What was the first electrical device

According to the Cyber Toaster Museum , a young engineer named Albert Marsh applied for a patent for an alloy of nickel and chromium in March, , which Marsh described in his patent application as having: " Two months later, George Schneider submitted a patent application for an enclosed toaster using a resistance wire and the very first rudimentary electrical appliance, the toaster, was born. The first toaster had a colorful name, "El Tosto," and was manufactured under the Pacific Electric Heating name, which later became Hotpoint Electric.

The Smithsonian web site has a wonderful section covering many aspects of the toaster such as early advertising and some early examples. The first U. This model, the D, is considered the first commercially successful toaster in U. The first automatic pop-up toaster was the Toastmaster 1A1, invented in Among the great variety of toaster designs that popped-up during that period, it was the pop-up toaster that became the winning design for consumers, becoming a highly desired wedding gift along the way.

It was not cheap. However, the toaster did not really take off until after when sliced bread was invented, which makes it official: historically speaking, the toaster is the next best thing since sliced bread.

The earliest toasters were designed to mimic small pieces of furniture. In the s the toasters copied the art deco style of buildings and in the s and 50s, toaster design reflected the streamlining taking place in the automotive industry.

In fact, there's an interesting parallel to our modern era, in which backdoors are increasingly common and the FBI and other U. Even before these revelations, I was deeply fascinated by the HX, the last of the great rotor machines.

This particular unit, different from the one I had seen a decade before, had been untouched since I immediately began to plan the restoration of this historically resonant machine.

People have been using codes and ciphers to protect sensitive information for a couple of thousand years. The first ciphers were based on hand calculations and tables.

In , a mechanical device that became known as the Alberti cipher wheel was introduced. Then, just after World War I, an enormous breakthrough occurred, one of the greatest in cryptographic history : Edward Hebern in the United States, Hugo Koch in the Netherlands, and Arthur Scherbius in Germany, within months of one another, patented electromechanical machines that used rotors to encipher messages.

Thus began the era of the rotor machine. Scherbius's machine became the basis for the famous Enigma used by the German military from the s until the end of WW II. To understand how a rotor machine works, first recall the basic goal of cryptography: substituting each of the letters in a message, called plaintext, with other letters in order to produce an unreadable message, called ciphertext.

It's not enough to make the same substitution every time—replacing every F with a Q , for example, and every K with an H.

Such a monoalphabetic cipher would be easily solved. A simple cipher machine, such as the Enigma machine used by the German Army during World War II, has three rotors, each with 26 positions.

Each position corresponds to a letter of the alphabet. Electric current enters at a position on one side of the first rotor, corresponding to a letter, say T. The current travels through two other rotors in the same way and then, finally, exits the third rotor at a position that corresponds to a different letter, say R.

So in this case, the letter T has been encrypted as R. The next time the operator strikes a key, one or more of the rotors move with respect to one another, so the next letter is encrypted with an entirely different set of permutations. In the Enigma cipher machines [below] a plugboard added a fixed scramble to the encipherment of the rotors, swapping up to 13 letter pairs. A rotor machine gets around that problem using—you guessed it—rotors.

Start with a round disk that's roughly the diameter of a hockey puck, but thinner. On both sides of the disk, spaced evenly around the edge, are 26 metal contacts, each corresponding to a letter of the English alphabet. Inside the disk are wires connecting a contact on one side of the disk to a different one on the other side. The disk is connected electrically to a typewriter-like keyboard.

When a user hits a key on the keyboard, say W , electric current flows to the W position on one side of the rotor. The current goes through a wire in the rotor and comes out at another position, say L. However, after that keystroke, the rotor rotates one or more positions. So the next time the user hits the W key, the letter will be encrypted not as L but rather as some other letter. Though more challenging than simple substitution, such a basic, one-rotor machine would be child's play for a trained cryptanalyst to solve.

So rotor machines used multiple rotors. Versions of the Enigma, for example, had either three rotors or four. In operation, each rotor moved at varying intervals with respect to the others: A keystroke could move one rotor or two, or all of them. Operators further complicated the encryption scheme by choosing from an assortment of rotors, each wired differently, to insert in their machine.

