| FEBRUARY 29 - BIRTHS | |
| Herman Hollerith | |
(source) |
 Born 29
Feb 1860; died 17 Nov 1929.
American inventor of a tabulating machine that was an important precursor of the electronic computer. For the 1890 U.S. census, he invented several punched-card machines to automate the sorting of data. The machine which read the cards used a pin going through a hole in the card to make an electrical connection with mercury placed beneath. The resulting electrical current activated a mechanical counter. It saved the U.S. 5 million dollars for the 1890 census by completing the analysis of the data in a fraction of the time it would have taken without it and with a smaller amount of manpower than would have been necessary otherwise. In 1896, he formed the Tabulating Machine Company, a precursor of IBM. |
| John Philip Holland | |
| Born 29
Feb 1840; died 12 Aug 1914.
Irish-American, "father of the modern submarine." He emigrated to the U.S. in 1873. With prototypes initially funded by the Irish Fenian Society in hopes of producing a submarine to use against England, by 1879 Holland had built the "Fenian Ram." It was of limited usefulness, but by 1898 he designed and built the "Holland," the first underwater vessel accepted by the U.S. Navy. He received orders for an additional six submarines for the Navy. |
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| Karl Ernst von Baer | |
(EB) |
Born 29
Feb 1792; died 28 Nov 1876.
Prussian-Estonian embryologist who discovered the mammalian egg (1827) and the notochord. He established the new science of comparative embryology alongside comparative anatomy with the publication of two landmark volumes (in 1828 and 1837) covering the range of existing knowledge of the prebirth developments of vertebrates. He showed that mammalian eggs were not the follicles of the ovary but microscopic particles inside the follicles. He described the development of the embryo from layers of tissue, which he called germ layers, and demonstrated similarities in the embryos of different species of vertebrates. He was also a pioneer in geography, ethnology, and physical anthropology.  |
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Today in Science History Science Store Browse a selection of Bargain Science and Nature Books |
| FEBRUARY 29 - EVENTS | |
| Lawrence's Nobel speech | |
In 1940, Ernest O. Lawrence delivered his Nobel Prize acceptance speech
in Berkeley, California, having arranged to receive the prize there, rather
than Sweden, so that he would not lose any time away from the task of fund
raising for his cyclotron research. |
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| Bohr's nucleus | |
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In 1936, Nature carried Niels Bohr's "bowl of balls" explanation
for the effect of bombarding particles on a nucleus. |
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| Pavlov memorial | |
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In 1936, two days after the death of Ivan Pavlov, the Soviet government
preserved his memory by ordering a monument
to be erected in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), renaming the First Leningrad
Medical Institute "The Pavlov Institute," maintaining his laboratory as
a museum, preserving his brain, granting a pension to his widow, and publishing
his collected works in four languages. |
| Solid helium | |
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In 1908, Dutch scientists produced solid helium. |
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| Gotthard Tunnel | |
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In 1880, the St. Gotthard Tunnel was completed, linking Switzerland
and Italy. |
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| Salem witches | |
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In 1692, Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, and Tituba, a slave woman, were
arrested
in Salem Township (now Danvers), Massachusetts, charged with inflicting
suffering on four girls through the use of witchcraft. Accusations of witchcraft
spread and 20 accused witches were eventually executed between 10 Jun and
22 Sep 1692. The Salem witchcraft trials provided a subject for modern
commentary by abnormal and social psychologists. |
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