Many over the hill are sure that everything that is in any way necessary and useful in the world has been created by the Americans and Western Europeans. And they do not believe their ears when they learn that 80% of all world inventions belong to the Slavs (and above all the Russians). From time immemorial, Russia has been rich in talented people, thinking, as they say today, creatively and creating amazing things. But for some reason they did not receive patents for their inventions on time. Either our Kulibins did not have enough resourcefulness, or they hoped for something Russian, or it was somehow not accepted by us. But foreigners could not only advertise their product, but also patent it. It was they who received world fame, and not the Russian inventors who had outstripped them.
Self-running stroller (car)
In 1741, the peasant Leonty Shamshurenkov submitted to the Nizhny Novgorod provincial chancellery an application “to make him a self-run stroller,” which “would run without a horse, only it would be driven through tools [ie. Driving mechanisms] by two people standing on the same wheelchair, except for the idle people sitting in it, and they will run at least through some long distance, and not only along a flat location, but also to the mountain, if there is not a very steep place. But due to bureaucratic delays, he managed to make it only in 1752, in St. Petersburg. The tests were successful, and Shamshurenkov was awarded fifty rubles. Unfortunately, the further fate of the self-running wheelchair is unknown to historians. The archives have not preserved a description of it or drawings.
17 years later, in 1769, the French military engineer Nicolas Cugno tested a "small cart" propelled by the power of steam. This vehicle can be considered the first car in terms of having an engine. But it was more like a steam locomotive, since it had a steam engine. And yet the whole world knows Cuyuno, and the name of our designer has been forgotten.
Steam machine
In 1763, mechanic Ivan Polzunov developed a project for a steam engine. Its construction was completed in 1765. The Polzunov steam engine was the world's first two-cylinder engine with the operation of cylinders on one common shaft. Moreover, the engine could work without an auxiliary hydraulic drive, that is, in a completely waterless place. After a successful test of the machine, Empress Catherine II awarded Polzunov 400 rubles and the rank of captain-lieutenant. The Scottish engineer James Watt was on the commission for the acceptance of this invention. He did not fail to take advantage of the ideas of the Russian inventor and in April 1784 in London received a patent for a steam engine with a universal engine.
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Bicycle
In 1800, the serf Efim Artamonov, an artisan of the Demidov Nizhny Tagil plant, built the first two-wheeled all-metal pedal scooter (a similar device will be called a bicycle in many years). And in 1801, the owner of the plant sent Artamonov on a "bike ride" along the route of the village of Verkhoturye - Moscow, for the coronation of Alexander I, in order to surprise the young tsar with an outlandish scooter. The emperor liked the invention, he granted the talented artisan 25 rubles in gold and "free", freeing him from serfdom.
But the inventor of the bicycle is considered to be the German baron Karl Drez, who patented the "running machine" (Laufmaschine) in 1818. It was just a scooter equipped with a saddle and handlebar. At present, such a design would be called a "balance bike".
Electric motor
The first electric motor, consisting of fixed and rotating parts, was invented in 1834 by the physicist Boris Jacobi. The most important thing in his invention was the discovery of the principle of continuous rotary motion. Thomas Davenport received a patent for the electric motor in 1837.
Narcosis
Who was the first to apply anesthesia? Several doctors on both sides of the ocean claimed priority in the field of pain relief during surgery. On October 16, 1846, American orthopedic dentist Thomas Morton performed the first successful operation to remove a jaw tumor under general anesthesia. In Russia, Fyodor Inozemtsev was the first to use ether anesthesia during an abdominal operation on February 7, 1847. And a week after him, Nikolai Pirogov performed his operation to remove the mammary gland from a patient suffering from oncological disease. And yet it is Pirogov who is called the godfather of anesthesia in Russia. Thanks to his energy, this novelty - pain relief - has quickly become an integral part of medicine. Already in the summer of 1847, Pirogov went down in history as the first doctor who used ether anesthesia on the battlefield. During the one and a half month siege by the Russian army of the village of Salta, he performed about a hundred operations with ether anesthesia. And in all, during his medical activities, he performed about ten thousand such operations. But at the same time he had no time to think about patents - the result was important to him. Thomas Morton patented ether anesthesia.
Incandescent lamp
Russian electrical engineer Alexander Lodygin began experiments with artificial lighting in 1870. He was the first in the world to suggest using tungsten filaments in lamps and twisting a filament in the form of a spiral, as well as pumping air out of the lamps and filling them with an inert gas. In 1872 he filed a patent for the invention of the incandescent lamp, and by 1874 he had patented it in more than ten countries.
Pavel Yablochkov, trying to improve arc lamps, used kaolin (white clay) for insulation. It was surprisingly found that at high temperatures, kaolin is electrically conductive. Yablochkov patented the invention in 1876 in France, and then demonstrated his "electric candle" in London, at the exhibition of physical devices. The Yablochkov candle turned out to be more convenient, simpler and even cheaper to operate than the Lodygin lamp.
The invention of Russian electrical engineers was later improved upon by the American Thomas Edison. But for some reason it was he who is considered in the Western world to be the inventor of the electric light bulb, although he only created a more or less commercially successful sample of it. In general, the entrepreneur defeated the inventors.
Diving suit
In 1871, Alexander Lodygin developed a project for a diving spacesuit, in which a gas mixture of oxygen and hydrogen should be used for breathing. However, the patent was received in 1878 by the Englishman Henry Fluse. He is considered the inventor of the closed-circuit breathing apparatus using pure oxygen.
Plane
The first aircraft in the world was designed and built by Russian sailor Alexander Mozhaisky at his own expense. It was tested in 1882. According to eyewitnesses of the tests, which took place in the presence of representatives of the military department of the Russian Empire and the Russian Technical Society, the separation of Mozhaisky's apparatus from the ground "took place." The flight lasted for several seconds, and the plane flew over 100 fathoms (almost 200 meters).
And only twenty years later, the Americans Orville and Wilbur Wright made a stable controlled horizontal flight on the Flyer-1. But Mozhaisky could not patent his invention, and the Wright brothers received a patent.
Radio
On May 7, 1895, Alexander Popov for the first time publicly demonstrated the reception and transmission of radio signals at a distance. In 1896 he transmitted the world's first radio telegram, in 1897 he established the possibility of radar using a wireless telegraph. But the patent for the invention of the radio was first received by the Italian Guglielmo Marconi in 1896.
Laser
The world's first laser was created in 1953-1954 by Soviet physicists Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. In parallel with them, the same development was carried out by the Americans Charles Towns and Arthur Shavlov. These "rival firms" shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics. However, prior to that, it was Towns and Shawlov who hurried in advance and on March 22, 1960 received a patent confirming their right to invention an optical maser, which today we simply call a laser.
Nikolay MEDVEDEV