| NOVEMBER 18 - BIRTHS | |
| Alan B. Shepard, Jr. | |
(source) |
 Born 18
Nov 1923; died 21 Jul 1998.
Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. was America's first man in space and one of only 12 humans who walked on the Moon. Named as one of the nation's original seven Mercury astronauts in 1959, Shepard became the first American into space on 5 May 1961, riding a Redstone rocket on a 15-minute suborbital flight that took him and his Freedom 7 Mercury capsule 115 miles in altitude and 302 miles downrange from Cape Canaveral, FL. (His flight came three weeks after the launch of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who on 12 Apr 1961, became the first human space traveler on a one-orbit flight lasting 108 minutes.) Although the flight of Freedom 7 was brief, it was a major step for U.S. in a race with the USSR. |
| George Wald | |
(source) |
Born 18
Nov 1906; died 12 Apr 1997.
American biochemist who received (with Haldan K. Hartline of the U.S. and Ragnar Granit of Sweden) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1967 for his work on the chemistry of vision. While researching the biochemistry of vision at Harvard University, he disclosed the presence of Vitamin A in the retina of the eye. In later work, he identified visual pigments and their precursors. As a byproduct he described the absorption spectra of the different types of cones serving colour vision. His important discovery of the primary molecular reaction to light in the eye represented a dramatic advance in vision since it plays the role of a trigger in the photoreceptors of all living animals. |
| Zheng Zuoxin | |
(source) |
Born 18
Nov 1906; died 27 Jun 1998.
(a.k.a. Tso-Hsin Cheng) Chinese ornithologist, considered the founder of modern Chinese ornithology, who was internationally renowned for his scientific study of birds. His love of nature and the colorful forest birds began in his childhood, when he learned to identify many birds by their calls. He did graduate work in the U.S. leading to a doctorate in Jun 1930, then returned to China. He spent 60 years doing field work and research in ornithology and conservation. In 1934 he co-founded the China Zoological Society. He was the deputy-director of Beijing Museum of Natural History. His 30 books, including the first checklist of Chinese birds. In 1987, his book A Synopsis of the Avifauna of China was published in English translation.«  A
Synopsis of the Avifauna of China, by Zheng Zuoxin. |
| George Kistiakowsky | |
(source) |
Born 18
Nov 1900; died 7 Dec 1982.
George Bogdan Kistiakowsky was a Russian American chemist who worked on developing the first atomic bomb but later advocated banning nuclear weapons. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1926, and taught chemistry at Princeton University then Harvard (1930-71). He served as special assistant to President Eisenhower for science and technology (1959-61). As head of the explosives division of the Los Alamos Laboratory during WW II (1944-46), he oversaw 600 people developing explosives for the first atom bomb. The conventional explosives are used for its detonation to uniformly compress the plutonium sphere and achieve critical mass. In 1977, he became chairman of the Council for a Livable World, which opposes nuclear war. |
| Patrick M.S. Blackett | |
(source) |
Born 18
Nov 1897; died 13 Jul 1974.
(Baron Blackett of Chelsea) English scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948 for his discoveries in the field of cosmic radiation, which he accomplished primarily with cloud-chamber photographs that revealed the way in which a stable atomic nucleus can be disintegrated by bombarding it with alpha particles (helium nuclei). Although such nuclear disintegration had been observed previously, his data explained this phenomenon for the first time and were useful in explaining disintegration by other means. |
| August Kundt | |
(source) |
Born 18 Nov 1839; died 21 May 1894.
August (Adolph Eduard Eberhard) Kundt was a German physicist who developed a method (1866) to determine the velocity of sound in gases and solids. He used a closed glass tube into which a dry powder (such as lycopodium) has been sprinkled. The source of sound in the original device was a metal rod clamped at its centre with a piston at one end, which is inserted into the tube. When the rod is stroked, sound waves generated by the piston enter the tube. If the position of the piston in the tube is adjusted so that the gas column is a whole number of half wavelengths long, the dust will be disturbed by the resulting stationary waves forming a series of striations, enabling distances between nodes to be measured. |
| (Nils) Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld | |
(source) |
Born 18
Nov 1832; died 12 Aug 1901.
(Baron) Swedish geologist, mineralogist, geographer, whose explorations included the first ship voyage from Scandinavia (1878) across the Asiatic Arctic through the Northeast Passage. He joined Swedish geologist Otto Torell on polar travels at Spitsbergen (1858 and 1861) where he discovered plant fossils of the Tertiary period. From 1864, he led his own expeditions, on the first, to make maps of Spitsbergen. In 1868, in the iron steamer Sofia, he reached a greater latitude (82°42'N) than anyone ever had before. In 1870, he visited the west-central coast of Greenland, collected minerals and fossils and studied the inland ice. He made an extensive collection of biological and zoological specimens at Spitsbergen during his 1872–73 exploration.« |
| Asa Gray | |
1865(source) |
Born 18
Nov 1810; died 30 Jan 1888.
