Sei sulla pagina 1di 14

1

Unidad 4: “Science and Technology in the United KIngdom”

Elemento de Competencia:
Establecer las diferencias y similitudes entre el desarrollo científico y tecnológico en
Inglaterra, Estados Unidos y México de manera integral a través de una reflexión
crítica y responsable identificando las aportaciones científicas y tecnológicas que
cada país ha hecho para mejorar las condiciones de la vida diaria.

Activity 27 .Origin of popular inventions.

A) Choose from the inventions given the five things that you think were
invented by a Mexican. Inventions and write the inventors

Penicillin Rocket belt Contraceptive pill Polio Vaccination


Color TV Instant book maker Mouse pad Facebook WWW
Digital Camera Gravity Laws Steam engine Trans lucid concrete

Mexican inventions Inventors


____________________________ ___________________________
____________________________ ___________________________
____________________________ ___________________________
____________________________ ___________________________
____________________________ ____________________________
____________________________ ____________________________

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


2

Activity 28. Inventions from three countries.

A) Write 7 Inventions from the United Kingdom and the United States of America

B) Now write a short text about advantages that one of these inventions brought to
the world. Take 10-15 minutes to do this task.
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


3

4.1 Inventions from the United Kingdom

Activity 29. Gadgets that make your life easier.

Write 30 words about each invention.

The Telephone

Penicillin

Stamps

Radar

Steam engine

4.2 Inventors and Inventions from United Kingdom

Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) was an English


businessman who invented a machine in 1769 using
water power for spinning cotton, which had been spun
by hand until then. He built his own factory and became
one of the early leaders of the Industrial Revolution.

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


4

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) a Scientist and Inventor who is


best known for inventing the Telephone in 1876. He was born in
Scotland but from 1872 he moved to the US, where he later started
the Bell Telephone Company which became one of the largest
companies in America.

George Boole (1815-64) was an English mathematician who invented a


type of mathematical logic known as Boolean Algebra in 1854. A simple
form that later became the language of computers.

Frank Whittle is well known for being an English engineer,


best known for inventing the jet engine in 1929, the type of
engine now used in most aircraft, which gives forward
movement by releasing a stream of gases at high speed
behind it.

John Cockroft (1897-1967) was an English scientist who Ernest Walton


succeeded with in splitting the atom at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1932.
He was later closely involved with Britain’s nuclear energy program and
was the first director of the research center at Harwell.

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


5

James Watt was a Scottish inventor whose work played an important part
in the development of the steam engine in 1774. His designs for engines
improved on those in existence at the time because they used much less
fuel. Watt’s engines were the first to be suitable for use in factories and
were therefore one of the major advances in industry that led to the
Industrial Revolution.

George Stephenson was born on June 9th, 1781, in the


coal mining village of Wylam, England. Wagons loaded
with coal passed through Wylam several times a day.
These wagons were drawn by horses -- locomotives had
not yet been invented. George Stephenson's first job was
to watch over a few cows owned by a neighbor which were
allowed to feed along the road; George was paid two cents a day to keep the cows out of
the way of the coal-wagons; and also, to close the gates after the day's work of the
wagons was over. In 1813, George Stephenson became aware that William Hedley and
Timothy Hackworth were designing a locomotive for the Wylam coal mine. So at the age
of twenty, George Stephenson began the construction of his first locomotive. It should be
noted that at this time in history, every part of the engine had to be made by hand, and
hammered into shape just like a horseshoe.

Charles Darwin

When he published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) it


caused much argument and anger because it seemed to disagree with the story of
creation in the Bible. Most people now accept the main points of Darwin’s Theory, and
many see it and the Bible as two ways of saying the same thing, but others, especially in

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


6

the US, interpret the Bible account literally and believe that only creationism, also called
creation science, should be taught in schools.

Richard Trevithick was an English engineer who was the first man to
develop steam engines into vehicles carrying passengers. The first of
these were to be used on roads, but in 1804 he built the first steam
engine that moved on rails.

Barnes Wallis was an English engineer. He designed some of the most important aircraft
and weapons of World War II, including the Wellington and Wellesley bombers and a
bouncing bomb used to destroy dams. After the war he invented the ‘swing-wing’ aircraft
and helped to design Concorde.

