| AUGUST 2 - BIRTHS | |
| Frank Alvord Perret | |
(source) |
 Born 2
Aug 1867; died 12 Jan 1943
American electrical engineer and inventor who later became a pioneer field volcanologist. Using his prior experience at Thomas Edison's labs, at age 20, Perret co-founded the Elektron Mfg Co. in Brooklyn, NY developing the motors, dynamos and electric controls that the company manufactured (and later, elevators). The first American electric elevator (1887) was probably powered by an Elektron motor. He began a second career in 1904 as a volcanologist, using his electrical knowledge to the measure their seismic activity. He became well known for his studies at Vesuvius (1906), Etna (1910), Stromboli and Kilauea (1911). From 1929, he lived at the foot of Mont Pelée, Martinique, where he founded a memorial volcanological museum.« |
| Elisha Gray | |
(source) |
Born 2
Aug 1835; died 21 Jan 1901.
Elisha Gray was a U.S. scientist and innovator who would have been known to us as the inventor of the telephone if Alexander Graham bell hadn't got to the patent office before him earlier that day, resulting in a famous legal battle. He subsequently joined Western Electric where he designed the telegraph printer, the answer-back call-box of the A.D.T. System, and the needle annunciator, among other inventions. He also goes down in history as the accidental creator of the first electronic musical instrument using his discovery of the basic single note oscillator and design of a simple loudspeaker device. |
| John Tyndall | |
(source) |
Born 2
Aug 1820; died 4 Dec 1893.
Irish physicist who became known to the scientific world in 1848 as the author of a substantial work on Crystals. In 1856 he traveled with Professor Huxley to Switzerland, after which he co-authored On the Structure and Motion of Glaciers. He also published Heat as a Mode of Motion (1863), On Radiation (1865), followed by Sound, then in 1870 he published Light. Included in these works were studies of acoustic properties of the atmosphere and the blue colour of the sky, which he suggested was due to the scattering of light by small particles of water. |
| Pierre-Charles L'Enfant | |
(source) |
Born 2
Aug 1754; died 14 Jun 1825.
French-born and educated as an architect, L'Enfant came to the U.S. as a French engineer who assisted the American Continental Army in its fight against the British during the American Revolution. Appointed by President Washington in 1791 to design the new federal city, L'Enfant designed the basic plan for Washington, D.C., based on many European cityscapes. L'Enfant was dismissed from his job in 1792 following professional disagreements and personality clashes with the three commissioners appointed by President Washington to oversee the project. |
|
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| AUGUST 2 - DEATHS | |
| Fred Allison | |
 Died
2 Aug 1974 (born 4 Jul 1882)
American physicist who promoted a magneto-optical technique to detect isotopes (ultimately shown to be non-existent by D. Morey under Merritt at Cornell). This method, he said, was able to distinguish 16 isotopes of lead. In 1931, he thought he had detected the new element 87 in lepidolite, a lithium ore, which he called virginium, now called francium. (This is regarded as erroneous because the element has no long-lived isotopes. The confirmed discovery came in 1939 by Marguerite Perey who discovered it in decay products of actinium). He also thought he had found 2 micrograms of element 85 in monazite, which he named alabamine. (Also now believed erroneous. It was discovered later, and named astatine.)« |
|
| Oliver La Farge | |
 |
Died 2 Aug 1963 (born 19 Dec 1901)
Oliver (Hazard Perry) La Farge was an American anthropologist who wrote novels and nonfiction books covering Native American life, and also spoke for the American Indian through his political actions. He learned of their habits and character during field experience, three archaeological expeditions to Arizona, and other ethnological expeditions to Guatemala (1932) and Mexico. This inspiration gave authenticity to his stories of native Americans. His fame was established when he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel of Navajo life, Laughing Boy (1929). While La Farge continued his career as a writer, he actively supported the interests of native Americans, eventually as president of the Association on American Indian Affairs.«  Yellow
Sun, Bright Sky: The Indian Country Stories of Oliver La Farge,
by David L. Caffey. |
| Louis Blériot | |
 |
Died
2 Aug 1936 (born 1872)
French aviator Louis Blériot died in Paris. On 25 Jul 1909, he was he was the first person to fly across the English Channel. Blériot flew a 24-hp monoplane, traveling from Calais, France, to Dover, England, in 37 minutes. This was the world's first international overseas airplane flight. Blériot made the historic crossing after Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail, offered £1,000 to the first successful pilot. |
| Alexander Graham Bell | |
(source) |
Died
2 Aug 1922 (born 3 Mar 1847)
Scottish inventor of the telephone died in Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia. Born in 1847, Bell's career was influenced by his grandfather (who published The Practical Elocutionist and Stammering and Other Impediments of Speech), his father (whose interest was the mechanics and methods of vocal communication) and his mother (who was deaf). As a teenager, Alexander was intrigued by the writings of German physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz, On The Sensations of Tone. At age 23 he moved to Canada. In 1871, Bell began giving instruction in Visible Speech at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes. This background set his course in developing the transmission of voice over wires. |
| Jacques Étienne Montgolfier | |
|
Died
2 Aug 1799 (born 6 Jan 1745)
