January 31:
George Robert Stibitz
(Born April 30, 1904: Died January 31, 1995)
U.S. mathematician who was regarded by many as the "father
of the modern digital computer." While serving as a research
mathematician at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City,
Stibitz worked on relay switching equipment used in telephone
networks. In 1937, Stibitz, a scientist at Bell Laboratories built
a digital machine based on relays, flashlight bulbs, and metal
strips cut from tin-cans. He called it the "Model K"
because most of it was constructed on his kitchen table. It worked
on the principle that if two relays were activated they caused
a third relay to become active, where this third relay represented
the sum of the operation. Also, in 1940, he gave a demonstration
of the first remote operation of a computer.
January 30:
John Bardeen
(Born May 23, 1908: Died January 30, 1991)
American physicist who was cowinner of the Nobel Prize for Physics
in both 1956 and 1972. He shared the 1956 prize with William B.
Shockley and Walter H. Brattain for their joint invention of the
transistor. With Leon N. Cooper and John R. Schrieffer he was
awarded the 1972 prize for development of the theory of superconductors,
usually called the BCS-theory.
January 29:
Allen B. DuMont
(Born January 29, 1901: Died November 15, 1965)
Allen B(alcom) Du Mont was an American engineer who perfected
the first commercially practical cathode-ray tube, which was not
only vitally important for much scientific and technical equipment
but was the essential component of the modern television receiver.
The early cathode ray tubes were imported from Germany at high
cost, but they burned out after 25 or 30 hours. In the 1930's,
he simplified and improved the production of cathode ray tubes
lasting a thousand hours. A financially successful by-product
of his television work was the cathode ray oscillograph. After
WW II, Du Mont had become the industry's first millionaire, investing
also in broadcasting stations. The Du Mont Broadcasting Co. he
began in 1955 grew to become Metromedia, Inc.
January 28:
Julian W. Hill
(Born September 4, 1904: Died January 28, 1996)
Julian Werner Hill was a U.S. research chemist who discovered
cold drawing, a technique of strengthening polymer fibers by stretching.
Julian Hill and Wallace Carothers had been building long polymer
chains by a reaction of a carboxylic acid with an alcohol to give
an ester in a device called a molecular still. While removing
a sample of the resultant product from the still, Hill observed
that the molten polymer could be drawn into fibers. He then made
an important and unexpected discovery - that after being cooled,
these pliable filaments could be stretched or "cold drawn"
to form very strong fibers. Further tests on the sample showed
that it had a molecular weight of over 12,000, far higher than
any previous polymer.
January 27:
Tape recorder
In 1948, Wire Recording Corporation of America announced the first
magnetic wire recorder. It is lightweight and portable. The 'Wireway'
machine with a built-in oscillator sold for $149.50. Image: Wireway
portable combination magnetic wire recorder and phonograph - ca.
1950
January 26:
Polykarp Kusch
(Born January 26, 1911: Died March 20, 1993)
German-American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics
in 1955 for his accurate determination that the magnetic moment
of the electron is greater than its theoretical value. This he
deduced from researching the hyperfine structure of the energy
levels in certain elements, and in 1947 found a discrepancy of
about 0.1% between the observed value and that predicted by theory.
Although minute, this anomaly was of great significance to theories
of the interactions of electrons and electromagnetic radiation,
now known as quantum electrodynamics. (He shared the prize with
Willis E. Lamb, Jr. who performed independent but related experiments
at Columbia University on the hyperfine structure of the hydrogen
atom.)
January 25:
Sir Isaac Shoenberg
(Born March 1, 1880: Died January 25, 1963)
Russian-Born British electrical engineer and principal inventor
of the first high-definition television system, as used by the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for the world's first public
high-definition telecast (from London, 1936). He had installed
the first radio stations in Russia before moving to England in
1914. He was head of a research group for Electrical and Musical
Industries (EMI) that developed (1931-35) an advanced kind of
camera tube (the Emitron) and a relatively efficient hard-vacuum
cathode-ray tube for the television receiver. Until 1964 the BBC
used his technical standard proposal - 405 scanning lines and
25 pictures a second. He was director of EMI from 1955. His youngest
son, David Shoenberg, became a noted physicist.
January 24:
Early computer
In 1948, IBM dedicated its "SSEC" in New York City.
The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator handled both data
and instructions using electronic circuits made with 13,500 vacuum
tubes and 21,000 relays. It occupied three sides of a 30-ft x
60-ft room. On the back wall, three punches and thirty readers
provided paper-tape storage. Banks of vacuum tube circuits for
card reading and sequence control and 36 paper tape readers comprising
the table-lookup section occupied the left wall. Most of the right
wall was filled by the electronic arithmetic unit and storage.
