July
Important
dates in History
July
31: Stephanie
Kwolek
(Born July 31, 1923)
American chemist and inventor of Kevlar®. Shortly
after graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry (1946), she began a career
at DuPont's textile fibers department in Buffalo, New York. Kwolek was assigned
to search for a new, high-performance fiber that would be acid- and base-resistant
and stable at high temperatures. After many long hours of work and much experimentation,
she created a liquid polymer that, after being spun, was five times stronger than
steel and had half the density of fiberglass. It was named Kevlar. Today, this
fiber is used to make bullet-proof vests, aircraft parts, inflatable boats, gloves,
rope, and building materials.
July
30: Vladimir
Kosma Zworykin
(Born
July 30, 1889: Died July 29, 1982)
Russian-born U.S. electronic engineer,
inventor, "the Father of Television." Concurrent with the start of radio
broadcasting, Zworykin was developing a system of transmitting sound and pictures.
Other inventors were using a motorized, mechanical scanning system with rotating
disks capable of a picture about one inch square. It was heavy, bulky and impractical
for home use. Zworykin, at Westinghouse, instead developed an electronic scanning
television system using his innovations, the iconoscope and kinescope, the forerunners
of today's television camera. He also invented the electron microscope.
July
29: Transcontinental
phone call
In
1914, transcontinental telephone service began. It was celebrated with a telephone
conversation between Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco and Alexander Graham Bell
in New York City repeating their historic conversation from 1876. Wendover, Utah,
was the site of the completion of the first transcontinental telephone line in
1914. The day's state-of-the-art in signal transmission technology, loading coils,
had reached its limit, barely able to deliver a faint voice from New York to Denver
until Western Electric's high-vacuum tube for amplifying sound in telephone cables
was developed in 1913.
July
28: Metric
system
In
1866, the metric system was authorized for the standardization of weights and
measures throughout the United States.
July
27: John
Hopkinson
(Born
July 27, 1849)
British engineer and physicist who invented the three-wire
system (three phase) for electricity generation and distribution, a system that
he patented in 1882. He presented the principle the synchronous motors (1883).
Hopkinson improved the design and efficiency of electric generators, as well as
the study of condensers and the phenomena of residual load.efficiency.
July
26: John
R. Whinnery
(Born
July 26, 1916)
John Roy Whinnery is an American electrical engineer known
for his work on microwave theory and laser experimentation. He worked on the problem
of He-Ne laser modulation, the transmission of laser light for optical communication
and photo thermal effects. Later he changed his research field to quantum electronics
and opto-electronics. He co-authored the classic textbook, Fields and Waves in
Communication Electronics, before he had a doctoral degree while working 6 days
a week in microwaves at General Electric during WW II.
July
25: Sergey
Vasilyevich Lebedev
Born
25 July 1874; died 2 May 1934.(Born July 25, 1874: Died May 2, 1934)
Russian
chemist who developed a method for industrial production of synthetic rubber.
In 1910, while researching processes by which small molecules combine to form
large ones, Lebedev made an elastic rubber by polymerizing butadiene (CH2CH-CHCH2),
which he obtained from ethyl alcohol. Production of polybutadiene in the Soviet
Union using Lebedev's process was begun in 1932-33, using potatoes and limestone
as raw materials. By 1940 the Soviet Union had the largest synthetic rubber industry
in the world, producing more than 50,000 tons per year. During WW II his process
of obtaining butadiene from ethyl alcohol was also used by the German rubber industry.
July
24: Steam
pump
In
1844, Henry Rossiter Worthington patents the independent single direct-acting
steam power pump, an invention which laid the foundation of the entire pump industry.
He was a U.S. mechanical engineer, and this invention solved the major steam-engine
problem of supplying water to the boiler - even when the engine was shut down
- and replaced hand-pumping to keep the boiler filled. He had several inventions
leading to the perfection of the direct-acting steam power pump (1845-55), patented
the duplex steam pump (1859), and built the first duplex waterworks engine, widely
adopted and used for more than 75 years.
