Thursday 31 July 2014

Remembering the thunderous southern pioneer freedom fighter who stood up against east india company & helped Tipu sultan too!!!


Dheeran Chinnamalai (born as Theerthagiri Sarkkarai Mandraadiyaar or Theerthagiri Gounder on April 17, 1756) was a Kongu chieftain and Palayakkarar from Tamil Nadu who rose up in revolt against the British East India Companyin the Kongu Nadu, Southern India. Kongunadu comprised the modern day districts of Coimbatore, Nilgiri, Tirupu, Erode, Salem, Dharmapuri, Karur, Namakkal and parts of Dindigul District and Krishnagiri District of Tamil Nadu state.


He was born in Melapalayam, near Erode in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He is held with high regard by the Gounder community who continue use him as a symbol of Independence for the community. He was one of the main leaders in the Polygar Wars and commanded a vast army, notably during the Second Polygar War that took place in 1801–1802. A thousand-strong army under him took French Military training in modern warfare alongside Tipu's Mysore forces to fight against the British East India company. 

They helped Tipu Sultan in his war against the British and were instrumental in victories at Chitheswaram, Mazahavalli and Srirangapatna. He was the first south Indian to oppose the British rule in India. After Tipu's death, Chinnamalai settled down at Odanilai in Kongu Nadu and constructed a fort there and defeated the British in battles at Cauvery in 1801, Odanilai in 1802 andArachalur in 1804. Later, Chinnamalai left his fort to avoid cannon attack and engaged inguerrilla warfare while he was stationed at Karumalai in the Palani region. He was captured by the British who hanged him at Sankagiri Fort on 31 July 1805.

Wednesday 30 July 2014

This newspaper boy started sketching on scraps, created SUPERMAN & got it published it after a lot of toil and patience!!!


Joseph "Joe" Shuster (July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992) was a Canadian-American comic book artist. He was best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with writer Jerry Siegel, first published in Action Comics No. 1 (June 1938). Shuster was involved in a number of legal battles concerning the ownership of the Superman character, eventually gaining recognition for his part in its creation. His comic book career after Superman was relatively unsuccessful, and by the mid-1970s Shuster had left the field completely due to partial blindness.


He and Siegel were inducted into both the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993. In 2005, the Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association instituted the Joe Shuster Awards, named to honor the Canada-born artist.

Joseph Shuster was born in Toronto, to a Jewish family. His father, Julius, an immigrant from Rotterdam, had a tailor shop in Toronto's garment district. His mother, Ida, had come from Kiev in Ukraine. As a youngster, Shuster worked as a newspaper boy for the Toronto Daily Star, The family barely made ends meet, and the budding young artist would scrounge for paper, which the family could not afford. He recalled in 1992,

I would go from store to store in Toronto and pick up whatever they threw out. One day, I was lucky enough to find a bunch of wallpaper rolls that were unused and left over from some job. The backs were blank, naturally. So it was a goldmine for me, and I went home with every roll I could carry. I kept using that wallpaper for a long time.



Sometime in 1924, when Shuster was 9 or 10, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. There Shuster attended Glenville High School and befriended his later collaborator, writer Jerry Siegel, with whom he began publishing a science fiction fanzine called Science Fiction. Siegel described his friendship with the similarly shy and bespectacled Shuster: "When Joe and I first met, it was like the right chemicals coming together."


The duo broke into comics at Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications, the future DC Comics, working on the landmark New Fun — the first comic-book series to consist solely of original material rather than using any reprinted newspaper comic strips — debuting with the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval" and the supernaturalcrime-fighter strip Doctor Occult, both in New Fun No. 6 (Oct. 1935). In a 1992 interview, in which he used the fledgling publisher's future name, he said the two sample strips were not the ones eventually published:

One was drawn on brown wrapping paper and the other was drawn on the back of wallpaper from Toronto. And DC approved them, just like that! It's incredible! But DC did say, 'We like your ideas, we like your scripts and we like your drawings. But please, copy over the stories in pen and ink on good paper.' So I got my mother and father to lend me the money to go out and buy some decent paper, the first drawing paper I ever had, in order to submit these stories properly to DC Comics.


