| OCTOBER 3 - BIRTHS | |
| Pierre René Deligne | |
(source) |
 Born 3
Oct 1944
Belgian mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki, Finland, in 1978 for his work in algebraic geometry. His work originated with André Weil's ideas on polynomial equations which led to three questions on what properties of a geometric object can be determined purely algebraically. These three problems quickly became major research challenges to mathematicians. A solution of the three Weil conjectures was given by Deligne. This work brought together algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory. The solution to these problems had required the development of a new kind of algebraic topology. |
| James Francis (Frank) Pantridge | |
(source) |
Born 3 Oct 1916; died 26 Dec 2004.
Irish cardiologist who developed the life-saving portable defibrillator. He found out that death occurred within the first hour for 60% of males (up to middle-age) that died from heart attack, and of these, 90% suffered ventricular fibrillation. To begin earliest possible treatment, in 1965, Pantridge equipped an ambulance with a portable defibrillator. It achieved a 50% long-term patient survival rate. This pre-hospital coronary care plan was adopted rapidly in America and was used in 1972 when President Lyndon Johnson suffered a heart attack during a visit to Virginia. In 1979, the first automated external defibrillators (AEDs) became available. The British government lagged, but in 1990 funded defibrillators for all front-line ambulances in England. [Image right: Karrier, first purpose built Mobile Cardiac Ambulance (source)] |
| Charles J. Pedersen | |
(source) |
Born 3
Oct 1904; died 1989.
Korean-American chemist who, along with Jean-Marie Lehn and Donald J. Cram, was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his synthesis of the crown ethers - a group of organic compounds with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity when reacting with other atoms and molecules much as do the molecules in living organisms, i.e. molecules that can "recognize" each other and choose with which other molecules they will form complexes. The three researchers studied chemical and physical properties of these complexes and have elucidated the factors that determine the ability of the molecules to recognize each other and fit into one another like a key fits a lock. |
| William Crawford Gorgas | |
(source) |
Born 3
Oct 1854; died 3 Jul 1920.
Major William Crawford Gorgas was a U.S. Army surgeon who contributed greatly to the building of the Panama Canal by introducing mosquito control to prevent yellow fever and malaria. Originally, Gorgas doubted the conclusion of Walter Reed's Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba (1900) that the mosquito was the only means by which the disease spread. Nevertheless, Gorgas supported the new policy and eventually became the most active proponent of the mosquito theory in the United States. In Cuba, he assisted in eliminating mosquito breeding grounds. In 1904, Gorgas led the ten-year anti-mosquito campaign to wipe out yellow fever in Panama. |
| Sir Patrick Manson | |
(source) |
Born 3
Oct 1844; died 9 Apr 1922.
Scottish parasitologist, born in Old Meldrum, Aberdeenshire, who was the "father of tropical medicine." He was the first to discover (1877-79) that the mosquito can host a developing parasite worm that causes the human disease, filariasis, which occurs when the worms invade body tissues. He settled in Hong Kong in 1883. He co-founded Dairy Farm there in 1886 to improve the health by supplying cows' milk free of contamination by means of stringent hygiene. Manson also did valuable research on sleeping sickness and beri-beri, and he helped introduce vaccination to the Chinese. His research, together with Alphonse Laveran's discovery of the malarial parasite, were the basis leading to Sir Ronald Ross's elucidation of the transmission of malaria by mosquitoes.  "Imperial
Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease" by
Douglas M. Haynes |
| George Brayton | |
(source) |
Born 3
Oct 1830; died 17 Dec 1892.
George Bailey Brayton was an American engineer who invented the first commercial gas internal combustion engine (patented 2 Apr 1872), which he manufactured and sold in the Providence, Rhode Island, area. Its principle of continuous ignition later became the basis for the turbine engine. A pressurized air-fuel mixture from a reservoir was ignited upon entering a water-cooled cylinder. The Brayton engine was given trials powering watercraft, one of John Holland's submarines and one used for a few months installed in a carriage (1872-3). His earlier career included developing steam engines.«  Internal
Fire: The Internal-Combustion Engine 1673-1900, by C.
