| AUGUST 10 - BIRTHS | |
| Wolfgang Paul | |
(source) |
 Born 10
Aug 1913; died 6 Dec 1993
German physicist who developed the Paul trap, an electromagnetic device that captures ions and holds them long enough for study and precise measurement of their properties. During the 1950s he developed the so-called Paul trap as a means of confining and studying electrons. The device consists of three electrodes - two end caps and an encircling ring. The ring is connected to an oscillating potential. The direction of the electric field alternates; for half the time the electron is pushed from the caps to the ring and for the other half it is pulled from the ring and pushed towards the caps. For his work he shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physics with Hans Georg Dehmelt and Norman F. Ramsey. |
| Leo Fender | |
(source) |
Born 10
Aug 1909; died 21 Mar 1991.
American inventor and manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, including the first solid-body electric guitar to be mass-produced: the Fender Broadcaster (1948, renamed the Telecaster two years later). He was an electronics enthusiast and radio repairman who got involved with guitar design after guitar-playing customers kept bringing him their external pickups for repair. Before Fender came along, guitarists met their amplification needs by attaching pickups to the surface of their hollow-bodied instruments. The Stratocaster (1954), had a flashier, contoured, double-cutaway body, with three (as opposed to two) single-coil pickups and a revolutionary string-bending (tremolo) unit. It became a much favored model of rock guitarists. |
| Arne Tiselius | |
| Born 10
Aug 1902; died 29 Oct 1971.
Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius was a Swedish biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1948 for his work on electrophoresis and other new methods of separating and detecting colloids and serum proteins. In electrophoresis - a method of separating chemically similar charged colloids - an electrical field is applied to the sample, and particles with different sizes migrate at different rates to the pole of opposite charge, enabling them to be detected and identified. Using the technique on blood serum Tiselius confirmed the existence of four different groups of proteins - albumins and alpha, beta, and gamma globulins. Tiselius also conducted work on chromatography (from 1940) and partition and gel filtration (from the late 1950s). |
|
| Charles Darrow | |
(source) |
Born 10
Aug 1889; died 29 Aug 1967
Charles Brace Darrow was an American inventor who designed the board game Monopoly. He had invented the game on 7 Mar 1933, though it was preceded by other real-estate board games. On 31 Dec 1935, a patent was issued for the game of Monopoly assigned to Parker Brothers, Inc., by Charles Darrow of Pennsylvania (No. 2,026,082). The patent titled it a "Board Game Apparatus" and described it as "intended primarily to provide a game of barter, thus involving trading and bargaining" in which "much of the interest in the game lies in trading and in striking shrewd bargains." Illustrations included with the patent showed not only the playing board and pieces, cards, and the scrip money.  Monopoly,
game by Parker Brothers. |
| Hugo Eckener | |
| Born 10
Aug 1868; died 14 Aug 1954
German pioneer dirigible expert and Zeppelin commander. |
|
| Sir Almroth Wright | |
| Born 10
Aug 1861
Sir Almroth Edward Wright was an English bacteriologist and immunologist who developed autogenous vaccines (prepared from the bacteria harboured by the patient). In 1892, while professor of pathology at the Army Medical School, he developed an anti-typhoid immunization with typhoid bacilli killed by heat. It was tested on more than 3,000 soldiers in India and used successfully during the South African (Boer) War. At the beginning of WW I, British soldiers were the troops immunized against typhoid fever, thus saving lives from infection. Wright also developed vaccines against enteric tuberculosis and pneumonia and contributed greatly to the study of opsonins, blood enzymes that make bacteria more susceptible to phagocytosis by white cells. |
|
| William Willett | |
(source) |
Born 10 Aug 1856; died 4 Mar 1915.
