| AUGUST 12 - BIRTHS | |
| Otto Struve | |
1932 (source) |
 Born 12
Aug 1897; died 6 Apr 1963.
Russian-American astronomer who was a fourth generation astronomer, the great-grandson of Friedrich Struve. He made detailed spectroscopic investigations of stars, especially close binaries and peculiar stars, the interstellar medium (where he discovered H II regions), and gaseous nebulae. He contributed to the understanding of the broadening of spectral lines due to stellar rotation, electric fields, and turbulence and worked to separate these effects from each other and from chemical abundances. He was a pioneer in the study of mass transfer in closely interacting binary stars. Struve emigrated to the USA (1921) and joined the Yerkes Observatory, Wisc., becoming its director in 1932.« |
| Eliezer Sukenik | |
(source) |
Born 12
Aug 1889; died 28 Feb 1953
Eliezer Lipa Sukenik was a Polish-born Israeli archaeologist who established the date and provenance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He settled in Israel in 1912, began teaching in 1914 and eventually became field archaeologist at the Hebrew University. He directed the excavations of the synagogues and Jewish tombs. In 1947, within the eleven caves near Qumran, north-west of the Dead Sea, Israel, parts of more than 700 ancient Jewish manuscripts were discovered. Most were written in Hebrew, some in Aramaic and fewer in Greek. The Dead Sea Scrolls, as they came to be known, are assumed to have been the library of a sectarian community at Qumran. Sukenik devoted the rest of his life to their study.«  The
Dead Sea Scrolls Today, by James C. Vanderkam |
| Erwin Schrödinger | |
(source) |
Born 12
Aug 1887; died 4 Jan 1961.
Austrian theoretical physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with the British physicist P.A.M. Dirac. Schrödinger took de Broglie's concept of atomic particles as having wave-like properties, and modified the earlier Bohr model of the atom to accommodate the wave nature of the electrons. This made a major contribution to the development of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger realized the possible orbits of an electron would be confined to those in which its matter waves close in an exact number of wavelengths. This condition, similar to a standing wave, would account for only certain orbits being possible, and none possible in between them. This provided an explanation for discrete lines in the spectrum of excited atoms.« Schrödinger:
Life and Thought, by Walter J. Moore |
| Vincent Bendix | |
(source) |
Born 12
Aug 1882; died 27 Mar 1945.
Vincent Hugo Bendix was an American inventor who developed systems for automobiles and aircraft and companies to manufacture them. His first, the short-lived Bendix Company of Chicago (1907-9) made a car called the Bendix Buggy. In 1910, he invented the Bendix drive which made the electric self-starter possible. It used a gear to engage with the engine at low rotational speed then fly back, disengaging automatically at higher speed. The first four-wheel brake system for automobiles was his creation. He entered aviation systems production in 1929 with the Bendix Aviation Corporation (later be renamed Bendix Corporation), and started Bendix Helicopters, Inc. in 1942. During WW II, Bendix was the major source of U.S. aviation electronics.« |
| Ephraim Ball | |
| Born 12
Aug 1812; died 1 Jan 1872.
American inventor and manufacturer whose "Ball's Ohio Mower" (patented 1 Dec1857) was the first widely successful of the two-wheeled flexible or hinged bar mowers, which greatly influenced the change from single driving-wheel machines to those with double drivers. His first invention was a turn-top stove. In 1840 he established a foundry for making ploughs. The "Ball's Blue Plough" he invented sold well. In 1851, he joined with others to form a larger company with factories at Canton, Ohio. His "Ohio Mower" (1854), "World Mower and Reaper," and "Buckeye Machine" (1858) sold extensively. Thereafter his "New American Harvester," produced up to10,000 of these machines annually (1865). Nevertheless, he died impoverished.«  |
|
| Robert Mills | |
c. 1850 (source) |
Born 12
Aug 1781; died 3 Mar 1855.
