| OCTOBER 9 - BIRTHS | |
| Max Von Laue | |
(source) |
 Born 9
Oct 1879; died 23 Apr 1960.
German physicist who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays in crystals. This enabled scientists to study the structure of crystals and hence marked the origin of solid-state physics, an important field in the development of modern electronics. |
| Karl Schwarzschild | |
(source) |
Born 9
Oct 1873; died 11 May 1916.
German theoretical astrophysicist, born in Frankfurt, Germany, who made both practical and theoretical contributions to 20th-century astronomy. He developed the use of photography for measuring variable stars. He also investigated the geometrical aberrations of optical systems using ray optics by introducing a perturbation equation which he called the Seidel Eikonal. While on the Russian front during military service, he computed the first two exact solutions of the Einstein Field Equations of General Relativity, one in static isotropic empty space surrounding a massive body (such as a "black hole"), and one inside a spherically symmetric body of constant density - work which led directly to modern research on black holes. |
| Emil Fischer | |
(source) |
Born 9
Oct 1852; died 15 Jul 1919
German chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1902 in recognition of his investigations of the sugar and purine groups of substances. He determined the structures of uric acid, xanthine, caffeine, theobromine, and other related compounds, and showed they are all derivatives of a single compound, a nitrogenous base that he named purine. His study of sugars led him to investigate the reactions and substances involved in fermentation, leading to his investigations of how enzymes break down sugars. Thus, Fischer laid the foundations for enzyme chemistry. During WW I Fischer was responsible for organizing the production of chemicals in Germany. He committed suicide in 1919, after two of his sons had been killed in the war. |
| Eugen Langen | |
(source) |
Born 9
Oct 1833; died 2 Oct 1895
German engineer who pioneered in building internal-combustion engines. In 1866 Eugen Langen, who owned a a sugar refining company, financed Nikolaus August Otto (1832-91), developed a more efficient gas engine. The Otto & Langen company produced stationary gas engines (usually powered by coal gas). Otto went on to build, in 1876, the prototype of the so-called Otto-cycle engines used in most modern automobiles, fueled primarily with gasoline, alcohol or benzene. Langen also devised the Wuppertaler suspension railway which opened in 1901. His Schwebebahn (swinging railway) has operated successfully along the Wupper river for almost 100 years. It has survived two world wars and continues to operate profitably and safely today. |
| Auguste-Arthur de La Rive | |
(source) |
Born 9
Oct 1801; died 1873
Swiss physicist who was one of the founders of the electrochemical theory of batteries. He began experimenting with the voltaic cell (1836) and supported the idea of Michael Faraday that the electricity was the result of chemical reactions in the cell. He invented a prize-winning electroplating method to apply gold onto brass and silver. He determined the specific heat of various gases, examined the temperature of the Earth's crust, and made ozone from electrical discharge through oxygen gas. He was a contemporary of Faraday, Ampere and Oersted, with whom he exchanged correspondance on electricity. [Image: As a demonstration to explain the rotatory movements observed at the time of the aurorae boreales by the influence of the terrestrial magnetism, De La Rive assembled an apparatus using an egg-shaped evacuated glass chamber on an electromagnet.] |
| Johann Andreas von Segner | |
(source) |
Born 9
Oct 1704; died 5 Oct 1777.
