| JUNE 30 - BIRTHS | |
| Paul Berg | |
(source) |
 Born 30
Jun 1926
American biochemist who made "fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA" techniques for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980 (with Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger). Berg's pioneering experiment, in which he was the first person to construct a recombinant-DNA molecule, initiated genetic engineering. Such molecules contain parts of DNA from different species, for example, a chromosome from a virus combined with genes from a bacterial chromosome. DNA molecules from viruses, being relatively small, are useful for such investigations. Important practical applications now include the manufacture of human hormone with the aid of bacteria.«  Dealing
With Genes: The Language of Heredity, by Paul Berg, Maxine
Singer |
| Adolf Furtwängler | |
(source) |
Born 30
Jun 1853; died 10 Oct 1907.
German archaeologist whose important publications include a volume on the bronzes found at Olympia, vast works on ancient gems and Greek vases, and the invaluable Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture in which he presented the pioneering method for prehistorical stylistic categorization of small artworks that he devised while excavating at the Olympia site in Greece (1878). His use of photography in research supplanted the use of drawings because a camera gives objective reproduction with more accuracy, which enabled fragments to be scrutinized, even when they were miles apart. Studying photographs, he reconstructed the statue of Athena, by demonstrating that a marble head in Bologna belonged to a marble body in Dresden.« |
| Sir Ferdinand von Mueller | |
(source) |
Born 30
Jun 1825; died 10 Oct 1896.
German-born Australian botanist and explorer. He migrated to Australia in 1848 for health reasons, and there became the country's greatest 19th-century scientist. Mueller gained an international reputation as a great botanical collector and writer. His contributions covered a wide field of sciences such as geography, pharmacy, horticulture, agriculture, forestry, paleontology, and zoology. His activity as a botanist is shown by hundreds of Australian plant names which are followed by 'F. Muell'. From 1853, he held the post as the first Government Botanist of Victoria until his death, 43 years later. He travelled widely throughout the colonies on botanical exploration, including as naturalist to the Gregory expedition to northern Australia (1855-57).« |
| Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker | |
1896 (source) |
Born 30
Jun 1817; died 10 Dec 1911.
English botanist who was assistant on Sir James Ross's Antarctic expedition and whose botanical travels to foreign lands included India, Palestine and the U.S., from which he became a leading taxonomists in his time. His Student's Flora of the British Islands became a standard text. He was a great friend of Charles Darwin, and they collaborated in research. With Charles Lyell, Hooker encouraged the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution. He served (1855-65) as assistant director to his father, Sir William Jackson Hooker, of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, whom he succeeded as director for another 20 years. He was also a president of the Royal Society. At age 94, he died in his sleep and was buried at Kew.«
Sir
Joseph Dalton Hooker: Traveller and Plant Collector,
by Ray Desmond. |
| Thomas Edmondson | |
(source) |
Born 30 Jun 1792; died 22 Jun 1851.
English inventor whose ticket printing and numbering machine pioneered a system of fare collection in the development of the railways. While working for the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, he found handwriting the tickets irksome and delaying, and it occurred to him that the work could be done by a machine. He evolved a process for preparing receipts in advance, serial numbering all the tickets (for accountability of monies collected), and inventing a basic stamping system on wooden blocks. Edmondson's early wooden dating presses were developed into iron ones and mass produced. By 1843, twenty-seven English companies, and the Paris and Rouen railway were using the system, which had now become the standard one to adopt. |
| JUNE 30 - DEATHS | |
| Lee De Forest | |
(source) |
 Died
30 Jun 1961 (born 26 Aug 1873)
American inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, which made possible live radio broadcasting and became the key component of all radio, telephone, radar, television, and computer systems before the invention of the transistor in 1947. |
| Sir John Rayleigh | |
(source) |
Died
30 Jun 1919 (born 12 Nov 1842)
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron of Rayleigh (of Terling Place) was an English physical scientist who made fundamental discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics that are basic to the theory of wave propagation in fluids. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904 for his investigations into the densities of the most important gases and his successful isolation of argon, an inert atmospheric gas.  |
| Gaston(-Camille-Charles) Maspero | |
| Died
30 Jun 1916 (born 23 Jun 1846)
French Egyptologist and director general of excavations and antiquities for the Egyptian government, who was responsible for locating a collective royal tomb of prime historic importance. |
|
| Siegfried Marcus | |
| Died
30 Jun 1898 (born 18 Sep 1831)
German-born Austrian inventor who built four of the world's earliest gasoline-powered automobiles. He held about 76 patents (though none on his automobiles) in about a dozen countries. He also invented an electric lamp (1877), various other electrical devices, and a carburetor. |
|
| Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny | |
| Died
30 Jun 1857 (born 6 Sep 1802)
French scientist who founded the science of micropaleontology with his study of small marine fossils, pollen, grain and spores found in sedimentary rocks for the purpose of dating stages. This discipline is of great practical value in petroleum exploration. In 1850, Orbigny undertook the detailed assignment of stages represented by Jurassic Period fossils in geologic formations of northwestern Europe. |
|
| Abraham Werner | |
(EB) |
Died
30 Jun 1817 (born 25 Sep 1750)
Abraham Gottlob Werner was a German geologist who founded the Neptunist school, holding that all rocks have aqueous origins. This contrasts with the Plutonists, or Vulcanists, who maintain that granite among other rocks were of igneous origin. Werner also rejected the idea of uniformitarianism whereby geological evolution has been a uniform and continuous process.« |
| William Oughtred | |
| Died
30 Jun 1660 (born 5 Mar 1574)
English mathematician and Episcopal minister who invented the earliest form of the slide rule, two identical linear or circular logarithmic scales held together and adjusted by hand. Improvements involving the familiar inner rule with tongue-in-groove linear construction came later. He introduced the familiar multiplication sign x in a 1631 textbook, along with the first use of the abbreviations sin, cos and tan. |
|
| JUNE 30 - EVENTS | |
| Eclipse | |
(source)(source) |
In 1973, a solar eclipse, predicted as the longest for 1,000 years, was
observed
by British, French and American scientists aboard the French prototype
Concorde
001 supersonic aircraft on a flight from Las Palmas, Canaries to Fort
Lamy, Chad. The path of totality crossed the Atlantic, the Sahara Desert
and East Africa. The moon's shadow travelled at over 3,000 km per hour.
