Fowler Associates Labs

January
Important dates in History

January 30: Heart Pacemaker
In 1957, an external artificial pacemaker with internal heart electrode is first used. To maintain a patient's heartbeat rhythm an electrode was sewn to the wall of the heart and connected through the chest to an external desk-top pulse generator. A team of scientists at the University of Minnesota, led by Dr C. Walton Lillehei, made this medical advance. However, such bulky equipment was not a good long-term solution since infection often occurred along the electrode wires, and the device required no interruption in the house electricity. So Dr. Lillehei also initiated research on the use of a small portable external pacemaker for these patients with heart block. This ultimately led to the development of the billion-dollar pacemaker industry.

January 27: Incandescent Lamp
In 1880, Thomas Edison received a patent (#223,898) for his electric incandescent lamp he invented on 21 Nov 1879. Edison's invention of the light bulb had a major impact on the electronics and computer industries. During the two years of research it took to develop the bulb, one of Edison's assistants noticed a flow of energy from one electrode to another in a pattern later known as the Edison effect. Later, the Edison effect was discovered to be an electron flow, which laid the basis for the electron tube and thence the entire electronics industry.

January 24: Early Computer
In 1948, IBM presented 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. The was perhaps the earliest true computer.

January 22: André-Marie Ampère
(Born January 22, 1775; Died June 10, 1836)
French mathematician and physicist who founded and named the science of electrodynamics, now known as electromagnetism. His interests included mathematics, metaphysics, physics and chemistry. In mathematics he worked on partial differential equations. Ampère made significant contributions to chemistry. In 1811 he suggested that an anhydrous acid prepared two years earlier was a compound of hydrogen with an unknown element, analogous to chlorine, for which he suggested the name fluorine. He produced a classification of elements in 1816. Ampère also worked on the wave theory of light. By the early 1820's, Ampère was working on a combined theory of electricity and magnetism, after hearing about Oersted's experiments.

January 21: British physicist H. L. Callendar dies
(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 21: Inventor Elisha Gray
(Born August 2, 1835; Died January 21, 1901)
American 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.

January 20: Zenobe- Theophile Gramm
(Born JApril 4, 1826; Died January 20, 1901
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 17: Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Kohlrausch
(Born October 14, 1840; Died January 17, 1910)
German physicist who investigated the properties of electrolytes (substances that conduct electricity in solutions by transfer of ions) and contributed to the understanding of their behaviour. Some of Kohlrausch's pioneering achievements include conductivity measurements on electrolytes, his work on the determination of basic magnetic and electrical quantities, and the enhancement of the associated measuring technologies. It was under his direction that the "Physikalisch- Technische Reichsanstalt" (the then Imperial Physical Technical Institute in Germany) created numerous standards and calibration standards which were also used internationally outside Germany.

January 16: Van de Graaff inventor dies
Robert Jemison Van de Graaff: (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.

January 15: In 1907, the three-element vacuum tube was issued a U.S. patent to its inventor, Dr Lee de Forest as a "device for amplifying feeble electric currents - such, for example, as telephone currents" (No. 841,387). The tube was evacuated, with some remaining conducting gas molecules, and it was suggested using for the heated electrode such material as platinum, tantalum or carbon. He had made a public annoucement of his device a few months earlier, on 20 Oct 1906 at a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers held in New York City. On 18 Feb 1908, he received another patent for the grid electrode tube (No. 879,532).

January 14: Precursor of the electric telephone inventor, Johann Phillipp Reis dies
(Born January 7, 1834: Died January 14, 1874)
German physicist who constructed a precursor of the electric telephone. At the age of 27, he constructed a rudimentary transmitter by placing an animal ear membrane in front of an electrical contact. A galvanic inductor oscillated in the receiver in the same manner as the transmitted signal. Reis's instrument conveyed certain sounds, poorly, but no more than that; intelligible speech could not be reproduced. The professors to whom this invention was presented were not very impressed and this version of the "telephone" never received any financial support and no patent ensued. Reis' devices were fragile and clumsy laboratory models, never put to public use.

January 13: English electrical engineer Sabastian Ziani de Ferranti dies January 13, 1930
English electrical engineer (born April 9, 1864)who promoted the installation of large electrical generating stations and alternating current distribution networks in England. He was interested in electrical and mechanical devices as a youth, and in 1881, began such employment while in his late teens. In his 20's, he began planning an ambitious generating station about 8 miles outside London, to use transmission at an unprecedented 10,000 volts - four times greater than previously practical. For this he began designing suitable cables, transformers and generators. His idea of making high voltage flexible cables using wax-impregnated paper for insulation was a landmark development used exclusively until the advent of synthetic materials. His 176 patents cover varied inventions.

January 12: In 1886, a patent for an "Electrode for Telephone- Transmitters" was issued to Thomas Alva Edison (No. 348114). The patent application was dated one year earlier on 12 Jan 1885.

January 12: Co-founder of Hewlett Packard Company: Died 12 Jan 2001
William (Redington) Hewlett (born 20 May 1913) was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Hewlett-Packard Company, a leading manufacturer computers, computer printers, and analytic and measuring equipment. In 1939, he formed a partnership known as Hewlett-Packard Company with David Packard, a friend and Stanford classmate. (The order of their names was determined by a coin toss.) HP's first product was an audio oscillator based on a design developed by Hewlett when he was in graduate school. Eight were sold to Walt Disney for Fantasia. Lesser-known early products were: bowling alley foul-line indicator, automatic urinal flusher, weight-loss shock machine. The company's first "plant" was a small garage in Palo Alto, with $538 initial capital.

January 9: Willis Rodney Whitney, American chemist: Died January 9, 1958
Willis Rodney Whitney (born August 22, 1868) was a 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.

January 8: John W. Mauchly, American Physicist and engineer: Died January 8, 1980.
Mauchly (born August 30, 1907) was coinventor in 1946, with John P. Eckert, of 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: 1943 - Nikola Tesla, Yugoslavian physicist (tesla motor), dies at 86
Serbian-American inventor and researcher (born 9/10 Jul 1856) who discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He emigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse.

Photos courtsey of Today in Science