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PinkMonkey Online Study Guide-World History
19.1 Achievements in Physics
Rapid progress was made in physics thanks to the
impetus provided by the Industrial Revolution in England.
The scientific achievements of Volta, Oersted and
Faraday in Electro-magnetism, enabled Samuel Morse, in 1844, to
invent the electric telegraph. Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant
Watson, worked on a harmonic telegraph, and thus was born the telephone
in 1876. In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison invented the first phonograph.
The renowned German Physicist Heinrich R. Hertz
created Hertzian waves, popularly known as "radio waves."
Luigi Palmieri an Italian physicist invented the seismograph. G.
Marconi sent the first radio signals and became the Father of Wireless
Telegraphy.
Herman Von Helmholtz invented the opthalmoscope,
while William Thomson developed the mariner’s compass.
Sir William Crooks studied the passage of electricity
through tubes known as ’Crooks tubes.’
In 1895, William K. Roentgen discovered X-Rays.
Modern physics was fostered by John Dalton and
Max Planck. Max Planck came forward with a new theory on light.
He also propounded the quantum theory; which explained the properties
of the atom.
The world witnessed the birth of nuclear physics
with Roentgen’s discovery of X-Rays.
Exhibit 19.1
Marie Curie with her husband, Pierre Curie
Another important development in this field was
made by the French couple Pierre and Marie Curie, who discovered
that Radium emits radiation. Albert Einstein predicted that by splitting
the atom, tremendous energy can be released. This theory paved the
way for the production of the atom bomb which was used by the Americans
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with catastrophic results. Thus the Age
of the Atom began from the middle of the 20th
century.
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