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Samuel Morse, Igor Sikorsky, and May 24
May 24, 2013
Walter Cronkite (1916-2009), who was the
anchorman at the
CBS Evening News for nineteen years, was also called "the most trusted man in America." In his early career, Cronkite was the host of the
television series,
You Are There, which ran from 1953-1957.
That show was unusual, since it featured
reenactments of
historical events by
actors, with CBS News
reporters in modern dress
interviewing the protagonists and reporting on the action. I saw these as a
child; and, in a word, it was strange. These were the early days of
television, so there were many such
experiments. One thing I still remember is Cronkite's final words at the end of each episode,
"What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times … and you were there."
Walter Cronkite, as seen on the April 4, 1968, newscast announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Still image from a YouTube Video.)
Well, today, May 24, the 144th day of 2013, appears to be a day like all other days, but on this day there were some important things that happened in
science and
technology.
1844
May 24, 1844, was the day that
Samuel Morse sent the
telegraph message, "What hath God wrought," the short distance (less than 40
miles) from the
United States Capitol to
Baltimore, Maryland, on the first
telegraph line. On the receiving end was his assistant,
Alfred Vail, who had more of a hand in the creation of the
Morse code than its eponymous
inventor.
Vail had performed a
letter frequency analysis of common
English text by an analysis of the
movable type in
type cases at a
Morristown, New Jersey,
newspaper. He translated his findings into the most efficient use of "dots" and "dashes" for telegraph transmission. It's much easier to do such a letter frequency analysis in today's
digital world (see figure).
Frequency of occurrence of letters in English. Click on the graph to get a PDF chart of the frequency values. (Graph by the author, rendered with Gnumeric.)
1940
On May 24, 1940,
Igor Sikorsky's Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 helicopter flew on its first
untethered flight. This helicopter was the first to have the now familiar vertical tail
rotor to counteract the
torque of the main rotor, as can be seen in his 1935
patent (see figure).
A portion of fig. 2 of US Patent No. 1,994,488, "Direct Lift Aircraft," by I. I. Sikorsky, March 19, 1935. (Via Google Patents.)[1)]
Sikorsky was an
aviation pioneer, having designed and flown the
first multi-engine fixed-wing aircraft in 1913. He
emigrated to the
US from
Russia in 1923, founded the
Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, and developed the
Pan American Airways flying boat aircraft.
Surprisingly, these two events, spaced about a
century apart, are the only significant technology milestones on this date. American
astronaut Scott Carpenter orbited the
Earth three times on this date in 1962 as part of
Project Mercury, but this was just one of many such space milestones at the time. Perhaps the date of the
technological singularity will be similarly spaced at a hundred years, to occur on May 24, 2040.
Two notable
scientists were born on this date.
William Gilbert (d. 1603) was born on May 24, 1544. I mentioned Gilbert and his pioneering studies on
magnetism in a
previous article (Magnetic Earth, June 26, 2008). He is known principally for his book,
De Magnete, which provided evidence that the Earth was a huge
permanent magnet. At that time, some people thought that
compass needles pointed towards
Polaris, the North Star, and not the Earth's (magnetic)
North Pole.
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (d. 1736), inventor of the
Fahrenheit temperature scale for
thermometers, was born on May 24, 1686. Fahrenheit's scale was calibrated using three convenient
reference points; namely, the temperature of a mixture of
ice and
water with
ammonium chloride (set at 0°F), the
freezing point of water (set at 32°F), and
human body temperature, by mouth or under an arm, (taken as 96°F).
When Fahrenheit thermometers became more robust and
accurate, it was found that water
boiled at about 180° on the scale. Rather than carry an odd number on the books, the scale was redefined to have
exactly 180 degrees between the freezing and boiling points of water. One reason for this is that the number, 180, is divisible by many small
integers, which is the same logic for having twelve
inches in a
foot.
Nicolaus Copernicus (b. 1473) died on May 24, 1543. His book,
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, removed the Earth from its place as the center of the
universe. In the five hundred years since that time, we've been finding out how much more insignificant our place in the universe really is.
Reference:
- I. I. Sikorsky, "Direct Lift Aircraft," US Patent No. 1,994,488, March 19, 1935.
Permanent Link to this article
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