| SEPTEMBER 4 - BIRTHS | |
| Stanford Moore | |
(source) |
 Born 4
Sep 1913; died 23 Aug 1982.
American biochemist, who was a co-recipient (with Christian B. Anfinsen and William H. Stein) of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of ribonuclease molecule, an enzyme. Enzymes are large molecules (macromolecules). The way in which an enzyme accelerates a chemical reaction involves an interaction of the reacting substance (the substrate) with only a limited part of the enzyme molecule, its active site. Moore and Stein have carried out investigations which supplement each other and have led to a complete elucidation of the sequence of amino acids in the enzyme ribonuclease. |
| Max Delbrück | |
(source) |
Born 4
Sep 1906; died 9 Mar 1981.
German-born U.S. biologist, a pioneer in the study of molecular genetics. He was a co-recipient (with Alfred Day Hershey and Salvador Luria), of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for work on the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of bacteriophages (a type of virus that infects bacteria, rather than ordinary cells.) Bacteriophages serve as models for the more complex, less approachable cells of animals and humans. This insight into the nature of viruses and of virus diseases leads to understanding the mechanism of inheritance, development growth and function of tissues and organs. |
| Simon Lake | |
(source) |
Born 4
Sep 1866; died 23 Jun 1945.
U.S. inventor whose submarine, the Argonaut, was the first to make extensive open-sea operations and to salvage cargo from sunken vessels. His career began in 1883 in his father's foundry and machine shop. At first, Lake invented equipment for surface vessels, including a steering gear, dredge and other improvement for fishing and oyster ships sailing in the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. In 1884, he built the Argonaut Jr., his first trial submersible. He was issued U.S. patent 581,213 for his submarine (20 Apr 1897). From 1886 he built the Argonaut, with a 30-hp gasoline engine, which he publicly demonstrated on 16 Dec 1897. After refitting, over several years, it sailed 2,000 miles and salvaged cargo from 30 wrecks.«  Argonaut:
The Submarine Legacy of Simon Lake, by John J. Poluhowich. |
| Lewis Latimer | |
(source) |
Born 4
Sep 1848; died 11 Dec 1928.
Lewis Howard Latimer was a Black-American inventor who contributed to electrical technology. After joining a Boston firm of patent solicitors as an office boy, he taught himself drafting and eventually rose in the mid-1870's to the position of chief draftman. Meanwhile, he was issued his first patent for his invention of a water-closet for railroad cars. In 1880, he moved to be draftsman and private secretary to Hiram Stevens Maxim of the U.S. Lighting Co. where he took charge of the installation of commercial incandescent lighting systems. He patented his carbon filament lamp improvements and other inventions. By 1883, he was working for the Edison Electric Light Co., where his expertise with patents was recognised with a position with its new legal department in 1889.« The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Daniel H. Burnham | |
(source) |
Born 4
Sep 1846; died 1 Jun 1912.
Daniel Hudson Burnham was an architect, raised and educated in Chicago, who gained his early architectural experience with William Le Baron Jenney, the so-called "father of the skyscraper". With John Root (1850-91), he pioneered the construction methods which made modern skyscrapers possible. He designed the dramatic Flatiron Building in New York City. Burnham also gained his reputation as a city planner. In 1909, Burnham and his assistant Edward H. Bennett prepared The Plan for Chicago, which is considered the nation's first example of a comprehensive planning document. |
| George Dobson | |
(source) |
Born 4
Sep 1844; died 26 Nov 1895.
Irish zoologist, chiefly remembered for his laborious investigation into the structure and classification of the chiroptera and insectivora, on both of which he became the chief authority of his time." After graduating with medical training (1867) from Trinity College, Dublin, he rose to the rank of surgeon lieutenant colonel in the army. He also served in the Zulu war of 1879. He was awarded the gold medal of the Dublin Pathological Society for his essay on Diagnosis and Pathology of the Injuries and Diseases of the Shoulderblade. He contributed the sections for Insectivora, Chiroptera, and Rodentia, in the article Mammalia and the articles Mole,Shrew, and Vampire to the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.[Image: example of a Chiroptera] |
| William E. Dodge | |
(source) |
Born 4
Sep 1805; died 9 Feb 1883.
