Museum of Renaissance Inventions
Bringing Renaissance Inventors and Their Inventions to You
Exhibit on Renaissance Inventors and Their Inventions
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John Harrington- The Flushing Toilet (1596)
John Harrington was a courtier, author, and scientist. He was one of the members of Queen Elizabeth I's Court and Queen Elizabeth I's godson. John was not very popular with some people though. He was eventually banished from the court for telling sexual stories to Kelston near Bath. During his seven year exile, he built himself a house with the first flushing toilet, which he named Ajax.
During this time period of the Renaissance wealthy households might have had a close-stool with a padded seat and a metal or porcelain container below it that had to be emptied by hand. This is what Harrington tried to move away from, his device could empty itself. His toilet had a pan with a seat, and the water was pumped into the cistern above. When a handle on the seat was turned, water came down from the cistern into the pan and its contents were swept away into a cesspool.
Sir John Harrington
Diagram of John Harrington's Original Toilet
John Harrington's Toilet for Queen Elizabeth I
Cornelis Drebbel- The Submarine (1620)
Between 1620 and 1624 Drebbel successfully maneuvered his submarine in depths ranging from 12 to 15 feet below the surface of the Thames River in England. The submarine was powered by oarsmen, the oars would come out through holes with flexible leather seals. Snorkel air tubes were held above the water by floats, and this allowed the submarine to submerge in several hours.
William Bourne's Drawing of the Submarine
Drebbel's Submarine in the Thames River
Drebbel's First Submarine in 1620
Blaise Pascal- Calculator (1642)
In 1642, at the age of 18, Pascal invented and built the first calculator to help his father do his taxes more efficiently. His device was called the Pascaline. The first Pascaline could only handle 5-digit numbers, but later he developed versions that could handle 6 and 8-digit numbers. The calculator had metal wheel dials that were turned to the right number with a stylus, and then the answer would appear in boxes at the top of the calculator. His machine could add, subtract, multiply, and divide, but multiplying and dividing were more difficult. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing were all done by repeated addition and subtraction. In reality the calculator could only add; over the next decade he continued to improve his device and built fifty Pascaline machines in all.
Blaise Pascal
The Pascaline with the Cover On
The Pascaline with the Cover Removed
Otto Von Guericke- Air Pump (1650)
Otto Von Guericke was a Prussian physicist, engineer, and natural philosopher. Guericke went to school at the University of Leipzig, he later studied law at the University of Jena in 1621, and mathematics and mechanics at the University of Leyden in 1623. After his studies he became an engineer in the army .
in 1650 he invented the first air pump. He used the air pump to create a partial vacuum and to study the role of air in combustion and respiration. His studies showed him that light travels through the vacuum but sound does not. In his early experiments during 1647, he made a vacuum by using a suction pump to remove the water from a sealed wooden cask. However the cask leaked air in from the outside as the water was withdrawn, thus confirming the need for glass or metal system. Von Guericke learned that the most desirable shape for withstanding the pressure difference was a sphere.