Day in Engineering History Archive - November 17

November 17

1790: German astronomer August Möbius, the mathematician who invented the famous single-sided strip that bears his name, was born. 1835: American physicist William Anthony, who developed one of the first electrical engineering courses in America (at Cornell), was born. 1869: The Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. 1871: The National Rifle Association (NRA) was organized. 1891: Emile Berliner was issued a patent for a combined telegraph and telephone. 1906: Soichiro Honda, who founded the Honda Motor Company, was born. 1962: President JFK dedicated the Dulles International Airport in VA. 1967: Surveyor 6 made a six-second flight from its landing site on the moon - the first lift-off on lunar surface. 1970: A U.S. patent was issued to Doug Engelbart for the computer mouse - an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System." 1990: Robert Hofstadter, Nobel Prize for Physics recipient for measuring the sizes of the neutron and proton in the nuclei of atoms, 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.