Some SA Inventions
This is a Copy and Paste.. so what?Please pass by if you are negative.
There are many South Africans who drove innovation forward and provided the world with new products or services.
Some of the well-known South African IT innovators include Mark Shuttleworth (Thawte and Canonical), and Elon Musk (Paypal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX).
Musk’s SpaceX, for example, was the first privately developed and owned spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station.
Doctor Chris Barnard’s first heart transplant in 1967 and Sasol’s oil-from-coal refinery are well known, but here are some of the lesser known inventions which came from South Africans.
Mayhew-Ridgers and van Jaarsveld developed an antenna based on phased-array principles, providing omnidirectional coverage but also blocking the RF transmissions along a single direction (that would correspond with the bearing of the SKA core site).
In November 1996, Vodacom was the first network in the world to introduce prepaid airtime on an Intelligent Network platform, which made it possible to debit customers’ accounts while they were speaking.
In 1998 Vodacom won a Global Mobile Award for the “Best GSM Service” for its VodaGo prepay system.
South African inventor Michael Suttner developed “The Lightie” solar bottle light, offering a low cost, solar powered light.
“The Lightie” is built into a durable, ruggedized acrylic housing and uses Lithium battery technology. It offers 40 hours of light when charged from 8 hours of sunlight.
South African engineer Henri Johnson is credited with the invention of the speed gun and other technologies used to measure the speed and direction of sports balls.
The South African-made speed gun was formally released at The Oval during the 1999 World Cup.
The world famous Pratley Putty was invented by George Pratley, a South African engineer who developed innovative products for the mining sector.
Pratley invented his famous putty in the sixties while looking for glue that would hold components in an electrical box.
Dolosse
Anybody who has visited harbours around the world would have seen large concrete blocks with a complex geometric shape, used to protect hardbour walls.
These large concrete blocks, known as dolosse (plural) or a dolos (singular), were invented by South African Eric Mowbray Merrifield in 1963, and are used around the world to protect harbour walls from the erosive force of ocean waves.
Comments (49)
20 Things You Never Knew About South Africa (Maybe)
Stumpled upon this page and learnt a new fact or two about our country:
1. South Africa is home to some of the oldest rocks in the world! The rocks around Barberton in Mpumalanga have been dated to over 3 billion years old, which is pretty old considering the Earth is just 4.5 billion years old.
2. South Africa is also home to the worlds largest confirmed meteorite impact crater. Some 2 billion years ago, an alien rock came crashing to the ground and rendered a huge mark on the Earth. You can find this meteorite scar, Vredefort Dome, close to the Vaal River near Parys.
3. The second Highest Waterfall in the world is located in South Africa. The Tugela Falls is found in the Drakensberg Mountains in the Royal Natal National Park in KwaZulu-Natal Province. The waterfall has a total drop of about 950 metres, not much shorter than the Angels Falls in Venezuela, but much easier to access as you have to fly in to see Angel Fall and you can drive to an observation point for Tugela Falls.
4. South Africa has the third largest canyon in the world - and the largest green one. Blyde River Canyon, in Mpumalanga, is just a little smaller than the Grand Canyon (in America) and the Fish River Canyon (in Namibia), but unlike those two Blyde River Canyon is home to a lot of lush vegetation.
5. South Africa is reputed to have the third highest level of biodiversity in the world including 18000 indigenous vascular plant species, of which 80% are uniquely South African!
6. Most of the world's proto-mammalian fossils are found in the Karoo. The Therapsids were some of our earliest mammalian ancestors and there is a lot of evidence of their presence that dates back some 200 million years. There is also a 280 million year old fossilized shark!
7. Sutherland in the Northern Cape is one of the most geologically stable places on Earth. And yet strangely it is located very close to a 66-million year old volcano which isn’t fully extinct. The area also enjoys some of the clearest and darkest night skies in the world, which make it prefer for stargazers so it is home to the South African Astronomical Observatory.
8. Jagersfontein Mine is the biggest man-made hole in the world. It was hand dug, produced 1900kgs of diamonds including one of the biggest diamonds ever discovered (The Excelsior Diamond which weighed in at a hefty 194.2g). The Big Hole in Kimberley is just slightly smaller than Jagersfontein. By 1914 it had excavated almost 3 metric tonnes of Diamonds!
9. The township of Soweto, close to Jo’Burg, has the unique honour of having been home to two Noble Peace Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They both had houses on Vilakazi Street.
10. If you ever visit Animal Kingdom Lodge in the United States, you will be surprised to learn that all the wine served there is South Africa in origin.
Ah Luk so, is pleasant to see you also.
There are only we and our friendship.
Reliability - as in the doorway a bolt.
And between times, if it is necessary,
Blog and couple of warm words!