| JUNE 1 - BIRTHS | |
| Sir Frank Whittle | |
(source) |
 Born 1
Jun 1907; died 8 Aug 1996.
English aviation engineer and pilot who was a pioneer in the field of jet propulsion, which he used to develop aircraft that could fly at faster speeds and higher altitudes than piston-engine propeller airplanes of the 1920s. While he was at Cranwell, still only 21 years of age, Whittle began to consider the possibilities of jet propulsion as applied to aircraft. By 1930, he had designed and patented a jet aircraft engine. After 11 years, Whittle's engine, tested and modified, successfully powered a Gloster-Whittle E.28/39, on a historic 17-min flight on 15 May 1941. Design work continued, and by the end of WW II, the Gloster Meteor became the RAF's first jet fighter that would fly 200-mph faster than the RAF's Spitfires and Hurricanes.  Genesis
of the Jet: Frank Whittle, by John Golley. |
| Edward Charles Titchmarsh | |
(source) |
Born 1
Jun 1899; died 18 Jan 1963.
English mathematician whose contributions to analysis placed him in the forefront of his profession. His contributions helped resolve the differences between the general theory of quantum mechanics and the methods used to solve particular problems in quantum theory. All Titchmarsh's work is in analysis. His early studies were on Fourier series, Fourier integrals, functions of a complex variable, integral equations and the Riemann zeta function. From 1939, Titchmarsh concentrated on the theory of series expansions of eigenfunctions of differential equations, work which helped to resolve problems in quantum mechanics. His work on this topic occupied him for the last 25 years of his life. Theory
of Functions, by Edward Charles Titchmarsh. |
| Charles Benedict Davenport | |
(source) |
Born 1
Jun 1866; died 18 Feb 1944.
American zoologist who contributed substantially to the study of eugenics (the improvement of populations through breeding) and heredity and who pioneered the use of statistical techniques in biological research. Partly as a result of breeding experiments with chickens and canaries, he was one of the first, soon after 1902, to recognize the validity of the newly discovered Mendelian theory of heredity. In Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911), he compiled evidence concerning the inheritance of human traits, on the basis of which he argued that the application of genetic principles would improve the human race. These data were at the heart of his lifelong promotion of eugenics, though he muddled science with social philosophy. Statistical
Methods in Biology, Medicine and Psychology, by
Charles Benedict Davenport. |
| Hugo Münsterberg | |
(source) |
Born 1
Jun 1863; died 16 Dec 1916.
German-American psychologist and philosopher who was interested in the applications of psychology to law, business, industry, medicine, teaching, and sociology. He was a forerunner in the field of behaviorism: in theoretical psychology, his "action theory" defined attention in terms of the openness of the nerve paths to the muscles of adjustment. His work in industrial / organizational (I/O) psychology was extremely experimentally based. He looked at problems with monotony, attention and fatigue, physical and social influences on the working power, the effects of advertising, and the future development of economic psychology. He also looked at the reliability of eye witness testimonies. Psychology
and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Münsterberg. |
| Francis Edgar Stanley and Freelan O. Stanley | |
(source) |
Born 1 Jun 1849; died 31 Jul 1918 and 2 Oct 1940 respectively
American inventors, twin brothers, the most famous manufacturers of steam-driven automobiles. Francis previously had invented a photographic dry-plate process (1883), and as the Stanley Dry Plate Company the brothers had engaged in the manufacturing of the plates. They sold the company to Eastman Kodak in 1905, as their interest had turned to steam-powered automobiles. They began working on steam powered cars in 1897, and built thousands of them them until the 1920's as the Stanley Motor Company. At racing events, they often competed successfully against gasoline powered cars (1902-09). They set a world record in 1906 for fastest mile in 28.2 seconds (127 mph or 205 kph). [Image right: 1910 Stanley Model 71] The
Stanley Steamer: America's Legendary Steam Car,
by
Kit Foster. |
| Sadi Carnot | |
Age 17 (source) |
Born 1
Jun 1796; died 24 Aug 1832.
(Nicholas Léonard) Sadi Carnot was a French physicist. He became a captain of engineers in the army, and spent much of his life investigating the design of steam engines. His book Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824) contained a theorem which says that a maximum efficiency of heat engine can be obtained by a reversible engine, and that efficiency depends only on the temperatures of the hot and the cool sources of the engine. This theorem played an essential role for the subsequent development of thermodynamics. It was written to promote the construction of steam engines and other heat engines in France, whose industrial development was lagging behind England's. Reflections
on the Motive Power of Fire, by Sadi Carnot. |
| Marchese Francesco Scipione Maffei | |
(source) |
Born 1
Jun 1675; died 11 Feb 1755.