July
23: Mark
David Weiser
(Born
July 23, 1952: Died April 27, 1999)
American computer scientist and visionary
who developed the pioneering idea for what he referred to as "ubiquitous
computing," He coined that term in 1988 to describe a future in which PC's
will be replaced with tiny computers embedded in everyday "smart" devices
(everyday items such as coffeepots and copy machines) and their connection via
a network. He said, "First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people.
Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily
at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age
of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives."
July
22: Edward
Farber
(Born
July 22, 1914: Died January 22, 1982)
Edward (Rolke) Farber was an American
who invented a portable, battery-operated stroboscopic flash unit for still cameras
(1937) that effectively "stopped action." He began his career as a photojournalist
on the staff of the Milwaukee Journal. After studying electrical engineering at
Northwestern University, Farber went on to design flash equipment for the U.S.
Army during World War II, and then established his own electronic-flash manufacturing
firm. He was a good friend and collaborator of Harold Edgerton and developed the
first practical portable strobe flash for news photographers.
July
21: Rudolph
A. Marcus
(Born
July 21, 1923)
Canadian-born American chemist, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize
for Chemistry for his work on the theory of electron-transfer reactions in chemical
systems. The Marcus theory describes, and makes predictions concerning, such widely
differing phenomena as the fixation of light energy by green plants (photosynthesis),
cell metabolism, photochemical production of fuel, chemiluminescence ("cold
light"), the conductivity of electrically conducting polymers, corrosion,
the methodology of electrochemical synthesis and analysis, and more.
July
20: Robert
D. Maurer
(Born
July 20, 1924)
American research physicist, who with his colleagues at Corning
Glass Works, Dr. Donald B. Keck and Dr. Peter Schultz invented fused silica optical
waveguide - optical fiber. This was a breakthrough creating a revolution in telecommunications,
capable of carrying 65,000 times more information than conventional copper wire.
In 1970, Maurer, Keck, and Schultz solved a problem that had previously stumped
scientists around the world. They designed and produced the first optical fiber
with optical losses low enough for wide use in telecommunications. The light loss
was limited to 20 decibels per kilometer (at least one percent of the light entering
a fiber remains after traveling one kilometer).
July
19: Samuel
Colt
(Born
July 19, 1814: Died January 10, 1862)
Samuel Colt, born Hartford, Conn., was
an American firearms manufacturer who popularized the Colt 45 revolver and other
firearms. While an apprentice seaman, he made a wooden model of an automatically
revolving breech pistol (perhaps inspired by the ship's wheel) and on returning
to the U.S.A. he made metal models, filed for patents, and toured as "Dr.
Coult," thus earning the money he needed to begin manufacturing. His factory
was one of the most innovative in its use of mass-production technique. His Barnum-like
salesmanship and self-promotion also popularized his product.
July
18: Intel
incorporates
In
1968, the Intel Corporation, inventor of the microchip, was incorporated. In 1968,
a Hungarian immigrant by the name of Andy Grove co-founded Intel with a collaboration
of colleagues with the same interest, to revolutionize the computer world. In
1971, Intel released its first microprocessor, the 4004 designed for a calculator.
In 1972 came the more powerful 8008. With the introduction of the 8080 in 1974,
the first personal computers were made possible.
July
17: Carrier
invents air conditioner
In
1902, Willis Haviland Carrier completed drawings for what came to be recognized
as the world's first scientific air conditioning system. In 1901, he started working
in research and development for Buffalo Forge Co., a leading manufacturer of fan
heating equipment. Shortly, he was assigned to solve a problem for a printing
plant where humidity control was necessary for paper handling in the machinery.
The system he designed with cooling coils was installed at the Sackett and Wilhelms
Co. in Brooklyn in 1902. Unfortunately, it was retrofitted to an existing hot-blast
heating system instead of being properly designed from scratch as a total system.
However, Carrier went on to improve on his invention, and began the air-conditioning
industry.
July
16: John
Kay
(Born
July 16, 1704: Died 1764)
John Kay was an English machinist and engineer,
inventor of the flying shuttle power loom, patented 1733, which was an important
step toward automatic weaving. Kay placed shuttle boxes at each side of the loom
connected by a long board, known as a shuttle race. By means of cords attached
to a picking peg, a single weaver, using one hand, could cause the shuttle to
be knocked back and forth across the loom from one shuttle box to the other. A
weaver using Kay's flying shuttle could produce much wider cloth at faster speeds
than before.