Siegel and Shuster created a bald telepathic villain, bent on dominating the world, as the title character in the short story "The Reign of the Superman", published in Siegel's 1933 fanzine Science Fiction #3. The character was not successful, and Siegel eventually devised the more familiar version of the character. Shuster modeled the hero on Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and his bespectacled alter ego, Clark Kent, on a combination of Harold Lloyd and Shuster himself, with the name "Clark Kent" derived from movie stars Clark Gable and Kent TaylorLois Lane was modelled on Joanne Carter, who later became Siegel's wife.


Siegel and Shuster then began a six-year quest to find a publisher. Titling it The Superman, Siegel and Shuster offered it to Consolidated Book Publishing, who had published a 48-page black-and-white comic book entitled Detective Dan: Secret Operative No. 48. Although the duo received an encouraging letter, Consolidated never again published comic books. 


Shuster took this to heart and, by varying accounts, either burned every page of the story, with the cover surviving only because Siegel saved it from the fire, or he tore the story to shreds, with only two cover sketches remaining. Siegel and Shuster each compared this character to Slam Bradley, an adventurer the pair had created for Detective Comics No. 1 (May 1939). In 1938, after that proposal had languished among others at More Fun Comics — published by National Allied Publications, the primary precursor of DC Comics — editor Vin Sullivan chose it as the cover feature for National's Action Comics No. 1 (June 1938). The following year, Siegel & Shuster initiated the syndicated Superman comic strip.



As part of the deal which saw Superman published in Action Comics, Siegel and Shuster sold the rights to the company in return for $130 and a contract to supply the publisher with material. Siegel and Shuster's status as children of Jewish immigrants is also thought to have influenced their work. Timothy Aaron Pevey has argued that they crafted "an immigrant figure whose desire was to fit into American culture as an American", something which Pevey feels taps into an important aspect of American identity.


When Superman first appeared, Superman's alter ego Clark Kent worked for the Daily Star newspaper, named by Shuster after the Toronto Daily Star, his old employer in Toronto. Shuster said he modeled the cityscape of Superman's home city, Metropolis, on that of his old hometown. When the comic strip received international distribution, the company permanently changed the name to the Daily Planet.

Tuesday 29 July 2014

First licensed pilot in India, french soldier & unpaid apprentice; the French born Indian engineered India's major industries!


Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (29 July 1904 – 29 November 1993) was a French-born Indian aviator and business tycoon. He was the former Chairman of Tata Sons. He became India's first licensed pilot in 1929. In 1983, he was awarded the French Legion of Honour and, in 1992, India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. J. R. D. Tata was born on 29 July 1904 in Paris, France, the second child of Parsi father Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata and his French wife, Suzanne "Sooni" Brière. His father was a first cousin of Jamsetji Tata, a pioneer industrialist in India.  


As his mother was French, he spent much of his childhood in France and as a result, French was his first language. He attended the Janson De Sailly School in Paris. One of the teacher's at that school used to call him L'Egyptian for some strange reason. Tata also served in the French Foreign Legion for one year in the regiment Le Saphis during the Second World War. After he left the service the whole regiment perished on an expedition in Morocco.

He attended the Cathedral and John Connon SchoolBombay. Tata was educated in LondonJapanFrance and India. He was enrolled in a "crammer" school, and was interested in studying Engineering at Cambridge. Just as the crammer course was ending and he was hoping to enter Cambridge, a law was passed in France to draft into the army, for two years, all French boys at the age of 20. As a citizen of France J.R.D had to enlist in the army for at least 1 year. Soon the Colonel of the regiment found that there was a member of his Squadron who could not only read and write French and English, but also could type, so he assigned him as a secretary in his office. Tata was once again transferred to a more luxurious office of a colonel. 


After a 12 month period of conscription in the French Army he wanted to proceed to Cambridge for further education, but his father decided to bring him back to India and he joined Tata Company. In 1929, JRD renounced his French citizenship and became an Indian citizen, and started working at Tata. In 1930 JRD married Thelma Vicaji. J. R. D. Tata was inspired early by pioneer Louis Blériot, and took to flying. On February 10, 1929, Tata obtained the first pilot licence issued in India. He later came to be known as the father of Indian civil aviation. He founded India's first commercial airline, Tata Airlines in 1932, which became Air India in 1946, now India's national airline.


