703
Everyday you meet new people, new faces and new personalities
💡George Cove's third solar panel on September 1909 @facethenation
George Cove, a forgotten solar power pioneer, may have built a highly efficient photovoltaic panel 40 years before Bell Labs engineers invented silicon cells.
In 1909, Technical World Magazine wrote that “such a machine is cheap and indestructible as a kitchen range. Even in its present and somewhat crude and experimental state, given two days of sun, it will store sufficient electrical energy to light an ordinary house for a week. The inventor has proved this now for months in his establishment”.
George Cove did not understand how his solar generator worked, and neither did anyone else at the time. It was only with Einstein’s work on the photoelectric effect (in 1905) and later work in quantum mechanics (1930s and beyond) that the concept of a semiconductor bandgap was realized. 😱
Outgoing German chancellor Angela Merkel receives farewell military honors at "Grosser Zapfenstreich" in Berlin, Germany, December 2, 2021 @facethenation
The "Grosser Zapfenstreich" has become the unofficial farewell ceremony for defense ministers, presidents and chancellors.
During the first World War, a 16-year-old Walt Disney (pioneer of animated cartoon films) left school and attempted to enlist in the army. He was rejected for being underage, but managed to find employment with the Red Cross as an ambulance driver in 1917.
While overseas, Walt Disney found time to develop his artistic skills. He decorated vehicles with cartoons (visible in the photo). At age 19, when Disney was done working for Red Cross in France, he moved back to Kansas City where his brother Roy got him a job as a newspaper artist at Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio.
@facethenation
Neil Armstrong and family before the Apollo 11 mission, 1969 @facethenation
Читать полностью…
The lumberjacks of the 1800s performed their difficult and dangerous work without any of the conveniences of modern technology. They used axes and long, flexible saws known as "misery whips". Daily pay of around $1.25 and tools such as steel wedges, sledgehammers, and log-moving tools, made logging a perilous and underpaid profession.
Up until the 1880s, lumberjacks felled trees with axes. Lumberjacks used two types of axes: a single-bitted or single-headed axe and a double-bitted axe. Some loggers believed the double-bitted axe to be a dangerous choice, and preferred to use two single-bitted axes instead. They would use one axe to get through the bark and the second for the tree itself.
@facethenation
General Eisenhower speaks with the 101st Airborne Division just before they board their planes to participate in the first assault of the Normandy invasion on June 5, 1944 @facethenation
Читать полностью…
Henry Ford was born on a farm family in Dearborn, Michigan. Henry himself did not like farming, but he did like fooling around with machines. Henry liked to fix all the farm machines, and he was known around the area to be a handyman. So as a youth Henry fixed various machines for surrounding farmers. This hobby of Henry's made his father angry, he would neglect all of his farm chores.
When he was 16, Henry left to work in nearby Detroit as an apprentice machinist. After completing his apprenticeship in 1882 he returned to his father's farm. A neighbor, John Gleason, paid him $3 a day to operate a small portable steam engine that cut corn, ground feed, and sawed wood. Ford's ability came to the attention of the district representative of the Westinghouse Engine Company of Schenectady, New York, and he was hired late in the summer of 1882 to travel throughout southern Michigan setting up and servicing Westinghouse steam traction engines.
In 1913 Henry Ford began searching for that little steam-engine. All he knew was its number, 345. After a long hunt it was found on a farm in Pennsylvania, rusty with disuse. The number plate was found in the farmhouse kitchen, used as a patch on an old cookstove. The farmer wanted ten dollars for the worthless thresher. Ford paid it and gave him a new Model T as a bonus; and he threshed again with the old steam-engine in Dearborn on his sixtieth birthday
@facethenation
In 1864 Otto von Bismarck initiated decisive wars with Denmark, Austria and France to unite 39 independent German states under Prussian leadership @facethenation
Читать полностью…
A monowheel is one big wheel with rider and engine inside its circumference. The first monowheel designs appeared as early as 1869.
In the early 1900's, a group of American inventors attempted to develop a propeller-driven monowheel. Monowheels were also built in Europe. The Italian inventor Davide Cislaghi designed a monowheel with a tilting outer wheel for turning. He received a French patent for the device in 1924 and a British patent in 1927. Historical accounts indicate that he went on to commercialize production of his design under the Motoruota name.
