George’s interest with cameras had first ignited when he planned to take a camera on vacation to Europe. He ended up canceling the trip, but he became obsessed with photography. It was such a hassle to take a picture with the glass plates and wet chemicals and so he was a banker by day and chemical experimenter at night spending all his time after work scheming up a way to make the camera portable. He started experimenting with taking photos on paper that had been painted with emulsion and later he got the combination right by putting photos on cellulose which allowed him to easily roll the film up for storage and development later

In his patent he refers to it as a “detective camera.” I can only imagine that it’s because a detective would be the type of person who would need a portable camera. The way it worked is you would take 100 pictures and send it to Kodak for processing and they would send you back 100 pictures and a new roll of film.

Even though he had a patent the roll film camera, he chose to focus on creating film. Because he created film for every camera that came out, camera manufacturers became his business partners. Sometimes the greatest innovations aren’t the “big ideas” but in finding a way to apply the big ideas in life. You don’t always need to find new big ideas to innovate, you can enter a space and explore the world that new big ideas open up. George Eastman continued to innovate until he retired and became one of the big philanthropists of the time.

It doesn’t stop there, In my research, I learned that Steven Sasson is credited with the invention of the digital camera in 1975 while working at Kodak. It’s cool to think that the folks who brought the camera and put it in the hands of ordinary people innovated into the digital space!

Learn more about George Eastman on the Kodak site and on Wikipedia.

1. How is the electron beam in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) generated?
2. How does hitting a sample with electrons give us images?

For answers and more photos,

mosquito head and eye (200x)

1) We are used to thinking of electrons in covalently-bonded materials as tightly affiliated with their specific atom’s nucleus. In solid metal, however, it’s more useful to think of the atomic-level structure differently: nuclei of the metal atoms are fixed in place, but their valence electrons are delocalized across the structure of the positive nuclei. (Metals have been described as having a “sea of electrons,” or as “sharing” their “free-floating” electrons.) Thus, with metallic solids it is relatively easy to remove electrons from their nuclei. In practice, this results in things like conductivity: under the force applied by voltage, electrons in metals flow.

Because the delocalized electrons in metals are not tightly held, heating a metal filament can give those electrons enough kinetic energy to overcome the force attracting them to the positive nuclei (if you like physics, see work functions) and cause the filament to emit electrons; this process is called thermionic emission. In a scanning electron microscope (SEM), a filament of tungsten is heated in this way (and connected to a battery, so that the electrons it emits are replaced) and it spits out an electron stream. After being focused by “lenses”– rings of negative charge that repel the electrons into a focused beam a few nanometers thick– this is the “electron gun” that an SEM shoots at a specimen.

the proboscis, which can also be called the mosquito’s mouth (230x)

2) How does shooting electrons at a specimen translate into images we can see on a computer screen? David Burton explains:

“The signals which make up SEM image are generated via the interaction of illumination (a focused beam of high-energy electrons) with the atomic structure of the sample (the actual protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up all matter). These imaging signals come in two basic flavors:

a. SECONDARY ELECTRONS (SE) are created by collisions between the high-energy electrons in the illuminating beam (so-called ‘primary’ electrons) and the electrons which surround the atoms in the sample. Such collisions knock the low-energy electrons out of their orbits.

b. BACKSCATTERED ELECTRONS (BSE) are created by collisions between the primary beam electrons and the nuclei of the target atoms. These collisions result in the primary electrons bouncing off of the larger, more massive nuclei (like a marble hitting a bowling ball).

the fringed tip of the wing (250x)

“In both cases, the electrons that escape from the sample comprise the signal at that point, and can be collected by various electron detectors. The SEM takes advantage of the fact that two distinct types of signal are generated (low-energy SE and high-energy BSE) to provide different imaging ‘modes.’

“Through the use of a variably biased mesh (‘Faraday cage’) the behavior of the low-energy secondary electrons can be manipulated. A positive charge on the cage attracts the SEs to the detector. Images obtained in this ‘SE mode’ of operation show extremely high edge definition and emphasize the small detail on the surface of the samples. On the other hand, applying a NEGATIVE bias to the Faraday cage will cause SEs to be REPELLED from the detector. Images acquired in this ‘BSE mode’ are derived from backscattered signal only, as the high-energy BSEs are unaffected by the small negative bias on the cage and strike the detector anyway. Since BSEs move in line-of-sight paths, the shadows caused by high areas blocking BSEs from lower areas are much accentuated, emphasizing the overall topography of the sample surface.

“Most scanning electron microscopes detect and image secondary electrons. The backscattered electrons can be detected and imaged by an optional detector that we do not have installed on our microscope.”

