These inventions are known all over the world. Did you know that they are the work of Poles? [TOPtech]

Here are some amazing inventions created by Poles that the whole world heard about.

Telescope

Speech teletroscopy, or – as the inventor himself described them – “an apparatus for reproducing images at a distance by means of electricity”. The teletroscope was invented and patented in 1897 in Great Britain by a then 25-year-old Pole, Jan Szczepanik. A year later, Szczepanik also patented the same invention in the USA, and the idea even made it onto the cover of the New York Times. The device divided the image from the camera into points of light, and then electrical impulses and then wired the signal from one place to another. The film was broadcast live, in color and in sync with sound, and the principle of its operation was later used to create television.

Although Szczepanik presented working prototypes to the world, the teletroscope never went into production due to the complexity of the design and high construction costs. The invention was ahead of its time, but the Pole is still considered the precursor of television. Apart from the telectroscope, Jan Szczepanik also patented several dozen other inventions in the field of photography and weaving, e.g. photometer, i.e. a device for measuring brightness.

Kerosene lamp

Everyone has probably heard that the kerosene lamp is the work of a Pole, but when talking about the greatest Polish inventions, it would be hard to omit it. The first working kerosene lamp was constructed in 1853 in Lviv by the Polish pharmacist Ignacy Łukasiewicz. Another Pole, Adam Bratkowski, helped him build the prototype. Earlier, together with Jan Zeh, who worked in the same pharmacy, Łukasiewicz learned how to use the benefits of crude oil, including extracting kerosene from it.

The kerosene used by Polish inventors gave relatively much light and did not smoke. Łukasiewicz’s lamp was not only much more efficient than the still commonly used candles, but also much cheaper to operate than gas and oil lamps. In the following months, Łukasiewicz perfected his invention, e.g. enhancing its brightness and adding a knob to adjust the wick and, as a result, the size of the flame.

Even in 1853, kerosene lamps were used to illuminate the operating room in a hospital in Lviv, and for the next several decades, lamps were used in both homes and workplaces around the world. The invention was replaced by the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison.

Bulletproof vest

It is hard to find a more “Polish” invention than a bulletproof vest. It is the work of not one, but two Poles. The first vest capable of stopping bullets from firearms was developed by Kazimierz Żegleń. The Pole came up with his idea in 1893 after the assassination attempt and tragic death of the then mayor of Chicago. The vests handmade by Żegleń consisted of several layers of silk soaked in an unknown substance.

In 1898, Kazimierz Żegleń contacted the already mentioned Polish inventor Jan Szczepanik, with whom he launched the production of vests. Jan Szczepanik not only refined the invention, but also created a machine for the rapid production of bulletproof material. Szczepanik became famous again when a carriage covered with a fabric of his design saved King Alfonso XIII of Spain from death.

Windshield wipers

The first designs of car wipers were created in the 1890s, and the invention is attributed to at least a few inventors today. One of them is the Polish composer, pianist and inventor Józef Hofmann. Born in Krakow, the genius was not only a great musician, but also the author of over 70 inventions in various fields.

Hofmann supposedly came up with the idea of ​​building windshield wipers for vehicles by observing the operation of a metronome, a device used to tell the tempo of a piece of music. The idea for the operation of windscreen wipers proposed by a Pole won the recognition of the American company Ford, founded in 1903, and it was this company that started the mass production of the invention.

Lunar vehicle

Finally, let’s move on to a bit more modern times and the Apollo missions. The American lunar program had a rather unusual Polish accent. Of course, we are talking about the lunar ride known from the Apollo 15 mission, which today we can call the only car that drove around a globe other than the Earth. The Lunar Roving Vehicle, as this vehicle was called, was constructed by a team of designers led by Mieczysław Bekker and delivered to NASA in March 1971.

Interestingly, Bekker’s team in the competition for the contract of the American space agency, the team of another Pole, Stanisław Rogalski. The vehicle was powered by four separate electric motors, reached a speed of 13 km/h and could take a load of up to 490 kg on board. It was used by NASA to transport tools and astronauts on the lunar surface. As part of the Apollo 15 mission, it covered almost 30 km and helped the astronauts collect over 77 kg of samples. The Americans liked the Lunar Roving Vehicle so much that it was sent to the Silver Globe in almost unchanged form as part of the Apollo 16 and 17 missions.