English builder who invented Daylight Saving Time. He claimed he had the idea while taking an early summer morning ride in Petts Wood near to his home in Chislehurst, London. He observed that many blinds were still down, although there was already good daylight, yet many made no use of it. He used his wealth as a prominent home builder to campaign for a scheme of adjusting clocks with the season and published a pamphlet in 1907. His original idea was to make four weekly changes of 20-mins each, for a total of 80-mins. The first Daylight Saving Bill, proposing a single one hour at the change of season failed in 1908. After his death, the idea was adopted during WW I for wartime fuel savings. A memorial was erected in Petts Wood. [Image right: Sundial on the Willett memorial tin Petts Wood.] Seize
the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Savings Time,
by David Prerau. |
| Albumazar | |
| Born 10
Aug 787
Leading astrologer of the Muslim world, who is known primarily for his theory that the world, created when the seven planets were in conjunction in the first degree of Aries, will come to an end at a like conjunction in the last degree of Pisces. |
|
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| AUGUST 10 - DEATHS | |
| Robert F. Borkenstein | |
(source) |
 Died
10 Aug 2002 (born 31 Aug 1912)
American forensic scientist who was most recognized for his contributions to the understanding and control of alcohol impairment in traffic accidents, and who invented the Breathalyser. He collaborated with Professor R.N. Harger of the Indiana University School of Medicine in the introduction of the Drunkometer, the first instrument for accurate measurement of quantities of alcohol in the blood by breath analysis. Subsequently, he invented the Breathalyzer, an instrument that changed the approach of forensic science and police enforcement in response to drinking-and-driving problems. This innovation enabled traffic enforcement authorities to determine and quantify blood alcohol concentrations with sufficient accuracy to meet the demands of legal evidence. |
| F.A. Vening Meinesz | |
(source) |
Died 10 Aug 1966 (born 30 July 1887)
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. |
| Oswald Veblen | |
(source) |
Died
10 Aug 1960 (born 24 Jun 1880)
American mathematician who made important contributions in early topology, and in projective and differential geometry - work which found applications in atomic physics and the theory of relativity. In 1905, he proved the Jordan curve theorem, which states that every non-self-intersecting loop in the plane divides the plane into an "inside" and an "outside". Although it may seem obvious in its statement, it is a very difficult theorem to prove. During WW II, he was involved in overseeing the work that produced the pioneering ENIAC electronic digital computer. His name is commemorated by the American Mathematical Society's Oswald Veblen Prize. Awarded every five years, it is the most prestigious award in recognition of outstanding research in geometry.« |
| Robert Hutchings Goddard | |
(source) |
Died
10 Aug 1945 (born 5 Oct 1882)
American professor, physicist and inventor, "father of modern rocketry". From age 17 Goddard was interested in rockets (1899) and by 1908 he conducted static tests with small solid-fuel rockets. He developed mathematical theory of rocket propulsion (1912) and proved that rockets would functioned in a vacuum for space flight (1915). During WW I, Goddard developed rocket weapons. He wrote A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, in 1919. Over the following two decades he produced a number of large liquid-fuel rockets at his shop and rocket range at Roswell, N.M. During WW II he developed rocket-assisted takeoff of Navy carrier planes and variable-thrust liquid-fuel rocket motors. At the time of his death Goddard held 214 patents in rocketry. |
| Aletta Henriette Jacobs | |
(source) |
Died
10 Aug 1929 (born 9 Feb 1854)
Dutch physician who pioneered family planning with the world's first birth control clinic. As the first woman to attend university in the Netherlands, she studied medicine, and became the country's first woman doctor. She took over her father's medical practice in Amsterdam. Soon she limited her practice to women and children, also holding a free clinic for the poor twice a week. In 1881, Jacobs undertook the first systematic study of contraception. Many of her patients were worn down from too many pregnancies, and in 1882 she began prescribing diaphragms as birth control, effectively opening the first birth control clinic in the world. She taught hygiene and child care, and strongly campaigned on women's health and safety issue, leading to new laws. |
| Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley | |
(source) |
Died
10 Aug 1915 (born 23 Nov 1887)
English physicist who experimentally demonstrated that the major properties of an element are determined by the atomic number, not by the atomic weight, and firmly established the relationship between atomic number and the charge of the atomic nucleus. He began his research under Ernest Rutherford while serving as lecturer at the Univ. of Manchester. Using X-ray photographic techniques, he determined a mathematical relation between the radiation wavelength and the atomic numbers of the emitting elements. Moseley obtained several quantitative relationships from which he predicted the existence of three missing elements (numbers 43, 61, and 75) in the periodic table, all of which were subsequently identified. Moseley was killed in action during WW I. |