He joined Tata & Sons as an unpaid apprentice in 1925. In 1938, at the age of 34, JRD was elected Chairman of Tata & Sons making him the head of the largest industrial group in India. He took over as Chairman of Tata Sons from his second cousin Nowroji Saklatwala. For decades, he directed the huge Tata Group of companies, with major interests in Steel, Engineering, Power, Chemicals and Hospitality. He was famous for succeeding in business while maintaining high ethical standards - refusing to bribe politicians or use the black market.


Under his chairmanship, the assets of the Tata Group grew from US$100 million to over US$5 billion. He started with 14 enterprises under his leadership and half a century later on July 26, 1988, when he left, Tata & Sons was a conglomerate of 95 enterprises which they either started or in which they had controlling interest.


He was the trustee of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust from its inception in 1932 for over half a century. Under his guidance, this Trust established Asia's first cancer hospital, the Tata Memorial Center for Cancer, Research and Treatment, in Bombay in 1941. It also founded the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, 1936), the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR, 1945), and the National Center for Performing Arts.


In 1945, he founded Tata Motors. In 1948, JRD Tata launched Air India International as India's first international airline. In 1953, the Indian Government appointed JRD Tata as Chairman of Air India and a director on the Board of Indian Airlines - a position he retained for 25 years. For his crowning achievements in aviation, he was bestowed with the title of Honorary Air Commodore of India.


JRD Tata cared greatly for his workers. In 1956, he initiated a program of closer 'employee association with management' to give workers a stronger voice in the affairs of the company. He firmly believed in employee welfare and espoused the principles of an eight-hour working day, free medical aid, workers' provident scheme, and workmen's accident compensation schemes,which were later, adopted as statutory requirements in India. He was also a founding member of the first Governing Body of NCAER, the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi,India’s first independent economic policy institute established in 1956. 


In 1968, he founded Tata Consultancy Services. In 1979, Tata Steel instituted a new practice: a worker being deemed to be "at work" from the moment he leaves home for work till he returns home from work. This made the company financially liable to the worker for any mishap on the way to and from work. In 1987, he founded Titan IndustriesJamshedpur was also selected as a UN Global Compact City because of the quality of life, conditions of sanitation, roads and welfare that were offered by Tata Steel.

Monday 28 July 2014

This dreamer had a zillion ideas & found his first product idea for TUPPERWARE working in a plastic factory!!!


Earl Silas Tupper (July 28, 1907–October 5, 1983) was an American born-Costa Rican businessman and inventor, best known as the inventor of Tupperware, an airtight plastic container for storing food. Tupper was born on a farm on Cates Hill in Berlin, New Hampshire. The Tupper Family moved from Berlin when Earl was 3 years old. After studying at Bryant University (then Bryant & Stratton), he began a landscaping and nursery business until the Great Depression forced the business into bankruptcy. He then got a job with the DuPont Chemical Company. He died in October 03, 1983.



Earl Tupper was a dreamer and a tinkerer who liked to improve the things he saw around him. Always devising better gadgets and gizmos, Tupper held equally strong opinions about how to improve the people around him. Born to a poor farming family, he aspired to be a millionaire and a famous inventor, and he achieved both goals.


Tupper also kept an illustrated notebook of his inventions. He fancied himself to be a latter-day Leonardo da Vinci. His "inventions" were wide-ranging. They included a better stocking garter, a dagger-shaped comb to be clipped to one's belt, pants that wouldn't lose their crease, and a fish-powered boat. He devised a convertible top for a rumble seat, customized cigarettes with names like "sporty" and "the collegiate," a better way to take out a burst appendix, and hundreds of other innovations.

He doggedly tried to sell his inventions, but had little luck. To support himself, he set up a tree surgery and landscaping business. During the Depression, however, Tupper's clients cut back, and Tupper Tree Doctors was forced into bankruptcy in 1936. Earl Tupper was lucky to get a job in one of the plastics factories in Leominster, Massachusetts. 



