Hero of Alexandria was a mathematician and an engineer about the time of Christ in the 1st century AD. He built a machine that could dispense holy water by accepting a coin. This was the world’s first vending machine. Its internal structure comprised essentially of levers resembling a balance beam. On one end of the beam,…
The root of the word ‘engineer’ lies in the Latin word ingenium, meaning ‘innate quality of mental power’ or cleverness. In olden days, the engineers were required to be extremely skilful and inventive as they devised various levers, pulleys and other machines that helped in the civil and military development of any society. Engineer, as…
The relation an + bn = cn for a, b, c and n being integers is valid for n being limited to 1 and 2. For example: 31 + 41 = 71 242 + 72 = 252 Fermat’s last theorem was first stated by Pierre de Fermat, a 17th century lawyer and amateur mathematician. The…
Olympus-1 was a communications satellite which was launched by the European Space Agency in 1989. In 1993, Olympus-1 was hit by a meteoroid that damaged its solar array pointing system. Satellites use panels of solar cells to derive electricity from the sun. For this, the solar panels have to point at the direction of the…
The e-mail predates the Internet or the World Wide Web by more than a decade. The e-mail originated in the research labs of the United States Defence Labs in the late 1960s, in the ARPANET project. It was used as a note or a file that was transferred from one user’s folder to another user’s…
Lord Byron, also known as George Gordon Byron and 6th Baron Byron, was a famous English poet. He was known to enjoy adventure. He was extremely fond of exercise and sports. He loved swimming and once swam from Sestos in Modern Gallipoli in European Turkey to Abydos in Upper Egypt. He mastered a wide variety of…
