The centenary of the first 14-Bis flight

Source: www.maganews.com.br

The centenary of the first 14-Bis flight

The conquest of the skies

On October 23^rd 1906, a crowd in Paris witnessed the first flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft. The pilot was Brazilian Santos Dumont, who had built the plane he called 14-Bis

   The world experienced one of the most creative periods in its history in the last decades of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century. It was in this period than man invented electric light, cinema and the automobile, amongst other inventions (read more about them on page 12). At that time man had flown in hot-air balloons, but no one had managed to fly in a motorized machine that was heavier than air and that could be controlled – that is, that could be directed wherever the pilot wanted it to go. Brazilian Santos Dumont was the first man to achieve this feat.  On October 23rd 1906, a crowd gathered in Paris and saw an aircraft fly for the first time without the aid of a catapult or any other external boost. Santos Dumont was piloting 14-Bis, as had called the plane he had made himself. This made the headlines the world over and the Brazilian became a worldwide celebrity.

A brief biography

Dumont: love for machines and aviation

He had a few accidents during test flights, but never gave up fighting for his dreams

   Alberto Santos Dumont was born on July 20, 1873 in a small city in Minas Gerais called Palmira (it is today called Santos Dumont, in honor of its illustrious son). When still a child, little Alberto used to like watching birds fly and asked how they could do it if they were heavier than air.  Dumont left Brazil when he was just 19 years old and went to live in France. In Paris he studied physics, mechanics and electricity. From 1898 he began planning, building and flying different hot-air balloons and dirigibles. Dumont had a few accidents during test flights, but he never gave up on his dreams. Besides becoming a famous aviator all over the world, Dumont was also well-known for other inventions of his, such as the wristwatch, for example. The Brazilian was considered to be a simple and generous man. In the last years of his life, Dumont suffered from two serious diseases: multiple sclerosis, and depression. On July 23rd 1932 Santos Dumont committed suicide in Guarujá (SP) andBrazil lost one of the greatest geniuses it has ever had. 

The aeronautical industry in Brazil

The Aeronautical Technology Center (CTA) was opened in the 1950s, in São José dos Campos-SP. It was the first step towards Brazil’s building of top quality airplanes and its advances in varied scientific and technological fields. Specialized schools were set up in CTA to train professionals to work in the aerospace industry and to fly planes. The following decade the government decided to build a large aeronautical company. Embraer (the Brazilian Aeronautical Company) was opened in 1969, also in São José dos Campos, being privatized in 1994. Today this company sells its airplanes to countries all over the world. 

Vocabulary

1 crowd – multidão

2 to witness – presenciar / testemumhar

3 heavier-than-air aircraft – aeronave mais pesada do que o ar

4 plane (= aircraft) – aeronave / avião

5 to flew – voar

6 hot-air ballon – balão movido a ar quente

7 wherever – na direção / por onde

8 feat – feito / proeza

9 catapult – catapulta

10 external boost – impulso externo

11 to make headlines – virar manchete

12 to give up – desistir13 to fight – lutar14 bird – pássaro

15 dirigibles – dirível

16 wristwatch – relógio de pulso

17 to be set up – ser criado

Matéria publicada na edição de número 33 da Revista Maganews.

Fotos - www.santosdumont.14bis.mil.br

Philo Farnsworth, 1906-1971: The Father of Television

Source: Voice of America Special English www.voanews.com 

www.manythings.org/voa/people 

source:http://www.crapo.senate.gov

I'm Phoebe Zimmermann. And I'm Steve Ember with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today we tell about a man who made possible one of the most important communications devices ever created -- television. His name was Philo Farnsworth.

(MUSIC)

In nineteen sixty-nine, American astronaut Neil Armstrong climbed down the side of the space vehicle that had taken him to the moon.

As his foot touched the surface of the moon, pictures of the event were sent back to televisions on Earth. The pictures were not very good. It was hard to see astronaut Armstrong clearly. The surface of the moon was extremely bright. And the moon lander vehicle created a very dark, black shadow. But the quality of the television pictures was not important.