American industrialist, cofounder of Phelps, Dodge & Company, which was one of the largest mining companies in the US for more than a century. His marriage (1828) to Melissa Phelps connected him with a wealthy New York family; his father-in-law was a successful metals trader. In 1833 Dodge joined the firm of Phelps, Dodge & Company, which for two generations held a foremost place as dealers in copper and other metals. The firm had an important part in the development of Lake Superior copper and of Pennsylvania iron. Dodge also made extensive investments in timber lands and in railroad enterprises - the Erie, Lackawanna, Jersey Central, and Texas Central. |
| Cullen Whipple | |
(USPTO) |
Born 4
Sep 1801; died 23 Oct 1868
American inventor and machinist of Providence, RI, who patented the first practical screw machine in the U.S. for making pointed screws (14 Dec 1852, No. 9,477). Early screws had blunt ends, and it was necessary to drill a starter hole. In Oct 1840, he was one of ten incorporators of The New England Screw Co. He invented a machine for the company to use cutting the threads of screws (patented 18 Aug 1842), another for shaving the heads of screws (patented 6 Apr 1843) and one for removing the burs left in cutting the slots in the heads (patented 19 Apr 1843). He invented and patented seven other machines or devices for improving the manufacture of screws, such as a Screw-Blank Feeding mechanism (3 Jun 1856, No.15,052).« |
|
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| SEPTEMBER 4 - DEATHS | |
| Hans Zinsser | |
(source) |
 Died
4 Sep 1940 (born 17 Nov 1878)
American bacteriologist and immunologists who was an international authority on typhus, a deadly disease. In 1936, he isolated the typhus germ. By 1939 he had perfection of a method to produce enough anti-typhus vaccine to protect a country nation. He travelled abroad to study disease outbreaks: an typhus epidemic in Serbia (1915), cholera in the Soviet Union (1923), a prison typhus epidemic in Mexico (1931) and lectured in China (1938). He published over 160 scientific papers. The cause of typhus, Rickettsia organisms are carried by a louse or a rat flea and transmitted to humans by a bite from the parasites, especially in areas of poor sanitation and overcrowding. He wrote his autobiography in the third person, As I Remember Him, while dying of leukemia.« Rats,
Lice, and History...of Typhus Fever, by Hans Zinsser. |
| Edward Anthony Spitzka | |
(source) |
Died
4 Sep 1922 (born 17 Jun 1876)
American anatomist and brain morphologist who autopsied (29 Oct 1901) the brain of Leon Franz Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. president William McKinley. At the time, he had just published an exhaustive series of eight papers on the human brain, but was only in the fourth year of his medical training. Although he detected a few very minor variations in gyri and sulci patterns in the brain of Czolgosz, he reported in the New York Medical Journal (1902) that "nothing has been found in the brain of this assassin that would condone his crime." He became editor of American editions of Gray's Anatomy. Throughout his career he studied the brain morphology of groups of famous people, different races, and criminals, thought ultimately he was unable to link traits to brain structure.«  |
| Irving Wightman Colburn | |
(source) |
Died 4 Sep 1917 (born 16 May 1861)
American inventor and manufacturer whose process for fabricating continuous sheets of flat glass made the mass production of glass for windows possible. Colburn began his experiments in 1899 which resulted in his patent for a sheet glass drawing machine on 25 Mar 1902. He formed the Colburn Machine Glass Co. in Aug 1906, installed drawing machines at two factories in 1908 but went bankrupt in 1911 before the technology was perfected. The Toledo Glass Company bought Colburn's patents in 1912 and hired him soon after. He began refining the process at the Toledo Glass experimental plant where its first draw of sheet glass took place on 25 Nov 1913. The company subsequently organized as the Libbey-Owens Sheet Glass Company in 1916. [Image
right: Colburn Machine Glass Co., Reynoldsville, Pa, 1907] |
| William John McGee | |
(source) |
Died
4 Sep 1912 (born 17 Apr 1853)
American geologist, hydrologist, archaeologist who was noted for his pioneer studies documenting the occurrence of waves of invasions and recessions of ice sheets in North America, thus establishing the complexity of the Great Ice Age. He worked in a number of governmental capacities, including as a director in the U.S. Geological Survey, and was a founder and president of the National Geographic Society. While on the staff of the Bureau of Soils, he organized the landmarkConference of Governors on Conservation of Natural Resources (13-15 May 1908) and has been called the "chief theorist of the conservation movement." As an anthropologist he studied the American Indians and wrote The Seri Indians (1898). [Image: Seri Indians]  Trails
to Tiburón: The 1894 and 1895 Field Diaries of W J McGee by
Hazel McFeely Fontana |
| César-François Cassini de Thury | |
(source) |
Died
4 Sep 1784 (born 17 June 1714)
French astronomer and geodesist (Cassini III), who continued surveying work he began while assisting his father, Jacques Cassini (Cassini II), resulting in the first topographical map of France produced by modern principles. His grandfather, Giovanni Domenico Cassini (Cassini I) discovered four satellites of Saturn, a band on planet's surface, and that its ring was subdivided. Cassini I was the first to assume effective direction (1671) of the new observatory established by the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris, which his descendants in turn continued. Cassini III was the first official director of the observatory when the post was created by the king in 1771. His son was Jean-Dominique Cassini (Cassini IV).« |
| SEPTEMBER 4 - EVENTS | |
| Meningitis vaccine | |
(source) |
In 2006, a vaccine for a type of meningitis was offered
for the first time in Great Britain for all babies at two, four and 13
months as part of the national childhood immunisation programme. The vaccine
is designed for protection against pneumococcal disease which causes meningitis
and septicaemia, a very serious infection, with a death rate of 20 per
cent. Of children that survive infection, a quarter suffer life-long brain
damage, deafness and epilepsy. Babies are particularly vulnerable. The
Wyeth pharmaceuticals company, the vaccine supplier, reported that its
use in America had shown a significant reduction in cases. An estimated
50 babies a year are expected to be protected from the devastating after-effects
of pneumococcal meningitis.« |
| Forth Road Bridge | |
(source) |
In 1964, the Forth Road Bridge opened.
