Day in Engineering History Archive - May 23

May 23

1785: Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter that he had invented bifocals. 1848: Otto Lilienthal, who accomplished some of the first controlled glider flights, was born. 1857: Augustin-Louis Cauchy, French mathematician, died. 1908: Nobel physicist John Bardeen, co-inventor of the transistor along with William Shockley and Walter Brattain, was born. 1916: Thomas Edison was issued three patents for his "Phonograph or Talking Machine." 1922: "Daylight Saving Time" was the topic in the first debate ever to be heard on radio in Washington, DC. 1934: Bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were shot to death in a police ambush. 1949: The Republic of West Germany was established. 1949: William Hansen, inventor of the klystron tube, died. 1960: Georges Claude, inventor of the neon light, died. 2007: The world's demographic makeup shifted from mostly rural to mostly urban.

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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.