Professor Mark Csele's Home Page - History Of Technology Page

One of my interests is in the history of technology. Not limited to just computing equipment, I have an interest in researching such technologies as the development of the steam engine (specifically early engines such as the Newcomen), refrigeration (Linde's early processes), the discovery of metals such as steel, chemistry (such as the discovery of elements), vacuum tubes, and many other technologies including military technologies such as the submarine and the jet engine. On the subject of military technology, I have a number of books I have enjoyed reading while delving into the subject.

On this page I have included links to other pages on this site which cover historical topics I find interesting. Just click on images to enter pages on each topic. I have also included links to external sites of similar interest.

Von Linde's Ice Machine To that end, my favourite science/history series is Connections by James Burke which I had previously used as course material in TECH238: Society and Technology. Those of you familiar with the series might recognize Carl VonLinde's Ice Machine, shown here as photographed in the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, and featured in the series.

Prior to the 1700's it was illegal to brew beer in Bavaria (Germany) during the summer months. The problem was, the beer went bad unless kept cool during the brewing process. This problem was solved by inventing the process of refrigeration. Interesting stuff, beer! You see, the yeast in an English-style ale does its thing at the top of the vat (it is called "top fermented") and it brews well at warmer (room) temperatures and so it could be brewed year-round. This is why many beer drinkers feel that English ales are best enjoyed at room temperature. The thought is that they are brewed "warm" and so should be consumed "warm".

Not so with German or lager beer. The yeast does its thing in the middle of the vat (bottom fermented) and this beer must be kept cool while brewing to avoid having the beer go bad. Enter the German's problem: You could not brew beer during half the year as the cellars where they brewed it would be too warm. They even had a law against it. The profits of these breweries would only be half of what the should be since they could only brew during half the year.

The solution, found by VonLinde, was a machine which compressed ammonia gas making it liquid. As the liquid evaporated back into a gas it absorbs heat from its surroundings, in this case a jacket of water around the beer vat, hence cooling it. And so, he had developed the first compressed-gas refrigerator system. Even today, your home fridge uses the same basic principle although now Freon (a hydrocarbon) is used instead of the toxic ammonia VonLinde used in his apparatus.

Oh yes, one final trivial point. Our lab buys gas (including liquid gases like nitrogen) from Praxair, a large company which supplies industrial gases such as oxygen and acetylene for welding. A few years back, before they became Praxair, the company was known as "Linde" ... named after the man who invented the refrigerator ... which also turned out to be an excellent way to separate gases such as oxygen from the air.

If you're into the Connections series, a neat link you might want to look at is the Palmer's James Burke Companion website (new URL).

Early Steam Engine Technologies

The Newcomen steam engine was really the first practical engine in widespread use, mainly for pumping water from mines in England - If you've ever seen Burke's Connections series you realize the importance of this engine in the industrialization of the Western world. I've documented a surviving engine, 'Fairbottom Bobs', now located at the Henry Ford museum at Dearborn, MI.

Early Electrical Technologies

I have had a rare opportunity to tour the Canadian Niagara Power Company's Rankine generating station at the top of Niagara Falls. This still-operational plant supplies 25Hz power to industries 100 years after the plant was built! The quarried-limestone building is important, architecturally-speaking, and the plant was indeed the first large-scale power generator on the Canadian side of the falls. Besides, how many plants can claim to have run for 100 years!

Continuing from where the Rankine story leaves off, a tour of a second older generating station, the Sir Adam Beck 1 Generating Station in Queenston, Ontario. This plant has been updated gradually and by all rights is becoming a 'modern' plant.

The oldest operating generating station in Ontario, 110 years old and still operating! Awarded an IEEE Milestone award, this plant originally employed 66 2/3 Hz and was one of the first to use high voltages for long distance transmission.

Early Telephone Technologies

An introduction to early telephone switching technologies including uniselectors and the Strowger relay which operates in two axes. This relay, developed in the later 1880's by a funeral director, paved the way for modern automatic telephone exchanges and direct-dialling by subscribers.