In the center of the room were card readers, card punches, printers,
and the operator's console. It was visible to pedestrians on the
sidewalk outside.
January 23:
Hideki Yukawa
(Born January 23, 1907: Died September 8, 1981)
Japanese physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics
in 1949 for research in the theory of elementary particles. In
1935, he published a paper entitled On the Interaction of Elementary
Particles* in which he proposed a new field theory of nuclear
forces and predicted the existence of the previously unknown meson.
Mesons are particles heavier than electrons but lighter thanprotons.
Encouraged by the discovery by American physicists of one type
of meson in cosmic rays, in 1937, he devoted himself to the development
of the meson theory, on the basis of his original idea. Since
1947 he worked mainly on the general theory of elementary particles
in connection with the concept of the "non-local" field.
January 22:
Horace Bénédict
de Saussure
(Born February 17, 1740: Died January 22, 1799)
Swiss physicist, geologist, and early Alpine explorer. He made
an extensive study of the structure of the Alps, described in
the four volumes of Voyages dans les Alpes (1779-96). His theory
was neptunian, but with uniformitarian overtones. The word geology
was introduced into scientific nomenclature by Saussure with the
publication of the first volume. Saussure developed what was probably
the first electrometer (1766), used to measure electric potential.
He also developed an improved hygrometer to measure atmospheric
humidity (1783), the first to use human hair for the purpose.
January 21:
H.L. Callender
(Born April 18, 1863: Died January 21, 1930)
Hugh Longbourne Callendar was a British physicist who made notable
contributions to thermometry, calorimetry, and knowledge of the
thermodynamic properties of steam. Callendar in 1886 described
a precise thermometer based on the electrical resistivity of platinum;
since then, platinum resistance thermometers have been prescribed
for the determination of temperatures between the defined points
of internationally recognized temperature scales. Later he developed
the electrical continuous-flow calorimeter, which measures the
heat-carrying properties of liquids. He also invented the compensated
air thermometer (1891), and a radio balance (1910).
January 20:
Zénobe-Théophile
Gramme
(Born April 4, 1826: Died January 20, 1901)
Belgian-born French electrical engineer and inventor (1869) of
the Gramme dynamo, a continuous-current electrical generator that
gave principal impetus to the development of electric power. In
1870 he invented a continuous-current dynamo with a ring armature
(a ring of soft iron around which were placed insulated copper
coils). This produced much higher voltages than other dynamos
of the time and was the first high-voltage direct-current generator
practical for mass production and distribution. Driven by steam-engines,
they were immediately successful and were used for a variety of
purposes, including factory lighting, electroplating, and lighthouses.
With these dynamos, the era of large-scale electrical engineering
began.
January 19:
Sir Henry Bessemer
(Born January 19, 1813: Died March 15, 1898)
English inventor and engineer who developed the first process
for manufacturing steel inexpensively (1856), leading to the development
of the Bessemer converter. Bessemer invented his steel making
process to solve a specific problem vexing another of his inventions,
the self-spinning artillery shell. The converter removed impurities
from molten pig iron by oxidation through air being blown through
the molten iron. The oxidation also raised the temperature of
the iron mass, keeping it molten. The oxidation process removed
impurities such as silicon, manganese, and carbon as oxides, which
oxides either escapd as gas or formed a solid slag. He also solved
problems about the chemistry of ores, fuels, and steel. He held
110 patents at his death.
January 18:
Joseph Dixon
Born 18 Jan 1799; died 15 Jun 1869. (Born January 18, 1799: Died
June 15, 1869)
American inventor and manufacturer who pioneered in the industrial
use of graphite and many other innovations. As a printer and a
photographer, he designed a mirror into a camera that was the
forerunner of the viewfinder, patented a double-crank steam engine,
evolved a method of printing banknotes to foil counterfeiters,
and patented a new method for tunneling under water. As a manufacturer
and entrepreneur, Joseph Dixon produced the first pencil made
in the U.S. and was responsible for the development of the graphite
industry there. When he died, the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company
was the largest manufacturer of graphite products in the world.
Listed among his friends were such great American inventors as
Fulton, Morse, and Bell.
January 17:
Benjamin Franklin
(Born
January 17, 1706: Died April 17, 1790)
American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist,
and diplomat. He become widely known in European scientific circles
for his reports of electrical experiments and theories. He invented
a type of stove, still being manufactured, to give more warmth
than open fireplaces; the lightning rod and bifocal eyeglasses
also were his ideas. Grasping the fact that by united effort a
community may have amenities which only the wealthy few can get
for themselves, he helped establish institutions people now take
for granted: a fire company (1736), a library (1731), an insurance
company (1752), an academy (1751), and a hospital (1751). In some
cases these foundations were the first of their kind in North
America.
