A CREATIVE STUDENT IN THE SERVICE OF THE LOCAL SOCIETY AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT. YOUNG EUROPEAN - AWARE OF THE NEEDS OF THE COMMUNITY AND ENVIRONMENT POLISH INVENTORS AND THEIR INVENTIONS OUR TOP 7 NATIVE INVENTORS

Ignacy Łukasiewicz Kazimierz Żegleń Jan Szczepanik Jan Czochralski Mieczysław Bekker Henryk Magnuski Józef Kosacki

IGNACY ŁUKASIEWICZ 1822 – 1882 KEROSENE LAMP

The story of the kerosene lamp can be traced back to the present-day Ukrainian city of Lviv, which used to be Polish Lwów. In 1853, while working with Jan Zah on destilation of oil Łukasiewicz not only obtained lighting kerosene, but together with Adam Bratkowski he also constructed the first oil lamp which was first used at Mikolasch's pharmacy in March 1853. Public lighting of kerosene lamps in the Lvov hospital on July, 31, 1853 was generally recognized as the beginning of the national oil industry. Ignacy Łukasiewicz was a pharmacist, an engineer, a businessman, an inventor and a philanthropist. He was born near Mielec in present-day but then in the Hapsburg Empire, and after passing through secondary school worked at pharmacists’. In 1852 Łukasiewicz distilled some petroleum and offered it for sale as a patent medicine. When it failed to sell he conceived the idea of using it for lighting. By fractional distillation he obtained pure kerosene but had to design a new kind of lamp that could use it.

In 1854 Łukasiewicz, with Tytus Trzeciecki and Karol Klobassa established some of the world’s first oil wells in Bóbrka, and two years later he was a partner in the first Polish oil refinery which opened at Ulaszowice. In 1870 he introduced jump drilling at the Bóbrka workshops. He ceased his work as a pharmacist to work in the oil industry through which he became very rich, and in his later years devoted much of his time and money to philanthropy. KAZIMIERZ ŻEGLEŃ 1869 – 1910 JAN SZCZEPANIK 1872 – 1926 THE BULLETPROOF VEST The first commercial bulletproof vest was developed in 1897 by not-one-but-TWO Polish inventors! Kazimierz Żegleń travelled to the USA in the late 19th-century and came across the research of George E. Goodfellow. Goodfellow noted how several gunshot victims, he had treated, had reduced injuries when silk fabric was between the bullet and the body. Curious to expand on this research, Żegleń got to work and produced a 1cm thick woven-silk vest that was publically-demonstrated in 1897.

Żegleń personally-demonstrating his bulletproof vest in 1897. The invention was incredibly expensive and the essential- weaving process was too slow. Jan Szczepanik, who had been developing automated weaving technology for years, teamed up with Żegleń and managed to work out the whole mass production thing.

Żegleń and Szczepanik eventually had a falling-out over business relations, and although Żegleń never relinquished his authorship, it was Szczepanik's weaving production and entrepreneurship that made him profitting more off the success of the bulletproof vest. Over 60 years later, an American woman of Polish decent, Stephanie Kwolek, developed the polymer for kevlar, the fabric which is used in today's standard-issue bulletproof vests! KAZIMIERZ ŻEGLEŃ

Kazimierz Żegleń was born in a small city called Tarnopol, which is really close to Ukraine. At the age of 18, he joined The Congregation of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ and became a monk. A few years later, he emigrated to the United States. At the time of his arrival, US society was being troubled by so-called anarchists carrying out repeated attacks on public figures. Multiple assassination attempts were carried out and eventually Chicago’s mayor, Carter Harrison Senior, was murdered at his own house. Żegleń was deeply distraught by these tragic events and decided to use his inventiveness to save people’s lives. And so, the monk started working on bulletproof armour of a new kind, so light that people could wear them on top of or under their usual clothes. JAN SZCZEPANIK „ THE POLISH EDISON”

