1850 – Edward Weston, English-American chemist is born.
Edward Weston was an English-born American chemist noted for his achievements in electroplating and his development of the electrochemical cell, named the Weston cell, for the voltage standard. Weston was a competitor of Thomas Edison in the early days of electricity generation and distribution.
1893 – William Moulton Marston, American psychologist and author is born.
William Moulton Marston, also known by the pen name Charles Moulton, was an American psychologist, inventor, and comic book writer who created the character Wonder Woman. Two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne (who lived with the couple in an extended relationship), both greatly influenced Wonder Woman’s creation.
He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006….
…Marston developed Wonder Woman, basing her character on the unconventional, liberated, powerful modern women of his day. Marston’s pseudonym, Charles Moulton, combined his own and Gaines’ middle names.
In a 1943 issue of The American Scholar, Marston wrote: “Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.”
1958 – Film: Vertigo has world premiere in San Francisco.
Vertigo is a 1958 American film noir psychological thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. The story was based on the 1954 novel D’entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Boileau-Narcejac. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor.
The film stars James Stewart as former police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson. Scottie is forced into early retirement because an incident in the line of duty has caused him to develop acrophobia (an extreme fear of heights) and vertigo (a false sense of rotational movement). Scottie is hired by an acquaintance, Gavin Elster, as a private investigator to follow Gavin’s wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who is behaving strangely.
The film was shot on location in San Francisco, California, and at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. It is the first film to use the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie’s acrophobia. As a result of its use in this film, the effect is often referred to as “the Vertigo effect”.
Vertigo received mixed reviews upon initial release, but is now often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining works of his career. Attracting significant scholarly criticism, it replaced Citizen Kane (1941) as the best film ever made in the 2012 British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound critics’ poll. In 1996, the film underwent a major restoration to create a new 70mm print and DTS soundtrack. It has appeared repeatedly in polls of the best films by the American Film Institute, including a 2007 ranking as the ninth-greatest American movie of all time.
2011 – 31 Stories of Small Business Success: Limor Fried @ Inc.com
Limor Fried, who earned her masters in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, runs Adafruit industries, which sells do-it-yourself electronics kits. For every kit Adafruit sells, Fried posts design files, schematics for circuit boards, and any software code needed. She welcomes people to use the information, as long as they credit where it came from and post any modifications they make. She sees it as a way to foster innovation.
“For the most part, everyone finally agrees that open source software has been a success. It runs the net, it runs Google, it runs everything,” Fried said. “Millions of companies and billions of dollars are made possible by open source software. Open source hardware is just starting to take off.”
She also hosts weekly video chats with partner Phillip Torrone and blogs, because she sees the hardware she sells—things like MintyBoost, a backup charger for iPhones or any USB device, that is housed in a tiny Altoids can—as not just products, but part of a larger cause. “People want to see the world become a better place through science and engineering,” Fried said. “We’re going to need the current and future generations to get inspired.”
