| AUGUST 18 - BIRTHS | |
| Marvin Harris | |
(source) |
Born 18 Aug 1927
U.S. anthropological historian and theoretician considered to be a generalist with an interest in the global processes that account for human origins and the evolution of human cultures. Due to his interests in cultural anthropology, Dr. Harris has assumed the role of an anthropological historian theoretician. His fieldwork with cultural materialism has taken him to the Islas de la Bahia, Brazil, Mozambique, Ecuador, India and East Harlem. |
| Bern Dibner | |
(source) |
Born 18 Aug 1897; died 6 Jan 1988
Ukrainian-American engineer and science historian. Dibner worked as an engineer during the electrification of Cuba. Realizing the need for improved methods of connecting electrical conductors, in 1924, he founded the Burndy Engineering Company. A few years later, he became interested in the history of Renaissance science. Subsequently, he began collecting books and everything he could find that was related to the history of science. This became a second career as a scholar that would run parallel with his life as a businessman. He wrote many books and pamphlets, on topics from the transport of ancient obelisks, to authorative biographies of many scientific pioneers, including Volta, inventor of the electric battery, and Roentgen, discoverer of the X ray. |
| Pierre-Émile Martin | |
(source) |
Born 18 Aug 1824; died 23 May 1915
French engineer who adapted the steelmaking process by using the open-hearth regenerative furnace invented by Charles William and Friedrich Siemens (1856), now known as the Siemens-Martin process. The Siemens' idea was to capture heat from exhaust gases in chambers flanking the furnace containing fire-bricks. When the flow is changed to preheat the input gases using recycled energy stored in the bricks, huge fuel savings result. Martin applied the process to steel production because it could produce the necessary high temperature to melt steel, with furnace capacity of 50-100 tons or more This process was adopted and almost universally worldwide to manufacture steel, until replaced by the basic oxygen process from the late 1940's.« [Image: left - Pierre Martin; right - vertical section of Siemens-Martin furnace] |
| Brook Taylor | |
(source) |
Born 18 Aug 1685; died 29 Dec 1731
British mathematician, best known the Taylor's series, a method for expanding functions into infinite series. In 1708, Taylor produced a solution to the problem of the centre of oscillation. His Methodus incrementorum directa et inversa (1715; “Direct and Indirect Methods of Incrementation”) introduced what is now called the calculus of finite differences. Using this, he was the first to express mathematically the movement of a vibrating string on the basis of mechanical principles. Methodus also contained Taylor's theorem, later recognized (1772) by Lagrange as the basis of differential calculus. A gifted artist, Taylor also wrote on basic principles of perspective (1715) containing the first general treatment of the principle of vanishing points.« |
| AUGUST 18 - DEATHS | |
| Richard Synge | |
(source) |
 Died
18 Aug 1994 (born 28 Oct 1914)
Richard Laurence Millington Synge was a British biochemist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with A.J.P. Martin for their development of partition chromatography, notably paper chromatography. Some of chemistry's advances need new methods for separating various substances. In filter-paper chromatography, a drop of a mixture of substances is dropped on a strip of filter paper, which is allowed to draw up a suitable solvent (ex. butyl alcohol-water), by capillary action. The spot begins to move, then gradually segregates into several spots. Some spots rapidly follow the solvent, while others lag behind. The result is a resolution of the mixture into component parts. One drop of extremely complicated mixtures can be analyzed in this simple way. |
| B. F. Skinner | |
(source) |
Died
18 Aug 1990 (born 20 Mar 1904)
B(urrhus) F(rederick) Skinner was an American psychologist whose pioneering work in experimental psychology promoted behaviorism, shaping behavior through positive and negative reinforcement and demonstrated operant conditioning. The "Skinner box" he used in experiments from 1930 remains famous. To investigate the learning processes of animals, he observed their behaviour in a simple box with a lever which, when activated by the animal, would give a reward (or punishment). The reward, such as pellets of food or water, acts as a primary reinforcer. He observed the behaviour of animals adapted to utilize the opportunity for a reward. He extended his theories to the behaviour of humans, as a form of social engineering.«  B.F.
