| AUGUST 15 - BIRTHS | |
| Peter Hodgson | |
(source) |
 
Born 15 Aug 1912; died 6 Aug 1976.
Peter (Calvert Leary) Hodgson was a marketing executive and entrepreneur who named "Silly Putty" and promoted it as a toy. It was a lump of rubber-like material could be stretched, rolled into a bouncing ball, or used to transfer colored ink from newsprint. The popularity of the product made him a millionaire. The original discovery was made in 1943 by James Wright who combined silicone oil and boric acid at the laboratories of General Electric while trying to make synthetic rubber. No significant application existed for the material. However, it was passed around by company employees as a curiosity. When Hodgson saw a sample, he realized its potential simply for entertainment. He sold it in one-ounce lumps packaged in plastic eggs.« [Image right: (source)] |
| Leslie Comrie | |
(source) |
Born 15
Aug 1893; died 11 Dec 1950.
Leslie (John) Comrie was a New Zealand astronomer and pioneer in the application of punched-card machinery to astronomical calculations. He joined HM Nautical Almanac Office (1926-36), where he replaced the use of logarithm tables with desk calculators and punched card machines for the production of astronomical and mathematical tables. This made scientific use of these machines, made originally for only business uses. In 1938, he founded the Scientific Computing Service Ltd., the first commercial calculating service in Great Britain, to further his ideas of mechanical computation for the preparation of mathematical tables. His use of card processing systems prepared the way for electronic computers.« |
| Louis-Victor de Broglie | |
(source) |
Born 15
Aug 1892; died 19 Mar 1987.
Louis Victor Pierre Raymond duc de Broglie was a French physicist best known for his research on quantum theory and for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons. De Broglie was of the French aristocracy - hence the title "duc" (Prince). In 1923, as part of his Ph.D. thesis, he argued that since light could be seen to behave under some conditions as particles (photoelectric effect) and other times as waves (diffraction), we should consider that matter has the same ambiguity of possessing both particle and wave properties. For this, he was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physics. |
| Tor Bergeron | |
| Born 15
Aug 1891; died 13 Jun 1977.
Tor Harold Percival Bergeron was a Swedish meteorologist best known for his work on cloud physics. He was the first meteorologist to take into account the upper atmospheric phenomena and their effect on climate. He demonstrated that raindrops can form in the upper parts of clouds, which contain little liquid water, through the growth of ice crystals. This happens at temperatures between -10°C and -30°C (14°F and -22°F) and is known as the Bergeron process. Work done in the 1930s by Tor Bergeron and W. Findeisen led to the concept that clouds may contain both supercooled water and ice crystals. This led further to the concepts of "warm rain" and "cold rain." |
|
| Elvin M. Jellinek | |
(source) |
Born 15
Aug 1890; died 22 Oct 1963.
Elvin Morton Jellinek was an American physiologist who was a pioneer in the scientific study of the nature and causes of alcoholism and in descriptions of its symptomatology. He was an early proponent of the disease theory of alcoholism, arguing with great persuasiveness that alcoholics should be treated as sick people. Jellinek gathered and summarized his own research and that of others in the important and authoritative works Alcohol Explored (1942) and The Disease Concept of Alcoholism (1960). In the latter book, Jellinek also recognized that some features of the disease (e.g., inability to abstain and loss of control) were shaped by cultural factors. |
| T. E. Lawrence | |
(source) |
Born 15
Aug 1888; died 19 May 1935.
T(homas) E(dward) Lawrence, also known as "Lawrence of Arabia," was a British archaeological scholar, which activity he pursued assiduously from his teens up to the outbreak of WW I. In two of his important projects, he collaborated with Leonard Woolley in the British Museum Expedition excavating Carchemish, (1910-14) a Hittite city on the upper Euphrates; and in the Survey of the Wilderness of Zin. Later he became best known as a military strategist, and author for his legendary war activities in the Middle East during WW I, and for his account of those activities in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). He died in England from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash near his home in Dorset. |
| John Torrey | |
1825 (source) |
Born 15
Aug 1796; died 10 Mar 1873.
American botanist and chemist known for his extensive studies of North American flora. The first professional botanist in the New World, Torrey published extensively on the North American flora, advocated the "natural system" of classification that was replacing Linnaeus' artifical system, and collaborated for many years with his student Asa Gray (who was to become an important botanist). Torrey never was able to make a living from botany and worked (among other things) as a freelance chemical analyst. Unidentified plants collected on government expeditions to the western states were sent to him for study, however, as a foremost authority of his time. A genus of evergreen trees, Torreya, is named for him. |
| Elias Fries | |
(source) |
Born 15
Aug 1794; died 8 Feb 1878.