Every man, woman and child who saw the television pictures understood they were watching an important event. They were watching history take place as it was happening many hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.

For a few minutes, the poor quality television pictures captured the imagination of millions of people throughout the world. Experts believe about six hundred million people around the world watched as Neil Armstrong stepped from the space vehicle to the surface of the moon.

In the years since then, people around the world have shared in many events. Television has made it possible for people in distant places to share a single experience.

A television system changes light and sound waves from a moving picture into electronic signals that travel through the air. The signals are changed back into sound and pictures in a television receiver.

Scientists in Britain, Germany, France, Japan, the former Soviet Union and the United States all made important discoveries that led to the development of modern television. Yet it was a young boy living on an American farm who was the first person to invent and design what became television. He first thought of the idea of an electronic television when he was only fourteen years old. His name was Philo Taylor Farnsworth.

(MUSIC)

Philo Farnsworth was born on August nineteenth, nineteen-oh-six, near Indian Creek in the western state of Utah. The house he lived in for the first few years of his life had no electric power. But Philo read about electricity. He was very excited when his family moved to a new house in Idaho that had electric power. He quickly began to experiment with electricity. He built an electric motor when he was twelve. Then he built the first electric washing machine for clothes that his family had ever owned.

Philo Farnsworth attended a very small school near his family's farm. He did very well in school. He asked his teacher for special help in science. The teacher began helping Philo learn a great deal more than most young students could understand.

One night, Philo read a magazine story about the idea of sending pictures and sound through the air. Anyone with a device that could receive this electronic information could watch the pictures. The magazine story said some of the world's best scientists were working on the idea. It said these scientists were using special machines to try to make a kind of device to send pictures. The story made Philo think.

Fourteen-year-old Philo decided these famous scientists were wrong. He decided that mechanical devices would never work. They could never be made to move fast enough to clearly capture and reproduce an electronic picture sent through the air.

Philo decided that such a device would have to be electronic, not mechanical. Philo knew electrons could be made to move extremely fast. All he would have to do was find a way to make electrons do the work.

Very quickly Philo had an idea for such a receiver. It would trap light in a container and send the light on a line of electrons. Philo called it "light in a bottle."

Several days later, Philo told his teacher about a device that could capture pictures. He drew a plan for it that he gave his teacher. Philo's drawing seems very simple. But it still clearly shows the information needed to build a television. In fact, all television equipment today still uses Philo's early idea. Philo's teacher was Justin Tolman. Many years later Philo would say Mr. Tolman guided his imagination and opened the doors of science for him.

(MUSIC)

Philo Farnsworth had to solve several problems before he could produce a working television system. One was that he was only fourteen years old. He knew no one would listen to a child. In fact, experts say that probably only ten scientists in the world at that time could have understood his idea.

Philo also had no money to develop his ideas. His idea for a working television would have to wait. After only two years of high school, Philo entered Brigham Young University in Utah. But he did not finish his education. He was forced to leave school when his father died.

Philo did not give up his idea for creating a television. He began serious work on it when he moved to San Francisco, California a few years later. He was twenty-one years old.

On September seventh, nineteen twenty-seven, Philo turned on a device that was the first working television receiver. In another room was the first television camera. Philo had invented the special camera tube earlier that year.

The image produced on the receiver was not very clear, but the device worked. Within a few months, Philo Farnsworth had found several people who wanted to invest money in his invention.

In August, nineteen thirty, the United States government gave Philo patent documents. These would protect his invention from being copied by others.

Very soon, however, several other inventors claimed they had invented a television device. One of these inventors, Vladimir Zworykin, worked for the powerful Radio Corporation of America. The RCA company began legal action against Philo Farnsworth. It said Mr. Zworykin had invented his device in the nineteen twenties. The big and powerful RCA claimed that it, not the small Philo Farnsworth Television Company, had the right to produce, develop and market television.

The legal action between RCA and the Farnsworth company continued for several years. RCA proved that Mr. Zworykin did make a mechanical television device. But it could not demonstrate that the device worked.