William Thomson was a British physicist and inventor. He did much work on the laws of
thermodynamics and in 1848 produced a temperature scale that
later became known as the Kelvin Scale. He also did important
work in the areas of magnetism and electricity. He invented many
scientific instruments, especially for use at sea, and was involved
in the laying of the first cable under the Atlantic.

Dorothy Hodgkin was an English scientist who did important work on the structure of
crystals. She discovered the structure of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin. In 1964 she
received the Nobel Prize for chemistry.

William Herschel was a British astronomer, born in Germany.


He was originally a musician but became an astronomer by studying the
sky through telescopes he made himself. He discovered Uranus, the first

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


7

new planet to be identified since ancient times, and proved the existence of double stars
after becoming the official astronomer to King George III.

Edmond Halley was an English astronomer and mathematician who was a close friend of
Isaac Newton. He is best remembered for Halley’s Comet, which was named after him.
A comet is a bright object that moves through space round the sun with a tail of burning
gas and dust. Halley correctly predicted that this one would return regularly to be seen in
the night sky approximately every 76 years.

Francis Crick was an English scientist. His work with James


Watson at the Cavendish Laboratory led to the discovery of the
structure of DNA in 1953. Crick, Watson and Maurice Wilkins
shared the Nobel Prize for this work in 1962. Crick’s later career
involved work on the visual system and the brain, and he published a book.

Rowland Hill was a British Post Office worker who invented the
postage stamp, originally costing one penny. Before this, postage was
paid by the person receiving a letter or parcel. Hill was made a knight
in 1860.

Jane Goodall is remembered as a British scientist who became famous for her study of
chimpanzees. She discovered that these animals can use tools. Before her studies,
people thought that these animals could not use tools. Before her studies, people thought
that only humans understood how to make and use tools with their hands. At the age of
23, she met Dr. Louis Leakey on a trip to Africa and became his assistant. Then she went
to Gombe National Park in Tanzania in 1960. She lived and worked there studying how
chimpanzees live. She has won many prizes for her work and in 1977 she started the
Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation. She was made
a dame in 2004.

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


8

JJ Thomson was an English physicist who won the Nobel Prize for
physics in 1906 for discovering the electron. He was also
responsible for running the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge,
England, which became the world’s leading center for research into
atomic physics. His son George Thomson (1892-1975) and seven of
his assistants all won Nobel Prizes.

Activity 30.

A) Write about an invention that you consider is the best invention ever, it does not
matter its nationality. Use the next key words (Helped, brought, improved, today,
invention, design, idea). Write more than 100 words in your text.

___________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


9

Activity 31. More inventions!

Write 30 words about each invention.

Camera

Light Bulb

Airplane

Revolver

Cell phone

4.3 Inventors and Inventions from the United States of America

George Eastman was an American who invented a camera small enough


to carry and film in a flexible roll. He started a company in 1884 that later
became the Eastman Kodak company. His Kodak box camera was first
sold in 1881 and the Brownie camera in the 1900. This made
photography available to many ordinary people for the first time.

Richard Feynman (1918-88) was a US Physicist who began the first research into
quantum electrodynamics. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for physics for his work in this
field. His Feynman diagrams help to explain the behavior of substances and light during
World War II, Feynman Worked on the Manhattan Project. In 1986, he was a member of
the Committee that investigated the explosion of the Challenger Spacecraft.

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


10

James D Watson is well known for being a US scientist who did


important work on DNA (=the substance in the human body that passes
from parents to children and makes it possible to identify every individual
human being). He worked mainly at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England,
and in 1962, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he won the Nobel Prize for medicine
for his work.

R Buckminster Fuller was an engineer from US and inventor of devices and buildings
that made the most efficient use of materials. His best-known
inventions include the geodesic dome and the Dymaxion House.
Fuller also created the idea of ‘Spaceship Earth’ which imagines all
people on earth as travelers together through space. He was
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.

