A Brief History On November 5, 1895, an unlikely candidate from Rochester, New York became the first American to patent an automobile. George Selden was actually an attorney that loved to dabble in his workshop. The son of an attorney that represented suffragist Susan B. Anthony, Selden’s attorney work included representing George Eastman (the Kodak camera guy) in patent matters. Selden also patented a typewriter and a hoop making machine. Digging Deeper Selden was intrigued by the internal combustion engine displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia (built by George Brayton… Is everyone in this story named George???) The…
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A Brief History On November 1, 1944, the first of what would end up to be thousands of missions by the famous Boeing B-29 Superfortress flew over Tokyo, Japan on a reconnaissance mission, the first allied aircraft over Tokyo since the 1942 Doolittle Raid. The aircraft was a special photo-reconnaissance version of the big bomber, equipped with 3 powerful cameras. Unlike many other warplanes fitted for reconnaissance, the F-13 and F-13A versions of the B-29 retained their defensive guns and bombing equipment. The 118 F-13 and F-13A Superfortresses were later re-designated RB-29 and RB-29A in 1948. Digging Deeper Although military…
A Brief History On October 29, 1998, former fighter pilot, test pilot, pioneering astronaut and US Senator from Ohio, John Glenn, blasted off aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, becoming the oldest person at age 77 to go into space. And he was an actively sitting US Senator at the time! Digging Deeper Despite John Glenn’s long, varied, and illustrious career, he is best remembered as the first American to orbit the Earth, when he took three laps around the planet in his Mercury 7 space capsule in 1962. Glenn had been a US Marine Corps fighter pilot in World War…
A Brief History On October 23, 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War, history saw the first use of airplanes for warfare purposes when an Italian airplane flew over Turkish positions as the first aerial reconnaissance mission by an airplane in history. Only 9 days later, on November 1, 1911, an Italian airplane dropped a bomb on Turkish troops, the first aerial bombardment in history. During this same conflict Italian pilots fired the first shots in anger from these planes, but only from pistols. All three of these milestones occurred in what is now Libya. Digging Deeper The aircraft involved was an…
A Brief History On October 22, 1797, Frenchman and balloonist Andre-Jacques Garnerin performed the first successful descent in a frameless parachute from a height of 3,000 feet. Garnerin had built a silk frameless parachute, the canopy of which we would recognize as a typical parachute today, with the lines running from the 23 foot diameter canopy to the basket Garnerin rode in. The parachute and basket Garnerin rode in were suspended underneath the hot air balloon gondola by a rope running through a hollow tube. (Previous parachute attempts were made with devices umbrella like in construction with umbrella like frames.)…