Personne ne doit trouver estrange de voir ici des opinions differentes des siennes, touchant les sciences, puisqu’on fait profession de rapporier les sentiments des autres sans les garantir…
Nobody should find it strange to see here opinions different from his own concerning the sciences, because we aim to report the ideas of others without guaranteeing them…
1665
The first edition of the first issue of the first scientific journal, Journal des Sçavans (“Journal des Savants”), is published as a twelve page quarto pamphlet in Europe. The journal, founded by Denis de Sallo, appeared only weeks before the publication of the first issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.
1903
The first transpacific cable connecting San Francisco to Honolulu (completed January 1st) is opened to the public for the very first time.
1917
American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard receives a five thousand dollar grant from the Smithsonian Institution to develop rockets for the purpose of studying the upper atmosphere.
1940
Edwin Howard Armstrong demonstrates FM radio to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the first time. The new medium’s principal advantage is that it is free of static and interference, especially during thunderstorms, which almost completely disable AM radio. In 1941, the first FM transmitter will be established.
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Nobody ever became a wizard because they read fantasy.
But plenty of people have become physicists and biologists because they read science fiction.
1610
Through January 15th, Galileo Galilei uses his newly developed telescope to make a series of observation whose subjects will include the craters and mountains of the Moon, four of Jupiter’s moons, the phases of the planet Venus, and Sunspots for the first time.
1904
Thomas Alva Edison films the electrocution of the elephant Topsy, who was being destroyed by her owners after killing three men in as many years, the third being a man who fed her a lit cigarette. The event is held as a public spectacle for a paying audience of 1,500 people at Coney Island, where the elephant had previously been kept on display. Edison was chosen to arrange the electrocution after a batch of cyanide-laced carrots had failed. Topsy was led to a special platform, the cameras were set rolling, the switch was thrown. It took only ten seconds. Afterwards, he will show the film around the country as part of an unsuccessful effort to discredit the “dangerous” alternating current of George Westinghouse, while promoting his own direct current electricity system. However, alternate current will eventually be universally adopted as the more practical system for long-distance transmission.
1950
RCA Victor announces that it will manufacture long-playing (LP) records. The announcement comes two years after the company’s chief competitor, Columbia Records, first debuted the “album”.
1958
Sputnik 1, the world’s first satellite, reenters the atmosphere and disintegrates after after ninety-two days in orbit. The 184 pound Sputnik (whose name means “companion” or “fellow traveler”) was launched from Kazakhstan on October 4, 1957. The craft circled the Earth every ninety-five minutes at almost 20,000 miles per hour five hundred miles above the Earth, transmitting a radio signal that had been picked up around the globe.
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1496
Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine of his own design. In the 2002 BBC television series Leonardo, it will be theorized that da Vinci, who was a devout pacifist, may have purposefully designed the flying machine to fail, so that it could not be put to a military use. Read more about the documentary at the The Sydney Morning Herald’s website.
1838
Morse code is first transmitted by Alfred Vail from Morristown, New Jersey.
1899
The word “automobile” is first printed in an editorial column in The New York Times.
1919
Professor Ernest Rutherford splits an atom for the first time, thus earning the title of “father” of nuclear physics. He accomplishes the split by bombarding Nitrogen atoms with Alpha particles emitted by radioactive materials to produce Oxygen.
1951
The television series Dragnet, which will become the first network-sponsored television program on December 24, 1953, premieres on the NBC network. The series will shortly become the highest rated crime series on television, and it will also go on to become one of the first television series to be exported from the US.
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The aXXo Files – The UK’s Independent actually ran a story on aXXo, calling him “a modern-day Robin Hood.” There’s no substantial information in the article. It’s just funny to see the media report on a globally-recognized personality as if no one had ever heard of.
Build a Net Gun – Instructables walks through step-by-step instructions for building your very own Net Gun. Having just read Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire series, I’m just dying to know if this has the power to shoot silver chainlink nets.
If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7 – Blogger Ed Bott explains why Windows 7 will be easier to use and more configurable than the much-beloved XP.
Music sales for 2008 second to digital downloads – Sales of albums in all formats fell 14 percent, while digital music sales were a leading source of growth for the music business.
Top 10 Biggest Tech Stories of 2008 – Techmeme runs down the year’s top stories objectively, ranking stories based on linkage.
Top 10 Ways to Lock Down Your Data – Lifehacker runs down a variety of ways to secure private information of your hard drive. Good to know with the recent rise in identity theft.
The Year 2008 in Photographs – Boston.com shares a gallery of the best news photos of the year, documenting some the biggest stories and most obscure events around the globe.
1813
A special Commission is convened in York, England to try sixty-six people for Luddite offenses. Seventeen of them will later be sentence to execution. The Luddites, who vowed to destroy the factory automation mechanisms which they blamed for their unemployment, rioted in 1812, destroying a thousand looms in Nottingham, where half of the population had been left no alternative but to rely on parish relief.
1839
French pioneering photographer Louis Daguerre took the first photograph of the Moon.
1936
The first electron tube to enable night vision was described, in St. Louis, Missouri.
1959
The first artificial satellite to orbit the sun, Luna 1, is launched by the U.S.S.R. Luna 1 will have the distinction of being the first spacecraft to leave Earth’s gravity and to fly past the Moon. It will lead to the discovery of solar winds.
1971
In the United States, an advertising ban on Cigarettes and tobacco product television commercials begins after being deferred for a day so that broadcasters could keep their commitments to advertisers during the Super Bowl the previous day. Both the ABC and CBS networks will later report that the ban results in a fifty per cent drop in advertising revenue, for an estimated loss of US$220 million. Under the Fairness Doctrine, the FCC also bans anti-smoking advertisements from broadcast.
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