Military Enigma machines also had a plugboard, which swapped specific pairs of letters both at the keyboard input and at the output lamps. The rotor-machine era finally ended around , with the advent of electronic and software encryption, although a Soviet rotor machine called Fialka was deployed well into the s.

The HX pushed the envelope of cryptography. For starters it has a bank of nine removable rotors. The unit I acquired has a cast-aluminum base, a power supply, a motor drive, a mechanical keyboard, and a paper-tape printer designed to display both the input text and either the enciphered or deciphered text. In encryption mode, the operator types in the plaintext, and the encrypted message is printed out on the paper tape. Each plaintext letter typed into the keyboard is scrambled according to the many permutations of the rotor bank and modificator to yield the ciphertext letter.

In decryption mode, the process is reversed. The user types in the encrypted message, and both the original and decrypted message are printed, character by character and side by side, on the paper tape. While encrypting or decrypting a message, the HX prints both the original and the encrypted message on paper tape. The blue wheels are made of an absorbent foam that soaks up ink and applies it to the embossed print wheels.

Beneath the nine rotors on the HX are nine keys that unlock each rotor to set the initial rotor position before starting a message. That initial position is an important component of the cryptographic key.

To begin encrypting a message, you select nine rotors out of 12 and set up the rotor pins that determine the stepping motion of the rotors relative to one another. Then you place the rotors in the machine in a specific order from right to left, and set each rotor in a specific starting position.

Finally, you set each of the 41 modificator switches to a previously determined position. To decrypt the message, those same rotors and settings, along with those of the modificator, must be re-created in the receiver's identical machine. All of these positions, wirings, and settings of the rotors and of the modificator are collectively known as the key. The HX includes, in addition to the hand crank, a nickel-cadmium battery to run the rotor circuit and printer if no mains power is available.

A volt DC linear power supply runs the motor and printer and charges the battery. The precision volt motor runs continuously, driving the rotors and the printer shaft through a reduction gear and a clutch. Pressing a key on the keyboard releases a mechanical stop, so the gear drive propels the machine through a single cycle, turning the shaft, which advances the rotors and prints a character.

The printer has two embossed alphabet wheels, which rotate on each keystroke and are stopped at the desired letter by four solenoids and ratchet mechanisms. Fed by output from the rotor bank and keyboard, mechanical shaft encoders sense the position of the alphabet printing wheels and stop the rotation at the required letter.

Each alphabet wheel has its own encoder. One set prints the input on the left half of the paper tape; the other prints the output on the right side of the tape. After an alphabet wheel is stopped, a cam releases a print hammer, which strikes the paper tape against the embossed letter.

At the last step the motor advances the paper tape, completing the cycle, and the machine is ready for the next letter. In , while working as head of the laboratory of electrical oscillators in the Physico-Technical Institute in the city, at that stage renamed Petrograd, he researched proximity sensors for the Russian government, using an electromagnetic field to detect objects that entered a certain zone.

Instead of creating a land-based sonar device, he came up with a musical instrument. He did so because he noticed that when he moved his body in or out of an electromagnetic field produced by a radio frequency oscillating circuit, he changed its frequency.

A keen cellist in his spare time, Theramin wondered how this phenomenon — which relied on the ability of the human body to hold an electrical charge, a quality known as capacitance — could be exploited. The result was an unusual looking electronic device with two primary circuits: one controlling pitch and the other volume. The pitch circuit used two tuned radio frequency oscillators, one fixed and the other variable. The first generated waves at a static frequency.

The second was capable of producing a range of frequencies and was connected to a vertical antenna. Through a process called heterodyning, signals from the two oscillators were mixed together. Maxwell Scotland created a new era of physics when he unified magnetism, electricity and light. Maxwell's four laws of electrodynamics "Maxwell's Equations" eventually led to electric power, radios, and television. His lightbulb burned out quickly.

Thomas Edison U. US , in New York City. He bought a number of patents related to electric lighting and began experiments to develop a practical, long-lasting light bulb.

By his bulbs could be used for hours. Electric lights Brush arc lamps were first used for public street lighting in Cleveland, Ohio. California Electric Light Company, Inc. The company used two small Brush generators to power 21 Brush arc light lamps. Siemens Thomas Edison U.