| OCTOBER 10 - BIRTHS | |
| Lester Germer | |
(source AIP) |
 Born 10
Oct 1896; died 1971
Lester (Halbert) Germer was an American physicist who, with his colleague Clinton Joseph Davisson, conducted an experiment (1927) that first demonstrated the wave properties of the electron. They showed that a beam of electrons scattered by a crystal produces a diffraction pattern characteristic of a wave. This experiment confirmed the hypothesis of Louis-Victor de Broglie, a founder of wave mechanics, that the electron should show the properties of an electromagnetic wave as well as a particle. He also studied thermionics, erosion of metals, and contact physics. |
| Earle Dickson | |
(source) |
Born 10
Oct 1892; died 21 Sep 1961.
Inventor of Band-aids. Finding his wife prone to kitchen accidents - cuts or burns - Dickson frequently was dressing her small wounds with cotton gauze and adhesive tape. After a number of these accidents, Earle devised a way she could easily apply her own dressings. He prepared ready-made bandages by placing squares of cotton gauze at intervals along an adhesive strip and covering them with crinoline. Now all his wife had to do was cut off a length of the strip and wrap it over her cut. His employment was as a cotton buyer at Johnson & Johnson, where his suggestion to make this a product became a reality leading to Band-aids. |
| Fridtjof Nansen | |
(EB) |
Born 10
Oct 1861; died 1930.
Norwegian explorer, oceanographer, statesman, and humanitarian who led a number of expeditions to the Arctic (1888, 1893, 1895-96) and oceanographic expeditions in the North Atlantic (1900, 1910-14). Nansen wrote The Oceanography of the North Polar Basin (1902). For his relief work after World War I he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace (1922). |
| Christophorus Buys Ballot | |
(source) |
Born 10
Oct 1817; died 3 Feb 1890.
Christophorus (Henricus Didericus) Buys Ballot was a Dutch meteorologist, born in Kloetinge, the Netherlands, particularly remembered for his observation in 1857 that the wind blows at right angles to the atmospheric pressure gradient. He showed that northern hemisphere winds circulate counter-clockwise around low pressure areas and clockwise around high pressure areas. The reverse is true in the southern hemisphere. Although not the first to make this discovery, his name remains attached to it as Buys Ballot's law. He studied and taught at the University of Utrecht, and founded the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in 1854. He was the inventor of the aeroklinoscope and of a system of weather signals. |
| Sir John Simon | |
EB/BBC Hulton Library |
Born 10
Oct 1816; died 23 Jul 1904.
English pathologist, whose sanitary reforms led to modern standards of public health. In 1850, Simon joined with the new Epidemiological Society, which in 1853 published a report which was submitted to Parliament, calling for compulsory smallpox vaccination of all infants. He also recognized that outside and home employment of mothers is a factor in infant mortality; in 1856 he stated that "infants perish under the neglect and mismanagement that their mothers' occupation implies." With the passing of the Public Health Act of 1848, local boards of health were set up, responsible for drainage, paving, cleansing and an ample supply of water. Simon described the improvements in English Sanitary Institutions, 1890. He was knighted in 1887. |
| Hugh Miller | |
(source) |
Born 10
Oct 1802; died 24 Dec 1856.
Scottish geologist and lay theologian, born in Cromarty. As a geological writer, he raised public interest in geologic history. With no formal training in geology, he had great experience in the field, particularly in the local Devonian rocks, for his initial interest in geology was stimulated by his work as a quarryman at a young age. His best known work in science is his description of the Devonian fossil fish of Scotland in his book The Old Red Sandstone (1841). He died at his own hands in 1856, after a long but episodic period of "illness of the brain", apparently aggravated by the stress of writing his final work, The Testimony of the Rocks, in which he tried to reconcile his religious beliefs with the scientific evidence of his studies. (published poshumously). |
| Thomas Drummond | |
(source) |
Born 10
Oct 1797; died 15 Apr 1840.
