Day in Engineering History Archive - November 14

November 14

1765: Robert Fulton, whose Clermont was the first truly successful steamboat, was born. 1863: Leo Baekeland, inventor of Bakelite, which played a large role as an insulator in early electronics, was born. 1910: The first airplane flight from a ship was made by Eugene Ely from the bow of the scout cruiser Birmingham. 1914: Black American educator & inventor Booker T. Washington died. 1922: The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began its domestic radio service. 1930: Edward White, the first U.S. astronaut to walk in space, was born. 1965: American engineer Allen Du Mont, who invented the first commercial cathode ray tube, died. 1967: A patent for Ruby Laser Systems was issued to Theodore Maiman. 1969: Apollo 12 blasted off on a mission to the moon. 1972: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 1,000 level for the first time, ending the day at 1003.16. 1994: Public trains began operation in the English Channel Tunnel (Chunnel). 2005: U.S. Navy made the first launch of an underwater glider from a submarine platform.

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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.