| JULY 23 - BIRTHS | |
| Mark David Weiser | |
 Born 23
July 1952; died 27 Apr 1999.
American computer scientist and visionary who developed the pioneering idea for what he referred to as "ubiquitous computing," He coined that term in 1988 to describe a future in which PC's will be replaced with tiny computers embedded in everyday "smart" devices (everyday items such as coffeepots and copy machines) and their connection via a network. He said, "First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives." |
|
| Chushiro Hayashi | |
(source) |
Born 23
July 1920
Japanese astrophysicist who with his coworkers created evolutionary models for stars of mass between 0.01 to 100 times that of the Sun. In 1950, he contributed to the abg (Alpher, Bethe, Gamow) model of nucleosynthesis in the hot big bang. Hayashi pioneered in modeling stellar formation and pre-main sequence evolution along “Hayashi tracks” (1961) downward on the Hertzprung-Russell diagram until stars reach the main sequence. He and Takenori Nakano studied the formation of low-mass, brown dwarf stars. Hayashi also investigated the formation of the solar system and of the earth and its atmosphere. He retired in 1984. He was presented the Bruce Medal in 2004 for lifetime contributions to astronomy.« |
| Marston Bates | |
(source) |
Born 23 July 1906; died 3 Apr 1974.
American zoologist and writer who studied mosquitoes and tropical diseases for the Rockefeller Foundation with fieldwork in Albania, Egypt and Columbia (1937-50). Rockefeller scientists reduced the problem of yellow fever in Columbia, where Bates supervised researchers who worked with local doctors in diagnoses and treatment, studied the region's forests and swamps in the area, and tested insects suspected as disease carriers. His first book, The Natural History of Mosquitoes (1949) was followed by more natural history books for laymen including The Nature of Natural History (1950) which showed his love of the tropics. As an environmental activist, he believed even the government should respect the earth's environment.« 
[Image
right:
mosquito.]
 The
Natural History of Mosquitoes, by Marston Bates. |
| Vladimir Prelog | |
(source) |
Born 23
July 1906; died 7 Jan 1998.
Yugoslavian-born Swiss chemist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John W. Cornforth for his work on the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions. Stereochemistry is the study of the three-dimensional arrangements of atoms within molecules. He authored systematic naming rules for molecules and their mirror-image version, that is, which configuration will be referred to as "dextra" and which will be the "levo" (right or left). Also, by X-ray diffraction, he elucidated the structure of several antibiotics. |
| Theodore Schneirla | |
(source) |
Born 23
July 1902; died 19 Aug 1968.
Theodore Christian Schneirla was the foremost American comparative psychologist of the mid-1900's (the American Museum of Natural History) whose empirical work was based on observations on the behaviour patterns of army ants. He went so far in his "biphasic A-W theory" as to reduce all behavior to two simple responses: approach and withdrawal. We approach what causes pleasure, and we withdraw from what causes unpleasure or pain. His Principles of Animal Psychology (1935, with N. R. F. Maier) was the leading text in its field. |
| Sir Arthur Whitten Brown | |
(source) |
Born 23
July 1886; died 4 Oct 1948
Scottish aviator who, as navigator for the pilot, Captain John W. Alcock, made the first nonstop airplane crossing of the Atlantic in a Vickers Vimy. He began his career in engineering before the outbreak of the First World War. Like Alcock, Brown also became a prisoner of war, after being shot down over Germany. Once released and back in Britain, Brown continued to develop his aerial navigation skills. While visiting the engineering firm of Vickers he was asked if he would be the navigator for the proposed transatlantic flight, partnering John Alcock, who had already been chosen as pilot. |
| Walter Schottky | |
(source) |
Born 23
July 1886; died 4 Mar 1976.
Swiss-born German physicist whose research in solid-state physics led to development of a number of electronic devices. He discovered the Schottky effect, an irregularity in the emission of thermions in a vacuum tube and invented the screen-grid tetrode tube (1915). The Schottky diode is a high speed diode with very little junction capacitance (also known as a "hot-carrier diode" or a "surface-barrier diode.") It uses a metal-semiconductor junction as a Schottky barrier, rather than the semiconductor-semiconductor junction of a conventional diode.« |
| Bal Gangadhar Tilak | |
(source) |
Born 23
July 1856; died 1 Aug 1920.