Lyle Cummins, Jr. |
| John Gorrie | |
(source) |
Born 3
Oct 1803; died 16 Jun 1855.
American physician and early pioneer in the invention of the artificial manufacture of ice, refrigeration, and air conditioning. While he was a Naval officer stationed at Apalachicola Florida when he needed ice to treat malaria patients with fever, for, he reasoned, people living in cold climates never got malaria. He built a small steam engine to drive a piston in a cylinder immersed in brine. The piston first compressed the air, and then on the second stroke, when the air expanded, it drew heat from the brine. The chilled brine was used to cool air or make ice. He was granted the first U.S. Patent for mechanical refrigeration in 1851. Dr. Gorrie was posthumously honored by Florida, when his statue was placed in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. |
|
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| OCTOBER 3 - DEATHS | |
| Sir Alec Issigonis | |
(source) |
 Died
3 Oct 1988 (born 1906)
Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis, died in Birmingham. He was the designer of the Mini car, a landmark in automotive design when the British Motor Corporation introduced the Morris Mini-Minor on 26 Aug 1959. It was only 10 ft long, yet seated four passengers, and one of the cheapest cars on the market. To save space, the engine was mounted transversely, and it had all-independent suspension. Issigonis believed that "when you're designing a new car for production, never, never copy the opposition." Thus the Mini looked like no other car, provided a vehicle that carried the greatest payload in the smallest practical space, and incorporated new engineering principles. It remains successful over four decades later. |
| Sir Peter Medawar | |
(source) |
Died
3 Oct 1987 (born 28 Feb 1915)
Sir Peter Brian Medawar died in London. He was a medical scientist and Nobel laureate (1960, with Sir Frank Burnet) for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance. Medawar inoculated the embryos of mice, before they had developed the ability to form antibodies, with tissue cells from another strain. Subsequently, the "foreign" proteins were accepted, even when later the capability to form antibodies existed. Skin grafts from the second strain were then accepted by the inoculated mice. |
| Florence Rena Sabin | |
(source) |
Died
3 Oct 1953 (born 9 Nov 1871)
American anatomist who was one of the first women physicians to pursue a research career. Her investigation of the lymphatic system proved that it developed from the veins in the embryo and grew out into tissues, the reverse of then prevailing understanding. In 1903, she became the first woman on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. It had initially been reluctant to hire a woman, but she had shown exceptional skill in papers published during a fellowship there. She moved in 1925 to head the cellular immunology section at the Rockefeller Institute, where she researched the body's white blood cells reaction to tuberculosis infection. In 1926, she was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences.« |
| Max Wolf | |
(source) |
Died
3 Oct 1932 (born 21 Jun 1863)
Maximilian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf was a German astronomer who founded and directed the Königstuhl Observatory. He used wide-field photography to study the Milky Way and used statistical treatment of star counts to prove the existence of clouds of dark matter. He was among the first astronomers to show that the spiral nebulae have absorption spectra typical of stars and thus differ from gaseous nebulae. His most important contribution was the introduction of photography to discover hundreds of asteroids, the first of which he named Brucia in honor of the donor of his 16-inch double telescope, Catherine Wolfe Bruce. |
| Lucy Hobbs Taylor | |
(source) |
Died
3 Oct 1910 (born 14 Mar 1833)
Lucy Beaman Taylor (née Hobbs) was the first woman dentist in America to graduate (1866) from a dental college as a Doctor of Dental Surgery. Earlier, being long refused admission to dental schools (1859-65), she had acquired the skills of dentistry, and practiced without a diploma, as was common at the time. Then the Iowa State Dental Society supported Lucy's ambition for a college degree, demanded her admission, and she was accepted by the Ohio College of Dentistry. After graduation, she practiced for a short time in Chicago, then married James M. Taylor and taught him dentistry. The couple moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in December, 1867, opened a joint office and soon enjoyed a prosperous practice (1867-86). |