January 16:
Oskar Barnack
(Born November 1, 1879: Died January 16, 1936)
German engineer who designed the first miniature camera (1913),
the Leica I. Its commercial introduction, delayed by WW I, was
made in 1924 by the Ernst Leitz optical firm at Wetzlar, Germany
where he was employed. Barnack was an enthusiastic photographer
from when only heavy plate cameras were available. As early 1905,
he conceived using a reduced format negative, to be enlarged after
exposure. He adapted his idea from equipment he made to take still
exposures on samples of cine film to test their sensitivity and
consistency before movie use. For this camera, Barnack established
the standard 35-mm film picture size by doubling the standard
18x24mm cine frame. His invention had only 1/250 of the weight
of a plate camera.
January 15:
Elevator
In 1861, the safety elevator was patented as a "Hoisting
Apparatus" by the American inventor, Elisha G. Otis, of Yonkers,
New York. (No. 31,128). His invention was designed to arrest a
fall in case of the lifting rope breaking. It used spring-loaded
pawls that would release and engage in a mortised track in the
walls of the shaft. In 1853, Otis had demonstrated a freight elevator
equipped with a safety device to prevent falling in case a supporting
cable should break. This increased public confidence and Otis
established a company for manufacturing elevators. The first elevator
for public use was a steam driven type installed by Otis Brothers
(1857) in the five story Broadway department store of E.W Haughtwhat
& Co.
January 14:
Benjamin Stillman, Jr.
(Born: December 4, 1816: January 14, 1885)
American chemist whose report on the potential uses of crude-oil
products gave impetus to plans for drilling the first producing
oil well, near Titusville, Pa. Silliman separated the crude oil
into its component parts, or its fractions, and observed the characteristics
of each fraction. He determined by use of a photometer that distilled
petroleum burned much brighter than all but the most expensive
and least efficient fuels. He also noted its potential use as
a lubricant; he found it capable of withstanding extremely high
and low temperatures and able to keep its form after long use.
Silliman concluded petroleum was "a raw material from which...they
may manufacture a very valuable product. His report marked petroleum
as the answer to the illumination fuel crisis.
January 13:
Plastic automoblie patent
In 1942, the first U.S. patent for construction of an automobile
using plastic was issued to Henry Ford of Dearborn, Mich. It covered
an automobile body construction, an auto body chassis frame made
of steel tubes or pipes designed for use with automobiles made
from plastics. The first such car manufactured in the U.S. was
produced by the Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Mich. in Aug 1941.
Fourteen plastic panels were mounted on a tubular welded frame.
Together with windows and windshield made of acrylic sheets, a
decrease in weight of approximately 30 percent was accomplished.
January 12:
Frank Alvord Perret
(Born August 2, 1867: Died Januarty 12, 1943)
American electrical engineer and inventor who later became a pioneer
field volcanologist. Using his prior experience at Thomas Edison's
labs, at age 20, Perret co-founded the Elektron Mfg Co. in Brooklyn,
NY developing the motors, dynamos and electric controls that the
company manufactured (and later, elevators). The first American
electric elevator (1887) was probably powered by an Elektron motor.
He began a second career in 1904 as a volcanologist, using his
electrical knowledge to the measure their seismic activity. He
became well known for his studies at Vesuvius (1906), Etna (1910),
Stromboli and Kilauea (1911). From 1929, he lived at the foot
of Mont Pelée, Martinique, where he founded a memorial
volcanological museum.
January 11:
Carl David Anderson
(Born September 3, 1905: Died January 11, 1991)
American physicist who, with Victor Francis Hess of Austria, won
the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936 for his discovery of the positron,
or positive electron, the first known particle of antimatter.
He examined the photographs of cosmic rays taken as they passed
through a Wilson cloud chamber in a strong magnetic field. Besides
the curved paths of negative electrons, he found also paths deviating
in the opposite direction, corresponding to positively charged
particles - yet having the the same mass as an electron! Previously,
Dirac had predicted such particles by theoretical solution to
electromagnetic field equations. Anderson has now found the existance
of positron.
January 10:
Frederick Gardner Cottrell
(Born:
January 10, 1877: Died November 16, 1948)
U.S. educator and scientist who invented the industrial electrostatic
precipitator (1907), which eliminates suspended particles from
streams of gases. He patented the "Art of Separating Suspended
Particles from Gaseous Bodies" (No. 895,729). To electrochemists,
he is best known for the Cottrell equation. Electrostatic precipitators
are still widely used to reduce air pollution by smoke from power
plants and dust from cement kilns and other industrial sources.