German physicist and mathematician who recognized the surface tension of liquids. He discovered that every solid body has 3 axes of symmetry. He used Daniel Bernoulli's theoretical work on the "reaction effect" to produce a horizontal waterwheel the same principle which drives a modern lawn sprinkler, which influenced Euler to work on turbines. In 1751 Segner introduced the concept of the surface tension of liquids, likening it to a stretched membrane. His view that minute and imperceptible attractive forces maintain surface tension laid the foundation for the subsequent development of surface tension theory. He made an unsuccessful attempt to give a mathematical description of capillary action. |
|
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| OCTOBER 9 - DEATHS | |
| Raymond Noorda | |
(source) |
 Died
9 Oct 2006 (born 19 Jun 1924)
American electrical engineer, known as "the father of computer networking" because he was primarily responsible for making widespread the business use of networked personal computers (PC's). He did not invent the local area network (LAN) by which computers share files and printers through interlinked nodes. However, as chief executive of Novell Inc (1983-94), his organization and marketing turned the company's NetWare brand software into the first major PC network operating system. It linked even previously incompatible computers, whether IBM-compatible, Apple or Unix. To establish standardization in the industry, he believed in working with competitors, for which he coined the term "co-opetition."« |
| Felix Wankel | |
(source) |
Died
9 Oct 1988 (born 13 Aug 1902)
German engineer who invented the first rotary internal combustion engine. His first job (1921-4), was with a scientific book publisher, but Wankel preferred tinkering. In 1924, he opened his own workshop and conceived the idea of a rotary engine. By 1927 he had drawn up the shape of his rotary piston engine. Although he received his first patent in 1929 (DRP 507,584), it was Feb 1957 before the first truly functional Wankel rotary engine was ready. Instead of moving pistons, the Wankel engine uses an orbiting rotor shaped as a curved equilateral triangle. Thus it needs few moving parts, is lightweight and compact. He stayed active throughout his life, filing a patent in 1987, a year before his death.«  Wankel
Rotary Engine: A History, by John B. Hege. |
| Anna Freud | |
1927 (source) |
Died
9 Oct 1982 (born 3 Dec 1895)
Austrian scientist, psychoanalyst; Sigmund's daughter; b. Vienna, d. London; founder of child psychoanalysis and one of its foremost practitioners. She also made fundamental contributions to understanding how the ego, or consciousness, functions in averting painful ideas, impulses, and feelings. Important in her own right, but diverging from her father in emphasizing the role of the ego (as opposed to id forces) in psychological functioning. Her book The ego and mechanisms of defense (1936) laid the groundwork for ego psychology. She was one of the first psychoanalysts to work primarily with children. |
| Gordon Allport | |
(source) |
Died
9 Oct 1967 (born 11 Nov 1897)
Gordon (Willard) Allport was an American humanistic psychologist and educator who developed trait theory in an original theory of personality. Allport thought the uniqueness of each personality was one of the most important things to understand. Part of this uniqueness is due to the many, many parts of our personality. He and many other psychologists considered reflexes, habits, drives or needs, beliefs, our particular view of our environment, goals or intentions, values, attitudes, and traits as being the kind of factors that determine what we do. Thus, "personality" becomes very complex. Unlike Freud, he did not see us as slavishly controlled by innate or external factors because humans have the ability to make conscious choices about how to behave. |
| Sir Henry Tizard | |
(source) |
Died
9 Oct 1959 (born 23 Aug 1885)
English chemist, inventor and administrator. Around 1920, with David Pye, his work on aircraft fuels ultimately led to the octane rating system, which expresses the anti-knocking characteristics of the fuel. In the 1930-40's he advised the British government in the scientific aspects of air defence, particularly radar. He led a mission of leading British and Canadian scientists to the USA (29 Aug 1940) to brief official American representatives on devices under active development for war use and to enlist the support of American scientists. Thus began a close cooperation of Anglo-American scientists in such fields as aeronautics and rocketry. His influence probably made the difference between defeat or victory at the Battle of Britain in 1940. |
| Pieter Zeeman | |
| Died
9 Oct 1943 (born 25 May 1865)
Dutch physicist who shared with Hendrik A. Lorentz the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1902 for his discovery of the Zeeman effect. |
|
| Karl von Goebel | |
| Died
9 Oct 1932 (born 8 Mar 1855)
Karl (Immanuel Eberhard) von Goebel was a German botanist whose Organographie der Pflanzen (1898-1901; Organography of Plants, 1900-05) clarified the principles of the science of plant morphology in relation to form and structure. |
|
| Joseph Farwell Glidden | |
(source) |
Died 9 Oct 1906 (born 18 Jan 1813)
American inventor, native of New Hampshire, who was an Illinois farmer when he developed the design of the first commercial barbed wire, patented 24 Nov 1874, a product that would transform the West. Before this innovation, settlers on the treeless plains had no easy way to fence livestock away from cropland, and ranchers had no way to prevent their herds from roaming far and wide. Glidden’s barbed wire opened the plains to large-scale farming, and closed the open range, bringing the era of the cowboy and the round-up to an end. With his partner, Isaac L. Ellwood, Glidden formed the Barb Fence Company of De Kalb, Illinois, and quickly became one of the wealthiest men in the nation. He died in De Kalb, Illinois. [Image right: detail from patent application diagram. source]
Devil's
Rope: A Cultural History of Barbed Wire, by Alan Krell. |
| Benjamin Banneker | |
(source) |
Died
9 Oct 1806 (born 9 Nov 1731)
American self-educated inventor, astronomer, inventor, mathematician and compiler of almanacs who was son of a freed slave who became one of the first important black American intellectuals. He was the first to record the arrival of the "seventeen-year locusts", or periodical cicadas. In 1753, Banneker built a wooden clock, that kept accurate time even though he had only previously seen a sundial and a pocket watch. He calculated the clock's gear ratios and carved them with a pocket knife. In 1789, he successfully predicted an eclipse. He helped survey the site of Washington D.C. (1791-3). Banneker was also an early antislavery publicist who worked to improve the lot of black people in the U.S.« [Note: some sources give date of death as 25 Oct 1806] The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Claude Perrault | |
(source) |
Died 9 Oct 1688 (born 1613)
Architect, physician and physicist. Claude Perrault was the architect of the oldest building of the Paris Observatory when it was funded in 1667 by King Louis XIV. Its centre line defined the meridian line of Paris (from 1667 to 1884 when France then adopted the international meridian line which passes through Greenwich close to London). Perrault presented a memoir to the Académie concerning a pendulum clock driven by water, some time before 1669 when he wrote to Christiaan Huygens on the subject of a hydraulic pendulum clock.. In 1673, he translated the Ten Books of Architecture by the Roman architect Vitruvius. [Image right: (source)] |
| OCTOBER 9 - EVENTS | |
| Meteorite | |
(source) |
In 1992, a great meteor, seen from Kentucky to New York, was observed at
7:50 pm EDT. It landed as a stone (chondrite, Olivine-Bronzite, H6, brecciated)
meteorite.