Links:

Notes on SEMs: http://www.uga.edu/caur/semnote1.htm
Metallic Bonding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_bond
A step-through of how an SEM works: http://mse.iastate.edu/microscopy/college.html
Wikipedia on SEMs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_electron_microscope
Raster Scanning:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_scan

the sex parts of the male (350x)

Want to learn more about what the Lab is about?  Starting today, and for the next week, Gizmodo will be running a series of stories on Intellectual Ventures and some of the projects that are underway.  The first story about invention gives a brief mention of us. The second, more extensive, piece describes who we are and why we’re here, including a video tour of the facilities. Keep an eye out this week for a lot more coverage from Gizmodo.  We’ll link to the articles below as they are released.

• Eureka: Hello Invention (8.25.10)
• How Intellectual Ventures Wants to Reinvent Invention (8.25.10)
• Why Ideas are Expensive (8.26.10)
• Why We Need More Inventions. Lots More Inventions (8.26.10)
• Why Failure Is an Option at Intellectual Ventures (8.27.10)
• How Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures Would Change the Patent System (8.27.10)

We’re proud of this team, some of the hardest working people in the lab. Hopefully they can take a good break and then come back to work to help us invent the future of food.

Lots of people are inspired by inventions, but they rarely get a chance to be inspired by the inventors directly.  This is largely because they are out of view, sequestered in a basement finicking with soldering irons and zip ties.  Les Paul was a prolific inventor who has inspired nearly everyone indirectly, and a lot of people directly.  His inventions have probably had the biggest impact on the sound of popular music over your lifetime.

Les Paul invented the solid body electric guitar, multi-track recording, & tape delay.  He died one year ago today.

Here is a wonderful interview by NPR from 1992.

Download the HD vesion

Copies of the issue were passed out in exchange for participation in a single-question survey.   Here are the results:

Just tell us what you like to make.

monkey men, circuit bending, tesla coils, amps, lasers, machines of death and destruction, furniture, low cost audio computers for info access to reduce poverty, sewing projects, gardening projects, foody makery, ceramics, a robot that clears large areas of weeds on a steep inline, alternate histories, redesigned clothing, web apps, movies, self-replicating Reprap 3D printers, news, music, friends, smiles and stuff, backyard crucibles, laser light plane touch surface, drones, free enterprise, modeled computers, 3D objects & 3D objects that make 3D objects, metalwork, sustainable design, sculpture, housing, fashion, electronics, embedded CPU projects, trouble, RC aircraft…then crashing them…then re-making them, ATM prototypes, 3ric, anything original or wicked fun, software, cardboard creatures with electric eyes, simulations of societies, AI stuff, coin-shrinkers, fulgurites, wood carvings, wooden things, books, knives, motorcycles, theramin, machines to learn, soldered pysanky, yarn, block prints, costumes, handicrafts, kinetic LED sculptures for “still” photography, lego robots, Craft Robo paper cut art, electronics for scientific computing, clothes, gadgets, clothes with gadgets, FPGA boards, edible sound, magnetic art, new and infeasible ideas, shiny photos, random thing driven by microcontrollers, making people jump (parkour), skin/skeleton/guts electronics, mobile robots, dangerous toys, cupcakes, new and amazing hacking tools, concrete structures,  projBox kit, video games, companies, making people ride bikes to power the entire Seattle Bicycle Music Festival.

The most popular things people like to make according to this very formal and controlled study are robots and trouble.  Needless to say, Make Magazine caters to a hands-on and creative, though unmistakeably diverse, crowd.  Find the latest issue covering our mosquito laser on newsstands everywhere.

For photos from the event:

We built a solid acrylic divider that can be used to seal two sides of a cup and then be removed when you need it to be. The design process starts with a simple photograph of the cup and inserting it into SolidWorks, where a spine was drawn along the inner surface of the cup.

The shape is then cut out with the laser cutter and silicone RTV (a sealant) applied to the edges. A thin layer of wax paper was then attached to the outer edges and the divider inserted and allowed to set to the exact shape of the cup.

Lets see it in action!

Even though the left side looks red, it is actually due to the reflection of the right side….trust me on this.

If you’re just stopping there, you may want to make a divider with a lower profile  so that you can more easily drink from the cup.  However, we were exploring a process developed by The Fat Duck for a drink called Hot & Iced Tea.  By varying the viscosity on each side with a  thickener, the divider can then be removed.  The left side remains cold and the right side remains hot.  The same technique can also be used for drinks with different textures (fizzy/still) or different colors.  Can you imagine the possibilities?  If you have a great drink idea to share, post it in the comments below.

Fortunately Emma’s here to save the day!  She gives a how-to on cleaning mosquito eggs in order to improve their life expectancy in the insectary.

This was actually a deleted scene from the Insectary video, a previous post on our blog.

Watch closely in the beginning of the video. You can see smoke from the firecracker rising to create gray bubbles on the water’s surface. Later, during the explosion, notice the little streamers of water which shoot up from where the bubbles were. 3ric Johanson explains that when the explosion’s shock wave hits the smoke bubbles, it causes those bubbles to burst and send up the streamers.

filmed at Hackerbot Labs