| DECEMBER 26 - BIRTHS | |
| Antoni Zygmund | |
(source) |
 Born 26
Dec 1900; died 30 May 1992.
Polish-born mathematician who created a major analysis research centre at Chicago, and recognized in 1986 for this with the National Medal for Science. In 1940, he escaped with his wife and son from German controlled Poland to the USA. He did much work in harmonic analysis, a statistical method for determining the amplitude and period of certain harmonic or wave components in a set of data with the aid of Fourier series. Such technique can be applied in various fields of science and technology, including natural phenomena such as sea tides. He also did major work in Fourier analysis and its application to partial differential equations. Zygmund's book Trigonometric Series (1935) is a classic, definitive work on the subject.«  Trigonometric
Series, by Antoni Zygmund. |
| Wilhelm Dörpfeld | |
(source) |
Born 26
Dec 1853; died 25 Apr 1940.
German archaeologist who was the first to study the construction of ancient Greek theatres. He worked with Ernst Curtius as a member of the excavation team at the Olympia site in Greece (1877-81), where Dörpfeld developed the method of dating ancient archaeological sites based on the strata in which objects were found and the type of building materials. He excavated the Mycenaean palace at Tiryns, Greece (1884-85). He was an associate of the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann assisting in the search for the Harbour of Troy, at Hisarlik, Turkey (1882-83). Dörpfeld continued that work (1893-94) after Schliemann's death.« |
| Clemens Alexander Winkler | |
(source) |
Born 26
Dec 1838; died 8 Oct 1904.
German chemist who discovered the element germanium (1886). He had a background in managing a cobalt glassworks and then on the faculty of the Freiberg School of Mining. Early in his career, he developed new techniques for industrial gas analysis and developed the Winkler gas burette. When, having been asked by the Freiberg Academy of Mining to analyze the mineral argyrodite (a silver sulphide ore), he found that all the known elements it contained amounted to only 93% of its weight. After spending four months tracking down and isolating the remaining 7%, he found the new element he called germanium, for Germany. This turned out to be the third of the elements (eka-silicon) predicted by Dmitry I. Mendeleyev in 1871.« |
| Felix Hoppe-Seyler | |
(source) |
Born 26
Dec 1825; died 10 Aug 1895.
Ernst Felix (Immanuel) Hoppe-Seyler was a German physician, who was a pioneer of physiological chemistry (biochemistry). He studied the chemical of blood and urine using the new technique of absorption spectroscopy, prepared hemoglobin in crystalline form and clarified its role in red blood cells. He demonstrated that the oxidation reactions between haemoglobin, oxygen and carbon monoxide took place in the tissues rather than in the blood itself. He also studied chlorophyll and was the first to prepare lecithin in a pure form. He coined the word proteid, now replaced with the word protein. He also investigated bile acids, lipid metabolism, quantification and classification of proteins and inspired research on nucleic acids.« |
| Charles Babbage | |
(source) |
Born 26
Dec 1791; died 18 Oct 1871.
English mathematician and pioneer of mechanical computation, which he pursued to eliminate inaccuracies in mathematical tables. By 1822, he had a small calculating machine able to compute squares. He produced prototypes of portions of a larger Difference Engine. (Georg and Edvard Schuetz later constructed the first working devices to the same design which were successful in limited applications.) In 1833 he began his programmable Analytical Machine, a forerunner of modern computers. His other inventions include the cowcatcher, dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, heliograph opthalmoscope. He also had an interest in cyphers and lock-picking.« Charles
Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer, by Anthony Hyman. |
| Bernard-Germain-Étienne Lacépède | |
(source) |
Born 26
Dec 1756; died 6 Oct 1825.
