| JANUARY 4 - BIRTHS | |
| Brian D. Josephson | |
 Born 4
Jan 1940
British physicist who discovered the Josephson effect (1962) - a flow of electric current as electron pairs, called Cooper Pairs, between two superconducting materials that are separated by an extremely thin insulator. This arrangement is called a Josephson Junction. He was a graduate student, 22 years old, at the time. Subsequently, he was awarded a share of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics (with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever). |
|
| Marie-Louise von Franz | |
(source) |
Born 4
Jan 1915; died 17 Feb 1998.
German-born Swiss psychologist who was a Jungian analyst (1948-98) in collaboration with Carl Jung for over 30 years. She was also fairy-tale expert whose research showed common themes in tales from many cultures, which she linked with experiences in daily life. She began analysis with Jung at eighteen, and worked with him until his death in 1961. As Jung's primary partner in his research into alchemical texts, her first major publication, Aurora Consurgens, is a companion volume to Jung's last major work, Mysterium Cuniuntionis. Other works include On Dreams and Myths and C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time. |
| Edward H. Johnson | |
| Born 4
Jan 1846; died 9 Sep 1917.
Edward Hibberd Johnson was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He spent many years in various business projects with Thomas Edison, including being the vice-president of the Edison Electric Light Company.* Johnson created the first electric lights on a Christmas tree on 22 Dec 1882.«  |
|
| Karl Humann | |
(source) |
Born 4
Jan 1839; died 12 Apr 1896.
German engineer and archaeologist, whose excavation of the ancient Greek city of Pergamum (now Bergama, Tur.) brought to light some of the choicest examples of Hellenistic sculpture and revealed much about Hellenistic city planning. He also excavated the Greek city of Magnesia, another ancient city located in modern Turkey. |
| Sir Isaac Pitman | |
(source) |
Born 4
Jan 1813; died 12 Jan 1897.
English inventor of the Phonetic Shorthand System was a philanthropic headmaster whose shorthand system was initially taught free of charge, and has since been adapted for such diverse languages as Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Latin, Persian, Welsh, and Tamil. In 1829, he learned Samuel Taylor's system of shorthand, and offered a manual of that system to a publisher who suggested that Pitman should invent a new system of his own. In Stenographic Soundhand (1837) he set forth a shorthand system based on phonetic rather than orthographic principles. He published books about shorthand using his own publishing house. His brother, Benn Pitman (1822-1910) emigrated to the U.S. in 1852 where he introduced the Pitman system. |
| Louis Braille | |
(source) |
Born 4
Jan 1809; died 6 Jan 1852.
French educator who developed a tactile form of printing and writing, known as braille, since widely adopted by the blind. He himself knew blindness from the age four, following an accident while playing with an awl. In 1821, while Braille was at a school for the blind, a soldier named Charles Barbier visited and showed a code system he had invented. The system, called "night writing" had been designed for soldiers in war trenches to silently pass instructions using combinations of twelve raised dots. Young Braille realised how useful this system of raised dots could be. He developed a simpler scheme using six dots. In 1827 the first book in braille was published. Now the blind could also write it for themselves using a simple stylus to make the dots. |
| Wilhelm Beer | |
| Born 4
Jan 1797; died 27 Mar 1850.
German banker who owned a private observatory as an amateur astronomer. He worked jointly with Johann Heinrich von Mädler, to publish Mappa Selenographica (1836), the most complete map of the Moon of in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was the first lunar map divided in quadrants, and recorded the Moon's face in detail. |
|
| Dominique Vivant Denon | |
| Born 4
Jan 1747; died 27 Apr 1825.
(baron) French artist, archaeologist, and museum official who played an important role in the development of the Louvre collection. In 1798 he accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on the latter's expedition to Egypt and there made numerous sketches of the ancient monuments, sometimes under the very fire of the enemy. The results were published in his Voyage dans la basse et la haute Égypte (1802; "Travels in Lower and Upper Egypt"). In 1804 Napoleon made Denon director general of museums, a post he retained until 1815. In this capacity he accompanied the Emperor on his expeditions to Austria, Spain, and Poland and advised him in his choice of works of art to pillage from the various conquered countries. Most of these works ultimately reached the Louvre. |
|
| Benjamin Rush | |
| Born 4
Jan 1746; died 19 Apr 1813.
American physician whose investigations spanned chemistry, medicine and psychiatry, though is best known as a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Though he promoted clinical research, he still believed in bleeding, purging and other depleting remedies. |
|
| Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau | |
(source) |
Born 4
Jan 1737; died 2 Jan 1816.
