DI-

GAL, CYRILLE RENZ L.

Light Bulb and Telephone: Edison was one of a half dozen who were putting the ele-
ments of a viable lighting system together in those years, and since Edison was late to the race,
he benefited from all his predecessors and rivals. Edison designed a vacuum bulb, in which a
metal filament could be heated to create light. Edison got the idea of creating a machine that
could record and play back telephone messages. That notion led him to imagine being able to
record not just voices, but music and other sounds, by using sound to vibrate a diaphragm and
push a stylus that made indentations on a cylinder covered with wax paper that was being turned
by a crank.

Discoveries in Optics: Newton was fascinated with the field of optics and not surpris-
ingly, made some major discoveries. His prime focus was unraveling the nature of light and its
properties. Using prisms and lenses, he studied the refraction and diffraction of light. The de-
scription of these experiments and his discoveries detailing light associated phenomena were
published in 1706.