Emile Berliner's 160th Birthday

Emile Berliner (May 20, 1851 – August 3, 1929) was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for developing the disc record gramophone (phonograph in American English). He founded The Berliner Gramophone Company in 1895, The Gramophone Company in London, England, in 1897, Deutsche Grammophon in Hanover, Germany, in 1898 and Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada in Montreal in 1899 (chartered in 1904). [Read more on Wikipedia]

Emile Berliner with disc record gramophone

Richard Trevithick's 240th birthday

http://www.google.co.uk/logos/2011/trevithick11-hp.jpg

Richard Trevithick (13 April 1771 – 22 April 1833) was a Cornish inventor and mining engineer. His most significant success was the high pressure steam engine and he also built the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive. On 21 February 1804 the world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey took place as Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. [Read more on Wikipedia]

Richard Trevithick, by John Linnell (1792-1882)

Guillermo González Camarena's birthday

Source: http://www.google.com.mx/logos/2011/camarena11-hp.jpg

Guillermo González Camarena (February 17, 1917 – April 18, 1965) (aged 48), was a Mexican engineer who was the inventor of color television. [Read more on wikipedia]

Thomas Edison's 164th Birthday

Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2011/edison11-hp.gif

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. [Read more on Wikipedia]

115th Birthday of Juan de la Cierva

Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/delacierva-hp.gif

Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu (21 September 1895 – 9 December 1936) was a Spanish civil engineer and pilot. His most famous accomplishment was the invention in 1920 of the Autogiro, a single-rotor type of aircraft that came to be called autogyro in the English language. After four years of experimentation, De la Cierva developed the articulated rotor which resulted in the world's first successful flight of a stable rotary-wing aircraft in 1923 with his C.4 prototype.

De la Cierva was born in Murcia, Spain to a wealthy family. After several successful experiments with aviation as a boy, he eventually earned a civil engineering degree. He moved to England in 1925, where with the support of Scottish industrialist James G. Weir, he established the Cierva Autogiro Company.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, De la Cierva supported the forces of Francisco Franco, helping the rebels to obtain the De Havilland DH-89 'Dragon Rapide' which flew General Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco. His brother was killed by the Republican army in Paracuellos del Jarama. [Read more on Wikipedia]

Happy 4th of July and Happy Birthday Rube Goldberg!

Source: http://www.google.com/logos/july4thgoldberg10-hp.png

Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was a Jewish American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg is best known for a series of popular cartoons he created depicting complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways – now known as Rube Goldberg machines. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.

Goldberg was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society, and is the name sake of the Reuben Award which the organization awards to the Cartoonist of the Year. He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg contests, which challenge participants to make a complex machine to perform a simple task. [Read more on Wikipedia]

Dennis Gabor´s 110th birthday

Source: http://www.google.com/logos/gabor10-hp.png
Holography support courtesy of the Departments of Electrical Engineering
and Applied Physics at Stanford University

Dennis Gabor CBE, FRS (original Hungarian name: Gábor Dénes; 5 June 1900 – 8 February 1979) was a Hungarian-British electrical engineer and inventor, most notable for inventing holography, for which he later received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics. [Read more on Wikipedia]

225th Birthday of Karl Drais

Source: http://www.google.com/logos/karldrais-hp.gif

Karl Drais (April 29, 1785 – December 10, 1851) was a German inventor and invented the Laufmaschine ("running machine"), also later called the velocipede, draisine (English) or "draisienne" (French), also nicknamed the dandy horse. This incorporated the two-wheeler principle that is basic to the bicycle and motorcycle and was the beginning of mechanized personal transport. Drais also invented the earliest typewriter with a keyboard in 1821, later developed into an early stenograph machine, and a wood-saving cooker including the earliest hay chest. [Read more on Wikipedia]

Karl Drais ca 1820, then still a baron

LL Zamenhof's 150th Birthday - Founder of Esperanto

Source: http://www.google.com/logos/esperanto_09.gif

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (pronounced /ˈzɑːmɨnhɒf/ in English; born Leyzer Leyvi Zamengov) (December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, and the inventor of Esperanto, a constructed language designed for international communication. [Read more on Wikipedia]

Birthday of Nikola Tesla

Source: http://www.google.com/logos/tesla09.gif

Nikola Tesla (Serbian: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer. He was an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor. This work helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. [Read more on Wikipedia]