Jan Szczepanik was a Polish inventor, with several hundred patents and over 50 discoveries to his name, many of which are still applied today, especially in the motion picture industry, as well as in photography and television. Szczepanik was born in the village of Rudniki near Mościska (now Ukraine) but relocated as infant with his mother to Zręcin in the industrial region of Krosno, where he grew up. Szczepanik graduated from a teachers' college and spent a lot of time reading scientific literature and journals. The inventor had his own workshops in Vienna, and Dresden. His knowledge of fabric, enabled him to create the first ballistic vest using silk. Spanish king Alfonso XIII awarded him an order for his invention. Szczepanik was granted awards by the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, who was fascinated with photosculpture – known also as photoplastigraphy – introduced to him by Szczepanik.  Szczepanik’s version of the The term ‚Telectroscope’ was Telectroscope, produced in 1898 is considered to be one of a replacedT at the turn on the century landmark in the development of withh the word ‚Television’. telecommunication. Szczepanik'se version aparatus is alleged to have been able to  A Telectroscope is a scope and t lens, amplified with electricity, that recreatee colour, which would make can reproduce images at a Szczepanik the forefather of colour distance. television JAN CZOCHRALSKI 1885 – 1953 THE CZOCHRALSKI PROCESS

Mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, mp3 players, portable game consoles and other electronic devices are based on single crystals, produced with the Czochralski method.

The Czochralski method, also Czochralski technique or Czochralski process, is a method of crystal growing used to obtain single crystals of semiconductors (e.g. silicon, and gallium arsenide), metals (e.g. palladium, platinum, silver, gold), salts and synthetic gemstones. Jan Czochralski was born in , a small town in the Prussian partition, near . In 1910 he received his chemical engineering degree at the Charlottenburg Polytechnic in Berlin.

In 1924, another important Czochralski’s invention emerged, an alloy highly suitable for the production of sliding bearings for railway (later known as bahnmetal or metal). The patent was immediately bought by the German railroad. Metal B allowed to increase the speed of trains and significantly expand the railways in Germany, Poland, the United States, the UK and the Soviet Union.

In 1925, Czochralski became the president of the German Society for Metals Science. In 1930 he received the title of full professor at the hands of the Polish president. MIECZYSŁAW BEKKER 1905 – 1989 OFF-THE-ROAD VEHICLES Bekker was born in Strzyżów, near Hrubieszów, Poland. He graduated from Warsaw Technical University in 1929.

Bekker worked for the Polish Ministry of Military Affairs at the Army Research Institute in Warsaw. There he worked on systems for tracked vehicles to work on uneven ground. During the Invasion of Poland he was in a unit that retreated to Romania and then he was moved to France in 1939.

In 1942 he accepted the offer of the Government of Canada to move to Ottawa to work in armored vehicle research. He entered the Canadian Army in 1943 as a researcher and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. Decommissioned in 1956, he moved to the USA.

Bekker co-authored the general idea and contributed significantly to the design and construction of the Lunar Roving Vehicle used by missions Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 on the Moon. He was the author of several patented inventions in the area of off-the-road vehicles, including those for extraterrestrial use. HENRYK MAGNUSKI 1909 – 1978 WALKIE-TALKIE  Born in Warsaw in 1909, Henryk Magnuski supported himself and his sister, Janina, by repairing radios for the Polish military.

After gaining employment with the State Tele- and Radiotechnical Works in 1934, the company sent him to New York to research American radio technology in 1939. In the same year, Hitler invaded Poland and Magnuski was unable to return home. Out of work, he was taken on by the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago, which would later change its name to Motorola. Leading a team of radio engineers, they developed the SCR-300, the first radio used by American forces in Europe. This revolutionary mobile device became known amongst GIs as the "Walkie-Talkie JÓZEF KOSACKI 1909 – 1990 MINE DETECTOR A Polish engineer, Józef Kosacki, was the inventor of the first portable mine detector! His invention has been used more than 50 years. His revolutionary invention saved a lot of lives and certainly gave a lot of advantages to the armies of several countries. He was an inventor, a profesor, an engineer and an officer in the Polish Army during World War II. He was born in Łapy. Kosacki started his studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Warsaw University of Technology in 1928 to obtain the degree of an electrical engineer five years later MORE INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT POLISH INVENTORS AND THEIR INVENTIONS THANK YOU