| MAY 27 - BIRTHS | |
| William Webster Hansen | |
(source) |
 Born 27
May 1909; died 23 May 1949.
American physicist who contributed to the development of radar and is regarded as the founder of microwave technology. He developed the klystron, a vacuum tube essential to radar technology (1937). Based on amplitude modulation of an electron beam, rather than on resonant circuits of coils and condensers, it permits the generation of powerful and stable high-frequency oscillations. It revolutionized high-energy physics and microwave research and led to airborne radar. The klystron also has been used in satellite communications, airplane and missile guidance systems, and telephone and television transmission. After WW II, working with three graduate students, Hansen demonstrated the first 4.5 MeV linear accelerator in 1947. |
| Rachel Carson | |
(source) |
Born 27
May 1907; died 14 Apr 1964.
Rachel Louise Carson was an American biologist well known for her writings on environmental pollution and the natural history of the sea. Embedded within all of Carson's writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly. Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In her book, Silent Spring (1962), she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.  Silent
Spring by Rachel Carson |
| Conrad Arnold Elvehjem | |
(source) |
Born 27
May 1901; died 27 Jul 1962.
American biochemist who identified that nicotinic acid was a vitamin which when absent from diet resulted in the disease pellegra. In 1937, working with dogs having the canine equivalent of pellegra (blacktongue), he showed that giving a dog 30 milligrams of nicotinic acid resulted in substantial improvement. Continuing doses to correct the diet deficiency led to complete recovery. It worked as well in humans. Niacin is one of the B vitamins. His later work was on the trace minerals such as zinc and cobalt which are essential to life as component parts of enzymes. |
| Sir John Cockcroft | |
(source) |
Born 27
May 1897; died 18 Sep 1967.
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft was a British physicist, who shared (with Ernest T.S. Walton of Ireland) the 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics for pioneering the use of particle accelerators to study the atomic nucleus. Together, in 1929, they built an accelerator, the Cockcroft-Walton generator, that generated large numbers of particles at lower energies - the first atom-smasher. In 1932, they used it to disintegrate lithium atoms by bombarding them with protons, the first artificial nuclear reaction not utilizing radioactive substances. They conducted further research on the splitting of other atoms and established the importance of accelerators as a tool for nuclear research. Their accelerator design became one of the most useful in the world's laboratories.« |
| Kasimir Fajans | |
(source) |
Born 27
May 1887; died 18 May 1975.
Polish-American physical chemist who discovered the radioactive displacement law simultaneously with Frederick Soddy of Great Britain. According to this law, when a radioactive atom decays by emitting an alpha particle, the atomic number of the resulting atom is two fewer than that of the parent atom. He discovered several elements that are created through nuclear disintegration. The first discovery of protactinium was in 1913 by Kasimir Fajans and O. Göhring, who found the isotope protactinium-234m (half-life 1.2 min), a decay product of uranium-238; they named it brevium for its short life. (Protactinium-231 was later identified in 1918 by other scientists; the name protoactinium was adopted at this time.) |
| Wolfgang Ostwald | |
(source) |
Born 27
May 1883; died 22 Nov 1943
German chemist who devoted his life as a teacher, researcher, editor and one of the founders of colloid chemistry. He defined colloids as disperse systems that are generally polyphasic and that possess particles 1-100 millimicrons in size. He discovered the rule of colour dispersion in the optics of colloidal systems, explained colloids' irregular flow behaviour, textural viscosity, and textural turbulence, and developed a method of foam analysis. He edited (from 1909) Kolloidchemische Beihefte and other journals and as the founder (1922) and president of the Kolloid Gesellschaft, Ostwald advanced research in colloids. He was the second child of 1909 Nobel Laureate Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald. |
| Karl Bühler | |
(source) |
Born 27
May 1879; died 24 Oct 1963.
German psychiatrist and psychologist who was known chiefly for his studies of the thought process. While a professor at the University of Vienna (1922-38), his views were influenced by the thinking of Trubetzkoy and other members of the Prague School. His Sprachtheorie (1934) presented a sign theory with particular emphasis on the functions of language, and a distinction between two "fields" which form the context in which a sign is used. The "symbolic field" (Symbolfeld) is formed by the other signs that make up an utterance; the "deictic field" (Zeigfeld) is formed by the context in which it is uttered and is the origin of modern conceptions of deixis. Bühler emigrated to the USA in 1939, practising as a clinical psychologist from 1945. |
| Frans Cornelis Donders | |
(source) |
Born 27
May 1818; died 24 Mar 1889.
