From: John Conover <john@email.johncon.com>
Subject: forwarded message from root@email.johncon.com
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 02:52:34 -0700
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Funny how some days have better "On This Day ..."
John
________________________ On This Day, Oct 22 ... ________________________
1st commercial flight from mainland to Hawaii. (1936)
This was the first transpacific passenger flight, October 21-27,
1936, and continued on to Manila, in the Philippines, departing
from the Pan American base at Alameda, San Francisco, arriving at
Cavite Base in the Philippines on the 27'th. The pilot was Captain
Edwin C. Musick, and the plane was a Martin M-130, flying boat,
registration NC14714, (Pan Am name, "China Clipper.") The first
ticket sold was to one R. F. Bradley, Aviation manager, Standard
Oil, San Francisco office.
Pan American was founded by Juan Trippe, son of a well to do
banking family, that was trained as a pilot in WWI. Educated at
Harvard to follow in his father's footsteps, the lure of flying
proved stronger than the force of tradition, and in 1922, Trippe
Capitan Edwin C. Musick is an unsung hero in the history of
aviation. The guy had a string of firsts, the most noted is the
first airmail flight from San Francisco to Manila on Nov. 22-29,
1935. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1894, he to would be trained
as a pilot for WWI, and was one of the first pilots to accumulate
10,000 hours behind the stick. In Oct., 1927 he joined Jan
Trippe's airline, an made the inaugural airmail flight from Key
West, Florida, to Havana Cuba. Musick pioneered new routes to the
Caribbean and then on to South America. In 1930 Musick became
chief pilot of Pan Am's Caribbean Division, and was in charge of
developing the special techniques of over-ocean flying. Here the
airline hoped to perfect the concept of a departmentalized flight
crew, multi-engined aircraft, a meteorological service,
communications, and flight control and maintenance. Pan Am was
instrumental in the design and deployment of the Sikorsky S-42
flying boat, and Musick, as chief test pilot, set more world
aviation records than any other pilot in the world. After
acceptance of the S-42, a plane was flown to California to start
survey flights for the trans-Pacific flights in 1935. Musick
pioneered the airmail flights to from California to Manila in a
Martin 130. In March of 1937, he pioneered a new route from San
Francisco to Honolulu, Kingman Reef, American Samoa, and New
Zealand, (today, it is still the longest flight route in the
world, flown non-stop by Air New Zealand.) On Jan. 11, 1938, the
Pan Am plane "the Samoan Clipper, (NC16734, an S-42,) disappeared
with Musick at the controls on a survey flight from Pago Pago,
American Samoa to Auckland, New Zealand. Apparently, the clipper
exploded in midair as the crew tried to dump fuel in an attempt to
land at Pago Pago. Neither the plane or any survivors were
found. A Liberty ship was christened by his widow, Cleo, in his
name, at the Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, California, in WWII.
The Dec. 2, 1935 issue of Time Magazine has a cover picture of
Musick.
The M-130 was designed by the Martin Company's, (now
Lockheed-Martin,) chief engineer, Lassiter Milbur, at the Middle
River, Md., plant. It had a gross weight of 53,000 pounds, and the
hull was divided into 6 water tight compartments, (a la, Titanic,)
and was 90 feet long, and was constructed of riveted 24ST aluminum
alloy-longitudinal stringers were not used. The wing was a high
wing, cantilever construction, with a span was 130 feet, with a
primary structure that was a box-girder constructed with
semi-diagonal tensional field web beams acting as side
members. The wing was constructed of riveted 24ST aluminum. All
highly stressed wing fittings were constructed of chrome-moly
steel. Stiffeners were added to the beam webs. The ailerons were
balanced and had metal framework and fabric covering. Trailing
edge tabs were installed on the ailerons, adjustable from the
pilots' cockpit, to overcome any tendency toward wing
heaviness. Power was provided by 4, Pratt & Whitney R-1830 radial,
air-cooled, 4000 horse power engines. The cabin was not
pressurized, but was air-conditioned. It could carry 46
passengers, and had berths, (a la, Singapore Airlines.) The range
was 4,000 miles. The control bridge was equipped with dual flight
controls and instruments, including a Sperry Automatic Pilot.
This plane was replaced by the Boeing B-134 in 1939. (The B-314,
first flown in 1939, was the largest commercial aircraft
manufactured prior to the advent of the 747. It has a gross weight
of just under 83,000 pounds, carrying 74 passengers in berths, a
la Singapore Airlines.)
Alameda, California, was Pan Am's West Coast base, and had served
clipper service for several years prior to the 1937 flight. When
Pan Am leased the area, it contained only a yacht basin. Terminal
facilities were constructed, and moved to Treasure Island in 1939,
at the request of the Navy for construction of Alameda Naval Air
Station.
The Alameda base no longer exists. However, the Pan Am bases at
Guam, Wake, Honolulu, Philapennes, and Hong Kong/Macao, still
exist, although in very deteriorated condition.