Scholar, mathematician, philosopher, and militant nationalist who helped lay the foundation for India's independence. Tilak was a great Sanskrit scholar and astronomer. He fixed the origin and date of Rigvedic Aryans, which was highly acclaimed and universally accepted by orientalists of his time. He founded (1914) and served as president of the Indian Home Rule League and, in 1916, concluded the Lucknow Pact with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, which provided for Hindu-Muslim unity in the struggle for independence. |
| Sir Jonathan Hutchinson | |
(source) |
Born 23
July 1828; died 26 Jun 1913.
English surgeon and pathologist who made a lifelong study of congenital syphilis. He was surgeon at the London hospital (1859-83) and professor of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons (1879-83). He recorded observations made during his vast clinical experience in over 1,200 medical articles. His name remains associated with a number of medical terms, including Hutchinson's triad (the three symptoms of congenital syphilis which he first described.) He was first to identify a certain inflammatory disease, then known as "Hutchinson's disease"), but now known as sarcoidosis, as named by the Norwegian dermatologist Cæsar Peter Møller Boeck (1845-1917). Hutchinson was knighted in 1908.« |
| Sir Thomas Brisbane | |
(source) |
Born 23
July 1773; died 27 Jan 1860.
Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, Baronet British soldier and astronomical observer for whom the city of Brisbane, Australia, is named. He was Governor of NSW (1821-25). Mainly remembered as a patron of science, he built an astronomical observatory at Parramatta, Australia, made the first extensive observations of the southern stars since Lacaille in (1751-52) and built a combined observatory and magnetic station at Makerstoun, Roxburghshire, Scotland. He also conducted (largely unsuccessful) experiments in growing Virginian tobacco, Georgian cotton, Brazilian coffee and New Zealand flax. |
|
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| JULY 23 - DEATHS | |
| Sir Henry Dale | |
(source) |
 Died
23 July 1968 (born 9 Jun 1875)
Sir Henry Hallett Dale was an English physiologist who in 1914 isolated the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from ergot fungi. In 1936 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with the German pharmacologist Otto Loewi) for discoveries in the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. Otto Loewi had shown that a substance released by electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve was responsible for effecting changes in heartbeat. Following up this work, Dale showed that the substance is in fact acetylcholine, thus establishing that chemical as well as electrical stimuli are involved in nerve action. He also worked on the properties of histamine and related substances, including their actions in allergic and anaphylactic conditions. |
| Alberto Santos-Dumont | |
(source) |
Died
23 July 1932 (born 20 July 1873)
Alberto Santos-Dumont was a Brazilian aviation pioneer, deemed the Father of Aviation by his countrymen. At the age of 18, Santos-Dumont was sent by his father to Paris where he devoted his time to the study of chemistry, physics, astronomy and mechanics. His first spherical balloon made its first ascension in Paris on 4 July 1898. He developed steering capabilities, and in his sixth dirigible on 19 Oct 1901 won the "Deutsch Prize," awarded to the balloonist who circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower. He turned to heavier-than-air flight, and on 12 Nov 1906 his 14-BIS airplane flew a distance of 220 meters, height of 6 m. and speed of 37 km/h. to win the "Archdecon Prize." In 1909, he produced his famous "Demoiselle" or "Grasshopper" monoplanes, the forerunners of the modern light plane.  Wings
of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight by
Paul Hoffman |
| Sir William Ramsay | |
(source) |
Died
23 July 1916 (born 2 Oct 1852)
Scottish chemist who discovered the "inert gases", neon, krypton and xenon, and co-discovered argon, radon, calcium and barium. Nobel laureate (1904) "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system". Died in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. |
| Sir John Simon | |
EB/BBC Hulton Library |
Died
23 July 1904 (born 10 Oct 1816)
English pathologist, whose sanitary reforms led to modern standards of public health. In 1850, Simon joined with the new Epidemiological Society, which in 1853 published a report which was submitted to Parliament, calling for compulsory smallpox vaccination of all infants. He also recognized that outside and home employment of mothers is a factor in infant mortality; in 1856 he stated that "infants perish under the neglect and mismanagement that their mothers' occupation implies." With the passing of the Public Health Act of 1848, local boards of health were set up, responsible for drainage, paving, cleansing and an ample supply of water. Simon described the improvements in English Sanitary Institutions, 1890. He died in London. |
