Day in Engineering History Archive - January 13

January 13

1864: Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien, who formulated the black body radiation displacement law, was born. 1903: Granville Woods was issued a patent for an "Electric Railway System" of the type that "current for the car-motor is taken from working contacts or conductors along the road bed." 1906: Hugo Gernsback, of the Electro Importing Company, advertised radio receivers for sale for $8.50 in "Scientific American" magazine. 1920: A New York Times editorial proclaimed rockets can never fly. 1930: Sebastian de Ferranti, an electrical engineer who developed the first 10 kV (4x previous) transmission system and components, died. 1942: Henry Ford patented a plastic automobile, which allowed for a 30% decrease in car weight. 1942: The first use of an ejection seat to save a pilot was made by German test pilot Mr. Schenk. 2000: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates stepped aside as CEO and promoted company president Steve Ballmer to the position.

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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.