Jan. 17, 1854 – Happy Birthday Thomas A. Watson. Hey Tom if you’re reading this, your boss needs you. Or wants you, whatever. Yes, although he wasn’t a great contributor to science, his name was the first words spoken in a telephone call, even though his boss, Alexander Graham Bell, was only making the phone call from the next room. You get the idea. Bell famously said, Mr. Watson, I need you. Or want you. Whatever.
1859 – Happy birthday DeWitt brace. He’s best known for optical experiments, especially in the relative motion of Earth and luminiferous aether, or its ether drift. I have no idea what I just said or even if that made any sense, but dang that sounded cool, right?!
1928 – RCA and General Electric install three test television sets in homes in New York allowing American inventor EFW Alexanderson to demonstrated the first home television receiver which delivered a poor and unsteady 1.5 square inch picture. On the other hand, Alexanderson did invent the Alexanderson alternator, which was an early radio transmitter used between 1906 and the 1930s for longwave long distance radio transmission.
Jan. 17 1706 – happy Birthday one of America’s founding fathers, author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat Benjamin franklin. Invented the llightning rod, befocals, the Franklin stove, came up with Philadelphia’s fire department and university. Truly a busy man with a very colorful life. 1871 – Andrew Hallidie invents and patents the cable car San Fransisco uses to this day. You’re welcomne world! It started on Clay street two years later.
Jan 26 1875 – Electric dental drill is patented by George F. Green. This way dentists could try and salvage the tooth instead of just yanking it out. This device was large and bulky and didn’t sell well in the beginning since most dentists didn’t have electricity running in their office. By way of comparison, today’s dentist drills can reach speeds of 800,000 revolutions per minute, while this design could only reach 15. Ow! Just yank it out already!
Dec. 3 1924 – Happy birthday John Backus. He wrote FORTRANS, ALGOL, speedcoding, and functional level programming. Now if you’re not an IT person like me, chances are you don’t even know what that is and don’t even care so I’ll move on, but if you are, good stuff back in those days.
1924 – Happy birthday John Backus. He wrote FORTRANS, ALGOL, speedcoding, and functional level programming. Now if you’re not an IT person like me, chances are you don’t even know what that is and don’t even care so I’ll move on, but if you are, good stuff back in those days.
Dec. 12 1927 – Happy birthday Robert Noyce, aka the mayor of Silicon Valley. He co-founded the Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corp in 1968 along with Jack Kilby with the realization of the first integrated circuit, or microchip which fueled the personal computer revolution and gave the Silicon valley its nickname.
1890 – Happy Birthday Edwin Howard Armstrong, called the most prolific and influential inventor in radio history. He patented the super-regenerative circuit in 1922, the superheterodyne receiver in 1918, and perhaps most importantly, frequency modulation, or FM radio. Now can someone explain to me again please the Tesla-Edison feud?
Dec. 19, 1943 – Happy Birthday William DeVries, who performed the first artificial heart surgery.
Dec. 22, 1949 – Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature starred in Samson and Delilah, which premiered in New York. In addition to being a great Austrian-American actress, Hedy also was a very beautiful science geek and worked with a composer named George Anthell to develop spread spectrum and frequency hopping technologies that would prevent radio communication jams in World War II. This contributed to today’s technologies of CDMA for our cell phones, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. (CDMA stands for Code Division Multiple Access and used to be how cell phones communicated, kinda. The only reason I know that acronym off the top of my head is because I used to do IT work for Qualcomm in the 1990s.) And oh my, was she beautiful. Crazy smart too!
Dec. 22 1882 – Thomas Edison invents the Christmas tree light, when in reality he only got the credit while his associate, Edward H. Johnson who worked for Edison Electric Light Company, did the actual work and thus is known as the father of Electric Christmas tree lights. Before this time, the Germans and English would use candles. Because that’s not a fire hazard or anything.
Dec. 23, 1947 – the team of Shockley, Brattain and Bardeen invented the transistor. Did it take all three of them? Not if you ask them. John Bardeen was just crazy brilliant, Walter Brittain could put just about anything together Macgyver style, and William Shockley was the visionary, who knew that they were onto something big. Once they discovered the absolute greatness of what the transistor could do, Schokley tried to take all the credit since he came up with the idea. The three men parted ways, only to reunite to accept the 1956 Physics Nobel Peace Prize.
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