| Baron Karl Rokitansky | |
(source) |
Died
23 July 1878 (born 19 Feb 1804)
Austrian pathologist whose contributions helped to establish pathology as a recognised science. He is one of the greatest descriptive pathologists, and he himself performed more than 30,000 autopsies, averaging two a day, seven days a week, for 45 years. Rokitansky developed a method of removing the body organs all at once. Thus, the heart, liver, kidneys, urinary bladder, and other organs remained in one block and then dissected on the autopsy table, apart. This permited instruction of medical students by showing all the different organs in the same relationships they had inside the body. He supported Semmelweis, his student, in the controversy over using aseptical methods to prevent contact infection carried on a physician's hands.« |
| Joseph Rogers Brown | |
(source) |
Died
23 July 1876 (born 26 Jan 1810)
American inventor and manufacturer who made numerous advances in the field of fine measurement and machine-tool production. He perfected and produced a highly accurate linear dividing engine in 1850, and in the succeeding two years he developed a vernier caliper reading to thousandths of an inch and also applied vernier methods to the protractor. Brown's micrometer caliper, widely used in industry, appeared in 1867. He also invented a precision gear cutter in 1855 to produce clock gears, a universal milling machine in 1862, and, perhaps his finest innovation, a universal grinding machine (patented in 1877), in which articles were hardened first and then ground, thereby increasing accuracy and eliminating waste. Cofounded J.R. Brown & Sharpe in 1853. [Image: Brown's universal milling machine] |
| Isaac Merrit Singer | |
(source) |
Died
23 July 1875 (born 27 Oct 1811)
English inventor of the continuous-stitch sewing machine (1851). Singer was an itinerant machinist until 1851 when he designed an effective sewing machine using the basic features found on modern machines. A patent infringement settled with Elias Howe, another sewing machine inventor, did nothing to deter Singer. The company he founded was, within the decade, the world's largest sewing machine manufacturer. Singer gained 20 additional patents, but his biggest invention was the new way of marketing to consumers. He spent millions of dollars on advertising, made purchase affordable by offering installment credit, and provided after-sale service. He died in Torquay, Devon, at age 63. |
| JULY 23 - EVENTS | |
| Cloned mice | |
(source) |
In the 23 July 1998 issue of the science journal, Nature, an international
team of scientists led by Ryuzo Yanagimachi of the University of Hawaii,
announced
they had accomplished the first reproducible cloning of a mammal from adult
cells to produce three generations of cloned mice, more than 50 identical
sisters in all. The cloning technique
was said to be more reliable than the one used to create Dolly the sheep.
Their "Honolulu technique" affords the researchers greater ability to manipulate
the adult donor nucleus. This ability will have application industry-wide
in increasing the study of the role genes play in aging and the disease
processes.
Image: Two-cell mouse
embryo. |
| Inventure Place | |
 |
In 1995, Inventure Place, home of the National Inventors Hall of Fame,
opened in Akron, Ohio. |
| Genetically altered vaccine approved | |
 |
In 1986, the FDA licensed production of a new Hepatitis B vaccine - the
first recombinant DNA (genetically altered) vaccine - by Merck & Co.,
marketed as RecombivaxHB. This superceded the old
method of making Hepatitis B vaccines from blood taken from human chronic
hepatitis B virus carriers. |
| Three Mile Island Unit 2 re-entered | |
|
In 1980, the first human re-entry
was made into the Three Mile Island Unit-2 containment building since shutdown
after the 28 Mar 1979 accident,
when the core of the nuclear power plant lost water coolant and began a
partial melt-down incident. |
|
| World aircraft speed record | |
(source) |
In 1956, Bell X-2 rocket plane sets world aircraft speed record of 3,050
kph. The X-2 was a swept-wing, rocket-powered research aircraft used to
investigate the problems of aerodynamic heating, stability, and control
effectiveness at high speeds and altitudes. The X-2 was carried to launch
altitude by a Boeing B-50, and then released. Lt. Col. Frank "Pete" Everest
piloted this ninth
powered flight and reached Mach 2.87. (Later that year, on 27 Sep 1956,
its 13th powered flight by Capt M. Apt reached Mach 3.2. The flight ended
with loss of control, a crash, and the death of the pilot.) Image:
X-2 on ramp with B-50 mothership and support crew. |
| Pituitary hormone | |
|
In 1937, the isolation of pituitary hormone was announced (Yale University).
