Recognizing the First Generation Inventors V

Recognizing the First Generation Inventors V

Automobile is the next interesting invention in the transportation sector, which came earlier than the invention of airplane. The history of the automobile invention is a rich one and may dates back to the 15^th century when Leonardo da Vinci was creating designs and models for transport vehicles. There are many different types of automobiles - steam, electric, and gasoline - as well as many other classifications. Reporting exactly who was the first inventor of automobile is difficult to credit one single individual. However, Mr. Karl Benz, a German national was reputed to be among the first inventors of self – propelled automobile popularly known as “motor vehicle”. Karl Benz was able to patent a three-wheeled Motor Car, known as the "Motorwagen," in 1885. It was the first true, modern automobile. Benz also patented his own throttle system, spark plugs, gear shifters, a water radiator, a carburetor and other fundamental components of the automobile. Benz eventually built a car company that still exists today as the Daimler Group.

Reflecting to the trend of events, which metamorphosed from a mere conception of an automobile to the reality, we can begin with Leonardo da Vinci’s Car invention, which was invented in 1495. It was seen as a first automobile in two categories; it was the first self-propelled vehicle in history and the first programmable machine that can move. However, strictly speaking Leo’s automobile was not exactly a car compared to the present day reality, as it had no seats for a passenger or a driver. Although, it was a well designed machine. In fact, it was so well designed; it took many centuries for a machine-tooling laboratory to successfully build the complex gear systems inside the car. Leonardo’s Car was spring driven so it had to be wound up before it could move. It was also programmable – pegs were put into small holes to direct the wheels of the car to turn at certain points in time during the journey. Complex gearing and cog assemblies controlled it all internally. It was certainly an extreme ingenuity of man – kind and exceptional capability displayed by Leonardo da Vinci for designing such a piece in such a time under such a condition.

Somewhere in Asia, precisely in China, Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built a steam-powered vehicle around 1672 as a toy for the Chinese Emperor. It was a small size car and could not carry a driver but it was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle produced in history. A steam-powered self-propelled vehicle large enough to transport people and cargo was first developed in the late 18th century. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrated his fardier à vapeur ("steam dray"), an experimental steam-driven artillery tractor, in 1770 and 1771. As Cugnot's design proved to be impractical, his invention was not developed in his native France but in Great Britain. By 1784, William Murdoch had built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth and in 1801 Richard Trevithick was running a full-sized vehicle on the roads in Camborne. The first automobile patent in the United States was granted to Oliver Evans in 1789.

In 1807 François Isaac de Rivaz was the first to design an internal combustion engine car powered by hydrogen gas as fuel. He started by inventing a stationary engine suitable to work as a pump in 1804, de Rivaz progressed to a small experimental vehicle built, which was the first wheeled vehicle to be powered by an internal combustion engine. In subsequent years de Rivaz developed his design, and in 1813 built a larger 6-meter long vehicle, weighing almost a 1000 kg (a ton). In 30 January 1807 Isaac de Rivaz was granted patent No. 731 in Paris, France.

In 1870 in Europe, Siegfried Marcus made a significant achievement in automobile industry. Marcus was born in Malchin, which was then part of Germany into a Jewish family. He began work at the age of 12 as an apprentice mechanic. At 17, he joined Siemens and Halske, an engineering company that built telegraph lines. He moved to Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire in 1852, working first as a technician in the Physical Institute of the Medical School built. Marcus was the first to invent petrol powered combustion engine, which he placed on a pushcart, and then built four progressively sophisticated combustion-engine cars within a span of 15 years. He was able to create the two-cycle combustion engine. His car's second incarnation was in 1880 when he developed a four-cycle, gasoline-powered engine, an ingenious carburetor and magneto for ignition. He finally created additional components; steering, a clutch and brakes, which further refined his design and perfected his car. A four-stroke petrol internal combustion engine was developed and patented by Nikolaus Otto. This was followed by the development of a similar four-stroke diesel engine, which was invented by Rudolf Diesel. Otto and Diesel were both Germans. Nikolaus Otto was born on June 10^th, 1832 at Holzhausen, Nassau and died January 26, 1891, Cologne Germany. In 1892, Rudolf Diesel patented the engine that bears his name, an internal combustion engine that doesn’t require a spark to ignite the fuel-air mixture. Diesel was born in Paris to a German family and grew up in London, Paris and Munich. In 189, he won a patent for the diesel engine, but continued to fine-tune its development for years. The diesel engine allowed trains and ships to operate more efficiently with oil instead of coal. Before the advent of petroleum products, hydrogen gas was the technology used for energizing automobile engine. Principally, Christian Friedrich Schönbein discovered this technology in 1838.