Ophthalmologist, the most eminent of 19th-century Dutch physicians, whose investigations of the physiology and pathology of the eye made possible a scientific approach to the correction of refractive disabilities such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. He found (1858) that hypermetropia (farsightedness) is caused by a shortening of the eyeball, so that light rays refracted by the lens of the eye converge behind the retina. He discovered (1862) that the blurred vision of astigmatism is caused by uneven and unusual surfaces of the cornea and lens, which diffuse light rays instead of focusing them. |
| MAY 27 - DEATHS | |
| Ernst Ruska | |
(source) |
 Died
27 May 1988 (born 25 Dec 1906)
Ernst August Friedrich Ruska was a German electrical engineer who invented the electron microscope. For "his fundamental work in electron optics and for the design of the first electron microscope" he was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986 (with Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig). In 1928, found that a magnetic coil could act as a lens to focus an electron beam. Adding a second lens he produced the first primitive (x17 power) electron microscope. By 1933, his refinements increased the magnification to x7000, exceeding what was possible with visible light. The first commercial model was marketed in 1939. Since then, electron microscopes rapidly found applications in biology, medicine and many other areas of science.« [Image right: Ruska's electron microscope (source) ]  The
early development of electron lenses and electron microscopy,
by Ernst Ruska. |
| John Howard Northrop | |
(source) |
Died
27 May 1987 (born 5 July 1891)
American biochemist who received (with James B. Sumner and Wendell M. Stanley) the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1946 for successfully purifying and crystallizing certain enzymes, thus enabling him to determine their chemical nature. During WW I, he conducted research on fermentation processes suitable for the industrial production of acetone and ethyl alcohol. This work led to a study of enzymes essential for digestion, respiration, and general life processes. He crystallized pepsin (1930), a digestive enzyme present in gastric juice, and found that it is a protein, thus resolving the dispute over the nature of enzymes. Using the same chemical methods, he isolated the first bacterial virus (bacteriophage), and found it is a nucleoprotein (1938). |
| Merle Antony Tuve | |
(source) |
Died
27 May 1982 (born 27 Jun 1901)
American research physicist and geophysicist who (with Gregory Breit) made the first use pulsed radio waves to explore the ionosphere. He devised the necessary detecting equipment to measure the time between receiving a direct radio pulse and a second pulse reflected from the ionosphere. The observations he made provided the theoretical foundation for the development of radar. Tuve, with Lawrence R. Hafstad and Norman P. Heydenburg, made the first and definitive measurements of the nuclear force between proton-proton force at nuclear distances. During WW II he developed the proximity fuse. Following the war, he made important contributions to experimental seismology, radio astronomy, and optical astronomy.« |
| Dr. Roy K. Marshall | |
| Died
27 May 1972 (born 21 Aug 1907)
Astronomer with the Fels Planetarium, Philadelphia, then the first director of Morehead Planetarium, Chapel Hill, N.C. He contributed to the slim but classic work Star Maps For Beginners, by I.M. Levitt, a book on skylore and learning the constellations which first appeared in 1942 with periodic revisions over 50 years. He combined his scientific expertise with showmanship as a pioneering TV science broadcaster with a weekly Nature of Things half-hour program. It premiered on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) network on 13 Dec 1948 with a broadcast from the Fels Planetarium. It became so popular it ran year-round until 1954.« The
Nature Of Things, by Roy K. Marshall. |
|
| Frederic Eugene Ives | |
(source) |
Died
27 May 1937 (born 17 Feb 1856)
American photographer and inventor of the halftone process, a method of reproducing photographs on a printing press. Prior to this process, photos and illustrations were reproduced from hand-engraved plates. In this way printers could reproduce line drawings, but not the shades of gray in a photograph because printing presses cannot print gray - only black and white. Ives invented a screen that would convert a photograph into a pattern of tiny dots. Large dots form where the image is dark, and tiny dots where the image is light, thus giving the illusion of shades of gray. In 1881, he was the first to make a three-colour print from halftone blocks. Further inventions in photography and colour printing yielded 70 patents. (Image: 1996 U.S. postage stamp.) |
| Sir Joseph Wilson Swan | |
(EB) |
Died
27 May 1914 (died 31 Oct 1828)
