SPANISH INVENTS

Marina Devesa Romera 4A

Index:

1.- The submarine. 2.- The table football. 3.- The cigarettes. 4.- The mop. 5.- The Chuppa Chupps. 6.- The spacesuit. 7.- The gyroplane. 8.- A Talgo. 9.- The laryngoscope.

1.- The submarine: The submarine is a ship or vessel able

to navigate under the surface of the sea or submerged. Commonly, "submarine" refers to a vessel that operates on the surface and under water by itself. Underwater vessels with limited mobility which usually remain in the same place, such as those used for rescue or research, are commonly called submersibles. Submersibles are usually taken to their area of operation by common or large ships and have very little autonomy. Many submersibles work connected by an "umbilical cord" to a mother ship (submarine, surface vessel or platform) that provides them with air and electricity.

2.- The table football: Table football is a board game based on

football. It is played on a special table on which transverse axes hold small wooden figures divided into two teams; these players are turned by the people playing the game to strike a ball. There are two different types of table football in Spain: English table football and Spanish table football, also called two-legged football, which has different measures from the English one. Whereas the football played on the international table has players with united legs, the legs of the Spanish players are separated. Alejandro Campos Ramirez, a Galician also known as Finisterre,created this peculiar machine in order that he himself and the children who were hurt in the Civil War could continue playing the national sport

3.- The cigarettes: Although tobacco comes from America, the origin of

cigarettes goes back to the Seville of the 16th century. In those times, beggars used to gather the remnants of the tobacco leaves that they found to crush them and wrap them in rice paper. It was not until the year 1833 when the first packet was sold with the name of " Top Cigarettes ". Now the cigarette is one of the most popular formats in the consumption of tobacco. It is made with the leaves of a dry tobacco plant, chopped and covered by a thin leaf in the shape of a cylinder. Commonly the cylinder integrates a filter to reduce the damage to human health.

4. The mop: The mop is a tool used for

washing floors. It consists of a bundle of absorbent cloth attached to a long handle. The mop is usually associated with a plastic bucket provided with a mechanism called wringer. To wash the floor, after soaking and wringing it, it is scrubbed against the surface that is going to be cleaned. It is also frequently used for cleaning spilled liquids. The mop " was invented in Spain in 1964 by the inhabitant of La Rioja Manuel Jalón Corominas (1925 - 2011), and was later improved to acquire its current aspect.

After the mop was created, Manuel Jalón continued giving the world his revolutionary inventions. He took advantage of the increasing use of the plastic of the 60s to improve the hypodermic syringe and to create the first disposable one.

5. The Chuppa Chupps:

Enric Bernat created one of the most revolutionary Spanish inventions in history with the simple idea of introducing a stick in a candy. This way children could eat up the candy with the smallest possibility of choking. In 1958 Bernat introduced the candy in the Spanish market with the name of 'Chups', though, as the slogan of the product was "chuppa chupps", people adopted this name to refer to this type of candy.

6. The spacesuit: The spacesuit is a hermetically

closed outfit that includes a device for breathing and allows the wearer to move freely in space. It is the only article destined to perform any extravehicular activity and a safety measure for the reentry, since it protects human beings from the heat, cold, radiation and zero atmospheric pressure of space. This suit can be worn both in extravehicular activity (EVA in English) out of the ship and moving around the moon.

7.- The gyroplane:

The gyroplane is an aircraft of gyratory wings, that is to say, it flies lke planes but its wing is a rotor that turns by the action of the relative wind that crosses it bottom up. For this reason, it is possible to consider that it is a hybrid between the airplane and the helicopter: as the airplane, its propulsion is carried out by means of a propeller, but, apart from wings,it has a rotor as the helicopter.

This rotor is not connected to the engine of the aircraft, so it turns freely ("it" "autoturns"), stimulated by the air, this way generating the lift. In the helicopter, on the contrary, the propulsion and the sustentation take place in the rotor, which is stimulated by the engine.

8. A Talgo: A Talgo is a type of train which consists of a rigid series of short

coaches made of aluminium and lower than the traditional ones, designed and built by the Spanish company Talgo Patents. Its name comes from the initials of Articulated Train Light Goicoechea Oriol, in consideration of its designer Alejandro Goicoechea, and the financier who supported his investigations and the manufacture of the first trains developed with this system, Jose Luis Oriol Urigüen. Both set up the company in 1942. First they built the prototypes Talgo 0 and Talgo I, without a commercial use, and later they made the Talgo II. After the Talgo II,Goicoechea stopped taking part in the projects of the company.

9. The laryngoscope:

The laryngoscope is a simple medical instrument that serves mainly to examine the glottis and the vocal chords. The inventor of the first laryngoscope was the teacher of the opera singer Manuel García. Its later development and use in medical practice is largely due to the German doctor Johann Czermak.