The massive or commercial development of vehicles was achieved in n 1885, Karl Benz who developed petrol powered automobile. It was considered to be the first "production" vehicle as Benz made several other identical copies wit a single cylinder two-stroke engine powered the automobile.

Frenchman, Amédée Bollée was the first to produce “real” automobile in 1873. He was able to develop a self-propelled steam road vehicle to transport group of passengers. The first carriage-sized automobile suitable for use on existing wagon roads in the United States was a steam-powered vehicle invented in 1871 by Dr. J.W. Carhart.  It induced the State of Wisconsin in 1875 to offer a $10,000 a handsome prize award to the first to produce a practical substitute for the use of horses and other animals. They stipulated that the vehicle would have to maintain an average speed of more than 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h) over a 200-mile (320 km) course. The offer led to the first city to city automobile race in the United States, starting on 16 July 1878 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and ending in Madison, via Appleton, Oshkosh, Waupun, Watertown, Fort Atkinson, and Janesville. While seven vehicles were registered, only two started to compete: the entries from Green Bay and Oshkosh. The vehicle from Green Bay was faster, but broke down before completing the race. The Oshkosh finished the 201-mile (323 km) course in 33 hours and 27 minutes, and posted an average speed of six miles per hour. In 1879, the legislature awarded half the prize

The development of automobile was pari-pasu competing between Americans and Europeans Asia with very little information from Asia.  Thus, in 1903, Model A Ford was produced and sold in America.  Ford Motor Company's Model T became the first mass-produced automobile in 1908, focusing on affordability for the average consumer. By 1927 Ford produced over 15,000,000 Model T automobiles. At the turn of the 20th century, electrically powered automobiles were a popular method of automobile propulsion, but their common use did not last long, and they diminished to a niche market until the turn of the 21st century. This is the short story of automobile invention.

Recognizing the First Generation Inventors IV

Recognizing the First Generation Inventors IV

Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Sumner Tainter, Valdemar Poulsen and few others are rightly qualified as first generation inventors for telecommunication, which was built from the scratch to the present day ICT. The next important technology that facilitated the development of human civilization before Stone Age is transportation, which is diverse with different levels of sophistication.

Starting with the invention of airplane, which to my thinking is the most mind-boggling and astounding system to mankind. From the time immemorial, mankind marveled the way birds were flying crisscrossing the sky at will without hindrance, and it was the dream of many inventors of 18^th and 19^th centuries to make human being fly. People built wings to strap onto their arm or machines with flapping wings called “ornithopters” in a desperate effort to navigate the sky like birds. The concept was perfectly working for smaller body at bird-scale was not working for much larger scale needed to lift both a man and a machine off the ground. So, the idea was completely discarded and began to look for other means of making man to fly. Beginning in 1783, a few aeronauts made daring, uncontrolled flights in lighter-than-air balloons, filled with either hot air or hydrogen gas, which made them lift the ground with tremendous risk to their lives. All these proved impractical way to fly as there was no way to move from one point to the next desired point unless the wind was blowing in the same - desired direction. It was in the early nineteenth century that an English baronet from Yorkshire conceived an idea of a flying machine with fixed wings, a kind of propulsion system, and movable control surfaces. That was the fundamental mechanism of making larger of object to fly - popularly called airplane. Sir George Cayley was the first inventor of a true airplane — a kite mounted on a stick with a movable tail. It was crude, but originated the idea of inventing an airplane. It was that idea, which evolved overtime and made the design and fabrication of a gigantic machine that could carry over 500 people with their personal belongings and move with amazing speed of a thousand or so kilometers per hour, faster than speed of sound - a supersonic speed as physicists will call it.  

