Day in Engineering History Archive - May 1
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.
May 1
1825: Johann Balmer, of Balmer's formula for computing wavelengths [λ=hm²/(m²-n²)], was born. 1875: Harriet Quimby, the first female pilot to fly across the English Channel, was born. 1921: The first successful marine radio navigation beacons began regular operation in the U.S. 1925: Astronaut M. Scott Carpenter, the second U.S. citizen to orbit the earth, was born. 1926: Henry Ford announced an 8 hour, 5 day work week. 1931: The Empire State Building was dedicated remotely by President Hoover from Washington, D.C. 1958: James Van Allen reported that two radiation belts encircled Earth. 1960: The Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane near Sverdlovsk and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. 1964: The first BASIC program, invented by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth University, was run on a computer at about 4:00 a.m. 1999: The ''Liberty Bell 7,'' the Mercury space capsule flown by Gus Grissom, was found in the Atlantic 300 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral, 38 years after it sank.
Webmaster: Kirt Blattenberger, BSEE, UVM 1989