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.
| Jan
| Feb | Mar |
Apr | May |
Jun | Jul |
Aug | Sep |
Oct | Nov |
Dec |
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.
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