Category: Inventions and Discoveries

Around a Continent in 18 Months: The First Circumnavigation of Australia

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When we think of great explorers, we picture men in naval uniforms, compasses in hand, charting “new worlds.” But tucked away in the annals of Australia’s history is a story that breaks that mould. It’s the story of Bungaree—the first Aboriginal man, and indeed the first Australian, to sail right around a continent.

His name is little known today, but his contribution to one of history’s most extraordinary voyages, in an exploration led by Captain Matthew Flinders, an English navigator was extraordinary.

From Broken Bay to the World

Bungaree was a man of the sea. Born around 1775 among the Kuringgai people near Broken Bay, north of Sydney, he grew up at a time when everything around him was changing. European ships had begun to appear on the horizon; new settlements were springing up on ancient lands. While many Aboriginal communities resisted the newcomers, Bungaree was curious. Quick-witted and charismatic, he learned to move between two worlds—his own and that of the British colonists.

By the time Flinders was preparing to embark on his grand voyage of exploration, Bungaree had already earned a reputation as a skilled sailor and interpreter. Flinders, who understood the need for a knowledgeable local person on his mission, invited Bungaree to join the expedition aboard HMS Investigator in 1801.

The Journey Around a Continent

The Investigator’s mission was to chart the entire coastline of the vast southern landmass known then as New Holland. Flinders hoped to prove it was a single continent—what we now call Australia. For this, he needed not just navigational skill, but also understanding—someone who could help bridge worlds. Bungaree became that person.

Throughout the voyage –from December 1801 to June 1803–Bungaree played a vital role as peacemaker and emissary. When the Investigator anchored near Indigenous communities, it was often Bungaree who stepped ashore first—speaking to local groups in shared gestures, explaining the strangers’ peaceful intent, and easing tensions that could have turned deadly. His presence gave the expedition a human connection that maps and compasses could not.

Flinders, for his part, admired Bungaree’s warmth and humour. In his journals, he wrote that Bungaree “was always of service wherever we went,” and that his “good disposition and open, manly conduct” won respect from both shipmates and the people they met. It was a rare acknowledgment of partnership in an age otherwise defined by hierarchy and conquest.

The Man Beyond the Maps

The voyage was gruelling. The Investigator battled storms, leaks, and disease. Food was scarce; scurvy stalked the crew. Yet through months at sea and thousands of kilometres of unknown coast, Bungaree remained cheerful and steadfast—a figure of resilience and adaptability. When they finally completed the first circumnavigation of the continent in 1803, Bungaree had travelled more of Australia’s coastline than any person before him.

And yet, history gave him only a passing mention. While Flinders returned to England (and was later imprisoned by the French), Bungaree returned to Sydney. There he became something of a local character—always dignified, dressed in military uniforms, wearing his medals proudly. He was lovingly referred to as “King Bungaree,”.

An Amazing Feat

So this was the veryfirst successful circumnavigation of an entire continent in recorded history–the first time anyone had completely circumnavigated a single, continuous continental landmass on Earth.

Other earlier famous circumnavigations (like Magellan’s) went around the globe or around islands (for example, Tasmania, which Flinders himself had circumnavigated earlier with George Bass in 1798). But going around a continent — that is, a vast mainland connected by continuous coastline — was unique. (Incidentally, while one can circumnavigate Africa, the Americas through the Panama Canal, and Antarctica when the ice permits, it is not possible to circle Asia and Europe).

Remembering Bungaree

Bungaree died in 1830 and was buried at Rose Bay. His resting place, like so much of his story, is unmarked. But in recent years, there has been a growing recognition of his contribution—not just as a companion to Flinders, but as a symbol of the spirit of adventure, resilience, and bringing two worlds together.

–Meena

PIC from ABC News

Letting Off Steam: Pressure Cookers

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I recently, and reluctantly, bought a new pressure cooker, in place of my old one which has been my trusty companion over several decades and continents. The old one was an original English Prestige cooker, although over the years of replacement of its various parts (especially handles and gasket ring) with local add-ons made it a war veteran, scarred but not retired. Coincidentally, this week brought the news of the demise of TT Jagannathan who made TTK and Prestige a well-known and trusted Indian brand. In fact the Prestige pressure cooker is such a ubiquitous presence in every home, that we take complete ownership of its being uniquely Indian. 

Digester: Precursor to Pressure Cooker

In fact the origin of a utensil that could cook food at high temperature can be traced back to the 17th century in England. Its earliest form was called a Digester. It was devised by Denis Papin, a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, who had moved to England. The Digester was a large cylindrical airtight container, heated over coals to produce internal steam pressure to increase the boiling temperature to above 100 degrees centigrade. A small tube in the lid closed with a flap was held in place by a weighted rod allowing the steam to escape when the pressure became too high. This was an early version of the first safety valve, one that helped prevent the contraption from exploding. In 1679, Papin presented his invention to the Royal Society which included top scientists of the day. They were so impressed that they commissioned Papin to write a book. The book published in 1681 titled A New Digester or Engine for Softening Bones detailed his successful experiments in cooking a variety of meats and was described as a construction guide, an experiment log, and a cookbook. In 1682, Papin used his Digester to cook a full meal for the Royal Society dinner which received rave reviews. However the Digester as a cooking equipment did not really take off in England till much later. Papin moved on to Germany and continued his experiments leading to other inventions based on a similar application of the pressure of steam.