(Bernard-Germain-) Étienne de La Ville-sur-Illon, comte de (count of) Lacépède, was a French naturalist interested in herpetology and ichthyology. Buffon secured him a position at the Jardin du Roi (later the Jardin des Plantes) and invited him to continue his work Histoire Naturelle in animal classification. To supplement Buffon's work, Lacépède published several volumes which dealt with the oviparous quadrupeds (1788), reptiles (1789), fishes (1798-1803), and whales (1804). After the French Revolution, he became a politician, which activity prevented him making any further contribution of importance to science.« |
|
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages: Custom Quotations Search - custom search within only our quotations pages: Today in Science History Science Store Click here to browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| DECEMBER 26 - DEATHS | |
| James Francis (Frank) Pantridge | |
(source) |
 
Died 26 Dec 2004 (born 3 Oct 1916)
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)] |
| Dian Fossey | |
(source) |
Died
26 Dec 1985 (born 16 Jan 1932)
American zoologist who for years made a daily study of the mountain forest gorillas of Rwanda, central Africa. In 1963, she met Louis and Mary Leakey, who encouraged her initial interest. With Jane Goodall's encouragement, she set up and directed (1967-80) the Karisoke Research Center, Rwanda. Living a solitary life for many years, she observed the gorillas’ habits and gradually gained their acceptance. She wrote Gorillas in the Mist (1983) to acquaint the public with the threats to the gorillas from poachers and loss of habitat. In 1985, Fossey's mutilated body, hacked by machete, was found near the centre. Poachers, whose devastating attacks on the gorillas she had tried to stop, were suspected for her murder, although unproved.« Gorillas
in the Mist, by Dian Fossey. |
| Giuseppe Mario Bellanca | |
(source) |
Died
26 Dec 1960 (born 19 Mar 1886)
Italian-American aviation pioneer who designed and built airplanes, including the first U.S. monoplane with an enclosed cabin (1917). He had a flying school (1912-16) at Long Island, N.Y., where he built and learned to fly his first plane. In 1917, he designed the first enclosed-cabin monoplane, which he flew successfully in air races. The CF airliner he created in 1920 could carry four passengers in an enclosed cabin. It won three major performance contests in 1922. Although regarded as "the world's best airplane," he couldn't sell them, in a market glutted with surplus WW I airplanes. In 1931, Pangborn and Herdon flew a Bellanca plane on the first Japan-to-U.S. nonstop flight.« Giuseppe
Bellanca's Golden age, the Golden Age of Aviation Series,
by A. and D.W. Abel. |
| Melvil Dewey | |
(source) |
Died
26 Dec 1931 (born 10 Dec 1851)
American librarian who developed library science in the U.S., especially with his system of classification, the Dewey Decimal Classification (1876), for library cataloging. His system of classification (1876) uses numbers from 000 to 999 to cover the general fields of knowledge and designating more specific subjects by the use of decimal points. He was an activist in the spelling reform and metric system movements. Dewey invented the vertical office file, winning a gold medal at the 1893 World's Fair. It was essentially an enlarged version of a card catalogue, where paper documents hung vertically in long drawers.« Melvil
Dewey: The Man and the Classification, by Stevenson and
Kramer. |
| Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond | |
(source) |
Died
26 Dec 1896 (born 7 Nov 1818)
German physiologist whose research on animal electricity in nerve and muscle fibres founded modern electrophysiology. In 1849, he detected minute electrical discharges created by the contraction of the muscles in his arms, using galvanometer, a primitive device for measuring voltages. He used pieces of saline- soaked blotting paper between the wires and his skin to keep electrical resistance in the connection to a minimum. Realizing that the skin still acted as a barrier to the underlying muscle signals, he induced a blister on each arm, removed the skin and placed the paper electrodes within the wounds. Then the electrical signals he captured were about 30 times stronger. In 1850, he invented a nerve galvanometer with better sensitivity.« |
| Heinrich Schliemann | |
(source) |
Died
26 Dec 1890 (born 6 Jan 1822)
