| MAY 24 - BIRTHS | |
| Harry Hammond Hess | |
(source) |
 Born 24
May 1906; died 25 Aug 1969.
American geologist who made the first comprehensive attempt at explaining the phenomenon of seafloor spreading (1960). This revived Alfred Wegener's earlier theory of continental drift. Together, these provided an interpretation of the earth's crust in terms of plate tectonics. The surface of the globe is not continuous. Rather, it is broken into a number of huge plates that float on the molten rock under the crust, moved over eons of geologic time by convective currents driven by earth's internal heat. With this motion these plates rub against, collide with, or separate from other plates. Thus the nature of earthquakes and volcanoes could be explained, plus the existence of ridges of young rock mapped around the globe under the ocean where the sea floor was spreading. |
| Arthur Martin Vineberg | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1903; died 26 Mar 1988.
Canadian heart surgeon, noted chiefly for his development, in 1950, of a surgical procedure for correction of impaired coronary circulation. In the Vineberg operation one end of an artery in the chest, called the internal mammary artery, is freed up. The side branches to the artery, like tributaries flowing off a river, are cut to allow blood to flow freely from them. The artery then is snaked under the surface of the heart muscle, and each time the heart beats, blood from the branches oozes into the heart muscle, nourishing it. Over time new vessels grow and supply blood to the myocardium. The first clinical procedure was carried out at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal in 1950. Modern bypass surgery pre-empted it in the 1960s. |
| Helen Brooke Taussig | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1898; died 20 May 1986.
American physician who founded pediatric cardiology. She pioneered using X-rays and fluoroscopy to identify heart defects in newborns. With surgeon Alfred Blalock, she developed a surgical procedure for treating blue baby syndrome. After 1944, when the first Blalock-Taussig operation was developed, many blue babies were saved from invalidism or death. The Blalock-Taussig shunt (a surgical shunt made between the pulmonary artery and the aorta as treatment for tricuspid and pulmonary atresia) is named for her. In the early 1960s, Taussig was a major person in revealing and stopping the harm caused by the sedative drug thalidamide, which when taken by pregnant woman caused terrible deformations of their to newborn children. |
| W.F. Albright | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1891; died 19 Sep 1971.
William Foxwell Albright was a Chilean-born American archaeologist who excavated primarily biblical sites and an expert on the culture and history of the Near East. He spent a decade from 1919 at the American School of Oriental Reseach in Jerusalem. During this time, he directed excavations in Palestine at Gibeah, Tell Beit Mirsim, Bethel and Ader. After further work, he produced three volumes of Excavation of Tell Beit Mirsim. His most famous work, From the Stone Age to Christianity (1940) traced the growth of man's belief in God. In 1947, Albright was the first outside expert to declare that the Dead Sea scrolls were genuine. He called their discovery "the most momentous discovery in modern time pertaining to the Bible."«  Archaeology
and the Religion of Israel, by William Foxwell Albright
et al. |
| Clark L. Hull | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1884; died 10 May 1952.
Clark Leonard Hull was an American psychologist who developed an influential theory of behaviour in which he identified the variables that intervene between stimulus and response. He made experimental studies on learning, that he presented in his book, Aptitude Testing (1928) and attempted to structure psychological theory following a deductive method of reasoning similar to that used in geometry. He proposed that from a set of postulates about psychology, logical conclusions could be deduced and tested. Hull was the first known psychologist to apply quantitative experimental methods to the investigation of hypnosis. His last books were Essentials of Behavior (1951) and A Behavior System (1952).« Hypnosis
and Suggestibility: An Experimental Approach, by Clark
W. Hull. |
| Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1878; died 2 Jan 1972.
(née Moller) American efficiency expert, who as wife of Frank Bunker Gilbreth, contracting engineer, together developed the method of time-and-motion study. Upon her marriage, 19 Oct 1904, she became a partner in her husband's fledgling motion study business. As a contractor, he was already applying ideas to improve the speed of building. After a few years, they applied motion study to industry. Each step of work activity was to be studied in detail (employing motion pictures for analysis) to determine the optimal way to execute a given task. By choosing a method of least exertion, the employees would be more healthy, more productive, and economically improve the business. She continued after her husband's death in 1924. Making
Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth..., by Jane Lancaster |
| Ynes Mexia | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1870; died 12 Jul 1938.