Scottish civil engineer who invented the Drummond light (similar to limelight illumination in theatres). As a Royal Engineer he worked on the ordnance survey and attended chemistry lectures by Faraday at the Royal Institution. In the autumn of 1825, while mapping Ireland, Drummond applied limelight to enable surveying by night as well as day and designed an improved Heliostat. To produce a bright light, using an oxygenated alcohol flame, he heated a small ball of lime to incandescent in front of a reflector. From 1828, he attempted to adapt the Drummond light for use in lighthouses, but it was expensive to operate, and by 1831, he instead turned to politics, and by 1835 was Under Secretary of Ireland. His early death was caused by overwork.« 
 Thomas
Drummond: Under-secretary in Ireland, 1835-40; life and letters,
by R. Barry O'Brien. |
| Benjamin Wright | |
(source) |
Born 10
Oct 1770; died 24 Aug 1842.
American engineer who directed the construction of the Erie Canal. A one-time judge, he helped survey the Erie Canal route. When the Erie Canal was finally funded in 1817, Wright was selected as one of the three engineers to design and build it, then named chief engineer. Wright made the Erie Canal project a school of engineering. Until mid-century, almost every civil engineer in the U.S. had trained with, or been trained by someone who had worked under, Wright on the Erie Canal. Because he trained so many engineers on that project, Wright has been called the "father of American civil engineering." He also engaged in the design and construction at the outset of the first railroads. He was the first Chief Engineer of the Erie Railroad. |
| Henry Cavendish | |
(source) |
Born 10
Oct 1731; died 24 Feb 1810.
English physicist and chemist, born in Nice, who conducted experiments in diverse fields, discovering such phenomena as the composition of air, the nature and properties of hydrogen, the specific heat of certain substances, the composition of water, and various properties of electricity. He also measured the density and mass of the Earth. |
|
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| OCTOBER 10 - DEATHS | |
| A(lfred) Irving Hallowell | |
(source) |
 Died
10 Oct 1974 (born 28 Dec 1892)
American cultural anthropologist who was an authority on the Northern Ojibwa Indians. He used tests of perception, and particularly favoured the Rorschach ink blot test to assess individual Ojibwa personalities. Hallowell collected a series of 266 Rorschach records from various Ojibwa communities, and although he never prepared an over-all summary of the results in the form of a sketch of typical Ojibwa personality structures, he used the data in a number of papers. All of Hallowell's field work was undertaken among American Indians. He published many studies of the tribes and made important contributions to culture- and- personality theory. His book Culture and Experience appeared in 1955.« The
Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History,
by A. Irving Hallowell, et al. |
| Sir Cyril Burt | |
(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1971 (born 3 Mar 1883)
British psychologist who was a leader in developing methods of statistical data analysis, particularly factor analysis, in psychological testing. He investigated the role of heredity in intelligence with twin studies and the role of nuture in juvenile deliquency. In 1913, he was appointed thea school psychologist for the schools administered by the London County Council (LCC) This was the first appointment of this kind in the U.K. In 1926, he proposed a national testing program of intelligence tests on children at about age 11. Subsequently, the national "Eleven-Plus" exam was used to identify whether children were high scorers suitable for education at a grammar schools, or not. After Burt's death his later work on twins was questioned as flawed or fraud.« Cyril
Burt, Psychologist, by Leslie S.
