August
Important
dates in History
August
31: Sir
George Porter
(Born
December 6, 1920: Died August 31, 2003)
English chemist, corecipient with
fellow Englishman Ronald Norrish and German Manfred Eigen of the 1967 Nobel Prize
for Chemistry. All three were honoured for their studies in flash photolysis,
a technique for observing the intermediate stages of very fast chemical reactions.
His research group in the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory applied flash photolysis
to the problem of photosynthesis and extended these techniques into the nanosecond
and picosecond regions.
August
30: John
W. Mauchly
(Born
August 30, 1907: Died January 8, 1980)
American physicist and engineer, coinventor
in 1946, with John P. Eckert, of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
(ENIAC), the first general-purpose electronic computer.
August
29: Faraday
experiment
In
1831, Michael Faraday wound a thick iron ring on one side with insulated wire
that was connected to a battery. He then wound the opposite side with wire connected
to a galvanometer. He found that upon closing the battery circuit, there was a
deflection of the galvanometer in the second circuit. Then he was astonished to
see the galvanometer needle jump in the opposite direction when the battery circuit
was opened. He had discovered that a current was induced in the secondary when
a current in the primary was connected and an induced current in the opposite
direction when the primary current was disconnected.
August
28: Andre-Eugene
Blondel
(Born
August 28, 1863: Died November 15, 1938)
French physicist known for his oscillograph
and photometric units of measurement. As a professor of electrotechnology in Paris,
in 1893, he invented the electromagnetic oscillograph, a device that allowed electrical
researchers to observe the intensity of alternating currents. In 1894, he proposed
the lumen and other new measurement units for use in photometry, based on the
metre and the Violle candle. Endorsed in 1896 by the International Electrical
Congress, his system is still in use with only minor modifications. Blondel was
a pioneer in the high voltage long distance transport of electric power, and also
contributed to developments in wireless telegraphy, acoustics, and mechanics.
He proposed theories for induction motors and coupling of a.c. generators.
August
27: World's
biggest battery
In 2003, the world's
biggest battery was connected to provide emergency power to Fairbanks, Alaska's
second-largest city. Without power lines between Alaska and the rest of the U.S.,
the state is an "electrical island." Worse, tough environmental conditions
cause a total city blackout every two or three years. The $35 million rechargable
battery contains 13,760 large nickel-cadmium cells that weigh a total of 1,300
tonnes and cover 2,000 square metres, an area greater than a sports field. The
battery can provide 40 megawatts of power, enough for around 12,000 people, for
up to seven minutes, while diesel backup generators are started. This will be
an important safeguard, where winter temperatures can drop as low as -51ºC.
(Born
August 26, 1873: Died June 30, 1961)
American inventor of the Audion vacuum
tube, which made possible live radio broadcasting and became the key component
of all radio, telephone, radar, television, and computer systems before the invention
of the transistor in 1947. He held 300 patents.
August
25: Peter
Cooper Hewitt
(Born
May 5, 1861: Died August 25, 1921)
American electrical engineer who invented
the mercury-vapour lamp, a major step in electrical lighting. He studied the production
of light using electrical discharges (while Edison was still developing incandescent
filaments). The mercury-filled tubes he began developing in the late 1890s, gave
off an unattractive blue-green light. Thus, despite its brilliance, it was unsuitable
as a lamp in homes. However, photo studios widely adopted his lamps because the
black and white film of the time just needed very bright light, despite its colour.
There were also many industrial uses for the lamp. His manufacturing company (est.
1902) was bought by General Electric in 1919 which produced a new design in 1933.
August
24: Rudolf
Clausius
(Born
January 2, 1822: Died August 24, 1888)
Rudolf (Julius Emanuel) Clausius was
a German mathematical physicist who formulated the second law of thermodynamics
and is credited with making thermodynamics a science. Essentially a theoretical
physicist, he published his work in thermodynamics in 1865 wherein he stated the
First and Second laws of thermodynamics in the following form: (1) The energy
of the universe is constant. (2) The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.
In all Clausius wrote eight important papers on the topic. He restated Sadi Carnot's
principle of the efficiency of heat engines. The -Clapeyron equation expresses
the relation between the pressure and temperature at which two phases of a substance
are in equilibrium.