| Elias Howe | |
(source) |
Died
3 Oct 1867 (born 9 Jul 1819)
Elias Howe, American inventor, was born in Spencer, Mass. It was Walter Hunt, in 1834, who built America's first sewing machine, then thought about it a destroyer of home stitchers' jobs, and didn't pursue it. Howe did. Howe was granted a patent on his own machine on 10 Sep 1846. Commercial success came slowly, requiring the defense of his patent against Isaac Singer's better marketed machine. Eventually he gained riches, but died young at 49. By then, his sewing machine helped revolutionize garment manufacture in the factory and in the home.  |
| OCTOBER 3 - EVENTS | |
| Heart device | |
In 1994, the Food and Drug Administration approved the Left Ventricular
Assist Device, which helps failing hearts continue to function. |
|
| Record speed | |
(source) |
In 1963, the X-15 rocket plane achieved
a world record speed of Mach 6.7, which is 4,520 mph or over a mile per
second, with U.S. Air Force pilot Pete Knight. It reached an altitude of
192,100 feet (58,552 m). Its internal structure of titanium was covered
with a skin of Inconel X, a chrome-nickel alloy. To save fuel, the
X-15 was air launched from a B-52 aircraft at about 45,000 ft. Test flights
between 8 Jun 1959 and 24 Oct 1968 provided data on hypersonic air flow,
aerodynamic heating, control and stability at hypersonic speeds and piloting
techniques for reentry used in the development of the Mercury, Gemini,
and Apollo spaceflight programs. The X-15 reached 354,200 feet (67 miles)
on 22 Aug 1963.« [Image:
NASA artist's conception of the flight.]
Hypersonic!
The Story of the North American X-15, by Dennis R. Jenkins,
Tony Landis. |
| First UK atom bomb test | |
(source) |
In 1952, "Hurricane", the first British atomic bomb was tested
at the Monte Bello, Australia, becoming the third country in the world
to test such a weapon. The bomb used an improved plutonium implosion bomb
similar to the U.S. "Fat Man". The bomb used plutonium produced in Britain
at Windscale (now Sellafield) with a low Pu-240 content since hurried production
led to short irradiation times, plus some Canadian origin plutonium. To
test the effects of a ship-smuggled bomb (a threat of great concern at
the time), Hurricane was exploded inside the hull of the HMS Plym (1450
ton frigate) which was anchored in 40 feet of water 400 yards off shore.
The explosion, 9-ft below the water line, left a saucer-shaped crater on
the seabed 20-ft deep and 1,000-ft across. |
| Videotape recording | |
(source) |
In 1952, the first U.S. video recording
on magnetic tape giving credible results of off-air black and white recordings
was made by John
T. Mullin at the electronics division of Bing Crosby Enterprises, Inc.,
Los Angeles, Cal. Using a Video Tape Recorder, the images on magnetic tape
were not only one-third less costly than photographic methods, but were
also immediately available to reproduce on a standard TV monitor tube as
soon as the tape was rewound. The 12-head VTR used one-inch tape running
at 120 inches per second to record ten tracks of monochrome video information,
a clock track to control synchronization and an FM audio track. The basic
theory was to use frequency division multiplexing with the 10 channels
covering the desired video range. |
| Telescope lens | |
 |
In 1947, after 11 years of grinding and polishing a 200-inch diameter telescope
lens for the Mount Palomar Observatory was completed at the California
Institute of Technology. This lens, the first of its size made in the U.S.,
began when 20 tons of molten glass at 2,700 deg. Fahrenheit were poured
into a ceramic mold at Corning Glass Works, N.Y. on 2 Dec 1934. The glass
lens was allowed to cool only one or two degrees per day over the next
eleven months, and then brought to room temperature. The telescope in which
the lens was mounted was named the Hale Telescope in recognition of the
late Dr. George E. Hale who had
initiated the project. The completed telescope was first used on 1 Feb
1949 by taking pictures of a Milky Way constellation. |
| Atomic bomb security | |
|
In 1945, following a message from President Truman, a bill sponsored by