(marquess) Italian dramatist and archaeologist whose studies made from 1718 of the archaeology of his native town were published in his four-volume Verona illustrata (1731-32). From 1732, he spent four years pursuing archaeological research in France and also travelled through England, Holland and Germany. He built a museum to house his valuable collection, which he bequeathed to his native city. The Museo Lapidario holds many precious stone relics with runic Latin, Greek, Arabic, Egyptian, Persian and Hebrew inscriptions. He also was interested in physics and astronomy, and built his own observatory to study the movements of the stars. His hometown celebrated him with a statue in the Piazza de Signori.« |
|
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| JUNE 1 - DEATHS | |
| Sir Christopher Cockerell | |
 |
 Died
1 Jun 1999 (born 4 Jun 1910)
Inventor of the hovercraft. He was an electronics engineer with the Marconi Company (1935-50) where he worked on airborne navigational equipment and on radar. Then he began a boat-hire business. Considering the water drag on the hull of a boat, he had the idea of raising the boat on a cushion of air. In 1954, he performed a crucial experiment using kitchen scales, tin cans, and a vacuum cleaner to show that a stream of air could produce the required lift. The next year he built a working balsa wood model with a model-aircraft engine. The first full-scale prototype, SR-N1, weighed 7 tons and was capable of 60 knots. It crossed the English Channel in 1959 (with Cockerell aboard). Hovercraft entered regular cross-channel service in 1968. |
| Werner Forssmann | |
(source) |
Died 1 Jun 1979 (born 20 Aug 1904)
German surgeon who shared (with André F. Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1956 for the development of cardiac catheterization. In 1929, to avoid dangers with the direct injection of drugs into the heart frequently demanded in an emergency, he proposed introducing a catheter. This was a tube inserted through a vein at the elbow and passed through the vein into the right atrium of the heart. Drugs could then be introduced through this. After practice on cadavers, he introduced a 65-cm catheter to his own heart, walked up several flights of stairs to the x-ray department and calmly confirmed that the tip of the catheter had reached his heart. There had been no pain or discomfort. (Image right source) Mavericks,
Miracles, and Medicine: The Pioneers Who Risked Their Lives...,
by Julie M. Fenster. |
| Hans Berger | |
(source) |
Died
1 Jun 1941 (born 21 May 1873)
Psychiatrist who recorded the first human electroencephalogram (EEG). In 1929, he devised a system of electrodes which he attached to his son's skull, and connected to an oscillograph. This gave a recording of brain waves - the rhythmic changes in electric potentials. The most prominent of these rhythms he labelled "alpha waves" and "beta waves." |
| Karl George Christian von Staudt | |
(source) |
Died
1 Jun 1867 (born 24 Jan 1798)
German mathematician who developed the first complete theory of imaginary points, lines, and planes in projective geometry. His early work was on determining the orbit of a comet and, based on this work, he received his doctorate. He showed how to construct a regular inscribed polygon of 17 sides using only compasses. He turned to projective geometry and Bernoulli numbers. An important work on projective geometry, Geometrie der Lage was published in 1847. It was the first work to completely free projective geometry from any metrical basis. He also gave a geometric solution to quadratic equations. |
| René-Just Haüy | |
(source) |
Died
1 Jun 1822 (born 28 Feb 1743)
French mineralogist who was the founder of the science of crystallography through his discovery of the geometrical law of crystallization. In 1781, he saw an accidentally dropped calcite crystal broke into rhombohedral pieces. Deliberately breaking various forms of calcite, he found the same result. He concluded that all the molecules of calcite have the same form and it is only how they are joined together that produces different gross structures. Hence, he suggested that other minerals should show different basic forms. He thought that there were, in fact, six different primitive forms from which all crystals could be derived by being linked in different ways. His theory was able to predict in many cases the correct angles of a crystal face. |
| Richard Kirwan | |
(source) |
Died 1 Jun 1812 (born 1 Aug 1733)
Irish chemist whose Elements of Mineralogy (1784), was the first English systematic treatment of the subject. He did valuable work on chemical affinity and the combining proportions of acids and bases forming salts. Previously a staunch defender of phlogiston theory, in 1791, Kirwan conceded that the experimental evidence was to the contrary. He was president of the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Dublin Society. He challenged Antoine Lavoisier's discoveries and the revolutionary views of the Scottish geologist James Hutton. He was also a great eccentric; one of his pet hates was flies. He always dined alone, because of dysphagia; he was unable to swallow food without convulsive movements, distressing for others to view. [Image right: sign for phlogiston in eighteenth-century (source) ] |
| JUNE 1 - EVENTS | |
| National light-pollution law | |
(source) |
In 2002, the first national law prohibiting "light pollution" went into
effect. The Czech Republic became
the first nation to outlaw excess outdoor light. All outdoor light fixtures
in the country must be shielded to ensure light goes only in the direction
intended, and not above the horizontal. Czech astronomers had lobbied for
the legislation. Light from street and road signs bounces off molecules
in the atmosphere, making skies less dark. This light pollution is a particular
problem for astronomers since even low levels of man-made light from distant
cities can obscure their view of faint objects far away in space. Better
designed, non-polluting light fixtures should give everyone better more
energy efficiency and reduce glare on roads and in residential areas. [Image:
Skyglow 120km north of Adelaide, Australia.]
