Inventors Science

Listen to the story of how Wilbur and Orville Wright developed, tested, and successfully flew the first powered airplane.

Frank Zamboni created the ice-resurfacing machine, and ice-based sports would never be the same!

Nikola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant, invented the radio, the induction motor, the neon lamp, and the remote control. Tesla's personal life was magnificently bizarre. Strikingly handsome and impeccably dressed, he was germophobic and never shook hands. He required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. In later years, he ate only white food and conversed with the pigeons in Bryant Park. This clear, authoritative, and highly enjoyable biography takes account of all phases of this remarkable life.

Frank Einstein (kid-genius scientist and inventor) and his best friend Watson, along with Klink (a self-assembled artificial intelligence entity), create the BrainTurbo to power-boost the human body and help their baseball-pitching pal Janegoodall make the team. But when Klank (a mostly self-assembled and artificial almost intelligence entity) goes missing, they must first rescue their robot pal and stop T. Edison - Frank’s classmate and archrival - from stealing their latest invention and using it against them!

Hidden Energy: Tesla-Inspired Inventors and a Mindful Path to Energy Abundance gives reasons for optimism. This audiobook readies you for humankind's next leap - tapping into ample sources of truly clean power, the ultimate renewable. Making that leap is more about mindsets and a consciousness shift than technology.

George J. Klein was a design engineer who spent 40 years at the National Research Council of Canada and is likely the most productive inventor in Canada in the 20th century. This publication presents a biography of Klein beginning with his ancestors who came to Canada from Alsace in 1835 and continuing with his early life, family influences, education, working life, and inventions.

You know the Super Soaker. It's one of the top 20 toys of all time. And it was an accidental discovery that brought it into being. Trying to create a new cooling system for refrigerators and air conditioners, inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy. A love of rockets, robots, and inventions and a mind for creativity were present in Lonnie Johnson's early life.

Like Michelangelo, Galileo is another Renaissance great known just by his first name - a name that is synonymous with scientific achievement. Born in Pisa, Italy, in the 16th century, Galileo contributed to the era's great rebirth of knowledge. He invented a telescope to observe the heavens. From there, not even the sky was the limit! He turned long-held notions about the universe topsy turvy with his support of a sun-centric solar system.

In ancient China, an alchemist mixed an exploding medicine and accidentally invented gunpowder. Learn about the development of gunpowder and other explosives, like nitroglycerin and dynamite, in this fun feature.

Can you imagine having to sit still for 30 minutes just to have your picture taken? Or having to send film away to be developed? Technology has come a long way since then! Listen to learn about photography inventions like flashbulbs, Kodak and Polaroid cameras, and more!

Some kids are born missing a hand or fingers, others lose them because of accidents. Find out how people are printing artificial hands on 3-D printers to help those who need a hand. They are cheap, easy to build, and really work!

In medicine, machines can be used to take detailed pictures of bones and even to save people’s lives. Listen to learn about the marvelous machines of modern medicine, like the defibrillator, the x-ray machine, and more!

Have you ever wished you could have Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak? At some point soon, you just might be able to get one! Scientists are experimenting with a special material that bends light so the material is concealed. They still have a long way to go, but if they succeed, it could be one of the coolest inventions of the century!

Follow along this brief history of the pursuit of perpetual motion machines and how this endeavor led to the laws of physics we have today. From Robert Park's generator-rigged bicycle, to Robert Fludd's self-running bicycle, to the steam engines of the 19th century, these stories offer a peek into some of mankind's successes and failures when it comes to the exploration of science and advancement.

Have you ever wondered where glasses came from? This book takes a fun look at the invention of glasses starting with the Greeks and Romans. Then it looks at attempts by the Spanish, Chinese, French, and even inventor Ben Franklin to improve the design.

Plastic was once considered the material of the future, but now it has become a nuisance that results in too much trash for the planet to handle. Learn about the durability and longevity of this 19th-century invention and hear recycling ideas from a chemist who hopes to salvage plastic's reputation.

The Bakeys company uses a simple recipe to make edible spoons in the hopes of cutting down on plastic trash.

Regarded as a mechanical genius, John Joseph Merlin is sadly remembered most for a party at the Carlisle House, where he careened into the hostesses' plate glass mirror, wearing his newly invented roller skates, and playing the violin.

Why would Geoffrey Pyke propose a strange idea like building an aircraft carrier from a mixture of ice and wood pulp?

How did forgetting to wash a jar make cars safer? A scientist named Édouard Bénédictus accidentally dropped a plastic-coated flask that did not break. This invention was tested and engineered to help today's windshields protect drivers better.