the war department and known as the May-Johnson bill was introduced into
the U.S. Congress. The purpose of this bill was to keep the atomic bomb
a secret under stringent security restrictions. Because it failed to provide
for the sharing of information with foreign countries, and granted a dominant
role to the military, scientists throughout the country were galvanized
in opposition. Due in part to lobbying by scientists
such as Leo Szilard and other
groups, the May-Johnson Bill was tabled in December. The McMahon
Act, signed
on 1 Aug 1946, mandated civilian control of atomic energy under the auspices
of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). |
|
| Aerosol | |
|
In 1941, the first aerosol can used in a commercial application was patented,
invented by two U.S. Dept. of Agriculture researchers,
a chemist and an entomologist, L.D. Goodhue and W.N. Sullivan. They were
looking for a way to apply oil-free insecticides in mushroom houses. They
dissolved an insecticide in a nonflammable, liquefied gas under pressure
in a steel container. The insecticide was allowed to escape in a fine spray
through an oil burner nozzle. During WW II such cans, dubbed "bug
bombs," were used
to protect troops from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Under the public service
patent, royalty-free licenses were issued for the manufacture of insecticidal
aerosols
until the patent expired in 1960. Many improvements
followed. Image from 1947 ad
for Westinghouse household Bug Bomb. |
| Telephone fax | |
|
In 1922, city telephone lines were used for the first time in the U.S.
for the transmission of a facsimile photo in Washington, DC. Charles F.
Jenkins sent an image from 1519 Connecticut Ave to the U.S. Navy Radio
Staion NOF at Anacostia, D.C. Witnesses from the U.S.Navy and the Post
Office Dept. attended the transmission. A photographic plate was used to
record the signals at 5502 16th St, N.W. Washington, D.C. Earlier in the
year, on 11 Jun 1922, a photograph had been sent by radio across the Atlantic
from Rome to Bar Harbor, Maine. That transmission reproduced a 7 x 9.5
in. halftone picture, using light falling on a selenium cell to form the
dots. |
|
| SOS | |
(source) |
In 1906, the second international conference on wireless telegraphy in
Berlin adopts SOS as international distress signal, replacing the call
sign CQD. By 1904 many Trans-Atlantic British ships were equipped with
wireless. "CQ" originated in England as a general call on a landline wire.
"CQ" preceded time signals and special notices as a sign for "all stations".
The Marconi company suggested "CQD" for a distress signal. Established
1 Feb 1904, and sometimes thought to mean, "Come Quick Danger," its origin
was simply a general call, "CQ," with "D," meaning distress. Unfortunately,
the 1906 Conference proceedings do not give an account of the discussions
nor the origin of SOS; the proceedings merely specify what the signal will
be. |
| Motor vacuum cleaner | |
|
In 1899, the motor-driven vacuum cleaner was patented (U.S. No. 634,042)
as a "pneumatic carpet renovator" by John S. Thurman of St. Louis, Mo.
Thurman developed a gasoline powered vacuum cleaner and the General Compressed
Air Company. In a newspaper advertisement
from the St. Louis Dispatch Thurman offered his invention
of the horse drawn (which went door to door) vacuum system there in St.
Louis. He offered vacuuming services at $4 per visit - a significant amount
in that era. By 1906, Thurman was offering built-in central vacuum systems.
They actually used compress air, though, and featured no dust collection. |
|
| U.S. Pharmacopoeia | |
|
In 1805, the first U.S. pharmacopoeia prepared by a medical society in
the U.S. was authorized by the members of the Massachusetts Medical Society
of Boston, Mass. It became the 286-page The Pharmacopoeia of the Massachusetts
Medical Society (1808), edited by Drs. James Jackson and John Collins
Warren. The earliest pharmacopoeia produced in the U.S. was prepared for
army use. It had 32 pages, with a type area on the page of 4.25 x 2.5 in.
Published in 1778 in Philadelphia, Pa., its name - Pharmacopoeia simpliciorum
et efficiorum, in usum noscomii militaris, etc. - reflected the use
of Latin in the text. Dr. William Brown, Physician-General to the Hospitals
of the U.S. wrote it for use in the U.S. Army Military Hospital at Lititz,
Pa.. |
|