Ynes Enriquetta Julietta Mexia was an American botanical collector, who developed her passion for botany and fieldwork in her 50's, and yet was able to make about 150,000 collections in 12 years on seven expeditions. She was aged 55 when she made her first collecting trip. She accompanied Stanford's Assistant Herbarium Curator, Roxanna Ferris, in Mexico. Her activity was remarkable, as she spent several years exploring for specimens in remote reaches of Central and South Americas. At age 59, she began a 2-1/2 year expedition in Peru and Brazil which included a three-month period trapped by floods with her team in a 600-m deep gorge which they escaped eventually by building a raft and running the river and its rapids.« Ynes
Mexia: Botanist And Adventurer, by Durlynn Anema. |
| Alfred Cort Haddon | |
1898 (source) |
Born 24
May 1855; died 20 Apr 1940.
English anthropologist who is recognised as one the founders of modern British anthropology as an observational science. He began as a professor of zoology, and in 1888 spent eight months studying the coral reefs and marine zoology of the Torres Straits. He thereby became interested in the folk-lore, ceremonies and beliefs of the islanders and began to rescue such fast-perishing knowledge by collecting information from the elders. He organised the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait Islands in 1898, as he saw a need in the field of ethnology to make intensive studies in limited areas. Upon his return, he changed disciplines from biology to ethnology at the Cambridge University Museum.*« Magic
and Fetishism, by Alfred Cort Haddon. |
| Sophus Otto Müller | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1846; died 23 Feb 1934.
Danish paleontologist who was prominent in the study of Bronze and Iron ages and Oriental influence on prehistoric Europe. In the late 1800s, he discovered and excavated burial mounds in central Jutland, Denmark, that represented the first evidence of the Neolithic battle-axe cultures of the later Middle Neolithic Periods in Scandinavia. He identified chronological sequences of the single graves within these barrows. The antiquities he recovered from them included well-proportioned battle-axes, flint axes, amber beads, beakers, and cups.« |
| Charles-Lucien Bonaparte | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1803; died 29 Jul 1857.
(Prince) French zoologist who was a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. From 1822 to 1828, he was in the United States, where he wrote four volumes of American Ornithology (1825-33) adding to the body of work left unfinished by Alexander Wilson at his death. Bonaparte's scientific reputation was established by these volumes, with which he had the assistance of the artist Titian Peale, who found and painted birds for him from the Rocky Mountains and Florida. In 1848-49, Bonaparte's scientific career experienced a brief hiatus when he took part in the political agitation for Italian independence against the Austrians and he was forced to leave Italy in July 1849. He went to Holland and then to France. The
Emperor of Nature: Charles-Lucien Bonaparte and his World,
by Patricia Tyson Stroud. |
| William Whewell | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1794; died 6 Mar 1866.
British scientist, best known for his survey of the scientific method and for creating scientific words. He founded mathematical crystallography and developed Mohr's classification of minerals. He created the words scientist and physicist by analogy with the word artist. They soon replaced the older term natural philosopher. Other useful words were coined to help his friends: biometry for Lubbock; Eocine, Miocene and Pliocene for Lyell; and for Faraday, anode, cathode, diamagnetic, paramagnetic, and ion (whence the sundry other particle names ending -ion). In metereology, Whewell devised a self-recording anemometer. He was second only to Newton for work on tidal theory. He died as a result of being thrown from his horse*.« William
Whewell: Theory of Scientific Method, by William Whewell |
| John Davy | |
Born 24
May 1790; died 24 Jan 1868.
