Showing results for "Biography" in Inventions & Inventors

Thomas Edison wasn't just an inventor. He was also a physicist and businessman. Young listeners will discover how he became a great scientist whose inventions made a better life for most everyone.

Nikola Tesla was a scientist and inventor in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Among his many inventions and experiments, he helped create the modern electricity system. Learn more about Tesla's life as a famous inventor!

Learn about George Eastman and the invention of the Kodak camera.

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

How much do you know about Philo T. Farnsworth? Find out the facts you need to know about this inventor, scientist, and TV pioneer. You’ll learn about the early life, challenges, and major accomplishments of this important American.

Throughout history, people have experimented, invented, and created new ways of doing things. Kid Innovators tells the stories of a diverse group of brilliant thinkers in fields like technology, education, business, science, art, and entertainment, reminding us that every innovator started out as a kid. Florence Nightingale rescued baby mice, Alan Turing was a daydreamer with terrible handwriting, and Alvin Ailey felt like a failure at sports.

This audiobook tells the story of Henry Ford, along with his invention, the popular Model T automobile.

David Aguilar was born missing part of one arm, a small detail that seemed to define his life and limit people’s ideas of who he was and who he could be. But in this funny and heartfelt memoir, David proves that he can throw out the rulebook and people’s expectations and maybe even make a difference in the world—and all with a sense of humor.

Before Isaac Newton became the father of physics, an accomplished mathematician, or a leader of the scientific revolution, he was a boy living in an apothecary's house, observing and experimenting, recording his observations of the world in a tiny notebook. As a young genius living in a time before science as we know it existed, Isaac studied the few books he could get his hands on, built handmade machines, and experimented with alchemy.

What do libraries, streetlights, and fire stations have in common? What about bifocal lenses and the odometer? Sayings like "haste makes waste?" Benjamin Franklin was a man of many talents: a scientist who experimented with electricity; a diplomat who served as envoy to France and negotiated peace with England; a mapmaker, printer, and writer famous for his Poor Richard's Almanack.

At least as far back as the ancient myth of Icarus, humans longed to fly - but it wasn't until December 17, 1903, on the windy dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, that the dream finally came true. And it was all thanks to Orville and Wilbur Wright, two former bicycle mechanics who built their first toy plane - a rubber-band powered rotary - when they were just children.

Meet the Wizard of Menlo Park, and see how he grew from a lonely, inquisitive boy who carried out experiments in his basement to the smart, enterprising, and imaginative inventor who gave us the stock-market ticker, helped develop the phonograph and cinema, and even came up with the first storage battery and electric car.

Sure, almost all kids know Benjamin Franklin as one of America's Founding Fathers, a man with a hand in both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. And they may even have some vague idea that he once flew a kite during a lightning storm. What Kathleen Krull sets out to do in this very different biography is show Ben Franklin as the natural philosopher (the term for scientists back in the 1700s), whose experiments led to important discoveries about the nature of electricity - including his famous demonstration that electricity and lightning were one and the same.

Although Orville and Wilbur Wright are celebrated today as heroes for their revolutionary contributions to science and engineering - they are acknowledged as the first men to successfully achieve powered, piloted flight - their success was hard-earned. In fact, it took the self-taught engineers years of work and dozens of crashes before they managed a single 12-second flight! In this first installment of the brand new Epic Fails series, Ben Thompson and Erik Slader take listeners through the Wright brothers' many mishaps and misadventures as they paved the way for modern aviation.

One day in 1882, Thomas Edison flipped a switch that lit up lower Manhattan with incandescent light and changed the way people live ever after. The electric light bulb was only one of thousands of Edison’s inventions, which include the phonograph and the kinetoscope, an early precursor to the...

Mary Myers always dreamed of flying, but she lived when women were often told to stay put and stay quiet. Determined and fearless, Mary wouldn’t stay tied down. With the help of her husband, she transformed into Carlotta, the famous aeronaut, and took to the skies. Carlotta performed much more than aerial feats in her gas balloons. A skybound scientist, she collected information on currents, weather, and atmospheric pressure.

In 1862, balloons were the only way to reach the sky. But 14-year-old Otto Lilienthal didn’t want to fly in balloons. He wanted to soar like a bird. Scientists, teachers, and news reporters everywhere said flying was impossible. Otto and his brother Gustav desperately wanted to prove them wrong, so they made their own wings and tried to take flight. The brothers quickly crashed, but this was just the beginning for Otto, who would spend the next 30 years of his life sketching, re-sketching, and building gliders.

In 1877 a young man developed a way to reproduce sounds so they could be heard again and again. This young man, Thomas Edison, has since been heralded as one of the world's greatest inventors. This inspiring biography details the creation of Edison's favorite invention, the phonograph. Young listeners will also discover that Edison did not allow his handicap (he was hard of hearing) to slow him down.

Henry Ford loved mechanical things: springs and gears, cogs and wheels, and things that clicked and ticked and turned. One hot summer day in 1876, Henry and his father were riding to Detroit in their farm wagon. Suddenly there was a huffing-puffing monster heading straight toward them. It was a road-roller, and it was lumbering down the road all by itself. That was the day Henry started thinking about horseless riding machines—and he never stopped.

Johannes Gutenberg spent his days shut away, working on a mysterious project. His neighbors wondered what he was doing in his metal shop. Why did he need so much money? Was he making expensive gold jewelry? Weapons? Armor? What project could possibly take up so many hours of Johannes's time? And how did his invention change the world?