| Otto Lilienthal | |
(source) |
Died 10 Aug 1896 (born 23 May 1848)
German inventor and aeronautical pioneer on whose studies formed a foundation for Octave Chanute and the Wright brothers. His prior inventions, such as a small steam engine that worked on a system of tubular boilers designed for safety, brought him financial success. In 1891, he built and flew in the Derwitzer Glider. Within the next five years (before he died in a crash), assisted by his brother, Gustav, he designed other gliders and made 2000 flights. He carefully studied the aerodynamics of rigid wings, inspired by the gliding flight of storks made without flapping their wings. Although his aircraft achieved only low speed and altitudes, and he had survived other crashes, he broke his spine and died the day following a crash, falling from about 56-feet.« [Image (right): 1986 biplane design of the type he used on his last flight. He crashed when the upper wing fractured] 
Birdflight
As The Basis Of Aviation, by Otto Lilienthal. |
| Ernst Felix (Immanuel) Hoppe-Seyler | |
(source) |
Died
10 Aug 1895 (born 26 Dec 1825)
Ernst Felix (Immanuel) Hoppe-Seyler was a German physician, who was a pioneer of physiological chemistry (biochemistry). He studied the chemical of blood and urine using the new technique of absorption spectroscopy, prepared hemoglobin in crystalline form and clarified its role in red blood cells. He demonstrated that the oxidation reactions between haemoglobin, oxygen and carbon monoxide took place in the tissues rather than in the blood itself. He also studied chlorophyll and was the first to prepare lecithin in a pure form. He coined the word proteid, now replaced with the word protein. He also investigated bile acids, lipid metabolism, quantification and classification of proteins and inspired research on nucleic acids.« |
| Francis Lowell | |
| Died
10 Aug 1817 (born 7 Apr 1775)
American manufacturer, a member of the gifted Lowell family of Massachusetts and the principal founder of what is said to have been the world's first textile mill in which were performed all operations converting raw cotton into finished cloth. |
|
| AUGUST 10 - EVENTS | |
| Magellan orbits Venus | |
In 1990, the space probe Magellan
arrived at its planned polar orbit around Venus. As the planet rotated
slowly beneath it, Magellan circled once every 3-hr 15-min, collecting
radar images of the surface in strips about 17-28 km (10-17 mi) wide and
radioed back the information. Magellan was carried into space in
the shuttle cargo bay of STS-30 Atlantis, launched
4 May 1989, and was the first planetary spacecraft to be released
from a shuttle in Earth orbit. The Magellan mission also provided
gravity, atmospheric and other measurements. On 11
Oct 1994, it was directed towards the surface, collecting data until
it broke up and partially vaporized in the atmosphere.« |
|
| Space capsule recovery | |
| In
1960, an ejected space capsule from Discoverer 13 was recovered when it
returned from orbit; it was the first human-made object recovered from
space. |
|
| Aspirin | |
(source) |
In 1897, Dr. Felix Hoffmann successfully created
a chemically pure and stable form of acetylsalicylic acid. His handwritten
laboratory notes - aspirin's "birth certificate" - suggested: "Through
its physical characteristics such as a sour taste without any corrosive
effect, acetylsalicylic acid has an advantage over salicylic acid and will
therefore be tested for its usability in this context." His success was
Aspirin
- a better pain reliever for his father's rheumatoid arthritis than the
salicylic acid previously used despite unpleasant side effects, such as
stomach bleeding and a horrid taste. Hoffmann had improved on the earlier
work of French chemist Charles Frederic Gerhardt who derived acetylsalicylic
acid from plants, though only in impure, unstable form (1853). |
| Mammoth skeleton | |
|
In 1889, the skeleton of a thirty-six foot long and fifteen-foot high mammoth
was found in St. James, Nebraska. |
|
| Screw cap patented | |
|
In 1889, Dan Rylands patented the screw cap. |
|
| Electric streetcar | |
|
In 1885, Leo Daft opened America's first commercially operated electric
streetcar in Baltimore, Maryland. |
|
| The Smithsonian Institution | |
|
In 1846, an Act of Congress signed
by President James K. Polk established
the Smithsonian Institution as a trust to administer the generous bequest
of James Smithson, an amount over $500,000. In 1826, James Smithson, a
British scientist, drew up his last will and testament, naming his nephew
as beneficiary. Smithson stipulated that, should the nephew die without
heirs (as he would in 1835), the estate should go “to the United States
of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution,
an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”
The motives behind Smithson’s bequest remain mysterious; he had never traveled
to the U.S. and seems to have had no correspondence with anyone there. |
|
| Royal Observatory | |
 |
In 1675, King Charles II laid the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich.* |
