| MARCH 27 - BIRTHS | |
| John Robinson Pierce | |
 Born 27
Mar 1910
U.S. communications engineer, scientist, and father of the communications satellite. Pierce was influential in the development of microwaves and radar during WW II, then began working on the theory of satellite communication in 1954. His writings, which detailed the use of satellites in beaming radio signals around the world, were largely ignored. However, he convinced NASA to convert the Echo balloon satellite into a radio wave reflector. His successful experiments with Echo in 1960 led to the development of Telstar, which initiated modern television and radio communications by amplifying signals from one station on Earth and beaming them to another. |
|
| Sir Henry Royce | |
(source) |
Born 27
Mar 1863; died 22 Apr 1933.
(Baronet) English industrialist who, with Charles Rolls, founded Rolls-Royce Ltd. (1906), a manufacturer of luxury automobiles and airplane engines. Rolls-Royce engines powered the British aircraft of WW II in the "Hurricanes" and "Spitfires." |
| Karl Pearson | |
| Born 27
Mar 1857; died 27 Apr 1936.
English mathematician, one of the founders of modern statistics. Pearson's lectures as professor of geometry evolved into The Grammar of Science (1892), his most widely read book and a classic in the philosophy of science. Stimulated by the evolutionary writings of Francis Galton and a personal friendship with Walter F.R. Weldon, Pearson became immersed in the problem of applying statistics to biological problems of heredity and evolution. The methods he developed are essential to every serious application of statistics. From 1893 to 1912 he wrote a series of 18 papers entitled Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution, which contained much of his most valuable work, including the chi-square test of statistical significance. |
|
| Sir (James) Alfred Ewing | |
(source) |
Born 27
Mar 1855; died 7 Jan 1935.
Sir (James) Alfred Ewing was the British physicist who discovered and named hysteresis (1890), the resistance of magnetic materials to change in magnetic force. Ewing was born and educated in Dundee and studied engineering on a scholarship at Edinburgh University. He helped Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin in a cable laying project. In 1878 he became professor of Mechanical Engineering and Physics at Tokyo University, where he devised instruments for measuring earthquakes. In 1903 he moved to the Admiralty as head of education and training, where during WW I, he and his staff took on the task of deciphering coded messages. |
| Otto Wallach | |
| Born 27
Mar 1847; died 26 Feb 1931.
German chemist awarded the 1910 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for analyzing fragrant essential oils and identifying the compounds known as terpenes. |
|
| Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen | |
 |
Born 27
Mar 1845; died 10 Feb 1923.
German physicist who was a recipient of the first Nobel Prize for Physics, in 1901, for his discovery of X rays, which heralded the age of modern physics and revolutionized diagnostic medicine. |
| Elijah McCoy | |
(source) |
Born 27
Mar 1843; died 10 Oct 1929.
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.« |
| Johann Wilhelm Hittorf | |
(source) |
Born 27
Mar 1824; died 28 Nov 1914.
German physicist who was a pioneer in electrochemical research. His early investigations were on the allotropes (different physical forms) of phosphorus and selenium. He was the first to compute the electricity- carrying capacity of charged atoms and molecules (ions), an important factor in understanding electrochemical reactions. He investigated the migration of ions during electrolysis (1853-59), developed expressions for and measured transport numbers. In 1869, he published his laws governing the migration of ions. For his studies of electrical phenomena in rarefied gases, the Hittorf tube has been named for him. Hittorf determined a number of properties of cathode rays, including (before Crookes) the deflection of the rays by a magnet. |
| Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli | |
| Born 27
Mar 1817; died 10 May 1891.
Swiss botanist famous for his work on plant cells. At the age of 25 he wrote a paper on pollen formation of seed and flowering plants and described cell division with great accuracy. He noted what he called transitory cytoblasts, which later were identified as chromosomes. |
|
| Charles Joseph Minard | |
(source) |
Born 27
Mar 1781; died 24 Oct 1870.
