DC-9 airplane retirement
In 2014, the
last flight of a U.S. passenger McDonnell Douglas DC-9 aircraft left
Minneapolis/St. Paul, going to Atlanta. The Delta airline was the first to
begin service with the original 65-seat version in 1965, as well as the last
U.S. major airline to retire it. Delta had originally phased out their DC-9
fleet in 1993. The merger with Northwest in 2008 brought back 94 DC-9s with an
average age (as of 31 Dec 2007) of 35.6 years, to be phased out again. Despite
being known as a reliable workhorse, the jet’s technology was dated, its
engines noisy, but most importantly, it could not match the newer airplanes in
fuel economy, while fuel prices were continuing to increase. They have been
replaced with newer, quieter, more efficient aircraft, such as the Boeing 717
(which still owes much to the original DC-9 design).
In 2000, the
last Pyrenean ibex was found dead under a fallen tree with a crushed skull, by
forest rangers in the Ordesa National Park in northern Spain. The 13-year-old
female, named Celia, was the last known survivor of Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica, one of the
four subspecies of the Spanish ibex. Of those, another subspecies, the
Portuguese ibex had already became extinct in 1892. Known locally as a bucardo,
Celia was studied by scientists while she lived in captivity within the park.
Shortly before her death, they had taken tissue and blood samples to preserve
the DNA for a cloning attempt. On 23 Jan 2009, a baby
Pyranean ibex was born from a surrogate gate, becoming the first extinct
species to be resurrected. Sadly, the baby died 7 minutes later due to lung
defects. The Pyranean ibex was thus also the first species to go extinct twice.
In 1971,
Berkeley chemists announced the first synthetic production of growth hormones.
In 1971, the
first adult heart transplant in the U.S. was performed at the Stanford Medical
Center, Stanford, Calif., by Dr. Norman Shumway. The
54-year-old patient, whose heart had been damaged by virus infection, survived
for 15 days after the surgery. Shumway, an American surgeon, continued to
pioneer in cardiac transplantation. His surgical team went on to perform many
other heart-transplant operations. Later, Shumway also accomplished open-heart
surgery for the transplantation of valves.
In 1954, a New York Times article on food
included the news that a frozen turkey dinner from C.A. Swanson & Sons of
Omaha was soon to be available in the newspaper’s home area for about $1. This
was the first frozen meal of the “TV Dinner” type that was successfully sold
across the U.S. An aluminium foil tray with a foil overwrap was filled with
white and dark turkey slices, cornbread sage dressing and gravy, plus two
separate segments contained green peas and mashed sweet potatoes with butter.
Each 12-oz dinner needed only about 25 minutes in a hot oven to be ready to eat
from the disposable foil tray (no plate needed). Six months later, having had
great response to the turkey meal, Swanson introduced a “TV Fried Chicken Dinner,”
reported in the Times on
10 Jun 1954. “TV Dinner” was the Swanson brand.
In 1953, Phenytoin (diphenylhydantoin), an
anti-epileptic drug, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. This
drug was first synthesized in 1908 by Heinrich Biltz, a German physician. It is
now one of the more popular anti-convulsive medications.
In 1929,
Sheffield Farms of New York began using Sealcone wax paper cartons instead of
glass bottles for milk delivery, using packaging equipment from Sealcone Inc.
of New York. These quart, pint and half pint truncated cone containers used a
flexible spruce fibre paper rather than a stiff cardboard. The upper end was
flattened and hermetically sealed with a metal closure that permitted storage
even upside-down. This triangular shape meant two Sealcones used only as much
space as one glass milk bottle, with a 94% saving in packaging weight, and at
lower cost. Advertisements said they were transparent enough to see the cream
line. Borden's
plant in New York adopted Sealcones in Feb 1930. Various other designs of
single-use wax paper cartons had been devised and used elsewhere before the
Sealcone.[Image: from a 1936 advertisement.]
.
In 1927,
commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and
London.
In 1913, William M. Burton
patented a process to "crack" petroleum, converting oil to produce
gasoline. Standard Oil used his method.
In 1857, a
U.S. patent (#16,362), which was the country's first patent related to zinc ore
was issued to Samuel Wetherill, Bethlehem, Pa.
In 1851, the
rotation of the Earth was proved experimentally by Leon Foucault. After weeks of work, he
recorded in his journal that he made this discovery at 2:00 am working with a
pendulum in the cellar of the house he shared with his mother. Using a steel
wire 2-m long with a 5-kg brass bob, he had made a pendulum suspended in a way
that freely permitted it, he found that its plane of oscillation slowly rotated
relative to the ground. This led to using much longer versions of his pendulum.
He found that the angular velocity of the rotation equalled wsinqwhere w is
the angular velocity of the Earth rotating on its axis, and q is the
latitude of the site of the pendulum. He demonstrated his discovery on 31 Mar 1851 for Napoleon.
In 1844, U.S.
patent No. 3,605 was issued, the country's first patent related to iron ore, to
S. Broadmeadow of Woodbridge, N.J. Under the title of “Improvement in the mode
of obtaining Wrought-Iron Directly from the Ore,” he gave his preferred form
for an iron furnace. He used a different shape for the arch of the roof of the
fire-chamber as it approaches the stack, intended to avoid reflecting back the
flame and heat; and thus to remove any reverbatory effect which causes more of
the ore to be converted to slag instead of reducing it to malleable iron. The
ore (oxides of iron) was to be pulverised to a coarse powder, mixed with a
suitable proportion of powdered “carburet of iron.” The mass is left at rest
during heating using coal as fuel, while the carbon of the latter combines with
the oxygen of the ore.
In 1838, Samuel Morse,
with his partner, Alfred Vail,
gave the first public demonstration of their new invention electric telegraphic
system at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, N.J.
Typewriter
In 1714, an idea for a possible
typewriter predecessor was patented by Englishman Henry Mill, but he never succeeded
in perfecting his invention and it died with him. Nothing more than the patent
record remains known about the machine. It was British patent number 385,
granted “by the grace of Queen Anne.” The patent's title was: An artificial machine or method for the
impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after
another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatever may be engrossed in paper
or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print.
0 comments:
Post a Comment