| JULY 12 - BIRTHS | |
| Elias James Corey | |
(source) |
 Born 12
July 1928
American organic chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1990 "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis." He is principally known for his work is in computer-aided analyses of synthesis problems. Using "retrosynthetic analysis," a target molecule might be broken down by reversible steps into simpler, readily available compounds, which is greatly assisted by the use of computers. Corey has synthesized over 100 substances for the first time, including terpenes (plant oil hydrocarbons) and ginkolide B (an extract from the ginko tree used to control asthma.) |
| Michael Ventris | |
(source) |
Born 12
July 1922
English architect and cryptographer who in 1952 deciphered the Minoan Linear B script. These were the inscriptions on ancient clay tablets found in Crete and a few other locations; writings which had baffled archaeologists since their discovery in 1900. He showed the script to be Greek in its oldest known form, dating from about 1400 to 1200 BC, roughly the period of the events narrated in the Homeric epics. One of the most tantalizing riddles of classical archaeology was solved, but not without creating some puzzling situations. The reading of these tablets in the Greek language raised the question: How could a literate people in the fourteenth century BC become illiterate for almost five centuries, to regain literacy in the eighth century? Ventris died young, in an auto accident, soon after his triumph. |
| Willis Lamb | |
(source) |
Born 12
July 1913
Willis Eugene Lamb, Jr. was an Americanphysicist and joint winner, with Polykarp Kusch, of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1955 "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum." His experimental work spurred refinements in the quantum theories of electromagnetic phenomena. |
| Buckminster Fuller | |
(EB) |
Born 12
July 1895; died 1 July 1983.
R(ichard) Buckminster Fuller was an American inventor, educator, author, philosopher, engineer and architect who developed the geodesic dome, the only large dome that can be set directly on the ground as a complete structure, and the only practical kind of building that has no limiting dimensions (i.e., beyond which the structural strength must be insufficient). He held over 2000 patents. Photo: R. Buckminster Fuller shown with a geodesic dome constructed as the U.S. pavilion at the American Exhange Exhibition, 1959. |
| Saul Dushman | |
| Born 12
July 1883; died 1954.
Russian-American physical chemist, a world leader in vacuum science and technology, a GE assistant director of research and author of several standard scientific textbooks. One example is Scientific Foundations of Vacuum Technique (1922). It is very readable and he gets to the hows and whys things work the way they do. One of the true classics, it was completely revised in 1961 by his colleague James Lafferty. Using a formula he derived, Dushman calculated the conductances for cylindrical tubes based on their measured dimensions and produced the table which he included in the book that is still used to design a vacuum system. |
|
| Albert Calmette | |
(source) |
Born 12
July 1863; died 29 Oct 1933.
Albert Calmette was a French doctor and bacteriologist, born in Nice. He was a pupil of Louis Pasteur. He joined the Navy as a doctor, and was the Director of the Bacteriological Institute of Saigon (1891). On his return in France, as a professor of bacteriology, he created the Pasteur Institute of Lille. (1895-1919). Calmette studied the venoms of the snakes and anti-venomous serotherapy. He developed and improved several processes of vaccination, in particular that against tuberculosis with its fellow-member bacteriologist and veterinary Camille Guerin (1872-1961). These two researchers gave their name to the famous antituberculosis vaccine Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG). |
| George Washington Carver | |
(source) |
Born 12
July 1861; died 5 Jan 1943
African-American educator, scientist, chemist, inventor, botanist. After the Civil War, Southern farmers planted cotton year after year, and the soil lost its fertility. Yields dropped. Between1890 and 1910, the cotton crop was devastated by the bolweevil. George Washington Carver was appointed head of the agriculture department at The Tuskegee Institute in Alabama by Booker T. Washington (1896). Carver discovered and taught how to maintain the fertility of the soil. Further, his discovered two new crops that would grow well there: peanuts and sweet potatoes. Further, Carver created a market by inventing hundreds of new uses for for these crops, from milk to printer's ink . [audio] |
