| JULY 30 - BIRTHS | |
| Vladimir Kosma Zworykin | |
1929(EB) |
 Born 30
July 1889; died 29 July 1982
Russian-born U.S. electronic engineer, inventor, "the Father of Television." Concurrent with the start of radio broadcasting, Zworykin was developing a system of transmitting sound and pictures. Other inventors were using a motorized, mechanical scanning system with rotating disks capable of a picture about one inch square. It was heavy, bulky and impractical for home use. Zworykin, at Westinghouse, instead developed an electronic scanning television system using his innovations, the iconoscope and kinescope, the forerunners of today's television camera. He also invented the electron microscope.  Zworykin,
Pioneer of Television, by Albert Abramson. |
| F.A. Vening Meinesz | |
(source) |
Born 30 July 1887; died 10 Aug 1966
Felix Andries Vening Meinesz was a Dutch geophysicist and geodesist who was known for his measurements of gravity at sea for which he devised the Vening Meinesz pendulum apparatus with comparable accuracy as on land. Starting in 1923 he conducted several global gravity surveys on voyages on submarines, particularly to and in the Indonesian Archipelago. He detected strong gravity anomaly belts running parallel to the Indonesian deep sea trenches. He explained these Meinesz belts as sites of downbuckling of the Earth's crust. He introduced the concept of regional isostasy taking flexure of an elastic crust into account. He also contributed to physical geodesy: The Vening Meinesz formula connects the deviation of the vertical from the plumbline to gravity anomalies. |
| Henry Ford | |
(source) |
Born 30
July 1863; died 7 Apr 1947
American inventor and car manufacturer, born in Dearborn, Mich. Ford first experimented with internal combustion engines while he was an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. He completed his first useful gas motor on 24 Dec 1893. The Quadricycle, he designed made its first road test on 4 Jun 1896. In 1903 the Ford Motor Company was incorporated. By 1908, Ford was manufacturing the low cost, reliable Model T, while continuing to revolutionize his industry. Ford introduced precision manufactured parts designed to be standardized and interchangeable parts. In 1913, production was increased using a continuous moving assembly line. By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model T's. |
| Thomas Jackson Rodman | |
(source) |
Born 30
July 1815; died 1871
U.S. military inventor of perforated-cake gunpowder. Its hexagonal grains, perforated with several longitudinal holes, increased the burning surface of each grain. By burning evenly, it provided controlled rather than sudden pressure that was maintained as the projectile traveled forward, thus giving increased muzzle velocity. He also invented a system of casting cannon around a hollow core cooled from inside, resulting in a stronger barrel as concentric layers of metal cooled and shrank. His work led to casting of some of the largest cannon ever built: 20-inch muzzleloaders that fired 1,080-pound solid shot. [Image: Rodman Cannon at Fort McHenry.] |
| Reinier de Graaf | |
c.1664 (source) |
Born 30
July 1641; died 21 Aug 1673
Dutch physician who discovered the follicles of the ovary (known as Graafian follicles), in which the individual egg cells are formed (1672) and also published on male reproductive organs (1668). He was also important for his studies on pancreatic juice (1663) and on the reproductive organs of mammals. He is considered one of the creators of experimental physiology. He used a technique of injecting dye into organs in order to be able to observe them better. It was on this technique that a bitter priority dispute with Swammerdam developed. He wrote a brief tract on the use of the syringe in anatomy (1669). He died, perhaps by suicide, at only 32 years of age. |
|
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| JULY 30 - DEATHS | |
| Lyle B. Borst | |
(source) |
 Died
30 July 2002 (born 24 Nov 1912)
American nuclear physicist who led the construction of the Graphite Research Reactor (BGRR), at Brookhaven National Laboratory. After work on the Manhattan Project in WW II. he organized about 1,300 scientists, and spoke before Congress to keep atomic research under civilian control, to avoid a worldwide nuclear arms race. In 1946, with Karl Morgan, he developed a film badge to measure worker exposure to fast neutrons. BGRR, completed in 1949, was the first reactor built solely to research peacetime uses of atomic energy. In its first year of operation, Borst announced the production of radioactive iodine suitable for treating thyroid cancer. In 1952, he explained how beryllium-7 from helium fusion triggers supernovae.« |
| John Milne | |
(source) |
Died
30 July 1913 (born 30 Dec 1850)
English seismologist who invented the horizontal pendulum seismograph (1894) and was one of the European scientists that helped organize the seismic survey of Japan in the last half of the 1800's. Milne conducted experiments on the propagation of elastic waves from artificial sources, and building construction. He spent 20 years in Japan, until 1895, when a fire destroyed his property, and he returned home to the Isle of Wight. He set up a new laboratory and persuaded the Royal Society to fund initially 20 earthquake observatories around the world, equipped with his seismographs. By 1900, Milne seismographs were established on all of the inhabited continents and he was recognized as the world's leading seismologist. He died of Bright's disease.« |
| Jacob Perkins | |
(source) |
Died
30 Jul 1849 (born 9 Jul 1766)
