Day in Engineering History Archive - September 8

September 8

1636: Harvard University, the oldest institute of higher learning in the U.S., was founded. 1894: Hermann von Helmholtz, who experimented with physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology, and inventor of the Helmholtz coil, died. 1900: Galveston, TX, was struck by a hurricane that killed about 6,000 people. 1920: Air Mail service began between NY City and San Francisco. 1930: Scotch tape was developed by Richard Drew. 1930: The comic strip "Blondie" made its debut - her maiden name was Boopadoop. 1944: The German V2 rocket barrage began in London. 1960: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, was dedicated. 1965: Joshua Lionel Cowen, founder of the Lionel model train company, died. 1966: NBC-TV aired the first episode of "Star Trek" titled "The Man Trap." 2000: "Go Slow" protests were held in the UK to protest high fuel prices. 2012: William Moggridge, designer of the first laptop computer, died.

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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.