It was famous for its comb industry, had made the switch to plastic in the late 19th century, and there were many small plastics factories run by self-taught engineer/inventors. It was a great place for Tupper. After one year working for the Viscaloid plant (the plastics manufacturing division of DuPont), Tupper bought a few used molding machines and began making beads and plastic containers for cigarettes and soap. He called his company Tupper Plastics.


Using black, inflexible pieces of polyethylene slag, a waste product of oil refining process given to him by his supervisor at DuPont Chemical Company, Tupper purified the slag and molded it to create lightweight, non-breakable containers, cups, bowls, plates, and even gas masks that were used in World War II. He later designed liquid-proof, airtight lids, inspired by the secure seal of paint can lids.


Tupper founded the Tupperware Plastics Company in 1938 and in 1946 introduced Tupper Plastics to hardware and department stores. Around 1948, he joined forces with Brownie Wise, who caught his attention after she made a lengthy phone call to his office in South Grafton, Massachusetts, in which she explained her extraordinary success selling Tupperware via home parties.


Based on a marketing strategy developed by Wise, Tupperware was withdrawn from sale in retail stores in the early 1950s and Tupperware "parties" soon became popular in homes. This was the first instance of "party-plan" marketing.

The Corporate headquarters was moved from Massachusetts to Orlando, Florida. After his falling-out with Wise, which resulted in her dismissal in 1958, Tupper sold The Tupperware Company for $16 million to Rexall. Shortly afterward, he divorced his wife, gave up his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes, and bought an island just off the coast of Costa Rica.


Tupperware is the name of a home products line that includes preparation, storage, containment, and serving products for the kitchen and home, which were first introduced to the public in 1948. Tupperware develops, manufactures, and internationally distributes its products as a wholly owned subsidiary of its parent company Tupperware Brands. It is marketed by means of direct sales through an independent sales force of approximately 1.9 million consultants.

Saturday 26 July 2014

He was convinced having two personalities in childhood; learnt psychiatry from own life & childhood events & praised by Freud!!!


Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversionarchetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.


Born in Kesswil, in the Swiss canton of Thurgau, on 26 July 1875 as the fourth but only surviving child of Paul Achilles Jung and Emilie Preiswerk. Jung's father was a poor rural pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church while his mother came from a wealthy Swiss family. Emilie Jung was an eccentric and depressed woman who spent much of her time in her own separate bedroom enthralled by the spirits that she said visited her at night.


Jung was a solitary and introverted child and was convinced from childhood that, like his mother, he had two personalities—a modern Swiss citizen and a personality more suited to the nineteenth century. "Personality Number 1," as he termed it, was a typical schoolboy living in the era of the time. "Personality Number 2" was a dignified, authoritative and influential man from the past.


Jung did not plan to study psychiatry since it was not considered prestigious at the time. But, studying a psychiatric textbook, he became very excited when he discovered that psychoses are personality diseases. His interest was immediately captured—it combined the biological and the spiritual and was exactly what he was searching for.


In 1895 Jung studied medicine at the University of Basel. In 1900 he began working in the Zurich psychiatric hospital Burghölzli with Eugen Bleuler. His dissertation, published in 1903, was titled "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena." In 1906 he published Studies in Word Association and later sent a copy of this book to Sigmund Freud which led to a close six year friendship between them. Jung and Freud influenced each other during the intellectually formative years of Jung's life. Freud called Jung "his adopted eldest son, his crown prince and successor". 


The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development. Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types. Jung saw the human psyche as "by nature religious" and made this religiousness the focus of his explorations. Jung is one of the best known contemporary contributors to dream analysis and symbolization.


Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophyalchemyastrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.


Jung founded a new school of psychotherapy, called analytical psychology or Jungian psychology. His theories include:
His also focused on other areas like Individuation, Persona, Spirituality, Alchemy, Alcoholics Anonymous and Art therapy.

Friday 25 July 2014

Having started as a clerk; this MACINTOSH followed his passion in chemistry leading to invention of first waterproof fabric/!!!