The early Digester was expensive to build and could be rather dangerous as there was the threat of explosion from too much steam pressure. It wasn’t until the addition of safety valves that effectively stopped the pressure from getting too high, and safety locks preventing the lid from flying off if opened too soon, would such a utensil become more common. Papin died in obscurity, not knowing that his Digester would one day transform into the domestic pressure cooker.

But the technology triggered other experimenters to work on similar devices. In 1919, José Alix Martínez was granted the first patent in Spain for his olla exprés (express cooking pot), which used the pressure cooker technology invented by Papin. However, the term “pressure cooker” featured in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1910. In simple terms, a pressure cooker is a sealed chamber that traps the steam generated when its contents are heated. As the steam builds up, pressure increases and drives the boiling point of water beyond 100°C. Pressure cooking reduces cooking time up to 70per cent, preserves more nutrients and vitamins, uses less energy and water, and can be used to cook a wide range of foods

Around the same time, a new invention appeared in India which used steam, though not steam pressure, to cook food. This was the creation of a Calcutta gentleman Indhumadhab Mallik.  In this, raw ingredients including meat and fish as well as vegetables dal and rice were placed in containers which were stacked in an inner container. The outer container had water, and the entire contraption was sealed and placed over a charcoal fire. The food cooked in the steam that was generated. The steam cooker was called ICMIC cooker (combining the words hygienic and economic.) The cooker became popular in Bengal and was also sold in other states under different names.

By the 1930s, the pressure cooker was making its presence felt across the world, even as high up as Mount Everest. Higher altitudes with lower atmospheric pressure meant longer cooking time and a pressure cooker helped ease the problem, making it a great help in mountaineering expeditions.

World War II led to a dip in the production of pressure cookers due to the need for aluminium for the war effort in the US and Europe. Pressure cooker companies were enlisted to create canned goods (the cans were made of aluminium) for the troops. However, there was continuing demand for pressure cookers, and some companies started making cheaper cookers with substandard materials, which caused the cookers to explode. This raised safety concerns leading to the fall in popularity of pressure cookers in Europe.

Pressure cookers arrived in India in the late-1950s. They were introduced by two companies—Hawkins and TTK Private Ltd. (which became known as TTK Prestige). But the safety issue remained a concern as there were frequent explosions. Simultaneously companies were working on innovations to prevent such mishaps.

A significant contribution in this field came from TT Jagannathan (TTJ) who joined the family business when he was in his early 20s, and took charge of TTK Prestige at a time when the company was struggling. The reports of faulty pressure cookers had severely damaged the company’s reputation. Jagannathan, an engineer from IIT Madras and a PhD in Operations Research from Cornell began experimenting with ways to increase safety in pressure cookers.  

As he recounted in his book Disrupt and Conquer: How TTK Prestige Became A Billion-Dollar Company, Mr Jagannathan saw a godown full of unsold pressure cookers on a visit to Lucknow. The dealer explained that there were increasing cases of TTK pressure cookers bursting, and that the TTK name had lost credibility. TTJ was disturbed and launched a probe into the reason for this. A pressure cooker comes with a weight valve that is meant to rise up and release the steam that is built up by the pressure inside the cooker. The valve then settles back in place. The safety plug is a back-up safety mechanism and regulates the pressure built up in the cooker if the weight valve fails. He discovered that users were unknowingly purchasing fake safety plugs to replace the original ones. These plugs were cheaper but also made of substandard material which allowed too much steam build-up, leading to exploding cookers. He realized that there needed to be a device which, even when poor materials were used, could prevent this from happening. He immediately contacted his company’s head engineer and asked him to make certain preparations. TTJ returned to Bangalore and spent a month in the lab and used his engineering knowledge to create just such a device. This was the Gasket Release System or GRS. GRS is a secondary safety feature that releases excess steam if the primary pressure valve fails, preventing a dangerous pressure build up. It works by providing a weak point in the lid where a section of the rubber gasket will be pushed out through a slot if the main pressure vent becomes blocked or fails, allowing steam to escape down and away from the user.

This safety feature set new standards across the industry, and was also adopted by other manufacturers of pressure cookers in India. Its inventor TTJ never patented it. As he said “I did it for the industry. If any pressure cooker burst, it would mean a loss for the category. The category wouldn’t grow if people had fears around safety. I didn’t want only Prestige to be safe, but all pressure cookers in the country to be safe.”

The invention, along with Prestige’s close and continuous outreach and contact with its customers has ensured that the brand is associated with quality, durability and reliability. Today the Prestige brand has introduced a wide range of kitchen appliances catering to a new generation and befitting the ‘smart kitchens’. However the name’s first association is so much with Pressure cookers that Prestige is synonymous with Pressure cooker.

–Mamata

The Stroop Effect and Other Sneaky Brain Games

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Having been associated for long with Vikram A. Sarabhai Community Science Centre (VASCSC), the pioneering science centre in the country, I always source STEM education materials and kits from them.