  In 1799, Sir George Cayley extensively worked on the mechanics of lift and drag forces – a kind of fan engineering; and presented his first scientific design for a fixed-wing aircraft. This arose interests among aeronautics; scientists and engineers who experimented and permutated all kind of ideas on designing and testing airplanes. In 1874, Felix duTemple made the first attempt at powered flight by hopping off the end of a ramp in a steam-driven monoplane. Other scientists, such as Francis Wenham and Horatio Phillips studied cambered wing designs mounted in wind tunnels and on whirling arms. The Aerial Steam Carriage, conceived by William Henson in 1843, was the first aircraft design to show propellers. 50 years later, precisely in 1894, Sir Hiram Maxim made a successful takeoff using a biplane on a "test rig" but it was a woefully uncontrolled flight – with danger and potential for sustaining body injury. Thereafter, Otto Lilienthal was the first to make a controlled flight by shifting his body weight to steer a small glider. Motivated by the Otto’s success, the Wright brothers; Wilbur and Orville Wright experimented with aerodynamic surfaces to control an airplane in flight successfully. The brothers' first glider, tested in 1900, failed to fly. A second trial in 1901 fared better, but they went on by improving the design after each trial. Later that year, the brothers built a wind tunnel in which they tested over 200 wing and airframe designs. This resulted in a successful glider (unpowered) model (flown in 1902 at Kill Devils Hills near Kitty Hawk). Their work led them to make the first controlled, sustained, powered flights on December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It flew for 12 seconds covering a distance of 37 m. The brothers choice of Kitty Hawk to fly their planes was because of it was an isolated town on North Carolina's Outer Banks that had steady winds and sand dunes on which they could glide and land gently, maximizing their safety. The engine of the plane stalled during another trial on December 14^th. It took them three days to repair the engine for the subsequent trial, the plane accelerated on a monorail track and flew into the air, staying up for 15 seconds; it flew 47 meters. That day, the brothers took turns flying the plane. On the last flight that day, Wilburs flew 260 meters in 59 seconds. Their "Wright fly" was a fabric-covered biplane with a wooden frame. A 12-horsepower water-cooled engine was made to energize the two propellers of the plane, which caused it flew and moved. Wright brothers were raised in Dayton, Ohio but were not able to make it to college. However, they had strong intuitive technical ability for creativity and innovations. During the next few years, the brothers developed more sophisticated planes. They later formed the Wright Company, which built and sold their airplanes. Before venturing into airplane building, they had their hands in several innovations as they were credited of building a printing press, constructed, repair and sales of bicycles. It was the profits made from bicycle business that funded their airplane-building endeavor. The Wright brothers' famous airplane, the "Wright Flyer," is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., USA. Wilbur Wright died in 1912 of typhoid fever while Orville died 36 years later in 1948.

The work of Wrights accelerated aviation at an unprecedented rate – and for good reason. The feats achieved sequentially were landing without crashing (1903 to 1905) – The Wright Brothers develop their temperamental Kitty Hawk Flyer into a practical flying machine. Aeronautical scientists and engineers in America and Europe designed and fabricated fixed wings to the airplane. Thereafter, the planes were made to achieve faster, higher and long distances between 1909 and 1912) – Pilots and engineers begin to explore the capabilities and push the possibilities of aircraft.

While the Americans are crediting and celebrating Wright brothers of being the pioneers inventors of airplane, elsewhere, this claim is recently being challenged. According to an online paper www.airspacemag.com/history. The paper indicated that a number of candidates were suggested for first-flight honors; Hiram Maxim, Clement Ader, Karl Jatho, and Augustus Moore Herring, who were reported flying distances of up to 70 m through the air. Another strong contender was Gustave Whitehead who was believed to had flown his Condor plane in August 1901 - more than two years before the Wright Brothers' famous successful flight. Condor was designed to be part-car, part plane and may have been reputed to be the first flying car, as reported by one of the famous aviation journal Jane. Gustave Whitehead, a German immigrant in USA who settled in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA where he reported to had made some spectacular flights. This is the short history of the early invention of airplane between the Americans and Europeans in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The next interesting invention in the transportation sector is “vehicle” which came earlier than airplane. (To be Continued next week)

Recognizing the First Generation Inventors III

Recognizing the First Generation Inventors III

The second part of this article was published on 28^th July 2017 but couldn’t continue due to exigency of the last five articles on my meeting with Ambassador Kenneth Quinn and ASABE. The articles focused on Global food insecurity and innovations to address the gargantuan challenge of hunger, thirsty and poverty, which cause human indignity and squalor. “Discovering of electricity” was the issue under discussion in that article, which was attributed to Benjamin Franklin, a famous American inventor who was born on Sunday, January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts, which was then under British colony.