English scientist, chemist physicist and inventor, born in Sunderland, Yorkshire, who produced an early electric incandescent lamp. He began these experiments in the 1840’s and obtained a UK patent covering a partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent lamp in 1860. Swan’s early lamps provided low light output, were short lived, and were operated from battery cells. Low voltage operation required relatively high filament current that necessitated that the power source be co-located near the Swan lamp. He also addressed the problem of photographic print fading and in the mid 1850s some began to experiment with carbon, perfecting and patenting the process in 1864. Thus Swan invented the dry photographic plate, an important improvement in photography. Image: pencil drawing by M. Agnes Cohen, 1894; in the National Portrait Gallery, London. |
| Robert Koch | |
(source) |
Died
27 May 1910 (born 11 Dec 1843)
(Heinrich Hermann) Robert Koch was a German physician, a founder of the science of bacteriology, who discovered the tubercle bacillus (1882) and the cholera bacillus (1883). He studied bubonic plague in Bombay (1897) and malaria and sleeping sickness in Africa. In addition Koch investigated tropical dysentery, and the Egyptian eye disease (trachoma), and typhus recurrens in tropical Africa. He also carried out work of exceptional importance concerning destructive tropical cattle diseases, such as rinderpest, Surra disease, Texas fever, coast fever in cattle and the trypanosome disease carried by the tsetse fly. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905, "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis." |
| J. Edgar Thomson | |
(source) |
Died
27 May 1874 (born 10 Feb 1808)
John Edgar Thomson was an American civil engineer and third president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company who consolidated a network of railroad lines from Philadelphia to various cities in the Midwest and the South, extending as far as Chicago and Norfolk, Va. His principal projects included completing the road across the Alleghenies, double tracking its main line and experimenting with coal-burning locomotives. In an unprecedented expansion program, though leases and purchases, Thomson controlled over six thousand miles of railroad by 1873. Thomson also invested in transcontinental lines as well as coal companies, iron and steel works, lumber operations, and land companies. |
| MAY 27 - EVENTS | |
| Highest temperature | |
(source) |
In 1994, the highest temperature produced
in a lab was a plasma temperature of 510 million degrees Celsius (918,000,000
deg F) in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) operated at the Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory of Princeton University. An early
record was set there in 1985, when the TFTR was the first tokamak to achieve
the reactor temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius. The TFTR (Dec 1982-Apr
1997) was the largest magnetic fusion experiment in the U.S. and was the
first such device in the world to studied the confinement and heating of
plasmas with 50/50 mixtures of deuterium and tritium - the fuel mixture
likely to be used in the commercial fusion power plants of the twenty-first
century. |
| Black light | |
|
In 1961, the first black light was sold. |
|
| Enriched flour | |
|
In 1941, the U.S. Federal Register published the definition of enriched
flour giving specifications for required amounts it must contain of vitamin
B-1 (thiamine), nicotinic acid (niacin) or nicotinic acid amide (niacin
amide), and iron. All wheat flour manufactured after the effective date
was required to be enriched with vitamins to improve the nation's nutrition
and good health. Enriched bread could be produced using enriched flour.
The addition of niacin led to the virtual elimination of pellagra. (In
the Federal Register of 3 Dec 1941, the effective date of riboflavin
as a required ingredient of enriched flour was postponed
until 20 Apr 1943 because it appeared that the available supply was inadequate.)«
[Ref.:
Federal Register, 27 May 1941, vol 6, pages 2574-82 and 3 Dec 1941,
pages 6175-76.] |
|
| Golden Gate Bridge opened to pedestrians | |
(source) |
In 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco was first opened to the
public as a Pedestrian Day. By 6 am, 18,000 people were waiting for the
toll gates to open. Many crossed in unique ways, hoping to be prize-winners
as the first to establish a record, whether by walking backwards or on
stilts, tap-dancing, roller-skating or playing instruments. It was a sprinter,
Donald Bryan, from San Francisco Junior College, who became the first person
to cross the entire span. At 10 am, Chief engineer Joseph
Strauss gave no speech, but instead read a poem he had written for
the event. By the end of the day, about 200,000 people had joined the celebration.
The bridge was ceremonially opened
to traffic the next day.«
The
Gate: The True Story of the Design and Construction of the Golden Gate
Bridge, by John Van Der Zee. |
| Wind tunnel | |
(source) |
In 1931, the first U.S. full scale wind
tunnel for testing airplanes was opened in Langley Field Research Center,
Va. In the 30-ft high by 60-ft wide
tunnel, flying characteristics of full-size airplanes were tested in
air speeds up to 115-mph. The air was driven by two propellers downstream,
each over 35-ft in diameter, powered by 4,000 hp electric motors.
