Questions to the text:
Is man capable of changing the course of history?
How has history been shaped by spiritual leaders and divine figures?
Name outstanding human rights activists.
What political leaders significantly influenced our history? Whose destiny you like the most?
Name the greatest philosophers and try to remember their input.
How big is the changing power of arts? How have great writers, artists, singers, performers changed the world?
List the achievements of the above-mentioned scientists and accentuate their role.
How do you see the perspectives of the mankind in consideration of anthropogenic influence?
Write
short notes about the key issues raised in the text.
Compose
and write a plan of the text.Retell the text using new vocabulary.
Write
a composition about what the world will be like in 100 years (25
sentences). Compare your guesses with the scientific projections.
Prepare
a report on any person who significantly contributed to the course
of history (20-25 sentences).
Topic 15. Amazing achievements: history and prospects.
Every great discovery I ever made, I gambled that the truth was there, and then I acted in faith until I could prove its existence.
--Arthur H. Compton
The inventors of TV, telephone, frozen food, and railway engines changed the world for ever.
Joseph Lister was a British physician who introduced antiseptics into surgery in 1867. He started using carbolic acid dressings in his own surgery work and so cut down the incidence of sepsis which had been shown by Louis Pasteur to be caused by germs. Three years later he claimed that death from surgery had dropped from over 40% to under 15%. He also replaced the original silk thread which was used to stitch wounds with cat gut. The cat gut could be sterilised and was readily absorbed into the body and this improved recovery rates from surgery even more. Thanks to Lister, infection during surgery is unusual rather being the norm as it was in the mid eighteen hundreds.
John Robert Oppenheimer is known as the father of the atomic bomb. He was an American, theoretical physicist and widely known for his part as scientific director of the Manhattan Project which was the World War II attempt to develop nuclear weapons. His team first tested the atomic bomb in New Mexico, and Oppenheimer is said to have quoted from the Bhagavad Gita: ‘If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’
Clarence Birdseye is the American inventor who is considered to be the founder of the frozen food industry. In 1922 Birdseye started a series of experiment to see which methods of freezing produced the best fish. As a result of this Birdseye Seafoods Inc. was formed. Basically, he has seen how the Inuit in the north had air frozen their fish in seconds in temperatures of -43C and noted how fresh it tasted on thawing. It was his quick freeze machine that really started the modern frozen food industry in 1924.
Hippocrates (460-370BC) was a Greek physician who was said to be the father of medicine as we know it today. He was the founder of the Hippocratic School of Medicine. It was this school that first saw the study of medicine as a discipline of its own instead of part of theurgy a philosophy. He is credited with advanced a system for the systematic study of medicine.
Antoine Lavoisier was the father of modern chemistry. He was the first to recognize oxygen and hydrogen as elements in their own right and worked and wrote the very first list of elements. Unfortunately, because he was such a prominent French citizen, he was beheaded during the French Revolution.
Alexander Fleming was the Scottish biologist and pharmacologist who discovered the antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928. He made this discovery by accident when he noticed that fungus, in the laboratory, would not grow around a particular kind of mould. He isolated this as being from the penicillium genus.
William Caxton was an English engineer who had his own textile business and translated a popular French romance story into English. He printed it as the Recuyell of Historyes of Troye and it became the book ever to be printed in English. He set up a printing press and published over a hundred different titles, including works by Chaucer and Gower.
George Stephenson was an English engineer who built the first railway line in the world to use steam locomotives. His rail gauge which is the distance between the rails is four feet and eight and a half inches and this is still a standard size worldwide.
Alexander Graham Bell is credited with the invention of the telephone. In 1876 he was awarded the first US patent for the telephone. He is also known for pioneering work on hydrofoils and aeronautics. On his death on 2nd August 1922, all telephones in the US were silenced for one minute in tribute to the man who made them possible.
John Baird was a Scottish engineer who was credited with building the first working television in 1926. He used an electromechanical device to show black and white and color pictures on screen. The first color TV transmission was made on July 3rd 1928.