A few weeks ago, we received one such package I had ordered. The wonderful thing about VASCSC material is that they don’t let an inch of space go to waste. So the large envelope in which the kit came was also printed with any number of science games and puzzles.

The one that my 6 year old grand daughter and I really had fun with was the Stroop Effect.

It was all giggles as she held out the sheet with a bunch of words and asked me to look at them.  The word “RED” was written in bright blue ink. She asked me to say the colour, not the word..

“Red!” I said instinctively.

“No!” she giggled. “It’s blue ! You have to say the colour of the ink!”

Oh.

And just like that, we stumbled headfirst into the Stroop Effect—a clever little quirk of our brains first identified by psychologist John Ridley Stroop in 1935. Stroop, an American psychologist conducted a series of studies as part of his PhD research. He was fascinated by how automatic processes—like reading—can interfere with other tasks, such as identifying colours. In his now-famous experiment, he showed that when colour words (like “red” or “green”) were printed in mismatched ink colours, people took longer to name the ink colour. This delay, or interference, revealed something profound about how our brains handle conflicting information.

So what is the Stroop Effect?

The classic version of the Stroop test asks you to name the colour of the ink in which a different colour name is written. Like the word “Green” printed in red ink. Sounds simple, right? But our brains are wired to read words so automatically that it slows us down, or even trips us up, when the word and the ink colour don’t match.

This interference between what we read and what we see is a fascinating peek into how our minds juggle competing bits of information.

Why does it matter?

What seems like a party trick actually has deeper implications. Psychologists use the Stroop test to study attention, processing speed, and cognitive control. In clinical settings, it helps assess brain injuries, dementia, and even ADHD. The longer it takes for a person to respond correctly, the more it can reveal about how their brain is functioning.

But even beyond labs and clinics, understanding the Stroop Effect has very real applications.

Take driving, for instance. Ever noticed how highway signs use simple fonts and colours? Imagine if a stop sign said “Go” in red letters—confusing, right? Designers rely on principles like those revealed by the Stroop Effect to make sure our brains process the right cue first.

It’s not just colours and words

Once you start noticing, these mental speed bumps are everywhere. Consider this: we all know that when we try rubbing our stomach with one hand and patting our head with the other, we run into hilarious situations. It is tricky, because your brain is trying to coordinate two conflicting patterns of movement. That’s a bit like motor interference, another cousin in the Stroop family.

Or think of the McGurk Effect, where what you see affects what you hear. If a video shows someone saying “ga,” but the sound is “ba,” your brain may hear “da.” Vision wins over sound, just like reading wins over colour in the Stroop test.

And then there is change blindness—when something in a visual scene changes, and we don’t notice because our attention is elsewhere. Magicians depend a lot on this trick, as also UX designers, who try to guide user attention in websites and apps using visual cues.

A lesson in humility

For me, discovering the Stroop Effect was a gentle reminder that our brains, for all their wonder, are not infallible. They’re predictably imperfect, prone to biases and blind spots. Well, that makes life more exciting!

–Meena

Image: Venderbilt University site

Broken Frames, Broken Lives

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Today, each one of us harbours doubts and fears about the rapid rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI), smart robots, driverless cars etc., especially whether these will take away jobs from people and give them to machines.

This has happened with every new technology since the industrial revolution. Maybe the time of maximum anxiety around technology and jobs was in the late 1700s to early 1800s, a time when quite a few people in the UK depended on the cotton, wool and silk industries for their livelihoods. This was based on the labour of framework knitters, who like some of our weavers even today, worked in their own homes. Though the hours were long and they got small wages, they were at an equilibrium. 

In the early 1800s, there were around 30,000 knitting-frames in England. But change had already started to set in. Change of fashion (men moving from stockings to trousers) and increasing exploitation of weavers by the middlemen were two major factors. But perhaps the most important was the mechanization and wide-frame machines that were coming in to make production faster. Production moved from homes to factories with this mechanization.

As more and more people lost their livelihoods, anger and frustration boiled over, and mill-owners and the new machines were targeted. The scale of the sabotage that occurred in England between 1811 and 1816 was beyond anything seen before.  In the peak three months of the riots, 175 of these new frames were broken per month! The people involved in these riots and destruction called themselves ‘Luddites’. The origin of the name is not quite clear, but some said it was after Ned Ludd, a legendary weaver who in 1770 was supposed to have smashed such machines.

Governments then, as today, were heavy-handed. Their response to the riots was to pass the Frame-Breaking Bill in the House of Commons in February 1812. The Bill was drastic– it proposed transportation or the death penalty for those found guilty of breaking stocking or lace frames. Not everyone was happy with the draft Bill– in the House of Lords, the poet and social campaigner Lord Byron argued against it saying that it was placing the value of life at “something less than the price of a stocking-frame”.  But such passionate appeals did not help, and the Bill was passed.

The Government would have expected all such riots to stop after the Bill. But exactly the opposite happened. The riots actually became more violent and rioters started using arms. The logic was that if they were going to be punished by death or deporatation for breaking frames, then they might as well do something that really deserved such drastic measures. A popular rhyme at the time was “you might as well be hung for death as breaking a machine”. A few mill owners were in fact killed. Government response also got harsher and several Luddites were hanged.