French chemist who collaborated with Lavoisier and others to establish a systematic chemical nomenclature, helping to distinguish elements from compounds. He published studies on phlogiston and crystallization, and also liquified ammonia gas. He wrote the chemical section of the Encyclopédie méthodique (Vol. I, 1786). In 1761, Guyton proposed that the name "alumine" (hence aluminium) be used for the base in alum (potassium aluminium sulphate; Latin alumen = alum). Guyton was one of the first to conclude that iron and steel differ solely in their carbon content, improved the manufacture of gunpowder, was the first to use chlorine and hydrochloric acid gas as disinfectants, and one of the first balloonists (1784). |
|
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| JANUARY 4 - DEATHS | |
| Frederic Kavaler | |
 Died
4 Jan 1998 (born 2 Feb 1926)
American physiologist who was a pioneer in cardiac electrophysiology. His research on the contraction of heart cells was important in developing ways to better treat heart disease. He was one of the first researchers able to devise techniques to investigate the behaviour of individual heart cells. From the 1960's into the 1970's, Kaveler's investigation of the frog heart muscle formed a foundation on which to determine how drugs could counter heart disease. He pioneered in the field and demonstrated that changes in calcium ion concentrations outside the cells could control heart contractions.« |
|
| Sol Tax | |
(source) |
Died
4 Jan 1995 (born 30 Oct 1907)
American cultural anthropologist, founder of the Current Anthropology journal and initiator of the Fox Project, a study of the culture of the Fox and Sauk Indians. Soon after receiving his Ph.D (1935), Tax began his study of the Omaha kinship pattern among the Fox. This study was done on the Fox and Sauk Indians in Tama, Iowa. He worked with the Indians from 1948 to 1962. His work led to him to develop a pan-Indian organization and to help native American tribes preserve their cultural identity. |
| Harold E(ugene) Edgerton | |
(source) |
Died 4 Jan 1990 (born 6 Apr 1903)
American electrical engineer and ultra-high-speed photographer. As a graduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1926), he used a strobe light in his studies. By 1931, he applied the strobe to ultra-high-speed photography. He formed a company (1947) to specialize in electronic technology, which led to inventing the Rapatronic camera, capable of photographing US nuclear bomb test explosions from a distance of 7 miles. Throughout his career he applied high-speed photography as a tool in various scientific applications. He also developed sonar to study the ocean floor. Using side-scan sonar, in 1973, he helped locate the sunken Civil War battleship USS Monitor, lost since 1862, off Cape Hatteras, NC.«  Stopping
Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton,
by Gus Kayafas, Estelle Jussim. |
| Erwin Schrödinger | |
(source) |
Died
4 Jan 1961 (born 12 Aug 1887)
Austrian theoretical physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with the British physicist P.A.M. Dirac. Schrödinger took de Broglie's concept of atomic particles as having wave-like properties, and modified the earlier Bohr model of the atom to accommodate the wave nature of the electrons. This made a major contribution to the development of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger realized the possible orbits of an electron would be confined to those in which its matter waves close in an exact number of wavelengths. This condition, similar to a standing wave, would account for only certain orbits being possible, and none possible in between them. This provided an explanation for discrete lines in the spectrum of excited atoms.« |
| Sir Alliott Verdon Roe | |
| Died
4 Jan 1958 (born 26 Apr 1877)
English aviator who was the first in Britain to construct and fly his own airplane. Having heard of the success of the Wright brothers, Roe set out to build his own plane. On 8 Jun 1908, he flew his biplane a distance of 75 feet (23 m). |
|
| Clarence Edward Dutton | |
(source) |
Died
4 Jan 1912 (born 15 May 1841)
American geologist who coined the term isostasy for his explanation that continents rise higher on the Earth's surface by virtue of their less dense crustal rock; ocean basins are denser material. After the civil war, while still an army officer, from 1875, he assisted in Powell's survey of the Rocky Mountains. From 1880 until his retirement from the army in 1891, he worked for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). He made geological investigations of the Grand Canyon in Colorado, the plateaus of Utah, and the 1886 Charleston earthquake. In seismology, he pioneered a method to determine the depth of the focus of an earthquake and the speed of its seismic waves. In 1887, he became the first head of the USGS division of volcanic geology.« Tertiary
History of the Grand Canyon District, by Clarence Edward
Dutton. |
| John William Draper | |
(source) |
Died
4 Jan 1882 (born 5 May 1811)
English-American chemist who pioneered in photochemistry. He recognized that light initiated chemical reactions as molecules absorbed light energy. The Draper Point is the name given to the point at which all substances glow a dull red (about 525 degrees C.). He described the effect of rise in temperature as the addition of more and more of the visible light region produced a white glow (1847). His interest in spectroscopy and photography was applied to give the first astronomical photograph. Its subject was the moon (1840). He also studied photographs of the solar spectrum to show that contained both infrared and ultraviolet light. His photographs of persons include the oldest surviving photgraphic portrait (1840), and he was one of the first to produce microphotographs. |
| Robert Hoe | |
(source) |
Died
4 Jan 1833 (born 29 Oct 1784)
English-American printing-press manufacturer. The Smith brothers established a carpenter shop in New York City with Hoe's assistance under the firm name of Smith, Hoe & Company, specializing in wooden hand presses. Later, they made cast-iron frame presses with the toggle-joint principle instead of the screw for pressure. After the Smiths died, Hoe continued the business under the name of R. Hoe & Company (1823-33). He purchased (1827) Samuel Rust's patent for a wrought-iron framed printing press, made improvements and successfully manufactured it as the "Washington" press. His son Richard continued the business after his death and developed the rotary press which increased newspaper production. |
| Stephen Hales | |
(source) |
Died
4 Jan 1761 (born 17 Sep 1677)
English botanist, physiologist, who pioneered the quantitative experimental approach in plant and animal physiology. He was a clergyman whose work in plant physiology, Vegetable Staticks (1787), included early demonstrations of the importance of air and light in plant growth, and of the role of transpiration in causing upward sap flow. He also measured the rates of growth of shoots and leaves and the pressure roots exert on sap, and he investigated plant respiration. Hales was the first to quantitatively measure blood pressure, measured the capacity of the left ventricle of the heart, and the output of the heart per minute. He invented an artificial ventilator that could convey fresh air into prisons, ships' holds, and granaries. |
| JANUARY 4 - EVENTS | |
| Martian Rover | |
In 2004, Spirit, a robot rover
landed on Mars to analyze the planet's rocks, looking for evidence of water.