August
23: William
Henry Eccles
(Born
August 23, 1875: Died April 29, 1966)
British physicist who pioneered in the
development of radio communication. Eccles was an early proponent of Oliver Heaviside's
theory that an upper layer of the atmosphere reflects radio waves, thus enabling
their transmission over long distances. He also suggested in 1912 that solar radiation
accounted for the differences in wave propagation during the day and night. He
experimented with detectors and amplifiers for radio reception, coined the term
"diode," and studied atmospheric disturbances of radio reception. After
WW I, he made many contributions to electronic circuit development*, including
the Eccles-Jordan "flip-flop" patented in 1918 and used in binary counters
(working with F.W. Jordan).
August
22: Willis
Rodney Whitney
(Born
August 22, 1868: Died January 9, 1958)
American chemist and founder of the
General Electric Company's research laboratory, where he directed pioneering work
in electrical technology and was credited with setting the pattern for industrial
scientific laboratory research in the United States.
August
21: Adding
machine patent
In
1888, William Seward Burroughs of St. Louis, Missouri, received a patent on his
adding machine (No. 388,118), the first in the U.S. for a machine that would be
successfully marketed. One year after making his patent application in Jan 1885,
he incorporated his business as the American Arithmometer Corporation of St. Louis,
in Jan 1886, with an authorized capitalization of $100,000. Twenty years after
that, in Jan 1905, that company was acquired by the Burroughs Adding Machine Co.,
organized under the laws of Michigan, with a capital of $5 million.
August
20: Edward
Weston
(Born
August 20, 1936: Died May 9, 1850)
British-born American electrical engineer
and industrialist who founded the Weston Electrical Instrument Company. He moved
to America as a young medical student in 1870. In the next few years, he revolutionized
the electro-plating industry by inventing and manufacturing a highly successful
electroplating dynamo, which far surpassed the efficiency of storage batteries.
He patented the dynamo and a nickel-plating anode in 1875. From then until about
1917, Weston was granted 334 U.S patents. After early experiments with designs
of incandescent lamps, he distinguished himself with the invention and manufacture
of a series of precision electronical measuring instruments.
August
19: Blaise
Pascal
(Born
June 19, 1623: Died August 19, 1662)
French mathematician, physicist, child
prodigy. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities. In hydrodynamics
he formulated what came to be known as Pascal's law of pressure, and invented
the syringe and hydraulic press. Pascal invented the first digital calculator
to help his father with his work collecting taxes. He worked on it for three years
(1642-45). The device, called the Pascaline, resembled a mechanical calculator
of the 1940s. This, almost certainly, makes Pascal the second person to invent
a mechanical calculator for Schickard had manufactured one in 1624. He died at
the young age of 39 having been sickly and physically weak through life. Autopsy
showed he had been born with a deformed skull.
August
18: Bern
Dibner
(Born
August 18, 1897: Died January 6, 1988)
Ukrainian-American engineer and historian
of science. 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.
August
17: Henry
Joseph Round
(Born
June 2, 1881: Died August 17, 1966)
English electronics engineer whose numerous
inventions contributed to the development of radio communications. He joined the
Marconi Company in 1902, and for his earliest work he devised the elements of
direction-finding equipment. Round became Chief of Marconi Research in 1921. He
was a prolific inventor. Amongst other inventions he designed the Straight Eight
Gramophone Recording System, a large audience public address system which was
used to relay King George's speech at the Wembley Exhibitions. A talking picture
system he invented was used to record sound on to film during the 1930's cinema
boom. In total he produced 117 patents. The last was "Pressure Wave Transmission
Arrangements" (1964), at age 83.
August
16: Gabriel
Lippmann
(Born
August 16, 1845: Died July 13, 1921)
French physicist, born Hollerich, Luxembourg,
who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1908 for producing the first colour
photographic plate. Lippmann was a giant of his day in classical physics research,
especially in optics and electricity. He worked in Berlin with the famed Hermann
von Helmholtz before settling in Paris to head (in 1886) the Sorbonne's Laboratories
of Physical Research until his death. His inventions include an instrument for
precisely measuring minute differences in electrical power and the "coleostat"
for steady, long-exposure sky photography.