Hearnshaw. |
| George Frederick Dick | |
CDC Poster(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1967 (born 21 Jul 1881)
American physician and pathologist who, with his wife, Gladys Henry Dick, isolated the hemolytic streptococcus that was the cause of, and developed an immunization to treat, the dangerous scarlet fever (1924). They also developed the Dick test (1925) a test to determine susceptibility or immunity to scarlet fever by an injection of scarlet fever toxin. They purified a soluble extoxin from hemolytic Streptococccus pyogenes and use it as a diagnostic. They use Koch's postulates to show that scarlet fever is caused by streptocoocci, recover the bacteria from all cases of the disease and infect others with cultures of the bacterium. The Dick test, an in vivo skin test, is rarely used today, measures host antibody response. |
| Adolf Engler | |
(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1930 (born 25 Mar 1844)
(Gustav Heinrich) Adolf Engler was a German botanist famous for his system of plant classification and for his expertise as a plant geographer. He emphasized the importance of geological history in the study of plant geography, and worked out an influential system of plant classification. He wrote several works on plant geography and taxonomy, and collaborated with Karl Prantl on the early volumes of Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien (32 vol. in 17, 1887–1909) and edited the early volumes of Das Pflanzenreich. The Engler and Prantl system of flowering plant classification was the principal one in use until the 1970s. |
| Elijah McCoy | |
(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1929 (born 27 Mar 1843)
Canadian-born Black-American inventor holding many patents for the automatic lubrication of machinery. While resident in Ypsilanti, Michigan, after two years of development, he received his first U.S. patent, No. 129,843 on 23 Jun 1872, for a lubricator for steam engines. By 1926 he held several dozen patents for devices that enabled a steady supply of oil to machinery, in drops flowing from a reservoir cup while the machine continued to run, thus eliminating the need to stop the machine to oil it. These were used by stationary steam engines in factories, railway locomotives, steam-powered inland waterway and ocean ships. His inventiveness yielded other patents, including an ironing table, scaffold support and rubber heel.« |
| Adolf Furtwängler | |
(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1907 (born 30 Jun 1853)
German archaeologist whose important publications include a volume on the bronzes found at Olympia, vast works on ancient gems and Greek vases, and the invaluable Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture in which he presented the pioneering method for prehistorical stylistic categorization of small artworks that he devised while excavating at the Olympia site in Greece (1878). His use of photography in research supplanted the use of drawings because a camera gives objective reproduction with more accuracy, which enabled fragments to be scrutinized, even when they were miles apart. Studying photographs, he reconstructed the statue of Athena, by demonstrating that a marble head in Bologna belonged to a marble body in Dresden.« |
| Sir Ferdinand von Mueller | |
(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1896 (born 30 Jun 1825)
German-born Australian botanist and explorer. He migrated to Australia in 1848 for health reasons, and there became the country's greatest 19th-century scientist. Mueller gained an international reputation as a great botanical collector and writer. His contributions covered a wide field of sciences such as geography, pharmacy, horticulture, agriculture, forestry, paleontology, and zoology. His activity as a botanist is shown by hundreds of Australian plant names which are followed by 'F. Muell'. From 1853, he held the post as the first Government Botanist of Victoria until his death, 43 years later. He travelled widely throughout the colonies on botanical exploration, including as naturalist to the Gregory expedition to northern Australia (1855-57).« |
| Thomas Say | |
(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1834 (born 27 Jun 1787)
American self-taught naturalist often considered to be the founder of descriptive entomology in the United States. His taxonomic work was quickly recognized by European zoologists. Say was a founding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He was chief zoologist of Major Stephen Long's exploring expedition to the tributaries of the Missouri River in 1819 and in 1823 for the expedition to the headwaters of the Mississippi. During the 1819 expedition, Say first described the coyote, swift fox, western kingbird, band-tailed pigeon, Say's phoebe, rock wren, lesser goldfinch, lark sparrow, lazuli bunting, and orange-crowned warbler. His important work, American Entomology, remains a classic. He also wrote on paleontology and conchology. [Note: Some sources give his birth date as 27 July 1787*.] |
| Pierre Lyonnet | |
(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1789 (born 22 Jul 1708)
Dutch naturalist and engraver who skillfully dissected insects and made detailed illustrations of their anatomy. He also had a career as an official codebreaker. In 1738 he entered the service of the States General as an administrator of secret expenses and as a code-clerk. In his leisure he turned to natural history. He believed that nature was a cipher that could be interpreted by tracing every detail of its perfect design. He designed a simple microscope which had each lens suspended at the end of a series of ball and socket joints over a small mahogony dissecting table mounted on a post above a wooden base with small drawers containing his instruments. After preparing engravings for several books written by others, he produced his own treatises.« [Other sources list his birth year as 1706 and others as 1707.] |
| David Gregory | |
(source) |
Died
10 Oct 1708 (born 3 Jun 1659)
Scottish mathematician and astronomer. In 1702 he published a book in defense of the theories of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. However, in the matter of chromatic aberration, Gregory noted something that Newton had missed. Different kinds of glass spread the colours of the spectrum by different amounts. He suggested a suitable combination of two different kinds of glass might eliminate chromatic aberration. (A half century later, Dollond accomplished this result.) Telescopes were a special interest of his, and Gregory also experimented with making an achromatic telescope. Gregory and did important work on series. |
| OCTOBER 10 - EVENTS | |
| Millau Viaduct work began | |
(source) |
In 2001, construction on the Viaduc de Millau (Millau Viaduct) began
to bridge
the River Tarn in Southern France. Finished in 38 months, it was opened
14
Dec 2004. The Millau Viaduct, designed
by Sir Norman Foster, is the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world.