Over the next 65 years, tests were also run on helicopters, the Mercury
space capsule, parachutes and parafoils, the occasional dirigible and,
once, the fastest submarine in the world. Generations of aircraft passed
through the Full-Scale Tunnel; all emerged more airworthy than when they
entered. NASA closed the tunnel in October 1995. A smaller scale wind tunnel
opened there in the 1920s. By 1936, a new wind tunnel was built able to
provide an air speed of 600 mph. [Image:
A scale model of an airship under test.] |
| Balloon record | |
(source) |
In 1931, Auguste Piccard and Charles Knipfer took man's first trip into
the stratosphere when they rode their balloon to an altitude of 51,800
feet (nearly 10 miles above the earth). This required the use of a pressurized
cabin, which Piccard had designed. On-board experiements included the use
of an electroscope to investigate cosmic rays |
| Pressure sensitive tape | |
(source) |
In 1930, masking tape
was patented by inventor
Richard G. Drew of St. Paul, Minnesota. (U.S. No. 1,760,820).
He assigned the rights to the 3M Company, which marketed the tape
from 8 Sep 1930 under the trademark "Scotch." In 1923, 3M developed the
first sandpaper that was waterproof. Drew took trial batches to a local
auto body shop for testing. Two-tone paint finishes on cars had just been
introduced and become all the rage. Thus he happened to witness the auto
painter's lack of suitable materials to attach protective masking
paper. After two years of effort, Drew came up with effective, removeable
masking tape. After five more years, he had also designed the first waterproof
cellophane tape. |
| Edison patent | |
|
In 1924, Thomas A. Edison was issued a patent for a "Method of Producing
Chlorinated Rubber" (U.S. No. 1,495,580). |
|
| Britain's first inland oilwell | |
(source) |
In 1919, oil was struck at England's first
inland oilwell. Since 1915, the British Government, prompted by the
war effort and awareness of the importance in petroleum products had investigated
extracting oil on the mainland. At Hardstoft, near Tibshelf, in a Derbyshire
coalfield, the bore was 3070-ft deep when oil was struck in a sandy limestone
horizon near the top of a faulted dome in the main carboniferous limestone
measures. Oil flowed from the well on 7 Jun that year. Between that date
and Dec 1927, 2500 tons of oil was produced. The average production of
6 barrels a day compared favourably with US oil wells of the period. In
1938, the well was deepened to continue operation. Production ceased in
1945, and the well was finally capped in 1952. |
| Snow melting apparatus | |
(USPTO) |
In 1890, black American inventor Frank J. Farrell of New York City was
issued a patent for an "Apparatus for melting snow" to be placed in a street
gutter (No. 428,670). The box-shaped apparatus was designed so that the
upper surface, a removeable cover, formed a portion of the bed of a street
gutter. Inside, a duct for heated fluid had openings under a perforated
tray, and drain holes. Steam could be supplied from an adjacent house.
An automatic steam trap using a float-ball prevented the waste of live
steam. The patent described that snow would be thrown upon the surface
tray to be melted; the perforated tray caught sticks and stones. Earlier
in the year, he patented a steam trap. He patented eight valves between
1890 and 1893.
The
Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity,
by Patricia Carter Sluby. |
| Jukebox | |
(source) |
In 1890, two U.S. patents for the
first jukebox were issued to Louis
Glass and his business associate, William S. Arnold (No. 428,750, -1)
concerning a "coin actuated attachment for phonographs." Their first jukebox
was a coin-operated Edison
Class M Electric Phonograph with oak cabinet placed in the Palais
Royale Saloon in San Francisco. This was before the time of vacuum tubes,
so there was no amplification. For a nickel a play, a patron could listen
using one of four listening tubes. Known as "Nickel-in-the-Slot," the machine
was an instant success, earning over $1000 in less than half a year. |
| Lubricator | |
(USPTO) |
In 1873, Elijah J. McCoy, the famous
black American inventor, was issued one of his many patents for a lubricating
device (U.S. No. 139,407). This one was designed to be attached to a steam
engine cyclinder and provide oil to the steam chest chiefly when the steam
was exhausted, but close a valve otherwise. The cup of oil contained a
central vertical tube with a regulator at its top that would control the
oil flow depending on steam pressure on the valve at the bottom. The small
tap on the side at the bottom was to drain off condensed water. A glass
viewing port in the side towards the top permitted visual inspection of
the oil level. |
| Piano | |
|
In 1796, the first U.S. patent for a piano was issued in the U.S. to James
Sylvanus McLean of New Jersey, for "an improvement in piano fortes." The
first piano-like instrument known in the U.S. was called a spinet, described
in the Boston Gazette of 18 Sep 1769, and was built by John Harris. |
|
| City water pumping | |
|
In 1755, the first municipal water pumping plant in America was installed
at Bethlehem, Pa., by Hans Christopher Christiansen. The city was supplied
from a 70 foot high tank that was filled with water pumped from a spring
through wooden pipes. Although Boston, Mass., had built a piped municipal
water supply from a spring to a 12 foot square reservoir, the installation
at Bethlehem was the first to use a pumping plant. |
|