The climax of the Luddite Rebellion took place at midnight on Friday 28 June 1816. Sixteen men raided the factory of Heathcoat and Lacy at Loughborough, with around 1000 sympathisers cheering them on.  They destroyed nearly all of the fifty-five lace-frames.  Subsequently eight men were sentenced to death and two were transported.

The protests died down after that. Mechanization marched on, and the thousands who were involved in their traditional occupation lost out.

Technology will come. But how do we make the changes so we can reduce the negative impacts? How do we make the world a more inclusive place? Surely we cannot let history repeat itself!

–Meena

Photo-credit: historicalbritain.org/

A Brush With History

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A survey in America in 2003 asked people which of the following inventions would be the hardest to live without: the automobile, the personal computer, the cell phone, the microwave, and the toothbrush. The more recent inventions trailed the list; the century-old automobile came in second, and the five-century-old toothbrush came in first!

This week Meena took a walk through the history of walking sticks. Continuing a look at things that aid, and starting at the head rather than the legs, here’s looking back at the object that we start and end our day with—the toothbrush!

But cleaning teeth did not wait till the discovery of the toothbrush. From the earliest times, people used to chew on a piece of twig until it softened and became frayed. This process helped to not only reach crevices where particles hid, but also released juices in the mouth which performed the task that toothpastes do now (not to mention the regular work out for the jaws!) Twigs from aromatic shrubs or trees were also built-in mouth freshening!  Even today neem and babool twigs continue to be used by many. While one end of the twig was frayed by chewing, the other end could be niftily carved into a toothpick to pick at the more stubborn bits wedged between the teeth.  

Such tooth cleaning tools date back to 3500-3000 BC, to early Babylonians and Egyptians. Toothsticks these have been discovered as part of burial artifacts in Egyptian tombs, to enable the departed persons tooth cleaning routine even in the afterlife.

Different cultures had other cleaning techniques. Some used a rag dipped in sulfur oil or a saline solution to wipe teeth. Another practice was to just rub baking soda (sodium bicarbonate is still an ingredient in toothpastes) directly onto the teeth.

The transition from a ‘make your own bristles by chewing’ implement to the toothbrush in its early form as we know it is believed to be the invention of the Chinese in the 15th century. Using a piece of bone or bamboo, they attached, at right angles to this, stiff coarse bristles from the back of a hog’s neck, and voila! You could reach the difficult to reach crevices in the mouth, and also actually brush your teeth rather than chew with them.  

News of this nifty device reached Europe via commercial travellers during the middle ages. But it was difficult to replicate because the Siberian hog’s hair which was ideally stiff and coarse was not available; and the horsehair used as a substitute was not stiff enough.

The story goes that an Englishman named William Addis who was jailed for inciting a riot spent his time in prison experimenting with alternatives to cleaning teeth by the prevalent method of rubbing them with a rag covered in soot and salt. Addis carved a handle out of a small bone, drilled holes into it, and inserted tufts of boar bristles which were held in place by glue. He had found his replacement for the soot and rag!

After his release Addis began importing coarse boar bristles from the cold climates of Siberia and northern China. His design and the combination proved so successful that, in 1780 he founded a company called Addis to mass produce these brushes, and became a very wealthy man. The company continues to be in the brush business till today.

The expanding market gave rise to innovations in design and material. The single or double row of bristles gave way to a three-row brush with serrated bristles, and Meyer Rhein patented this design in 1844. The Chinese civil war in the latter 1800s, and later the Japanese invasion of China made it increasingly difficult to procure the boar bristles. The invention of a nylon, new synthetic material in the mid-1930s provided a timely alternative to natural bristles. This invention began a new phase in the history of the toothbrush with Dr West’s Miracle Tuft Toothbrush in 1938, the first such toothbrush with nylon bristles. And the rest, as they say is history.

While the material of the handle and the bristles continues to be plastic and nylon, today toothbrushes come in a mouth-boggling range of shapes and sizes. Handles that are straight, angled, and contoured with a variety of grips; and bristles ranging from hard to extra-soft offer something to fit every tooth. While the fundamentals of their design have not changed since the time of the Egyptians and Babylonians, today toothbrushes, like all products are marketed with labels such as ‘ergonomically designed’ to ‘dentist endorsed’.  

Even more heavily dentist-endorsed are the mouth-watering choices in toothpastes. We have come a long way from sooty rags as mouth-cleaning agents. It is believed that mouth cleaning and freshening agents were in use even before the invention of toothbrushes. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, as well as people in China and India used a variety of ingredients to keep teeth and gums clean, as well as for whitening teeth and freshening breath. These included powdered charcoal and bark, as well as a powder of ox hooves, ashes and burnt eggshells which added abrasiveness. The Chinese added mouth-freshening components such as ginseng, herbs, mints and salt.

