1922: All telephone service in the United States and Canada is silenced for one minute to mark the funeral of Alexander Graham Bell. The tribute starts a trend that may deserve a revival in the 21st century.
Bell was one of several inventors of the transmission of speech by electrical wires. He achieved patent primacy [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Thomas Edison’
Aug. 4, 1922: For Whom the Bell Tolls Not
August 4th, 2010 |
No Comments
July 9–10, 1856: Visionary Tesla Born at Midnight
July 9th, 2010 |
No Comments
1856: Scientific genius and visionary inventor Nikola Tesla is born at the stroke of midnight in the unassuming village of Smiljan, in what’s now Croatia. He wastes little time in revolutionizing the world through foundational developments in electromagnetism, electrical current, wireless power and communications, weaponry, robotics, computer science, mass media and much more.
“Tesla is like [...]
June 3, 1889: Power Flows Long-Distance
June 3rd, 2010 |
No Comments
1889: The first long-distance transmission of electricity takes place, linking a powerhouse at Willamette Falls to a string of lights in Portland, Oregon, 14 miles to the west.
The power lines stretching from the hydroelectric generator to 55 street lights at 4th and Main heralded the arrival of a major innovation in energy technology. The [...]
April 9, 1860: Phonoautogram Records Sound, But Doesn’t Reproduce It
April 9th, 2010 |
No Comments
1860: Seventeen years before Thomas Edison records what was previously thought to have been the first sound ever captured in a fixed medium, Parisian typesetter and inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph records sound visually onto paper.
Neither Scott nor any of his contemporaries devised a way to turn these visual phonautogram recordings back into sound, [...]
March 5, 1904: Tesla’s Having a Ball
March 5th, 2010 |
No Comments
1904: Physicist Nikola Tesla attempts to explain the phenomenon of “ball lightning.”
Ball lightning (if it exists at all) is an electrical discharge, usually appearing in spherical shape that, unlike regular lightning, tends to linger awhile. It occurs naturally but rarely, and despite the best efforts of Tesla and others, the exact origin of the phenomenon [...]
March 4, 1877: The Microphone Sounds Much Better
March 4th, 2010 |
No Comments
1877: Emile Berliner files a patent caveat for a new kind of microphone. It assures the future of the telephone, but not fame for Berliner.
Alexander Graham Bell had already invented his telephone, but without Berliner’s carbon-disk or carbon-button microphone, telephones would have sounded terrible for decades. And they may not have been capable of surmounting [...]
Nov. 16, 1904: Vacuum Tube Heralds Birth of Modern Electronics
November 16th, 2009 |
No Comments
1904: British engineer John Ambrose Fleming invents and patents the thermionic valve, the first vacuum tube. With this advance, the age of modern wireless electronics is born.
Although the Supreme Court eventually invalidated Fleming’s U.S. patent — ruling that the technology he used for his invention was already known — he remains the acknowledged inventor of [...]
Oct. 21, 1879: Edison Gets the Bright Light Right
October 21st, 2009 |
No Comments
1879: Thomas Edison crowns 14 months of testing with an incandescent electric light bulb that lasts 13½ hours.
Sir Humphrey Davy had produced incandescent electric light in 1808 by passing battery current through a platinum wire. But the voltaic pile was expensive and could be messy.
The invention of the dynamo in 1866 literally generated new possibilities [...]