave the esteemed Mr. Edison credit for the invention solely because he owned a power company, later known as General Electric, and a light bulb is just a bulb without a source of electricity to light it. In reality, light bulbs used as electric lights existed 50 years prior to Thomas Edison's 1879 patent date in the U.S.

Additionally, Joseph Swan, a British inventor, obtained the first patent for the same light bulb in Britain one year prior to Edison's patent date. Swan even publicly unveiled his carbon filament light bulb in New Castle, England a minimum of 10 years before Edison shocked the world with the announcement that he invented the first light bulb. Edison's light bulb, in fact, was a carbon copy of Swan's light bulb.

DID YOU KNOW?
The first light bulbs lasted a mere 150 hours, and that ten years later, Edison introduced one that lasted 1,200 hours? The average light bulb today lasts approximately 1,500 hours.

An X-ray picture is really a picture of the shadows cast by the denser materials (like bones) in your body.

These shadows are projected onto a film that has been coated with a sensitive material. The film is developed in a manner very similar to a photograph.

If the doctor suspects that you have a broken bone he will probably take an X-ray picture to check. X-rays are made of the same electromagnetic particles as light but with a much shorter wavelength. These shorter wavelengths allow X-rays to pass through the human body.

X-rays are produced in a special tube. Most of the air is pumped out of the tube. The tube holds a negatively charged electrode called a cathode. Inside the cathode is a tungsten wire which will give off electrons when heated. The tube also contains an anode, or target electrode. The anode is also made of tungsten. When the electrons emitted by the cathode hit the tungsten anode they are stopped abruptly and some of their energy is turned into X-radiation.

X-rays were named by their discoverer, Wilhelm Roentgen. He used the mathematical symbol X, which stands for an unknown, to denote his unknown rays.

Whitcomb L. Judson invented the zipper and YKK is the Japanese company that makes them.

Whitcomb L. Judson was a lover of gadgets and machines and the idea for his "clasp locker" came from when a friend had a stiff back from trying to fasten his shoes. Judson's clasp locker was used mostly on mailbags, tobacco pouches and shoes. However, his design, like most first inventions needed to be fine-tuned.

A more practical version came on the scene in 1913 when a Swedish-born engineer, Gideon Sundback revised Judson's idea and made his with metal teeth instead of a hook and eye design. In 1917, Sundback patented his "separable fastener."

The name changed again when the B. F. Goodrich Co. used it in rubber boots, galoshes, and called it the "zipper" because the boots could be fastened with one hand.

The 1940s brought about research in Europe of the coil zipper design. The first design was of interlocking brass coils. However, since they could be permanently bent out of shape, making the zipper stop functioning, it was rather bad for business and wasn't too practical. The new design was improved after the discovery of stronger, more flexible synthetics. Coil zippers eventually hit the market in the early 1960s.

In 1934, Yoshida Kogyo Kabushililaisha was founded. Sixty years later they changed their name to YKK Co. The privately owned firm, headquartered in Japan, now is made up of 80 companies at 206 facilities in 52 countries. Wow! you say? but of course, the demand for zippers is great. YKK makes everything from the dyed fabric around the zipper to the brass used to make the actual device.

Earle Dickson, an employee of Johnson and Johnson developed the Band-Aid® in 1920 for his accident-prone wife, Josephine. His employer, Johnson and Johnson, a company launched by pharmacist Robert Johnson and his two brothers, produced large, dry, cotton and gauze dressings, which remained sterile in germ-resistant packaging until opened. They formed their Company upon the premise set forth by Sir Joseph Lister, of Listerine fame, at a speech given in Philadelphia in 1876, that surgical procedures should be sterile, to reduce the alarmingly high post-operative mortality rates, which were 90% in Britain at the time.

Earle attached small pieces of this sterile gauze, produced by his employer, to the center of strips of surgical tape to bandage poor Josephine's wounds. A colleague of his encouraged him to pitch his invention to Management, which he did. Management initially dismissed his idea, but later reversed its position when Earle demonstrated how easily the bandage could easily be applied by oneself. The powers that be realized the earning potential of this invention, snatched Earle's idea, and ran with it.

