GIFTED EDUCATION NEWS-PAGE OCTOBER- NOVEMBER 2003 ISSUE

GIFTED EDUCATION NEWS-PAGE

VOLUME 13, NUMBER 1

Published by GIFTED EDUCATION PRESS; 10201 YUMA COURT;

P.O. BOX 1586; MANASSAS, VA 20108; 703-369-5017 www.giftededpress.com

GREAT INVENTORS - RECOMMENDED BOOKS AND WEB SITES - 1. Flight -- On the 100^th anniversary of the Wright brothers first successful flight (1903) in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, there are many books about these pioneers to stir the imagination of future inventors:

The Wright Brothers Legacy: Orville and Wilbur Wright and Their Aeroplanes in Pictures (2003) by Walt Burton, Owen Findsen and Alexander Lee Nyerges. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

To Conquer the Air : The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight (2003) by James Tobin. New York: Free Press.

The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age (2003) by Peter Jakab and Tom Crouch. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic.

The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (2003, reissue) by Tom D. Crouch. New York: W.W. Norton.

Pioneers of American Aviation -

http://www.hill.af.mil/museum/history/pioneers.htm

U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission -

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/index.cfm

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum -

http://www.nasm.si.edu/galleries/gal209/wrights.htm

Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kill Devil Hills, NC-

http://www.nps.gov/wrbr/

Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, Dayton, OH -

http://www.nps.gov/daav/

Wright Brothers' Aeroplane Company Dayton, OH -

http://www.wright-brothers.org/

2. Voice Recording - Thomas Edison considered the voice recorder (1877) his greatest invention, even above the incandescent light bulb (1879), electrical generating plants (1882), and the movie camera and projector (1891).

Edison : A Biography (1992) by Matthew Josephson. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Thomas Edison: The Great American Inventor (1987, Barrons Solution Series) by Louise Egan and Louise Betts. New York: Barons Juveniles.

Maverick Inventor: My Turbulent Years at CBS (1973) by Peter C. Goldmark. New York: E.P. Dutton. Inventor of the Long Playing (LP) Record.

Emile Berliner: Maker of the Microphone (1974) by Frederic W. Wile. New York: Ayer Co. Designed the microphone, first used in Bell telephones (1876). He also invented the gramophone(1887-88), and the flat disk and equipment for recording sound (1887-88), which enabled companies such as RCA to mass produce 78 rpm records.

Edison Birthplace Museum -

http://www.tomedison.org/

Thomas Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory at The Henry Ford Museum -

http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/edison/

Smithsonian Museum - Edison After 40 -

http://americanhistory.si.edu/edison/index.htm

Edison National Historic Site - Located in Menlo Park, New Jersey, this museum includes many recordings made by Edison. The web site presents these recordings in MP3 format.

http://www.nps.gov/edis/home.htm

National Recording Preservation Board -

http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/nrpb-home.html

Vincent Voice Library, Michigan State University Libraries. Contains "taped utterances" of over 50,000 people during the last 100 years -

http://www.lib.msu.edu/vincent/

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. collection of folk recordings from around the world -

http://www.folkways.si.edu/

Folk Music Albums Available on CD: Library of Congress and Rounder Records Folk Music Compact Discs. The musicologist, Alan Lomax, made many of these recordings including ones by blues singers.

http://www.loc.gov/folklife/rounder.html

3. Electric Power Grids and Generators - This is a story of competition between great inventors to produce technologies (alternating and direct currents, power generators) for the electrification of America.

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World (2003) by Jill Jonnes. New York: Random House.

Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution (2003) by L. J. Davis. New York: Arcade Publishing.

A Life of George Westinghouse (2001) by Henry G. Prout. Frederick, MD: Beard Group. With Nikola Tesla, he designed the alternating current method of transporting electricity which he first demonstrated at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1896, he started the first hydroelectric plant in Niagra Falls to provide electricity to Buffalo, New York.

Tesla : Man Out of Time (2001) by Margaret Cheney. New York: Touchstone Books.

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius (1998) by Marc J. Seifer. Sacramento, CA: Citadel Press.

George Westinghouse Virtual Museum -

http://www.georgewestinghouse.com/museum.html

School for Champions: Life of George Westinghouse -

http://www.school-for-champions.com/biographies/westinghouse.htm

Tesla: Master of Lightning -

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/

Nikola Tesla, 1856 - 1943: Forgotten American Scientist -

http://www.concentric.net/~Jwwagner/

Tesla Memorial Society of New York -

http://www.teslasociety.com/

4. Radio Transmission - To communicate the human voice and music by wireless radio waves was the goal of

many inventive geniuses. They fought a dramatic battle for the development of the technology and the radio broadcasting industry. Beginning with the work of Tesla and Marconi in 1892 and 1894, radio transformed communication.

Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century & The Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked a Revolution (2003) by Gavin Weightman. New York: DaCapo Press.

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1993) by Tom Lewis. New York: Harper Perennial Library.

Inventing American Broadcasting 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) (1997) by Susan J. Douglas. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Radio Reader : Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (2001) by Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio (Editors). New York: Routledge.

Raised on Radio: In Quest of the Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Amos "N" Andy, the Shadow, Mary Noble, the Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bill Stern, Our Miss Brooks.... (2000) by Gerald Nachman. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (1998) by John Dunning. New York: Oxford University Press.

The Invention of Radio -

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blradio.htm

http://www.geocities.com/shack2000_au/Page2.htm

U.S. Marconi Museum -

http://www.marconiusa.org/

Edwin Howard Armstrong - Inventor of FM Radio -

http://world.std.com/~jlr/doom/armstrng.htm

David Sarnoff - Founded NBC in 1926 and disseminated radio and television technology through RCA and NBC -

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/sarnoffdavi/sarnoffdavi.htm

http://www.davidsarnoff.org/

http://www.radiohof.org/pioneer/davidsarnoff.html

Radio Hall of Fame -

http://www.radiohof.org/