Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: Edison patents radio
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (372) · December 29th, 2008 · Add a Comment
Today in History – December 29, 1891 – Thomas Alva Edison patents “transmission of signals electrically” by radio. Close to a year later, on August 9, 1892, he received a patent for a two-way radio.
Also on this date in 1952, the first transistor hearing aid went on sale by the Sonotone Corporation. This hearing aid was much larger than the miniature ones today as it was a hybrid of analog and digital technologies, weighing 3.5-oz, measuring 3 inches and costing around $300 (which would be over $1500.00 today). Still it was a big improvement over the large amplifying horns and other devices used previously. Alexander Graham Bell was originally working on hearing aids for people with deafness when he invented the telephone using such a horn in 1876. Edison’s phonograph, invented in 1877, also used such a horn to amplify and broadcast sound.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on Edison and radios or hearing aids. For curricular resources, browse our resources for persons with disabilities, or visit the Electrical Engineering Education or Engineering Diversity community sites.
Tags: Electrical Engineering · Engineering Mechanics · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Mechanical Engineering
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