| AUGUST 9 - BIRTHS | |
| Marvin Minsky | |
(source) |
 Born 9
Aug 1927
Biochemist and the founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Project. Marvin Minsky has made many contributions to AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. He holds several patents, including those for the first neural-network simulator (SNARC, 1951), the first head-mounted graphical display, the first confocal scanning microscope, and the LOGO "turtle" device. His other inventions include mechanical hands and the "Muse" synthesizer for musical variations (with E. Fredkin). In recent years he has worked chiefly on imparting to machines the human capacity for commonsense reasoning. |
| Ralph Wyckoff | |
(source) |
Born 9
Aug 1897; died 3 Nov 1994.
Ralph (Walter Graystone) Wyckoff was an American scientist, a pioneer in the application of X-ray methods to determine crystal structures and one of the first to use these methods for studying biological substances. He became famous in two areas of structural research: X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. He developed a new technique of 'metal shadowing' for observation with the electron microscope. A specimen, such as a virus, is placed in a vacuum together with a heated tungsten filament covered with gold. Vaporized gold coated the side of the specimen nearest the filament, leaving a 'shadow' on the far side. This allowed better estimates to be made of their size and shape, as well as revealing details of their structure. |
| Jean Piaget | |
(source) |
Born 9
Aug 1896; died 17 Sep 1980.
Swiss child psychologist and zoologist. By age 15 he was contributing articles on molluscs to journals of zoology, and his doctoral degree (1918) thesis was on the distribution of molluscs in the Valaisian Alps. Thereafter, he turned to researching how mental growth develops in several successive stages from infancy to adulthood - "the embryology of intelligence" - for which he became distinguished. In the journal Science (27 Jun 1958), he summarized that at the age of eleven or twelve "a child becomes capable of certain formal or abstract operations of thought which before were possible only as concrete operations on properties of the immediately present object world. This provides the last of three mental revolutions during development."«  The
Psychology of the Child, by Jean Piaget. |
| Jonathan Homer Lane | |
| Born 9
Aug 1819; died 3 May 1880.
U.S. astrophysicist who was the first to investigate mathematically the Sun as a gaseous body. His work demonstrated the interrelationships of pressure, temperature, and density inside the Sun and was fundamental to the emergence of modern theories of stellar evolution. |
|
| William T. G. Morton | |
(source) |
Born 9
Aug 1819; died 15 Jul 1868.
William T(homas) G(reen) Morton was an American surgeon who was the first dentist to use ether (letheon) during an tooth extraction, privately on on 30 Sep 1846. He followed this by a public demonstration of this method of anesthesia on16 Oct 1846 during an operation performed by Dr. John Collins Warren (1778-1856) at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The patient, Gilbert Abbott, age 20, had a small superficial tumor removed from beneath the left lower jaw. The suggestion to use ether came from the chemist Charles T. Jackson, (1860-1913). After the success of the public demonstration, the use of ether for painless operations spread quickly to other countries. |
| Joseph Locke | |
(source) |
Born 9
Aug 1805; died 18 Sep 1860.
English civil engineer who build many significant early main-line railways. In 1823, he began learning his trade while surveying railways and working with Robert Stephenson at his locomotive factory. Within three years, Locke became a railway construction engineer under George Stephenson, and by 1835 was a Chief Engineer building the Grand Junction Railway. Locke put double-headed rails into use that were secured in chairs on wooden sleepers. These developed into the standard bullhead track used for a century afterwards for railways throughout Britain. In addition to a number of main lines in England, he undertook engineering for several early main lines in France. In 1847, he won election to serve as Member of Parliament for Honiton.« |
| Count Amedeo Avogadro | |
(source) |
Born 9
Aug 1776; died 9 Jul 1856.
Italian chemist and physicist who found that at the same temperature and pressure equal volumes of all perfect gases contain the same number of particles, known as Avogadro's Law (1811) leading to the Avogadro's constant being 6.022 x 1023 units per mole of a substance. He realized the particules could be either atoms, or more often, combinations of atoms, for which he coined the word "molecule." This explained Gay-Lussac's law of combining volumes (1809). Further, Avogadro determined from the electrolysis of water that it contained molecules formed from two hydrogen atoms for each atom of oxygen, by which the individual oxygen atom was 16 times heavier than one hydrogen atom (not 8 times as suggested earlier by Dalton.)« Amedeo
Avogadro: A Scientific Biography, by M. Morselli. |
| Thomas Telford | |
(source) |
Born 9
Aug 1757; died 2 Sep 1834.