Before the 1850s these mouth cleaners were in powder form. Early versions of these in paste form contained soap, and in the 1850s chalk was included in the composition. During the 1850s, a new toothpaste in a jar called a Crème Dentifrice was developed; in 1873 Colgate started the mass production of toothpaste in jars. The late 1880s saw another breakthrough in toothpaste manufacturing with the invention of toothpaste tubes; making it easier to carry, and to use.  Colgate introduced its toothpaste in a tube similar to modern-day toothpaste tubes in the 1890s. Today toothpaste is always associated with the tube.

The formula of toothpaste underwent changes over time. Soap, which was initially used in toothpaste, was later replaced by other ingredients like sodium lauryl sulphate (which continues to be an ingredient in most toothpastes). This transition led to gentler toothpaste options and a wider variety of flavours.

In the second half of the twentieth century modern toothpastes were developed to help prevent or treat specific diseases and conditions such as tooth sensitivity. Fluoride toothpastes to help prevent decay were introduced in 1914. Toothpastes with very low abrasiveness were also developed, and helped prevent the problems caused by overzealous brushing. Each of these is heavily advertised and endorsed by professional ‘oral health specialists’. The new trend in toothpastes is the return to natural organic ingredients to replace the chemical components. Perhaps a return to its origins, albeit in ‘brand’-new avatars!

–Mamata

Walking Stick: Symbol of Status, Symbol of Renunciation

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The walking stick may be one of the most ancient tools ever invented (or should we say ‘discovered’??!!). I can imagine my ancient-ancestress in Africa, 300,000 years ago, stopping to cut a branch and smoothen it, to help her trek and clamber over hills and rocks.

Walking sticks obviously began as mobility aids, in that they help with balance and mobility issues; reduce the risk of falling; help those recovering from injuries and those who experience pain in their hips or knees. But of course, they were also used for self-defence. Having a two-in-one is always great–my ancient grandmother would have used hers to shoo away wolves or hyenas.

What began as a very functional item would soon have become a thing of beauty and pride– my ancestress-grandmother may have spent the evenings chipping at her stick and carving wonderful designs on it.

Down the ages, these sticks became a symbol of power, authority and status. Ancient images show kings, religious leaders and authority figures holding them.

But walking sticks really came into their own in the 17th and 18th centuries, when they became an essential part of the wardrobe of fashionable men in Europe. The cult is thought to have started with Louis XIV. This royal king was conscious of his height—he was 5’4”, and so used heels (red and high). And to help him balance, he used a walking stick. Heels and walking sticks became the rage in the French court, and then spread to the rest of Europe and to England. They became prized possessions  and an oft-exchanged gift between kings and courts.

And of course, befitting the importance given to these objects, they began to be made of precious material and extravagantly decorated. The knobs or handles were carved individually, made of gold, silver, ivory, tortoise shell, or painted porcelain, and studded with precious stones or inlaid with mother of pearl. Shapes ranged from lions to dogs to rams to fantastical creatures. Louis XIV had a stick whose eagle knob was set with twenty-four diamonds!

And no one who could afford it was content to have just one.   Voltaire, the French philosopher-writer owned eighty sticks, though he considered himself a man who did not follow fashion.  Count Brühl of Dresden, owned three hundred canes to match his three hundred suits, and had a snuff-box to match each cane! Queen Victoria had a room full of canes, gifted to her from across the world, though she used only one–one of great historic value which had been presented to King Charles II. The head was made of “An idol which graced the temple of an ill-fated Indian prince… an exquisitely wrought affair in ivory… The eyes and forehead are jewelled and on the tongue is the rarest of rubies.”

But if walking sticks were a symbol of worldly power, they were also the symbol of spirituality. They were among the few possessions of monks–Hindu, Jain and Buddhist.  A staff is part of our image of Swami Vivekananda. And of course Gandhiji! It was with the help of his lathi that Gandhi strode across the country, and walked 241 miles in 24 days to protest the British monopoly on salt in India.

There is a very interesting story about Gandhiji and his lathi. In the 1920s and 30s, Ghorghat village in Bihar made and supplied lathis all across north India, and these were essentially used by the British forces on protesting unarmed Indians. When Gandhiji visited Ghorghat in 1934, the villagers wanted to gift him a lathi. He agreed but put a condition—that they would not sell them to the British anymore. It is a symbol of those times and of Gandhiji’s influence that the villagers readily agreed to give up a means of their livelihood. Gandhi accepted their gift. Ever since, the village celebrates ‘lathi mahotsav’ to commemorate the gifting of a lathi to the Mahatma.

Walking sticks started losing their image as a fashion-accessory around the middle of the last century, but great are the advancements of walking sticks as mobility aids. So now it is about function and not art!

Well, we, especially men, may have lost a fashion accessory. But with better and more functional walking sticks on the market, senior-life is surely better!

–Meena

The Women Who Gave the World Windshield Wipers

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Imagine if you had to put your hand out and try to clean your windshield to get a clearer view. Or maybe even get out of the car to do it! Well, this was what was happening in the early part of the 20th century.

It was a woman’s eye which caught the problem, and after some thought and work, came out with a solution. And it was another woman who worked on it further.

