| JULY 6 - BIRTHS | |
| J. Carson Mark | |
(source) |
 Born 6
July 1913; died 2 Mar 1997
Canadian-born American scientist who, as head of the theoretical division at the Los Alamos (N.M.) Scientific Laboratory, was instrumental in the development of the hydrogen bomb. He began at Los Alamos in 1945 as a collaborator on the Manhattan Project. He joined the staff in 1946 and became leader of T Division the following year until his retirement in 1973. At the Laboratory, he was involved in the development of various weapons systems, including thermonuclear bombs. He had a broad range of research interests, including hydrodynamics, neutron physics and transport theory. By the 1960s, much of the weapons work had been relocated and the T division diversified into working with outside agencies and private industry. |
| Axel Hugo Teodor Theorell | |
(source) |
Born 6
July 1903; died 15 Aug 1982.
Swedish biochemist whose study of enzymes that facilitate oxidation reactions in living cells contributed to the understanding of enzyme action and led to the discovery of the ways in which nutrients are used by organisms in the presence of oxygen to produce usable energy. Theorell won the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1955 for "for his discoveries concerning the nature and mode of action of oxidation enzymes." |
| Sidney George Brown | |
| Born 6
July 1873; died 1948.
American-born British electrical engineer, inventor and radio pioneer with over 1000 patents. He patented the first solid state detector to be useful in a receiving apparatus on 3 Jun 1904. It was actually a solid state electrolytic detector but its macroscopic characteristics were so similar to those of a crystal detector that it was later catalogued with the latter for sales purposes. In 1911, he founded the SG Brown Company which concentrated primarily on designing and manufacturing navigation and communication products for the military and commercial marine industry. SG Brown became famous, over the years, for highly accurate and reliable auto-pilot and gyrocompass products. |
|
| Rudolf Albert von Kölliker | |
|
Born 6
July 1817; died 2 Nov 1905.
Swiss embryologist and histologist, one of the first to interpret tissue structure in terms of cellular elements. |
| Sir William Jackson Hooker | |
 |
Born 6
July 1785; died 12 Aug 1865.
English botanist who was the first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, near London. He greatly advanced the knowledge of ferns, algae, lichens, and fungi, as well as of higher plants |
| Alexander Wilson | |
|
Born 6
July 1766; died 23 Aug 1813.
Scottish-born ornithologist and poet who left his homeland in 1794, aged 27, in search of a better life in America. Naturalist William Bartram sparked his interest in birds. By 1802, Wilson had resolved to author a book illustrating every North American bird. He travelled extensively to make paintings of the birds he observed. This pioneering work on North American birds grew to nine volumes of American Ornithology, published between 1808 and 1814, with illustrations of 268 species, of which 26 were new. As a founder of American ornithology he became one of the leading naturalists who also made the first census of breeding birds, corrected errors of taxonomy, and may have inspired Audubon's later work when they met in 1810.«  Alexander
Wilson: Naturalist and Pioneer,: A biography, by Robert
Cantwell. |
| George Claghorn | |
(source) |
Born 6
July 1748; died 3 Feb 1824.
American revolutionary soldier and ship-builder whose most notable vessel was the USS Constitution, one of several 44-gun frigates authorized by Congress in 1794 to protect commerce at sea. He served in the Revolutionary War, rising from first lieutenant to the rank of colonel, then became a well-known ship-builder at New Bedford, Mass. He built the whalerRebecca there, launched in Mar 1785. It is said to be the first American whaler to round Cape Horn and return with a cargo of sperm oil from the Pacific. In 1794, he moved to Boston to build the USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides"). Its difficult launch began on 20 Sep 1797, but it was not afloat until 21 Oct. It remains the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.« |
| Antoine de Jussieu | |
|
Born 6
July 1686; died 12 Apr 1758.
