AEA June Bug
The June Bug was an early US aircraft designed and flown by Glenn H. Curtiss and built by the Aerial Experiment Association in 1908; the June Bug is famous for winning the first aeronautical prize, the Scientific American Cup awarded in the United States. A solid silver sculpted trophy, $25,000 in cash, would be awarded to whoever made the first public flight of over 1 kilometer. Glenn Curtiss had a hobby of collecting trophies, he and the Aerial Experiment Association built the June Bug with hopes of winning the Scientific American Cup. Aerodrome #3 included the used aileron steering system, but a shoulder yoke made it possible for the pilot to steer by leaning from side to side; the varnish that sealed the wing fabric cracked in the heat, so a mixture of turpentine and gasoline was used. The June Bug had yellow wings because yellow ochre was added to the wing mixture in order to make the aircraft show up better in photographs, due to the orthochromic-form monochrome photographic techniques of that time.
It was named by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell after the common Phyllophaga, a beetle known colloquially in North America as the "June bug," because June bugs were observed to fly to aircraft: they have large stiff outer wings for gliding, more delicate smaller propeller-like wings that do the actual propulsion; the June Bug was tested in New York, at Stony Brook Farm. Curtiss flew it on three out of four tries on June 21, 1908, with distances of 456 ft, 417 ft, 1,266 ft at 34.5 mph. On June 25, performances of 2,175 ft and 3,420 ft were so encouraging that the Association contacted the Aero Club of America about trying for the Scientific American Cup; the Aero Club contacted the Wright brothers. Orville wrote to decline the opportunity on June 30, as the Wrights were busy completing their deal with the United States government; the message was received by July 1, Curtiss took to the air as requested on July 4. The flight was a great public event; the event was overseen by a delegation of 22 notable members of the Aero Club, headed by Alan R. Hawley.
Families came as early as 5 a.m. to claim a spot on the grassy hill, along with reporters, a motion picture film crew. The June Bug became the first airplane in the United States to perform in a movie. A thunderstorm began, umbrellas popped up around the hillside; the town of Hammondsport was nearly empty. The nearby Pleasant Valley Wine Company generously opened its doors and offered generous free samples to all who were there. Charles M. Manly, who had unsuccessfully tested the Langley Aerodrome in 1903, measured out the 1 km and 20 ft distance with plenty of volunteer help; the June Bug took one false start, going not far enough. On the second try, the airplane flew 5,360 ft in 1 minute 40 seconds, winning the trophy and a US$25,000 cash prize, it was such an amazing sight that one woman watching was hit by a train on nearby tracks and suffered two broken ribs. After the flight, the wine cellars reopened their doors with free champagne for all. Amidst the publicity following the flight, the Wrights sent a warning to Curtiss that they had not given permission for the use of "their" aircraft control system to be used "for exhibitions or in a commercial way".
In fact, none of the AEA's aircraft used a wing-warping system like the Wrights' for control, relying instead on triangular ailerons designed by Alexander Graham Bell, which he patented in December 1911. However, in 1913 a court ruled. Three years previous to the June Bug's flight, the Wrights had made flights of up to 24 miles without official witnesses; however the Wrights would have been required to install wheels and dispense with a catapult launch to compete for the 1908 prize. From October to November, the June Bug was modified by adding floats to it in an attempt to create a seaplane. Renamed Loon, attempts to fly it began on Keuka Lake on November 28. Although the aircraft could achieve speeds of up to 29 mph on the water, it could not take off, on January 2, 1909, one of the floats filled with water, the Loon unexpectedly sank, it was recovered, but rotted away in a nearby boathouse. A replica of the June Bug was flown in 1976 by Mercury Aircraft of Hammondsport. Data from General characteristics Length: 27 ft 5 in Wingspan: 42 ft 6 in Powerplant: 1 × Curtiss B-8 V-8 air-cooled piston engine, 40 hp Performance Maximum speed: 39 mph Related development Curtiss Golden Flyer Notes Bibliography Aircraft Ab - Ak
Hubbard Bell Grossman Pillot Memorial
Hubbard Bell Grossman Pillot Memorial is a public artwork by Lee Lawrie, located at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D. C. United States. "Hubbard Bell Grossman Pillot Memorial" was surveyed as part of the Smithsonian's Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture survey in 1967-1969. This grave site memorial is a tall marble stele with relief carvings showing a classical nude male seated with his body turned to the right showing his profile. In his left hand he holds his right arm rests on an urn; the front is inscribed: HUBBARD BELL GROSSMAN PILLOT This grave site serves as the final resting place for National Geographic editor Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor and his wife Elsie May Bell. Alexander Graham Bell's parents, Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds Bell, are buried here along with fourteen other individuals marked by bronze markers
First transcontinental telephone call
A telephone call, which for marketing purposes is claimed to be the first transcontinental telephone call, occurred on Jan. 25, 1915, a day timed to coincide with the Panama–Pacific International Exposition celebrations. However, the transcontinental telephone line was first completed on June 17, 1914, first voice tested in July 1914. A 1998 U. S. postage stamp commemorates the completion of the line in 1914. The original long distance telephone network started in 1885, in New York City. By 1892 this line reached Chicago. After introducing loading coils in 1899, the long distance line continued west, by 1911 it reached Denver, Colorado; the president of AT&T, Theodore Vail, committed the company to a transcontinental line in 1909. On June 17, 1914, after affixing 4,750 miles of telephone line, workers raised the final pole at Wendover, Utah on the border between Nevada and Utah state lines. Theodore Vail, the president of AT&T, succeeded in transmitting his voice across the continental U. S. in July 1914.
