In 1856…Nikola Tesla was born.
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| Nikola Tesla |
Tesla, one of history’s most under-appreciated and under-acknowledged engineers. Credit for his work is often gray and debated, sometimes due to unscrupulous competitors and sometimes due to timing.
Indeed, Tesla is known to have worked on a radio before Marconi, an X-Ray machine before Roentgen, an induction motor around the same time Ferrari claimed his, and experimented to find “small charged particles” years before Thomson was credited with proving the existence of electrons.
Tesla is perhaps best known within engineering circles for his work on AC (alternating current) and his “War of Currents” feud with Thomas Edison (side note: Edison, an employer of Tesla’s for some time, is known in some engineering circles as the man who copied and stole from Tesla).
Even with such challenges and a lifetime of illnesses, Tesla accrued about 300 patents. He died penniless and in debt in his New York apartment on January 7, 1943, at the age of 86. After his death, much of Tesla’s papers and works were impounded by the United States' Alien Property Custodian office. This was despite the fact that Tesla had become a US citizen at 35 years old.
Eventually many of his personal notebooks and works were declared “top secret” by the FBI and shuttered away from public view. Reasons given for doing so were that Tesla had done significant work with various US government agencies.
Tesla's theories on the possibility of the transmission by
radio waves go back as far as lectures and demonstrations in 1893 in St. Louis,
Missouri, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the
National Electric Light Association. Tesla's
demonstrations and principles were written about widely through various media
outlets. Many devices such as the Tesla
Coil were used in the further development of radio.
Tesla's radio wave experiments in 1896 were conducted in
Gerlach Hotel (later renamed The Radio Wave building), where he resided.
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| Tesla died January 7, 1943 |
In 1900, Tesla was granted patents for a "system of
transmitting electrical energy" and "an electrical transmitter."
When Guglielmo Marconi made his famous first-ever transatlantic radio
transmission in 1901, Tesla quipped that it was done with 17 Tesla patents.
This was the beginning of years of patent battles over radio with Tesla's
patents being upheld in 1903, followed by a reverse decision in favor of
Marconi in 1904. In 1943, a Supreme Court of the United States decision
restored the prior patents of Tesla, Oliver Lodge, and John Stone. The court declared that their decision had no
bearing on Marconi's claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, just
that since Marconi's claim to certain patents were questionable, he could not
claim infringement on those same patents (there are claims the high court was trying to
nullify a World War I claim against the U.S. government by the Marconi Company
via simply restoring Tesla's prior patent).
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| Graham McNamee |
He died young on May 9 1942 of a brain embolism at age 53.
In 1900...one of the most famous trademarks in the world, “His Master’s Voice”, was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The logo of the Victor Talking Machine Company, and later, RCA Victor, features the dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone machine.
When Emile Berliner visited England in May 1900 and saw the picture, he promptly registered it as a trademark -- in the United States on May 26th and in Canada on July 16th. The Victor Talking Machine Company began to use the painting as a trademark in 1902, and the Gramophone Company in 1909.
The original painting hangs in the offices of EMI, the successor of the Gramophone Company. It is one of the most widely recognized and valuable trademarks in the world.
In 1920...Journalist David Brinkley was born in Wilmington North Carolina. He became a TV sensation teamed with Chet Huntley on NBC for the nightly news 1956-70, and for political convention coverage, the JFK assasination, etc. Many of his commentaries, some tongue in cheek or ironical, were considered minor classics. Later he would move to ABC where This Week with David Brinkley became a Sunday morning fixture. He died June 11, 2003 at age 82.
In 1944...a radio show of international intrigue The Man Called X, starring Herbert Marshall, debuted on CBS radio. It would be a listening favorite on the Tiffany Network & NBC for the next 8 years.
In 1950…After 15 years as a radio favorite, "Your Hit Parade" started a nine-year run on television – the first eight years on NBC, the last year on CBS – while continuing on radio until 1955.
In 1954…Radio station WINS in New York City hired disc jockey Alan Freed from WJW in Cleveland, where he had helped popularize, if not invent, the term "rock 'n' roll."
In 1962…Telstar 1
launched. Telstar is the name of various communications satellites.
The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical.
Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It
successfully relayed through space the first television pictures, telephone
calls, fax images and provided the first live transatlantic television feed.
Telstar 2 was launched May 7, 1963.
Telstar 1 and 2, though no longer
functional, are still in orbit as of October 2013.
In 1965...the Rolling Stones got their first Number One U.S. hit with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."
Blanc began his radio career at the age of 19 when in 1927, he debuted as a voice actor on the KGW program The Hoot Owls, where his ability to provide voices for multiple characters first attracted attention. He moved to Los Angeles in 1932, where he met Estelle Rosenbaum (1909 - 2003), whom he married a year later, before returning to Portland. He moved to KEX in 1933 to produce and co-host his Cobweb And Nuts show with his wife Estelle, which debuted on June 15.
Blanc was a regular on the NBC Red Network show The Jack Benny Program in various roles, including voicing Benny's Maxwell automobile (in desperate need of a tune-up), violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael, the tormented department store clerk, and the train announcer.
By 1946, Blanc appeared on over 15 radio programs in supporting roles. His success on The Jack Benny Program led to his own radio show on the CBS Radio Network, The Mel Blanc Show, which ran from September 3, 1946, to June 24, 1947. Blanc played himself as the hapless owner of a fix-it shop, as well as his young cousin Zookie.
Blanc also appeared on such other national radio programs as The Abbott and Costello Show, the Happy Postman on Burns and Allen, and as August Moon on Point Sublime. During World War II, he appeared as Private Sad Sack on various radio shows, most notably G.I. Journal. Blanc recorded a song titled "Big Bear Lake".