July
15: Dobby
loom
In
1879, a patent for the first American "dobby" loom (U.S. No. 217,589)
was issued to Horace Wyman and George Crompton of Worcester, Mass. This was a
type of loom on which small, geometric figures can be woven in as a regular pattern
as exemplified in Turkish towelling. The harness frames are elevated by hooked
jacks and depressed by springs. Originally this type of loom needed a dobby boy
who sat on the top of the loom and drew up warp threads to term a pattern. Wyman
an American inventor who in his life held 260 patents related to looms and textile
machinery. He assigned the patent to George Crompton.
July
14: Jay
Forrester
( Born
July 14, 1918)
Jay Wright Forrester is a U.S. electrical engineer and management
expert. In 1944-51 he supervised the building of the Whirlwind computer at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for which he invented the random-access
magnetic core memory, the information-storage device employed in most digital
computers. He also studied the application of computers to management problems,
developing methods for computer simulation.
July
13: New
York blackout
In
1977, a power failure blacked out New York. Starting at about 9 pm, four lightning
strikes on high-voltage transmission lines within the course of about half-an-hour
knocked out electricity and plunged millions of residents of New York City into
darkness. Unlike the calm during a similar blackout in 1965, the 1977 blackout
erupted in chaos. The city was already in the midst of a financial crisis and
high unemployment. Responding to the tension of the times, mobs set fires, smashed
windows and hauled away food, clothing and appliances. It took 25 hours to restore
power to the entire city. About 4,500 people were arrested during the riots, which
resulted in damage estimated at $61 million.
July
12: Celluloid
In 1870, a U.S. patent (No.
105,338) for a process by which celluloid is produced was awarded to John W(esley)
Hyatt, Jr., (1837 - 1920) the man considered to be the "father of the U.S.
Plastics industry," and his brother, Isaiah S. Hyatt of Albany, N.Y. In the
early 1860's he sought a substitute material for ivory billiard balls. He improved
the techniques of molding pyroxylin (a partially nitrated cellulose) with camphor
by dissolving in an alcohol and ether mixture to make it softer and more malleable.
This he called "Celluloid," a name trademarked on 14 Jan 1873. It was
the first synthetic plastic. Unfortunately, it was inflammable, but was used for
a period for production of photographic film, among other applications. Hyatt
gathered 200 patents.
July
11: Aleksandr
Prokhorov
(Born
July 11, 1916)
Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Prokhorov is the Soviet physicist who
received, (with Nikolay G. Basov, USSR and Charles H. Townes, US), the Nobel Prize
for Physics in 1964 "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics,
which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser
principle." "Maser" stands for "microwave amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation." An amplification can occur only if the
stimulated emission is larger than the absorption, requiring that there should
be more atoms in a high energy state than in a lower one. This state is called
an inverted population. Prokhorov had researched the maser independently but simultaneously
with the other prize recipients.
July
10: Harold
DeForest Arnold
(Born
September 3, 1883: Died July 10, 1933)
American physicist whose research led
to the development of long-distance telephony and radio communication. He worked
at Western Electric on thermionic tubes, which amplified radio and telephone signals,
leading to transcontinental telephony (July 1914). Even before the transcontinental
line was completed, Arnold was directing work on the development of new higher
power tubes to extend telephone service by radio to other continents. The first
transcontinental demonstration of radio telephone (29 Sep 1915) was transmitted
from New York City to Arlington, Virginia, then to San Francisco and Honolulu.
Arnold later became the first director of research at Bell Telephone Labs (1925
to his death in 1933).
July
9: Percy
Spencer
(Born
July 9, 1894: Died 1970)
Percy Le Baron Spencer invented the microwave oven.
In 1940, Sir John Randall and Dr. H. A. Boot invented the magnetron tube to produce
radar microwaves. After the war, Dr. Percy Spencer at the Raytheon Company was
investigating the magnetron tube. During one experiment, he discovered that a
chocolate bar in his pocket had totally melted. Dr. Spencer deduced the magnetron
radiation had melted the chocolate, not his body heat. This led Spencer to researched
cooking food. The first commercial microwave ovens were made for restaurants.