French physician and botanist who wrote many papers on human anatomy, zoology, and botany, including one on the flower and fruit of the coffee shrub. |
|
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| JULY 6 - DEATHS | |
| Nathaniel Wyeth | |
|
 
Died 6 July 1990 (born 24 Oct 1911)
Nathaniel Convers Wyeth was an American chemist and inventor of the PET plastic beverage bottle. His patent was asssigned to Du Pont for the "Biaxially Oriented Poly(Ethylene Terephthalate) Bottle" and described these bottles as "useful in bottling liquids under pressure such as ... carbonated beverages" which had "excellent strength properties, are impact resistant, and are capable of holding liquids under pressures as high as about 100 p.s.i.g." (U.S. No. 3,733,309, issued 15 May 1973). It was the first plastic suitable to hold carbonated beverages that was safe enough to satisfy the food safety requirements. His other career contributions include development of polymer processing equipment, synthetic textile fibres, and other plastic products. Andrew Wyeth, distinguished American painter, was his brother. [Image right: PET bottles.] |
| Edward Goodrich Acheson | |
(source) |
Died
6 July 1931 (born 9 Mar 1856)
American inventor who discovered the abrasive carborundum, the second hardest substance (next to diamonds) and perfected a method for making graphite. He worked at Thomas Edison's Menlo Park from 1880 until 1884 when he left to become an independent inventor. In 1891, he obtained the use of an electric generating plant of considerable power and tried to use electric heat to impregnate clay with carbon. The resultant mass exhibited some small shiny specks, and he determined that this crystalline substance (silicon carbide) had value as an abrasive, which he called "carborundum." In 1894, Acheson established the Carborundum Company, to produce grinding wheels, whet stones, and powdered abrasives. |
| Lawrence Hargrave | |
(source) |
Died
6 July 1915 (born 29 Jan 1850)
Australian aeronautical pioneer best known for his invention of the box kite. Hargrave "flew" in 1894, by attaching himself to a huge four kite construction attached to the ground by piano wire.Due to their innate abilities to carry heavy payloads, steady flight, and capacity for high altitude flight these kites have had many industrial and military uses in the past. Box kites were used until the 1930's to carry meteorological equipment for high altitude weather studies and by the Royal Air Force as sea rescue equipment to deliver radio aerials. Hargrave also made important studies of wing surfaces and worked with rotary engines and gliders. |
| Joseph LeConte | |
(source) |
Died
6 July 1901 (born 26 Feb 1823)
American geologist who was a universalist in the scope of his scientific writings. As a founding member of John Muir's Sierra Club, he spoke fervently for broad preservation of California forests by government and wise use of timberlands in private enterprise. He was one of the earliest advocates of contractional theory of mountain formation. LeConte accepted the theory of evolution about 1874, becoming one of its leading proponents and a writer able to reconciler the idea with religious thought. His Sight: An Exposition of the Principles of Monocular and Binocular Vision (1881) was the first treatise on physiological optics written in the U.S. He was an ardent camper, and his death occurred during a trip in the Yosemite Valley. |
| Sir Edwin Chadwick | |
(source) |
Died
6 July 1890 (born 24 Jan 1800)
Physician and social reformer who devoted his life to sanitary reform in Britain. By 1848 Chadwick had become Sanitary Commissioner of London, and was very influential in the city's approach towards cholera. He believed that filth in rivers was less dangerous than filth in sewers. As Commissioner, he had the power to have sewers regularly flushed into the River Thames. This policy inadvertently contributed to the spread of cholera by water purveyors which had their intakes in the polluted areas of the river. Contrary to Dr. John Snow, he was a strong believer in the theory that epidemics were generated spontaneously from dirt, and that basic sanitation rather than specific avoidance of cholera germs would control the disease. |
| Georg Ohm | |
|
Died
6 July 1854 (born 16 Mar 1789)
German physicist who showed by experiment (1825) that there are no "perfect" electrical conductors. All conductors have some resistance. He stated the famous Ohm's law (1826): "If the given temperature remains constant, the current flowing through certain conductors is proportional to the potential difference (voltage) across it." or V=iR. |
| Thomas Davenport | |
|
Died
6 July 1851 (born 9 July 1802)
American inventor of what was probably the first commercially successful electric motor, which he used with great ingenuity to power a number of established inventions. Though several other inventors had experimented with motors, Davenport was the first to secure a US patent (No. 132 on 25 Feb 1837) for his direct current motor. He incorporated the concept of the electromagnet invented by Joseph Henry in a way that produced a rotary motion using his own idea of a commutator and brushes to control the direction of current flow. He used a motor he built to power shop machinery, and also built the first electric model railroad car. |
| Regiomontanus | |
(source) |
Died
6 July 1476 (born 6 June 1436)
German astronomer and mathematician who was chiefly responsible for the revival and advancement of trigonometry in Europe. His book De triangulis omnimodis (1464) is a systematic account of methods for solving triangles. In Jan 1472 he made observations of a comet which were accurate enough to allow it to be identified with Halley's comet 210 years later (being three returns of the 70 year period comet). He also observed several eclipses of the Moon. His interest in the motion of the Moon led him to make the important observation that the method of lunar distances could be used to determine longitude at sea. However, instruments of the time lacked the necessary accuracy to use the method at sea. |
| JULY 6 - EVENTS | |
| Radio compass | |
In 1920, a radio compass was used for first time for aircraft navigation.
In a test of the radio
compass as an aid to navigation, an F5L left Hampton Roads and flew
directly to the battleship Ohio (BB 12), 94 miles at sea in a position
unknown to the pilot. Without landing, the plane made the return trip to
Hampton Roads, this time navigating by signals from Norfolk. |
|
| International fingerprints | |
 |
In 1905, John Walker's fingerprints were the first ones to be exchanged
by police officials in Europe and America. Law enforcement units in London
and St. Louis, MO. completed the exchange. |
| First malted milk | |
|
In 1886, Horlick's of Wisconsin offered the first malted milk to the public. |
| Rabies vaccine | |
(source) |
On 6 July 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur and
his colleagues injected the first of 14 daily doses of rabbit spinal cord
suspensions containing progressively inactivated rabies virus into 9-year-old
Joseph Meister, who had been severely bitten by a rabid dog 2 days before.
The
immunization was successful. This
was the beginning of the modern era of immunization, which had been presaged
by Edward Jenner nearly 100 years earlier. Pasteur's rabies immunization
procedure was rapidly adopted throughout the world. The boy grew up and
became caretaker of the Pasteur Institute until age 64.  |
| Shoe making machine | |
 |
On 6 July 1858, an Abington, Mass., shoemaker named Lyman Blake patented
the first shoe-sole machine. His invention revolutionized the shoe industry
and helped establish Plymouth County as the nation's shoe manufacturing
capital. Factories were built in Brockton, Rockland, Abington and
Hanover. During the Civil War, the area grew rich shodding the Union Army.
(Born 28 Aug 1809, Chicester?) |