Taller than the Eiffel Tower, the tallest pylon is 340m high, making it
the world's highest road bridge. It carries the A75 motorway from Clermont-Ferraud
south to Beziers, crosses
2.5-km and rises 270m above the valley. It was to replace the motor route
through the town of Millau with continual traffic jams, shorten the journey
by 100 km and save 4 hours of driving time. It was built using a steel
deck, rather than concrete roadbed.« |
| Cruithne | |
(source) |
In 1986, a tiny asteroid,
Asteroid 3753, was found orbitting
the Earth - a body in addition to the Moon - by J. D. Waldron at Siding
Spring Observatory. It was called Cruithne,
(pronounced "Croo-een-ya") after Celtic tribes
who came to Britain between about 880 and 500 BC. It is pulled alternately
by the Sun and Earth. When viewed from the Earth, its 770-year orbit
appears to be horseshoe shaped, but this is an effect of viewing an orbit
from a rotating planet. It actually passes closer to the Earth than the
Moon. At its closest approach it only gets to within about 15 million km
(9 million miles) of our planet. Its diameter
ranges between 2.9 - 6.4 km diameter wide. Cruithne will remain in a suspended
state around Earth for at least 5,000 years. |
| Nuclear Test Ban Treaty | |
 |
In 1963, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), signed by Britain,
America and the Soviet Union, comes into operation. Its official title
was the Treaty Banning
Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water.
On 15 July 1963, U.S., British, and Soviet negotiators had met in Moscow.
Due to disagreements
concerning on-site inspections, agreement on a comprehensive ban was not
reached. So negotiators turned their attention to the limited ban, prohibiting
tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and beneath the surface of the seas
(but not yet those underground).
On 4 August 1963 the LTBT was signed
in Moscow by the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union, and ratified by the
US President 7 Oct 1963. |
| Radio telescope | |
(source) |
In 1980, the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope network in N.M. was
dedicated. Conceived in the 60's and built in the 70's the VLA
is versatile and sensitive, with angular resolution comparable to that
of the best ground-based optical telescopes. The VLA is an "aperture synthesis"
interferometric instrument, designed to gain the resolving power of a very
large antenna by utilizing a number of smaller antennas. Information from
all of its antennas is combined mathematically to produce resolving power
equal to that of a single antenna as much as 36 km in diameter. The VLA
is arranged in a "Y" pattern, with nine antennas on each of the three arms.
