Sunday, December 6, 2009

1908 - SOS Accepted as Universal Distress Signal

SOS Accepted as Universal Distress Signal (1908): For centuries, ships became isolated as soon as they left visual range of shore and of other ships. This meant that if a ship encountered any problems while at sea, they could sink without anyone knowing their fate. This isolation ended with the invention of the wireless telegraph and Morse Code.

By 1904, many transatlantic ships had wireless telegraph capability on board. Realizing a need for a widely recognized distress call, the letters "CQD" became the first distress call. At the time, both on land and at sea, the letters "CQ" preceded any general message meant for all stations. Thus "CQD" means "All stations, distress" and not "Come Quick Danger."

At the Radiotelegraphic Conference held in Berlin in 1906, it was noted that there needed to be an internationally agreed upon and recognized signal for distress. No longer should Great Britain use "CQD" while Germany used "SOE." A single distress call was needed.

After much discussion, the letters "SOS" was agreed upon. Although many have later stated that the letters stand for "Save Our Ship," "Save Our Souls," "Sink or Swim," or "Send Out Succor," this is not true. The letters were chosen for the ease and unmistakability of three dots, three dashes, and three dots and not for the actual letters of "SOS."

After being agreed upon at the 1906 conference, the Morse code signal of three dots, three dashes, and then three dots (sent together, without spacing) went into effect as the international signal for distress on July 1, 1908.

Although now officially the international signal for distress, many people still used the old signal of "CQD." Even in 1912, when the Titanic began to sink, its radio operator placed the "CQD" distress signal until another operator suggested to also send the new "SOS" signal. It took several years for "SOS" to replace the old signal.

1909 - NAACP Is Founded

NAACP Is Founded (1909): The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded on February 12, 1909. After a race riot in Springfield, Illinois in 1908, "The Call" went out to Northerners to find a way to create social equality. In 1909, a group of multi-racial activists held a conference in New York City in response to "The Call" and decided to form the NAACP (originally called the National Negro Committee). Among the founders were W.E.B. DuBois, Ida Wells-Barnett, Henry Moscowitz, Oswald Garrison Villiard, Mary White Ovington, and William English Walling.

1900 - Max Planck Formulates Quantum Theory

Max Planck Formulates Quantum Theory (1900): For several decades, physicists had been trying to understand the surprising results they continued to get from heating black bodies (a surface that absorbs all frequencies of light that hits it). Try as they might, scientists could not explain the results using classical physics.

In 1900, German theoretical physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) discovered an equation that explained the results of these tests. The equation is E=Nhf, with E=energy, N=integer, h=constant, f=frequency. In determining this equation, Planck came up with the constant (h), which is now known as "Planck's constant."

The really amazing part of Planck's discovery was that energy, which appears to be emitted in wavelengths, is actually discharged in small packets (quanta). This new theory of energy revolutionized physics and opened the way for Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
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Friday, December 4, 2009

1903 - First Silent Movie: The Great Train Robbery

First Silent Movie, The Great Train Robbery (1903): Produced by Thomas Edison but directed and filmed by Edison Company employee Edwin S. Porter, The Great Train Robbery was the first narrative movie, one that told a story. The film is a classic western with four bandits who rob a train and its passengers of their valuables and then make their grand escape only to be killed in a shootout by a posse sent after them.

Still from the 1903 film, The Great Train Robbery.
Picture in the public domain.

The film does not spare on violence as there are both several shootouts and one man being bludgeoned with a piece of coal. Surprising to many audience members was the special effect of throwing the bludgeoned man over the side of the train (a dummy was used). Also first seen in The Great Train Robbery was a character forcing a man to dance by shooting at his feet - a scene that has been often repeated in future westerns. To the audience's fear and then delight, there was a scene in which the leader of the outlaws looks directly at the audience and fires his pistol at them. (This scene appeared either at the beginning or at the end of the film, a decision left up to the operator.)

The Great Train Robbery not only was the first narrative film, it also introduced several new editing techniques. Rather than staying on one set, Porter took his crew to ten different locations, including Edison's New York studio, Essex County Park in New Jersey, and along the Lackawanna railroad. Unlike other film attempts which kept a stable camera position, Porter included a scene in which he panned the camera to follow the characters as they ran across a creek and into the trees to fetch their horses. However, the most innovative editing technique introduced in The Great Train Robbery was the inclusion of crosscutting. Crosscutting is when the film cuts between two different scenes that are happening at the same time.

The Great Train Robbery was hugely popular with audiences. The approximately twelve minutes of film that starred Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson was played across the country in 1904 and then played in the first nickelodeons (theaters in which movies cost a nickel to see) in 1905. The Great Train Robbery's popularity lead directly to the opening up of permanent movie theaters and opened up the possibility of a future film industry.
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History of the Nobel Prizes


A pacifist at heart and an inventor by nature, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. However, the invention that he thought would end all wars was seen by many others as an extremely deadly product. In 1888, when Alfred's brother Ludvig died, a French newspaper mistakenly ran an obituary for Alfred which called him the "merchant of death."

Not wanting to go down in history with such a horrible epitaph, Nobel created a will that soon shocked his relatives and established the now famous Nobel Prizes.

Who was Alfred Nobel? Why did Nobel's will make establishing the prizes so difficult?

Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1842, when Alfred was nine years old, his mother (Andrietta Ahlsell) and brothers (Robert and Ludvig) moved to St. Petersburg, Russia to join Alfred's father (Immanuel), who had moved there five years earlier. The following year, Alfred's younger brother, Emil, was born.

Immanuel Nobel, an architect, builder, and inventor, opened a machineshop in St. Petersburg and was soon very successful with contracts from the Russian government to build defense weapons.

Because of his father's success, Alfred was tutored at home until the age of 16. Yet, many consider Alfred Nobel a mostly self-educated man. Besides being a trained chemist, Alfred was an avid reader of literature and was fluent in English, German, French, Swedish, and Russian.

Alfred also spent two years traveling. He spent much of this time working in a laboratory in Paris, but also traveled to the United States. Upon his return, Alfred worked in his father's factory. He worked there until his father went bankrupt in 1859.

Alfred soon began experimenting with nitroglycerine, creating his first explosions in early summer 1862. In only a year (October 1863), Alfred received a Swedish patent for his percussion detonator - the "Nobel lighter."

Having moved back to Sweden to help his father with an invention, Alfred established a small factory at Helenborg near Stockholm to manufacture nitroglycerine. Unfortunately, nitroglycerine is a very difficult and dangerous material to handle. In 1864, Alfred's factory blew up - killing several people, including Alfred's younger brother, Emil.

The explosion did not slow down Alfred, and within only a month, he organized other factories to manufacture nitroglycerine.

In 1867, Alfred invented a new and safer-to-handle explosive - dynamite.

Though Alfred became famous for his invention of dynamite, many people did not intimately know Alfred Nobel. He was a quiet man who did not like a lot of pretense or show. He had very few friends and never married.

And though he recognized the destructive power of dynamite, Alfred believed it was a harbinger of peace. Alfred told Bertha von Suttner, an advocate for world peace,

My factories may make an end of war sooner than your congresses. The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops.*

Unfortunately, Alfred did not see peace in his time. Alfred Nobel, chemist and inventor, died alone on December 10, 1896 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.

After several funeral services were held and Alfred Nobel's body was cremated, the will was opened. Everyone was shocked.

The Will

Alfred Nobel had written several wills during his lifetime, but the last one was dated November 27, 1895 - a little over a year before he died.

Nobel's last will left approximately 94 percent of his worth to the establishment of five prizes (physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace) to "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."

Though Nobel had proposed a very grandiose plan for the prizes in his will, there were a great many problems with the will.

* Relatives of Alfred Nobel were so shocked that many wanted the will contested.
* The format of the will had formal defects which could have caused the will to be contested in France.
* It was unclear which country Alfred had his legal residence. He was a Swedish citizen until age nine, but after that he had lived in Russia, France, and Italy without becoming a citizen. Nobel had been making plans for a final home for himself in Sweden when he died. The location of residency would determine what country's laws would govern the will and the estate. If determined to be France, the will could have been contested and French taxes would have been taken.
* Because Nobel had wanted the Norwegian Storting (parliament) to choose the peace prize winner, many charged Nobel with a lack of patriotism.
* The "fund" that was to implement the prizes did not yet exist and would have to be created.
* The organizations that Nobel named in his will to award the prizes had not been asked to take on these duties prior to Nobel's death. Also, there was no plan to compensate these organizations for their work on the prizes.
* The will did not state what should be done if no prize winners for a year were found.

Because of the incompleteness and other obstacles presented by Alfred's will, it took five years of hurdles before the Nobel Foundation could be established and the first prizes awarded.

The First Nobel Prizes

On the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, December 10, 1901, the first set of Nobel Prizes were awarded.

Chemistry: Jacobus H. van't Hoff
Physics: Wilhelm C. Röntgen
Physiology or Medicine: Emil A. von Behring
Literature: Rene F. A. Sully Prudhomme
Peace: Jean H. Dunant and Frédéric Passy

* As quoted in W. Odelberg (ed.), Nobel: The Man & His Prizes (New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., 1972) 12.

Bibliography

Axelrod, Alan and Charles Phillips. What Everyone Should Know About the 20th Century. Holbrook, Massachusetts: Adams Media Corporation, 1998.

Odelberg, W. (ed.). Nobel: The Man & His Prizes. New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., 1972.

Official Website of the Nobel Foundation. Retrieved April 20, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.nobel.se

1903 - The First License Plates Issued in the U.S.


A 1903 Massachusetts licence plate, one of the first license plates issued in the United States.
Picture courtesy of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.

The First License Plates Issued in the U.S. (1903): Although New York was the first state to require automobiles have license plates (1901), these plates were made by individual owners (with the owner's initials) rather than state-issued plates.

The first state-issued license plates were issued in Massachusetts, beginning in 1903. The very first plate, featuring the number "1," was issued to Frederick Tudor. (One of his relatives still holds an active registration on the plate.)

These early Massachusetts license plates were made of iron and covered in a porcelain enamel. The background was colored a cobalt blue and the number was in white. Along the top of the plate, also in white, were the words: "MASS. AUTOMOBILE REGISTER." The size of the plate was not constant; it grew wider as the plate number reached into the tens, hundreds, and thousands.

Massachusetts was the first to issue license plates, but other states soon followed. As automobiles began to crowd the roads, it was necessary for all states to find ways to start regulating cars, drivers, and traffic.
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