It all started with a trolley-car ride in New York in 1902. Mary Anderson was visiting New York from Alabama on a frosty day in winter, and was in a trolley car when she noticed that the driver was struggling to see what was outside. He would frequently thrust his head out of the window, put his hand out and wipe the windshield, but it was not really effective. He sometimes even had to stop the vehicle, get down and clean.

To Mary, this seemed really a terrible way of doing things. She wanted a solution whereby the driver could clean the windshield form inside. Her brain got working on the problem. When she was back in Alabama, she worked on various possibilities, and finally came out with a design consisting of a lever inside the vehicle that controlled a spring-loaded arm with a rubber blade. The lever had a counterweight so that the wiper would remain in contact with the window, and would move the blade across the windshield, removing rain or snow. The device could be easily removed if desired after the winter was over.

She wrote up a detailed description, and hired a designer to create a prototype. She even got a local company produce a working model! She applied for a patent, and on November 10, 1903 was granted her first patent for an automatic car window cleaning device controlled from inside the car, called the windshield wiper. The patent for the Window Cleaning Device was granted for 17 years.

In the meantime, another woman came along to develop on this idea. This was In 1917, when Charlotte Bridgewood patented the “electric storm windshield cleaner,” the first automatic wiper system that used rollers instead of blades. She was an automobile enthusiast who wanted to improve Mary Anderson’s manual windshield wipers. She went on to develop the automatic windshield wipers that she called “Electric Storm Windshield Cleaner”. She patented these first electrically powered windshield wiper in 1917, improving previous manually-operated wipers.

Sadly, neither woman profited from their ingenuity. Mary could not find anyone who would manufacture it for her. Moreover, when she patented in 1903, there was no very large demand yet, as personal automobiles were yet to take off. Her patent expired in 1920, just as cars were getting popular. Her invention had obviously been before its time.

In Charlotte’s case, the wipers used rollers rather than blades and therefore did not catch on.

In both cases, their being women was probably a huge reason!

This was not an isolated achievement in case of either woman. Mary was a well-regarded real-estate developer. She successfully ran a cattle ranch and vineyard in Fresno, California. 

Charlotte was a Canadian vaudeville performer and inventor of the turn signal, traffic light, and brake light. She was president of the Bridgwood Manufacturing Company

In 1922, Cadillac became the first car company to include windshield wipers as standard equipment. Today, almost all motor vehicles, including cars, trucks, buses, train locomotives, and watercraft with a cabin—and even some aircraft—are equipped with one or more such wipers, as a legal requirement.

On the 121st anniversery of Mary’s patent, we thank you Mary Anderson and Charlotte Bridgewood for your path-breaking work. You may not have profited, but you continue to inspire all inventors, and especially women!

–Meena

Fever Tree

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Clay tablets from Mesopotamia mention this deadly disease. Indian writings of the Vedic period (1500 to 800 BC) call it the ‘king of diseases.’ Traces of the disease have been found in remains of bodies from Egypt dating from 3200 and 1304 BC. The 270 BC Chinese medical canon has documented the disease’s headaches, chills, fevers and periodicity. The Greek poet Homer (circa 750 BC) mentions it in The Iliad, as do Aristotle (384-322 BC), Plato (428-347 BC), and Sophocles (496-406 BC) in their works.

The disease? None other than malaria, a disease that has taken its toll on not only humans down the ages, but our Neanderthal ancestors too. In the 20th century alone, malaria claimed between 150 million and 300 million lives, accounting for 2 to 5 per cent of all deaths!

Many have been the scientists who spent their lives trying to understand malaria. Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (1845-1922) a French army doctor during the Franco-Prussian played a key role. He as the first to postulate that malaria was not spread by bad air, but rather that ‘Swamp fevers are due to a germ’. He was also the earliest scientist to detect crescent-shaped bodies in the blood of affected individuals, and then the four stages of the development of the parasite in the blood. These findings were confirmed by Camillo Golgi. Dr. Charles Ross and India played a huge part in the unravelling of the whole cycle and Ross received the Nobel Prize for discovering the mosquito-stages of malaria.

The story of uncovering the cure for malaria has been dramatic too. For centuries, when no one had a clue what caused malaria, treatments included blood-letting, inducing vomiting, and drastic things like limb amputations, and boring holes in the skull. Herbal medicines like belladonna were used to provide symptomatic relief. 

Cinchona-nitida-quinine
Cinchona Tree whose Bark yields Quinine

But the cure strangely came from South America—a region not originally plagued with the diease. It was probably brought from the outside around the 16th century. The native Indians were the first to discover the cure. The story goes that an Indian with a high fever was lost in the Andean jungles. Desperate with thirst as he wandered the jungles, he drank from a pool of stagnant water. The taste was bitter and he thought he had been poisoned. But miraculously, he found his fever going down. On observation, he found that the pool he had drunk from had been contaminated by the surrounding quina-quina trees. He put two and two together, and figured that the tree was the cure. He shared his serendipitous discovery with fellow villagers, who thereafter used extracts from the quina-quina bark to treat fever. The word spread widely among the locals.