August
15: Leslie
John Comrie
(Born
August 15, 1893: Died December 11, 1950)
New Zealand astronomer and pioneer
in mechanical computation. He joined HM Nautical Almanac Office in 1926, becoming
superintendent (1930-36). There, he revolutionized the computing methods by installing
desk calculators and punched card machines originally made for accounting. Further,
he implemented efficient numerical methods for use with these mechanical computing
aids. He left there to found the Scientific Computing Service Ltd., the first
commercial calculating service in Great Britain, where he was more free to apply
his ideas of mechanical computation for the preparation of mathematical tables.
Using card processing systems he prepared the way for the electronic computer.
August
14: Hans
Christian Ørsted
(Born
August 14, 1777)
Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric
current in a wire can deflect a magnetized compass needle, a phenomenon the importance
of which was rapidly recognized and which inspired the development of electromagnetic
theory.
August
13: Felix
Wankel
(Born
August 13, 1902: Died October 9, 1988)
German engineer and inventor of the
Wankel rotary engine, the first rotary internal combustion engine. The Wankel
engine is distinguished by the presence of an orbiting rotor in the shape of a
curved equilateral triangle that does the work done by the moving pistons in other
internal-combustion engines. Advantages of the Wankel engine include light weight,
few moving parts, compactness.
August
12: Harry
Brearley
(Born
February 18, 1871: Died August 12, 1948)
English metallurgist who invented
stainless steel, which is an alloy of steel with chromium and nickel. In 1912,
he was investigating corrosion of rifle barrels because their internal diameter
was quickly eroded from the action of heating and discharge gases. His solution
was to develop a chrome alloy steel which was much more rust resistant than the
steel then in common use. The added metals produce a surface film of metal oxides
which resists rusting. Thus it was termed "stainless steel". He also
realized how it could revolutionize the cutlery industry. Until then, table cutlery
was silver or nickel plated, and cutting knives of carbon steel had to thoroughly
washed and dried after use, and even then rust stains would have to be rubbed
off.
August
11: Tom
Kilburn
(Born
August 11, 1921: Died January 17, 2001)
British electrical engineer who wrote
the computer program used to test the first stored-program computer, the Small-Scale
Experimental Machine, SSEM, also known as "The Baby." First tested on
June 12, 1948, the program took 52 minutes to run. The tiny experimental computer
had no keyboard or printer, but it successfully tested a memory system developed
at Manchester University in England. This system, based on a cathode-ray tube,
was the first that could store programs, whereas previous electronic computers
had to be rewired to execute each new problem.
August
10: Wolfgang
Paul
(Born
August 10, 1913: Died December 6, 1993)
German physicist developed the Paul
trap, an electromagnetic device that captures ions and holds them long enough
for study and precise measurement of their properties. During the 1950s he developed
the so-called Paul trap as a means of confining and studying electrons. The device
consists of three electrodes - two end caps and an encircling ring. The ring is
connected to an oscillating potential. The direction of the electric field alternates;
for half the time the electron is pushed from the caps to the ring and for the
other half it is pulled from the ring and pushed towards the caps. For his work
he shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physics with Hans G. Dehmelt and Norman F.
Ramsey.
August
9: Sir
Edward Frankland
(Born
January 18, 1825: Died August 9, 1899)
English chemist who was one of the
first investigators in the field of structural chemistry, invented the chemical
bond, and became known as the father of valency. He studied organometallic compounds
- hybrid molecules of the familiar organic non-metallic elements (such as carbon,
hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus) with true metals. By 1850, he had prepared
small organic molecules containing such metals as zinc. Subsequently, he devised
the theory of valence (announced 10 May 1852), that each type of atom has a fixed
capacity for combination with other atoms. For his investigations on water purification
and for his services to the government as water analyst, Frankland was knighted
in 1897.
August
8: Sir
Nevill Francis Mott
(Born
September 30, 1905: Died August 8, 1996)
English physicist who shared (with
P.W. Anderson and J.H. Van Vleck of the U.S.) the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physics
for his independent researches on the magnetic and electrical properties of amorphous
semiconductors. Whereas the electric properties of crystals are described by the
Band Theory - which compares the conductivity of metals, semiconductors, and insulators
- a famous exception is provided by nickel oxide. According to band theory, nickel
oxide ought to be a metallic conductor but in reality is an insulator. Mott refined
the theory to include electron-electron interaction and explained so-called Mott
transitions, by which some metals become insulators as the electron density decreases
by separating the atoms from each other in some convenient way.
