August 10

1602: French mathematician Gilles de Roberval, who invented the Roberval balance weighing scale, was born. 1846: Act of Congress signed by President James K. Polk established the Smithsonian Institution. 1856: William Willett, who invented the concept of Daylight Saving Time, was born. 1886: A patent for welding by using electricity was awarded to Elihu Thomson. 1896: Otto Lilienthal, who accomplished some of the first controlled glider flights, died. 1909: Leo Fender, inventor of the first solid body electric guitar, was born. 1909: Ford trademarked "Explosive-engines and their parts." 1913: German physicist Wolfgang Paul, who developed the Paul trap for holding electrons long enough to study them, was born. 1928: The Federal Radio Commission issued first U.S. television license to Charles Jenkins Labs in Washington, D.C. 1945: Robert Goddard, "the father of modern rocketry," died. 1948: WABC TV channel 7 in New York, (ABC) began broadcasting. 1949: The National Military Establishment was renamed the Department of Defense. 1966: "Daylight Meteor," seen from Utah to Canada, was the only known case of a meteor entering Earth's atmosphere & leaving it again. 1990: Magellan spacecraft went into orbit around Venus. 1996: Cascading power outages hit parts of nine western states.