French civil engineer who made significant contributions to the graphical representations of data. His best-known work, Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l'Armee Français dans la campagne de Russe 1812-13, dramatically displays the number of Napoleon's soldiers by the width of an ever-reducing band drawn across a map from France to Moscow. At its origin, a wide band shows 442,000 soldiers left France, narrowing across several hundred miles to100,000 men reaching Moscow. With a parallel temperature graph displaying deadly frigid Russian winter temperatures along the way, the band shrinks during the retreat to a pathetic thin trickle of 10,000 survivors returning to their homeland.« |
| Charles-François Brisseau de Mirbel | |
| Born 27
Mar 1776; died 12 Sep 1854.
French botanist whose book Traité d'anatomie et de physiologie végétale, 2 vol. (1802; "Treatise on Plant Anatomy and Physiology"), earned him recognition as a founder of plant cytology and plant physiology. His most notable contribution to plant cytology was his observation (1809) that each plant cell is contained in a continuous membrane. |
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| MARCH 27 - DEATHS | |
| Joseph Sobek | |
(source) |
 Died
27 Mar 1998; born 5 Apr 1918.
American inventor of racquetball who developed the sport (1950) to play at the Greenwich, Connecticut, YMCA. As a squash and tennis professional for seven years, he invented racquetball as an alternative indoor racquet sport. He drafted rules, drew a racquet design, which was created in 1951 by Magnan Racket Manufacturing Company. To promote his invention, he founded the Paddle Rackets Association with a group of players. He withdrew from active promotion as the sport quickly rose in popularity, as an athletic activity that was easy to learn, and needed no power or strength to enjoy. By the early 70's, there were court clubs in every state. There are now millions of players, and it is an Olympic sport.« |
| Sir Malcolm Brown | |
| Died
27 Mar 1997 (born 5 Oct 1925)
English geologist who won a worldwide reputation for his contributions to petrology and was one of the few scientists outside America to be invited by NASA to work on the samples of lunar rock brought back by the Apollo 11 mission. From 1979 to 1985, he was Director of the Institute of Geological Sciences (which name Brown changed to the British Geological Survey in 1984). |
|
| Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin | |
(source) |
Died
27 Mar 1968 (born 9 Mar 1934)
Soviet cosmonaut who on 12 Apr 1961 became the first man to travel into space when he was 27 years old. He graduated from the Soviet Air Force cadet school in 1957. He volunteered to become a cosmonaut and joined a group of test pilots for training. Three days before the launch, he was informed he had been selected to pilot the Vostok 1 spacecraft. He orbited the Earth once in 1 hour 29 minutes at a maximum altitude of 187 miles (301 km). He never went into space again but trained other cosmonauts and toured several other nations. Gagarin was killed with another pilot in the crash of a two-seat jet aircraft while on what was described as a routine training flight. His ashes were placed in a niche in the Kremlin wall. |
| Jaroslav Heyrovský | |
(source) |
Died
27 Mar 1967 (born 20 Dec 1890)
Czech chemist who received the 1959 Nobel Prize for Chemistry "for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis" (1922), which is one of the most versatile analytical techniques. It applies the principle that in electrolysis the ions are discharged at an electrode and, if the electrode is small, the current may be limited by the rate of movement of ions to the electrode surface. In polarography the cathode is a small drop of mercury (constantly forming and dropping to keep the surface clean). The voltage is increased slowly and the current plotted against voltage. The current increases in steps, each corresponding to a particular type of positive ion in the solution. The height of the steps indicates the concentration of the ion.« |
| Vincent Bendix | |
(source) |
Died
27 Mar 1945 (born 12 Aug 1882)
Vincent Hugo Bendix was an American inventor who developed systems for automobiles and aircraft and companies to manufacture them. His first, the short-lived Bendix Company of Chicago (1907-9) made a car called the Bendix Buggy. In 1910, he invented the Bendix drive which made the electric self-starter possible. It used a gear to engage with the engine at low rotational speed then fly back, disengaging automatically at higher speed. The first four-wheel brake system for automobiles was his creation. He entered aviation systems production in 1929 with the Bendix Aviation Corporation (later be renamed Bendix Corporation), and started Bendix Helicopters, Inc. in 1942. During WW II, Bendix was the major source of U.S. aviation electronics.« |
| Sir James Dewar | |
 |
Died
27 Mar 1923 (born 20 Sep 1842)
British chemist and physicist whose study of low-temperature phenomena entailed the use of a double-walled vacuum flask of his own design which has been named for him. |
