March 31:
Sir Dugald
Clerk
(Born March 31, 1854: Died November 12, 1932)
Scottish inventor of the two-stroke Clerk cycle motorcycle engine,
widely used on light motorcycles and other small machines. In
1881 he patented an engine he built in 1876 to run on hydrocarbon
vapour which used an explosion once every two strokes of the piston
rather than the once every four of the more common Otto cycle
used by most automobile engines. In another major research direction,
he studied the properties of gaseous fuel and its heating and
lighting applications. The British Admiralty appointed him director
of engineering research in 1916, followed by his knighting in
1917. His work appears in the two volumes of The Gas, Petrol,
and Oil Engine.
March 30:
John Henry Poynting
(Born September 9, 1852: Died March 30, 1914)
British physicist who introduced a theorem (1884-85) that assigns
a value to the rate of flow of electromagnetic energy known as
the Poynting vector, introduced in his paper On the Transfer of
Energy in the Electromagnetic Field (1884). In this he showed
that the flow of energy at a point can be expressed by a simple
formula in terms of the electric and magnetic forces at that point.
He determined the mean density of the Earth (1891) and made a
determination of the gravitational constant (1893) using accurate
torsion balances. He was also the first to suggest, in 1903, the
existence of the effect of radiation from the Sun that causes
smaller particles in orbit about the Sun to spiral close and eventually
plunge in.
March 29:
Elihu Thomson
Born March 29, 1853: Died March 13, 1937)
U.S. electrical engineer and inventor whose discoveries in the
field of alternating current phenomena led to the development
of successful alternating current motors. Thomson invented electric
welding and other important inventions in electric lighting and
power among his lifetime total of about 700 patents. Thomson was
also a cofounder of the General Electric Company (in 1892, in
a merger with the Edison Company) industry.
March 28:
UNIVAC for Census
In 1946, the Census Bureau and the National Bureau of Standards
met to discuss the purchase of a computer. The agencies agreed
to buy UNIVAC, the world's first general all-purpose business
computer, from Presper Eckert and John Mauchly for a mere $225,000;
unfortunately, UNIVAC cost far more than that to develop. Eckert
and Mauchly's venture foundered as the company continued to build
and program UNIVACs for far less than the development cost. Eventually,
the company was purchased by Remington Rand.
March 27:
Polyethylene
In 1933, polyethylene was discovered by Reginald Gibson and Eric
William Fawcett. It was one of the earliest plastics to come into
common use. It was discovered by accident while reacting ethylene
and benzaldehyde at high pressure. The demands of war and the
need for a better insulator for cables stimulated the development
of polyethylene and it played a key role in the development of
radar.
March 26:
Sir Bernard Katz
(Born: March 26, 1911)
German-born British physiologist who elucidated how nerve cells
transmit signals to muscles. Although it was known that neurons
release acetylcholine at their terminal ends, Katz discovered
in the early 1950s that the release of this neurotransmitter occurs
continuously and spontaneously, although at low levels when neurons
are at rest. Further, he found that acetylcholine is released
in discrete packets, later called vesicles. In the late 1960s,
Katz determined that the amount of acetylcholine in a vesicle
was related to the electrical potential at the terminal of an
axon (the long extension of a neuron that transmits the impulse).
These studies won him a share (with Julius Axelrod and Ulf von
Euler) of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
March
25: Henry
Charles) Fleeming Jenkin
In 1959, the maser was patented by Charles Townes (No. 2,879,439).
"Maser" is an acronym for "Microwave Amplification
by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation ". The invention
is an apparatus for amplifying and producing electromagnetic energy
directly from excited molecules or atoms. The concept grew out
of research in microwave spectroscopy following Word War II .
The image shows Townes with the second maser at Columbia University.
The normally evaculated metal box where maser action occurs is
opened up to show the four rods (centre) that send excited molecules
into a resonant cavity (to the right). The microwaves that were
generated emerged through the vertical copper waveguide near Townes'
hand.
March 24:
Maser
In 1959, the maser was patented by Charles Townes (No. 2,879,439).
"Maser" is an acronym for "Microwave Amplification
by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation ". The invention
is an apparatus for amplifying and producing electromagnetic energy
directly from excited molecules or atoms. The concept grew out
of research in microwave spectroscopy following Word War II .
The image shows Townes with the second maser at Columbia University.