Its 12.37 kg mass
crashed onto the Chevrolet Malibou car of Mrs. Michelle Knapp of Wells
Street in Peekskill, NY. The fireball [mpeg video]
was first seen over West Virginia and traveled about 700 km NE, before
smashing into the parked car with a velocity of about 80 m/s. It is only
the 4th recovered meteorite for which detailed data exist on its trajectory.
Dark flight began about 30 km high, when the velocity dropped below 3 km/s
and it continued an additional 50 km without ablation. Since getting hit
by the meteorite, the car has toured Germany, Switzerland, Japan, France
and the US. |
| Sakharov Nobel Prize | |
(source) |
In 1975, Andrei Sakharov (21 May 1921 - 1989), often called father of the
Soviet hydrogen bomb,
became the first Soviet citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work
as an outspoken dissident to the Soviet regime. In 1957 his concern with
the radioactive hazards of nuclear testing inspired him to write a pioneering
article on the effects of low-level radiation. This might be considered
his first step towards dissent. The Nobel Committee citation called him
"the conscience of mankind" saying he "has fought not only against the
abuse of power and violations of human dignity in all its forms, but has
in equal vigor fought for the ideal of a state founded on the principle
of justice for all." The Soviet authorities denied him permission to go
to Norway to receive his award. |
| Hydrocephalus shunt | |
|
In 1956, a successful new silicone valve to drain "water on the brain"
in cases of hydrocephalus, was reported
by Dr. Eugene B. Spitz at the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting in
New York City. John Holter, an engineer,
invented the shunt using a silicone one-way, pressure-sealing valve which
avoided the clogging problems experienced with the earlier metal valves
previously tried by surgeons Spitz and Nulsen. The shunt drained fluid
and controlled cranial pressure. In the 8 months since the first installation
in Feb 1956, the Holter valve was implanted in 68 cases of which 57 were
successful in decompressing the brain. Previous means had a success rate
of only 16 out of 122 cases. The device has since saved many thousands
of lives.« |
|
| Electric blanket | |
|
In 1946, the Simmons Company of Petersburg, Va., manufactured the first
electric blanket. Its price was $39.50. The temperature was regulated by
an "electronic" thermostatic control. |
|
| Altimeter | |
|
In 1938, the radio altimeter was first demonstrated in New York by Bell
Labs, in the first public display of the device that gives pilots the
height of an aircraft above the local terrain by bouncing radio signals
off the ground to give a reliable altitude reading, thus changing aviation
forever. |
|
| Hoover Dam online | |
(source) |
In 1936, the first generator at Boulder (later Hoover)
Dam began transmitting electricity
to Los Angeles. From 1939 to 1949, Hoover Powerplant was the world's largest
hydroelectric installation; with an installed capacity of 2.08 million
kilowatts, it is still one of the country's largest. There are 17 main
turbines in Hoover Powerplant. The original turbines were all replaced
through an uprating program between 1986 and 1993. With a rated capacity
of 2,991,000 horsepower, and two station-service units rated at 3,500 horsepower
each, for a plant total of 2,998,000 horsepower. The plant has a
total nameplate capacity of 2,074,000 kilowatts, and generates more than
4 billion kilowatt-hours a year - enough to serve 1.3 million people. |
| Meteor shower | |
1988 (source) |
In 1933, a great unpredicted meteor shower was seen from Europe that surprised
astronomers. Dr. W.J. Fisher, a Harvard astronomer, identified the Giacobini-Zinner
comet as the cause. This minor periodic comet was only sparsely the
cause of meteors in the past, and would otherwise be little noticed by
the astronomical observers. A hundred "shooting stars" a minute were reported
from the Soviet observatory at Pulkovo,
near Leningrad. Though short-lived, this exceeded in brilliance the showers
of 1833 and 1866, Lasting only a few hours, its maximum came at about
20:00 GMT. It was regarded as one of the major meteoric displays of history,
resulting from stray fragments of comet burning up in Earth's upper atmosphere. |
| First flight | |
Eole-3 (source) |
In 1890, it is reported, however without evidence, French electrical engineer
Clément Ader was the first person to actually fly an airplane, but
his steam-powered bat-like plane, "Eole", only rose a few inches off the
ground. (It was not a sustained flight like the Wright Brothers later flight.)