Franklin was the first to make a cutting-edge discovering of electricity that opened window for better understanding and utilization of this God given source of energy – electricity. Thus, he is considered as a “founding father” of electricity. Franklin conducted a famous kite and a silk ribbon in a thunderstorm experiment in 1752, exactly 265 years ago that created foundation for clear discovery and understanding of electricity. The Franklin’s experiment was a watershed moment in mankind's question to channel a force of nature once thought to be the wrath of God to humanity. Hitherto, Electricity was not a well-understood phenomenon, so Franklin's discovery proved to be fairly foundational. Franklin’s frantic effort in discovering electricity made him received an electric shock that nearly burns him. That early brush with the dangers of electricity left an impression on him. He was quoted describing the sensation as "a universal blow throughout my whole body from head to foot, which seemed within as well as without; after which the first thing I took notice of was a violent quick shaking of my body." However, it didn't scare him away. Instead, it made him more curious, put in more effort until he finally laid solid foundation for a better discovery of electricity. Franklin contributed distinctively in the “science of electricity” from the design of first battery to establishment of some common nomenclature in the study of electricity. It's thanks to Franklin effort, for instance, that electric charges are referred to positive and negative charges. Before him, they were known as "vitreous" and "resinous" charges.

There after, several efforts were made to expand the use of Franklin discovery on the myth called electricity. It was only in 1831, electricity became viable for use in technology when Michael Faraday created the electric dynamo. The dynamo is a power generating system, which generates electric current in a practical way. Faraday’s rather crude invention used a magnet that was moved inside a coil of copper wire, creating a tiny electric current that flowed through the wire. This opened the door to American Thomas Edison and British scientist Joseph Swan who each invented the incandescent filament light bulb in their respective countries in about 1878. Previously, others had invented ordinary light bulbs, but the incandescent bulb was the first practical bulb that could light for hours on end. That was the early story of electric power generation, use and the inventors who championed the discovery.

The next important technology that facilitated the development of human civilization before Stone Age is telecommunication. It is a transmission of information through sound, words or visual from a distance. Naturally, telecommunication has been part and parcel of human evolution, thus, it is historically difficult to credit individuals or groups for the discovery of telecommunication. This is because humans have communicated with one another in some shape or form ever since time immemorial. Record shows that evidence of telecommunication dated back to 3500 BC, when the stone features proto-cuneiform signs, which was basically rudimentary symbols that convey meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Similar to this early form of writing was the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs around around 3200 BC. In China, a written language was noticed around 1200 BC and similar thing was also observed around 600 BC in the America. Historical evidence revealed that China was using “smoke signal” to communicate between regions of 100s kilometers apart. “In a matter of hours, Chinese soldiers stationed on the Great Wall could warn their comrades 800 kilometers away of impending enemy attack via tower to tower smoke signals” – a quotation from an online Newspaper; www.conferencecallsunlimited. As humans neared the end of the B.C. period, system of long distance communication started to become more commonplace. Human messengers on foot or horseback were the common means of passing information from one place to another in Egypt and China. In the year 14 AD, the Romans established the first postal service in the western world. While such postal service was considered to be the first well-documented mail delivery system in Europe, other countries in Asia such as India and China had already owned such services. Before the beginning of AD, the means of communication was mainly through signs and writing. The major breakthrough came when the audio became a pathway for effective communication between places separated by long distance.