The quest for ways to ignite a fire began about 1.5 million years ago, when the caveman discovered that he could start a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and ended with the successful invention of the non-toxic matches we use today.

Today, approximately 500 billion matches are used each year and about 200 billion of these come from matchbooks.

In 1669, an alchemist, one who mistakenly believes that he can change base metals into gold, mixed up a batch of something which was, surprisingly, not gold, but a substance he named phosphorous. Since his recipe did not produce the gold he desired, he tossed it onto the heap of history.

Next was Robert Boyle, an English physicist, after whom Boyle's Law was named. He cleverly coated a piece of paper with phosphorous and, armed with a splinter of sulfur-coated wood, bravely bulled the wood through the paper, which burst into flames.

Much later, in 1826, John Walker stumbled upon a chemical concoction that produced fire. After stirring together a mixture of chemicals, which did not contain phosphorous, John removed the stick he used, only to find a dried lump at its end. When he scraped the stick against the floor to rid it of the lump, the stick ignited. His mixture of antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate, gum, and starch could produce fire. In his rush to demonstrate his discovery to others, John bypassed the patent office.

In no time, a person at one of John's demonstrations, Samuel Jones, spotted an overlooked, golden opportunity, and patented the invention under his name. Mr. Jones produced matches he named Lucifers, which produced phenomenal sales. The widespread availability of the matches actually led to a significant increase in smoking.

Aspirin's history is a lengthy one, from its discovery in the fifth century BC, to its use as a bartering tool in World War I, to its newly discovered benefits and uses.

A person could get a headache thinking about all of the detours aspirin has taken on the road to becoming today's common, inexpensive, cure-all medication.

Aspirin's roots are deep, and reach back to Hippocrates himself, the Greek father of modern medicine, who held the recipe for a pain reliever and fever reducer made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree. The key the Greek father of modern medicine held from sometime between 460 and 377 BC, was buried with him, and was not rediscovered until 1758 by an English clergyman.

Scientists, now aware of the pain relieving properties of willow bark, struggled to strip it down to the exact ingredient responsible for its powers, and finally did so in the 1820s. They narrowed their search to salicin, an early form of the family of drugs named salicylates, of which aspirin is a member.

Severe stomach upset from the salicylic acid extracted willow bark posed a problem for scientists. They attempted to remedy this side effect by combining the acid with sodium to neutralize the acid, but it failed to reduce the belly aching.

A French chemist, Charles Frederic Gerhardt put an end to the dilemma in 1853, by adding acetyl chloride to the sodium salicylate mixture. He published the results of his findings, but did not pursue his creation past this point, even though it upset the stomach less than the currently available compound. Mr. Gerhardt saw no future in the time-consuming preparation of his recipe, which he felt did not improve much upon the original medicine. His decision left people grabbing their guts, and stomaching the old standby, sodium salicylate.

Salvation came in 1897, in the person of an eager, young Felix Hoffman, who sought, and found, a drug to help relieve the painful symptoms of his father's arthritis. This driven chemist, an employee of the Bayer Company, found and dusted off Gerhardt's old publication, mixed a batch of the recipe, and discovered that it actually worked.

Hoffman used his connection with his employer to pitch his idea, and Bayer reluctantly agreed to produce the medicine they named Aspirin. They invented the name Aspirin by combining the initials A from acetyl chloride, the SPIR from the plant they extracted the salicylic acid from, Spirae ulmaria, and the IN, because it was the common ending for medications at that time. Bayer launched Aspirin in powder form and as a tablet in 1915. Aspirin was an instant success.

Aspirin's success ended up costing the Bayer Company a great deal of money, when the U.S., England, France, and Russia forced it to surrender the trademark to them, as part of Germany's war reparations at the close of World War I. Bayer gave up the trademark in 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, which explains why the aspirin, stripped of its trademark, is now written in the lower case.

Today, aspirin holds the title of being the most widely used drug, one that is no longer solely used as a pain reliever and as a fever reducer. Physicians have shown aspirin to be effective in combating arthritis pain, in reducing the risk of heart disease, of death following a heart attack, of cancer, if taken two times weekly, and of developing preeclampsia during pregnancy. It is doubtful that aspirin will ever again be lost to the annals of history.