| Alexander Agassiz | |
(source) |
Died
27 Mar 1910 (born 17 Dec 1835)
Alexander (Emmanuel Rodolphe) Agassiz was a Swiss marine zoologist, oceanographer, and mining engineer. He moved to the U.S. in 1849 to join his father, naturalist Jean Louis Agassiz, and studied at Harvard for degrees both in civil engineering (1857) and zoology (1862). Alexander Agassiz made important contributions to systematic zoology, to the knowledge of ocean beds, and to the development of the copper mines of Lake Superior (1866-9). He was curator of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology (1873-85), founded by his father. He made numerous oceanographic zoological expeditions, wrote many books and examined thousands of coral reefs to refute Darwin's ideas on atoll formation. |
| Alphonse(-Eugène) Beau de Rochas | |
(source) |
Died
27 Mar 1893 (born 9 Apr 1815)
French railway engineer who originated the theoretical principle of the four-stroke internal-combustion engine and provide a theoretical pressure diagram (1862). His achievement lay partly in his emphasizing the previously unappreciated importance of compressing the fuel-air mixture before ignition. (French patent #52,593, 16 Jan 1862). However, he never built such an engine, nor defended his patent when the German Nikolaus August Otto produced a four-stroke engine in 1876. Beau de Rochas proposed other ideas: a rail tunnel beneath the English Channel, a submarine telegraph, a new kind of drive for canal boats, the use of steel for high-pressure boilers, and a method of improving the adhesion of locomotive wheel on Alpine tracks. |
| Wilhelm Beer | |
| Died
27 Mar 1850 (born 4 Jan 1797)
German banker who owned a private observatory as an amateur astronomer. He worked jointly with Johann Heinrich von Mädler, to publish Mappa Selenographica (1836), the most complete map of the Moon of in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was the first lunar map divided in quadrants, and recorded the Moon's face in detail. |
|
| MARCH 27 - EVENTS | |
| Windsurfer | |
In 1968, the windsurfer was patented. |
|
| Alaska earthquake | |
|
In 1965, south central Alaska was rocked by a great earthquake (Richter
scale 8.3-8.5) releasing over twice the energy of the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake. It was felt on land over an area of almost 1,300,000 sq
km. The death toll was only 131, but property damage was very high. The
earthquake tilted an area of at least 120,000 sq km. Some landmasses were
thrust up locally as high as 25 m; elsewhere land sank as much as 2.5 metres.
Extensive coastal damage resulted from submarine landslides and tsunamis.
Tsunami damage reached Crescent City, Calif. Tens of thousands of aftershocks
indicated that the region of faulting extended about 1,000 km. |
|
| Mobile computer center | |
|
In 1961, the first mobile computer center, a UNIVAC Solid-State 90 computer
loaded into a motor van, was used on assignment for the Douglas Aircraft
Corporation, Charlotte, N.C. The mobile center was set up by Remington
Rand UNIVAC, a division of Sperry Rand. |
|
| Polyethylene | |
|
In 1933, polyethylene
was discovered by Reginald Gibson and Eric William Fawcett. It was one
of the earliest plastics to come into common use. It was discovered by
accident while reacting ethylene and benzaldehyde at high pressure. The
demands of war and the need for a better insulator for cables stimulated
the development of polyethylene and it played a key role in the development
of radar. |
|
| Marconi | |
|
In 1899, Marconi transmitted
across the English Channel from Boulogne, France, to Dover, England. The
test was requested by the French Government, which was considering purchasing
rights to the invention in France. Representatives of the French Government
observed operations at both stations. In the same fashion as previous trial
transmissions at Marconi's Alum Bay and Poole stations, both transmitter
and receiver used a well-insulated copper wire, hung from a 150-ft high
mast. Messages were exchanged over the 32 miles, and trials continued for
several days, at a speed of up to fifteen words a minute. The success of
Marconi's experiments made possible communications without expensive undersea
cables. |
|
| Long-distance phone call | |
|
In 1884, the first long-distance telephone call was made, between Boston
and New York City. Branch managers of the American Bell Telephone Company
in Boston called their counterparts in New York City. Although they reported
the call was perfectly clear, maintaining clarity on long-distance phone
calls proved problematic until the early 1900s, when Michael Pupin devised
a method to transmit telephone signals over long distances. The Bell Telephone
Company bought his long-distance telephone patent in 1901. |
|
| First locomotive on U.S. stamp | |
(source) |
In 1869, a pictorial ultramarine 3-cent stamp was first
used*, the first in the U.S. showing a locomotive. The U.S. trans-continental
railroad was finished
in the same year these stamps were issued, with ceremonies on 10 May 1869.