July
8: Pyotr
Kapitsa
(Born
July 8, 1894: Died April 8, 1984)
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Russian physicist,
was a corecipient of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for his basic strong magnetic
field inventions and discoveries in the area of low-temperature physics. He discovered
that helium II (the stable form of liquid helium below 2.174 K, or -270.976 C)
has almost no viscosity (i.e., resistance to flow). Late in the 1940's Kapitza
changed his focus, inventing high power microwave generators - planotron and nigotron
(1950-1955) and discovered a new kind of continuous high pressure plasma discharge
with electron temperatures over a million K.
July
7: Phillips
head screw
In
1936, several U.S. patents were issued for the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver
to its inventor, Henry F. Phillips (Nos. 2,046,343, 2,046,837 -40). They describe
a fastening system involving a shallow cruciform recess and a matching driver
with a tapering tip that conveniently self-centers in the screw head. Phillips
founded the Phillips Screw Company to license his patents. After three years of
rejection, he finally persuaded the American Screw Company to spend $500,000 developing
a manufacturing process and manufacture the screws. General Motors was convinced
to use the screws on its 1936 Cadillac. By 1940 virtually every American automaker
had switched to Phillips screws.
July
6: Sidney
George Brown
(Born
July 6, 1873: Died 1948)
American-born British electrical engineer, inventor
and radio pioneer with over 1000 patents. He patented the first solid state detector
to be useful in a receiving apparatus on 3 Jun 1904. It was actually a solid state
electrolytic detector but its macroscopic characteristics were so similar to those
of a crystal detector that it was later catalogued with the latter for sales purposes.
In 1911, he founded the SG Brown Company which concentrated primarily on designing
and manufacturing navigation and communication products for the military and commercial
marine industry. SG Brown became famous, over the years, for highly accurate and
reliable auto-pilot and gyrocompass products.
July
5: George
Johnstone Stoney
(Born
February 15, 1826: Died July 11, 1911)
Irish physicist who introduced the
term electron for the fundamental unit of electricity. At the Belfast meeting
of the British Association in August 1874, in a paper: On the Physical Units of
Nature, Stoney called attention to a minimum quantity of electricity. He wrote,
"I shall express 'Faraday's Law' in the following terms ... For each chemical
bond which is ruptured within an electrolyte a certain quantity of electricity
traverses the electrolyte which is the same in all cases." Stoney offered
the name electron for this minimum electric charge. When J.J. Thomson identified
cathode rays as streams of negative particles, each carrying probably Stoney's
minimum quantity of charge, the name was applied to the particle rather than the
quantity of charge.
July
4: Electric
plant
In
1883, the first three-wire central-station incandescent-lighting plant in the
U.S. started operations in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.
July
3: Foam
rubber
In
1929, foam rubber was developed at the Dunlop Latex Development Laboratories in
Birmingham. British scientist E.A. Murphy whipped up the first batch in 1929,
using an ordinary kitchen mixer to froth natural latex rubber. His colleagues
were unimpressed - until they sat on it. Within five years it was everywhere,
on motorcycle seats, on London bus seats, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre seats,
and eventually in mattresses.
July
2: Vacuum-cast
steel
In
1957, the first vacuum-cast steel made in the U.S. was a 93,900-pound ingot, 78
inches in diameter. During the production process, the gases were entrapped by
vacuum-stream degassing equipment (designed by the F.J. Stokes Corporation, Philadelphia,
Penn.) The ingot was poured by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Bethlehem, Penn.
Vacuum-cast steel can be made using either an electric or an open-hearth furnace
to melt the metal.
July
1: Henri-Étienne
Sainte-Claire Deville
(Born March 11, 1818: Died July 1, 1881)
French chemical researcher who invented the first economical process for
producing aluminum. His early work began in his own laboratory with research of
turpentine. By 1849, Deville turned to inorganic chemistry, and synthesized nitrogen
pentoxide. A few years later, he developed a process to extract aluminum metal
from its compounds based on the use of sodium. By thus replacing the use more
costly potassium, Deville changed aluminium from a laboratory curiosity to a commercial
product. His metallurgical studies extended also to platinum and other minerals.
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