English chemist and doctor who first prepared, named and characterised the gas phosgene. He was the younger brother of Humphry Davy. Having finished school in Penzance, in 1808, John went to London to assist his brother in the chemistry laboratory at the Royal Institution. From 1810-1814, John trained as a physician at the University of Edinburgh, during which time he discovered phosgene. He then began a career as an army doctor, including many years abroad, and eventually become inspector general of hospitals. While abroad, he observed and recorded the local culture, studied and dissected animals, and analyzed minerals. He wrote Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy (1836) and other works on his brother's scientific career.« |
|
| Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit | |
| Born 24
May 1686; died 16 Sep 1736.
German physicist and maker of scientific instruments. He is best known for inventing the alcohol thermometer (1709) and mercury thermometer (1714) and for developing the Fahrenheit temperature scale. He devoted himself to the study of physics and the manufacture of precision meteorological instruments. He discovered, among other things, that water can remain liquid below its freezing point and that the boiling point of liquids varies with atmospheric pressure. |
|
| John Mayow | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1640; died Oct 1679.
English chemist and physiologist who, about a hundred years before Joseph Priestley and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, identified spiritus nitroaereus (oxygen) as a distinct atmospheric entity. He further recognized the role of oxygen in the combustion of metals. His medical writings include a remarkably correct anatomical description of respiration. |
| William Gilbert | |
(source) |
Born 24
May 1544; died 10 Dec 1603.
English scientist, the "father of electrical studies" and a pioneer researcher into magnetism, who spent years investigating magnetic and electrical attractions. Gilbert coined the names of electric attraction, electric force, and magnetic pole. He became the most distinguished man of science in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Noting that a compass needle not only points north and south, but also dips downward, he thought the Earth acts like a bar magnet. Like Copernicus, he believed the Earth rotates on its axis, and that the fixed stars were not all at the same distance from the earth. Gilbert thought it was a form of magnetism that held planets in their orbits. |
|
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| MAY 24 - DEATHS | |
| Tom Bacon | |
(source) |
 
Died 24 May 1992 (born 21 Dec 1904)
Francis Thomas Bacon was an English mechanical engineer who pioneered the first modern hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells, which electrochemically convert air and fuel directly into electricity. The principle was first observed by Sir William Grove (1842) when he supplied oxygen and hydrogen to platinum electrodes immersed in sulphuric acid and a current was produced in an external circuit. It remained a curiosity until Bacon began serious research in the early 1940s for proposed application in submarines. By 1959 he developed a successful six-kilowatt fuel cell. When fuel cells were used by U.S. Apollo space vehicles, they could both provide in-flight power and clean drinking water, the by-product of the electrochemical reaction.« [Image: fuel cell schematic (source)] |
| Alan Hazeltine | |
(source) |
Died
24 May 1964 (born 7 Aug 1886)
(Louis) Alan Hazeltine was an American electrical engineer and physicist who invented the neutrodyne circuit, which made commercial radio possible. As one of the few experts in radio engineering at the outbreak of WW I, he designed a radio receiver for the U.S. Navy. In 1922, Hazeltine invented the "neutrodyne" receiver to eliminate the squeaks and howls of the early radio receivers, using neutralizing capacitors to in effect siphon off the high pitched squeals. The Hazeltine amplifier neutralized the grid-to-plate capacitative coupling which was a cause of oscillation in triode amplifiers. The neutrodyne was the first commercial receiver suited to general public reception. By 1927 some ten million of these receivers were being used by listeners in the U.S. |
| Hideyo Noguchi | |
(source) |
Died
24 May 1928 (born 24 Nov 1876)
