Does’t thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. ~Benjamin Franklin
1728 – Johann Heinrich Lambert, Swiss mathematician, physicist, and astronomer is born.
Johann Heinrich Lambert was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer. He is best known for proving the Irrationality of π.
Asteroid 187 Lamberta was named in his honour.
1743 – Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist is born.
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier was a French nobleman and chemist central to the 18th-century Chemical Revolution and a large influence on both the histories of chemistry and biology. He is widely considered to be the “Father of Modern Chemistry.”
It is generally accepted that Lavoisier’s great accomplishments in chemistry largely stem from the fact that he changed the science from a qualitative to a quantitative one. Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783) and opposed the phlogiston theory. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and was also the first to establish that sulfur was an element (1777) rather than a compound. He discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same.
1791 – John Fitch is granted a United States patent for the steamboat.
Fitch was granted a patent on August 26, 1791, after a battle with James Rumsey, who had also invented a steam-powered boat. Unfortunately, the newly created Patent Commission did not award the broad monopoly patent that Fitch had asked for, but a patent of the modern kind, for the new design of Fitch’s steamboat. It also awarded steam-engine-related patents dated that same day to Rumsey, Nathan Read, and John Stevens. The loss of a monopoly due to these same-day patent awards led many of Fitch’s investors to leave his company. While his boats were mechanically successful, Fitch no longer had the financial resources to carry on.
1920 – The 19th amendment to United States Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote.
The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920. The Constitution allows the states to determine the qualifications for voting, and until the 1910s most states disenfranchised women. The amendment was the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. It effectively overruled Minor v. Happersett, in which a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give women the right to vote.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the amendment and first introduced it in 1878; it was forty-one years later, in 1919, when the Congress submitted the amendment to the states for ratification. A year later, it was ratified by the requisite number of states, with Tennessee’s ratification being the final vote needed to add the amendment to the Constitution. In Leser v. Garnett (1922), the Supreme Court rejected claims that the amendment was unconstitutionally adopted.
2011 – Adafruit wishes linux happy birthday!
When people ask us “why do open-source anything” they usually do not know how ubiquitous linux is and all the wonderful things that have happened because of it – with it. It’s everywhere, runs almost everything and it’s invisible. Linux started out as “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional”… just like a lot open-source hardware projects now. Read more.
