Template:Selected anniversaries/August 18: Difference between revisions

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||1824: Pierre-Émile Martin born ... engineer who adapted the steelmaking process by using the open-hearth regenerative furnace invented by Charles William Siemens and Friedrich Siemens (1856), now known as the Siemens-Martin process. The Siemens' idea was to capture heat from exhaust gases in chambers flanking the furnace containing fire-bricks. When the flow is changed to preheat the input gases using recycled energy stored in the bricks, huge fuel savings result. Pic.
||1824: Pierre-Émile Martin born ... engineer who adapted the steelmaking process by using the open-hearth regenerative furnace invented by Charles William Siemens and Friedrich Siemens (1856), now known as the Siemens-Martin process. The Siemens' idea was to capture heat from exhaust gases in chambers flanking the furnace containing fire-bricks. When the flow is changed to preheat the input gases using recycled energy stored in the bricks, huge fuel savings result. Pic.


||1835: Friedrich Stromeyer dies ... chemist.  
||1835: Friedrich Stromeyer dies ... chemist. While studying compounds of zinc, Stromeyer discovered the element cadmium in 1817; cadmium is a common impurity of zinc compounds, though often found only in minute quantities. He was also the first to recommend starch as a reagent for free iodine and he studied chemistry of arsine and bismuthate salts. Pic.


||1841: Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet dies ... navigator. He circumnavigated the earth, and in 1811 published the first map to show a full outline of the coastline of Australia. Pic.
||1841: Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet dies ... navigator. He circumnavigated the earth, and in 1811 published the first map to show a full outline of the coastline of Australia. Pic.
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||1858: William Austin Burt dies ... inventor, legislator, surveyor, and millwright. He was the inventor, maker and patentee of the first typewriter constructed in America. He is referred to as the "father of the typewriter". Burt also invented the first workable solar compass, a solar use surveying instrument, and the equatorial sextant, a precision navigational aid to determine with one observation the location of a ship at sea. Pic.
||1858: William Austin Burt dies ... inventor, legislator, surveyor, and millwright. He was the inventor, maker and patentee of the first typewriter constructed in America. He is referred to as the "father of the typewriter". Burt also invented the first workable solar compass, a solar use surveying instrument, and the equatorial sextant, a precision navigational aid to determine with one observation the location of a ship at sea. Pic.


||1868: French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium.
||1868: French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium ... 1868, Pierre Janssen discovered a previously unknown bright yellow line in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the sun during a solar eclipse he was observing from India. This was an indication of a new element. For over 30 years, it was assumed the element was only present in the sun since the spectral line was not observed in the lab until 1895 when Sir William Ramsay examined a gas released from treating the mineral cleveite. Ramsay named the new element “helium” after the greek word helios for the sun. discovered helium in the solar spectrum during eclipse.


||1874: William Fairbairn (1st Baronet) ... civil engineer who was first to use wrought iron for ships, bridges, mill shafts, and structural beams. After moving to London in 1811, he invented a steam excavator and a sausage-making machine, but without commercial success. By 1817, he had established an engineering works in Manchester making mill machinery, which later made over 400 locomotives. The shipbuilding works he opened at Millwall, London (1835-49) built hundreds of iron boats. He furnished the rectangular wrought-iron tubes used by Stephenson for the Britannia railway bridge (1850) over the Menai Strait, which included two almost 460-ft (140-m) spans. He assisted James Joule and Lord Kelvin in geological investigations from 1851. Pic.
||1874: William Fairbairn (1st Baronet) ... civil engineer who was first to use wrought iron for ships, bridges, mill shafts, and structural beams. After moving to London in 1811, he invented a steam excavator and a sausage-making machine, but without commercial success. By 1817, he had established an engineering works in Manchester making mill machinery, which later made over 400 locomotives. The shipbuilding works he opened at Millwall, London (1835-49) built hundreds of iron boats. He furnished the rectangular wrought-iron tubes used by Stephenson for the Britannia railway bridge (1850) over the Menai Strait, which included two almost 460-ft (140-m) spans. He assisted James Joule and Lord Kelvin in geological investigations from 1851. Pic.
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||1890: Erich Kamke born ... mathematician, who specialized in the theory of differential equations. Also, his book on set theory became a standard introduction to the field.
||1890: Erich Kamke born ... mathematician, who specialized in the theory of differential equations. Also, his book on set theory became a standard introduction to the field.
||1891: The first rainmaking experiments in the U.S. were conducted near Midland, Texas, paid for by a grant from the U.S. government. Patent attorney Gen. Robert Dyrenforth set off explosive balloons and artillery to try to make rainclouds develop. At a time of extreme drought, any effort with a hope of success may have been thought worthwhile to try, but there were no results. The method chosen was to test a theory that rainstorms seemed often to occur where major battles had taken place during the Civil War, and they may have been because of the effect of smoke, dust and disturbances in the air from artillery.