The innovative departure from traditional head portrait stamp designs brought
unexpected scorn. Some critics
surmised this design was "to represent how Congressmen make money." A few
days later, on 1 Apr 1869, a green 12-cent stamp was first used*, the first
to show a steamship, the S.S. Adriatic. This theme of fast communication
was accompanied by a 2-cent stamp showing postal carrier on horseback.
(*With
no formal date of issue in early years, a stamp is dated by its earliest
known use.)« |
| Corkscrew | |
(USPO) |
In 1860, M L. Byrn of New York City, N.Y., was issued a patent for an improved
corkscrew - a "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" (No. 27,615). The
inventor claimed the design would provide greater strength and durability
and which could be manufactured at less cost than prior construction methods
using a spiral twist of steel wire that gradually tapered from the handle
to the point. Byrn claimed the gimlet-type scrw with wider threads would
also be strong enough to "remove a bung of the hardest wood from a barel
or hogshead." |
| Kerosene | |
(source) |
In 1855, Abraham Gesner received the
first U.S. patent for a process to obtain oil from bituminous shale and
cannel coal for the purpose of illumination (No. 12,612), which he called
kerosene. The fuel was extracted by dry distillation at a controlled temperature
in large cast-iron retorts set in suitable furnaces for evaporation and
metal pipes surrounded by water for the condensation of the vapour. The
light volatile liquid obtained is redistilled and treated with acid and
peroxide of manganese to precipitate impurities. Freshly calcined lime
is then mixed with the distillate to remove water and neutralize the acid.
Further distillation yields kerosene. Gesner had previously obtained patents
Nos. 11,203-5 on 27 Jun 1854 for a process
for obtaining kerosene by heat distillation. |
| Steam rock drill | |
|
In 1849, Joseph J. Couch received the first U.S. patent for a steam-powered
percussion rock drill (No. 6,237) as "improved machinery for drilling rocks.
The drill was driven by steam power and acted independently of gravity.
The machine would be held stationary as the drill was thrown against the
rock. After each blow, the tool was seized by means of friction-grips. |
|
| Steam fire-engine | |
|
In 1841, the first U.S. steam fire engine was tested at the City Hall in
New York City. Designed and built by Paul R. Hodge, it was 14 feet long,
weighed about 8 tons, and required two horses to pull it on level ground.
A boiler was mounted on two small wheels at the front and two huge wheels
in the rear. It was placed in service by Peral Hose No. 28, but subsequently
abandoned as too heavy, and because of the sparks that were emitted from
its stacks. |
|
| London Zoo | |
(source) |
In 1827, the Zoological Society of London received a Royal Charter from
George IV. The society was founded in Apr 1826 by Stamford Raffles and
other scientists to research into animals kept in comparative freedom.
Though Raffles became the society's first president, he died very shortly
thereafter. His work was continued by the Marquess of Lansdowne, who obtained
the Regent's Park land at a nominal rent from the Crown and supervised
the construction of the original animal houses. London Zoological Gardens
- Britain's first scientific zoo - was opened
on 27 Apr 1828 for members of the society. By 1831, the royal managerie
had been presented by King William IV to the society. In 1847, the general
public were first admitted as paying visitors to help provide funding for
the zoo.« 
[Image: Visitors viewing Obaysch,
photographed in 1852 at the London Zoo, the first hippopotamus seen in
England since prehistoric times, and the first in Europe since Ancient
Rome.] |
| Darwin's first report | |
|
In 1827, Charles Darwin, aged
18, submitted his first report of an original scientific discovery to the
Plinian Society in Edinburgh, Scotland. Darwin had discovered several things
about the biology of tiny marine organisms found along the Scottish coast. |
|