Six months amidst the celebrations surrounding the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, on January 25, 1915, Alexander Graham Bell, in New York City, repeated his famous statement "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you," into the telephone, heard by his assistant Dr. Watson in San Francisco, for a long distance call of 3,400 miles. Dr. Watson replied, "It will take me five days to get there now!" The Alexander Graham Bell call initiated AT&T's transcontinental service. The phone call was symbolic. Dr. Watson was at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco to receive the call, placed by Bell from the Telephone Building at 15 Dey Street in New York City. President Woodrow Wilson and the mayors of both cities were involved in the call. President Woodrow Wilson spoke to an audience in San Francisco from the White House and is quoted as saying "It appeals to the imagination to speak across the continent." However, President Wilson was concerned with the "devaluation of the individual" as AT&T celebrated the achievement of the company rather than distinguishing individual inventors and innovators.
"Mr. Watson -- come here!" Library of Congress. July 27, 2010. "Phone to Pacific From the Atlantic". New York Times. January 26, 1915. "Across the Continent by Telephone". Scientific American. 112: 129. 6 Feb 1915. Doi:10.1038/scientificamerican02061915-129. Retrieved 9 October 2015. American Telephone and Telegraph Company; the story of a great achievement. New York: Bartlett-Orr press. Retrieved 9 October 2015
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church; the university has more than 3,900 faculty members and nearly 33,000 students, is one of Boston's largest employers. It offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, doctorates, medical, dental and law degrees through 17 schools and colleges on two urban campuses; the main campus is situated along the Charles River in Boston's Fenway-Kenmore and Allston neighborhoods, while the Boston University Medical Campus is in Boston's South End neighborhood. BU is categorized as an R1: Doctoral University in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. BU is a member of the Boston Consortium for Higher Education and the Association of American Universities; the university was ranked 42nd among undergraduate programs at national universities, 46th among global universities by U. S. News & World Report in its 2018 rankings.
Among its alumni and current or past faculty, the university counts eight Nobel Laureates, 23 Pulitzer Prize winners, 10 Rhodes Scholars, six Marshall Scholars, 48 Sloan Fellows, nine Academy Award winners, several Emmy and Tony Award winners. BU has MacArthur, Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowship holders as well as American Academy of Arts and Sciences and National Academy of Sciences members among its past and present graduates and faculty. In 1876, BU professor Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in a BU lab; the Boston University Terriers compete in the NCAA Division I. BU athletic teams compete in the Patriot League, Hockey East conferences, their mascot is Rhett the Boston Terrier. Boston University is well known for men's hockey, in which it has won five national championships, most in 2009. Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the Newbury Biblical Institute in Newbury, Vermont in 1839, was chartered with the name "Boston University" by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1869.
The University organized formal Centennial observances both in 1939 and 1969. On April 24–25, 1839 a group of Methodist ministers and laymen at the Old Bromfield Street Church in Boston elected to establish a Methodist theological school. Set up in Newbury, the school was named the "Newbury Biblical Institute". In 1847, the Congregational Society in Concord, New Hampshire, invited the Institute to relocate to Concord and offered a disused Congregational church building with a capacity of 1200 people. Other citizens of Concord covered the remodeling costs. One stipulation of the invitation was; the charter issued by New Hampshire designated the school the "Methodist General Biblical Institute", but it was called the "Concord Biblical Institute." With the agreed twenty years coming to a close, the trustees of the Concord Biblical Institute purchased 30 acres on Aspinwall Hill in Brookline, Massachusetts, as a possible relocation site. The institute moved in 1867 to 23 Pinkney Street in Boston, received a Massachusetts Charter as the "Boston Theological Seminary".