Flying at 55,000 feet, the jet's speed made possible a continuous view
of the solar eclipse for 74 minutes, ten times longer than could be seen
by an observer on the ground. Four months later, Concorde 001, the first
prototype to fly, was retired on 19 Oct 1973, to the French Air Museum
at Le Bourget Airport. It had made 225 supersonic flights in a total of
397.« |
| Leap second | |
(source) |
In 1972, the first leap
second day, one second was added to the world's time in order to keep
the super-accurate atomic clocks in step with the Earth's rotation. Since
the adoption of this system
in 1972, firstly due to the initial choice of the value of the second (1/86400
mean solar day of the year 1900) and secondly to the general slowing down
of the Earth's rotation, it has been necessary to add
over 20 seconds to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). [Image:
part of the master clock system at the U.S. Naval Observatory.] |
| Russian space tragedy | |
|
In 1971, a Soviet space mission ended in tragedy when three cosmonauts
aboard Soyuz 11 were found dead inside their spacecraft after it
had returned to Earth. The cosmonauts were G.T. Dobrovolsky, V.J. Patsayev,
and V.N. Volkov and died during re-entry after a 24-day mission in space. |
|
| African-American joins space program | |
(source) |
In 1967, a press conference announced four Air Force officers selected
for training in the U.S. Air Force's Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) program,
El Segundo, California.*
One of the four, Major Robert Lawrence, was the first African-American
to qualify for training in the US space program. His career was cut short
only a few months later, when he died on 8 Dec 1967 on a training flight
in a Starfighter jet that crashed at Edwards Air Force Base, California.
(Several years earlier, another African-American had been selected for
the MOL program, on 31 Mar 1961, but not subsequently selected for training).
It was not until 30 Aug 1983 that the first African-American entered
space: Col. Guion S. Bluford, Jr. |
| Atomic reactor | |
|
In 1963, it was announced that the first U.S. plutonium-fueled nuclear
reactor to produce useful amounts of electricity was installed in the experimental
reactor of the Argonne National Labboratory's Idaho division, near Idaho
Falls, Idaho.* |
|
| Plastic laminate car | |
|
In 1953, first laminated fiberglass-body sport car to be produced in the
U.S. was the Chevrolet Corvette made at a General Motors factory in Flint,
Michigan.* |
|
| Transistor | |
|
In 1948, the transistor was demonstrated by its inventors, John
Bardeen and Walter Brattain,
scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratory in Murray Hill, NJ.*
It was a simple, tiny device utilizing the electronic semiconducting properties
of a germanium wafer. The transistor represented a significant advance
in technology. As it was developed over the next few years, it was incorporated
into electronic equipment as a functional replacment for the vacuum tube.
