Day in Engineering History Archive - September 4

September 4

1682: English astronomer Edmund Halley first saw his namesake comet. 1833: The New York Sun hired the first newsboy, Barney Flaherty. 1882: Thomas Edison's Pearl Street electric power station began operations in New York City, becoming the first display of a practical electrical lighting system. 1882: Thomas Edison's Pearl Street DC Power Station began operation. 1888: George Eastman received a patent for his roll-film camera, and registered his trademark, "Kodak." 1941: The American destroyer USS Greer was attacked by German submarine U-652 off Iceland, marking the unofficial start of the shooting war. 1951: The first live, coast-to-coast TV broadcast took place by President Harry Truman from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference. 1957: Ford began selling its ill-fated Edsel. 1964: The 6,156 foot long Forth Road Bridge, at that time the longest in Europe, opened. 1967: The last new episode of "Gilligan's Island" aired. 1989: The U.S. Air Force launched its last Titan III rocket. 1995: Pierre Omidyar launched AuctionWeb, later changed to eBay.

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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.