Born 5 Feb 1915; died 17 Nov 1990 at age 75.
Born 5 Feb 1878; died 3 Jul 1935 at age 57.
French engineer and industrialist who introduced Henry Ford's methods of mass production to the European automobile industry. In 1908 he helped the Mors automobile firm increase its production from 125 cars to 1,200 cars per year. At the outbreak of World War I Citroën persuaded the French army of the need to mass-produce munitions. In 1915 he built a munitions plant whose production of shells reached 55,000 per day. Upon this success he was given the responsibility of organizing the supplying of all French munitions plants with certain vital raw materials. After the war Citroën converted his original arms factory into a plant to mass-produce a small, inexpensive automobile; the first Citroën car came off the assembly line in 1919.
Born 5 Feb 1872; died 9 Dec 1935 at age 63.
American biochemist whose discoveries concerning the value of vitamins and proteins helped establish modern concepts of nutrition. Collaborating with Thomas Osborne, together they published more than 100 papers on various aspects of nutrition (1909-28). In 1913, they showed that rats developed xerophthalmia on diets in which lard supplied the fat. The condition was cured by substitution of butterfat. Thus, they discovered butterfat contained a growth- promoting factor necessary for development, soon known as fat-soluble vitamin A, (co-discovered simultaneously by Elmer McCollum). Mendel also contributed to discovery of B complex vitamins (1915) and linked the nutritive value of proteins to their amino acids.
Scottish anatomist and physical anthropologist who specialized in the study of fossil humans and who reconstructed early hominid forms, notably fossils from Europe and North Africa. After graduating from university (1888), he travelled as a physician on a gold mining trip to Siam. There, he dissected monkeys and became interested in racial types. In 1892, he returned to Britain and studied anatomy. In 1915, he published The Antiquity of Man, an anatomical survey of all important human fossil remains, at which time he believed that moderns humans are as old as extinct forms of humans. In 1931, New Discoveries was published in which he admitted that modern humans probably arose from types already separate in the early Pleistocene.
Hiram Stevens Maxim was an American-English inventor whose best known innovation is the Maxim machine gun. His first patent was for a hair-curling iron (1866), followed by a device for generating illuminating gas and a locomotive headlight. In 1878, he was hired as chief engineer of the United States Electric Lighting Company, the first such company in the United States. In that post he produced a basic invention, a method of manufacturing carbon filaments. In 1881 he exhibited an electric pressure regulator at the Paris Exposition. Among his hundreds of other patents in the U.S. and Great Britain are a mousetrap, an automatic sprinkling system, an automatic steam-powered water pump, vacuum pumps, engine governors, and gas motors.
Amazing Hiram Maxim, an Intimate Biography, by Arthur Hawkey. - book suggestion.
Born 5 Feb 1840; died 23 Oct 1921 at age 81.
Scottish inventor who was a pioneer of the pneumatic tyre. In 1887, when his 9-yr-old son complained of the rough ride he experienced on his tricycle over the cobbled streets of Belfast. Dunlop devised and fitted rubber air tubes held on to a wooden ring by tacking a linen covering fixed around the wheels. Due to the major improvement in riding comfort, Dunlop continued development, until he patented the idea, issued on 7 Dec 1889 (No. 10607) as "An improvement in Tyres of Wheels for Bicycles, Tricycles or other Road Cars".
Born 5 Feb 1799; died 1 Nov 1865 at age 66.
British botanist whose attempts to formulate a natural system of plant classification greatly aided the transition from the artificial (considering the characters of single parts) to the natural system (considering all characters of a plant). He made the first definitive orchid classification in 1830.
Born 5 Feb 1797; died 29 Apr 1872 at age 75.
French mathematician and physicist who proposed a theory dealing with the transmission of heat in crystal structures based on the work of the French mathematicians Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier and Siméon-Denis Poisson.
Born 5 Feb 1770; died 7 Oct 1847 at age 77.
French mineralogist, geologist, and naturalist, who first arranged the geologic formations of the Tertiary Period (from 66.4 to 1.6 million years ago) in chronological order and described them. He made the first systematic study of trilobites, an extinct group of arthropods that became important in determining the chronology of Paleozoic strata (from 540 to 245 million years ago). He helped introduce the principle of geologic dating by the identification of distinctive fossils found in each stratum and noted that the Paris formations had been created under alternate freshwater and saltwater conditions. From 1800, he was also director of the Sèvres Porcelain Factory, improving ceramics and enameling, and made Sèvres the leading European factory of its kind.
Born 5 Feb 1744; died 16 Sep 1819 at age 75.
American physician and scientist who financed two balloon flights for himself and a Frenchman, Jean Pierre Blanchard, with experience in balloon flight. Jeffries wished to make scientific and meteorological observations. The first flight took place in London on 30 Nov 1784. Jeffries had provided himself with thermometer, barometer, electrometer, hygrometer and timepiece. He took air samples at different elevations for Cavendish, who subsequently made a chemical analysis of the air. The twelve observations of temperature, pressure, and humidity that Jeffries made were the first scientific data for free air, to a height of 9,309 feet. The values agree closely with modern determinations. On 7 Jan 1785, they made the first balloon crossing of the English Channel.Image: Jeffries posed as if in balloon, holding barometer.
