December
Important
dates in History
December
31: Arsène
d'Arsonval
(Born
June 8, 1851: Died December 31, 1940)
Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval was
a French physician and physicist who was a pioneer in therapeutic use of electricity,
heat, and light. He designed the first reflecting moving coil galvanometer for
measurement of a small electric current (1882). Arsonval's early research into
animal heat, muscle contraction, and electrophysiology led to his invention of
devices used to treat diseases through electricity. He created high-frequency
currents used to treat diseases of the skin and mucous membranes (1890), and showed
that a human being could conduct an alternating current strong enough to light
an electric lamp (1892).
December
31: Edison's
light
In
1879, inventor Thomas Edison first publicly demonstrated his electric incandescent
light in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
December
30: Tungsten
filaments
In
1913, Dr William David Coolidge patented (#1,082,933) a method for making ductile
tunsten for the purpose of making filaments for electric lamps. When Coolidge
joined the General Electric Research Laboratory (1905), he was given the task
of replacing the fragile carbon filaments in electric light bulbs with tungsten
filaments, although tungsten was difficult to work. He developed a way to superheat
the metal tunsten in order to draw it out into the fine threads used for lamp
filaments. Coolidge then improved the X-ray tube by using a heated tungsten filament
cathode in vacuum producing electrons, instead of residual gas molecules in the
tube. This permitted higher operating voltages, higher energy X rays and the treatment
of deeper-seated tumors.
December
29: Charles
Goodyear
(Born
December 29, 1800: Died July 1, 1860)
American inventor of the vulcanization
process that made possible the commercial use of rubber. Originally the use of
rubber was limited since it would freeze hard in winter and become gummy in summer.
After years of persistent experimentation, Goodyear mixed and baked sulfur and
rubber together, creating a tough, cured compound that could withstand the heat
and stress. Unfortunately, he was a poor businessman, unable to profit from his
invention or effectively patent it abroad. The "vulcanized" name was
applied by English rubber pioneer Thomas Hancock, using the sugggestion of a friend
to name the process after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. Nor was Goodyear ever
connected to the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. which was named in his honor.
December
28: Johannes
Robert Rydberg
(Born
November 8, 1854: Died December 28, 1919)
Swedish physicist for whom the Rydberg
constant in spectroscopy is named. Rydberg found a relatively simple expression
relating the various lines in the spectra of the elements (1890). He hoped to
determine the structure of the atom but, although his work did provide the basis
for the structure theory, he himself did not reach his goal.
December
27: Charles
Martin Hall
(Born
December 6, 1863: Died December 27, 1914)
U.S. chemist and inventor who discovered
the electrolytic method of producing aluminum, thus bringing the metal into wide
commercial use. As a young chemist experimenting in a woodshed, Hall invented
a method for extracting pure aluminum from its ore. He had the idea that if he
could find a nonaqueous solvent for aluminum oxide, he could produce metallic
aluminum by electrolysis, using carbon electrodes and home-made batteries. On
Feb. 23, 1886, Hall found that molten cryolite (the mineral sodium aluminum fluoride)
was a solvent for the process and he produced his first small globules of aluminum.
By 1914, Hall's process had brought the cost of aluminum, once a precious metal
used for fine jewelry, down to 18 cents a pound.
December
26: Computer-
Man of the Year
In
1982, The Man of the Year in Time magazine was a non-human for the first time.
A computer received the honour as 1982's "greatest influence for good or
evil." The article recognized that, "By itself, the personal computer
is a machine with formidable capabilities for tabulating, modeling or recording.
Those capabilities can be multiplied almost indefinitely by plugging it into a
network of other computers. This is generally done by attaching a desk-top model
to a telephone line (two-way cables and earth satellites are coming increasingly
into use). One can then dial an electronic data base, which not only provides
all manner of information but also collects and transmits messages: electronic
mail."
December
25: Centigrade
In 1741, the Centigrade temperature
scale was devised by astronomer Anders Celsius (1701-44) and incorporated into
a Delisle thermometer at Uppsala in Sweden. Celsius divided the fixed-point range
of the Fahrenheit scale (the freezing and boiling temperatures of water) into
100 equal divisions, but curiously set the freezing point at 100 and the boiling
point at 0. This reverse scaling was changed to match the sense of the other temperature
scales after Celsius's death.
