Latest news with #invention
CTV News
6 hours ago
- General
- CTV News
Saskatoon student invents deaf blind communication device
WATCH: A Saskatoon high school student is gaining national attention for his invention that helps deaf blind people communicate with others.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Coventry middle school pair shine with creativity and excellence
COVENTRY — Two middle school students have demonstrated their creativity, ingenuity and determination, proudly representing the town at the Connecticut Invention Convention State Finals. Seventh-grader Dominik Grzywinski from Capt. Nathan Hale School and fourth-grader Emma Fillmore from G.H. Robertson School presented their projects at the CIC. The organization pushes students to solve real-world problems by using engineering design processes. During the STEAM Night, which happened last April, the two students presented their invention logs and prototypes. They also did presentations at school-level events. Grzywinski was coached by Cindy Wilbur, a K-12 STEM specialist. His invention is called Vision Tech and is an app to help reduce stress. As for Fillmore, she was coached by Stacey Fortin, a Challenge and Enrichment teacher. She created The Lil' Helper, which is a wearable tracker case to prevent children from being separated from their parents. More than 20,000 inventors throughout the state presented creations and Grzywinski and Fillmore were in the top 4.5% selected to participate in the state finals. The state finals took place at the University of Connecticut's Gampel Pavilion. For the event, the two students had to prepare detailed display boards and present their projects to a panel of state judges. With her wearable tracker case, Fillmore was selected to go to the 11th annual Raytheon Technologies Invention Convention U.S. Nationals. The event will take place at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan in 2026. This is the second time in two years that a student from Fortin's class advanced to the national level.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- General
- Irish Times
An Irishwoman's Diary: The earl who left Ireland behind when dreams of a hot-air balloon went up in smoke
If you are thinking of devoting your life to achieving a dream, perhaps the experience of Benjamin O'Neale Stratford will act as a cautionary tale. Born in 1808, he spent his life trying to build the world's best hot-air balloon, only to see his dream go up in smoke. His balloon, on the other hand, never left the ground. With a name like that, you might think he was born into a life of privilege. You would be right. His ancestors owned most of Baltinglass, Co Wicklow , although their fortunes were on the wane by the time Benjamin came along. This was mainly due to his feckless father, Mason Gerard Stratford, who had a penchant for bigamy; he collected and abandoned wives with reckless abandon. Benjamin was the sixth earl of Aldborough and he lived in Stratford Lodge, overlooking the town of Baltinglass. To say he was eccentric is an understatement. Edward P O'Kelly makes this clear in his passages about Benjamin in the Journal of the Co Kildare Archaeological Society in 1905. It's clear O'Kelly could have filled a book with tales about him. At one point, he noted in passing that the earl had only one eye, 'the other having been removed by a heron that he had fired at'. He gave no further explanation, as though having your eye plucked out by a furious heron was an everyday occurrence. According to the author, the earl's sole aim in life was to construct a hot-air balloon and he devoted decades to the task. To accommodate his invention, he built a house at the western end of Stratford Lodge in chiselled Ballyknockan granite. Its door was 50 feet wide and 60 feet high so that the balloon could exit safely when inflated. READ MORE The earl led a reclusive life as he worked on the balloon. Instead of hiring a cook, his meals came from Dublin every day on the Blessington and Baltinglass Royal Mail coach. They might not have been piping hot when they reached him, but a plate of cold cabbage and bacon is an insignificant matter when you are dreaming of flying across the sky in a basket. He temporarily moved in with his balloon but vowed to leave the country His plan was to fly to England and then on to France . Clearly an optimist, he bought a plot of land on the banks of the Seine to accommodate this dream. He had also hoped to offer the balloon to help the Crimean War effort. The author wrote: 'He regretted exceedingly that he had not the balloon finished for the Russian War, that it might have been utilised by sharp-shooters to snipe the Russian generals.' They would have to be very sharp shooters indeed to risk their lives in a hot-air balloon above the Russian army. By spring of 1858, when Ireland was still reeling from the effects of the Famine, the balloon was almost ready to take flight. Then, tragedy struck. A fire broke out in Stratford Lodge in the early hours of a Sunday morning in February. Neighbours rallied to help, presumably expecting that the earl would be keen to save the historic mansion. However, it quickly emerged that his only concern was to save the balloon house. Stratford Lodge was left in ruins and while the balloon house escaped the worst of the fire, the balloon itself was irreparably damaged. He temporarily moved in with his balloon but vowed to leave the country – and his ballooning dreams – behind forever. The earl was true to his word, travelling to Alicante in Spain where he spent the remainder of his life. [ Walking the Bray Celtic Camino: a Famous Five adventure for adults Opens in new window ] Not for him a life of lying on the beach and enjoying afternoon cocktails. No, he became even more reclusive over there, according to Paul Gorry in his book, Baltinglass Chronicles. He studiously avoided his countrymen and had his meals delivered to his room. Leaning into his eccentric character, he refused to leave out his used dishes and cutlery. When the crockery began to overflow, he would simply move to another room and start accumulating dishes again. The earl hadn't done much to add to the gaiety of life in Baltinglass so it's not surprising that his death, in 1875, was a minor event for the people of the town. As for the balloon house, it was dismantled and the stone was used in the construction of the tower of St Joseph's church in Baltinglass. While the balloon never saw the sky, the land where it once stood sees plenty of airborne activity today. It is home to Baltinglass Golf Club, where members send their golf balls soaring into the air on a daily basis.