Light
Pollution, by Bob Mizon. |
| E-Lamp | |
Genura (source) |
In 1992, the E-Lamp, an electronic electrodeless 20-year lightbulb, was
announced
by Pierre Villere. The E-Lamp is illuminated
when radio waves excite a phosphor coating, an efficient process that can
save as much as 75% of lighting costs. The E-lamp technology
was licensed from Diablo Research Corporation that developed it in the
late 1980s. However, they were not approved for residential use in the
U.S. In Apr 1994, General Electric (G.E.) Lighting announced that "the
world's first practical compact high-tech induction reflector lamp" would
be on the market
in Europe within weeks using the tradename Genura.
It is smaller than the incandescent reflector lamp it replaces. |
| 3K radiation | |
(source) |
In 1965, A. Penzias and R. Wilson detected a 3 degree kelvin primordial
background radiation using a horn reflector antenna built for radio astronomy.
The Big Bang description of the origin of the universe took place 15 to
20 billion years ago in an explosion from a hot dense state. The high energy
radiation produced
when the universe was very young and very hot would have been absorbed
and degraded as the universe expanded and cooled. The microwave background
radiation first observed by Penzias and Wilson is thought to be a relic
of this very early state, when the universe was only about a million years
old. The uniformity of microwave background indicates that the universe
was homogeneous until it was a few million years old. |
| Stereo FM | |
|
In 1961, FM stereo broadcasting was authorized to begin in the U.S. when
on this date the Federal Communications Commission received its first notifications
of such regular operation, from WEFM Chicago and WGFM Schenectady. Both
these stations, and others, had previously experimented with stereo broadcasting.
The FCC adopted the stereo FM broadcasting standards coinvented by Carl
G. Eilers of Zenith. |
|
| Solar battery | |
|
In 1955, a solar energy battery was first shipped from an American commercial
factory, National Fabricated Products, Inc., Chicago, Ill. The battery
was disc shaped, about the size of a half-dollar, with two terminals. It
was hermetically sealed, and provided about half of a volt of electricity. |
|
| Titanium | |
|
In 1951, a titanium plant was opened in Henderson, Nev. which was the first
fully self-contained and integrated facility in the U.S. It converted titanium
ore into titanium sponge, which was melted down and formed into ingots
of titanium metal. |
|
| Photosensitive glass | |
|
In 1947, the development of photosensitive glass was announced publicly
in Corning, N.Y. It had first been made by the Corning Glass Works in Nov
1937. The glass
is crystal clear, but exposure to ultraviolet light followed by heat treatment
forms submicroscopic metal particles creating an image within the glass.
This is believed to be the most durable form of photographic medium, and
to be as permanent as the glass itself. |
|
| British TV licences | |
1946 (source) |
In 1946, television licences
were first issued in Britain costing £2 and included radio (radio-only
licences then cost £1) and were sold at Post Offices. Television
services had been suspended suspended during WW II. A Mickey Mouse cartoon
was being shown when TV service was suddenly blacked out for defence reasons
on 1 Sep 1939. That same cartoon was shown on 8 Jun 1946 when television
re-opened to cover the Victory Parade. The first radio licence fee began
in Nov 1922 and cost 10 shillings (50p). The BBC's
domestic radio and TV services are financed by the television licence fee,
which continues to the present time. The licence fees as of 1 Apr 2002
are £112.00 for colour and £37.50 for black and white. |
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1920, Thomas A. Edision received a patent for "Composition of Matter
for Sound-Records or the Like and Process" (U.S. No. 1,342,326). |
|
| Svedberg's colloidal sol patent | |
 |
In 1909, Swedish chemist Theodor
Svedberg filed to patent his method of producing colloidal sols or
gels, simultaneously in Great Britain, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland.
By 1926, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with disperse
systems. In colloidal systems, extremely fine particles are dispersed in
a continuous medium, in which they remain suspended indefinitely. In molecular-disperse
systems, the particles are large molecules like proteins or haemoglobin.
Svedberg invented an ultracentrifuge to investigate them. At 40,000 revolutions/min,
the particles were redistributed towards the periphery of the motion. Analysis
of photographs of the distribution yielded the molecular weight of the
particles.«  |
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1909, Thomas A. Edison received a
patent for "Shaft-Coupling" (U.S. No. 923,633). |
|
| Rock wool | |
(source) |
In 1897, a rock wool factory in the U.S., the Crystal Chemical Works, was
opened in Alexandria, Ind. Mineral wool had previously been made from blast
furnace slag, but the new factory used local limestone rock in a process
discovered by Charles Corydon Hall to create a sulphur-free product.