Skinner: A Life, by Daniel W. Bjork. |
| Elizabeth Stern | |
| Died
18 Aug 1980 (born 19 Sep 1915)
Elizabeth Stern (married name Elizabeth Stern Shankman) was a Canadian-born American, one of the first pathologists to work on the progression of a cell from normality to cancerous. Her breakthrough studies of cervical cancers have changed the disease from fatal to one of the most easily diagnosed and treatable. Her studies showed that a normal cell advanced through 250 distinct stages before becoming cancerous and thus is the most easily diagnosed of all cancers. She was the first to linking a virus in herpes simplex to cervical cancer. She was also the first to report the linkage between oral contraceptives and cervical cancer. |
|
| Walter Chrysler | |
(source) |
Died
18 Aug 1940 (born 2 Apr 1875)
Walter P(ercy) Chrysler was an American industrialist and inventor who founded his own company, Chrysler Motors. He began as a teenager in the railroad industry and rose to management positions. Then, in 1912, Charles W. Nash recruited him as works manager for the Buick division of General Motors. Chrysler reorganized production for efficiency, increasing output and profits, but resigned in 1920. He rescued Willys-Overland automobile company from bankruptcy and then turned Maxwell Motor Company into the Chrysler Corporation (1924) which produced Chrysler's first car in Jun 1925. The company grew to become the third of the present "Big Three" automobile manufacturers.« Chrysler,
by Vincent Curcio. |
| William Henry Hudson | |
(source) |
Died
18 Aug 1922 (born 4 Aug 1841)
English (born in Argentina of American parents) author, naturalist and ornithologist. His interest in nature started in his youth when he studied the local flora and fauna in Argentina, where he was born of American parents. After moving to England (1869) he published onithological works including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895). He followed these with popular books on the English countryside, including Hampshire Days (1903) and Afoot in England (1909). His work helped foster the back-to-nature movement of the 1920s to 1930s, and he was a founder member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.« 
William
Henry Hudson: Life, Literature, and Science, by Felipe
Arocena. |
| Sir William Fairbairn | |
(source) |
Died
18 Aug 1874 (born 19 Feb 1789)
(1st Baronet) Scottish civil engineer who was first to use wrought iron for ships, bridges, mill shafts, and structural beams. After moving to London in 1811, he invented a steam excavator and a sausage-making machine, but without commercial success. By 1817, he had established an engineering works in Manchester making mill machinery, which later made over 400 locomotives. The shipbuilding works he opened at Millwall, London (1835-49) built hundreds of iron boats. He furnished the rectangular wrought-iron tubes used by Stephenson for the Britannia railway bridge (1850) over the Menai Strait, which included two almost 460-ft (140-m) spans. He assisted James Joule and Lord Kelvin in geological investigations from 1851.« The
life of Sir William Fairbairn, by William Fairbairn. |
| André-Jacques Garnerin | |
(source) |
Died
18 Aug 1823 (born 31 Jan 1769)
French aeronaut, the first person to use a parachute regularly and successfully. He perfected the parachute and made jumps from greater altitudes than had been possible before. On 22 October 1797, at age 28, Garnerin made his first jump above the Parc Monceau in Paris. He dropped from a hot-air balloon at 3000 feet. His parachute, with 36 ribs and lines, was semi-rigid, somewhat resembling an umbrella. The descent was a success, except that he shook back and forth violently while falling. The physicist Lalande, who attended the event, suggested improving air flow with a small opening at the top of the canopy. Garnerin died aged 41. While preparing balloon equipment, a beam struck his head inflicting a mortal wound. |
| Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre | |
| Died
18 Aug 1822 (born 19 Sep 1749)
French astronomer who became famous for the astronomical he prepared that plot the location of Uranus. He later worked with the Bureau de Longitudes.« |
|
| AUGUST 18 - EVENTS | |
| Tay Road Bridge opened | |
(source) |
In 1966, the Tay Road Bridge designed by William Fairhurst was opened
by the Queen Mother. This finally replaced ferry service for vehicles across
the Tay estuary on the east coast of Scotland, although the present rail
bridge had been in use since 1887.
The 42-span road bridge
is one of the longest in Europe, 1.4 miles (2250-m) long, 32-ft (10-m)
above water level, and links Newport in north-east Fife to Dundee. Tolls
are collected on the southbound route are used for maintenance costs. Construction
began on the £6 million project in 1962. Willie Logan, director
of the construction company and five other workers died while the bridge
was being built, and are commemorated by a 51-ft (15.5-m) tall obelisk
at the Fife end.« |
| Contraceptive | |
|
In 1960, the first oral contraceptive was marketed by the Searle Drug Company
in America. |
|
| UK Fire Service | |
|
In 1941, the National Fire Service was established in Britain. |
|
| Westbound transatlantic solo flight | |
|
In 1932 the Scottish aviator Jim Mollison made the first westbound transatlantic
solo flight.* |
|
| Belle Isle Aquarium | |
|
In 1904, the Belle Isle Aquarium opened in the U.S. This facility is the
oldest, continuously running aquarium in America. Several other institutions
opened earlier but since have closed or moved to multiple different buildings.
Belle Isle Aquarium is still in its original building and site as the one
in which it opened. |
|
| Rainmaking | |
|
In 1891, rainmaking experiments were conducted near Midland, Texas by the
U.S. government. |
|
| Candian patent No.1 | |
|
In 1869, the Canadian patent
No. 1 was issued to W. Hamilton. According to the Canadian Intellectual
Property Office, the first Canadian patent, issued before the present number
series, "was granted in 1791 by the Governor General in Council to Angus
MacDonnel, a Scottish soldier garrisoned at Quebec City, and to Samuel
Hopkins, a Vermonter, for processes to make potash and soap from wood ash."
Hopkins also was granted the first U.S.
patent by George Washington, dated 31 July 1790 for an improvement "in
the making Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process." |
|
| Helium | |
|
In 1868, Pierre Janssan discovered helium in the solar spectrum during
eclipse. |
|