It was from them that Spanish Jesuit missionaries in Peru learnt about the healing power of the bark between 1620 and 1630, when one of them was cured of malaria by the use of the bark. The story goes that the Jesuits used the bark to treat the Countess of Chinchon, the wife of the Viceroy who suffered an almost fatal attack. She was saved and made it her mission to popularize the bark as a treatment for malaria, taking vast quanitities back to Europe and distributing it to sufferers. And from then, the use of the powder spread far and wide. It is said that it was even used to treat King Louis XIV of France.

The tree from which the bark came was Cinchona, a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae which has at least 23 species of trees and shrubs. These are native to the tropical Andean forests. The genus was named so after the Countess of Chinchon, from the previous para. The bark of several species in the genus yield quinine and other alkaloids, and were the only known treatments against malaria for centuries, hence making them economically and politically important. It was only after 1944, when quinine started to be manufactured synthetically, that the pressure on the tree came down.

Not unusually, the tribe who actually discovered it is forgotten. The medicine came to be called “Jesuit Powder’ or ‘Chincona powder’ or “Peruvian powder’. Trees in the genus also came to be known as fever trees because they cured fever.

May the many indigenous community, their knowledge and their practices which are at the base of so many medicines today get their due recognition, credit and due.

–Meena  

Maze-Amaze

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

Last week, I was in a shopping area near my house, and got myself lost. Having no sense of direction, any set of streets can turn into a maze for me, and I can get lost hopelessly anywhere!

That is when I started thinking about real mazes. What would I ever do if I got into one? Probably panic and die!

But apparently that wouldn’t happen in a labyrinth. Because though most of us don’t really stop to think about the difference, they are very different! Labyrinths have a single continuous path which leads to the centre, and as long as you keep going forward, you will get to the centre eventually. So given enough time, it is close to impossible for anyone, even me, to get lost in a labyrinth.Mazes on the other hand, have multiple paths which branch off and will not necessarily lead to the centre or to the exit.

Mazes probably evolved from labyrinths, and over time took on elaborate forms including multiple branching paths, dead ends, etc.

The first recorded labyrinth is a 5th century BC one from Egypt. Labyrinths are found in many cultures, and generally seem to have an underlying spiritual meaning.  Some represent spiritual journeys which guide visitors towards a single path, which may be full of twists and turns, but there is no doubt of reaching the goal as long as one is walking on the right path. In some cases, entering the labyrinth signified death and exiting it signified re-birth. They were also fertility symbols. Labyrinths were also thought to represent protection or fortification. Often in temples, forts etc., one can find carvings or paintings of labyrinths on the floor or walls, to represent one of these symbolisms.

Some temples are like labyrinths themselves, and their orientation, form and geometry have symbolic as well as spatial importance. The process of moving through the pathways is supposed to unwind the Kundalini or stored energy, releasing, magnifying, and ultimately harnessing its flow. 

Chakravyuha labyrinth
Chakravyuha labyrinth

Many military formations adopted in ancient Indian warfare were labyrinths. The famous Chakravyūha (wheel formation, also called Padmavyūha—lotus formation) of the Mahabharata was one such. It was a very special formation and knowledge of how to penetrate it was limited to only Abhimanyu, Arjuna, Krishna and Padyumna on the Pandavas’ side. The Kauravas strategically diverted the senior warriors to different parts of the battlefield, and then went into the Chakravyuha formation, and succeeded in decimating the Pandava warriors. 16-year old Abhimanyu was there and bravely plunged into the wheel, killing many seasoned Kaurava warriors. Alas, he did not know how to get out of the formation, and at the sixth level, was slaughtered by a horde of Kauravas.   

The Bara Imambara of Lucknow houses a famous Indian maze. Said to be the world’s largest structure that is unsupported by beams, the Imambara is considered a marvel of engineering. The fourth Nawab, Asaf-Ud-Dowhala, commissioned this building during the drought of 1784 to help people in the city earn a livelihood. He invited bids and it was won by Hafiz Kifayatullah, an architect from Shahjahanabad who was already well-known by then. Work on the building started in the 1784 and finished fourteen years later.

The Bhul Bhulaiya or Maze located on the upper floor of the Bara Imambara was Kifayatullah’s masterpiece. It is said that there are 1024 ways of getting inside the maze but only two ways of coming out! Once you enter the maze, you might end up going round and round and up and down staircases without being able to come back. It is even difficult to figure out which level you are at—you could think you have climbed down to the lower floor, but may still be on an upper one!

Interestingly, about 10 years ago, archaeologists uncovered a 2,000-year-old labyrinth that is the second-largest ever found in the country. This is in Gedimedu in Tamilnadu, along an ancient trade route on the east coast of India. It measures 56 feet by 56 feet, with passages ranging from 2.6 feet to 3.6 feet. It follows a pattern similar to Greek mazes found on clay tablets from 1200 BC. Archeologists are still studying the maze.

I am not sure I want to ever go into a maze or labyrinth. I don’t want to be loster than I am!

–Meena

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A Mark of Citizenship

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 2 Comments

When we were children, and very much into Enid Blyton’s mystery and adventure stories, a fascinating element in some of these was the notes/letters that appeared to be blank, but which revealed secret messages when warmed. The excitement was heightened when we ourselves tried to make ‘invisible ink’. This usually involved some lemon juice with which we wrote on paper. Once the juice dried, the paper appeared to be blank, until a hot iron was run over the paper, or it was placed close to the flame of a candle, upon which the words would slowly show up. Many a summer afternoon was spent in this ‘mystery’ activity, with much excitement and anticipation on the part of message writer and receiver!