December
24: James
Prescott Joule
(Born
December 24, 1818: Died October 11, 1889)
English physicist who established
that the various forms of energy - mechanical, electrical, and heat - are basically
the same and can be changed, one into another. Thus he formed the basis of the
law of conservation of energy, the first law of thermodynamics. He discovered
(1840) the relationship between electric current, resistance, and the amount of
heat produced. In 1849 he devised the kinetic theory of gases, and a year later
announced the mechanical equivalent of heat. Later, with William Thomson (Lord
Kelvin), he discovered the Joule-Thomson effect. The SI unit of energy or work
, the joule (symbol J), is named after him. It is defined as the work done when
a force of 1 newton moves a distance of 1 metre in the direction of the force.
December
22: Robert
E. Kahn
(Born
December 23, 1938)
American computer scientist who co-created the packet-switching
protocols that enable computers to exchange information on the Internet. In the
late 1960s Kahn realized that a packet-switching network could effectively transmit
large amounts of data between computers. Along with fellow computer scientists
Vinton Cerf, Lawrence Roberts, Paul Baran, and Leonard Kleinrock, Kahn built the
ARPANET, the first network to successfully link computers around the country.
Kahn and Cerf also developed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet
Protocol (IP), which together enable communication between different types of
computers and networks; TCP/IP is the standard still in use today.
December
22: Gustav
Waldemar Elman
(Born
December 22, 1876: Died December 10, 1957)
Swedish-American electrical engineer
and metallurgist who developed permalloys, metallic alloys with a high magnetic
permeability used in electronic communications. This property enables the alloy
to be easily magnetized and demagnetized, and such alloys are important for use
in electrical equipment, telephones and other communications systems. In 1916,
he developed Permalloy for Western Electric Company (later Bell Telephone Laboratories)
This nickel-iron alloy has a higher magnetic permeability than that of silicon
steel. Later, in 1923, Elmen found that magnetic permeability could be dramatically
enhanced if Permalloy was heat treated. His discovery made possible deep-sea telegraph
cables of large message- carrying capacity.
December
21: Tom
Bacon
(Born
December 21, 1904: Died May 24, 1992)
Francis Thomas Bacon was an English
engineer who developed the first practical hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells, which convert
air and fuel directly into electricity through electrochemical processes. The
principle, devised in 1842 by Sir William Grove was not seriously pursued until
Bacon in the early 1940s, proposed their use in submarines and began research.
By 1959 he developed a successful six-kilowatt fuel cell. When fuel cells were
used by U.S. Apollo space vehicles, they could both provide in-flight power and
clean drinking water, the by-product of the electrochemical reaction.
December
20: Robert
Jemison Van de Graff
(Born
December 20, 1901: Died January 16, 1967)
American physicist and inventor
of the Van de Graaff generator, a type of high-voltage electrostatic generator
that serves as a type of particle accelerator. It uses the principle of electric
fields that charges on a dome can leap off at points where the curvature is great.
Thus, a dome of great radius will inhibit the electric discharge and create stored
charge at a high voltage. This device has found widespread use not only in atomic
research but also in medicine and industry.
December
19: Altair
microcomputer
In
1974, the pioneering Altair 8800 microcomputer was first put on sale in the U.S.
as a do-it-yourself computer kit, for $397. It used switches for input and flashing
lights as a display. Ed Roberts founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems
(MITS) to market his product that used the 8800 microprocessor. The demand for
the $395.00 machine exceeded MITS' wildest expectations. The Altair 8800 was featured
on the cover of the Janurary 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. The first commercially
successful personal computer, the Commodore PET, which integrated a keyboard and
monitor in its case, came out in early 1977. The Apple II followed later that
year.
December
18: Edwin
H. Armstrong
(Born
December 18, 1890: Died January 31/February 1, 1954)
Edwin H(oward) Armstrong
was the American inventor who laid the foundation for much of modern radio and
electronic circuitry. Fascinated by radio from childhood, he built a 125-foot-tall
antenna in the front yard in 1910 and invented the continuous-wave transmitter
(1912), the regenerative circuit (1912), superheterodyne circuits (1918), and
frequency modulation for the FM radio system (1933). His inventions and developments
form the backbone of radio communications as we know it. Exhausted by nonstop
patent battles from the 1920s on, he took his own life. Nevertheless, he won most
of the suits posthumously.
December
17: Edison
Electric
In
1880, the Edison Electric Illuminating Company was incorporated for the purpose
of providing electric light to New York City. It was capitalized with $1,000,000.
The first central electric station in the U.S. was opened by this company on 4
Sep 1882 at 257 Pearl St. in lower Manhattan. It had one engine, capable of generating
power for 800 light bulbs. Within 14 months, the service had 508 subscribers and
12,732 bulbs. The company was the prototype for other local illuminating companies
that were established in the United States during the 1880s. Edison's earlier
Electric Light Company was incorporated October 15, 1878 for the purpose of financing
Edison's invention of the incandescent lamp.