It has taken the only photo of Earth from another planet. Surviving dust
storms, it far outlasted its expected useful life. A twin robot rover,
Opportunity, landed three weeks after Spirit on the
other side of the planet. |
|
| Driverless subway train | |
|
In 1962, the first unmanned subway train controlled automatically ran in
New York City. |
|
| Sputnik | |
(NASA) |
In 1958, the Russian Sputnik
I satellite, the first man-made object to orbit the earth, fell
back into the atmosphere and disintegrated, after 92 days in space. The
Sputnik
(meaning "companion" or "fellow traveller") was launched from Kazakhstan.
The craft circled the earth every 95 minutes at almost 20,000 miles per
hour 500 miles above the Earth. The 184-lb satellite had transmitted a
radio signal picked up around the world, and instrumentation for temperature
measurement. |
| Moon | |
|
In 1912, the closest approach to earth by the moon was 221,441 miles apart
center to center. |
|
| Elephant electrocution | |
(source) |
In 1904, Thomas Edison's movie crew filmed
the electrocution
of an elephant.
Topsy, was being destroyed by its owners after she killed three men in
as many years. The third was a man that fed her a lit cigarette. The event
was a public spectacle to a paying audience of 1500 people at Coney Island,
where the elephant had been kept on show. Edison was the consultant chosen
to arrange the electrocution death after cyanide-laced carrots had failed.
Thereafter, he showed the film around the country as part of his unsuccessful
effort to discredit the "dangerous" alternating current of George Westinghouse,
and promote Edison's direct current electricity system. Eventually, A.C.
was universally adopted, however, as more practical for long-distance transmission. |
| Carnegie Institute founded | |
|
In 1902, the Carnegie Institute was founded to promote research in the
humanities and sciences. |
|
| First U.S. appendectomy | |
|
In 1885, Dr. William West Grant of Davenport, Iowa, performed what is believed
(sources disagree) to be the first successful appendectomy in the U.S.
His patient was 22-year-old Mary Gartside, on whom he performed surgery
by opening her abdomen and removing a perforated appendix. She recovered
and lived until 1919, when she died from an unrelated illness.*
The first appendectomy in Britain took place
in 1848 by Dr Hancock. In Canada, Dr Abraham Groves wrote
in his book, All In The Day's Work (1934), that he performed his
first appendectomy to successfully remove an inflamed appendix on 10 May
1883 on a boy in the log cabin in which he lived. Although the boy recovered,
at the time, medical opinion had a negative reaction.« |
|
| Roller skates | |
|
In 1863, four-wheeled roller skates were patented by James Plimpton of
New York. |
|
| Airy Transit Circle | |
|
In 1850, the Airy Transit Circle was first used
at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The instrument
was designed by George Biddell Airy, the
Astronomer Royal. It was set up on the Prime Meridian - the north-south
line of longitude 0° - which marks the start of the Universal day for
the world. The time at which a star passed over the meridian was measured
with a regulator (an extremely accurate clock). The transit was used to
measure the angle of a star at that instant. From this data, the co-ordinates
of that star could be determined and plotted on a star chart. Navigation
at sea depended on the accuracy of these charts, and the Airy Transit Circle
was a great improvement on the previous technology.« |
|
| Yellow fever in Philadelphia | |
|
In 1794, Dr. Benjamin Rush fought the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia.
While other physicians fled, and hundreds of residents were dying daily
from the disease, Rush remained to treat the victims. |
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