Early Electronics & Computing Technologies

One on my interests in electronics is how they built computing circuits in the 40's through 60's (i.e. without the aid of logic chips and, before that, utilizing vacuum tubes). As an example consider a digital frequency counter built in 1967. This counter (originally from an HP Wave Analyzer) used only eight transistors for a counter and some funky optical-logic to decode the counter output to decimal. This type of circuitry was used extensively in the late 50's and early 60's for computing devices.

Vacuum Tube Technologies

Who can resist the warmth of the vacuum tube! Since I built my first one-tube radio from a Radio Shack P-Box kit I was fascinated with these little glass wonders. I wasn't always a big fan of tubes, especially in the 70's listening to people run-on about how the tube was superior to the transistor .... I'll give you that the tube might add interesting properties to audio being reproduced through it but all-in-all, the transistor was a more efficient device. Having said that, I'm waxing nostaligic about tubes these days especially since I still see them popping-up in places like laser power supplies where switching 15,000 volts just isn't easy with a solid-state device!

I have a collection of odd tubes, my favourites being low-voltage (1V filament like the 1T4 and 1R5 variety used in battery-operated tube portable sets like the one below) and special-purpose miniature tubes like a 6CW4 Nuvistor (an ultra-miniature tube in a metal can the size of a transistor, smaller than a CK722 transistor ... I have a few of those, too) and 9004 acorn tubes (a UHF diode which can operate at frequencies up to 850 MHz ... amazing in the 1930's when it was developed).

My favourite radio, a Continental M-500 portable tube radio. This 4 tube superheterodyne set used a large 67.5 Volt B battery and a D-Cell to power the filaments of the 1-volt tubes - an 1R5 for an RF amp and local oscillator, 1T4 for an IF amp, 1U4 for second IF and detector, and 3S4 for an AF amp. Click on the photo to the left for a better photo or on one of these other photos of this radio including the Circuit Diagram showing tube placement, A view of the entire rear showing the large B (67.5 volt) battery and D-size small filament cell (All tubes had 1.5 volt filaments in this unit), and a close-up of the actual circuit which was hand-wired. The can is an IF transformer operating at 455KHz. The beige jack with four terminals in the lower left is for headphones.

If you like tubes you've got to check out Mikes Electric Stuff in the UK featuring a huge assortment of antique glass tubes (geissler, vacuum tubes, etc.) as well as tesla coils, lasers and other high-voltage stuff. This guy has a really extensive collection of bizarre tubes ranging from Geissler tubes to large mercury vapour rectifiers. Another cool tube site is The Virtual Valve Museum.

20th Century Military Technologies

Another interest is military technology. I have always found the rate of development of technology during wartime fascinating. The development of both aircraft during WW-II and submarines during both wars are good illustrations. Aircraft, for example, progressed from primitive, slow, piston-driven machines to jet-powered fighters resembling those of modern times in only six years during the second world war. Perhaps the most amazing plane of the second world war was the Messerschmitt Me262. Although introduced too late in the war (1944) to save the Luftwaffe from defeat in WW II, a total of 1430 such planes were built. The plane itself was powered by two Jumo-004 jet engines, the first of which were problematic but this was not surprising given the date! Its maximum speed was 540 mph, an unheard-of speed for the 1940's!

And of particular interest was the Horten flying wing, an experimental plane developed by the Germans during WWII. The first versions of this plane had pusher-props run from piston engines but later versions used jet engines, built by BMW.

Being an espionage buff, naturally I'm also intrigues by enciphering technologies and codebreaking. I've provided a glance at the workings of the German Enigma enciphering machine as well as links for further reading. This machine was instrumental to the Germans in WWII and the cracking of the Enigma code was a major contribution to the war efforts of the allies. At the college, I have developed a simple Enigma encryption system based on a PIC16F84 microcontroller chip which we use as part of an interfacing project in CTEC1530:Microprocessor design.