Japanese bacteriologist who was the first to obtain pure cultures of Trepanema pallidum, the spirochete that causes syphilis, which he found in the brains of persons who had died of paresis. He demonstrated the syphilitic origin of certain forms of general paralysis, developed one of the first tests to diagnose syphilis and proved that both Oroya fever and verruga peruana could be produced by Bartonella bacilliformis, now known to be different phases of Carrion's disease (bartonellosis). He found ways to cultivate microorganisms that had never before been grown in the test tube. Noguchi studied poliomyelitis, and trachoma and worked on a vaccine and serum for yellow fever. He died of yellow fever, while researching the disease in Africa. Noguchi
and His Patrons, by Isabel Rosanoff Plesset. |
| Gabriel Gustav Valentin | |
(source) |
Died
24 May 1883 (born 8 Jul 1810)
German-Swiss physiologist who was the first person to note the digestive activity of pancreatic juice (1844)*. With Purkinje, one of his medical school teachers, he discovered in 1834 that certain cells on the inner surface of the oviduct contained cilia, tiny threadlike structures that beat in coordinated fashion independently of the nervous system and thus force the ovum to move along the tube. They investigated the occurence of ciliated cells elesewhere among vertebrates)*. In 1836, he identified the neuron nucleus and nucleolus. In 1841 he was the first to observe one type of Trypanozoma (they are now know to cause sleeping sickness). The Valentin knife was named after him |
| Ferdinand II of Tuscany | |
(source) |
Died
24 May 1670 (born 14 Jul 1610)
Ferdinand II de' Medici was Grand Duke from 1621. His eager and liberal patronization of men of science included Steno and Galileo, and he helped suppost the foundation of the Accademia del Cimento (1657). He also devised a sealed thermometer which, unlike Galileo's open one, was not affected by changes in air pressure. It was to him that Galileo dedicated the lens with which he had discovered the satellites of Jupiter and he also made him a gift of the armed lodestone. J. W. Blaeu dedicated to him one of his globes of the fifth type. Ferdinand II was also a patron of Robert Dudley. |
| Nicolaus Copernicus | |
(source) |
Died
24 May 1543 (born 19 Feb 1473)
Polish astronomer who proposed that the planets have the Sun as the fixed point to which their motions are to be referred; that the Earth is a planet which, besides orbiting the Sun annually, also turns once daily on its own axis; and that very slow, long-term changes in the direction of this axis account for the precession of the equinoxes. The
Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus, by
Owen Gingerich |
| MAY 24 - EVENTS | |
| Falkirk Wheel | |
(source) |
In 2002, the Falkirk Wheel - the world’s first rotating boat
lift - was opened by Queen Elizabeth II. It moves boats between the
Union and Forth & Clyde Canals in Scotland, linking the two canals
for the first time in decades since 1933 when the original flight of eleven
locks were closed and filled-in due to lack of use. More recently, the
canals have been revitalized for recreational boating. The Falkirk Wheel
was installed at a cost of £84.5 million to carry boats to and from
the Union Canal aquaduct elevated 115 feet above the lower basin. This
extraordinary engineering
feat efficiently handles loads of 300 tons at each end. |
| Concorde | |
(source) |
In 1976, the Concorde began regular passenger service between Europe and
Washington D.C., the first U.S. destination for transatlantic service by
Air France and British Airways. Whereas scheduled Concorde flights
started on 21 Jan 1976 for London-Bahrain
and Paris-Rio routes, the U.S. Congress
had banned Concorde landings in the US, mainly due to citizen protest over
sonic booms. The US ban was lifted in Feb 1976, for over-water supersonic
flight, yet New York banned Concorde locally, so Washington D.C. was chosen
for the first route. New York finally conceded, and service there began
22
Nov 1977.«
 Booklist
for Concorde Jet |
| Britain thinks metric | |
(source) |
In 1965, Hansard, the official record of all English parliamentary
debates,
recorded
in an Appendix the statement by Mr Jay (President of the Board of Trade)
saying he was impressed by the case for adoption of the metric system -
by a long-term, gradual, voluntary process - and was arranging for the
British Standards Institution to investigate. Eventually, as a member of
the European Common Market, the transition to the metric system for trade
and commerce became obligatory. |
| Astronaut | |
(source) |
