TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 9 JULY
On 9 July 1819, Elias Howe was born. He was the son of a farmer, but his persistence and inventiveness led to significant progress in the early design of an important machine. Sadly, as with many inventions of his era, he had to spent much effort and money protecting his patents. You can read more — about how he developed his ideas into a commercial product, and how it eventually changed his life — in this Biography of Elias Howe, a chapter from Great Fortunes and How They Were Made (1871). You'll be answering a question about exactly what was his invention in the quiz below. He became famous enough that his life was commemorated with the issue of a 5¢ postage stamp in 1940.
On 9 Jul 1933, Oliver Sacks was born. He wrote several best-selling books, but your webmaster has a favorite. Today's book pick is: Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, by Oliver Sacks. Long before he became a distinguished neurologist and bestselling writer, he was a small English boy, growing up in a household of polymaths who fostered in his science. He became fascinated by metals and chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $6.98. Used from $1.22. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | To Wheeler's comment, If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day, a student responded, I can't believe that space is that crummy. Wheeler replied: To disagree leads to study, to study leads to understanding, to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love. So maybe I'll end up loving your theory. — John Wheeler, American physicist (born 9 Jul 1911).  |
 | Nature gropes and blunders and performs the crudest acts. There is no steady advance upward. There is no design. — Oliver Sacks, English neurologist and writer (born 9 Jul 1933). |
 | Heredity is the general expression of the periodicity of organic life. All generations belong to a continuous succession of waves, in which every single one resembles its predecessors and its followers. — Wilhelm His, Swiss anatomist and embryologist (born 9 Jul 1831). |
| Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page. | |
| Births | |
| | Elias Howe, an American inventor, was born 9 Jul 1819. Although he wasn’t the first to create a particular type of machine, he was the first in the U.S. to pursue it and was granted a patent on his own machine on 10 Sep 1846. Commercial success came slowly, requiring the defense of his patent against the better marketed machine of another more well-known person in the same industry. Eventually Howe gained riches, but died young at 49. By then, his machines helped revolutionize the factory and in the home. What was Howe's invention? |
 | On 9 Jul 1938, James Pollack was born, an American NASA astrophysicist, who helped develop a theory of the climatic effects after atomic war. He was a world-renowned expert in the study of planetary atmospheres. He resolved the paradox that Saturn’s rings show low microwave emissivity but high radar reflectivity and discovered the first real evidence of sulphuric acid in the clouds of Venus. This theory’s predicted climatic result of atomic war was known by what name? |
| Deaths | |
 | The inventor and manufacturer of the safety razor (1855-1932) began in 1895 by producing a crude version of a disposable razor blade. A utopian, he wrote four books translating his business experience into social theories, culminating with The People's Corporation (1924). Can you name this inventor? |
| Events | |
 | On 9 Jul of a certain year, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, at Provident Hospital in Chicago, performed the world’s first successful open heart surgery without using anesthesia. He removed a knife from the heart of a bar-fight stabbing victim. He sutured a wound to the pericardium (the fluid sac surrounding the myocardium) The patient recovered and lived for several years afterward. Dr. Williams was the only African-American in a group of 100 charter members of the American College of Surgeons in 1913 What was the decade in which this open-heart surgey took place? |
 | On 9 Jul 1957 an announcement was made of the discovery of an artificial element, and its name was proposed, for an isotope believed found with a half-life of 10 minutes at 8.5 MeV. Later tests showed that no isotopes of the element with that atomic number had such a half-life. The element was truly discovered in Apr 1958. However, IUPAC accepted the name given to the prematurely discovered element. What is the name of this element? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for July 8: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin • Atlanta, Georgia • leadership to build the atomic-powered submarine, USS Nautilus • Christiaan Huygens • the decade including the year 1800.
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