Day in Engineering History Archive - July 17

July 17

Today is Wrong Way Corrigan Day. 709 BC: The earliest record of a confirmed total solar eclipse was written in China. 1850: Astronomers at the Harvard Observatory took the first photograph of a star - Vega. 1899: NEC Corporation was organized as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital. 1902: Willis Carrier completed drawings for what came to be recognized as the world's first scientific air conditioning system. 1920: Gordon Gould, who coined the term "laser," was born. 1920: Nils Bohlin, inventor of the 3-point shoulder and lap safety belt, was born. 1947: Sir Watson-Watt, the father of radar, was granted a patent for his radar concept. 1955: Disneyland opened in Anaheim, CA. 1975: An Apollo spaceship docked with the Soyuz 19 spacecraft in orbit - it was the first link up between the U.S. and Soviet Union. 1981: The Humber Bridge at Kingston-Upon-Hull, England, was opened as the longest single-span bridge in the world (1.4 km). 1989: The first test flight of Stealth bomber took place. 1996: TWA Flight 800 mysteriously crashed off the coast of Long Island. 1997: The F.W. Woolworth Company closed after 117 years in business.

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Note: These historical tidbits have been collected from various sources, mostly on the Internet. As detailed in this article, there is a lot of wrong information that is repeated hundreds of times because most websites do not validate with authoritative sources. On RF Cafe, events with hyperlinks have been verified. Many years ago, I began commemorating the birthdays of notable people and events with special RF Cafe logos. Where available, I like to use images from postage stamps from the country where the person or event occurred. Images used in the logos are often from open source websites like Wikipedia, and are specifically credited with a hyperlink back to the source where possible. Fair Use laws permit small samples of copyrighted content.