Today's playing cards got their names from a combination of names in Italian and French decks of cards.

The French trimmed the Italian deck from 78 cards to 52 cards, kept certain aspects of the Italian deck, and combined it with aspects of their deck. The British adopted the new French deck, the Americans followed suit, and the product of the changes the French made to their deck is the modern deck of cards.

Certain cards in today's playing cards, Italy's tarots, or picture cards, were used for both fortune telling and for card games, and made up 22 of the Italian deck of 78 cards. The remaining 56 cards were number cards. One tarot card named "il matto," or the fool, is present in today's deck as the joker.

The Italian deck had four suits, which represented the chalice, the sword, money, and the baton, and four "court" cards, the king, queen, knight, and knave.

Of the 56 cards in the Italian deck, the French kept 52, which included the king, queen, knave, and 10 number cards in each of the four suits. They renamed the suits the spade, heart, diamond, and club and the deck they created is the most common deck in use today.

In 1946, Dr. Percy Spencer, an engineer for the Raytheon Company, pulled the idea for the microwave oven right out of his pocket.

An invention of Raytheon Company scientists Sir John Randall and Dr. H.A. Boot, the magnetron, provided Dr. Spencer with both the most critical component of the microwave oven, and created the accident, which led to its discovery.

The magnetron the two Birmingham University scientists were charged with inventing during World War II, provided the Allies with the means to pinpoint the exact locations of Nazi war machines and arsenals, as the magnetron produced microwaves which radar then bounced off of these weapons of destruction, and back to the Allies.

Testing using the magnetron continued in the post-war years, and Dr. Spencer, in the midst of performing one of these tests, made a logical connection, which gave birth to the microwave oven. While performing such a test, Doc Spencer had a hankering for the chocolate bar he had stashed in his pocket. He eagerly reached into his pocket, only to discover chocolate sauce. Percy reasoned that the culprit responsible for the melted mass of chocolate was not his body heat, but his proximity to the heat-producing magnetron.

In true scientific fashion, Dr. Spencer decided to put his theory to the test, and sent for a bag of unpopped corn. He placed the corn in front of the magnetron tube and watched as the kernels popped into the air, and rained down upon the floor. Still dissatisfied with the amount of data he had collected, the good doctor decided to perform one more test to solidify his theory. To add more drama to his next act, he chose to cook an egg, which, when placed in front of the magnetron tube, summarily blew up in the face of an on-looking colleague.

Raytheon deemed these data conclusive, and launched an effort to produce the first microwave oven. The mammoth microwave oven they created bore the name Radar Range, in honor of the magnetron's service to this country during wartime. Sales of the large appliance in the 1940s were virtually nil, with the exception of sales to the military and to restaurants.

In 1952, Tappan introduced a home use model, selling at a mere $1295.00, and sales of microwaves increased. Today, the compact versions of the original Radar Range, carrying much lower price tags, are standard in most homes, and almost everyone can afford to enjoy microwave popcorn from a bag, not from off of the floor!

Neither!

Twelve midnight A.M. and twelve midnight P.M., or 00:00 A.M. and 00:00 P.M., mean nothing at all. They are simply the midpoints that divide the day into two equal halves.

Each and every day begins exactly at midnight, and each A.M. begins precisely thereafter. Similarly, each P.M. begins immediately after noon. No meaning can be assigned to 12:00 A.M. (00:00 A.M.), or to 12:00 P.M. (00:00 P.M.). They are merely reference points meant to simplify timetables for us.

Along the same line, the Universal Day, established by the International Convention in 1884 in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., operates according to World Time, or Universal Time at Greenwich, England. The logic regarding Midnight and Noon also applies to Greenwich Mean Time, commonly referred to as GMT or Zulu time; Midnight and Noon represent markers, or "page breaks" in the day and in the night, and may be represented by 00:00 o’clock.

Greenwich, England also holds the distinction of being at the point of zero longitude, where East meets West. The 1884 international agreement also recognized this line of zero degrees longitude as the prime meridian, a point from which all points on the earth’s surface are measured.