In 1869, three trustees of the Boston Theological Institute obtained from the Massachusetts Legislature a charter for a university by name of "Boston University". These trustees were successful Boston businessmen and Methodist laymen, with a history of involvement in educational enterprises and became the founders of Boston University, they were Isaac Rich, Lee Claflin, Jacob Sleeper, for whom Boston University's three West Campus dormitories are named. Lee Claflin's son, was Governor of Massachusetts and signed the University Charter on May 26, 1869 after it was passed by the Legislature; as reported by Kathleen Kilgore in her book, Transformations, A History of Boston University, the founders directed the inclusion in the Charter of the following provision, unusual for its time: No instructor in said University shall be required by the Trustees to profess any particular religious opinions as a test of office, no student shall be refused admission... on account of the religious opinions he may entertain.
Every department of the new university was open to all on an equal footing regardless of sex, race, or religion. The Boston Theological Institute was absorbed into Boston University in 1871 as the BU School of Theology. In January 1872 Isaac Rich died, leaving the vast bulk of his estate to a trust that would go to Boston University after ten years of growth while the University was organized. Most of this bequest consisted of real estate throughout the core of the city of Boston, appraised at more than $1.5 million. Kilgore describes this as the largest single donation to an American college or university to that time. By December, the Great Boston Fire of 1872 had destroyed all but one of the buildings Rich had left to the University, the insurance companies with which they had been insured were bankrupt; the value of his estate, when turned over to the University in 1882, was half what it had been in 1872. As a result, the University was unable to build its contemplated campus on Aspinwall Hill, the land was sold piecemeal as development sites.
Street names in the area, including Claflin Road, Claflin Path, University Road, are the only remaining evidence of University ownership in this area. Following the fire, Boston University established its new facilities in buildings scattered throughout Beacon Hill and expanded into the Boyls
Beinn Bhreagh
Beinn Bhreagh is the name of the former estate of Alexander Graham Bell, in Victoria County, Nova Scotia. It refers to a peninsula jutting into Cape Breton Island's scenic Bras d'Or Lake 3 km southeast of the village of Baddeck, forming the southeastern shore of Baddeck Bay; the peninsula was known to the Mi'kmaq as Megwatpatek translated to "Red Head" due to the reddish sandstone rocks at the tip of the peninsula. The name Beinn Bhreagh—meaning "Beautiful Mountain" in Scottish Gaelic—is thought to have been given to the peninsula by Dr Bell, who purchased 242.8 hectares to form the estate in the late 1880s. In July 2005, the Nova Scotia Civic Address Project review changed the status of Beinn Bhreagh from a "generic locality" to a "community". Wealthy from his successful invention and marketing of the telephone, inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel undertook a cruising vacation in 1885 along the coast of eastern North America with their intended destination being Newfoundland, in order to view a mining operation that Mabel's father had invested in.
Along the way, due to the accidental grounding of their passenger boat, they serendipitously discovered Cape Breton's Bras d'Or Lake and were enthralled by their surroundings. Its landscape and Scottish traditions and culture were reminiscent of his birthplace in Edinburgh, Scotland; the Bells lived on Beinn Bhreagh from about 1888 until Dr. Bell's death in 1922 only in the summer and later year-round. Bell constructed a laboratory and boatyard on this property, conducting experiments in powered flight and hydrofoil technology, among many other things; some of his most notable accomplishments at Beinn Bhreagh included the first manned flight of an airplane in the British Commonwealth in 1909, plus the HD-4, a hydrofoil boat designed by Frederick Walker Baldwin and Dr Bell, built at Beinn Bhreagh. Designed as a submarine chaser and powered by aircraft engines, their vessel set a world watercraft speed record of 71 miles per hour in 1919, which remained unbroken for many years. Dr Bell and his wife Mabel were both buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain, on the estate, overlooking Bras d'Or Lake.
The 242.8-hectare estate owned by the Bells is on the peninsula at the end of Beinn Bhreagh Road. It is now owned by their many descendants and not open to the public, nor is it visible from Beinn Bhreagh Road. Dr and Mrs Bell's first residence on Beinn Bhreagh, the "Lodge", was built in 1888; the second and larger home, Beinn Bhreagh Hall was built in 1893. Both are visible from Baddeck, across Baddeck Bay. For more information and pictures of the estate, visit the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, a national park system unit and museum managed by Parks Canada, which contains many objects donated to the nation by Dr Bell's descendants; the museum was designated a National Historic Site in 1952, while Beinn Bhreagh Hall was named a National Historic Site in 2018. Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard was the first president of the National Geographic Society and Bell was its second president. Bell's son-in-law Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor was president of the National Geographic Society for many years, his grandson, Melville Bell Grosvenor, great grandson Gilbert Melville Grosvenor were editors of the National Geographic Magazine and Presidents of the Society.