Charles Macintosh (29 December 1766 – 25 July 1843) was a Scottish chemist and inventor of waterproof fabrics. The Mackintosh raincoat is named for him. Macintosh was born in Glasgow, and was first employed as a clerk. By age 19, he instead pursued his interest in chemistry and science derived from his father, George Macintosh who was a well-known and inventive dyer. Charles was prepared with university studies at Glasgow and as a student of Joseph Black at Edinburgh. 


He devoted all his spare time to science, particularly chemistry, and before he was twenty resigned his clerkship to take up the manufacture of chemicals. In this he was highly successful, inventing various new processes. His experiments with one of the by-products of tarnaphtha, led to his invention of waterproof fabrics, the essence of his patent being the cementing of two thicknesses of cloth together with natural (India) rubber, the rubber being made soluble by the action of the naphtha.

By the time he was twenty, Charles had opened a plant in Glasgow to produce sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) and Prussian blue dye. He also introduced the manufacture of lead and aluminum acetates to Britain, and developed new processes to dye cloth. In 1797, he established Scotland’s first alum works at Hurlet, Renfrewshire. He found a source of the alum in waste shale from coal mines. Additional chemical works followed later.

In 1818, while analysing the by-products of a works making coal gas, he discovered dissolved indiarubber. He joined two sheets of fabric together with this solution, allowed them to dry, and discovered that the new material could not be penetrated by water - the first rainproof cloth. For his various chemical discoveries he was, in 1823, elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1828, he became a partner with James Beaumont Neilson in a firm to exploit the latter's patent for the hot blast blowing of blast furnaces, which saved considerably on their fuel consumption.


In 1823, while trying to find uses for the waste products of gasworks, Macintosh noted that coal-tar naphtha dissolved india rubber. He then took wool cloth, painted one side of it with the rubber preparation, and placed another thickness of wool cloth on top, thereby producing a waterproof fabric. Soon after he began the manufacture of coats and other garments. But problems developed. In the process of seaming a garment, tailors punctured the fabric, allowing rain to penetrate; the natural oil in woollen cloth caused the rubber cement to deteriorate; and, in the earlier years, the garments became stiff in winter and sticky in hot weather. The mackintosh, as it came to be known, was greatly improved when vulcanized rubber, which resisted temperature changes, became available in 1839.


Macintosh married, in 1790, Mary Fisher, daughter of Alexander Fisher a merchant of Glasgow. Charles Macintosh died in 1843 at Dunchattan, Scotland, and was buried in the churchyard of Glasgow Cathedral.

A yeast factory which Macintosh set up in 1809 failed because of opposition from London brewers. Meanwhile, he continued to buy all the ammonia and the tar waste byproducts from the Glasgow coal-gas works. He utilized the ammonia in the production of cudbear, a useful dye extracted from various lichens. By varying the choice of mordant used with this dye, manufacturers could colour textiles in a range of shades from pink to blue. The tar could be distilled to produced naphtha - a volatile, oily liquid hydrocarbon mixture. Although this could be used in flares, from 1819, Macintosh continued to experiment to find more ways to utilize naphtha, so that the original tar waste could yield more value.


In June 1823, Macintosh patented his process using a solution of india-rubber in naphtha soaked between two layers of cloth forming a sandwich that was pressed together. The rubber interior provided a layer impermeable to water, though still flexible. His patent, No. 4,804, described how to “manufacture for rendering the texture of hemp, flax, wool, cotton, silk, and also leather, paper and other substances impervious to water and air.” (The sandwich-type construction was not totally new, for it had been devised by Spanish scientists to make leak-proof containers for mercury, and also Charles Green in 1821 had made a balloon envelope that applied the same principle.)



In another application of his inventiveness, Macintosh developed improved methods of iron production, which was much faster than the existing methods. He patented a method for converting malleable iron into steel (1825) in which the iron was raised to white heat in a current of coal gas which provided a carbon content. The process was unsuccessful in commercial application because of the problem involved in keeping a furnace gas-tight. He then assisted Beaumont Neilson in bringing hot blast into use in blast furnaces (1828). By introducing hot air into the furnace, instead of cold air, the smelting process was made more efficient. In return, he was given a share in Beaumont’s patent. This was more of a loss than a gain because of protracted litigation concerning the patent that lasted until 1843.