The Janitor who Revolutionized Elevator Design

 The El Cortez Hotel in San Diego has been recognized by numerous architects and engineers as a pioneer in design. Indeed, it has set trends in various ways, but there’s more to its story. During its heyday, it was regarded as one of the nation’s most sophisticated hotels, becoming a preferred destination. Guests chose it not just for San Diego’s attractions, but for the experience of staying at the hotel itself. Eventually, its fame and the resulting high occupancy led the management to conclude that the hotel’s single elevator was inadequate.

Remembering Nikola Tesla on His Birthday 10th July

 It's birthday of the Genius who invented 20th century, #NikolaTesla, the father of Modern Electricity --

(10 July)

Tesla was a #mysterious man who could see far into the #future. Although deprivileged, he died with a passion for science that changed the 20th century. Still, only a few years ago, the world started to appreciate what he did for mankind. But he wouldn’t mind it

A Full Article:-

Tesla was born in what is now Croatia on a summer night in 1856, during what he claimed was a #lightning_storm – which led the midwife to say, “He will be a child of the storm,” and his mother to counter prophetically, “No, of the light.”

He discovered and patented the #rotating_magnetic_field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the three-phase system of electric power transmission. In 1891 he invented the Tesla #coil, an induction coil widely used in radio, TV & in other technologies.

Why The Most Creative People Flourish In Messy Environment

By Dan Scotti and BusyBuilding Blog

All our lives, we’ve been told to “be organized.” Organization has always been pegged as a direct key to success. Starting at very early ages, we have been trained to clean up our toys and make our beds. But perhaps our mothers had it wrong. As you can see from a research conducted by the University of Minnesota and from the examples below, messy environments can enhance our creativity by letting our lives get a little messy.

Ladi Kwali:The Woman on The N20 Note

Nigeria's best known potter who was awarded a Doctorate and was made MBE in 1963 for the level of detail and skill she utilized while making her pots.

Ladi Dosei Kwali (1925-1983) popularly known as Dr Ladi Kwali was born in 1925 in Kwali town in the present Federal Capital Territory, Abuja,Nigeria.

Probably she is the best known of the Abuja potters. Making pots was women’s work in Kwali and the entire Gwari villages, therefore Ladi came to Abuja (the then Suleja) with knowledge of traditional Gwari pottery. 

Nigeria exports religion, India exports cars

BY AZUKA ONWUKA

The biggest country in Africa that the United Kingdom colonised is Nigeria. The biggest country that the United Kingdom colonised in Asia is India (which then comprised the present Pakistan and Bangladesh).

When the UK came into Nigeria and India, like all other countries they colonised, they brought along their technology, religion (Christianity), and culture: names, dressing, food, and language, among others. Try as hard as the British did, India rejected the British religion, names, dressing, food, and even language, but they did not reject the British technology. Today, 80.5 per cent of Indians are Hindus; 13.4 per cent Muslims; 2.3 per cent Christians; 1.9 per cent Sikhs; 0.8 per cent Buddhists, among others. Hindi is the official language of the government of India, but English is used extensively in business and administration and has the status of a “subsidiary official language.” Interestingly, it is rare to find an Indian with an English name or dressed in suit.

Oil Tanks Exhausted, Think Tanks Needed By Philip Emeagwali

I am particularly honored to share this topic with the World on Philip Emeagwali's 60th birthday today because I suggested this topic to him few years ago when he asked a question on Facebook. He acknowledged it here. So let's all join to celebrate one of our greatest scientist at 60 with this message he has for Nigeria.

Oil Tanks Exhausted, Think Tanks Needed

Emeagwali's photo taken in 1973 for
his passport to travel to the US for
the first time.He was only 19

 The man with wisdom is a shining torch that sheds light in our darkness and guides us out of our ignorance. I am often asked: "How do we build a stronger Nigeria through technological innovation?"

I came across the answer in 1963 sitting on the verandah of our house along Gbenoba Road, Agbor, Midwest Region. I was silently reciting a quotation on the masthead of the newspaper called the West African Pilot. It read:

“Show the light and the people will find the way.”

Because I was nine years old, I did not understand the deep meaning of those wise words. I now understand “the light” as a metaphor for knowledge, and “showing the light” to mean increasing the intellectual capital, the sum of human knowledge possessed by 6.6 billion men, women, and children. We find "the way" when we've brought to fruition our dream of eradicating poverty, discovering the cure for AIDS, and inventing the internet for email communication.

A long time ago, a man asked his children,

“If you had a choice between the clay of wisdom or a bag of gold, which would you choose?”

