August 26

1873: Dr. Lee DeForest, inventor of the Audion tube, was born. 1886: Jerome Hunsaker, who in 1916 was awarded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) first Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering, was born. 1895: Electricity was first transmitted commercially from the first large-scale utilization of Niagara Falls power. 1929: The first roller coaster built in the U.S. 1938: A tape recorder was used for the first time in the U.S. to send a radio broadcast. 1950: Ransom Olds, founder of Oldsmobile, died. 1957: The first Edsel made by the Ford Motor Company rolled out. 1974: Aviation pioneer Charles Augustus Lindbergh died. 1978: Sigmund Jahn blasted off aboard the Russian Soyuz 31 and became the first German in space. 1998: Nobel laureate Frederick Reines, who discovered the neutrino, died.