Day in Engineering History Archive - October 18

Day in Engineering History October 18 Archive - RF CafeOctober 18

British Broadcasting Company Formed - RF Cafe1799: Christian Schönbein, who discovered and named ozone (O3) for its peculiar smell (ozo is Greek for smell), was born. 1876: The state of Alaska was officially transferred to America by Please click here to visit RF CafeRussia. 1871: English mathematician Charles Babbage, whose difference engine is considered the first programmable calculator, died. 1892: The first long-distance telephone line was opened between Chicago and New York. 1922: The British Broadcasting Company was formed, and five years later became the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 1931: American inventor Thomas Alva Edison died at age 84. 1945: The International Military Tribunal portion of the Nazi War Crimes trial opened in Nuremberg. 1954: TI announced the world's first transistor radio, the Regency TR-1. 1959: The USSR announced an unmanned space vehicle, Luna 3, had taken first pictures of far side of the moon. 1962: Dr. James Watson of the U.S., Dr. Francis Crick & Dr. Maurice Wilkins of U.K. won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for work in determining double-helix molecular structure of DNA. 2004: Scientists at UC Irvine announced the development of the world's longest electrically conducting nanotubes. 2006: Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7. 2012: Antennalyzer inventor Wendell C. Morrison died.

| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |

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.