Annette Funicello, actress and Mouseketeer, is born in Utica NY (1942)
Apollo 7 crew returns (1968)
Chester Carlson invents xerography (1938)
Chester Carlson was a patent analyzer for an electric component
maker. He was nearsighted, and had to draw, by hand, all of the
patent documentation for his employer. He had graduated, in 1928,
from the California Institute of Technology. He was a nerd. After
flirting with vocations (poetry, artist, etc.,) that would allow
him to work in seclusion, (he was not a people-person,) he settled
on analyzing patents. He wanted to build a think tank and handle
patents for folks, and become a commercial success by the age of
30. It was a bad career choice in the late 1920's. Scores of
companies rejected his application during the Great
Depression. One that did not was AT&T-but laid him off immediately
after hiring him. He ended up at P. R. Mallory & Company, a maker
of capacitors, etc. He was at Mallory that he realized the need for
a copier machine. The concept of the photocopy machine was a child
of the Depression.
Carlson set up shop in the kitchen of his apartment in Queens,
N. Y. After investigating the technical journals of Eastman Kodak
Company, he decided that wet development was not practical. He
decided to pursue his own concept of dry reproduction based on the
principle of photo-conductivity. The Hungarian physicist, Paul
Selenyi, had shown how charged particles would attache themselves
to an oppositely charged surface. Carlson decided that he could
get dry particles to stick to a charge plate in a pattern
corresponding to an image shining on the plate. He called this
idea electrophotography. It was a great idea, but hard to
implement. Over several years, Carlson concocted foul-smelling
experiments in his apartment. The landlady's daughter, so the
story goes, came up to see what the sulfurous source of the odors
was and wound up marring him in 1934.
Carlson received a patent for electrophotography in 1937. (He had
received a Law degree in 1939, and was admitted to the bar in
1940.) He moved his laboratory into the back of a beauty shop
owned by his mother-and-law, and hired an assistant, one Otto
Kornei, a German refugee physicist. He gave him ten dollars per
month as a research budget.
Finally, on October 22, 1938, they created a static electricity
charge on a sulfur-coated zinc plate by rubbing it with a cotton
cloth. Then, a piece of glass with words written on it was held
next to the zinc plate, and exposed with light. The plate was
dusted with lycopodium powder, (moss spores,) and then wax paper
pressed against the powder. The wax paper was heated to the
melting point, and peeled off. The excess powder was blown off,
and the first dry copy in the history of commerce was made.
But no one cared. Kornei went to IBM. IBM was not interested in
dry copy, and neither was GE or RCA. In 1944, however, the
Battelle Memorial Institute, gave him $3,000 for continued
research, (and agreed to give him 40% of the profits for acting as
his agent.) In 1945, his wife divorced him, and Battelle ran out
of research money. And then John Dessauer got involved. Dessauer
was the director of research for the Haloid Company. It
manufactured photographic paper, and things were not going well
competing against Kodak-they needed to eliminate the wet process
used by Kodak to get a competitive edge. Haloid is now the Xerox
Corporation. (It was a big gamble. Haloid had to front $25,000 per
year for R&D to deploy Carlson's design-on a gross revenue of
$100,000.)
Taking over, Haloid decided that the product needed a better
name. A classic language professor at Ohio State University
suggested the name xerography, (from the Greek "xeros" for dry,
and "graphos," for writing.) Haloid executives estimated that the
total available market just a few thousand offices. At the time,
that was optimistic.
At the 1948 Optical Society of America meeting in Detroit, Haloid
announced the first Xerox machine. No one cared. The first model
was put on the market in 1949, and was promptly called the "ox
box," (it required 14 manual operations to work,) and was not
competitive with carbon paper. In addition, it was a bit pricy, at
$400.
The 1950's produced some success. In 1955, Haloid marketed an
automated copier, the Copyflo, (which would produce prints from
microfilm.) It was enough success for the company to change its
name to Haloid Xerox in 1958.
Carlson was never an employee of Haloid, and lived in poverty off
of royalties until 1960, when Haloid introduced the 914 copier-the
first copier to use ordinary paper. Despite weighing 600 pounds,
the machine was a vast commercial success. Refinements like air
nozzles to pull single sheets of blank paper into the machine-and
Americans added a new word to their vocabulary-toner-for the ink
that was developed in a Rochester garage.
In 1961 the company changed its name to Xerox. Chester Carlson
became immensely wealthy and gave away millions of dollars to
charities and private citizens who wrote him, (mostly
anonymously.) He died of a heart attack in 1968 in New York City.
Chinese make first record of solar eclipse (2136 BC)
John F Kennedy announces USSR has missile bases in Cuba (1962)
The Surgeon General releases his first report on AIDS (1986)
US National debt topped $1 TRILLION (nothing to celebrate). (1981)
USSR's Venera 9 sends first photos from Venus (1975)
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--
John Conover, john@email.johncon.com, http://www.johncon.com/