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| NEWSLETTER - NOVEMBER 17 | |
| Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page. | |
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| Quotations for Today | |
| "Success is 99 per cent failure" - Honda Soichiro, Japanese industrialist, founder of Honda Motor Company (born 17 Nov 1906) "What is Physics? The physicist is interested in discovering the laws of inanimate nature. . . It is, as Schrödinger has remarked, a miracle that in spite of the baffling complexity of the world, certain regularities in the events could be discovered. . . The laws of nature are concerned with such regularities." - Eugene Wigner, Hungarian-born American Nobel prize-winning physicist (born 17 Nov 1902) "Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world. The dragons are all dead and the lance grows rusty in the chimney corner." - Hans Zinsser, American bacteriologist (born 17 Nov 1878) | |
| QUIZ | |
| Births | |
| William Merriam Burton, born 17 Nov 1865, was an American chemist who developed a thermal cracking process for crude petroleum. He recognized the need for altering the methods of refining crude oil at the turn of the century and understood that he could squeeze more power from every molecule of petroleum. What was his goal with thermal cracking? | |
| Deaths | |
| John Evershed (1864-1956) was an English astronomer who discovered (1909) the Evershed effect - the horizontal motion of gases outward from the centres of sunspots. While photographing solar prominences and sunspot spectra, he made a discovery about the Fraunhofer lines in the sunspot spectra. What was this discovery and how did it relate to the Evershed effect? | |
| Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) was an American inventor of an important precursor of the electronic computer. His invention was applied to the 1890 U.S. census to automate the sorting of data. It saved the United States 5 million dollars for the 1890 census by completing the analysis of the data in a fraction of the time it would have taken without it. What was his invention? | |
| Events | |
| On 17 Nov of a certain year, a U.S. patent was issued for the computer mouse - an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System" invented by Doug Engelbart. In the lab, he and his colleagues had called it a "mouse," after its tail-like cable. In what decade was this patent issued? | |
| On 17 Nov 1797, the first patent in the U.S. for a clock was issued to a clock-maker in East Windsor, Conn. Later, the same manufacturer applied Whitney's idea of interchangeable parts and began mass production (1802) of very inexpensive household clocks. He is to clocks in the U.S. as Henry Ford is to automobiles. Can you name this inventor? | |
| Answers | |
| When you have your answers ready to all the questions above, you'll find all the information to check them, and more, on the November 17 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers. | |
| Fast answers for the previous newsletter for November 16: French; refrigeration and scientific research at low temperatures and very high vacuums; the decade containing the year 1945; corn (maize). | |
| Feedback | |
| If you enjoy this newsletter, the website, or wish to offer encouragement or ideas, please write. |
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