Died 5 Feb 2015 at age 91 (born 10 Mar 1923).
Died 5 Feb 1983 at age 83 (born 17 Feb 1899).
American physician who, on 18 May 1935, was appointed Chief of the Physiological Research Laboratory, Wright Field, Ohio, and during a distinguished career there made great contributions to aviation medicine giving last benefits to flying safety and mission effectiveness of pilots.
Died 5 Feb 1973 at age 69 (born 29 Sep 1903).
A Dream of the Heart: The Life of John H. Gibbon, Jr. Father of the Heart-Lung Machine, by Harris B. Shumacker. - book suggestion.
Being in the World, by Ludwig Binswanger. - book suggestion.
Died 5 Feb 1943 at age 79 (born 23 Feb 1863).
U.S. botanist whose major area of research was the cycad genera, palmlike, cone-bearing plants intermediate in appearance and structural features between tree ferns and palms. Before his work, little was known concerning the life histories, distribution, ecology, and diversity of cycads and other primitive seed plants. Making visits to Mexico, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa and Cuba (1904-22), Chamberlain collected specimens and gained information on critical stages in such plant development. Studying the primitive gymnosperms of the cycad family enabled him to postulate a course of evolutionary development for the spermatophyte (seed plant) ovule and embryo and led to speculation about a cycad origin for angiosperms (flowering plants).
Elementary Physical Geography, by William Morris Davis. - book suggestion.
In 1952, some sources say - apparently incorrectly - that the first time a pedestrian "Don't Walk" sign was installed in America, it was on this day, in New York City. Others cite the date as 29 Feb 1952. However, much earlier examples have been discussed in an article on the Highway History page of the U.S. Department of Transportation web site. This article has found examples of “Don't Walk” signs dating from the late 1930's.
The Nature Of Things, by Roy K. Marshall. - book suggestion.
In 1918, Thomas A. Edison was issued a U.S. patent for a "Starting and Current-Supplying System for Automobiles" (No. 1,255,517).
In 1901, Thomas A. Edison was issued three U.S. patents.
In 1901, an improved loop-the-loop centrifugal railway was patented by Edwin Prescott of Arlington, Mass. (U.S. No. 667,455). He had installed at Coney Island in 1900, named as Boynton's Centrifugal Railway. It had a 75-ft incline and a 20-ft-wide loop. This patent was to improve on his previous patent for a roller coaster with a purely circular loop (16 Aug 1898, No. 609,164), The early constant-radius circular shape resulted in an uncomfortable shock to passengers as the car entered the loop. The new design was made to offer more comfort by varying the radius of the curve of the loop. The entry point of the loop began with a greater radius. The radius decreased toward the horizontal diameter of the loop. The patent also covered other details of coaster construction.
In 1899, Thomas A. Edison was issued a U.S. patent for a "Phonograph Recorder and Reproducer" (No. 397,280).
In 1884, black American inventor Willis Johnson of Cincinnati, Ohio, was issued a U.S. patent for an "Egg Beater" (No. 292,821). It was designed so that eggs, batter and similar ingredients used by bakers or confectioners could be mixed intimately efficiently. The image shows a top view, with one cylinder and hopper attached, with suitable mixing paddles (not seen in diagram) contained therein which are rotated by a shaft attached to a pulley and a hand crank. A second cylinder can be attached to the other end of the shaft so that production may be doubled.
In 1870, for the first time in the U.S. an animated photographic picture projection before a theatre audience was presented by Henry R. Heyl using his Phasmatrope. This was a converted projecting lantern in front of which rotated a disc with 16 openings near the edge, each carrying a photographic plate. The series of plates showed dancers, who appeared to move as the rotating disc showed successive positions. The pictures were a continuous loop that did not change. The event was the Ninth Annual Entertainment of the Young Men's Society of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church of Philadelphia, held at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, Pa.
In 1825, housewife Hannah Lord Montague (1794-1878) at 139 Third Street, Troy, N.Y. took her scissors and created the first detachable collar on one of her husband's shirts in order to reduce her laundry load to the collar only. Her husband, Orlando Montague, showed his wife's invention to other men around town. Their wives embraced this new invention. Merchants followed suit, and manufactured collars in mass quantities for sale to the outside world. Woodsheds, garrets and store fronts became collar making places as people were drawn to this new trade by its apparent simplicity: a table, a pair of scissors, a bolt of cloth and a spool of cotton was all that was necessary. Troy, New York, became "Collar City" to the rest of America.
In 1824, Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating founded "The Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts" to honor Ben Franklin and advance the usefulness of his inventions. First located in the Philadelphia County Court House (known today as Independence Hall), it soon was moved in a new location where it remained for its first century. In 1930, funds were raised ($5.1 million in just 12 days) to move again into a new building which opened to the public on 1 Jan 1934. There it is complemented by the Fels Planetarium, the second planetarium in the U.S. Its construction began in 1933, the donation of Samuel S. Fels.