August
7: James
Bowdin
(Born
August 7, 1726: Died November 6, 1790)
American founder and first president
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1780). He was a scientist prominent
in physics and astronomy, and wrote several papers including one on electricity
with Benjamin Franklin, a close friend. In one of his letters to Franklin, Bowdoin
suggested the theory, since generally accepted, that the phosphorescence of the
sea, under certain conditions, is due to the presence of minute animals. Bowdoin
was also a political leader in Massachusetts during the American revolution (1775-83),
and governor of Massachusetts (1785-87). His remarkable library of 1,200 volumes,
ranged from science and math to philosophy, religion, poetry, and fiction. He
left it in his will to the Academy.
August
6: Lightning
experimenter dies
In
1753, Professor Georg Richmann of St. Petersburg, Moscow, was killed by his experiment
with lightning. One year after Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment, Richmann attached
a wire to the top of his house and led it down to an iron bar suspended above
"the electric needle" and a bowl of water partly filled with iron filings*.
It was reported that during a storm, Richmann was struck while about a foot from
the bar, and closely observing the needle. "A globe of blue and whitish fire
about four inches diameter" from the bar struck Richmann's forehead"
with "an explosion like that of a small cannon." His assistant, M. Sokolaw,
who survived, was thrown to the floor feeling blows on his back. He found marks
of burning hot wire fragments on the back of his clothes.
August
5: Thomas
Newcomen
(Born
February 24, 1663: Died August 5, 1729)
Thomas Newcomen, inventor of the atmospheric
steam engine, died in London. His invention of c.1711 came into use to pump water
out of coal mines by 1725. It had a piston connected to one end of a large crossbeam;
the other end was connected to a very heavy pump piston. On each stroke, water
chilled and condensed the steam in the cylinder, dropping the piston thus moving
the crossbeam and operating the pump. This was wasteful of fuel needed to reheat
the cylinder for the next stroke. Although it was slow and inefficient, Newcomen's
engine was relied on for the first 60 years of the new steam age it began.
August
4: Étienne
Lenoir
(Born January 12, 1822: Died August 4, 1900)
(Jean-Joseph-) Étienne
Lenoir was a Belgian inventor who devised the world's first commercially successful
internal-combustion engine. He moved to Paris where his work with electro-plating
led him to other electrical inventions, among them a railway telegraph. Lenoir
patented his first engine in 1860. Looking much like a double-acting steam engine,
it fired an uncompressed charge of air and illuminating gas with an ignition system
of his own design. One of these engines powered a road vehicle in 1863; another
ran a boat. Because of improved designs by Nikolaus Otto and other inventors,
the Lenoir engine became obsolete and only about 500 Lenoir engines were built.
The Lenoir engine wasn't efficient enough, and the inventor died poor.
August
3: Emile
Berliner
(Born
May 20, 1851: Died August 3, 1929)
German-born American inventor who made
important contributions to telephone technology and developed the phonograph record
disk, the microphone in 1877 and the gramaphone in 1887. Whereas Edison invented
cylindrical records, Berliner came up with the idea of using disks.
August
2: Elisha
Gray
(Born August 2, 1935: Died January 21, 1901
Elisha Gray was a U.S. scientist
and innovator who would have been known to us as the inventor of the telephone
if Alexander Graham bell hadn't got to the patent office before him earlier that
day, resulting in a famous legal battle. He subsequently joined Western Electric
where he designed the telegraph printer, the answer-back call-box of the A.D.T.
System, and the needle annunciator, among other inventions. He also goes down
in history as the accidental creator of the first electronic musical instrument
using his discovery of the basic single note oscillator and design of a simple
loudspeaker device.
August
1: Georges
Charpak
(Born
August 1, 1924)
Polish-born French physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize for
Physics in 1992 for his invention and development of subatomic particle detectors,
in particular the multiwire proportional chamber, a breakthrough in the technique
for exploring the innermost parts of matter. As particle physicists have focussed
their interest on very rare particle interactions, which often reveal the secrets
of the inner parts of matter, sometimes only one particle interaction in a billion
is the one searched for. Charpak replaced now inadequate photographic methods
with used modern electronics that connected the detector directly to a computer.
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