| SEPTEMBER 13 - BIRTHS | |
| Horace Welcome Babcock | |
 Born 13
Sep 1912
American astronomer, who with his father, Harold Babcock, was first to measure the distribution of magnetic fields over the solar surface. Horace invented and built many astronomical instruments, including a ruling engine which produced excellent diffraction gratings, the solar magnetograph, and microphotometers, automatic guiders, and exposure meters for the 100 and 200-inch telescopes. By combining his polarizing analyzer with the spectrograph he discovered magnetic fields in other stars. He developed important models of sunspots and their magnetism, and was the first to propose adaptive optics (1953). |
|
| Sir Robert Robinson | |
| Born 13
Sep 1886; died 8 Feb 1975
British chemist who received the 1947 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his research on a wide range of organic compounds, notably alkaloids (complex, naturally occurring, nitrogen-containing organic compounds that can have profound effects on living things). In his early research, he studied plant pigments and synthesized anthocyanins and flavones. Later, working with alkaloids, he discovered the structures of morphine (1925) and strychnine (1946). |
|
| Wilhelm Johann Eugen Blaschke | |
| Born 13
Sep 1885; died 17 Mar 1962
German mathematician whose major contributions to geometry concerned kinematics and differential geometry. Kinetic mapping (important later in the axiomatic foundations of various geometries) he both discovered and established it as a tool in kinematics. He also initiated topological differential geometry (the study of invariant differentiable mappings). |
|
| Wilhelm Filchner | |
| Born 13
Sep 1877; died 7 May 1957
German scientist and explorer who led the German Antarctic expedition of 1911-12. In Tibet (1926-28) he conducted cartographic surveys and magnetic observations. He also made a magnetic survey of Nepal (1939-40) |
|
| Constantin Carathéodory | |
| Born 13
Sep 1873; died 2 Feb 1950
German mathematician of Greek origin who made important contributions to the theory of real functions, to the calculus of variations, and to the theory of point-set measure. He also contributed to thermodynamics and helped develop Einstein's special theory of relativity. |
|
| Adolf Meyer | |
(source) |
Born 13
Sep 1866; died 17 Mar 1950
Swiss-American psychiatrist (1900-40), whose teaching and influential work has become a part of psychiatric theory and practice in English-speaking countries. Already trained in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology when he emigrated to the U.S. (1892), from working at mental institutions, he began to attribute the disorder in mental illness not to brain pathology, but to a personality dysfunction. He recognized social environment as an influence in mental disorders. Throughout his years at Johns Hopkins University as professor of psychiatry (1910-41), he taught that in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, the patient must be evaluated as a whole person. |
| Milton Snavely Hershey | |
| Born 13
Sep 1857; died 13 Oct 1945
American manufacturer who founded the Hershey Chocolate Corporation. Apprenticed to a confectioner until 1876, he then opened his own candy shop in Philadelphia, Penn. Though that venture was unsuccessful, a few years later, he innovated the production of caramels by using fresh milk, with great success. In the 1890's he diversified into chocolate, and in 1903 began building what became the world's largest chocolate manufacturing plant. That site became Hershey, Pennsylvania. He used his fortune philathropically. (eb) |
|
| Hans Christian Joachim Gram | |
| Born 13
Sep 1853; died 14 Nov 1938
Danish pharmacologist and pathologist, who invented the Gram stain, the best known and most widely used bacteriological staining method that is almost always the first test performed for the identification of bacteria.. |
|
| Walter Reed | |
 |
Born 13
Sep 1851; died 22 Nov 1902
US Army pathologist and bacteriologist who led the experiments that proved that yellow fever is transmitted by the bite of a mosquito. The Walter Reed Hospital, Washington, D.C., was named in his honour. |
| Sir Andrew Noble | |
| Born 13
Sep 1831; died 22 Oct 1915
(Baronet) Scottish physicist and gunnery expert, known as a founder of the science of ballistics. He invented the chronoscope, a device for measuring very small time intervals, and in about 1862, he used it to measure the velocity of shot in gun barrels. His investigations in ballistics led to the redesign of guns, new methods of loading, and development of new types of gunpowder. |
|
| Oliver Evans | |
(source) |
Born 13
Sep 1755; died 15 Apr 1819
American millwright and inventor who invented the first automatic corn mill, pioneered the high-pressure steam engine (US patent, 1790) and created the first continuous production line (1784). By about age 19, he invented a machine for bending and cutting off the wires in textile carding combs. His ideas for an automatic corn mill began in 1782, but the invention's development was not completed until 1790. The mill used bucket elevators to raise the grain, conveying devices including a horizontal screw conveyor, and a "hopper boy" to cool and dry the meal before gathering it into a hopper feeding the bolting cylinder. Together, this took incoming wheat and delivered flour packed in barrels. |
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| SEPTEMBER 13 - DEATHS | |
| August Krogh | |
 Died
13 Sep 1949 (born 15 Nov 1874)
Schack August Steenberg Krogh was a Danish physiologist who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1920 for his discovery of the motor-regulating mechanism of capillaries (small blood vessels). Working with frogs, which he injected with Indian ink shortly before killing, he showed that in sample areas of resting muscle the number of visible (stained) capillaries was about 5 per square millimeter; in stimulated muscle, however, the number was increased to 190 per square millimeter. From this he concluded that there must be a physiological mechanism to control the action of the capillaries in response to the needs of the body (not just flow due to heart beating). Krogh's research linked exercise physiology with nutrition and metabolism. |
|
| Robert Hope-Jones | |
(source) |
Died
13 Sep 1914 (born 9 Feb 1859)
British-American organ builder whose innovations created the theatre organ and its orchestral sounds. In his early career, in England, as chief electrician with the Lancashire and Cheshire Telephone Company he gained experience with low voltage electrical circuits which led him to their application to the church organ. As an organ-builder, his many inventions included the Diaphone, (GB patent 21,414 in 1894, improved as GB patent 21,558 in 1895). In 1897, he patented a foghorn (No. 21,389) for use in lighthouses and still used today. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1903, where he eventually sold his patents to the Wurlitzer company, N. Tonawanda, NY. Despite his productive years contributing to organ devices and pipes, he died prematurely by suicide.«  Robert
Hope-Jones, by David H. Fox |
| SEPTEMBER 13 - EVENTS | |
| Taconite | |
In 1956, full production of taconite began at a the first U.S. plant established
for large-scale commercial production. Taconite is a hard ore containing
25 to 30% iron. The rock was crushed, ground and magnetically separated
to yield small pellets containing about 62% iron, with an annual prodction
of 3,750,000 tons. Preliminary operations had begun in the fall of 1955.
