In 1947, Edwin H. Land gave the first demonstration his invention of instant photography at a meeting of the Optical Society of America. On 28 Nov 1948, his Polaroid Land Camera first went on sale, at a Boston department store. The 40 series, model 95 roll film camera went on sale for $ 89.75. This first model was sold through 1953, and was the first commercially successful self- developing camera system. A sepia-coloured photograph took about one minute to produce. His first commercial success came in 1939 with his invention of Polaroid filters for lenses in products such as ski goggles, sunglasses and slip-on sunglasses for optical glasses.
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In 1896, black American inventor, Willie H. Johnson, of Navasota, Texas, was issued a U.S. patent for "A Mechanism for Overcoming Dead Centers" which occur in machines when a shaft is driven by a crank (No. 554,223). The essential part of his invention consisted of a two-part or compound crank-rod of such construction that the members automatically locked together at the proper point in the stroke, so as to act as a single rod, and at other intervals of its travel would automatically unlocked, so that each member would act independently of the other. Either could act to carry the stroke past the top dead center of the other. Johnson secured a second patent in Oct 1898 for an improvement to his design (No. 612,345).
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In 1901, a loop-the-loop centrifugal railway was patented by Edwin Prescott of Arlington, Mass. (No. 667,455) which he had installed at Coney Island in 1900 where it was known as Boynton's Centrifugal Railway. It had a 75-ft incline and a 20-ft-wide loop. He had previously obtained a patent for a roller coaster on 16 Aug 1898 (No. 609,164). This patent was to improve on the earlier design, having a purely circular loop, which 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 to be greater at the entry point, but decreasing radius toward the horizontal diameter of the loop. The patent also covered other details of coaster construction.
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Born 7 Feb 1926.
Russian cosmonaut and space engineer From 1955, he was part of the team that would go on to design the Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz spacecraft under the leadership of Sergey Korolev. He trained as a cosmonaut, and eventually launched 12 Oct 1964 for 16 earth orbits as one of the crew of Voskhod 1 (with Vladimir M. Komarov and Boris B. Yegorov), the world's first multimanned spaceflight. Only ten people had been into orbit before the Voskhod 1 mission. When his career as a cosomonaut ended for medical reasons, he continued as a space engineer eventually becoming head of the Soviet space design bureau that designed the Salyut and Mir space stations.«
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2004 - The inventor of poutine, Quebec's Fernand Lachance, died at age 86
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In 1974, the third and final astronaut crew returned from the U.S. earth-orbiting Skylab Space Station, completing their mission in space that began on 16 Nov 1973. Overall, Skylab had orbited Earth 2,476 times during the 171 days of its occupation during a total of three manned Skylab missions which started with the first crew on 25 May 1973. During that time, about 2,000 hours of scientific and medical experiments had been conducted by the three crews, many of which concerned how astronauts adapted to prolonged time spent under conditions of microgravity. The coronal holes in the Sun were discovered. After spending time in a parking orbit, the vacant Skylab was steered to Earth, disintegrated in its atmosphere on 11 Jul 1979.«
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Born 10 Feb 1842; died 20 Jan 1907
Irish astronomical writer who was a diligent compiler of facts rather than a practicing scientist. Nevertheless, by 1885, her exhaustive treatise, A Popular History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century gained international recognition as an authoritative work. In 1903, with Lady Huggins, she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society, a rank previously held only by two other women, Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. Her publications included several books and 55 pieces in the Edinburgh Review. She contributed some astronomer biographies to the Dictionary of National Biography and some astronomical entries in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.«
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In 1957, the General Electric Company (U.S.) announced that Borazon, a material hard enough to scratch diamonds, had been made. Dr. Robert H. Wentorf, a research scientist at had succeeded in synthesizing cubic boron nitride (CBN) given the trade name Borazon. It remains hard at temperatures at which diamond burns readily (about 1600 ºF), whereas Borazon can withstand temperatures of more than 3500 ºF. The hardness of diamond and borazon is approximately equal, each able to scratch the other. In actual lapping tests, Borazon powder has polished the surface of a large diamond at the same rate as the surface was polished by diamond powder. It is now used for abrasive tools for such industries as metalworking, stone, and mining.
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1999 - Canadian developer of the renowned Blackberry, Research In Motion, began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Blackberrys were first sold in 1999.
