Time Travel Tuesday #timetravel a look back at the Adafruit, maker, science, technology and engineering world
1861 – Dorothea Klumpke, American astronomer and academic is born.
In 1886 Sir David Gill proposed an atlas of the heavens. The idea received enthusiastic support, especially from the Director of the Paris Observatory, Admiral Amédée Mouchez, who suggested an international meeting in Paris. This led to the Carte du Ciel project which required photographing the entire sky and showing stars as faint as the 14th magnitude. The Paris Observatory was to do a major portion of the sky as its contribution. It was also envisioned that a catalogue of all the stars to the 11th magnitude be drawn up.
Despite being a woman, and in the face of fierce competition from 50 men, she secured the post of Director of the Bureau of Measurements at the Paris Observatory…
…She was the first recipient of the “Prix de Dames” from the Société astronomique de France in 1889, and in 1893 was made an Officier d’Académe of the French Academy of Sciences – up to that time, these honours had not been awarded to a woman. On December 14, 1893 she read her doctoral thesis, “L’étude des Anneaux de Saturne” to a large audience of academics at the Sorbonne, and was awarded the degree of Docteur ès Sciences; the first woman to do so. Her main subjects were mathematics and mathematical astronomy. The examining committee, composed of Dr. Jean Gaston Darboux and Drs. Félix Tisserand and Marie Henri Andoyer were unanimous in their praise. By way of contrast, Harvard awarded its first doctorate in astronomy to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin in 1925.
On February 22, 1934, she was elected a Chevalière de la Légion d’Honneur with the French President himself presenting the Cross. Shortly after the award, she and Anna moved to San Francisco where she spent the rest of her days. She made endowments to the Paris Observatory, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the University of California to be granted to aspiring astronomers. Minor planets 339 Dorothea and 1040 Klumpkea were named in her honor, as is the Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
1892 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph.
The key to Edison’s fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph.
1927 – Marvin Minsky, American computer scientist and academic is born.
Marvin Lee Minsky was an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