Scottish engineer, who was a road, bridge and canal builder. He began as a stonemason apprentice at age 14, but then taught himself architecture and in 1787 became surveyor of public works for Shropshire. He planned the Ellesmere (1793-1805) and Caledonian (1803-23) canals, the road from London to Holyhead, with the Menai Suspension Bridge (1819-1826), and Katherine's Docks in London (1824-1828). In all, he built over 1000 miles of road and 1200 bridges, as well as aquaducts, harbours, docks, and other buildings. He died in London. |
| AUGUST 9 - DEATHS | |
| James Alfred Van Allen | |
(source) |
 Died
9 Aug 2006 (born 7 Sep 1914)
American physicist who discovered the Earth's magnetosphere, two toroidal zones of radiation due to trapped charged particles encircling the Earth (also known as the Van Allen radiation belts). During WWII he gained experience miniaturizing electronics, such as in the proximity fuse of a missile. After the war, he studied cosmic radiation, taking advantage of the unused German stock of V2 rockets launched into the outer regions of the atmosphere, carrying research devices using radio to relay back the data gathered. He was also involved in the early U.S. space program, and he had radiation measuring instruments on the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, launched 31 Jan 1958 with follow-up carried out by satellites Explorer 3 and 4 later the same year.«  |
| Cecil Frank Powell | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1969 (born 5 Dec 1903)
British physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1950 for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and for the resulting discovery of the pion (pi-meson), a heavy subatomic particle. The pion proved to be the hypothetical particle proposed in 1935 by Yukawa Hideki of Japan in his theory. |
| Edward L. Thorndike | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1949 (born 31 Aug 1874)
Edward L(ee) Thorndike was a U.S. psychologist considered to be the father of Educational Psychology who studied the process of learning in animals, children and adults. His theory of connectionism proposed that mental or behavioral responses to specific stimuli are the result of a process of trial and error that produces neural connections linking the stimuli with the most satisfactory response. Thorndike studied how animals learn through trial and error in his "puzzlebox" experiments, such as observing a hungry cat in a box which received food when it escaped. Gradually, the animal learned what it had to do to escape, and the escape time became shorter. He applied such associative learning to humans and to the practice of education.« |
| Leo Frobenius | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1938 (born 29 Jun 1873)
Leo (Viktor) Frobenius was a German explorer, archaeologist and ethnologist who proposed a theory that culture evolves through stages of youth, maturity, and age. He helped to spread knowledge of West African art and culture throughout Europe. Between 1904-35, he made a series of twelve major expeditions throughout Africa, gathering knowledge of art and culture, travelling across the deserts, savannahs and rain forests of Africa and South Africa, the River Nile and the shores of the Red Sea. He enthusiastically reported his finding in numerous books and essays. Frobenius also explored centres of prehistoric art in the Alps, Norway, Spain, and Africa. He founded the Institute of Culture Morphology (1925).« |
| John Charles Fields | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1932 (born 14 May 1863)
American mathematician who originated the idea, postumously given his name - for the Fields Medal. It became the most prestigious award for mathematicians, often referred to as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for mathematicians. As a professor at the University of Toronto, he had worked to bring the International Congress of Mathematicians to Toronto (1924). The Congress was so successful that afterward there was a surplus of about $2,500 which Fields, as chairman of the organizing committee, proposed be used to fund two medals to be awarded at each of future Congresses. This was approved on 24 Feb 1931. He died the following year, leaving $47,000 as additional funding for the medals, which have been awarded since 1936.«  |
| Ernst Haeckel | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1919
German biologist who separated the animal kingdom into unicellar and multicellular organisms, and was an enthusiastic supporter of Darwin's theories. He led numerous scientific expedition, and cataloged 4,000 new species of lower marine animals. However, he held an erroneous concept, popularized an expression, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," (meaning that he supposed any animal embryo progresses through all previous evolutionary stages as it develops) which he based on the striking resemblance of the early embryos of many early vertibrate embryos. Such interpretation may not have lasted, but he nevertheless stimulated enquiry. He coined many words used by biologists today, such as ecology, phylum and phylogeny.« Art
Forms in Nature (Dover Pictorial Archives), by Ernst
Haeckel. |
| John Gates | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1911 (born 8 May 1855)
John Warne Gates, known as John "Bet A Million" Gates, was an inventor, promoter and speculator. He discovered a market for wire fencing on the Western plains and helped convince ranchers to adopt barbed wire. He began its manufacture St. Louis, and, by a succession of consolidations and promotion schemes, organized (1898) the American Steel and Wire Company. |
