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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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