At the same time, RCA claimed that Mr. Farnsworth had produced his television image tube after Mr. Zworykin had developed his. When Mr. Farnsworth said he had developed the idea much earlier, RCA said it was impossible for a fourteen-year-old boy to produce the idea for a television device. Company representatives said Mr. Farnsworth was not even a scientist. He had never finished college.

RCA said Philo Farnsworth should be forced to prove he had invented the television image tube. Philo could not prove he invented it. But his high school teacher could. In court, Justin Tolman produced the drawing that Philo had made for him many years before as a student. At that moment, the legal experts for RCA knew they had lost.

Philo Farnsworth won the legal action and the right to own the invention of television. However, he did not have the money or support to build a television industry. It was the nineteen fifties before television became a major force in American life. Vladimir Zworykin and David Sarnoff, the head of RCA, became the names connected with the new industry.

(MUSIC)

Philo Farnsworth continued to invent more than one hundred devices that helped make modern television possible. He also developed early radar, invented the first electronic microscope, and worked on developing peaceful uses of atomic energy. In his last years, Mr. Farnsworth became a strong critic of television. He did not like most of the programs shown on television. Yet, as he watched Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon, Mr. Farnsworth knew the event clearly showed the power of his invention.

Philo Farnsworth died in March, nineteen seventy-one. Today, a statue of him stands in the United States Capitol. He is considered one of the most important inventors of the twentieth century.

(MUSIC)

This program was written by Paul Thompson. It was produced by Lawan Davis. I'm Phoebe Zimmermann. And I'm Steve Ember. Listen again next week for PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.

Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939: Psychiatrist and Founder of Psychoanalysis

siSource: www.manythings.org/voa/people

Source of this pic: www.utopiacapital.blogspot.com

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.  I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Bob Doughty.

The work and theories of Sigmund Freud continue to influence many areas of modern culture.

Today, we explore Freud's influence on the treatment of mental disorders through psychotherapy.

(MUSIC)

Sigmund Freud was born May 6, 1856, in Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic.  He lived most of his life in Vienna, Austria.  Early in his adulthood, Freud studied medicine.  By the end of the 19th century, he was developing some exciting new ideas about the human mind.  But his first scientific publications dealt with sea animals, including the sexuality of eels.

Freud was one of the first scientists to make serious research of the mind.  The mind is the collection of activities based in the brain that involve how we act, think, feel and reason.

He used long talks with patients and the study of dreams to search for the causes of mental and emotional problems.  He also tried hypnosis.  He wanted to see if putting patients into a sleep-like condition would help ease troubled minds.  In most cases he found the effects only temporary.

Freud worked hard, although what he did might sound easy.  His method involved sitting with his patients and listening to them talk.  He had them talk about whatever they were thinking.  All ideas, thoughts and anything that entered their mind had to be expressed.  There could be no holding back because of fear or guilt.

Freud believed that all the painful memories of childhood lay buried in the unconscious self.   He said this part of the mind contains wishes, desires and experiences too frightening to recognize.

He thought that if these memories could somehow be brought into the conscious mind, the patient would again feel the pain.  But this time, the person would experience the memories as an adult.  The patient would feel them, be able to examine them and, if successful, finally understand them.

Using this method, Freud reasoned, the pain and emotional pressure of the past would be greatly weakened.  They would lose their power over the person's physical health.  Soon the patient would get better.

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Sigmund Freud proposed that the mind was divided into three parts: the id, the ego and the superego.  Under this theory, the superego acts as a restraint.  It is governed by the values we learn from our parents and society.  The job of the superego is to help keep the id under control.

The id is completely unconscious.  It provides the energy for feelings that demand the immediate satisfaction of needs and desires.

The ego provides the immediate reaction to the events of reality.  The ego is the first line of defense between the self and the outside world.  It tries to balance the two extremes of the id and the superego.

Many of Freud's theories about how the mind works also had strong sexual connections.  These ideas included what he saw as the repressed feelings of sons toward their mothers and daughters toward their fathers.