The limestone was melted in a specially designed water-jacketed cupola,
blown by steam pressure then allowed to cool to form fine threads. Its
light, fibrous form resembled freshly-sheared sheep's wool. Being both
insectproof and fireproof, rock wool was useful as a filtering material
and as an insulating material for such uses as packing walls or for covering
steam boilers. In 1929, the works became part of Johns Manville Corp.« |
| Cotton chopper | |
|
In 1886, black American inventor W.H. Richardson was issued a patent for
a "Cotton Chopper" (U.S. No. 343,140).
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
|
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1886, Thomas A. Edison was issued
a patent for a "System of Electrical Distribution" (U.S. No. 343,017). |
|
| Pay telephone service | |
 |
In 1880, the first pay telephone service in the United States, for public
use went into service. The toll was given to an attendant. It was installed
by the Connecticut
Telephone Co. in their office at Yale Bank Building at State and Chapel
Streets in New Haven, CT.*
After its founding on 28 Jan1878, the New Haven exchange grew quickly.
Within a few years, the company pursued expansion and interconnection of
distant towns. By 1880 they had the right to build exchanges in any part
of Connecticut and western Massachusetts and, more important, they had
the right to interconnect their exchanges. Early toll lines from Bridgeport
to New Haven to Hartford brought a good return, and toll lines were built
and promoted everywhere. |
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1880, Thomas A. Edison was issued
a patent on a design for a "Magnetic Ore-Separator" (U.S. No. 228,329). |
|
| Tay Bridge opened | |
(source) |
In 1878, the original Tay Bridge was officially opened by Queen Victoria.
It carried a single rail line across the Forth of Tay on the east coast
of Scotland. At almost 2 miles in overall length, it was for its time the
world's longest bridge. The engineer was Thomas
Bouch, who supervised construction, and was knighted for his work.
Sadly, the structure was inadequate in both design and quality to withstand
gale force winds, and on 28 Dec 1879, its cast iron piers collapsed
as a train crossed the high navigation spans. The engine and carriages
fell into the water taking over 75 passengers to their deaths. An official
inquiry found Bouch at fault, and that poor maintenance procedures weakened
the piers and contributed to the failure.« [Image:
collapsed span in water beside broken columns after the collapse of the
Tay Bridge.]
Beautiful
Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay: Reinvestigating the Tay Bridge Disaster,
by Peter R. Lewis. |
| Processed coconut | |
(source) |
In 1875, black American inventor Alexander P. Ashbourne received a patent
for a "Process Preparing Cocoa-nut for Domestic Use" (U.S. No. 163,962).
The patent describes the process by taking any quantity of coconuts and
pare them. The meat is then grated or otherwise pulverized, and is then
passed through fine sieves, hot boiling water being added at the same time.
The meat is then cooked with hot steam for 3 to 4 hours, then pressed dry.
Sugar is added in the ratio of one pound of sugar to three pounds of coconut,
plus a small quantity of fine stick cinnamon to preserve the flavour. The
compound is dried gradually and packed.
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Edison receives first patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1869, Thomas Edison of Boston, Mass.,
received his first patent. It was for an "electrographic vote recorder."
The device was the first of its kind, and would enable a legislator to
register a vote either for or against an issue by turning a switch to the
right or left. His application was executed on 13 Nov 1868 and submitted
to the U.S. Patent Office on 28
Nov 1868 (No. 90646). |
| Crumlin viaduct | |
(source) |
In 1857, the Crumlin Viaduct in South Wales, then the highest railway viaduct
in Great Britain was opened.
It was built to carry coal from the area's mines on the Taff Vale Extension
of the Newport, Abergavenny, and Hereford Railway over the river Ebbw and
smaller Kendon valley. The viaduct was one of the most important engineering
wonders of its era. The designer, Thomas Kennard, used his modification
of the Warren Truss. Its overall length of 1658-ft used an estimated 2,550
tons of wrought and cast iron. Being 200-ft high at the highest point above
the valley floor, it was the highest railway viaduct in Britain until demolished
in 1965. After the last passenger train passed over it on 13 Jun 1964,
the line was closed.« |
| Antoine Lavoisier | |
 |
In 1768, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier
sat for the first time at the Royal Academy of Sciences. Lavoisier
had been on the list of candidates for two years. The death of Théodore
Baron had liberated a place at the Academy for a chemist and supported
by his father's friends, Maraldi and Duhamel du Monceau as well as by Bernard
de Jussieu, Macquer and Joseph
Jérome Le François de Lalande (1732-1807), he was elected.
His first papers were reports on analysis: studies of gypsum, the diamond,
meteorites, charcoal, lead and mineral waters. |