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In 2003, Dolly, the world's most famous cloned sheep, was put down. She had been suffering from a progressive lung disease. Dolly had been born at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland on 5 Jul 1996. The accomplishment of the first mammal cloned from an adult sheep cell was announced on 23 Feb 1997. Using microscopic needles, scientists had replaced the nucleus of an egg cell with the nucleus from a parent cell - in Dolly's case, an udder cell. The resulting embryo was implanted into the womb of a third, surrogate sheep. Somehow, the egg cell reprogrammed the donated DNA contained within its new nucleus. Dolly's early death, like her birth, raised new controversy about the wisdom of cloning.«
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Born 15 Feb 1564; died 8 Jan 1642.
Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who applied the new techniques of the scientific method to make significant discoveries in physics and astronomy. His great accomplishments include perfecting (though not inventing) the telescope and consequent contributions to astronomy. He studied the science of motion, inertia, the law of falling bodies, and parabolic trajectories. His formulation of the scientific method parallel the writings of Francis Bacon. His progress came at a price, when his ideas were in conflict with religious dogma.
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Died 17 Feb 1998 (born 4 Jan 1915)
Born 4 Jan 1915; died 17 Feb 1998.
German-born Swiss psychologist who was a Jungian analyst (1948-98) in collaboration with Carl Jung for over 30 years. She was also fairy-tale expert whose research showed common themes in tales from many cultures, which she linked with experiences in daily life. She began analysis with Jung at eighteen, and worked with him until his death in 1961. As Jung's primary partner in his research into alchemical texts, her first major publication, Aurora Consurgens, is a companion volume to Jung's last major work, Mysterium Cuniuntionis. Other works include On Dreams and Myths and C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time.
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1964 - Canadian inventor of the ski-doo, Joseph-Armand Bombardier, died at age 57. The Quebec native founded Bombardier, now an international multi-billion dollar company.
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In 1878, the phonograph was patented by Thomas A. Edison. His first recording was made reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into a large horn which transmitted vibrations to a needle which scribed a recording on a cylinder rotated by hand. (US patent No. 200521)
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In 1996, a bright "new" star was discovered in Sagittarius by Japanese amateur astronomer Yukio Sakurai. It was found not to be a usual nova, but instead was a star going through a dramatic evolutionary state, re-igniting its nuclear furnace for one final blast of energy called the "final helium flash." It was only the second to be identified in the twentieth century. A star like the Sun ends its active life as a white dwarf star gradually cooling down into visual oblivion. Sakurai's Object had a mass a few times that of the Sun. Its collapse after fusing most of its hydrogen fuel to helium raised its temperature so much higher it began nuclear fusion of its helium remains. This was confirmed using its light spectrum to identify the elements present.«
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1974 - Construction of Toronto's CN Tower was completed. At 553.3 metres, it was the tallest building in the world until September, 2007.
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In 1984, a 12-year-old Houston boy known publicly only as "David," who had spent most his life in a plastic bubble because he had no immunity to disease, died 15 days after being removed from the bubble for a bone-marrow transplant.
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1923 - The Nobel Prize was awarded to the discoverers of insulin, Sir Fredrick Banting and John MacLeod. It was the first time a Nobel Prize was awarded to a Canadian.
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Born 26 Feb 1829; died 26 Sep 1902
Inventor and manufacturer of jeans, Levi Strauss was one of the best-known beneficiaries of California's gold rush economic boom. He was born in Bavaria and trained as a tailor. One of thousands, he travelled to San Francisco in 1850, hoping to make his fortune. His original plan was to manufacture tents and wagon covers, but instead found a market using the stout canvas he had brought with him to make very durable pants for the Forty-niners. Finding that these pants sold as fast as he could make them, Strauss opened a factory, improved the design by adding copper rivets at the stress points in his pants, and adopted a heavy blue denim material called genes in France, that originated the now familiar name of "jeans".
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In 1561, Ambroise Paré published La méthode curative des playes et fractures de la teste humaine ("Treatment method for wounds and fractures of the human head"). It was written in response to an inquiry following the accidental death of Henri II (1559), who was struck in the eye by a lance during a tournament. The first part (which was reprinted in Paré's Anatomie Universelle, 15 Apr 1561), covered the anatomy of the cranium with woodcut illustrations after Vesalius. In the second part, Paré described his methods of treatment of head wounds, skull fractures and diseases of the facial organs. The text included abundant figures of his surgical instruments. For his innovative methods, Paré is known as "the father of modern surgery
Polaroid Land Camera Demonstrated