Other significant scientific and technological anniversaries in 1997
- 50 years ago - 1947
- Demonstration of the first successful transistor at Bell Laboratories, New Jersey by William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. You can see a replica of the first transistor in the Computing Then and Now (www.nmsi.ac.uk/galleries/computing.html) gallery.
- 100 years ago - 1897
- Sir John Douglas Cockroft born: Co-inventor (with Ernest Walton) of the linear accelerator - the first 'atom smasher'. See the actual equipment used by Cockroft and Walton in the Nuclear Physics and Power gallery (www.nmsi.ac.uk/on-line/treasure/plan/2ndnucl.htm) at the Science Museum.
Ferdinand Braun: first demonstrated the cathode ray tube at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Joseph John Thomson discovers the electron.
Yerkes Observatory, USA: World's largest working refracting telescope (40" objective) operational.
Eduard Buchner: Showed that fermentation does not require living cells.
- 200 years ago - 1797
- Joseph Henry born: Discoverer of the principle of electromagnetic induction at the same time as Michael Faraday, but did not receive the same degree of publicity as Faraday. He was the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Louis Nicolas Vauquelin: Discovered chromium.
Designed by the Electronic Publishing Group of Institute of Physics Publishing.