The pituitary gland is a small gland the size of a peanut at the base of
the brain. It is the master endocrine gland in vertebrate animals. The
hormones secreted by the pituitary stimulate and control the functioning
of almost all the other endocrine glands in the body. Pituitary hormones
also promote growth and control the water balance of the body. |
|
| Ice cream cone | |
|
In 1904, by some accounts, the ice
cream cone was invented by Charles E. Menches during the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. |
|
| First Ford sold | |
(source) |
In 1903, in Detroit, the Ford Motor Company sold its first automobile,
the Ford Model A. It featured a twin-cylinder internal combustion engine
designed and manufactured by then little-known Michigan machinist, Henry
Ford. |
| Dunlop tire patent | |
(source) |
In 1888, Scottish vetenerian, John Boyd Dunlop, applied to patent the pneumatic
tyre as "an improvement in the tyres or wheels for bicycles, tricycles
and other road tyres." Although Robert William Thomson,
among his various other inventions, had an earlier
patent for "carriage wheels" with a pneumatic tyre (invented Dec 1845),
there was little demand for it in his lifetime, and was forgotten. To improve
his son's bicycle, Dunlop reinvented the idea, and developed it. He formed
a company in 1889 (became Dunlop Rubber Co in 1900), and with help from
the demonstrated benefit on racing bicycles, Dunlop had a successful product.
These first tyres were glued to the wheel rim. |
| Daimler car | |
1886 (source) |
In 1886, Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) invented the car. Daimler to
patented
a high speed, petrol-fuelled, four stroke engine in 1885 which he installed
in a crude wooden bicycle frame, and so invented the motorbike. In 1886
came a four wheel vehicle, fashioned from a four seat, horse-drawn carriage,
with a steering column and a larger engine mounted below the back seat
and projecting through the floor. The one-cylinder, 1.1 h.p. engine had
a four speed gearbox that turned the back wheels by means of a belt-driven
mechanism capable of a maximum speed of 16 km/h |
| Hawaii phone line | |
|
In 1877, the first telephone and telegraph line in Hawaii was completed. |
|
| French-Atlantic cable | |
|
In 1869, the shore end of the French-Atlantic cable via St. Pierre was
landed at Duxbury, Mass. [Ref.: Putnam's Monthly
Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art, Vol. 14, No. 21,
p.387.] |
|
| Typewriter | |
(source) |
In 1829, William Austin Burt, a surveyor, of Mount Vernon, Michigan, received
a patent for his typographer,
a forerunner of the typewriter (U.S. No. 5581X). The Patent Office fire
of 1836 destroyed the original patent model. Burt's typographer was a heavy,
box-like contraption, made almost entirely of wood. Like today's familiar
toy typewriter, the typographer had type mounted on a metal wheel, with
a rotating, semicircular frame. By turning a crank, Burt was able to move
the wheel until it came to the letter he wanted. Then he would pull a lever,
driving the type against the paper and making an inked impression. [Image:
A reproduction of the Burt typographer] |
| First U.S. lighthouse | |
(source) |
In 1715, The first lighthouse in America was authorized by the Boston
Light Bill for construction at Little Brewster Island, Massachusetts.
Boston
Light, located on Little Brewster Island to mark the entrance to Boston
harbour, has guided ships since its lantern was first lighted just before
sunset, on 14 Sep 1716. In the 1600s, treacherous rocks caused countless
loss of lives. False signal fires lit in the wrong places by "wreckers"
lured ships aground to plunder. Boston Light was blown up by the British
in 1776, but rebuilt in 1783 by Governor John Hancock. The lighthouse is
also the last remaining
manned station in the U.S. |