Each of the 27 antennae is a fully-steerable 82-ft diam. parabolic dish,
weighing approx. 230 tons. |
| Vinyl | |
(USPTO) |
In 1933, a U.S. patent
was issued to Waldo L. Semon for a method of making plasticized PVC, now
known simply as vinyl. The patent was titled "Synthetic Rubber-like Composition
and Method of Making Same" (U.S. No. 1,929,453). As originally known, PVC
- polyvinyl chloride - was a polymer that was hard and difficult to form
into useful articles. Semon had invented a way to make it in a rubber-like
form. In brief, it consisted of dissolving a polymerized vinyl halide,
at an elevated temperature, in a substantially non-volatile organic solvent,
and allowing the solution to cool, whereupon it sets to a stiff rubbery
gel. The patent listed uses such as water-proof boots or shoes, insulating
coatings and resilient flooring material. |
| Detergent | |
(source) |
In 1933, Dreft, the first detergent with synthetic surfactants for home
use was marketed by Procter & Gamble. Soap had been used to clean clothes
for nearly 2,000 years, but had poor perfomance in hard water. In the 1920s,
P&G researchers created
special two-part "miracle molecules," one end of which pulled grease and
dirt out of clothes while the other clung to water, suspending dirt until
it could be washed away. These were a sodium alkyl sulphate made
from chlorosulphonic acid and a fatty alcohol, called synthetic surface-active
agents - synthetic surfactants for short. Dreft eliminated the problems
associated with soap, and gently cleaned lightly soiled clothes. The discovery
of detergent technology began a revolution
in cleaning technology. |
| U.S. rigid dirigible | |
(source) |
In 1923, the first American-build rigid dirigible was christened in Lakehurst,
N.J. as Shenandoah ("daughter of the stars"). It was the first of
the Zeppelin type to use helium gas, of which a supply was was available
in the U.S. This ZR-1 was launched 20 Aug 1923, and tested in flight 3
Sep 1923. Covered with an aluminum-painted fabric, it was 680 feet long,
weighed 36 tons, bear 55 tons, and carry enough fuel to cruise 5,000 miles
at an average speed of 65 mph. It was commanded by Commander Zachery Lansdowne
(1888-1925), an early Navy aviator, who died with 14 members of the crew
when the airship was struck and destroyed
in a violent thunderstorm on 3 Sep 1925 over Caldwell, Ohio, though 29
of the crew survived. |
| Panama Canal | |
(source) |
In 1913, the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans commingled in the
Panama Canal after U.S. engineers blew up the Gamboa Dam. By the summer
of 1913, the locks and the Culebra Cut (culebra means snake) had been finished.
The struggle to dig the Culebra Cut had lasted seven years. On 26 Sept.
water was first turned into the locks. On 10 Oct., President Woodrow Wilson
pressed a button in Washington that carried a signal by telegraph to Panama.
When received a minute later, a dynamite charge was ignited that blew a
hole in the Gamboa Dike and water began to fill the Culebra Cut. This act
also marked the final stage in the creation of Lake Gatun, 85 ft above
sea level, the largest man-made lake at that time.
Path
Between The Seas : The Creation of the Panama Canal,
by David McCullough. |
| Bicycle patent | |
|
In 1899, the black inventor
Isaac R. Johnson patented his frame of a bicycle which can be separated
or folded to store in the trunk of a car or other small places. This type
of bicycle can be used to carry on vacation. (Black
Achievers, 1986 C&M Publishing, Kalamazoo, Michigan) |
|
| Billiard ball | |
(source) |
In 1865, the first U.S. patent for a billiard
ball of a composition material resembling
ivory was patented by John Wesley Hyatt (No. 50,359). He was the winner
of a $10,000 prize offered by Phelan and Collender of New York City for
the best substitute for an ivory ball. While still searching for substitute
materials for making billiard balls, he invented
celluloid, which he patented on 12 July 1870, (No. 105,338). He combined
nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol, heated the mixture under pressure
to make it pliable for molding, and allowed it to harden under normal atmospheric
pressure. His discovery opened the way for the development of the modern
plastics industry. (Hyatt also had inventions in water purification, sugarcane
refining and textile manufacturing.) |
| Triton | |
(image) |
In 1846, Neptune's moon, Triton, is discovered by William Lassell while
he was observing the newly discovered planet Neptune. He was attempting
to confirm his observation of the previous week, that Neptune
had a ring. Instead he discovered that Neptune had a satellite, Triton.
Lassell soon proved that the ring he thought he had seen was a product
of his new telescope's distortion. This picture
of Triton was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass Triton:
Voyager 2, which found fascinating
terrain, a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for ice
volcanoes on this world of peculiar orbit and spin. Ironically, Voyager
2 also confirmed the existence of complete thin rings around Neptune -
but these would have been quite invisible to Lassell! |
| Metric system | |
|
In 1796, according to tradition, the metric system was born. The Oct 10
(10/10) date was chosen since it seems to signify the base 10 way of using
measurements. |
|