Cottrell contributed to the development of a process for the separation
of helium from natural gas, and also was instrumental in establishing
the synthetic ammonia industry in the U.S. during attempts to
perfect a high temperature process for formation of nitric oxide.
January 9:
Willis Rodney Whitney
(Born August 22, 1868: Died January 9, 1958)
American chemist and research director who founded the General
Electric Company's research laboratory and directed pioneering
work there. He is known as the "father of basic research
in industry" because it became a model for industrial scientific
laboratories elsewherein the U.S. In Oct 1900 he was offered a
research position at the General Electric (GE) Co., Schenectady,
N.Y. His self-directed research program there began on a basis
of three days a week. He quickly proved that chemical research
techniques (such as use of an electric furnace) could be highly
useful in the electrical industry. By 1904 he was directing 41
staff. His own 40 patents included the GEM lamp filament (1904),
but contributed indirectly to many inventions.
January 8:
John W. Mauchly
(Born August 30, 1907: Died January 8, 1980)
American physicist and engineer, who with John P. Eckert invented
(1946) the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC),
the first general-purpose electronic computer. Mauchly initially
conceived of the computer's architecture, and Eckert possessed
the engineering skills to bring the idea to life. ENIAC was developed
(1946) for the US Army Ordnance Department as what was probably
the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a vast machine,
consuming 100 kW of electric power and containing 18,000 electronic
valves. Their successful UNIVAC computer (1951) was the first
commercial computer, and introduced magnetic tape for programming.
January 7:
Nikola Tesla
(Born
July 9/10, 1856: Died January 7, 1943)
Serbian-American inventor and researcher (born on the stroke of
midnight) who designed and built the first alternating current
induction motor in 1883. He emigrated to the United States in
1884. Having discovered the benefits of a rotating magnetic field,
the basis of most alternating-current machinery, he expanded its
use in dynamos, transformers, and motors. Because alternating
current could be transmitted over much greater distances than
direct current, George Westinghouse bought patents from Tesla
the system when he built the power station at Niagara Falls to
provide electricity power the city of Buffalo, NY.
January 6:
Bern Dibner
(Born
August 18, 1897: Died January 6, 1988)
Ukrainian-American engineer and science historian. Dibner worked
as an engineer during the electrification of Cuba. Realizing the
need for improved methods of connecting electrical conductors,
in 1924, he founded the Burndy Engineering Company. A few years
later, he became interested in the history of Renaissance science.
Subsequently, he began collecting books and everything he could
find that was related to the history of science. This became a
second career as a scholar that would run parallel with his life
as a businessman. He wrote many books and pamphlets, on topics
from the transport of ancient obelisks, to authorative biographies
of many scientific pioneers, including Volta, inventor of the
electric battery, and Roentgen, discoverer of the X ray.
January 5:
Louis-Paul Cailletet
(Born September 21, 1832: Died January 5, 1913)
French physicist and ironmaster, noted for his work on liquefaction
of gases. Working at his father's metallugy business, he investigated
the permeability of iron to hydrogen and other gases, accounting
for the unpredictable behaviour of some irons in terms of an excess
of dissolved gases. In 1870, he began carefully measuring whether
real gases deviate from "ideal" gas law behaviour. From
this grew an interest in the liquefaction of gases. He used the
Joule-Thomson effect - compressing a gas whilst cooling it, then
allowing its rapid expansion to cool it still further - and in
1877-78, was first to produce droplets of liquid oxygen, hydrogen,
nitrogen, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and acetylene. He
also invented the altimeter and the high-pressure manometer.
January 4:
Brian D. Josephson
(Born January 4, 1940)
British physicist who discovered the Josephson effect (1962) -
a flow of electric current as electron pairs, called Cooper Pairs,
between two superconducting materials that are separated by an
extremely thin insulator. This arrangement is called a Josephson
Junction. He was a graduate student, 22 years old, at the time.
Subsequently, he was awarded a share of the 1973 Nobel Prize for
Physics (with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever).
January 3:
Alexander Meissner
(Born September 14, 1883: Died January 3, 1958)
Austrian engineer whose work in antenna design, amplification,
and detection advanced the development of radio telegraphy. In
1907 he joined the Telefunken Company of Berlin, where he conducted
research on radio problems. He improved the design of antennas
for transmitting at long wavelengths, devised new vacuum-tube
circuits and amplification systems, and developed the heterodyne
principle for radio reception. In 1911 Meissner designed the first
rotary radio beacon to aid in the navigation of the Zeppelin airships.
In 1913 he was the first to amplify high-frequency radio signals
by using feedback in a vacuum triode; this principle made it possible
to build radio receivers more sensitive than any earlier type.