After successful use of writings and signs to communicate, the next hurdle was to device a way of transmitting sound between far away distances. The idea for a “speaking telegraph” was kicked around as early as 1843 when Italian inventor Innocenzo Manzetti began broaching the concept. And while Manzetti and others explored the notion of transmitting sound across distances, it was Alexander Graham Bell who ultimately invented telephone.  He was born on March 3^rd, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland; he was the son of Alexander Melville Bell, a professor of speech elocution at the University of Edinburgh. His father was the inventor of “visible speech,” an alphabet that used symbols to represent human sounds. The young Bell was home-schooled until he was 11, when he was sent to Edinburgh’s Royal High School for four years: he enjoyed science, but he was reported to be a “below average student” academically. The Bell family migrated to Canada in 1870, and in 1871 young Bell moved to Boston, Massachusetts as a teacher to the deaf. He worked on ways to translate the human voice into vibrations, and thus came up with the idea for the telephone. When he was 25, Bell opened his School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston, MA, where he taught deaf people to speak. At the age of 26, although Bell was yet to earn a university degree, he became Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory, it was done out of a recognition for his tremendous academic achievements in his chosen area. In 1875, Bell began working with Thomas Watson, a mechanically inclined electrician; by 1876 Bell had uttered the first intelligible sentence over the phone: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” He was granted a patent in same year (1876) for "Improvements in Telegraphy," which laid out the underlying technology for electromagnetic telephones. Bell was credited for invention or improvement of several devices along communication line. He improved Thomas Edison's phonograph, he invented the multiple telegraph in 1875, the hydro-airplane, the photosensitive selenium cell (the photo-phone, a wireless phone) which was developed with Sumner Tainter. He developed new techniques for teaching the deaf to speak. In 1882, Bell and his father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, bought and re-organized the journal "Science." Bell, Hubbard and others founded the National Geographic Society in 1888; Bell was the President of the National Geographic Society from 1898 to 1903. He was certainly a great scientist whose immeasurable contributions led the foundation revolution in communication globally.

The next step the invention of answering machine, in case someone called and the responder wasn’t available. Communication gap? At the turn of the 20th century, a Danish inventor named Valdemar Poulsen set the tone for the answering machine with the invention of the tele-graphone, the first device capable of recording and playing back the magnetic fields produced by sound. The magnetic recordings also became the foundation for mass data storage formats such as audio disc and tape (To be continued next week).

American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers: Achieving Global Food Security through Innovation II

American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers: Achieving Global Food Security through Innovation II

In the last paragraph of the first part of this article, two questions were posed; what are the innovations? What are their contributions to achieving global food security? The EA 50 innovations cut across the on – and – off – farm operations for better yield, loss reduction, damage control, time and output efficiencies. One of such innovations is Tiger – mate 255 Field Cultivator invented by Case IH, manufacturers of CASE Tractor series. The Tiger-Mate 255 sets new standards for seedbed preparation with advanced features that include an enhanced shank assembly, split-the-middle sweep design and single-point hydraulic depth control. All work together to create an ideal growing environment for crop germination under various field conditions. The workhorse component of the Tiger-Mate 255 is the superior shank assembly, combining force and flexibility to support field speeds of up to 16 kilometer per hour. Thicker shanks, a beefed-up shank guard channel and increased holding power help to manage fast-changing field conditions due to climatic variability. A unique rear-flowing parabolic sweep design creates superior soil and residue flow along the entire width of the unit. Thus, rocks or stumps are not match for Tiger-Mate sweeps, made from high-strength Earth Metal alloy steel composition. For mechanized farming, seedbed preparation is highly valuable for early crop germination, roots development, soil water utilization and nutrients uptake. This permits optimum crop growth, which is fundamental to achieving potential yield.  

Another interesting innovation is automatic thinning machine called LetuceBot. This machine has opened a window for a new era of smart machines in agriculture. Agriculture could not be left behind in the ultimate use of ICT to triple productivity and reduce labor in this century. To understand how LetuceBot works smartly, one to needs to understand how lettuce is cultivated. Multiple of stands are planted within a small area with intention of thinning out the small ones to allow the most viable stands to have more space, nutrients and water to grow faster and better. It is similar to planting of millet or sesame. The removal to reduce plants population is called thinning, a tedious job that requires a lot of quick decision of which to remove or leave. There are few people ready to do this kind of time consuming and labor intensive work especially in the developed countries.

Blue River Technology (BRT) invented the LettuceBot machine. BRT is a United States of America (USA) based company with her headquarters located at Sunnyvale, a small city in Santa Clara County, California with a population of 140,095 as presented by the 2010 United State Census. BRT is one of the World most innovative companies as it won the 2017 “Most Innovative Robotics Fast Company” award and “The Artificial Intelligence 100 CB Insights” award in addition to being EA 50 innovative and other notable awards. The company specializes in building new generation of smart agriculture equipment and devices

What was the motivation for inventing LettuceBot? “So actually going out in the field and finding the lettuce thinning was a problem, a problem worth solving, so we didn’t start with a technology and then look for something to apply it, we started with a problem,” says Redden a roboticist and cofounder of Blue River Technology who was quoted by an online paper. He added “We’ve looked at millions plants, and we’ve told our algorithms, here’s what a “lettuce looks like, so our machine is just tremendously good at what lettuce looks like.” The LettuceBot is pulled behind a tractor and can thin four beds at once. Information from cameras mounted on the bottom help it makes billions of calculations per second selecting the best plant based on size, position and distance to its neighbor.

