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Oct. 28, 1793: Whitney’s Cotton Gin Patent Not Worth Much

1793: Eli Whitney applies to patent his new invention: a machine that quickly separates cotton seeds from cotton fibers. The cotton gin was the little engine that could — and did — transform the economy of the South and change the course of American ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  27 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Eli Whitney

Oct. 27, 1931: Killer Fungus Spreads, Dutch Elm Disease Hits Northeast

1931: Arborists discover a new outbreak of Dutch elm disease in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. It’s an early marker of a decades-long scourge that will kill millions of trees and denude the parks and tree-lined streets of many North American ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  26 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Forest Service

Oct. 22, 1905: A Star Discoverer Is Born

1905: Karl Guthe Jansky is born in Oklahoma. He’ll discover that some of the “static” afflicting radio signals comes from distant stars. The new field of radio astronomy will widen and deepen our view of the universe. Jansky studied physics at the ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  21 Oct 2009

Oct. 21, 1879: Edison Gets the Bright Light Right

1879: Thomas Edison crowns 14 months of testing with an incandescent electric light bulb that lasts 13½ hours. Sir Humphrey Davy had produced incandescent electric light in 1808 by passing battery current through a platinum wire. But the voltaic pile ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  20 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Alexander Graham Bell

Oct. 8, 1823: New York Gets That Erie Feeling

1823: DeWitt Clinton inaugurates the Erie Canal, opening a section that links Albany to Rochester and beyond. The canal will not be completed for another two years, but once this great engineering feat links the Atlantic and Lake Erie, it will direct ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  7 Oct 2009

Oct. 7, 1806: Do You Copy? Carbon Paper Patented

1806: Englishman Ralph Wedgwood receives the first patent for carbon paper. His work seems to duplicate that of Italian inventor Pellegrino Turri. Wedgwood was part of the famous Wedgwood family that intermarried with the Darwins, Galtons and Huxleys ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  6 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Royal Society

Sept. 25, 2002: Mysterious Meteorite Dazzles Siberia

2002: A large fireball flashes across the night skies of the Irkutsk region of Siberia. What may have been a comet causes electrical circuits to come alive and leaves residents worrying about radioactivity. Eyewitnesses saw the sky light up. More than ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  24 Sep 2009

Related Topics: Russian Academy of Sciences

Sept. 22, 1792: Day 1 of Revolutionary Calendar

1792: It’s 1 Vendémiaire of An I in the French Revolutionary Calendar, the first day of the first month of the first year of the First Republic of France. It’s the day the National Convention proclaimed France a republic, but no one would know about ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  21 Sep 2009

Sept. 21, 1756: John McAdam Paves the Way

1756: John McAdam is born in Ayr, Scotland. Along the road of life, he’ll invent a new way to make the roads of our lives a smoother ride. When McAdam was 14 his father died, and the young man was shipped off to the care of a merchant uncle in New York ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  21 Sep 2009

Sept. 16, 1736: One Degree of Separation — Fahrenheit Dies

1736: German physicist and instrument maker Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit dies in the Netherlands. His pioneering work on thermometers means he will live on, to a degree. Fahrenheit (Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in some accounts) was born in the Prussian city ...

From RANDY ALFRED, Wired,  15 Sep 2009

Related Topics: Isaac Newton

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