Ader's 50 meter flight was cut
short, said eye witnesses, by trees at the end of the field. The
plane's design flaw
didn't show up in that minimal flight - Ader hadn't provided adequate control.
He coined the french word "avion" for aircraft. It is said to mean Appareil
Volant Imitant les Oisaux Naturels: Flying Machine Imitating Natural
Birds. At the Paris Electrical Exhibition (1881), Ader showed a closed-circuit
stereo audio system to a listening booth. |
| Telephone | |
 |
In 1876, the first two-way telephone conversation occurred over outdoor
wires. Alexander Graham Bell had a two-way conversation
with Watson over the telegraph line linking Boston and East Cambridge.
Three days earlier in Boston, 6 Oct 1876, Bell two-way telephone test of
conversation with Watson had been the world's first two-way telephone conversation. |
| Oil pipeline | |
 |
In 1865, the first underground oil pipeline was laid between Oil Creek
and
Pithole,
Pa. Samuel Van Syckel, who came to the creek in 1864 with some money hoping
to make more, had handled quantities of oil produced at Pithole, several
miles from a shipping point, only to see his profits eaten up by the tyranny
of teamsters. With determination, he built a mostly buried, two-inch pipeline
with three relay pumps, 5.5 miles between
the wells and the railroad. Carrying eighty barrels of oil an hour, the
day that the Van Syckel pipe-line began to run oil, a revolution
began in the business. The teamsters turned out in fury, digging up and
cutting the pipe so that the oil would be lost. It was only by stationing
an armed guard that they were held in check. [Image:
Oil Creek, Pa., 1865] |
| Calliope patent | |
(source) |
In 1855, Joshua C. Stoddard of Worcester, Massachusetts, received a patent
for his calliope. The first
instrument consisted of 15 whistles, of graduated sizes, attached in a
row to the top of a small steam boiler. A long cylinder with pins of different
shapes driven into it ran the length of the boiler. The pins were so arranged
that when the cylinder revolved, they pressed the valves and blew the whistles
in proper sequence. The different shapes enabled the operator to play notes
of varying length. Later, Stoddard replaced the cylinder with a keyboard.
Wires running from the keys to the valves enabled the operator to play
the instrument like a piano. He patented
a successful hay rake in 1879 and a fire escape in 1884. He died on April
4, 1902. |
| Sewing machine motor | |
(source) |
In 1855, the first U.S. patent was issued for a sewing machine motor to
Isaac
Merritt Singer of New York City. It covered a spring and cone pulley
device. (No. 13,661) |
| First U.S. astronomy expedition | |
 |
In 1780, the first U.S. astronomy expedition
to record an eclipse of the sun left on this day from Harvard College,
Cambridge, Mass., for Penobscot Bay, led by Samuel Williams. A boat was
supplied by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with four professors and
six students. Although the country was at war with Britain, the British
officer in charge of Penobscot Bay permitted the expedition to land and
observe the eclipse of 27 Oct 1780. The eclipse began at 11:11 am and ended
at 1:50 pm. They set up equipment to observe the predicted total eclipse
of the sun. A solar eclipse occurred, but the expedition was
shocked
to find itself outside the path of totality. They saw a thin arc of the
sun instead of its complete obscuration by the moon. |
| Kepler's Supernova | |
(source) |
In 1604, Johannes Kepler and other observers saw the appearance of a "new"
star in the constellation of Ophiuchus in the western sky, rivaling the
brilliance of the nearby planets. |