When the LettuceBot makes a decision, it hits the plant’s leaves with a precise spray of fertilizer killing that plant while nourishing the roots of the lettuce left behind.  A kind of herbicidic application of fertilizer; killing some nourishing others. LettuceBot thin a field quicker than its human counter parts while ultimately making better choices, the goal is for it to leave more viable lettuce in the field.  So instead of a crew of ten people out manually thinning a field, there’s a crew of one or two operating the LettuceBot. This just the starting point of introducing commercial smart machines into agriculture, taking away the menial tasks away.  So that people can do higher-level jobs of managing machines that do menial tasks. The overall goal of smart devices in agriculture is to make plants communicate their needs while the machines attend to such needs – “I’m thirsty,” or “I need some nitrogen fertilizer”, or “some bugs or pests are attacking me”. This is certainly for the future as Agricultural Engineers are busy cracking their brains to make the impossible become possible using smart equipment and devices.

There are forty-eight other innovations under the category of EA 50 innovative awards that space and time may not permit me to discuss. Rotary tillers, front – fold planters, Auto crop flow, drip calculator, mulch finisher and many others – all aimed at fighting global food insecurity.

Another way of showcasing innovation is recognition of individuals for their innovative ways to increase agricultural productivity. Under this category, there are Young Engineering Achievement Awards. These awards are four. The first one is the New Holland Young Researcher Award, which recognizes dedicated use of scientific methodology to seek out facts or principles significant to the Agricultural Engineering profession. The second one is Larry W. Turner Young Extension Professional Award. This award recognizes personal character and outstanding achievement in disseminating, sharing and applying engineering knowledge to address agricultural challenges. The third is A. W. Farrall Young Educator Award, which recognizes outstanding success in motivating others to apply engineering principles to the problems of agricultural engineering. The last is Sunkist Young Designer Award, which honors the development of technical plan that influences agricultural engineering progress as evidenced by use in the field. These awards are made to ASABE members under the age of 40. The four 2017 awardees are Matt Darr, Joe D. Luck, Leigh A. H. Krometis and Brian M. Huenink. Matt Darr is a professor who bagged the New Holland Young Researcher award for outstanding research in biomass feedstock logistics and advance machinery engineering. Luck is an associate professor and precision agricultural engineer who won Turner Young Extension Award for his substantial contributions in the development and delivery of a regional extension program in the area of precision agriculture data management. Krometis, a young lady is the recipient of 2017 A. W. Farrall Young Educator award for contribution to teaching, research and service and for her dedication to students at all levels of education. Huenink bagged Sunkist Young Designer Award for outstanding technical knowledge in equipment design, encouraging professional and community leadership.

In addition to several other awards, there are three distinct gold medal awards provided by three major agricultural engineering corporations. The first one is John Deere Gold Medal Award for “distinguished achievement in the application of science and art to the soil”. This year’s award was presented to Qin Zhang for contributions in applying science to the soil with automation technology for plant production. Zhang is a professor and internationally recognized scholar in agricultural automation technology.  The second Gold Medal award is Massey – Ferguson Educational award to “honor those whose dedication to the spirit of learning and teaching in the field of agricultural engineering had advanced our agricultural knowledge and practice and whose efforts serve as an inspiration to others”. This year’s award went to Ann D. Christy, a professor for her sustained and substantial contributions and impart on engineering education through excellence in scholarship, instruction, service and mentoring. The last Gold Medal award is the Cyrus Hall McCormick Jerome Increase Case Award for “Exceptional and Meritorious Engineering Achievement in Agriculture”. Scott A. Shearer won this award for development of machinery engineering technology and innovative futuristic concept that shape precision farming system.

A reader may notice that most of the ASABE members living USA won the awards but the entries came from all corners and crannies of the continents where agricultural engineering is being practiced. This means that the entries are opened to public with laid down regulations and members and organizations have equal opportunity to win. The lesson for us here in Nigeria is that our professional bodies must recognize interests that promote society at large and tailor their activities toward achieving such interests. ASABE is working hard to fight global food insecurity and the fight is getting harder by the day.