Jacob Perkins was an American inventor, of Newburyport, Mass., a Freemason, who produced innovations in diverse fields. For example, in 1794, under his patent of January 16 of that year, he made the first nails which were both cut and headed by machine in America. Around 1817, he installed a hot air furnace of his own design in the Massachusetts Medical College. While living in London, England, he advocated high pressure steam techniques and designed in 1827-28 a steam gun for the French Government. Also, Perkins advanced the art of engraving and platemaking for bank notes. In 1834, he was issued the first US patent for a refrigerating machine for sulphuric ether compression in a closed cycle. (It utilized a concept displayed by Oliver Evans, 1805.) Back in England, he printed 64 million of the first penny postage stamp in 1840. |
| Jean Antoine Claude Chaptal | |
(source) |
Died
30 Jul 1832 (born 4 Jun 1756)
French chemist who authored the first book on industrial chemistry. He also coined the name "nitrogen." His technical activity covered a wide field, such as improvements in the manufacture of sulphuric acid, saltpetre for gunpowder, beet-root sugar, wine, dyeing, bleaching and other things. He was the first to produce sulphuric acid commercially in France at his factory at Montpellier. His career covered the stormy period of the French Revolution. He was arrested, but more fortunate than the brilliant Lavoisier, then released to manage the saltpeter works at Grenelle. He also helped to organize the introduction of the metric system. |
| Guillaume Rondelet | |
(source) |
Died
30 Jul 1566 (born 27 Sep 1507)
French naturalist and physician who contributed substantially to zoology by his descriptions of marine animals, primarily of the Mediterranean Sea. After studying at Montpellier, he later travelling widely through Europe with his patron Cardinal Tournon. Returning to Montpellier in 1545, he taught medicine. His real interest, however, was zoology, and in 1554 he published his massive compendium on aquatic life, Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus verae piscium effigies expressae sunt, which covered far more marine life than any earlier work in the field. This laid the foundation for later ichthyological research and was the standard reference work for over a century. He also published various other works on diagnosis and several pharmacological works. |
| JULY 30 - EVENTS | |
| Rocket reaches 100 mi altitude | |
 |
30 July 1946 was the first time an altitude of 100 mi (167 km) is reached
by a test rocket. It was a V-2 rocket (No. 9), fueled with alcohol and
liquid oxygen launched at White
Sands, NM. This test had the first separation of nose cone. During
World War II, the nose cone held a German warhead containing almost a ton
of explosives. At White Sands, the Army invited government agencies and
universities to use the nose cone's 20 cubic feet of space for scientific
research, up to 2,000 pounds of scientific equipment, such as cameras,
sensors, and on-board experiments, were carried aloft on each flight. |
| Corn Flakes | |
(source) |
In 1898, Corn Flakes were invented by William
Kellogg. At Battle Creek Sanitarium, Sanitarium superintendent,
Dr.
John Harvey Kellogg and Will Keith Kellogg, his younger brother and
business manager, invented many grain-based foods, including a coffee substitute,
a type of granola, and peanut butter to provide patients a strict nutritious
diet. In 1894 they unintentionally invented a flaked cereal process based
on wheat. By 1898, W.K. Kellogg had developed the first flaked corn cereal.
Patients enjoyed the cereals and wanted more to take home. In 1906, the
Battle Creek Toaster Corn Flake Company was founded by W.K. Kellogg. |
| Auto Ad | |
(source) |
In 1898, Scientific American carried the first magazine automobile
advertisement bringing Alexander Winton returns for his $1000 car. The
Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH, invited readers to "dispense
with a horse" this day. Alexander Winton, known
as a "trigger-tempered Scot," migrated to New York City from his native
Scotland in 1878. He came to Cleveland in 1882 when he was 22. First a
maker of bicycles, he made his first experimental four-wheeled, gasoline
engine car in 1896. By 1900, the Winton Motor Car Company had the world's
largest
automobile
factory,
but by 1904 the manufacturing centre of the country was Detroit, Mich.
The cars were expensive, purchased by the upper-middle-class, a market
which the company lost to competition, and closed
in 1924. Image: The Winton Six,
the most popular Winton model, advertised in the 1920 Lakewood High School
Yearbook. |
| Wireless telegraphy | |
|
In 1872, Mahlon Loomis received a patent
for "a new and Improved Mode of Telegraphing and of Generating Light, Heat,
and Motive Power" (U.S.No. 129,971). In 1865, Loomis
had transmitted
wireless signals between two mountains in Virginia using two kites flown
18 miles apart, each carrying a 600 foot wire from the ground. When he
interrupted the flow of electricity from the atmosphere, through the wire,
to an earth ground, a galvonometer on the other kite's wire measured a
current change. He also noted dark clouds passing over his apparatus causing
too much electricity to be collected by the aerials...causing him to shut
down operations. This wireless communication took place many years before
Marconi's experiments. |
|
| Glassmaking | |
(source) |
In 1739, German immigrant Caspar Wistar begins glass manufacturing in Allowaystown,
NJ. Earlier
glass making in America, since1608, failed
as the British Crown discouraged glass making in America by high taxes,
so they could sell their own glass wares to the colonies. As a result,
most bottles were imported to the colonies in the early years. Caspar Wistar
founded the first successful and enduring large-scale glass factory, producing
bottle sand other glassware and window glass. The Wistars were successful
until the hard times of the Revolutionary War damaged their business. In
1780 they closed the glassworks. Image:
Wine bottle, about 1745-1755. Height 23.5 cm., nonlead, blown, with applied
seal Wistarburgh Glassworks, near Alloway, New Jersey. |