French balloon pioneer, with his older brother, Joseph. An initial experiment with a balloon of taffeta filled with hot smoke was given a public demonstration on 5 June 1783. This was followed by a flight carrying three animals as passengers on 19 Sep 1783, shown in Paris and witnessed by King Louis XVI. On 21 Nov 1783, their balloon carried the first two men on an untethered flight. In the span of one year after releasing their test balloon, the Montgolfier brothers had enabled the first manned balloon flight in the world. Étienne also developed a process for manufacturing vellum.  |
| AUGUST 2 - EVENTS | |
| First new U.S. Interstate highway contract | |
(source) |
In 1956, the first new contract
to build a section of the U.S. Interstate Highway system, awarded after
the signing of the Highway-Aid
Act of 1956, was for U.S. Route 66 in Laclede County, Missouri, which
became Interstate 44. The Highway-Aid Act of 1956 established 90% federal
funding for a System of Interstate and Defense Highways across the
U.S., making it possible for States to afford construction of the important
network of national limited-access highways. Other notable firsts related
to the U.S. Interstate highways are claimed by the States of Pennsylvania
(which has the oldest section
of Interstate Highway, built 1 Oct 1940, years before the Highway Aid Act
of 1956, but later part of the Interstate system) and Kansas, which began
the first concrete paving under the Act, on 26 Sep 1956.« [Image:
Sign which reads "This is the First Project in the United States on which
actual construction was started under the provisions of the new Federal
Aid Highway Act of 1956. Missouri State Highway Commssion. Cameron, Joyce
& Company Contractor."] |
| Nylon bristle toothbrush | |
|
In 1938, the first nylon-bristle toothbrush in the U.S. was described in
a New York Times business report. Dr. West's Miracle-Tuft toothbrush, a
new product from the Weco Products Company, was the first to use synthetic
DuPont nylon bristles instead of natural hog bristles. It had four guarantees:
"No bristle shedding, 100 per cent waterproofed, longer life, greater cleansing
power." Its price was to be 50 cents (with a fair-trade minimum of 47 cents).
The report said an intensive national advertising campaign for the new
toothbrush was to be launched in about six weeks. Competition*
came in May 1939, as Johnson & Johnson began advertising their new
Tek toothbrush. |
|
| Escalator | |
(source) |
In 1892, George A. Wheeler, of New York City, patented ideas for the first
practical moving staircase, though it was never built (U.S. No. 479864).
Some of its features were incorporated in the prototype built by the Otis
Elevator Company in 1899. Charles D. Seeberger coined the brand name Escalator
(from scala, Latin for steps, with elevator). Seeberger with
Otis installed the first step-type escalator made for public use at the
Paris Exhibition of 1900, where it won first prize. Seeberger eventually
sold his patent rights to Otis in 1910. The earliest type of escalator,
patented in 1891 by Jesse W. Reno, was introduced as a new novelty ride
at Coney Island moving passengers on a conveyor belt at an angle of 25
degrees. [Image: Artist's impression
of escalators for a computer graphic.] |
| Greenwich Mean Time | |
(source) |
In 1880, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted
officially by Parliament. Greenwich had been the national centre for time
since 1675. GMT was originally set-up to aid naval navigation, but was
not was used on land until transportation improved. In the 1840 's with
the introduction of the railways there was a need in Britain for a national
time system to replace the local time adopted by major towns and cities.
GMT was adopted by the U.S. at noon on 18 Nov 1883 when the telegraph lines
transmitted time signals to all major cities. Prior to that there were
over 300 local times in the USA. GMT was adopted worldwide on 1 Nov 1884
when the met International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, USA and
24 time zones created. |
| Tube railway | |
(source) |
In 1870, Tower Subway, the first tube
railway in the world, was opened under the River Thames in London,
England. Engineer James Henry Greathead used a tunnelling shield he modified
from Barlow's design to bore the 6-ft diameter tunnel
near the Tower of London. It opened with steam operated lifts and a 12-seat
carriage shuttled from end to end by wire rope powered by a steam engine.
It was not successful due to low use and frequent breakdowns, and the railway
closed within three months (Nov 1870). The tunnel was converted to a foot
tunnel with stairs. It was closed in 1894 when the opening of the nearby
Tower Bridge made it redundant. The tunnel now holds water mains and fibre
optic cables.[Image: structure
(1926) built over the northern shaft] |
| Nail Machine | |
|
In 1791, Samuel Briggs and his son, Samuel Briggs, Jr. became the first
father-son pair to receive a joint U.S. patent. Their invention was a nail-making
machine. |
|
| Portable barometer patent | |
(source) |
In 1695, a British patent was granted to Daniel
Quare for a portable portable weather-glass column (barometer)
"which," in the words of the patent "may be removed and transported to
any place, though turned upside down, without spilling one drop of the
quicksilver, or letting any air into the tube, or excluding the pressure
of the atmosphere." Quare's elegant barometers
had a wooden or ivory column
resting on brass feet and a brass compartment with a glass front to read
the measurement scales at the top of the barometric tube. Just below the
top of the tube, Quare formed a constriction controlling sudden mercury
flow to protect the closed end of the glass tube from breaking due to the
impact by the mercury column during transport.« [Image
left: detail of top of column and detail of feet at the bottom of column;
right: full view of barometer.] |
