Day in Engineering History Archive - December 11

December 11

1781: Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster, who developed Brewster's Law, which relates the refractive index of a material to its polarizing angle, was born. 1941: German and Italy declared war on the U.S. 1945: Charles Fabry, co-discoverer of the ozone layer, died. 1954: The American Nuclear Society was formed. 1961: Albert Taylor, who regarded as "the father of navy radar," died. 1967: Concord 001, the first SST airplane, was rolled out in Toulouse, France. 1972: Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed on the moon for a three-day exploration, which would be the final Apollo mission to the moon. 1983: Harold Black, who developed the negative-feedback principle for amplifier design, died. 1987: George Brown, who developed the turnstile TV antenna, and the vestigial sideband filter, died. 1998: Scientists announced that they have deciphered the entire genetic blueprint of the nematode worm.

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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.