America's leading botanist in the mid-19th century, extensively studying North American flora, he did more work than any other botanist to unify the taxonomic knowledge of plants of this region. He was Darwin's strongest early supporter in the U.S.; in 1857, he was the third scientist to be told of his theory (after Hooker and Lyell). He debated L. Agassiz between 1859 and 1861 on variation and geographic distribution Gray's discovery of close affinities between East Asian and North American floras was a key piece of evidence in favor of evolution. Though not fully comfortable with selection, he argued that evolution was compatible with religious belief and slid towards theistic evolutionism. Gray co-authored Flora of North America. |
| Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre | |
(source) |
Born 18
Nov 1787; died 10 Jul 1851.
French painter and physicist who invented the daguerreotype, the first practical process of photography. Though the first permanent photograph from nature was made in 1826/27 by Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce of France, it was of poor quality and required about eight hours' exposure time. The process that Daguerre developed required only 20 to 30 minutes. The two became partners in the development of Niepce's heliographic process from 1829 until the death of Niepce in 1833. Daguerre continued his experiments, and he discovered that exposing an iodized silver plate in a camera would result in a lasting image after a chemical fixing process. The
Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science,
by Barger and White. |
|
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| NOVEMBER 18 - DEATHS | |
| Niels Bohr | |
(source) |
 Died
18 Nov 1962 (born 7 Oct 1885)
Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist, born in Copenhagen, who was the first to apply the quantum theory, which restricts the energy of a system to certain discrete values, to the problem of atomic and molecular structure. For this work he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. He developed the so-called Bohr theory of the atom and liquid model of the nucleus. Bohr was of Jewish origin and when the Nazis occupied Denmark he escaped in 1943 to Sweden on a fishing boat. From there he was flown to England where he began to work on the project to make a nuclear fission bomb. After a few months he went with the British research team to Los Alamos in the USA where they continued work on the project. |
| Frank Baldwin Jewett | |
(image) |
Died
18 Nov 1949 (born 5 Sep 1879)
Frank Baldwin Jewett was the U.S. electrical engineer who directed research as the first president of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., (1925-40). Jewett believed that the best science and technology result from bringing together and nurturing the best minds. Under his tenure Bell Labs laid the foundation for a new scientific discipline, radio astronomy, and transformed movies by synchronizing sound to pictures. Bell Labs was the first to transmit television over a long distance in the U.S. and designed the first electrical digital computer. Bell Labs won its first Nobel Prize in physics for fundamental work demonstrating the wave nature of matter. |
| Walther Hermann Nernst | |
(source) |
Died
18 Nov 1941 (born 25 Jun 1864)
German scientist who was one of the founders of modern physical chemistry. In 1889, he devised his theory of electric potential and conduction of electrolytic solutions (the Nernst Equation) and introduced the solubility product to explain precipitation reactions. In 1906, Nernst showed that it is possible to determine the equilibrium constant for a chemical reaction from thermal data, and in so doing he formulated what he himself called the third law of thermodynamics. This states that the entropy, (a thermodynamic measure of disorder in a system), approaches zero as the temperature goes towards absolute zero. For this, he was awarded the 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1918, he explained the H2-Cl2 explosion on exposure to light as an atom chain reaction. |
| John E.W. Keely | |
(source) |
Died
18 Nov 1898 (born 3 Sep 1827)
John Ernst Worrell Keely was a fraudulent American inventor. In 1873 he announced that he had discovered a new physical force that, if harnessed, would produce unheard-of power. He claimed, for example, to be able to produce from a quart of water enough fuel to move a 30-car train from Philadelphia to New York City. He began construction of an engine to perform this feat and by 1874 was able to give preliminary demonstrations of his machine. He made a great show of guarding the secret of the motor he was developing to obtain power "from intermolecular vibrations of ether," and scientists and engineers scoffed at his unverified claims. |
| Gustav Theodor Fechner | |
(source) |
Died
18 Nov 1887 (born 19 Apr 1801)
German physicist and philosopher who was a key figure in the founding of psychophysics, the science concerned with quantitative relations between sensations and the stimuli producing them. He formulated the rule known as Fechner’s law, that, within limits, the intensity of a sensation increases as the logarithm of the stimulus. He also proposed a mathematical expression of the theory concerning the difference between two stimuli, advanced by E. H. Weber. (These are now known to be only approximately true. However, as long as the stimulus is of moderate intensity, then the laws will give us a good estimate.) Under the name “Dr. Mises” he also wrote humorous satire. In philosophy he was an animist, maintaining that life is manifest in all objects of the universe. |