As a result, both Beinn Bhreagh or Baddeck, the nearest town, are prominently displayed in National Geographic maps of the area, despite their small size. Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada Bell Boatyard, part of the Beinn Bhreagh estate Bell Homestead National Historic Site, Ontario, Canada Bell Memorial Cape Breton Dr. Mabel H. Grosvenor, last surviving grandchild and personal secretary of Alexander Graham Bell, a steward of the Beinn Bhreagh estate until her death in 2006 Historic Buildings in Baddeck, Nova Scotia History of Baddeck Index of Alexander Graham Bell related articles Victoria County, Nova Scotia
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Telephone
A telephone, or phone, is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be heard directly. A telephone converts sound and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user. In 1876, Scottish emigrant Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced intelligible replication of the human voice; this instrument was further developed by many others. The telephone was the first device in history that enabled people to talk directly with each other across large distances. Telephones became indispensable to businesses and households and are today some of the most used small appliances; the essential elements of a telephone are a microphone to speak into and an earphone which reproduces the voice in a distant location. In addition, most telephones contain a ringer to announce an incoming telephone call, a dial or keypad to enter a telephone number when initiating a call to another telephone.
The receiver and transmitter are built into a handset, held up to the ear and mouth during conversation. The dial may be located either on a base unit to which the handset is connected; the transmitter converts the sound waves to electrical signals which are sent through a telephone network to the receiving telephone, which converts the signals into audible sound in the receiver or sometimes a loudspeaker. Telephones are duplex devices; the first telephones were directly connected to each other from one customer's office or residence to another customer's location. Being impractical beyond just a few customers, these systems were replaced by manually operated centrally located switchboards; these exchanges were soon connected together forming an automated, worldwide public switched telephone network. For greater mobility, various radio systems were developed for transmission between mobile stations on ships and automobiles in the mid-20th century. Hand-held mobile phones were introduced for personal service starting in 1973.
In decades their analog cellular system evolved into digital networks with greater capability and lower cost. Convergence has given most modern cell phones capabilities far beyond simple voice conversation, they may be able to record spoken messages and receive text messages and display photographs or video, play music or games, surf the Internet, do road navigation or immerse the user in virtual reality. Since 1999, the trend for mobile phones is smartphones that integrate all mobile communication and computing needs. A traditional landline telephone system known as plain old telephone service carries both control and audio signals on the same twisted pair of insulated wires, the telephone line; the control and signaling equipment consists of three components, the ringer, the hookswitch, a dial. The ringer, or beeper, light or other device, alerts the user to incoming calls; the hookswitch signals to the central office that the user has picked up the handset to either answer a call or initiate a call.
A dial, if present, is used by the subscriber to transmit a telephone number to the central office when initiating a call. Until the 1960s dials used exclusively the rotary technology, replaced by dual-tone multi-frequency signaling with pushbutton telephones. A major expense of wire-line telephone service is the outside wire plant. Telephones transmit both the outgoing speech signals on a single pair of wires. A twisted pair line rejects electromagnetic interference and crosstalk better than a single wire or an untwisted pair; the strong outgoing speech signal from the microphone does not overpower the weaker incoming speaker signal with sidetone because a hybrid coil and other components compensate the imbalance. The junction box arrests lightning and adjusts the line's resistance to maximize the signal power for the line length. Telephones have similar adjustments for inside line lengths; the line voltages are negative compared to earth. Negative voltage attracts positive metal ions toward the wires.
The landline telephone contains a switchhook and an alerting device a ringer, that remains connected to the phone line whenever the phone is "on hook", other components which are connected when the phone is "off hook". The off-hook components include a transmitter, a receiver, other circuits for dialing and amplification. A calling party wishing to speak to another party will pick up the telephone's handset, thereby operating a lever which closes the switchhook, which powers the telephone by connecting the transmitter and related audio components to the line; the off-hook circuitry has a low resistance which causes a direct current, which comes down the line from the telephone exchange. The exchange detects this current, attaches a digit receiver circuit to the line, sends a dial tone to indicate readiness. On a modern push-button telephone, the caller presses the number keys to send the telephone number of the called party; the keys control a tone generator circuit. A rotary-dial telephone uses pulse