Tomas Edison (1847-1931) was a famous US inventor. His


inventions included a machine for reproducing sound, the electric light
bulb and the kinescopic camera which was later used in cinemas .He
produced the first talking films in 1912. His famous phrase “Genius is
one per cent inspiration, ninety per cent perspiration”

Albert Einstein(1879-1955) a physicist, born in Germany, who was


possibly the greatest scientist of the 20th century. In 1905 he published
his theory of relativity. This led to equation giving the relation between
mass and energy (E=mc²) which is the basis of atomic energy. Einstein
suggested how it could be used for making weapons, but after World
War II he spoke publicity against nuclear weapons, 1917, he had become famous all over
the world. He was given the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. When Hitler came to power,
Einstein, who was Jewish, went to live to US, becoming US citizen in 1940. In 1933 he
wrote a book called why war? with Sigmund Freud. He became a professor at Princeton

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


11

University in 1934, and he spent the rest of his life looking, without success, for a theory
that combined those of gravitation and electromagnetism. In 1952 he was offered the
presidency, the position of president of the state of Israel, but he did not accept it.
.
Dolby is an electronic system that reduces noise to improve the sound
of tape recordings, films, etc. It was invented in London by Ray Dolby
(1933-), a recording engineer born in the US.

Bill Gates is a US businessman who, in association with Paul Allen, started the
Microsoft Corporation when he was only 19 on April 4th, 1975. Microsoft is a company
dedicated to the computer industry and it is established in Redmond Washington, USA.
Microsoft was the creator of the operating system windows. This product is being used
as Microsoft Windows operating system. He is thought to be the richest person in the
world. His foundation called Gates Foundation, gives money to educational and health
projects. He was made an honorary knight by the British government in 2005.

Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google Funders) were two doctoral students in computer
from Stanford University who improved searches. Coordination and advice were due to
Mexican Hector Garcia Molina on September 4th, 1998. They had a server with 80 CPUs
and two HP routers. This search engine beat a more popular time Altavista, which was
created in 1995.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (May 14th,1984) is a programmer and American businessman


known as the creator of Facebook. To develop the network, Zuckerberg had the support
of his fellows from Harvard Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. He is
currently the youngest person listed on Forbes with a fortune valued at more than 6,900
million dollars.

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


12

4.4 Patenting an Invention

When someone invents something, it can be patented. A patent is a property right


granted by the Government of a country to an inventor to exclude others from making,
using, offering for sale, or selling the invention without his permission for a limited time.
Getting a patent requires a process. First, a review is done in order to check in a list the
things that can and cannot be patented and then, it is determined if the invention falls into
of one of the patenting categories, after that the candidate receives the basics of the
patenting process from the material provided by the organization in charge of giving the
patents.. A typical patent application takes 2 or 3 years grant, however the procedure may
be accelerated as explained above. There is generally a time limit of 4 ½ years from the
application´s earliest date, finally after a patent application if the invention has passed all
the rules and the cost for this process has been paid, the person gets a Patent for a period
of time.

There is an organization in each country for getting a Patent. Intellectual Property


Office (IPO) is the organization in England for getting a Patent. In the United States of
America it is the USPTO (United States Property and Trademark Office) and in Mexico
the IMPI (Instituto de la Propiedad Intelectual). In the United Kingdom if you have a
granted patent, you must renew it every year after the 5 th year for up to 20 years
protection. A patent UK is a territorial right that only gives protection to the invention in
the UK.

An invention can be patented only if it is new, if it has an inventive step that is not
obvious to someone with knowledge and experience in the subject and if it has the
capacity of being made or used in some kind of industry.

An invention cannot be patented if it is a scientific or mathematical discovery, theory


or method, a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, a way of performing mental act,
playing a game or doing business, an animal or plant variety.

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


13

Activity 32. Let’s dream!

A) If it were possible, what would you invent in order to improve quality of life?
Describe you invention by giving it a name, mentioning the characteristics, its
benefits and the country where you would patent it. Use more than 100 words in
your text.

Invention:

Characteristics:

Benefits:

Place to patent it (why?)

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL


14

Activity 33. Mexican people can also invent!

Find more Information about Mexican Inventions. Write 30 words about each
invention. (Do not repeat the inventions mentioned before). Take 40 minutes to do
this task.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

CULTURA INGLESA FIME UANL

Potrebbero piacerti anche