December
16: Percy
Carlyle Gilchrist
(Born
December 27, 1851: Died December 16, 1935)
Metallurgist who, with his better-known
cousin Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, devised in 1876-77 a process (thereafter widely
used in Europe) of manufacturing in Bessemer converters a kind of low-phosphorus
steel known as Thomas steel. In the Thomas-Gilchrist process the lining of calcined
dolomite (lime) used in the converter is basic rather than acidic (silica) and
it captures the acidic phosphorus oxides formed upon blowing air through molten
iron made from the high-phosphorus iron ore prevalent in Europe. It reduces phosphorous
content of steel to roughly 0.04%, an important improvement since higher phosphorus
makes steel brittle.
December
15: Wolfgang
Pauli
(Born
April 25, 1900: Died December 15, 1958)
Austrian-born American winner of the
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945 for his discovery in 1925 of the Pauli exclusion
principle, which states that in an atom no two electrons can occupy the same quantum
state simultaneously. This principle clearly relates the quantum theory to the
observed properties of atoms.
December
14: Nikolay
Gennadiyevich Basov
(Born
December 14, 1922)
Soviet physicist, best known for the development of the
maser, the precursor of the laser. In 1955, while working as a research student
with Aleksandr Prokhorov at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he devised a microwave
amplifier based on ammonia molecules. The two scientists shared the 1964 Nobel
Prize (with American Charles Townes) , who independently developed a maser), for
basic research in quantum electronics that led to the development of both the
maser and the laser. These devices produce monochromatic, parallel, coherent beams
of microwaves and light, respectively. Basov went on to develop the laser principle,
and introduced the idea of using semiconductors to achieve laser action (1958).
December
13: Philip
W. Anderson
(Born
December 13, 1923)
Philip Warren Anderson is an American physicist who (with
John H. Van Vleck and Sir Nevill F. Mott) received the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physics
for his research on semiconductors, superconductivity, and magnetism. He made
contributions to the study of solid-state physics, and research on molecular interactions
has been facilitated by his work on the spectroscopy of gases. He conceived a
model (known as the Anderson model) to describe what happens when an impurity
atom is present in a metal. He also investigated magnetism and superconductivity,
and his work is of fundamental importance for modern solid-state electronics,
making possible the development of inexpensive electronic switching and memory
devices in computers.
December
12: Robert
Noyce
(Born
June 3, 1990: Died December 12, 1927)
Robert (Norton) Noyce was a U.S. engineer
and coinventor (1959), with Jack Kilby, of the integrated circuit, a system of
interconnected transistors on a single silicon microchip. He held sixteen patents
for semiconductor devices, methods, and structures. In 1968, he and colleague
Gordon E. Moore cofounded N.M. Electronics, which later was renamed Intel Corporation.
Noyce served as Intel's president and chairman (1968-75), then as vice chairman
until 1979.
December
11: Georg
von Kleist
(Born
c. 1700: Died December 11, 1748)
German physicist, E(wald) Georg von Kleist
was dean of the Cathedral of Kamin. Kleist experimented to store electric charge
efficiently, and discovered (1745) the Leyden jar, a fundamental electric circuit
element for storing electricity, now usually referred to as a capacitor. The first
Leyden jar was a stoppered glass jar partially filled with water with a wire or
nail extending through the cork into the water. While holding the jar in one hand,
the jar was charged by placing the end of the wire into contact with a static
electricity producer, then removed. When Kleist touched the wire with his other
hand, a discharge took place, giving himself a violent shock. The device was more
thoroughly investigated by Pieter van Musschenbroek (1946).
December
10: Thomas
Johann Seebeck
(Born
April 9, 1770: Died December 10, 1831)
German physicist who discovered (1821)
that an electric current flows between different conductive materials that are
kept at different temperatures, known as the Seebeck effect. It is the basis of
the thermocouple and is considered the most accurate measurement of temperature.
It is also a key component of the semi-conductor, the foundation of the modern
computer business. Seebeck's work was the basis of German physicist Georg Simon
Ohm (1789-1854) discoveries in electricity and of French physicist Jean Charles
Athanase Peltier (1785-1845), whose Peltier effect became well known as a way
to use electricity to freeze water (air conditioning, refrigeration).