The normally evaculated metal box where maser action occurs is
opened up to show the four rods (centre) that send excited molecules
into a resonant cavity (to the right). The microwaves that were
generated emerged through the vertical copper waveguide near Townes'
hand
March 23:
Hermann Staudinger
(Born March 23, 1881: Died September 9, 1965)
German chemist who won the 1953 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for
demonstrating that polymers are long-chain molecules. His work
laid the foundation for the great expansion of the plastics industry
later in the 20th century.
March 22:
John Canton
(Born July 31, 1718: Died March 22, 1772)
British physicist and teacher. After educating himself about science,
he developed a new method of preparing artificial magnets and
won election to the Royal Society (1749). In July 1752, he was
the first Englishman to repeat French experiments verifying Franklin’s
hypothesis that lightning was just a huge electric spark, (as
seen from charged Leyden jars). Following this, he studied the
polarity of the charge on a cloud. He invented a portable electroscope
to detect charge present in a system, and he remains well-known
for electrostatic induction experiments. Canton proved that water
is slightly compressible (1762). Noting compass needle irregularities
during a prominent aurora borealis he made the first observations
of magnetic storms (1756-9).
March 21:
George David Brikhoff
(Born March 21, 1884: Died November 12, 1944)
American mathematician, foremost of the early 20th century, who
formulated the ergodic theorem. As the first American dynamicist,
Birkhoff picked up where Poincaré left off, gaining distinction
in 1913 with his proof of Poincaré's Last Geometric Theorem,
a special case of the 3-body problem. Although primarily a geometer,
he discovered new symbolic methods. He saw beyond the theory of
oscillations, created a rigorous theory of ergodic behavior, and
foresaw dynamical models for chaos. His ergodic theorem transformed
the Maxwell- Boltzmann ergodic hypothesis of the kinetic theory
of gases (to which exceptions are known) into a rigorous principle
through use of the Lebesgue measure theory. He also produced a
mathematical model of gravity.
March 20:
AC power plant
In 1886, America's first demonstration of the alternating-current
system provided lighting along Main Street at Great Barrington,
Massachusetts. The power came from the first AC power plant in
the U.S. to begin commercial operation. Thus its creator, George
Westinghouse, now thirty-nine years old, began a new direction
in his career."
March
19: Louis-Victor
de Brogile
(Born August 15, 1892: Died March 19, 1987)
Louis Victor Pierre Raymond duc de Broglie was a French physicist
best known for his research on quantum theory and for his discovery
of the wave nature of electrons. De Broglie was of the French
aristocracy - hence the title "duc" (Prince). In 1923,
as part of his Ph.D. thesis, he argued that since light could
be seen to behave under some conditions as particles (photoelectric
effect) and other times as waves (diffraction), we should consider
that matter has the same ambiguity of possessing both particle
and wave properties. For this, he was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize
for Physics.
March
18: Superconductivity
In 1987, the discovery of "high-temperature" superconductivity
was announced to thousands of scientists at a packed meeting of
the American Physical Society in New York City. The phenomenon,
discovered 1911, was at first known to occur at only 4 degrees
above absolute zero, when all electrical resistance in a metal
sample disappeared. In 1986, researchers discovered a ceramic
material that was a superconductor at a temperature of more than
30 degrees above absolute zero. When published in September of
that year, that news stirred the wider scientific community into
action. By the time of the APS meeting, further discoveries had
been made. The scene of excitement at the meeting was dubbed the
"Woodstock of Physics."
March
17: Charles
Francis Brush
(Born March 17, 1849: Died June 15, 1929)
U.S. inventor and industrialist who devised an electric arc lamp
and a generator that produced a variable voltage controlled by
the load and a constant current. It was adopted throughout the
United States and abroad during the 1880's. The arc light preceded
Edison's incandescent light bulb in commercial use and was suited
to applications where a bright light was needed, such as street
lights and lighting in commercial and public buildings. He assembled
his first dynamo in the summer of 1876, resulting in a patent
for his Improvement in Magneto-Electric Machines, issued 24 Apr
1877 (US No. 189997). He then developed an arc light that was
regulated by a combination of electrical and mechanical means
limited by a "ring clutch".
March
16: Georg
Simon Ohm
(Born March 16, 1789: Died July 6, 1854)
German physicist who showed by experiment (1825) that there are
no "perfect" electrical conductors. All conductors have
some resistance. He stated the famous Ohm's law (1826): "If
the given temperature remains constant, the current flowing through
certain conductors is proportional to the potential difference
(voltage) across it." V=iR.
