Day in Engineering History Archive - January 19

January 19

1736: James Watt, inventor of the steam engine and after whom the unit of power is named, was born. 1747: German astronomer Johann Bode, who formulated Bode's Law governing planet distance from the sun, was born. 1883: Thomas Edison's first village electric lighting system using overhead wires began operation in Roselle, NJ. 1903: President Theodore Roosevelt sent the first trans-Atlantic, wireless telegraph message to King Edward VII of England. 1904: Thomas Edison was issued a patent for an Electrical Automobile. 1915: George Claude patented the neon tube advertising sign. Also in 1915, more than 20 people were killed when German zeppelins bombed England for the first time. 1922: U.S. Geological Survey predicted that the U.S. oil supply will last only 20 years. 1937: Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. 1969: My twin sisters, Bonnie and Brenda Blattenberger, were born - Happy Birthday! 1983: The Apple "Lisa" computer, which was the first with a GUI, was released. 1976: Hidetsugu Yagi, inventor of the antenna bearing his name, died. 2038: The Unix time stamp (POSIX) becomes technically obsolete - the Y2.038k problem. 1977: Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the non-planet Pluto, died.

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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.