December
9: Grace
Murray Hopper
(Born
December 9, 1906: Died January 1, 1992)
American mathematician and rear admiral
in the U.S. Navy. She pioneered the development of computer technology. Her ideas
contributed to the first commercial electronic computer, Univac I, and naval applications
for COBOL (co-mmon b-usiness o- riented l-anguage). With a Ph.D. in Mathematics
from Yale University (1934), she taught mathematics (Vassar, 1931-43), before
she joined the Naval Reserve. In 1944, she was commissioned as a Lieutenant (Junior
Grade) 1944, assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance where she became involved in the
early development of the electronic computer. For more than four decades, she
was a leader in computer applications and programming languages.
December
8: Albert
Kahn
(Born March 21, 1869: Died December 8, 1942)
German-American industrial architect
and planner, considered the world's foremost in his time: "father of modern
factory design." His rise coincided with the growth of U.S. industry, particularly
for the auto industry in Detroit. Shortly after founding Albert Kahn Associates
in 1895, he designed Detroit’s first large auto plants for the Packard Motor Car
Company. Kahn's design for Packard’s tenth building was the first concrete- reinforced
auto factory. The building was strong, fireproof, and with large areas free of
columns, an advance over the dangerous, inefficient, timber-framed plants of the
era. Kahn designed Ford Motor Company’s famous Highland Park plant, where Ford
produced of the Model T and perfected the assembly line process.
December
7: Bakelite
In 1909, Leo Baekeland of
Yonkers, New York, received the first U.S. patents for a thermosetting artificial
plastic which he called Bakelite. The patent (No. 942,699) for "an improvement
in methods of making insoluble condensation products of phenol-formaldehyde"
is commonly referred to as the "heat and pressure" patent. (Related
patents Nos. 942,700 and -809). Bakelite gave birth to the modern plastics industry.
Using money from his first invention, Velox photographic paper, he established
a laboratory, where he synthesized Bakelite, a nonflammable material that was
cheaper and more versatile than other known plastics. Bakelite has since been
used in everything from engine parts to jewelry to electronics.
December
6: Wolfgang
Paul
(Born
August 10, 1913: Died December 7, 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.
December
5: Sheldon
Lee Glashow
Born
December 5, 1932
American theoretical physicist who, with Steven Weinberg
and Abdus Salam, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for their complementary
efforts in formulating the electroweak theory, which explains the unity of electromagnetism
and the weak force.
December
4: William
Sturgeon
(
Born
May 22, 1783: Died December 4, 1850)
English electrical engineer who devised
the first electromagnet capable of supporting more than its own weight (1825).
The 7-ounce (200-gram) magnet was able to support 9 pounds (4 kilograms) of iron
using the current from a single cell. Sturgeon built an electric motor (1832)
and invented the commutator, now part of most modern electric motors. In 1836,
he invented the first suspended coil galvanometer, a device for measuring current.
His interests also extended to improving the voltaic battery, and developing theory
of thermoelectricity, and even atmospheric charge conditions. From 500 kite flights
made in calm weather, he found the atmosphere is consistently charged positively
with respect to the Earth, and increasingly so at increased height.
December
3: John
Backus
(Born
December 3, 1924: Died October 28, 1988)
American computer scientist who invented
the FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) programming language in the mid 1950s. He had
previously developed an assembly language for IBM's 701 computer when he suggested
the development of a compiler and higher level language for the IBM 704. As the
first high-level computer programming language, FORTRAN was able to convert standard
mathematical formulas and expressions into the binary code used by computers.
Thus a non-specialist could write a program in familiar words and symbols, and
different computers could use programs generated in the same language. This paved
the way for other computer languages such as COBOL, ALGOL and BASIC.
December
2: Heinrich
Georg Barkhausen
(Born
December 2, 1881: Died February 20, 1956)
German physicist who discovered
the Barkhausen effect (1919), a principle concerning changes in the magnetic properties
of metal. His work in acoustics and magnetism led to the discovery that magnetization
affects whole domains of a ferromagnetic material, rather than individual atoms
alone. He discovered that a slow, smooth increase of a magnetic field applied
to a piece of ferromagnetic material, such as iron, causes it to become magnetized,
not continuously but in minute steps. With Karl Kurz, he developed the Barkhausen-
Kurz oscillator (1920) for ultrahigh frequencies (forerunner of the microwave
tube), leading to understanding of the principle of velocity modulation. He is
also known for experiments on shortwave radio transmissions.
December
1: Frederick
Mark Becket
(Born
January 11, 1875: Died December 1, 1942)
Canadian Metallurgist who held more
than one hundred patents, covering a wide range of electric furnace and chemical
products, notably ferro-alloys, calcium carbide, and special chromium steels.
He developed a process of using silicon instead of carbon as a reducing agent
in metal production, thus making low-carbon ferroalloys and certain steels practical.
His processes for the production of low carbon ferro-alloys had world-wide application.
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