| JANUARY 3 - BIRTHS | |
| William Wilson Morgan | |
(source) |
 Born 3
Jan 1906 (died 21 Jun 1994)
American astronomer who, in 1951, provided the first evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy has spiral arms. He spent his entire career at the Yerkes Observatory, including three years as director. Eschewing theory, his research was devoted to morphology, the classification of objects by their form and structure. With Keenan and Kellman, he introduced stellar luminosity classes and the two-dimensional classification of stellar spectra strictly based on the spectra themselves. With Osterbrock and Sharpless he demonstrated the existence of spiral arms in the Galaxy using precise distances of O and B stars obtained from spectral classifications. Morgan invented the UBV system of magnitudes and colors. |
| Franz Cumont | |
(source) |
Born 3
Jan 1868 (died 25 Aug 1947)
Franz (-Valéry-Marie) Cumont was a Belgian archaeologist and philologist who strongly influenced the modern Protestant school of the history of religions through his fundamental studies, particularly on Roman pagan cults. |
| Robert Whitehead | |
(source) |
Born 3
Jan 1823 (died 14 Nov 1905)
British engineer who invented the modern torpedo. His first torpedo lacked speed and range. However, by 1870 he had managed to increase its speed to 7 knots and could now hit a target 700 yards away. The following year the British Navy purchased Whitehead's invention. Although a spar torpedo, a charge attached to a long pole and carried by a small boat, had been used during the American Civil War, Robert Whitehead was the first to produce a self-propelling torpedo. Whitehead's torpedo was propelled by a compressed-air engine, carried 18lbs. of dynamite. Its most important feature was a self-regulating device which kept the torpedo at a constant preset depth. Edison made a movie of a Whitehead topedo launch (1900). |
| Antoine-Thomson d'Abbadie | |
(source) |
Born 3 Jan 1810; died 19 Mar 1897.
French geographer, born with his brother Arnaud-Michel d'Abbadie (1815-93) in Ireland, who were notable for their extensive travels in Ethiopia where they studied its geology, natural history and archaeology. Antoine d'Abbadie was the first scientific explorer to travel throughout eastern Africa for 12 years. He returned to France with numerous astronomic, geodaesical, geophysical, geographical and meteorological observations. He contributed to increasing the knowledge on the emplacement of the sources of the blue and white Nile rivers. He had the magnificent castle of Abbadia built in Hendaye, and he continued with his astronomical observations for some time. He left his estate to the Academie des Sciences. [Image right: (source)] |
| JANUARY 3 - DEATHS | |
| Joy Adamson | |
Adamson with Elsa (source) |
 Died
3 Jan 1980 (born 20 Jan 1910)
Naturalist, conservationalist and author of the best-selling book "Born Free," was killed in Northern Kenya by a servant in a wage dispute. As well as a legacy of water-colour paintings of indigenous plants painted by Adamson during her early years in Kenya, she collected many botanical specimens. Her records include information concerning local uses of plant parts in ritual and medicinal practices, and for insecticides, dyes, fibres and food. On 1 Feb 1956, a completely new period in her life began with the arrival of an orphan lioness cub. With this cub, named Elsa, and later with a cheetah and a leopard, she proved that by skilful and considered action wild animals raised up by man can be taught to manage in nature independently. |
| Reginald Crundall Punnett | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jan 1967 (born 20 Jun 1875)
English Mendelian geneticist who, with the English biologist William Bateson, were among the first English geneticists. They reported the discovery of two new genetic principles: the first account of genetic linkage in sweet pea; and gene interaction (1905). Punnett devised the "Punnett" square to depict the number and variety of genetic combinations. Punnett had a role in connecting Mendelism with statistics. In 1908, Punnett was asked at a lecture to explain, " if brown eyes were dominant, then why wasn't the whole country becoming brown-eyed?" Punnett in turn asked his friend the mathematician, G. H. Hardy. Out of this conversation came the Hardy-Weinberg Law which calculates how population affects genetic inheritance. |
| Alexander Meissner | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jan 1958 (born 14 Sep 1883)
Austrian engineer whose work in antenna design, amplification, and detection advanced the development of radio telegraphy. In 1907 he joined the Telefunken Company of Berlin, where he conducted research on radio problems. He improved the design of antennas for transmitting at long wavelengths, devised new vacuum-tube circuits and amplification systems, and developed the heterodyne principle for radio reception. In 1911 Meissner designed the first rotary radio beacon to aid in the navigation of the Zeppelin airships. In 1913 he was the first to amplify high-frequency radio signals by using feedback in a vacuum triode; this principle made it possible to build radio receivers more sensitive than any earlier type. |
| Johan Herman Lie Vogt | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jan 1932 (born 14 Oct 1858)
Norwegian geologist and petrologist who pioneered in the use of physical-chemical methods in the study of the origin of igneous rocks and ores. He did important work on the chemistry of silicates as the basis for igneous rock petrology, and on differentiation in cooling magmas. Vogt is often called the father of modern physiochemical petrology. He also made studies of ore geology, especially magmatic ores. Petrology is a branch of geology that deals with the origin, composition, structure, and alteration of rocks. |
| Grenville Mellen Dodge | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jan 1916 (born 12 Apr 1831)
American civil engineer who was responsible for much of the railroad construction in the western and southwestern U.S. during the 19th century. Before the Civil War, he did railroad work in the West. During the war, with the Union forces, his skill in rapidly rebuilding the bridges and railroads destroyed by Confederate forces was of great value to Grant and Sherman in their Western campaigns. He became a Union general. He was severely wounded at the siege of Atlanta. After campaigning (1865-66) against the Native Americans, he left the army (May 1866). Then as chief engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad, he accomplished the efficient, rapid construction of that line. Dodge was a Republican Congressman from Iowa (1867-69). |