American architect and engineer of the Washington Monument. Mills designed buildings in Charleston, SC; Philadelphia, PA; Baltimore, MD; Richmond, VA and Washington, DC. In 1836, he won the competition for the design of the Washington Monument. Construction began in 1848 and proceeded slowly because of a lack of funds. The monument was only 152-ft high when Mills died in 1855; only in 1878 did Congress appropriate money to complete the structure, which was finished at 555-ft in 1884. He also designed the Department of Treasury building and several other federal buildings. His diverse interests included mapping and making a directory of lighthouses. He adopted fire-proofing measures in the design of buildings.« Robert
Mills: America's First Architect, by John Bryan |
| Thomas Andrew Knight | |
(source) |
Born 12
Aug 1759; died 11 May 1838.
British horticulturalist who initiated the field of fruit breeding, experimental horticulture while also studying plant physiology with botanical experiments. He made studies on the movement of sap in plants, the nature of the cambium, and phototropism in tendrils. To investigate the geotropism of roots and stems, he invented a machine, rotating to simulate gravity with centrifugal force in either horizontal or vertival position. In each case, he found the roots grew outwards and the stems inwards towards the centre. Forty years before Mendel, he studied the effects of pollen in the garden pea on seed characters. In horticulture, he investigated controlled environmental culture (greenhouses), plant nutrition, fertilization, and pest control.« |
|
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| AUGUST 12 - DEATHS | |
| Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield | |
(source) |
 Died
12 Aug 2004 (born 28 Aug 1919)
English electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with Allan Cormack) for creation of computerised axial tomography (CAT) scanners. He originated the idea during a country walk in 1967 when he realized that the contents of a box could be reconstructed by taking readings at all angles through it. He applied the concept for scanning the brain using hundreds of X-ray beams imaging cross-sections that were reconstructed as high-resolution graphics by a computer program handling complex algebraic calculations. By 1973 his CAT scanner could produce cross-section images of a brain in 4-1/2-min, invaluable for the diagnosis of brain diseases. He later built a larger machines able to make a full body scan.« |
| (Anthony) John Clark | |
| Died
12 Aug 2004 (born 18 Sep 1951)
English molecular biologist who was a founder of applying molecular technology to farm animals. In 1985, he began work in genetic modification (at what is now the Roslin Institute) to produce a sheep giving milk with human proteins. He was successful within five years. Tracy, the result of five year's work, produced 35g of the alpha-1-antitrypsin (used in treatment of cystic fibrosis) in each litre of her milk. During the 1990's, Clark continued to develop transgenic techniques on large animals. With his colleagues, he a produced a sheep from which a prion protein gene had been removed. Clark's work set the stage for Ian Wilmut's team at Roslin to clone a sheep, Dolly (1996), the result of transplanted the DNA of an adult sheep to an unfertilised egg cell.« |
|
| William B. Shockley | |
1958(source) |
Died
12 Aug 1989 (born 13 Feb 1910)
English-American engineer and teacher, cowinner (with John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain) of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956 for their development of the transistor, a device that largely replaced the bulkier and less-efficient vacuum tube and ushered in the age of microminiature electronics. Broken
Genius: Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age,
by Joel N. Shurkin. |
| Sir Ernst Boris Chain | |
(source) |
Died
12 Aug 1979 (born 19 June 1906)
German-born British biochemist who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Sir Alexander Fleming and Howard Walter Florey (later Baron Florey) for their work on penicillin. In 1928, Fleming had made the initial discovery of the antibiotic effect of penicillin. Being Jewish, Chain fled Nazi Germany to England in 1933. His varied research included phospholipids, snake venoms, tumour metabolism and lysozymes. From 1939, he worked with Florey on natural antibacterial agents produced by microorganisms, leading to their isolation, purification and determination of the chemical structure of penicillin. They performed the first clinical trials of the antibiotic. Chain's mother and sister perished in the Holocaust of WW II.« The
Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle,
by Eric Lax. |
| Walter Rudolf Hess | |
 |
Died
12 Aug 1973 (born 17 Mar 1881)
Swiss physiologist, who received (with António Egas Moniz) the 1949 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the role played by specific areas in the brain, especially the hypothalamus of the brain, in determining and coordinating the functions of internal organs, and in autonomic functions like sleep, hunger or defense mechanisms. Earlier, in 1948, Walter Rudolf Hess perfected a method of implanting electrodes in the brains of rats and was thus able to localize centers of the brain associated with certain instincts. |
| Harry Brearley | |
(source) |
Died
12 Aug 1948 (born 18 Feb 1871)
English metallurgist who invented stainless steel, which is an alloy of steel with chromium and nickel. In 1912, he was investigating corrosion of rifle barrels because their internal diameter was quickly eroded from the action of heating and discharge gases. His solution was to develop a chrome alloy steel which was much more rust resistant than the steel then in common use. The added metals produce a surface film of metal oxides which resists rusting. Thus it was termed "stainless steel". He also realized how it could revolutionize the cutlery industry. Until then, table cutlery was silver or nickel plated, and cutting knives of carbon steel had to be thoroughly washed and dried after use, and even then rust stains would have to be rubbed off. Steelmakers
and Knotted String, by Harry Brearley. |
| John Philip Holland | |
(source) |
Died
12 Aug 1914 (born 24 Feb 1840)
Irish inventor, "father of the modern submarine," who designed and built the first underwater vessel accepted by the U.S. Navy. In 1873, he emigrated to the U.S. where, with financial support from the Irish Fenian Society (who hoped to use submarines against England), he built the Fenian Ram, a small sub that proved a limited success in a test run. In 1895, his J.P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company received a contract from the U.S. Navy to build a submarine, and in 1898 a successful Holland, the first truly practical submarine, was launched. The U.S. government ordered six more; similar orders came from England, Japan, and Russia. Holland's final years were marked by litigation with his financial backers. |
| (Nils) Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld | |
(source) |
Died
12 Aug 1901 (born 18 Nov 1832)
(Baron) Swedish geologist, mineralogist, geographer, whose explorations included the first ship voyage from Scandinavia (1878) across the Asiatic Arctic through the Northeast Passage. He joined Swedish geologist Otto Torell on polar travels at Spitsbergen (1858 and 1861) where he discovered plant fossils of the Tertiary period. From 1864, he led his own expeditions, on the first, to make maps of Spitsbergen. In 1868, in the iron steamer Sofia, he reached a greater latitude (82°42'N) than anyone ever had before. In 1870, he visited the west-central coast of Greenland, collected minerals and fossils and studied the inland ice. He made an extensive collection of biological and zoological specimens at Spitsbergen during his 1872–73 exploration.« |
| James Keeler | |
(source) |
Died
12 Aug 1900 (born 10 Sep 1857)
James Edward Keeler was an American astronomer who confirmed Maxwell's theory that the rings of Saturn were not solid (requiring uniform rotation), but composed of meteoric particles (with rotational velocity given by Kepler's 3rd law). His spectrogram of 9 Apr 1895 of the rings of Saturn showed the Doppler shift indicating variation of radial velocity along the slit. At the age of 21, he observed the solar eclipse of July, 1878, with the Naval Observatory expedition to Colorado. He directed the Allegheny Observatory (1891-8) and the Lick Observatory from 1898, where, working with the Crossley reflector, he observed large numbers of nebulae whose existence had never before been suspected. He died unexpectedly of a stroke, age 42.« |
| William Daniel Conybeare | |
(source) |
Died
12 Aug 57 (born 7 June 1787)
English clergyman, geologist and paleontologist, known for his classic work, with co-author, William Phillips, on the stratigraphy of the Carboniferous (280-345 million years ago) System in England and Wales, Outline of the Geology of England and Wales (1822), one of the most influential textbooks on stratigraphy of the period. He also described and reconstructed saurian fossils from the Lyme Regis area of England. He wrote the first monograph on the ichthyosaur, drawing it as a lizard with paddle-like limbs. In 1821 he described the skeleton of the plesiosaurus. As a friend and collaborator of William Buckland, Conybeare was an influential member of the Oxford School of Geology. |