March
15: Nevil
Vincent Sedgwick
(Born:
May 8, 1873: Died: March 15, 1952)
English chemist who contributed to the understanding of chemical
bonding, especially in coordination compounds. He worked on kinetics
(studying the rates of isomerisation of triphenylmethane dye intermediates
and the hydration of carboxylic anhydrides), thermodynamics (investigating
phase equilibria and the solubility of organic acids and bases),
as well as investigating the colour of copper complexes. During
WW I, he set to work on a process for the production of acetone
(propanone) from ethanol and other wartime projects, such as the
production of phenol from benzene. His book, The Electronic Theory
of Valency (1927) was a culmination of many years' interest in
the nature of covalent and dative bonds.
March
14: Albert
Einstein
(Born March 14, 1879: Died April 18, 1955)
German-American physicist who developed the special and general
theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Recognized
in his own time as one of the most creative intellects in human
history, in the first 15 years of the 20th century Einstein advanced
a series of theories that proposed entirely new ways of thinking
about space, time, and gravitation. His theories of relativity
and gravitation were a profound advance over the old Newtonian
physics and revolutionized scientific and philosophic inquiry.
March
13: Elihu
Thomson
(Born March 29, 1853: Died March 13, 1937)
U.S. electrical engineer and inventor whose discoveries in the
field of alternating current phenomena led to the development
of successful alternating current motors. Thomson invented electric
welding and other important inventions in electric lighting and
power among his lifetime total of about 700 patents. Thomson was
also a cofounder of the General Electric Company (in 1892, in
a merger with the Edison Company) industry.
March
12: John
Theophile Desaguliers
(Born March 12, 1683: Died March 10, 1744)
French-English chaplain and physicist. He studied at Oxford, became
experimental assistant to Sir Isaac Newton. As curator at the
Royal Society, his experimental lectures in mechanical philosophy
and electricity (advocating, substantiating and popularizing the
work of Isaac Newton) attracted a wide audience. In electricity,
he first used the terms conductor and insulator. He repeated and
extended the work of Stephen Gray in electricity. He proposed
a scheme for heating vessels such as salt-boilers by steam instead
of fire. He made inventions of his own, such as a planetarium,
and improvements to machines, such as Thomas Savery's steam engine
(by adding a safety valve, and using an internal water jet to
condense the steam in the displacement chambers) and a ventilator
at the House of Commons. He was a prolific author and translator.
March
11: Vannevar
Bush
(Born March 11, 1890: Died June 28, 1974)
American electrical engineer and administrator who and oversaw
government mobilization of scientific research during World War
II. At the age of 35, in 1925, he developed the differential analyzer,
the world's first analog computer. It was capable of solving differential
equations. He put into concrete form that which began 50 years
earlier with the incomplete efforts of Babbage, and the theoretical
details developed by Kelvin. This machine filled a 20 x 30 foot
room. He innovated one of the largest growing media in our time,
namely hypermedia as fulfilled in the Internet with hypertext
links.
March
10: Francis
Robbins Upton
(Born 1852: Died March 10, 1921)
American mathematician and physicist who, as assistant to Thomas
Edison, contributed to the development of the American electric
industry. Upton was the best educated of Edison's Menlo Park assistants.
He was recruited by investors who felt it couldn't hurt to supplement
Edison's wizardry with some advanced scientific training. He joined
Edison in 1878, working at Edison's Menlo Park laboratory on mathematical
problems relating to the development of the light bulb, the watt-hour
meter and large dynamos. He later became a partner and general
manager of the Edison Lamp Company (est. 1880). Upton's articles
for Scientific American and Scribner's Monthly introduced many
of Edison's inventions to the public.
March
9: Howard
Hathaway Aiken
(Born March 9, 1900: Died March 14, 1973)
American mathematician who invented the Harvard Mark I, forerunner
of the modern electronic digital computer. While a graduate student
and instructor Harvard University, Aiken's research had led to
a system of differential equations which could only be solved
using numerical techniques, for which he began planning large
computer. His idea was to use an adaptation of Hollerith's punched
card machine. When eventually built, (1943) it weighed 35 tons,
had 500 miles of wire and could compute to 23 significant figures.
There were 72 storage registers and central units to perform multiplication
and division. It was controlled by a sequence of instructions
on punched paper tapes, and used punched cards to enter data and
give output from the machine.
March 8:
Ferdinand Count von Zeppelin
(Born July 8, 1838: Died March 8, 1917)
Ferdinand (Adolf August Heinrich) Count von Zeppelin was a German
engineer, the first notable builder of rigid dirigible airships,
known then and now by his name. After retiring from a military
career (1890), he devoted ten years to the designing and building
of his first successful light-than-air craft, the LZ-1. Its initial
flight on July 2, 1900 stimulated funding from the community.