The plant, known as the E.W. Davis Works at Silver Bay, Minn., was built
by the Reserve Mining Company (Duluth, Minn.) and jointly owned by the
Armco Steel and Republican Steel corporations. |
|
| Rail detector car | |
|
In 1928, a rail detector car was demonstrated near Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to
representatives of the American Railway Association and of various railroads.
Invented by Dr. Elmer Ambrose Sperry, it was designed to enable locating
internal flaws in existing railroad tracks. This first car, car No. 101,
was capable of travelling at 10 mph while examining one rail at a time.
It had been previously field-tested 13 Jun 1928. |
|
| Highest world shade temperature record | |
|
In 1922, 136.4 °F (58 °C), the world's highest shade temperature
was recorded
at the African village of Al Aziziyah, about 25 miles (40 km) south of
Tripoli, capital of Libya. The village is a major trade center of the Jifarah
plain. Surprisingly, it's just a few miles south of the Mediterranean Sea. |
|
| Yellow-fever | |
|
In 1900, physician Jesse Lazear, at age 34, was bitten by a mosquito carrying
yellow-fever while conducting experiments in Quemados, Cuba, to investigate
the transmission of that disease. His death, two weeks later, proved that
the mosquito was the carrier of yellow-fever. |
|
| First U.S. car accident fatality | |
|
In 1899, the first American automobile fatality resulted when Henry H.
Bliss was run over as he alighted from a streetcar at Central Park West
and 74th Street in New York City. He stepped into the path of an approaching
horseless carriage driven by Arthur Smith. Bliss, 68, was taken to hospital,
where he died of the injuries he sustained. The driver, Arthur Smith was
arrested and held on $1,000 bail. The first pedestrian
in the world to die after being struck by a car was Bridget Driscoll, on
17 Aug 1896, on the grounds of Crystal Palace, London. She was struck by
a car giving demonstration rides, and died minutes later of head injuries.
On 12 Feb1898, the first car-driver crash fatality
was businessman Henry Lindfield
whose speeding car ran into a tree at Purley, Surrey.« |
|
| Celluloid photographic film | |
|
In 1898, Reverend Hannibal Williston Goodwin was issued a U.S. patent for
his invention of "nitro cellulose transparent flexible photographic film
pellicles." (No. 610,861). He made a sale of one roll at $2.50 to Thomas
Alva Edison on 2 Sep 1889. |
|
| Ice shipped to Calcutta | |
Tudor (source) |
In 1833, a the first
imported shipment of ice arrived in Calcutta, India, from Boston, Mass.,
U.S. in the specially insulated hold of the Clipper Tuscany, which
had loaded and sailed on 6 - 7 May 1833 with 180 tons of ice. The ice,
in 2 - 3 cu.ft. blocks, had been cut
from local lakes in winter, and stored since then. The entrepeneur was
Fredric
Tudor, an ice merchant of Boston. During the over four month voyage,
about 80 tons was lost, but in the Indian unit of weight, the amount that
arrived was about 3,000 maund (1 maund = 82.6 pounds). It was priced at
four annas per seer
(about 2-lbs). At first sales were disappointing, until the local residents
became accustomed to this novelty for cooling drinks. India became a profitable
export market
for Tudor for over two decades.« 
The
Frozen Water Trade, by Gavin Weightman. |
| First U.S. rhino exhibit | |
|
In 1826, the first rhinoceros to be exhibited in the U.S. was shown at
Peale's Museum and gallery of the Fine Arts in New York City. An advertisement
described, "its body and limbs are covered with a skin so hard and impervious
that he fears neither the claws of the tiger nor the proboscis of the elephant.
It will turn the edge of a scimitar and even resist the force of a musket
ball." |
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