If nothing else, Freud's ideas were revolutionary.  Some people rejected them.  Others came to accept them.  But no one disputes his great influence on the science of mental health.

Professor James Gray at American University in Washington, D.C. says three of Freud's major ideas are still part of modern thinking about the mind.

One is the idea of the unconscious mind.  Another is that we do not necessarily know what drives us to do the things we do.  And the third is that we are formed more than we think in the first five years, but not necessarily the way Freud thought.

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Dr. Freud was trained as a neurologist.  He treated disorders of the nervous system.  But physical sickness can hide deeper problems.  His studies on the causes and treatment of mental disorders helped form many ideas in psychiatry.  Psychiatry is the area of medicine that treats mental and emotional conditions.

Freud would come to be called the father of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a method of therapy.  It includes discussion and investigation of hidden fears and conflicts.

Sigmund Freud used free association.  He would try to get his patients to free their minds and say whatever they were thinking.  He also had them talk about their dreams to try to explore their unconscious fears and desires.

His version of psychoanalysis remained the one most widely used until at least the 1950s.

Psychoanalysis is rarely used in the United States anymore.  One reason is that it takes a long time; the average length of treatment is about five years.  Patients usually have to pay for the treatment themselves.  Health insurance plans rarely pay for this form of therapy.

Psychoanalysis has its supporters as well as its critics.  Success rates are difficult to measure.  Psychoanalysts say this is because each individual case is different.

More recently, a number of shortened versions of psychological therapy have been developed.  Some examples are behavior therapy, cognitive therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy.  Behavior is actions; cognition is knowing and judging.

Some patients in therapy want to learn to find satisfaction in what they do.  Others want to unlearn behaviors that only add to their problems.

In these therapies, patients might talk with a therapist about the past.  Or patients might be advised to think less about the past and more about the present and the future.

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Other kinds of therapy involve movement, dance, art, music or play.  These are used to help patients who have trouble talking about their emotions.

In many cases, therapy today costs less than it used to.  But the length of treatment depends on the problem.  Some therapies, for example, call for 20 or 30 visits with a therapist.

How long people continue their therapy can also depend on the cost.  People find that health insurance plans are often more willing to pay for short-term therapies than for longer-term treatments.

Mental health experts say therapy can often help patients suffering from depression, severe stress or other conditions.

For some patients, they say, a combination of talk therapy and medication works best.  There are many different drugs for depression, anxiety and other mental and emotional disorders.

Critics, however, say doctors are sometimes too quick to give medicine instead of more time for talk therapy.  Again, cost pressures are often blamed.

Mental health problems can affect work, school, marriage, and life in general.  Yet they often go untreated.  In many cases, people do not want others to know they have a problem.

Mental disorders are common in all countries.  The World Health Organization says hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are affected by mental, behavioral, neurological or substance use disorders.

The W.H.O. says these disorders have major economic and social costs.  Yet governments face difficult choices about health care spending.  The W.H.O. says most poor countries spend less than one percent of their health budgets on mental health.

There are treatments for most conditions.  Still, the W.H.O. says there are two major barriers.  One is lack of recognition of the seriousness of the problem.  The other is lack of understanding of the services that exist.

More About Sigmund Freud

The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, left Vienna soon after troops from Nazi Germany entered Austria in 1938.  The Nazis had a plan to kill all the Jews of Europe, but they permitted Freud to go to England.  His four sisters remained in Vienna and were all killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Freud was eighty-three years old when he died of cancer in London on September 23, 1939.  Anna Freud, the youngest of his six children, became a noted psychoanalyst herself.

Before Sigmund Freud, no modern scientist had looked so deeply into the human mind.

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written and produced by Brianna Blake.  I'm Faith Lapidus. And I'm Bob Doughty.  You can download transcripts and audio archives of our programs at voaspecialenglish.com.  Listen again next week for more news about science, in Special English, on the Voice of America. (This was also broadcast in 2008.)