Elias (Magnus) Fries was a Swedish botanist, one of the fathers of mycology, who developed the first system used to classify fungi, which had been an area of difficulty and confusion in the pre-Darwin era. His interest in the subject began as a school-boy. His three-volume work, Systema mycologicum (1821-32) remains an important source for nomenclature. The major taxonomic characteristics he applied were spore color and arrangement of the hymenophore (such as smooth surfaces, lamellae, folds, tubes, or toothlike). He also investigated algae and lichens, and published works to educate lay persons.« |
|
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| AUGUST 15 - DEATHS | |
| Sune K. Bergstrom | |
(source) |
 Died
15 Aug 2004 (born 10 Jan 1916)
Sune K. Bergström was a Swedish biochemist who shared the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, (with Bengt Ingemar Samuelsson and John Robert Vane) for the isolation, identification, and analysis of prostaglandins and related biologically active substances. (These biochemical compounds influence such physiological phenomena in mammals as blood pressure, body temperature and allergic reactions.) Bergström purified several prostaglandins and determined their chemical structure. He also showed that prostaglandins are formed from unsaturated fatty acids. Through this discovery the metabolism of unsaturated fatty acids became of major interest in future research. |
| Wiley Post | |
 |
Died
15 Aug 1935 (born 22 Nov 1900)
One of the most colourful figures of the early years of U.S. aviation, who set many records. Between 15-22 Jul 1933, the first round-the-world solo flight (15,596 miles) was completed by Wiley Post, in his Lockheed Vega 5B single-engine aircraft Winnie Mae, in 7 days 18-hr 49-min. He had made an accompanied flight around the world in 1931. Wiley Post had made his first solo flight in 1926, the year he got his flying license, signed by Orville Wright, despite wearing a patch over his left eye, lost in an oilfield accident. Post invented the first pressurized suit to wear when he flew around the world. Another credit was his research into the jet streams. He died with his passenger, humorist Will Rogers, 15 Aug 1935, in a plane crash in Alaska. |
| Sir Edwin Ray Lankester | |
(source) |
Died
15 Aug 1929 (born 15 May 1847)
British zoologist whose interests embraced comparative anatomy, protozoology, parasitology, embryology and anthropology. He was one of the first to describe protozoan parasites found in the blood of vertebrates. Lankestrella (a parasite related to the causative agent of malaria) carries his name. His work contributed to an understanding of the disease. Based on his investigation into the comparative anatomy of the embryology of invertebrates, Lankester endorsed Darwin's theory of evolution, In anthrolopology, his activities included the discovery of flint implements, evidence of early man, in Pliocene sediments, Suffolk. He was Director of the British Museum of Natural History (1898-1907).«  Diversions
of a Naturalist, by Edwin Ray Lankester. |
| William Buckland | |
(source) |
Died
15 Aug 1856 (born 12 Mar 1784)
English pioneer geologist and minister, known for his effort to reconcile geological discoveries with the Bible and anti-evolutionary theories. |
| Johan Gadolin | |
(source) |
Died
15 Aug 1852 (born 5 June 1760)
Finnish chemist who discovered the element yttrium (1794). This was the first of a family of 15 rare earth elements called the lanthanides. He studied in Uppsala, Sweden, and taught chemistry there (1797-1822) and promoted Antoine Lavoisier's discoveries about combustion and his system of chemical nomenclature. In analysing a new black mineral from Ytterby, Sweden, he isolating from it the rare earth mineral, yttria. This was an important step towards identifying the remaining undiscovered elements. Over the next century yttria was found to contain the oxides of nine new rare earth elements. After Gadolin's death, one discovered by Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac and Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, was named gadolinium. |
| Pierre Bouguer | |
(source) |
Died
15 Aug 1758 (born 16 Feb 1698)
French physicist whose work founded photometry, the measurement of light intensity. He was a child prodigy, a professor at age 15, following his father, Jean Bouguer, in hydrography - the study of bodies of water, both salt and fresh. He participated on the expedition to Peru (1735-44) to measure an arc of the meridian near the equator. In 1729, he invented a photometer to compare the intensity of two light sources illuminating separate halves of translucent paper. The eye itself, he determined, could not be used as a meter, but could establish the equality of brightness of adjacent surfaces. He determined the sun was 300 times brighter the moon. Bouguer's law gives the attenuation of a beam of light by an optically homogeneous (transparent) medium.« Pierre
Bouguer's optical treatise on the gradation of light,
by Pierre Bouguer. |
| AUGUST 15 - EVENTS | |
| Voyager 1 | |
(source) |
In 2006, Voyager 1, the most distant man-made object, reached 100
astronomical units from the sun - meaning 100 times more distant from the
sun than is Earth - about 15,000 million km (9,300 million miles) from
the sun. At such great distance, the sun is a mere point of light, so solar
energy is not an option, but having a nuclear power source, Voyager
1 continues to beam back information. The spacecraft, launched
nearly 30 years earlier, on 5 Sep 1977, had flown beyond the outer planets
and reached the heliosheath, the outer edge of our solar system, where