German archaeologist who excavated sites at Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns he associated with Homer's Iliad and Vergil's Aeneid. After a successful business career, Schliemann retired (1863) to pursue his childhood ambition of discovering Homeric Troy. Ignoring scholarly derision, he excavated Hissarlik on the Asia Minor coast of Turkey, finding ruins of nine consecutive cities. The second oldest (Troy II), which he wrongly identified with Homer's city, yielded a hoard that Schliemann romantically called "Priam's Treasure." His spectacular finds in Greece at Mycenae (1874-76), Orchomenos in Boeotia (1880), and Tiryns (1884-85) established him as the discoverer of Mycenaean civilization and the leader in discovery of prehistoric Greece.« Lost
and Found: The 9,000 Treasures of Troy: Heinrich Schliemann and the Gold
That Got Away, by Caroline Moorehead. |
| Jean-Louis-Marie Poiseuille | |
(source) |
Died
26 Dec 1869 (born 22 April 1799)
French physician and physiologist who contributed to knowledge of blood circulation through arteries and experimentally derived an equation describing the laminar flow rate of fluids through narrow tubes (now known as the Hagen- Poiseuille equation because the German engineer Gotthilf Hagen also independently discovered it). It relates the flow rate to the fluid's viscosity, the pressure drop along the tube, and the radius of the tube. His interest in the circulation of the blood led him to conduct experiments on the flow of liquids in narrow tubes. Poiseuille is believed to be the first to have used the mercury manometer to measure blood pressure with his invention, the hemodynamometer, an improved method for measuring blood pressure.« |
| John Fothergill | |
(source) |
Died
26 Dec 1780 (born 8 Mar 1712)
English physician who was first to describe coronary arteriosclerosis (hardening and thickening of the arterial wall, with a loss of elasticity and reduced blood flow) associated with angina pectoris. He began his medical practise in 1740. He was first to give a substantial description of diphtheria in England in his Account of the Sore Throat Attended With Ulcers (1748), and credited with the first accurate description of migraine. He promoted coffee as a beverage in England, and as a crop in the West Indies. As a Quaker and philanthropist, he maintained a botanical garden in Upton, supported John Howard in his penal reforms and aided Benjamin Franklin (1774) draft a scheme of reconciliation between England and the American colonies.« |
| Simon Marius | |
 |
Died
26 Dec 1624 (born 10 Jan 1573)
(Also known as Simon Mayr) German astronomer, pupil of Tycho Brahe, one of the earliest users of the telescope and the first in print to make mention the Andromeda nebula (1612). He studied and named the four largest moons of Jupiter as then known: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (1609) after mythological figures closely involved in love with Jupiter. Although he may have made his discovery independently of Galileo, when Marius claimed to have discovered these satellites of Jupiter (1609), in a dispute over priority, it was Galileo who was credited by other astronomers. However, Marius was the first to prepare tables of the mean periodic motions of these moons. He also observed sunspots in1611.« |
| DECEMBER 26 - EVENTS | |
| Computer - Man of the Year | |
(source) |
In 1982, The Man of the Year in Time magazine was a non-human
for the first time. A computer received the honour as 1982's "greatest
influence for good or evil." The article recognized that, "By itself, the
personal computer is a machine with formidable capabilities for tabulating,
modeling or recording. Those capabilities can be multiplied almost indefinitely
by plugging it into a network of other computers. This is generally done
by attaching a desk-top model to a telephone line (two-way cables and earth
satellites are coming increasingly into use). One can then dial an electronic
data base, which not only provides all manner of information but also collects
and transmits messages: electronic mail." |
| Supersonic passenger jet | |
(source) |
In 1975, Tupolev-144, the first passenger supersonic jet (SST) made
its first commercial flight
in airline service from Moscow to Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. Although it could
carry up to 140 passengers, it was so loud that it was put into service
delivering not passengers, but mail between Moscow and Alma-Ata. The expensive
twice weekly flights were cut back to once a week in June 1976. Passenger
service began on 1 Nov 1977 on the same Moscow to Alma-Ata route. Plagued
with chronic mechanical problems, the service ended 1 Jun 1978 after 102
flights. Officials mothballed the inefficient and dangerous aircraft. The
first disastrous crash
had occurred at the prestigious Paris air show on 3 Jun 1973 killing all
six crew on board, and eight persons on the ground. Aeroflot ceased flying
the Tupolev-144 SST airplanes on 6 June 1978.