@facethenation
Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered the antibiotic penicillin in 1928, these natural inhibitors of microbial growth have revolutionized medicine and saved countless lives @facethenation
Читать полностью…
Not long ago, there were no galaxies far, far away. In fact, less than a century ago, many scientists believed there was just one galaxy, the Milky Way. All that changed, however, on December 30, 1924, when astronomer Edwin Hubble announced he had evidence that the Milky Way galaxy was just one of the many galaxies in an ever expanding universe.
Discovering that our galaxy wasn’t alone was just the beginning for Hubble. He continued measuring distances and velocities in deep space, finding that the further apart galaxies are from each other, the faster they move away from one another. His findings, published in 1929, led to the widely accepted notion that the universe is expanding. Albert Einstein personally thanked Hubble for the support his findings gave to his theory of relativity.
Earlier, in 1917, Albert Einstein had found that his newly developed theory of general relativity indicated that the universe must be either expanding or contracting. Unable to believe what his own equations were telling him, Einstein introduced a cosmological constant to the equations to avoid this "problem". When Einstein learned of Hubble's redshifts, he immediately realized that the expansion predicted by General Relativity must be real, and in later life he said that changing his equations was "the biggest blunder of his life".
@facethenation
US marines watch a test explosion of an American atom bomb, 1952. Over 2000 marines took part in the tests @facethenation
Читать полностью…
Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, meeting at the "Big Three" Tehran Conference around December 1, 1943 @facethenation
Читать полностью…
First ever video footage of New York fire brigade, 1893 🚒
@facethenation
Ku Klux Klan members hold a march in Washington
@facethenation
William Harvey Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor 🎖 for heroic actions in battle during the Battle of Fort Wagner in 1864. Though wounded severely twice, he never allowed the Flag 🇺🇸 he was carrying to touch the ground @facethenation
Carney was born a slave in 1840 in Norfolk, Virginia. He was able to escape slavery and made his way to the north settling in Massachusetts. In March 1863 he joined the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War. The first black soldier to earn the Medal of Honor.
Fast-paced and glamorous world of Formula One in the 1960's.
Françoise Madeleine Hardy was born in Paris on January 17, 1944. Hardy remains a popular figure in music and fashion, and is considered an icon of French pop @facethenation
Janet Armstrong and her sons Mark and Rick, watch the launch of Apollo 11 mission to the moon, commanded by her husband, astronaut Neil Armstrong on July 16, 1969 @facethenation
Читать полностью…
Lumberjacks undercut a Giant Sequoia tree 25 feet in diameter in Northern California, 1902 @facethenation
Читать полностью…
Eisenhower, giving the final order for D-day, the assault on Nazi-occupied France. It was the beginning of a campaign of of liberation of Europe from nazi tyranny
@facethenation
Henry Ford with Westinghouse Steam Engine No. 345 in Dearborn on his sixtieth birthday
@facethenation
Germany became a modern, unified nation under the leadership of the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck, 1890
@facethenation
Italian inventor Davide Cislaghi driving his monowheel motorcycle in France, 1935
@facethenation
Fleming returned to his lab from vacation and noticed mold growing in a petri dish. There were no bacteria in the area around the mold because something in the mold was killing them
@facethenation
Albert Einstein with Edwin Hubble, in 1931, looking through the lens of the 100-inch telescope 🔭 through which Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in 1924
@facethenation
US marines take part in a tactical exercise a few seconds after an atomic bomb. Many soldiers who were present were exposed to high levels of radiation
@facethenation
The Tehran was a strategy meeting of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill from Nov 28 and Dec 1, 1943. It was the first of the World War II conferences of the "Big Three" Allied leaders
@facethenation
The Avrocar VZ-9 was developed by Avro Canada as a top secret black project for the U.S. Army and Air Force, but the flying saucer shaped aircraft was a failure
@facethenation
Horse-drawn fire engine racing to a fire. The era of the fire horse lasted roughly fifty years stretching from the end of the Civil War until the end of 1915 @facethenation
Читать полностью…
In 1925 and 1926, the Ku Klux Klan descended on Washington for two massive marches.
In the early 1920's, the KKK was at the peak of its membership, numbering 4 million strong. The growth of the hate group was fueled by the 1915 release of the silent film Birth of a Nation, which portrayed members as heroes, coinciding with the widespread xenophobia following the devastation of World War I.
The KKK's hatred was directed not only against black people, but also against European Catholic and Jewish immigrants flocking to the U.S. after the war.
@facethenation