| George Eastman | |
1915 (source) |
Born 12
July 1854; died 14 Mar 1932
American inventor and industrialist who was a pioneering manufacturer of photographic materials, including rolled film (first patented on 14 Oct 1884) and the Kodak camera (patented 4 Sep 1888). He founded the Eastman-Kodak Company, which for years held a virtual monopoly in the camera and film industry. His introduction of the first Kodak (a coined word, 1888, that became a trademark) camera helped to promote large-scale amateur photography. [Timeline]  |
| Sir William Osler | |
(source) |
Born 12
July 1849; died 29 Dec 1919
(Baronet) Canadian physician who revolutionized the medical curriculum in North America, adapting the best of the systems he had observed in England and Germany. He believed that students learn best by doing, teaching medical students at the bedside. He introduced postgraduate training system, instituting a general internship of one year to be followed by a residency of several years. His textbook, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892) included the advances of the previous half-century in clinical medical science, and remained the standard text for 40 years. Early in his life, in 1873, he made the most careful description to date of what later were called the "blood-platelets," which was presented to the Royal Society.«  William
Osler: A Life in Medicine, by Michael Bliss. |
| Henry David Thoreau | |
(source) |
Born 12
July 1817; died 6 May 1862
Thoreau, an American born in Concord, Mass., was an author, philosopher, poet and naturalist. He was a pacifist who always had Ralph Waldo Emerson around to bail him out of trouble. Thoreau was known as the "Hermit of Walden" because he lived in the woods around Walden pond for several years.As Henry got older, his attentions turned more towards the observing and recording of natural history in Concord. Henry kept thorough journals of natural history and the citizens of Concord regarded him as the town naturalist. Many scholars consider Henry David Thoreau to be the father of the American conservation movements. |
| Claude Bernard | |
(source) |
Born 12
July 1813; died 10 Feb 1878
French physiologist (born near Villefranche) known chiefly for his discoveries concerning the role of the pancreas in digestion, the glycogenic function of the liver, and the regulation of the blood supply by the vasomotor nerves. On a broader stage, Bernard played a role in establishing the principles of experimentation in the life sciences. His Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865) is a scientific classic. |
| Josiah Wedgwood | |
(source) |
Born 12
July 1730; died 3 Jan 1795
English inventor, artist, potter, Josiah Wedgwood began a new branch of the pottery industry in the early 1760's. This inventor placed the manufacture of stoneware on a scientific basis, and founded the potteries of North Staffordshire. The agateware and unglazed blue or green stoneware he decorated with white neo-classical designs, used pigments he invented. In 1768 he used his engineering skills to design the machinery and high-temperature beehive-shaped kilns. For his invention of a pyrometer for measuring high temperatures, Wedgwood was made a fellow of the Royal Society. He was a major financial supporter of Dr. Thomas Beddoes' Pneumatic Institute near Bristol, where Humphry Davy studied nitrous oxide (1800). |
| JULY 12 - DEATHS | |
| Ynes Mexia | |
(source) |
 Died
12 July 1938 (born 24 May 1870)
Ynes Enriquetta Julietta Mexia was an American botanical collector, who developed her passion for botany and fieldwork in her 50's, and yet was able to make about 150,000 collections in 12 years on seven expeditions. She was aged 55 when she made her first collecting trip. She accompanied Stanford's Assistant Herbarium Curator, Roxanna Ferris, in Mexico. Her activity was remarkable, as she spent several years exploring for specimens in remote reaches of Central and South Americas. At age 59, she began a 2-1/2 year expedition in Peru and Brazil which included a three-month period trapped by floods with her team in a 600-m deep gorge which they escaped eventually by building a raft and running the river and its rapids.« Ynes
Mexia: Botanist And Adventurer, by Durlynn Anema. |
| Ole Evinrude | |
(source) |
Died
12 July 1934 (born 19 Apr 1877)
