Day in Engineering History Archive - January 7
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. All will eventually be either verified or removed.
Please submit significant
historical events and dates for inclusion in these lists. I will be glad to include your name and
birthday. Please do not submit your death date ;-)
A couple 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.
January 7
1610: Galileo Galilei sighted four of Jupiter's moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto). 1785: Jean Blanchard and John Jeffries made first air crossing of the English Channel from England to France in a hot-air balloon (first international flight). 1904: Marconi established "CQD" (-·-· --·- -··, CQ=be quite and listen, D=distress) as the first international radio distress signal, but two years later, "SOS" (··· --- ···, Save Our Souls) became the radio distress signal because it was faster to send by wireless radio. 1927: Commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and London. 1935: Sir Alfred Ewing, the physicist who discovered and named hysteresis, died. 1943: Serbian-American high voltage experimenter Nikola Tesla died. 1980: The first solar-cell power plant was dedicated at Natural Bridges National Monument, UT (266,029 solar cells in 12 producing 100 kW). 1998: Richard Hamming, of error correction code fame, died. 2004: American electrical engineer Oswald "Mike" Villard Jr., who developed over-the-horizon radar, died.
Webmaster: Kirt Blattenberger, BSEE, UVM 1989