||1897: Bern Dibner born ... engineer and science historian who worked as an engineer during the electrification of Cuba. Realizing the need for improved methods of connecting electrical conductors, in 1924, he founded the Burndy Engineering Company. A few years later, he became interested in the history of Renaissance science. Subsequently, he began collecting books and everything he could find that was related to the history of science. This became a second career as a scholar that would run parallel with his life as a businessman. He wrote many books and pamphlets, on topics from the transport of ancient obelisks, to authoritative biographies of many scientific pioneers, including Alessandro Volta, inventor of the electric battery, and Wilhelm Röntgen, discoverer of the X ray. Pic.
||1897: Bern Dibner born ... engineer and science historian who worked as an engineer during the electrification of Cuba. Realizing the need for improved methods of connecting electrical conductors, in 1924, he founded the Burndy Engineering Company. A few years later, he became interested in the history of Renaissance science. Subsequently, he began collecting books and everything he could find that was related to the history of science. This became a second career as a scholar that would run parallel with his life as a businessman. He wrote many books and pamphlets, on topics from the transport of ancient obelisks, to authoritative biographies of many scientific pioneers, including Alessandro Volta, inventor of the electric battery, and Wilhelm Röntgen, discoverer of the X ray. Pic.
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File:Klara Dan von Neumann.png|link=Klara Dan von Neumann (nonfiction)|1911: Computer scientist [[Klara Dan von Neumann (nonfiction)|Klara Dan von Neumann]] born. She will be one of the world's first computer programmers and coders, solving mathematical problems using computer code.
File:Klara Dan von Neumann.png|link=Klara Dan von Neumann (nonfiction)|1911: Computer scientist [[Klara Dan von Neumann (nonfiction)|Klara Dan von Neumann]] born. She will be one of the world's first computer programmers and coders, solving mathematical problems using computer code.
||1932 the Scottish aviator Jim Mollison made the first westbound transatlantic solo flight. Pic.


||1943: Friedrich Moritz Hartogs dies ... mathematician, known for his work on set theory and foundational results on several complex variables. Pic.
||1943: Friedrich Moritz Hartogs dies ... mathematician, known for his work on set theory and foundational results on several complex variables. Pic.
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||1981: Bernard Osgood Koopman dies ... mathematician, known for his work in ergodic theory, the foundations of probability, statistical theory and operations research.
||1981: Bernard Osgood Koopman dies ... mathematician, known for his work in ergodic theory, the foundations of probability, statistical theory and operations research.
||1986: Seventy-two Nobel Prize-winning scientists filed a legal brief with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging as unconstitutional a Louisiana law requiring schools that teach evolution to also teach “creation-science.” A news release described the scientists as “the largest group of Nobel laureates ever to support a single statement on any subject..” At a news conference in Washington D.C. the same day, they warned that the Louisiana law threatened scientific education by disparaging proven scientific facts to promote fundamentalist Christian beliefs.


||1990: B. F. Skinner dies ... psychologist whose pioneering work in experimental psychology promoted behaviorism, shaping behavior through positive and negative reinforcement and demonstrated operant conditioning. The “Skinner box” he used in experiments from 1930 remains famous. To investigate the learning processes of animals, he observed their behaviour in a simple box with a lever which, when activated by the animal, would give a reward (or punishment). The reward, such as pellets of food or water, acts as a primary reinforcer. He observed the behaviour of animals adapted to utilize the opportunity for a reward. He extended his theories to the behaviour of humans, as a form of social engineering. Pic.
||1990: B. F. Skinner dies ... psychologist whose pioneering work in experimental psychology promoted behaviorism, shaping behavior through positive and negative reinforcement and demonstrated operant conditioning. The “Skinner box” he used in experiments from 1930 remains famous. To investigate the learning processes of animals, he observed their behaviour in a simple box with a lever which, when activated by the animal, would give a reward (or punishment). The reward, such as pellets of food or water, acts as a primary reinforcer. He observed the behaviour of animals adapted to utilize the opportunity for a reward. He extended his theories to the behaviour of humans, as a form of social engineering. Pic.

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