Their Final 4th of July...

On July 4, 1826, our nation celebrated its 50th birthday. Two old patriots, former arch rivals and now close friends, began the day but did not finish it. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day in their own homes hundreds of miles apart on the 50th anniversary of their signing the Declaration of Independence. What could explain this strange occurrence?


1. Coincidence – well, it could be a coincidence, but what a significant one! They died on the same day, a momentous date and historic anniversary, especially for them. Both had lived much longer than the average male of the time (Adams was 90); Jefferson’s health had been failing for some time. It would be an incredible coincidence; the odds are mind-boggling.

2. Conspiracy – did someone else cause their deaths? In that time, it was unlikely due to communication problems over long distances, but it could have happened...

3. Divine intervention – well, that is possible…

4. Waiting for the day – do you suppose each of them wanted to see the nation turn 50 and willed themselves to live until that day? Perhaps…

The last words John Adams uttered were “Thomas Jefferson survives,” but Jefferson had passed away a few hours earlier.

What do you think?

Question of the Week

On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone from the US Patent Office.  On March 10, three days after receiving the patent, he successfully transmitted the famous first words.

What famous sentence was transmitted?

Answer:  "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."

Now, you may ask, who was Mr. Watson?  Thomas Watson was an experienced electrical designer and mechanic.  While Bell had the "germ of a great invention," he realized he did not have the equipment nor the expertise to make a working model.  A chance meeting at a machine shop changed all that.  There he met Watson and hired him as his assistant.  On that historic day, March 10, 1876, Mr. Watson heard the words loud and clear through the liquid transmitter now known as the telephone.  Just think how far we have come since then...

Question of the Week

Friday, February 11, is Thomas Edison's birthday.  Probably the greatest inventor of modern time, Edison accumulated over 1000 patents, over twice that of other prolific inventors.  His inventions include the light bulb, motion picture camera, phonograph, stock ticker, mechanical vote recorder, electric car battery, and electrical power.  Edison's ingenuity has profoundly influenced people's everyday lives and serves as inspiration to aspiring engineers and inventors.


What was Thomas Edison's favorite invention?

Answer:  Of all the wonderful things Thomas Edison invented, his favorite was the phonograph.  Edison had profound hearing loss at an early age and was technically deaf by his teen years, so that makes the phonograph an interesting choice.

The Anti-G Suit

During World War II, aviators were able to fly their aircraft higher and faster than ever before. But this was not without problems. There were accidents that could not be accounted for: pilots were not shot down, there were no malfunctions in the aircraft and yet they were crashing. What was happening was that when pilots were performing high-speed maneuvers such as pulling up hard out of a dive or making fast and tight turns to evade the enemy, they were creating strong centrifugal forces on the lower parts of their bodies.

So what does this mean? It means that as a result of G-forces (or gravitational force), blood pools in the lower part of the body, mainly the legs and abdomen. It’s kinda like when you eat a lot of food and feel sleepy after the meal: some of the blood from your head has gone to your stomach to help the digestion process. But in this case, so much blood has left the head that a pilot begins to feel some physical affects.

Let’s look at some stats. The force that is exerted by earth’s gravity on your body when you are on the ground (or your weight) is 1 G. If you were moving at 3 G’s you would weigh three times your normal weight and at 7 G’s your blood is as heavy as iron.

So without proper protection, the average person would “greyout” at 4 G’s, meaning that he or she would be unable to see color; “blackout” at 5 G’s and at 6 G’s the pilot would be unconscious.

The pilots of WWII that were crashing were experiencing G forces so great that they became unconscious and did not have control over their aircraft. This is called orthostatic intolerance.

To stop this from happening, in the 1940s Wilbur Franks of the University of Toronto was able to create a version of the G suit that you can see me wearing in the photo above.

So how does it work? There are bladders inside the suit at the legs and the abdomen. The tube on the suit receives air from the engine which had a valve that had a spring-mounted weight that would send air into the suit only if the G force was higher than 2 G’s. When the valve was engaged, air would go through the suit, inflate the bladders on the legs and abdomen which would push against the muscles of these body parts. The muscles would then squeeze the blood back up to the heart and up to the head, thus avoiding unconsciousness.

The suit I am wearing in the photograph is a modern issue Anti-G Suit like the ones that pilots in the US Air Force wear today. They wear it with a flight suit underneath, gloves, boots and of course, a helmet with oxygen mask.