These memories came back recently when another kind of ink is soon to be in the news, except that this ink is far from invisible, it is indelible! The purple mark on the forefinger is inextricable linked with election season. As soon as the voting process begins, this mark becomes the symbol of a citizen who has exercised their right, as well as duty, to participate in the process to vote-in a democratically-elected government. In a country like India in which millions across the country take part in the electoral process, this mark is a great common indicator of participation, as well identification. An inked finger identifies a voter not just when they emerge from the polling booth, but until the ink on the finger ‘wears’ off, a period that may last from a few days to a couple of weeks. The key word is ‘wears’ off rather than washes off. And that is where the search for, and use of, indelible ink in elections began.

In the early 1950s, in newly independent India, there was concern that fraudulent voting could upset a free and fair electoral process. There needed to be a common, easily applicable and low-cost way to ensure that the ‘one voter one vote’ principle was adhered to in letter and spirit.

Research on this started in the National Physical Laboratory of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-NPL). The research and experiments led to the formulation of the chemical formula for indelible ink which could be used on the finger of a voter who has just cast their vote. This ink was unlike other inks that were commonly used to fill the fountain pens that were the main writing instruments of the day.  A key component in this special-formulated ink was silver nitrate which is photosensitive, it reacts when exposed to light (sunlight or even indoor light). The water-base ink also contained a solvent like alcohol which allowed for faster drying, as well as some other dyes. The composition was optimized such that it diffused into the skin spontaneously to make a mark which could not be chemically or mechanically manipulated. The precise proportions, formula and protocol for making this ink were a closely guarded secret, and was patented by the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), New Delhi. But for the ink to be produced in vast quantities, it needed a professional ink-making company.

The NRDC approached Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd. (MPVL) to manufacture and supply the ink. An agreement to this effect was signed by the Election Commission of India in collaboration with the National Physical Laboratory and NDRC with MVPL. The factory was established during 1937 by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, then the Maharaja of Mysore province. It was originally called Mysore Lac and Paint Works Ltd.It was renamed as Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd. (MPVL) in1989.

The original rationale behind the establishment of the factory was to provide employment opportunities for the local people, and for effective utilization of the natural resources of the forest, specifically lac, which was used for the manufacture of sealing waxes. Apart from lac, the factory manufactured paints which were supplied to Government departments, especially to the Defence Department, particularly for war tanks, during the early days.

The factory was converted into Public Limited Company during 1947 as one of the Public Sector Undertakings (PSU). The company continues to be among the prominent undertakings of the Government of Karnataka, meeting the requirements of PSUs, Central Government, State Government, PSUs, private industries and the paint dealers. Although the Company also manufactures and supplies industrial coating paints, decorative paints, wood polishes, varnish and thinners, the largest chunk of its output is the manufacture and supply of indelible ink for elections.

The indelible ink was used for the first time in Indian elections in 1962 and has MPVL has remained the sole supplier since then. MPVL initially supplied ink only for parliamentary and assembly elections, but over the years it has also been supplying ink for elections to municipal bodies and cooperative societies. The concentration of silver nitrate in the ink varies depending on its usage. For example, in 2017, MPVL was commissioned to manufacture special marker pens to mark children during the polio drops drive in South India. The silver nitrate ink used in these pens was less concentrated, keeping in mind that children are prone to put their finger in the mouth.

According to MPVL, the high-quality indelible ink dries out completely in less than 40 seconds, but it leaves its impression even after a one-second contact with skin. The ink darkens with exposure to light and can remain on the voter’s fingernail and skin for at least two days, and up to 3-4 weeks, depending on a person’s body temperature and the environment. It cannot be simply washed away mechanically, or removed by any known chemical or solvent.

As the ink is photo-sensitive, it needs to be protected from exposure to direct sun rays. Earlier it used to be stored in brown-coloured glass bottles; now amber-coloured plastic bottles are used. The bottles used are designed in such a manner so as to prevent any kind of reaction with sunlight until they are opened. The ink is distributed in 5 ml, 7.5 ml, 20 ml, 50 ml and 80 ml vials. A single 5 ml vial is sufficient for an approximated 300 voters. The Election Commission of India places orders for the ink based on the number of registered voters involved in the election. The ink is then supplied to the Chief Electoral Officers who subsequently distribute it to individual voting centres.

The MPVL is the sole supplier of voter’s ink in India since 1962. The PSU also exports the ink to at least 25 other countries including Canada, Ghana, Nigeria, Mongolia, Malaysia, Nepal, South Africa and the Maldives. This ink is made as per the respective country’s specific use of the ink.  For example, in Cambodia and the Maldives, voters need to dip their finger into the ink, while in Burkina Faso the ink is applied with a brush, and nozzles are used in Turkey.

So this election season, as we walk into a polling booth and walk out with the small purple line on our finger, we know what has gone into making this distinguishing mark!

–Mamata