In 1962, astronaut
Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit the Earth as he flew
aboard Aurora 7. He made three revolutions of the earth, reaching
a maximum altitude of 164 miles. The spacecraft landed in the Atlantic
Ocean about 1000 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral after 4 hr 54 min of
flight time. Shortly afterwards, he also became an aquanaut. In summer
1965, he participated in the Navy's Sealab II program off the coast
of La Jolla, California. During the 45-day experiment, Carpenter spent
30 days living and working on the ocean floor. He was team leader for two
of the three ten-man teams of Navy and civilian divers who conducted deep
sea diving activities based in a sea floor habitat at a depth of 205 ft. |
| Surveillance satellite | |
(source) |
In 1960, MIDAS II, the first American surveillance satellite to
successfully reach orbit, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Although intended to be part of an early missile warning system, circling
the earth every 94 minutes, its telemetry system failed two days later,
and the satellite never began service. A few months earlier, on 26 Feb
1960, the first MIDAS
(Missile Detection Alarm System) satellite
launch ended with accident of its Atlas
Agena-A booster, and it never reached orbit. The first operationally
successful surveillance satellite was GRAB,
launched 22 Jun 1960. The first successful operational imaging surveillance
satellite, for photo reconnaissance, was Discoverer
XIV, launched 18 Aug 1960.« [Image
left: Atlas rocket with Agena-A upper stage, one of several used as a satellite
launch vehicle. Right:
Agena-A upper stage displayed in a museum.] |
| Parking meter patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1938, a U.S. patent was issued for a Coin Controlled Parking Meter to
Carl C. McGee of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (No. 2,118,318). The invention
was designed for "measuring the time of occupancy or use of parking or
other space, for the use of which it is desirous an incidental charge be
made upon a time basis." One or more coins were to be inserted, and a signal
would indicate when a predetermined period of time after that had elapsed.
(In this patent description, this time signal was designed to disappear
from view when time expired.) The coin remained in an operative position
until a clockwork spring was properly wound to drive the mechanism. The
display was graduated to show time remaining. |
| Spectrophotometer | |
(source) |
In 1935, the first spectrophotometer
was sold by General Electric Co., assignee of the patent issued
at the beginning of the year to the inventor, Arthur Cobb Harvey ("Photometric
Apparatus," 8 Jan 1935, U.S. No. 1,987,441). This electronic machine was
capable of distinguishing and charting two million different shades of
colour. The apparatus used a photo-electric device to receive light alternately
from a sample and from a standard for comparison. Its important innovation
was to eliminate any need for the two beams (from sample and from standard)
to travel different optical paths which in previous designs could introduce
inaccuracies when one path varied from the other, caused for example by
dirt on a lens in one path.« [Image:
a "GE-Hardy" double-beam recording spectrophotometer photographed in 1938
showing Walt Disney with the instrument at his studios.] |
| Storage battery | |
|
In 1921, Thomas A. Edison received one of his various patents concerning
a "Storage Battery" (U.S. No. 1,379,088) and another relating to the "Production
of Thin Metallic Sheets or Foils" (No. 1,379,089). |
|
| Electric railway | |
|
In 1892, Thomas A. Edison was issued three patents for an "Electric Locomotive"
and a fourth patent relating to an "Electric Railway" (U.S. Nos.
475,491 -4). |
|
| McCoy patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1887, the famous black American inventor Elijah
J. McCoy received another of his many patents for lubricating devices
(U.S. No. 363,529). This design was for lubricating the slide-valves and
cylinders of locomotive-engines. A steam chest and its steam valve have
a steam and oil conduit communicating with the interior of the steam-chest
at the side of the valve, such that the conduit opens "within the steam-pipe
to project oil, by the force of the steam, upon the side of the valve and
its seat." The oil delivered from the conduit is atomized as it is projected.«  [Image:
patent diagram, shown rotated 90º counterclockwise.]