Norwegian inventor and manufacturer of the outboard marine engine. Ole Evinrude was rowing his small boat one day. It struck him that rowing was more difficult than it needed to be, when his purpose was a picnic on a distant small island. He resolved then and there to invent a means of moving small boats quickly and easily through the water. When he figured out a better way he had invented the first practical outboard motor in 1909. He patented it in 1910; it quickly replaces steam and foot-driven motors for boats and spurs a new industry. The result was the Evinrude Outboard Motor that remains popular to this day. Photo: ca. 1915 model |
| Charles Stewart Rolls | |
| Died
12 July 1910 (born 28 Aug 1877)
British motorist, aviator, and automobile manufacturer who was one of the founders of the Rolls-Royce Ltd. automobile company. He was the first aviator to fly across the English Channel and back nonstop (June 1910). Rolls drove a 12-hp Panhard car in the Thousand Miles Trial of 1900 and took part in many of the early long-distance European classic races. In 1902 he became a motor dealer and in 1906 merged his firm with that of Sir Henry Royce to form Rolls-Royce Ltd. Rolls died in a flying accident, the first British pilot to do so. eb |
|
| Cyrus West Field | |
(source) |
Died
12 July 1892 (born 30 Nov 1891)
American entrepreneur who promoted the first transatlantic telephone cable. In 1856, he helped establish the Atlantic Telegraph Company. He obtained charters from the British and American governments, and arranged financial backers in New York and London. For technical services he enlisted British engineer Charles Tilston Bright and William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin). Laying the first cable was completed 5 Aug 1858, but shortly failed. Field persisted, and on 27 Jul 1866, an improved cable was laid. Field had built his personal fortune of $250,000 from a paper business (1841-53). Later, he invested in the New York Elevated Railroad Co. (1877-80), and the Wabash Railroad. By late in life, he had lost much of his fortune.« |
| Robert Stevenson | |
(source) |
Died
12 July 1850 (born 8 Jun 1772)
Scottish civil engineer who in 1797 succeeded his stepfather, Thomas Smith, as a member of the Scottish Lighthouse Board. In that capacity until 1843, he designed and built lighthouses (1797-1843). His first and greatest was the lighthouse at Bell Rock. Subsequently he established a civil engineering practice involved at first in canal, road and rail projects, and later maritime, river and bridge work. As chief executive of the Northern Lighthouse Board (1808-43) he was responsible for the construction and design of at least 23 lighthouses on the Scottish Coastline. He invented intermittent and flashing lights as well as the hydrophore (an instrument for obtaining specimens from water). The writer Robert Louis Stevenson was his grandson. |
| David Douglas | |
(source) |
Died
12 July 1834 (born 25 Jun 1799)
Scottish botanist who was one of the most successful of the great 19th century plant collectors. He established about 240 species of plants in Britain. His first foreign plant-hunting expedition (1824) was made throughout the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. The Douglas fir, which he cultivated from 1827, is named after him. He introduced other conifers including the Sitka spruce, now commercially important to the timber industry, and numerous garden plants and shrubs, including the lupin, California poppy and the flowering currant. At age 35, he died in by accident in Hawaii, when he fell into a pit dug by the islanders to trap wild cattle where he was trapped with a bull that also fell into the pit. He was gored to death by the bull.« Traveler
in a Vanished Landscape, The Life & Times of David Douglas, by
William Moorwood. |
| Jean Picard | |
 |
Died
12 July 1682 (born 21 Jul 1620)
French Jesuit, active astronomer, cartographer, hydraulics engineer, Jean Picard devised a movable-wire micrometer to measure the diameters of celestial objects such as the Sun, Moon and planets. For land surveying and leveling, he designed instruments that incorporated the astronomical telescope. He greatly increased the accuracy of measurements of the Earth, using Snell's method of triangulation (Mesure de la Terre, 1671). This data was used by Newton in his gravitational theory. Picard was one of the first to apply scientific methods to the making of maps. Among his other skills were hydraulics; he solved the problem of supplying the fountains at Versailles with water. |
| JULY 12 - EVENTS | |
| Lung Cancer and Smoking | |
 |
In 1957, U.S. Surgeon General Leroy Burney, who served in the post from
1956 to 1961, issued a report on a connection smoking and lung cancer.
