Day in Engineering History Archive February 6

February 6

1802: English physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone, who invented the resistive bridge circuit that eventually bore his name, was born. 1804: Joseph Priestley, discoverer elemental oxygen, ammonia, hydrochloric acid gas, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and oxides of nitrogen, died. 1886: German chemist Clemens Winkler discovered the element germanium (named for Germania). 1895: Baseball's legendary home run hitter Babe Ruth was born in Baltimore, MD. 1959: The U.S. successfully test-fired for the first time a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile from Cape Canaveral. 1971: Astronaut Alan Shepard used a six-iron that he had brought inside his spacecraft and swung at three golf balls on the surface of the moon. 1998: Washington's National Airport's name was changed to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

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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.