Washington Post
12-05-2025
- Washington Post
Florida kids love this mosquito center. Just don't call it a museum.
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida — Of all the creatures associated with Florida — alligators, flamingos, manatees — possibly the most consequential doesn't show up in tourism ads or on travel websites. Did you know that the mosquito prompted the invention of air conditioning? For that reason alone, it deserves some kind of special recognition. A statue, maybe? A proclamation? How about a museum?
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Hilarious recreation of Wallace and Gromit morning routine goes viral... but it took a whole year of planning
An inventor has recreated the iconic Wallace and Gromit morning routine complete with self-making toast and jam in a project that has been in the works for the past year. Joseph Herscher, 40, recreated the classic scene from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, in which Wallace builds an elaborate machine to simplify his morning routine. In total, it took him two months to complete the project and two full days of filming to create the now 29-second scene. After spotting his viral inventions online a year ago, the creators of the Wallace and Gromit Aardman Animations reached out to Joseph and offered him a tour, which sparked his decision to go ahead with this project. Having been a fan of the British series since his younger years, Joseph, who has been a full-time inventor and YouTuber for over 12 years, said 'it felt like a childhood dream come to life.' 'I have wondered about how this invention could be made since I first saw the film in 1993,' he said. 'It took about two months on and off to get it to a point where we could go ahead and film it.' He added: 'This project really meant a lot more to me than some of my other ones. 'Having been an Aardman fan since I was a kid, this really felt like I was fulfilling every little inventor's dream.' To play Gromit, Joseph, who is based in London, hired a dog named Archie who underwent a few training sessions to learn his role. This involved pushing a button to catapult the jam onto a piece of toast as it pops out of a toaster. As the project got underway, it became clear that two key elements were going to be hardest to perfect: sliding down into the trousers and catapulting jam across a table to land on a slice of toast. With the trousers, Joseph quickly realised the drop was much higher than expected. Joseph said: 'I realised I wouldn't feel good or safe dropping straight down from that height so we hung a bar that was connected to pullies on a counterweight. 'This meant it could lower me in a more controlled and gradual way before dropping me in the trousers.' The inventor ended up doing 65 takes to perfect the toast and jam stunt. In the original cartoon, Wallace has a contraption that times the toast popping up with jam flying across the table to land on it precisely. It took Joseph a lot of trial and error - and a bit of chemistry - to prevent the jam from splattering everywhere. Joseph said: 'The jam really did feel like the hardest part of the whole project. 'I realised early on that if I catapulted it as it is, it would just fly everywhere instead of aiming directly for the toast. 'So, I mixed sodium alginate in with the jam before placing it into a bowl of water that has calcium lactate in it. 'Because these two chemicals don't get along, the jam forms a sort of hard skin around it which keeps it in a spherical shape.' Wallace and Gromit fans couldn't hide their excitement in the comments section of the viral TikTok video, which has more than 190million views. One person asked: 'How many hours of jam-based bloopers did this have?' 'No one will ever understand how much I wanted one of these when I was little,' a second person said. A third person wrote : 'I've worked on the film and IMMEDIATELY shared it with the rest of the animators. This is incredible!'
