Day in Engineering History Archive - January 2

January 2

1822: Rudolf Clausius, who developed the 2nd law of thermodynamics, was born. 1870: Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began. 1893: The first U.S. commemorative postage stamps were issued. 1920: Prolific science fact and fiction writer Isaac Asimov was born. 1921: The first broadcast of religious services aired on KDKA in Pittsburgh. 1941: American physicist Donald Keck, inventor of the first practical optical fiber communications cable (fused silica), was born. 1959: The first spacecraft to orbit the Sun, Mechta (Luna 1), was launched by the USSR. 1968: Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful (563 days of survival) heart transplant. 1974: The Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act limited highway speeds to 55 mph due to Arab Oil Embargo. 1975: The "U.S. Patent Office" was renamed "U.S. Patent and Trademark Office."

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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.