The
Soviet SST, by Howard Moon. |
| Wham-O Frisbee patented | |
 |
In
1967, a patent was
issued to the Wham-O Mfg. Co. for their improvement of the Frisbee
(U.S. No. 3,359,678) - an "aerodynamic toy to be thrown through the air
... in throwing games." It was described as a saucer shaped throwing implement
with a series of concentric discontinuities adjacent the rim on its convex
side. These molded rings were designed
to provide "an interfering effect on the airflow over the implement and
create a turbulent unseparated boundary layer over the top of the implement
reducing aerodynamic drag." The name
began when William Russel Frisbie founded the "Frisbie Pie Company" in
(1895). In 1948 the innovator Fred Morrison saw the students working there
tossing empty pie forms to each other in their lunch break. |
| Feature film | |
(source) |
In 1906, the world's first full-length feature film, the 70-min Story
of the Kelly Gang was presented in the Town Hall at Melbourne, Australia,
where it had been filmed at a cost of £450. It preceded D.W. Griffith's
The
Birth of a Nation by nine years. The subject of the Australian movie
was Ned Kelly, a bandit who lived 1855 to 1880. The film toured through
Australia for over 20 years, and abroad in New Zealand and Britain. Since
some people, including politicians and police viewed the content of the
film as glorifying the criminals, the movie was banned (1907) in Benalla
and Wangaratta and also in Victoria (1912). Only fragments
totalling about 10 minutes of the original nitrate film have survived to
the present.« [Image:
detail from a frame of the Story of the Kelly Gang, possibly a police
constable firing a shot at Dan Kelly.] |
| Radium | |
 |
In 1898, Polish-French scientist Marie Sklodowska Curie discovered the
radioactive element radium while experimenting with pitchblende, a common
uranium ore. She had observed that this ore was more radioactive than refined
uranium. This indicated that there must be another element, even more radioactive
than uranium, mixed in with this ore. During the years between 1899 and
1902, Marie Curie dissolved, filtered and repeatedly crystallized nearly
three tons of pitchblende. The goal of that work was a refined sample of
the element - the yield was about 0.1 gram. This was enough for spectroscopic
examination, and to determine the exact atomic weight of radium. This discovery,
along with the element polonium, earned her a second Nobel Prize in 1911. |
| Electric store lighting | |
(source) |
In 1878, the first electric lighting in an American store was installed,
using eight dynamos to run 28 Brush arc lamps*
at John
Wanamaker's extensive "Grand Depot" department store, Philadelphia,
Pa. In 1875, he had bought the Pennsylvania Railroad depot for $500,000
and converted it into his innovative Grand Depot department store. The
lamps had two sets of electrodes working alternately to lengthen the operating
period. (patented by the maker, Charles F. Brush, on 2 Sep 1879, U.S. patent
No. 219,208). The arc lamps gave a steadier light, but gas-lighting was
retained as back-up. By 1888, Wanamaker had 355 arc lamps and 80 incandescent
lamps*. He followed electric
lights with ventilation fans. The electric displays drew customers.« 
John
Wanamaker: Philadelphia Merchant, by Herbert Ershkowitz. |
| Mont Cenis Tunnel joined | |
 |
In 1870, the mid-point rock wall was removed and joined the two bores completing
the Mont Cenis Tunnel through the Alps. Workers who had been digging towards
each other from both sides of the mountain met and shook hands. The previous
day, a hole had been drilled through the remaining 4 feet of rock between
them, and the workers from the two bores could hear each other. The two
bores met with an accuracy of within 2 feet vertically and about 18 inches
horizontally. By the next year, twin railroad tracks had been laid, and
the Mont Cenis Tunnel was opened on 17 Sep 1871. Digging had started
in 1857, tediously slowly by hand boring, until French engineer Germain
Sommeiller, introduced industrial-scale pneumatic drills. Train service
began 16 Oct 1871.*«  [Image
top:
Mont Cenis Tunnel entrance arch; bottom:
Sommeiller Boring Machines.] |
| Coffee percolator | |
(source) |
In 1865, James H. Mason of Franklin, Mass., was issued the first U.S. patent
for a coffee percolator (No. 51,741). |
| Annunciator | |
|
In 1833, the first U.S. patent for an annunciator was issued to Seth Fuller
of Boston, Mass. In 1829, this design was installed in the Tremont
House, Boston, Mass., and placed in service when the 170-room hotel
opened. It was known as "hanging bells" for its 140 bells, each in a glass-enclosed
box, mounted in a space 57 ft long, 6 ft high and 1 ft deep. A small hammer
striker provided an audible warning sound and vibrated a card giving the
room number. The hotel's innovations included the installation of eight
bathrooms and toilets in the basement. Each of two cisterns in the hotel
attic contained three hogsheads of rainwater. One supplied the baths, and
the other supplied other outlets, including running cold water in the laundry
and kitchen. |
|
| [Note: One source gives 26 Dec 1854 as the date basswood-pulp paper samples were first shown to the editor of the Buffalo Democracy newspaper. However, the event was previously recorded in the 18 Dec 1854 New York Daily Times which reprinted the information from the Buffalo Democracy.] | |