| Charles Augustus Young | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jan 1908 (born 15 Dec 1834)
American astronomer who made the first observations of the flash spectrum of the Sun, proved the gaseous nature of the sun's corona and discovered the reversing layer of the solar atmosphere. He was a pioneer in the study of the spectrum of the sun and experimented in photographing solar prominences in full sunlight. On 22 Dec 1870, at the eclipse in Spain, he saw the lines of the solar spectrum all become bright for perhaps a second and a half (the "flash spectrum") and announced the "reversing layer." By exploring from the high altitude of Sherman, Wy. (1872), he more than doubled the number of bright lines he had observed in the chromosphere, By a comparison of observations, he concluded that magnetic conditions on the earth respond to solar disturbances. |
| Henri-Philibert-Gaspard Darcy | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jan 1858 (born 10 Jun 1803)
French hydraulic engineer who first derived the equation (now known as Darcy's law) that governs the laminar (nonturbulent) flow of fluids in homogeneous, porous media. In 1856, modern studies of groundwater began when Darcy was commissioned to develop a water-purification system for the city of Dijon, France. He constructed the first experimental apparatus to study the flow characteristics of water through the earth. From his experiments, he derived the Darcy's Law equation, describing the flow of water in nature, which is fundamental to understanding groundwater systems. He performed extensive tests on filtration and pipe resistance. He initiated the open-channel studies carried out by Bazin. |
| Josiah Wedgwood | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jan 1795 (baptized 12 July 1730)
English inventor, artist, potter, Josiah Wedgwood began a new branch of the pottery industry in the early 1760's. This inventor placed the manufacture of stoneware on a scientific basis, and founded the potteries of North Staffordshire. The agateware and unglazed blue or green stoneware he decorated with white neo-classical designs, used pigments he invented. In 1768 he used his engineering skills to design the machinery and high-temperature beehive-shaped kilns. For his invention of a pyrometer for measuring high temperatures, Wedgwood was made a fellow of the Royal Society. He was a major financial supporter of Dr. Thomas Beddoes' Pneumatic Institute near Bristol, where Humphry Davy studied nitrous oxide (1800). |
| Jeremiah Horrocks | |
(source) |
Died
3 Jan 1641 (born c. 1617)
English astronomer and clergyman who applied Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion to observations of the Moon and Venus. Once Horrocks managed to obtain a small telescope, his observations convinced him that Lansberg's tables were incorrect. He accepted Kepler's elliptical orbits, and in working on the moon he applied an elliptical orbit to it and established that the line of apsides precessed, an effect which he ascribed to the influence of the sun. Horrocks predicted and observed a transit of Venus on 24 Nov 1639, the first one ever observed, and from the observation he corrected the solar parallax, indicating a much greater distance of the sun than anyone before him had admitted. He died at age only 22. |
| JANUARY 3 - EVENTS | |
| Mars lander | |
In 1999, the U.S. Mars Polar Lander was launched. |
|
| Oklahoma meteorite | |
(source) |
In 1970, a fireball was visible over a large area of the U.S. midwest.
The meteorite that fell was the first to be detected by the Prairie Network
operated by the Smithsonian Institution's Astrophysical Observatory since
1964. Its path was photographed by two of the system's 16 cameras funded
by a NASA grant. Using these records, scientists calculated the meteorite's
impact point. Gunther Schwartz, field manager of the network found the
21.6-lb meteorite six days later within a half-mile of the predicted site,
near the rural hamlet Lost City, about 45 miles east of Tulsa, OK. The
fast retrieval enabled examination of radioactivity produced by the meteorite's
exposure to cosmic rays, looking for clues to how the universe was created.*«[Image:
Dr Richard McCrosky of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory holds the
meteorite retrieved by Gunther Schwartz (left).] |
| Electric watch | |
(source) |
In 1957, the world's first electric watch was introduced
in Lancaster, PA by the Hamilton Watch Company. Research began in 1946,
but it was to take more than ten years to develop a viable watch. On this
day, Hamilton held a press conference." The idea of a watch which never
needed winding was very exciting to 1950's consumers, who were captivated
by progress and modernity. The Hamilton Electric was an instant hit. Its
popularity was enhanced by a number of very dramatic case styles with non-traditional
asymmetrical styling; they were visual reminders of the ultra-modern movements
inside the case. By 1969, when production ended, more advanced technology
had already rendered the Hamilton Electric obsolete. |
| Artificial transmutation of elements | |
|
In 1919, Professor Ernest Rutherford succeeded
in splitting the atom. By bombarding nitrogen atoms with alpha particles
emitted by radioactive materials he transmuted the nitrogen atoms into
oxygen.« |
|
| Wax drinking straw | |
(source) |
In 1888, the first wax drinking straw and the spiral winding tube-making
process
was patented by Marvin C. Stone in Washington, DC. Stone was already a
manufacturer
of paper cigarette holders. His idea was to make paper drinking straws
to replace the use of natural rye grass straws. Stone made his prototype
straw by winding strips of paper around a pencil and gluing it together.
He then tried paraffin-coated manila paper, so the straws would not become
soggy while someone was drinking. The first straws were hand rolled, and
by 1890 his factory was producing more straws than cigarette holders.By
1905, he had also invented a machine to roll his straws, necessary to keep
up with the growing demand, and new applications of spiral-wound tubing. |
| Margarine patented | |
|
In 1871, oleomargarine was patented by Henry Bradley in Binghamton, NY.
A "compound for culinary use" called margarine. U.S. Patent No. 110,626. |
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