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Brooklyn Bridge | |
(source) |
In 1883, Brooklyn
Bridge was opened over the East River, New York City, USA, of a breadth
of 1,600 feet, navigable water with a single span. What was then regarded
as the greatest engineering feat still stands in service today, and remains
the world's only stone-towered, steel cabled bridge. Twice the size of
the Niagara Suspension Bridge and four times the longest non-extension
spans ever attempted, the total length
of this colossal structure is 6,927 ft. The road bed is 80 feet wide, and
at an elevation of 186 feet above high water. John
Roebling, and after his death his son Washington
Roebling, worked on its construction for 13 years.«
The
Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge,
by David McCullough. |
| Patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1881, a patent for a "Life Saving Apparatus" was issued to black American
inventor, James Wormley (U.S. No. 242,091). The invention "consists in
a float or number of floats attached to the free end of a rope, which at
that end has one or more eyes and runs out as the ship moves through the
water, in combination with a lock and cast-off mechanism consisting essentially
of a sliding rod at the ship's side, provided with projecting arms, which,
in their normal position, are passed through each eye in the rope, but
which disengage therefrom by a movement of the sliding rod which is controlled,
through a suitable intervening mechanism, by a hand-lever at the ship's
wheel."« [Image: detail
from patent diagram showing midsection of vessel showing floats stored
along ship's bulwarks.]
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| First U.S. Bessemer steel rails | |
(source) |
In 1865, the first Bessemer steel rails ever rolled in the U.S. were a
few rolled at the North
Chicago Rolling Mill from hammered blooms made at the Wyandotte
rolling mill from ingots of steel made at the experimental steel works
at Wyandotte, Mich. The American Iron and Steel Association was in session
in Chicago at that time, and several of its members witnessed the rolling
of these rails. The North Chicago Rolling Mill was the first large iron
and steel plant in the Chicago area, founded in 1857. The first steel rails
rolled for a business order in the U.S., were made at the Cambria Iron
Company, at Johnstown, Pa., in Aug 1867, from ingots manufactured at the
works of the Pennsylvania Steel Company, at Harrisburg, Pa.*[Image:
detail from engraving of the much larger area covered by the factory buildings.] |
| London Underground train trial | |
(source) |
In 1862, the first trial
run of a train was made through the Metropolitan
underground line, the world's first underground passenger railway. The
public opening was held on 10 Jan
1863. The four mile, 33-min route
had seven stations between Farringdon St. and Paddington. Charles Pearson
first proposed the underground method to relieve congestion in London.
The Metropolitan Railway Co. was founded in Aug 1854. After financial delays,
the first shaft was sunk at Euston Square, in 1860. The tunnel was built
by "cut-and-cover" whereby a trench was dug to the rail level, then covered
with beams and a new surface.«
The
Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built...,
by Christian Wolmar. |
| Westminster Bridge | |
(source) |
In 1862, Westminster Bridge opened over the River Thames, London, England.
It replaced
the first Westminster Bridge design of 14 masonry arches (1722) by Colon
Campbell, built in 1738-50 by engineer Charles Labelye. Despite major work
to the piled foundations in 1837, after a century of use it had to be closed
in Aug 1846 because several of the caissons had given way under the weight
of the masonry. It was decided to demolish the old structure and erect
a new, wider bridge. A cast-iron bridge
in classic Gothic style but with 7 elliptical-arch spans was designed and
built there by Thomas Page in 1854-62. The Houses of Parliament at the
north
end were built about the same time from1840 and near completion in 1860.«
[Image:
One of the lamps above each pillar along Westminster Bridge.] |
| War use of field telegraph | |
|
In 1862, a field telegraph was used for the first time in U.S. warfare.
This was the time of the American Civil War. An army general's headquarters
near Williamsport, Va., was connected by wire to an advance guard several
miles away at Mechanicsville, Va. |
|
| Morse's message opens first U.S. telegraph line | |
(source) |
In 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted
the message,
"What hath God wrought!" from the U.S. Supreme Court room Washington D.C.
to his partner, Alfred Vail, in the Mount Clare station of the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad Co. Vail responded by retransmitting the same message
back to Morse. Thus, Morse formally opened America's first telegraph line,
an event that inaugurated America's telegraph industry. The biblical text,
from Numbers, Ch 23, verse 23, was selected by Annie Ellsworth, teenage
daughter of the Commissioner of Patents. Congress had appropriated $30,000
in 1843 for a telegraph wire to be strung 80 miles between Washington and
Baltimore.«  |