| Edward Forbes | |
(source) |
Died
18 Nov 1854 (born 12 Feb 1815)
British naturalist, pioneer in the field of biogeography, who analyzed the distribution of plant and animal life of the British Isles as related to certain geological changes. Forbes is considered by many to be the founder of the science of oceanography and marine biology. He studied the fauna of the Aegean Sea and did much to stimulate interest in marine biology. Unfortunately, he is best known for his "azoic theory" (1843), which stated that marine life did not exist on sea beds at depths over 300 fathoms (1800 feet). This was soon to be disproved, (but the desire to test this hypothesis has led to further exploration until, eventually, no depth has been completely unstudied). He became paleontologist to British Geological Survey in 1844. |
| NOVEMBER 18 - EVENTS | |
| Vitamin C | |
 |
In 1970, Nobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling declared this day that large
doses of Vitamin C could ward off the common cold. He proposed that regular
intake of vitamin
C in amounts far higher than the officially sanctioned RDA (Recommended
Daily Allowance) could help prevent and shorten the duration of the common
cold. He concluded that the optimal daily intake of vitamin C for most
people is 2.3 grams to 10 grams daily. Although the medical establishment
immediately voiced their strong opposition
to this idea, many ordinary people believed Dr. Pauling and began taking
large amounts of vitamin C. He wrote a book on the subject Vitamin C
and the Common Cold (1970) which became a best-seller.. |
| Push button telephone | |
(source) |
In 1963, the first telephone in the U.S. with push buttons instead of a
rotary dial was placed in commercial service in Carnegie and Greensburg,
Pa. This was a Touch-Tone telephone
with 10 push buttons, manufactured by the Western Electric Manufacturing
and supply Unit of the Bell System. The optional service was offered for
an extra charge. Some previous marketing trials had taken place in Ohio
and Pennsylvania. A 10 button dial was inserted into an adapter taking
the place of the rotary dial. The use of 12 Button dials with * and #
keys for special services came out rather quickly after the introduction
of Touch Tone Service in 1963, and the 10 button dial was discontinued. |
| X-ray | |
 |
In 1950, the first fluoro-record reflector camera was announced. This could
make x-ray pictures in one-sixth of the time previously required, and was
used for gastro-instestinal surveys. The manufacturer was the Fairchild
Camera and Instrument Corp., Jamaica, N.Y. |
| Airplane loop-the-loop | |
(source) |
In 1913, the first airplane
in the U.S. to perform a loop-the-loop was piloted by Lincoln
Beachey over North Isalnd, San Diego, California. At a level of 1,000
feet, he brought his aircraft up with a swoop and a moment later was flying
head downward. He completed the loop at a height of 300 feet. Ten days
later he performed a triple loop. Beachey
was one of the more colorful characters of early aviation. By 1912, he
was a stunt
pilot of great repute. His daring acts made him well known in aviation
circles. In Chicago, he flew along a string of boxcars first rolling one
wheel then the other alternatively along the car roofs as the train was
rolling down the tracks. He died in 1915, at age 28, from a crash while
performing stunts at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, Cal. |
| Standard time | |
(source) |
In 1883, standard
time in the U.S. went into effect at noon for the first time due a
decision of the American Railway Association. The actual local time, or
"sun time" constantly changes as one moves either east or west. With the
arrival of railroad
travel, the situation raised problems for railway lines and passengers
trying to synchronize schedules in different cities. The need for a system
of standardized
time was evident. The system adopted was first proposed by Charles F. Dowd
(1825 - 1904), a school principal in New York state. North America was
divided into four time zones, fifteen degrees of longitude, and one hour
of "standard time" apart. Sir Stanford Fleming proposed the extension of
the Dowd system to the whole world with 24 time zones. |
| Chirographer | |
In 1845, Charles Turber was issued his second patent for a machine that
was a typewriter precursor. This one he named the Chirographer (No. 4272).
He is creditted with the first U.S. patent on a typewriter with platen
movement and automatic letter spacing, which he patented two years earlier,
called "Thurber's Patent Printer" (No. 3,228, 26 Aug 1843).  |
|
| First book printed in England | |
|
In 1477, English printer
William Caxton, (c.1422 - c.1491) produced the first book
printed in England, Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (Sayings
of the Philosophers). A few years earlier, in Europe, he had learned the
art of printing in Cologne (1471). In Bruges, in partnership with a copyist
and bookseller, Colard Mansion, he produced the first book
in the English language, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, (late
1474 or early 1475) translated from French by Caxton himself. In 1476,
he returned to his native land, England, where he used his experience from
abroad to set up a printing and publishing business "at the sign of the
Red Pale" within the precincts of Westminster Abbey. In the next 15 years,
he printed 107 works, including 74 books.« |
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