“The bag of gold, the bag of gold,” the naïve children cried, not realizing that wisdom had the potential to earn them many more bags of gold in the future. The wealth of the future will be derived from developing the intellectual capital—the clay of wisdom—and the innovations of the younger generation to make Nigeria stronger.

Should Nigeria migrate from oil to soil, as is often suggested. I think not. It should leapfrog into the Information Age. Nigeria cannot return to an agricultural age because the West is being urbanized, the East is being eroded, and the North is being desertified. A Nigeria without oil must make the transition to a knowledge-based economy.

Nollywood can redefine 21st century Africa as the continent of arts and innovation. If Nigerians have an average of three children per couple, it will become the world's third most populous nation in 50 years. It will lag behind China and India, but will have a greater population density. Where will we find farmland? My grandfather's farmland was located where Onitsha market now lies. For countless centuries, my Igbo ancestors were farmers. Sons walked in their father's footsteps, ploughing the same land. Their life expectancy was about 37 years.

Daughters married early, had as many children as they could, and became young widows. My mother married days after her 14th birthday and gave birth to me six days after her 15th birthday. She was born in colonial Africa, where she counted her age on her fingers and toes and by her age-grade affiliation.

Yet she had a son who could count the ages of humanity on his supercomputer, which occupies the space of four tennis courts. Her son's supercomputer computes and communicates as an internet and sends and receives answers via e-mails to and from 65,000 sub computers. My father and I, followed by my son, broke the tradition of walking in our ancestors' footsteps. My father was a nurse, and my son and I are computer scientists. All three of us abandoned the soil to work in knowledge-based industries.

Philip Emeagwali standing outside
the student union building showing
off the new trousers and shoes
 he had just purchased in
Monmouth to replace the cotton
 trousers and sandals he had
bought in the Onitsha market. 

HOW TO BUILD YOUR MENTAL MUSCLES

While many people vow to get in shape physically, not many commit to exercising their mental muscles. What does exercising your mental muscles even mean? It means expanding your horizons, opening new doors, looking at different possibilities, stretching your mind…It will help you grow as a person. Give you a new outlook on life. And set you on a path to feeling a little more fulfilled. For isn’t that the ultimate goal of any resolution? A sense of accomplishment. Pride. Satisfaction.

Our conscious mind is made up of six mental muscles. Some people call these your higher faculties. It really doesn’t matter what you call them. What’s good to remember is that they are part of you, and you can develop each one to create more awareness in your life and improve your results.

YOU HAVE SIX MENTAL MUSCLES 

Perception

You can develop your ability to view your world differently. You can decide how circumstances will affect your life. You can develop better ways to perceive your reality. Don’t look at things from one point of view; look at them from many points of view. Look at some of the things you want to do today and think of how many points of views you can look at them. Doing this daily exercise will help you improve this mental muscle.

  

Where is Africa Going Wrong?

Out-of-the-Box Thinking in an In-the-Box World

by Philip Emeagwali

I once believed that capital was another word for money, the accumulated wealth of a country or its people. Surely, I thought, wealth is determined by the money or property in one’s possession. Then I saw a Deutsche Bank advertisement in the Wall Street Journal that proclaimed: “Ideas are capital. The rest is just money.” I was struck by the simplicity of such an eloquent and forceful idea. I started imagining what such power meant for Africa.
  

The potential for progress and poverty alleviation in Africa relies on capital generated from the power within our minds, not from our ability to pick minerals from the ground or seek debt relief and foreign assistance. If ideas are capital, why is Africa investing more on things than on information, and more on the military than on education? Suddenly, I realized what this idea could mean for Africa. If the pen is mightier than the sword, why does a general earn more than the work of a hundred writers combined? If ideas are indeed capital, then Africa should stem its brain drain and promote the African Renaissance, which will lead to the rebirth of the continent. After all, a renaissance is a rebirth of ideas. And knowledge and ideas are the engines that drive economic growth. When African men and women of ideas, who will give birth to new ideas, have fled to Europe and the United States, then the so-called African Renaissance cannot occur in Africa. It can only occur in Paris, London and New York.

The Power of Ideas

By Sam Adeyemi

Many years ago, in a small town in the United States, a doctor climbed his horse and rode to a chemist’s shop. He went in through the back door. He carried in his hand an old fashioned kettle and a wooden paddle. He brought these items to the shop clerk with a sheet of paper on which was written the formula for a drink. Both of them began to bargain and eventually the clerk gave the doctor five hundred dollars for the items that he had come to sell. What the doctor sold to the clerk was worth a fortune to the young clerk but not to the doctor who gave away the items for just five hundred dollars.

To the surprise of the clerk, the content of the kettle which has since become a household name in the world, began to pour forth gold. The content of the kettle has been heard of in more places on the earth than any gospel.