Day in Engineering History Archive - May 24

May 24

Happy Birthday William Gilbert! - Please click here to visit RF Cafe.Day in Engineering History May 24 Archive - RF Cafe1543: Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who published proof of a sun-centered solar system, died. 1544: William Gilbert, the "father of electrical studies," coiner of the names of electric attraction, electric force, and magnetic poles, was born. 1687: Gabriel Fahrenheit, inventor of the mercury thermometer, was born. 1844: Samuel Morse transmitted the message, "What hath God wrought?" from the U.S. Supreme Court room Washington D.C. to the Mount Clare station of the B&O Railroad. 1883: After 14 years of construction, the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to traffic. 1938: A U.S. patent was awarded for the coin-controlled parking meter. 1960: The first successful American surveillance satellite, Midas 2, was launched. 1962: Astronaut Scott Carpenter became the 2nd American to orbit the Earth as he flew aboard Aurora 7. 1964: Alan Hazeltine, inventor of the "neutrodyne" receiver that eliminated squeaks and howls of early radio receivers, died. 1985: The FCC formally initiated wireless LAN with spread spectrum authorization in the ISM bands.

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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.