Eventually, he produced more than 100 zeppelins for military uses
in WW I.
March 7:
Telephone
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented an "Improvement in
Telegraphy" (No.174,465) which established the principle
of the telephone. He held earlier patents. One concerned the simultaneous
transmission of two or more telegraphic signals along a single
wire which utilized transmission of impulses at different rates
to be received by different instruments each tuned to the pitch
corresponding to one of the transmitting instruments. Another
patent described ways of producing an alternately increasing and
decreasing current without actually breaking the circuit. In this
patent, he described a device to produce an undulatory current
(similar to a sinusoidal wave form rather than the square wave
of a pulsatory current) on the line wire.
March 6:
First American AC power
plant
In 1886, America's first alternating current power plant began
operation in Great Barrington, Mass. George Westinghouse demonstrated
transmission at 500 volts for 4000 feet, with a step-down for
lights in stores. It started producing commercial power two weeks
later, but subsequently became damaged by an accident and was
abandoned. Compared to the direct currect generated by Thomas
Edison's ventures, the great advantage of alternating current
was the ability to use transformers at the source for transmission
at higher voltage, which decreased energy losses so that transmission
distance could be increased by miles.
Westinghouse opened his first successful A.C. generating plant
was on November 30, 1886 at Buffalo, NY.
March
5: Alessandro
Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
(Born March 5, 1827: Died February 18, 1745)
Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian
physicist whose invention of the electric battery (1800) provided
the first source of continuous, reliable current produced by the
contact of two dissimilar metals. His famous voltaic pile consisted
of an alternating column of zinc and silver disks separated by
porous cardboard soaked in brine. This instrument revolutionized
the study of electricity by producing a practical source of current,
leading almost immediately to William Nicholson's decomposition
of water by electrolysis and later to Humphry Davy's discovery
of potassium and other metals by the same process. Volta also
invented the electrophorus and the condensing electroscope. The
volt, a unit of electrical measurement, is named after him.
March
4: Cray
supercomputer
In 1977, the first Freon-cooled Cray-1 supercomputer, costing
$19,000,000, was shipped to Los Alamos Laboratories, NM, and was
used to help the defense industry create sophisticated weapons
systems. This system had a peak performance of 133 megaflops and
used the newest technology, integrated circuits and vector register
technology. The Cray-1 looked like no other computer before or
since. It was a cylindrical machine 7 feet tall and 9 feet in
diameter, weighed 30 tons and required its own electrical substation
to provide it with power (an electric bill around $35,000/month).
The inventor, Seymour Cray, died 5 Oct 1996 in an auto accident.
His innovations included vector register technology, cooling technologies,
and magnetic amplifiers.
March
3: Gerhard
Herzberg
(Born December 25, 1904: Died March 3, 1999)
German-Canadian physicist and winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for
Chemistry for his work in determining the electronic structure
and geometry of molecules, especially free radicals: groups of
atoms that contain odd numbers of electrons. Herzberg is noted
for his extensive work on the technique and interpretation of
the spectra of molecules. He elucidated the properties of many
molecules, ions, and radicals and also contributed to the use
of spectroscopy in astronomy (e.g., in detecting hydrogen in space).
His work included the first measurements of the Lamb shifts (important
in quantum electrodynamics) in deuterium, helium, and the positive
lithium ion.
March 2:
Edward
Griffith Begle
(Born November 27, 1914: Died March 2, 1978)
American mathematician, a topologist, who was a leader in the
development of "new math" after the launch of the Sputnik
satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957 raised concerns about the
adequacy of science and mathematics education in American schools.
He emphasized the importance of mathematical principles over the
traditional focus on memorization and computational skills. Under
his leadership (director, 1958-72) the School Mathematics Study
Group reconceptualized the learning of mathematics at all grade
levels and developed teaching materials to fit the new concept.
March 1:
Edwin James Houston
(Born July 9, 1847: Died March 1, 1914)
Edwin James Houston was a U.S. electrical engineer. Together with
another Philadelphia high school teacher, Elihu Thomson, he experimented
with electricity, invented (patented 1881) and manufactured arc
street-lighting. He presented the first paper, Notes on Phenomena
in Incandescent Lamps, to The American Institute of Electrical
Engineers when it began in 1884 (AIEE - the predecessor society
of the present IEEE, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc.) . The merger of Thomson-Houston and Edison General
Electric companies (1892) formed General Electric. In 1894 he
joined with Arthur Kennelly (who resigned from Edison's laboratory)
to form a consulting company.
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