| George Stephenson | |
(source) |
Died
12 Aug 1848 (born 9 Jun 1781)
English engineer and principal inventor of the railroad locomotive, and the famous Rocket locomotive. The first railway he built ran from Darlington to Stockton which opened 27 Sep 1825 when large crowds saw him at the controls of the Locomotion as it pulled 36 wagons filled with sacks of coal and flour. The initial journey of just under 9 miles took two hours. In the Rainhill trials of 1829, there was a competition as to who could build the fastest locomotive. He won with his locomotive he named the "Rocket," which traveled at an unheard of speed of 36 miles per hour. He then built the Liverpool to Manchester line which opened on 15 Sep 1830. He is regarded as one of the most influential people of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. |
| AUGUST 12 - EVENTS | |
| New Zealand national DNA data bank | |
 |
In 1996, New Zealand became the second country to establish
a national DNA databank when the enabling Act took effect, providing a
powerful crime investigation tool. Orignally, the DNA was taken only from
blood samples, but the Criminal Investigations (Blood Samples) Act 1995
was amended in 2003 to allow samples from mouth swabs. The world's first
national databank was began operations in the U.K. on 10
Apr 1995. A technique discovered in 1984 by Alec Jeffreys shows how
individuals could be identified from their DNA based on Restriction Fragment
Length Polymorphism. In 1986, Kary Mullis created the Polymeraze Chain
Reaction to replicate DNA for analysis. |
| IBM PC | |
(source) |
In 1981, IBM introduced the PC personal computer for $1,600 base price.
It shortly eliminated most other machines suitable for home or small business
such as those with the S-100 bus, running on CP/M or their own operating
system. The PC was developed in less than a year at IBM's Boca Raton Florida
facility by using existing off-the-shelf components. The IBM-PC established
the dominance of the Microsoft operating system. The IBM PC hardware design
also became the industry standard for PC compatibles, with the ISA bus.
Its Intel 8080 processor speed was 4.77 MHz, and it used from 16K up to
640K of memory. Data storage choices included 5.25" floppy drives, cassette
tape, and later hard disks.« |
| Giant panda birth | |
(source) |
In 1980, in a Mexico zoo, the giant panda Yingying gave birth
to a baby named Xengli, the first giant panda cub born in captivity outside
of China. However, the baby survived only nine days. Yingying, resident
at Zoologico de Chapultepec "Alfonso L. Herrera," in July the following
year gave birth to Tohui, a female cub, the first giant panda born outside
China who stayed alive. Yingying's offspring included twins in 1985 and
1987. She died at age 14 in 1989. Tohui gave birth to Xinxin in 1990 at
the Mexico zoo. Attempts to breed
pandas in captivity began in China in 1955. The first ever live birth
in captivity of a giant panda took place at Beijing Zoo, China, on 9 Sep
1963, when the male Ming Ming was born to the mother Li Li.« [Image:
panda cub born in China in 2006, This baby weighed 218 grams at birth,
the heaviest panda born in captivity. Usual birth weight is between 83
to 190 grams] |
| Enterprise shuttle test | |
|
In 1977, the Enterprise, named after the Star Trek space module
and the prototype for the space shuttle, made its first flight on its own
within Earth's atmosphere after being launched from a Boeing 747, separated,
and then touched down in California's Mojave Desert; the space shuttle
Enterprise passed its first solo flight test. |
|
| Balloon telecommunications | |
|
In 1960, the first telecommunications satellite, the Echo One, was launched
by the United States from Cape Canaveral, Florida. |
|
| Soviet H-bomb | |
|
In 1953, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb, in Kazakhstan,
less than a year after President Harry Truman announced
on 7 Jan 1953 that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb. The
USSR press published
the news of its first hydrogen bomb on 20 Jan 1953. Its yield, equivalent
of 400 kilotons of TNT was about 30 times larger than the atomic bomb dropped
on Hiroshima. The USSR device used a "Layer Cake" design, was small enough
to fit in a plane, and could easily be turned into a deliverable weapon.
