Time Travel Tuesday #timetravel a look back at the Adafruit, maker, science, technology and engineering world
1707 – Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist is born.
Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the epithet “father of modern taxonomy”. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus (after 1761 Carolus a Linné).
Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University, and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, and published several volumes. At the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe.
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: “Tell him I know no greater man on earth.” The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: “With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly.” Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: “Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist”. Among other compliments, Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists), “The Pliny of the North,” and “The Second Adam”. He is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology.
In botany, the author abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species’ names is L. In older publications, sometimes the abbreviation “Linn.” is found (for instance in: Cheeseman, T.F. (1906) – Manual of the New Zealand Flora). Linnaeus’ remains comprise the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens, following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen he is known to have examined when writing the species description was himself.
1911 – The New York Public Library is dedicated.
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress), and fourth largest in the world. It is a private, non-governmental, independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing. The library has branches in the boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island, and affiliations with academic and professional libraries in the metropolitan area of New York State. The City of New York’s other two boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens, are served by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Library, respectively. The branch libraries are open to the general public and consist of circulating libraries. The New York Public Library also has four research libraries which are open to the general public as well.
The library, officially chartered as The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, was developed in the 19th century, founded from an amalgamation of grass-roots libraries, and social libraries of bibliophiles and the wealthy, aided by the philanthropy of the wealthiest Americans of their age.
1908 – John Bardeen, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate
John Bardeen was an American physicist and electrical engineer, the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon N Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.
The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, allowing the Information Age to occur, and made possible the development of almost every modern electronic device, from telephones to computers to missiles. Bardeen’s developments in superconductivity, which won him his second Nobel, are used in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR) or its medical sub-tool magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
In 1990, John Bardeen appeared on LIFE Magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential Americans of the Century.”
1934 – Robert Moog, American businessman, invented the Moog synthesizer, is born.
Robert Arthur “Bob” Moog, founder of Moog Music, was an American engineer and pioneer of electronic music, best known as the inventor of the Moog synthesizer.
During his lifetime, Moog founded two companies for manufacturing electronic musical instruments. Moog’s innovative electronic design is employed in numerous synthesizers including the Minimoog Model D, Minimoog Voyager, Little Phatty, Sub 37, Moog Taurus Bass Pedals, Moog Minitaur, and the Moogerfooger line of effects pedals.
1995 – The first version of the Java programming language is released.
James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton initiated the Java language project in June 1991. Java was originally designed for interactive television, but it was too advanced for the digital cable television industry at the time. The language was initially called Oak after an oak tree that stood outside Gosling’s office. Later the project went by the name Green and was finally renamed Java, from Java coffee. Gosling designed Java with a C/C++-style syntax that system and application programmers would find familiar.
Sun Microsystems released the first public implementation as Java 1.0 in 1995. It promised “Write Once, Run Anywhere” (WORA), providing no-cost run-times on popular platforms. Fairly secure and featuring configurable security, it allowed network- and file-access restrictions. Major web browsers soon incorporated the ability to run Java applets within web pages, and Java quickly became popular. The Java 1.0 compiler was re-written in Java by Arthur van Hoff to comply strictly with the Java 1.0 language specification. With the advent of Java 2 (released initially as J2SE 1.2 in December 1998 – 1999), new versions had multiple configurations built for different types of platforms. J2EE included technologies and APIs for enterprise applications typically run in server environments, while J2ME featured APIs optimized for mobile applications. The desktop version was renamed J2SE. In 2006, for marketing purposes, Sun renamed new J2 versions as Java EE, Java ME, and Java SE, respectively.
2012 – VOTE! “LEGO for girls, this time hardware-hacker style” – Will LEGO produce a hardware hacker’s idea of a set for girls?
Lego for girls, this time hardware-hacker style @ Tech Culture – CNET News.
One hacker has her own idea of what a Lego set for girls should be. If 10,000 people agree with her, the toymaker could find itself producing her hacker-focused design.
This week, Fried and business partner Phillip Torrone unveiled Ladyada’s Workshop, a Lego set they designed that features Ladyada (Fried’s hacker alter ego, wearing her work outfit) in her comfort zone: a workshop with a pick-and-place machine, a laser cutter, a sewing machine, a soldering station, a computer, a microscope, and shelves of parts and packages. And for good measure, her cat, Mosfet, looks on admiringly.
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