At 6,156 feet long it was the longest in Europe at that time. The Forth
Road Bridge at Queensferry is shown
at left. Both rail (1890) and road
bridges are sited where hard volcanic rock is close to the surface and
can make good foundations for the structures. Both bridges emphasise the
historical importance of the Forth crossing as the opening of the Forth
Road Bridge finally brought to an end a ferry service that could be traced
back 800 years. |
| Transcontinental US TV | |
(source) |
In 1951, President Harry Truman inaugurated
transcontinental television service in the U.S. when AT&T carried his
address to the opening session of the Japanese Peace Convention in San
Francisco. The conference would formalize the end of hostilities with Japan,
opening the door for Japan's economic recovery. The largest single television
audience to date, estimated at over 30 million people, viewed the President
Harry Truman, some as far away as New England. Eighty-seven stations all
over the U.S. received and broadcast Truman's speech, the result of a $40
million infrastructure investment
by AT&T. Microwave radio technology transmitted the television signal
from San Francisco to Chicago. From there, it was carried on existing coaxial
cables to the East Coast..« |
| Typewriter | |
(USPTO) |
In 1906, U.S. patent No. 830,115 was issued to Robert Eugene Turner of
Norfolk, Virginia, for his invention of a "Type Writing Machine,"(typewriter)
with a carriage powered by a motor to "return automatically when the end
of the writing-line is reached, also to return same by pressing a key-lever
on the keyboard to return the carriage at any point of its stroke." Also,
line spacing was provided by manual or automatic means. A low-powered motor
was adapted to feed the carriage in the printing direction, a high-powered
motor for returning the carriage in the reverse direction, and the necessary
mechanism to control their action. A buffering mechanism was included to
reduce the impact of the returning carriage at the end of its reverse stroke.«
[Image:
two figures from patent 830,115 showing details of carriage and platen
(top) and a sectional elevation of the type writing machine showing the
general arrangement of the mechanism.] |
| Kodak camera patent | |
(USPTO) |
In 1888, George Eastman was issued
a landmark U.S. patent No. 388,850 for his box camera. On the same date,
he registered the trademark name: Kodak. The Eastman Kodak company was
formed 24 Apr 1888. This design
was the first Kodak mass-produced camera, and brought photography to the
mass market. As described in its advertising, the operation was simple:
"Pull the String, Turn the Key, Press the Button." Now anyone could take
pictures family, events, indoor and outdoor scenes, and vacations, without
needing special skills. Only 22-ounces in weight, it required
no tripod or table for support. It used a fixed-focus lens which was still
fast enough to take practically instantaneously exposures. Its roll film
was enough to take 100 pictures, each 2½ inches diameter*.« |
| First electric central station | |
(source) |
In 1882, the first central
electric station to supply light and power was the Edison Electric Illuminating
Company at 257 Pearl Street in New York City. Thomas Edison inaugurated
its operation by operating a switch in the Wall Street office of his primary
financial backer. The station's "Jumbo No.1" generator was a direct-current
steam-powered dynamo. The armature alone was 6 tons of its total 27 ton
weight, and used air cooling. It was built at the Edison Machine Works
in 1881, and had its first test on 5 Jul 1882. It could power about 700
sixteen candlepower lamps. Within 14 months, Edison's first power station
served 508 subscribers and powered 12,732 bulbs.« [Image:
Exterior of Pearl Street station] |
| First newspaper using central electricity | |
(source) |
In 1882, the first newspaper plant to make use of the newly available electrical
power provided by the Edison Illuminating Company was the New York Times.
The building had previous been wired, with light fixtures and electric
meters installed and inspected by an expert from the Board of Underwriters.
There were 27 lamps installed in the editorial room and 25 lamps in the
counting room. Next day, in the newspaper's own article, the workers were
said to be unanimously in favour of the light provided by the carbon-filament
lamps as being brighter and steadier than the gas lighting it replaced.
There was no nauseous smell, and the lamps were very convenient to light
by simply turning a thumbscrew. Additional lights were added later for
the composing and press rooms.« [Image:
Exterior of New York Times building, c. 1874.] |