Its size restricted the amount of thermonuclear fuel and explosive force,
in contrast with the American thermonuclear device, "Mike,"
tested 1 Nov 1952 which was designed for great explosive power. |
|
| PLUTO pipeline | |
(source) |
In 1944, the first fuel-carrying PLUTO (Pipe-Line Under
The
Ocean)
under the English Channel became operational supplying fuel from the Isle
of Wight to Cherbourg for vehicles of the Allied forces in France. This
over 70 mile pipe was laid in just 10 hours, and is one of the greatest
feats of military engineering. The scheme was developed by A.C. Hartley,
chief engineer with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, from an idea by Admiral
Louis Mountbatten to relieve dependence on vulnerable oil tankers. Prototypes
of the pipeline
were tested at several locations starting in May 1942. Britain and the
U.S. then produced sufficient pipe to eventually lay 18 pipelines between
England and France pumping 781 million litres of fuel by VE day.*[Image:
section of pipeline showing lead core and successive protective layers.] |
| Benz car tour | |
|
In 1888, Bertha, wife of inventor Karl Benz, made the first motor tour.
Without her husband's knowledge, she borrowed one of his cars and with
their teenage sons travelled 180 km to visit relatives for 5 days.
she drove her sons, Richard and Eugen, 14 and 15 years old, in Benz's newly-constructed "Patent Motorwagen" automobiles from Mannheim to Pforzheim, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over more than just a very short distance. This was a distance of more than 106 km (more than fifty miles). Distances traveled before this trip were short and merely trials with mechanical assistants. |
|
| Quagga extinction | |
(source) |
In 1883, the quagga went extinct
when the last mare at Amsterdam Zoo died. It was not realised at that time
that she was the very last of her kind. Because of the confusion caused
by the indiscriminate use of the term "quagga" for any zebra, the true
quagga had been hunted to extinction without this being realised until
much later. The Quagga, formerly inhabited the Karoo and southern Free
State of South Africa. Like other grazing mammals, quaggas had been ruthlessly
hunted. The settlers saw them as competitors for the grazing of their livestock,
mainly sheep and goats. Now, by breeding with selected southern plains
zebras an attempt is being made,
started by Reinhold Rau, to retrieve at least the genes responsible for
the Quaggas colouration.«
Quaggas
and Other Zebras, by David Barnaby. |
| Edison phonograph | |
|
In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison completed his model for the first phonograph.* |
|
| Lister uses disinfectant | |
|
In 1865, after studying Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease (that infections
are caused by bacteria), Dr. Joseph Lister became the first surgeon to
use disinfectant during an operation. Lister
introduced phenol (carbolic acid) as a form of disinfectant
into his surgery; the higher standards of hygiene reduce the surgical death
rate from 45% to 15%. He was the first medical person raised to the peerage. |
|
| Singer's treadle sewing machine | |
(source) |
In 1851, Isaac M. Singer of New
York City was granted a patent for the first sewing machine with a rocking
treadle. Although a sewing machine had already been patented, Singer's
sewing machine was revolutionary, having a double treadle. With patent
in hand, Isaac set up shop in Boston, Massachusetts and began to manufacture
his invention. Even after huge settlements paid to Elias
Howe, another sewing machine patent holder, Singer, through business
innovations like installment buying, after-sale servicing and trade-in
allowances, had the marketplace all sewn up. |
| Planet conjunction | |
|
In 3 AD, a planetary conjunction was visible that may have been the Star
of Bethlehem mentioned in the New Testament.* |
|