| Gardner Quincy Colton | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1898 (born 7 Feb 1814)
American lecturer who was the first to administer nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic. This followed when one of Colton's public demonstrations of the properties of nitrous oxide, was attended by a dentist. It was Horace Wells, who observed a volunteer paid no heed to any pain when he accidentally gashed leg while stumbling around under the influence of a moderate dose of the gas. Wells suggested the use of the gas as an anaesthetic, and even volunteered to have Colton administer the nitrous oxide while one of Wells' molars was extracted by his partner, dentist John Riggs (11 Dec 1844). Between 1864-97, Colton as anaesthetist administered nitrous oxide while his dental colleagues successfully extracted tens of thousands of teeth.« |
| Sir Edward Frankland | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1899 (born 18 Jan 1825)
English chemist who was one of the first investigators in the field of structural chemistry, invented the chemical bond, and became known as the father of valency. He studied organometallic compounds - hybrid molecules of the familiar organic non-metallic elements (such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus) with true metals. By 1850, he had prepared small organic molecules containing such metals as zinc. Subsequently, he devised the theory of valence (announced 10 May 1852), that each type of atom has a fixed capacity for combination with other atoms. For his investigations on water purification and for his services to the government as water analyst, Frankland was knighted in 1897. |
| Charles Cros | |
(source) |
Died
9 Aug 1888 (born 1 Oct 1842)
(Émile-Hortensius-) Charles Cros was a French inventor and poet whose work in several fields foreshadowed or paralleled important developments. He was interested in mechanical and physical sciences. He designed an automatic telegraph and showed it at the World Fair of 1867. He sent to the Société française de photographie, in 1869, a system for reproduction of color images. Also, he delivered viable plans on 18 April 1877 to the Académie des Sciences, for an apparatus called a paléophone, which was the principle of the gramophone. Thus, he had the idea before Edison. Nevertheless, he died in poverty and was never recognized for his discoveries in his lifetime, due to more influential and better funded competitors. |
| Andrew Combe | |
 |
Died
9 Aug 1847 (born 27 Oct 1797)
Scottish physiologist. Andrew was the younger brother of George Combe (1788-1858) who was the author of some of the most popular works on phrenology. Andrew published The Principles of Physiology describing the "structure and functions of the skin, muscles, bones, lungs, and nervous system, the laws or conditions of their healthy action, and the unsuspected origin of many of their diseases." He continued with The Principles of Digestion, "considered with relation to the principles of dietetics.". |
| AUGUST 9 - EVENTS | |
| Mars 7 | |
(source) |
In 1973, the USSR launched
the Mars 7, on a Proton SL-12/D-1-e booster. It was one of
several Soviet Mars probes - Mars 4,
5,
6,
and 7 - launched in Jul-Aug 1973. The Mars 7 spacecraft was
made up of a flyby bus and a descent module intended separate to study
the atmosphere and land on the Martian surface with instruments to study
soil composition, and mechanical properties soil sensors. The combined
vehicle reached Mars on 9 Mar 1974. However, an equipment problem believed
to be due to a faulty computer chip resulted in the premature separation
of the lander. Being released about 4 hours too early, the lander missed
the planet by 1300-km. Both the bus and the lander instead travelled into
solar orbits.« |
| Educational TV | |
|
In 1956, the first statewide, state-supported educational television network
went on the air in Alabama. |
|
| Atomic bomb dropped | |
|
In 1945, during WW II, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by
the Americans. A few days earlier, the first wartime use of an atomic bomb
was the destruction of the Janpanese city of Nagasaki. |
|
| Electric washing machine | |
|
In 1910, an electric washing machine was patented by Alva J. Fisher of
Chicago, Illinois. |
|
| Diesel engine patent | |
|
In 1898, the diesel internal combustion engine was issued a U.S. patent
by 608,845. The inventor was Rudolf Diesel.« |
|
| Escalator | |
(USPTO) |
In 1859, the first U.S. patent for an escalator-type idea - titled "Revolving
Stairs" - was issued to Nathan Ames, of Saugus, Mass. (No. 25,076). He
arranged steps on an inclined, endless belt placed around rollers, so when
placed in motion, the steps act as elevators saving muscular effort. When
stationary, the stairs could be used in the usual way, but when in motion,
a person could also walk up the steps and so ascend with increased speed.
The patent showed not only two parallel sets of stairs (one up, one down),
but also a triangular arrangement whereby the same endless belt would provide
upward movement on one inclined plane to the apex, and from there downward
motion on the second inclined plane.« |
| Fulton steamboat | |
|
In 1803, Robert Fulton tested his
steam paddle-boat in France, on the River Seine. The project was undertaken
in connection with Chancellor Livingston, the U.S. ambassador in Paris.* |
|