Such use of transistors provided great savings in space and electrical
power consumption. This made possible the small portable, battery-powered
transistor radios which were sold to the public by late 1954. |
|
| Telephone recorder | |
|
In 1948, the telephone recording devices were first authorized for public
use in the U.S. To comply with the Federal Communications Commission regulations,
when the devices were being used, a periodic "beep" tone signal was used
to advise those on the telephone line that their conversations were being
recorded. The recording devices has been in use by government and business
prior to the adoption of the FCC regulations.* |
|
| Atomic bomb | |
|
In 1946, the first U.S. atomic bomb dropped from an airplane over water
was named "Able," a part of Operation Crossroads. A U.S. Air Force B-29
Superfortress, Dave's Dream, was used to deliver
the bomb, which was dropped over the Bikini Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean
onto a target group of 73 ships moved there for the purpose. The explosion
caused a 520-foot burst. The Gilliam and Carlisle transport
ships were sunk, and 18 other ships were damaged. |
|
| Round-the-world broadcast | |
|
In 1930, the first round-the-world broadcast from the U.S. used a series
of short-wave radio relays and took only one-eighth of a second, carrying
the voice of Clyde D. Wagoner. Beginning in Schnectady, New York, the signal
from W2XAD was relayed through Holland, Java, Australia, across the Pacific
Ocean and back to Schnectady.* |
|
| Airplane bomb-drop tests | |
1909 (source) |
In 1910, the first trials in the U.S. investigating the use of an airplane
to drop bombs were conducted by pilot Glenn H. Curtiss. He dropped lead
dummy bombs on 500-ft by 90-ft targets from a height of 50-ft. His aim
was successful 10 times out of 14 tries. For visibility, the missiles trailed
coloured streamers. The tests were observed by Admiral William Wirt Kimball
at Lake Keuka, Hammondsport, New York.* |
| Tunguska meteorite | |
(source) |
In 1908, at around 7:15 am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball
nearly as bright as the Sun was seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there
was a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 650 km (400 mi) away. Over
Tunguska, a meteorite
over 50-m diameter, travelling at over 25 km per second (60,000 mph) penetrated
Earth's atmosphere, heated to about 10,000 ºC and detonated
6 to10 km above the ground. The blast released the energy of 10-50 Megatons
of TNT, destroying 2,200 sq km of forest leaving no trace of life. The
Tunguska rock came out of the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth's
orbit twice a year. The first scientific expedition for which records survive
was made by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik in 1927. [Image:
a view of charred forest trees blown to the ground show the direction of
the blast.] |
| Balloon | |
|
In 1905, the first balloon landing on a building took place in Toledo,
Ohio, as the mid-point of a round-trip flight by A. Roy Knabenshue. He
had travelled for 25 minutes a distance of 3 miles to the 10-story building,
where he landed, took a 15-min break, and then returned to his starting
point.* |
|
| Electric stove | |
|
In 1896, the first U.S. patent for an electric stove was patented by William.S.
Hadaway, Jr., in New York City. (No. 563,032). It provided a uniform surface
distribution of heat from a one-ring spiral coiled conductor. An earlier
apparatus, described as an "electrical heating apparatus," which the inventor
termed an "electroheater," was patented by George B. Simpson of Washington,
D.C. on 20 Sep 1859 (No. 25,532). Simpson's device utilized the heating
effect resulting from passing electric current through coils of wire made
from platina or other metals.* |
|
| Tower Bridge | |
(source) |
In 1894, the Tower
Bridge across the River Thames in London was officially opened by the
Prince of Wales. A procession of vessels passed under the bridge. In 1878,
City architect Horace Jones proposed a new bridge was needed to improve
city traffic. It was approved by Act of Parliament in 1885 and the foundation
stone was laid 21 Jun 1886. Including
approaches, the bridge
is a half-mile long, having a roadway 35-ft wide flanked by footways 12.5
ft wide. From their foundations, the towers rise 293-ft, giving 140-ft
clearance for ships beneath the central span which carries two footways.
The roadway is a bascule (drawbridge), opening at the centre to permit
ship traffic on the Thames. The piers also house the bascule-lifting machinery
and their counterweights.«  [Image:
detail from The Opening of Tower Bridge by William Lionel Wyllie,
oil on canvas, 1894.] |
| U.S. Division of Forestry | |
|
In 1886, the U.S. Division of Forestry was established by an Act of Congress
(24 Stat. L.103). Its first chief, Dr. Bernhard
E. Fernow served until 1898. It became the Bureau of Forestry in 1901,
and the Forest Service in 1905. During the term of President Theodore Roosevelt
(1905), the Forest Reserves were transferred by Act of Congress from the
Dept. of the Interior to the Dept of Agriculture. The same Act opened these
natural resources for legitimate uses, and further outlined the principles
by which these federally owned lands would be reserved for public purposes
(33 Stat. L.628, 1 Feb 1905).* |
|
| Electric company | |
|
In 1879, the California Electric Light Company, was organized in San Francisco,
becoming the first electric company in the U.S. formed to produce and sell
electricity. Three months later, in Sep 1879, it had a central generating
station supplying power for lighting Brush arc light lamps.* |
|
| Caster | |
|
In 1838, the first U.S. patent for a furniture caster was issued to Philos
Blake, Eli Whitney Blake and John A. Blake, of New Haven, Connecticut (No.
821). The patent was titled a "mode of constructing casters and applying
them to bedsteads."* |
|
| Platform scale | |
(source) |
In 1831, the first U.S. patent for a platform scale was issued to brothers
Erastus and Thaddeus S. Fairbanks
of St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Thaddeus invented
and built it during the previous year, revolutionized weighing methods;
earlier scales had been of the even-balance or steel-yard types. With the
invention of the platform scale, the E. and T. Fairbanks and Company (which
had until then been produced stoves, plows, forks, machines) began to specialize
in manufacturing
scales of all sizes. The business was successful, and grew to supply scales
worldwide. On 13 Jan 1857, Thaddeus received the first U.S. patent for
a railway track scale (No. 16381)
which was introduced by their business. The company survives to the present
day. |
| Boron | |
Davy (source) |
In 1808, Humphry Davy announced he had
separated the element boron. However, working independently, French chemist,
Joseph
Louis Gay-Lussac had announced*
the same accomplishment nine days ealier, on 21 Jun 1808.« |