Nikola Tesla - n 1893, in St. Louis, Missouri, Nikola Tesla made devices for his experiments with electricity. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated the principles of his wireless work. The descriptions contained all the elements that were later incorporated into radio systems. In 1895 Alexander Stepanovich Popov built his first radio receiver. In 1895 Guglielmo Marconi created a wireless system capable of transmitting a signal at long distances (1.5 mi./ 2.4 km). The event marked the dawn of a new era in radio transmission technology since other early experimenters had only reached ranges limited to a few meters. Marconi achieved greater range thanks to the layout of his apparatus and creation of the first effective radio receiver. Although Marconi has long been credited with inventing the radio, in 1943, maybe for political reasons related to Marconi suing the U.S. over Patent infringement during WWI, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's radio patent number 645,576.
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955, also known as "TimBL"), is a British engineer and computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web, making the first proposal for it in March 1989. On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet. However, first military networks have been developed by the American military as early as 1960’s. TCP/IP protocol, which is the ground for the present Internet, was invented in 1974. Now Internet is present almost everywhere. Mount Everest was covered in 2010 by 3G Internet.
William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. Bill Gates is a creator of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and MSN search engine. His company created Windows Mobile – a mobile operating system.
Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955 – died October 5, 2011) is an American business magnate and inventor. He is well known for being the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple. In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and others, designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface which led to the creation of the Macintosh. Jobs' history in business has contributed much to the symbolic image of the idiosyncratic, individualistic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of design and understanding the crucial role aesthetics play in public appeal. His work driving forward the development of products that are both functional and elegant has earned him a devoted following. Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in over 230 awarded patents or patent applications related to a range from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based). His company is world-known for its popular products like iPod (portable player), iPhone (super popular touch-based smart phone) and iPad (a stylish tablet computer).
The most credible predictions about the future of technological progress should be based on the currently developing projects and ideas which the world is obsessed with at the moment. These could be divided into several big blocks: the energy block, the information technology block, biotechnology block, robotics and applied mechanics block, material science block and trivia. Energy issues are crucial as the world is rapidly exhausting its fuel resources and oil prices continue to surge. Scientists are now preoccupied with the research of alternative and renewable energy sources (solar, hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels) as well as improving conventional ones (fossil fuels, nuclear power). Besides that, they are working on wireless energy transfer, nanowire batteries and other more efficient energy storage opportunities. The IT block is represented by the research of AI, machine translation, 4G cellular communication, computer tech (3D displays, screenless displays, faster processors and bigger memory capacity etc), immersive virtual reality, intelligent apparel and many more.
The most potentially useful biotech developments should come from research in genetic engineering, artificial photosynthesis, synthetic biology, hibernation (say, for space travel), cryoprotection, stem cell treatment, body implants and prosthetics, in vitro meat, regenerative medicine. Present robotics, besides constructing funny Japanese toys, is concerned with issues of molecular nanotechnology, nanorobotics, swarm robotics, stealth robots. Material science block encompasses research in high-temperature superconductivity (possible applications: no loss conductors, frictionless bearings, magnetic levitation, high-capacity accumulators, electric cars), nanomaterials, especially carbon nanotubes, (for stronger, lighter materials, space elevator construction), metamaterials (for microscopes, cloaking devices), programmable matter, laser scalpels in medicine. The trivia block includes LED lamp application research, and, more interestingly, force field research with application in space travel, military and law enforcement.
The society should keep a tight leash on these experiments, and the final word in many of them should be said by a humanitarian, not scientific mind. This concerns potentially hazardous experiments and unacceptable issues. Of course, it is always nice to enjoy the new, better reality. But playing God may be something nature will not allow us to do. History saw episodes when scientists, driven by purely scientific ambitions, did horrible things. So, it’s up to the civil society to control these processes. One of the best ways to accomplish that is the further development of global management organizations, like UN, different councils and initiative groups, general democratic processes, eradication of war and rogue state philosophy. The humanity should be both bold and humble to continue its path through history, treading each step with caution and avoiding precarious balance.