the sun's influence wanes. Voyager 1 continues traveling at a speed
of about one million miles per day and could cross into interstellar space
before 10 years later.« |
| Lowest temperature ever | |
|
In 1994, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued
a press release that physicists there recently cooled atoms to 700 nanokelvins,
the coldest temperature ever recorded for matter. NIST scientists
chilled
a cloud of cesium atoms very close to absolute zero using lasers to catch
the atoms in an optical lattice. The atoms reached 700 nanokelvins, or
700 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. Zero kelvin (-273ºC),
or absolute zero, is the temperature at which atomic thermal motion would
cease. Since the late 1970s, physicists have sought to use lasers to cool
atoms closer to absolute zero, primarily for improving atomic timekeeping,
certain experimental measurements and lithography processes for the semiconductor
industry. |
|
| Bathysphere record dive | |
Beebe (source) |
In 1934, after a series of earlier dives since Jun 1930, each progressively
deeper, American zoologist William
Beebe and Otis Barton made their pioneering, record-breaking ocean
descent of 3,028 feet in a bathysphere
designed by Barton. In that instance, the bathysphere withstood over 1,360
pounds of pressure. Beebe began exploring
the undersea world with his homemade diving helmet on 9 Apr 1925. William
Beebe dreamed of exploring the deeper locations where he and his air hose
tether could not reach. Barton read of Beebe's plans in the 1926 Thanksgiving
Day edition of the New York Times. Barton had already decided to
design a deep sea vessel, had an engineering background, and a substantial
inheritance. The two joined forces on 28 Dec 1928. |
| Panama Canal opened | |
 |
In 1914, the Panama Canal was officially opened by an American ship sailing
from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The United States fomented a rebellion
to get the land for this canal...encouraging Panamanians to break away
from Colombia. Before the Panama Canal was built, sea trade had to gone
all the way around South America's sometimes stormy Cape Horn. The Panama
Canal crosses a small mountain range with a series of huge locks.
Path
Between The Seas : The Creation of the Panama Canal,
by David McCullough. |
| Crisco | |
(source) |
In 1911, Procter & Gamble Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, introduced Crisco,
a hydrogenated shortening to provide an economical alternative to animal
fats and butter. To emphasize the purity of the product within, the Crisco
can came inside an additional, removable over-wrap of white paper. Crisco,
the first solidified shortening
product made entirely of vegetable oil, was the result of hydrogenation,
a new process which produced shortening that would stay in solid form year-round,
regardless of temperature. |
| Chicago freight tunnels | |
 |
In 1906, a freight delivery tunnel
system, the first in the U.S., began operation underneath Chicago,
Illinois, but the whole underground system
was not finished until 1 Sep 1907. The finished system was put into operation
on 2 Jan 1908. The original franchise was issued to the Illinois Telephone
and Telegraph Company, 20 Feb 1899 for carrying telephone and telegraph
cables. After about twenty miles of tunnel had been accomplished, funds
were exhausted. The concern was sold to a new company, the Illinois Tunnel
Company, which obtained powers to handle merchandise and package freight
between stores, warehouses and delivery points. |
| Hello | |
 |
In 1877, Thomas Edison coined the telephone greeting "Hello."
He suggested the use of "Hello" to the president of the Telegraph Company
to answer the phone instead of "Ahoy, ahoy" suggested by Alexander Bell.
(NPR
audio) |
| Mont Cenis tunnel authorized | |
 |
In 1857, a bill was passed by the Italian parliament authorizing the boring
of the Mont Cenis Tunnel 8 miles through the Alps between Modane and Bardonnêche.
Two weeks later, the first blast was fired on the Italian side by King
Victor Emmanuel. During 1858 with only hand drilling methods only 1,506
feet was excavated, total, from both ends. However, in 1861, French engineer
Germain
Sommeiller introduced pneumatic drills capable of 200 strokes per minute
which increased progress by 3½ times to 5,364 -ft in 1870. A wheeled
carriage on rails carried up to nine air-driven perforators that drilled
a pattern of holes for blasting the rock face. Compressor plants at each
end were water powered. When opened on 17
Sep 1871, this triumph of engineering was the world's first important
mountain tunnel.*«  [Image
top:
Mont Cenis Tunnel entrance arch; bottom:
Sommeiller Boring Machines.] |
| Dental chair patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1848, the first U.S. patent for a surgical or dental operating-chair
with adjustable elevation and tilt of the seat and back was issued to M.W.
Hanchett of Syracuse, N.Y. (No. 5711). The chair included a footrest with
adjustable elevation. [Image:
top - full view of seat and foot rest; bottom - detail of tilt cogs beneath
seat.] |
| Rotary washing machine | |
(source) |
In 1835, a U.S. patent was issued for a rotary washing machine to C. H.
Farnham (issued without number, known as 8993X).
A hand-turned crank rotated a perforated cylinder within a covered wooden
shell. Clothes were put inside the cylinder through a hatch in the shell
and a removeable panel in the cylinder. This was not the first patent for
a washing machine issued in the U.S. - the earliest patent was granted
3 Mar 1797 to Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire for "an improvement in
washing clothes." |
