Day in Engineering History Archive - July 14

July 14

Today is Bastille Day. 1827: Optics researcher Augustin Fresnel died. 1850: The first public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration in took place in the U.S. 1847: The first Rotary Printing Press was patented (#5199) by Richard Hoe. 1853: The first U.S. World's Fair opened in New York. 1857: Fred Maytag, a pioneer of automatic washing machines, was born. 1867: Alfred Nobel demonstrated dynamite for the first time. 1885: Sarah Goode became first black woman to receive a U.S. patent (#322,177). 1911: Harry Atwood landed an airplane on the lawn of the White House to accept an award from U.S. President William Taft. 1914: The first patent for a liquid-fueled rocket design was granted to Dr. Robert Goddard. 1918: Jay Forrester, inventor of magnetic RAM, was born. 1933: Germany outlawed all political parties except the Nazi Party. 1948: Six Royal Air Force (RAF) Vampires land after completing the first transatlantic flight made by jet aircraft. 1965: Mariner 4 spacecraft sent first close-up photograph of Mars. 1989: The first kill by an F-16 was scored by an Israeli Air Force pilot shooting down a Syrian MIG-21. 1995: The MP3 format was named. 2000: A Florida jury ordered five major tobacco companies to pay smokers a record $145 billion in punitive damages (later reversed).

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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.