Dr. Leroy Burney, US Surgeon General during the Eisenhower Administration
was the first government official to publicly acknowledge the connection
between smoking and lung cancer. Dr. Burney, himself a smoker, issued the
report in 1957, saying, "It is clear that there is an increasing and consistent
body of evidence that excessive cigarette smoking is one of the causative
factors in lung cancer." This statement and a stronger one two years later
in 1959 set the stage for the 1964 Surgeon General Report on smoking and
health. Burney
died 31 July 1998, at the age of 91. [Image:
Top - Smoker's lung, dead at 50. Bottom - Non-smoker's lung alive until
70.] |
| First motorcycle on U.S. stamp | |
(source) |
In 1922, the new issue of the blue 10-cent U.S. Special Delivery stamp
had for the first time the image of a motor cycle, replacing the 9 Dec
1902 version with a bicycle.
Being the first new stamp of the Harding presidency, the revised design
demonstrated a growing post-World War I interest in developing technology.
This stamp began the year's series of new regular postage stamps, collectively
having a patriotic theme, and was issued with much more publicity than
any previous regular series. The increased level of attention given by
the Post Office Department to this series included giving advance notice,
and is regarded as the early roots of the later practice of issuing First
Day Covers for stamp collectors.« |
| Panama Canal Formal Opening | |
Ganun Locks (source) |
In 1920, the Panama
Canal was formally dedicated. It had taken more than 30 years to overcome
the enormous engineering challenges and complete at a cost of $347 million.
The first ship had, in fact, travelled through six years earlier when the
Panama Canal opened to shipping on 15 Aug 1914. At that time, the world
scarcely noticed the event since German troops were driving across Belgium
toward Paris and the newspapers relegated the Panama story to their back
pages; the greatest engineering project in the history of the world had
been dwarfed by the totality of World War I.
Path
Between The Seas : The Creation of the Panama Canal,
by David McCullough. |
| Wireless telegraphy in the southern hemisphere | |
(source) |
In 1906, the first long-distance wireless telegraphy message
across water in the southern hemisphere was transmitted 300-km across Bass
Strait from Devonport, Tasmania to Queenscliff, Victoria, Australia, to
demonstrate Marconi's equipment. A Morse code message from Governor Gerald
Strickland of Tasmania, was sent to Governor General Northcote of Victoria.
The town celebrated.
Businesses closed for the afternoon. A band played for the crowd of 2000
people at the event. Despite the test's success, the Australian Government
postponed purchase or approval for the service and after three months the
stations were dismantled. However, by 1912, wireless equipment was required
for ships in Australian waters.«  |
| Celluloid | |
Hyatt (source) |
In 1870, a U.S. patent (No. 105,338) for an improved process by which celluloid
is produced was awarded to John
W(esley) Hyatt, Jr., (1837 - 1920) the man considered to be the "father
of the U.S. Plastics industry," and his brother, Isaiah S. Hyatt of Albany,
N.Y. In the early 1860's he sought a substitute material for ivory billiard
balls. He improved the techniques of molding
pyroxylin (a partially nitrated cellulose) with camphor by dissolving in
an alcohol and ether mixture to make it softer and more malleable. This
he called "Celluloid," a name trademarked on 14 Jan 1873. It was the first
synthetic
plastic. Unfortunately, it was inflammable, but was used for a period
for production of photographic film, among other applications. |
| Paper Bag Machine | |
|
In 1859, the paper bag manufacturing machine was patented by William Goodale,
Mass. |
|
| Fog Horn | |
(source) |
In 1844, Captain J.N. Taylor of the Royal Navy first demonstrated the fog
horn. At the time, it was called a telephone
- to mean far-signalling, thus an instrument like a fog-horn, used on ships,
railway trains, etc., for signalling by loud sounds or notes. The 19 July
1844 Times (London) reported, "Yesterday week was a levee day at
the Admiralty, and amongst the numerous models..was Captain J. N. Tayler's
telephone instrument... The chief object of this powerful wind instrument
is to convey signals during foggy weather. Also the
Illustrated London
News on 24 Aug. 1844 referred to "The Telephone; a Telegraphic Alarum.
Amongst the many valuable inventions..that of the 'Telephone, or Marine
Alarum and Signal Trumpet', by Captain J. N. Taylor." |
