Today in History – May 23, 1930 – U.S. Plant Patent Act of the Hawley-Smot Trariff allows plants to be patented. This new U.S. Plant Patent Act provided, for the first time, patent protection for new and distinct varieties of asexually reproduced plants. Plant breeders now had a financial incentive to perform plant breeding experiments [...]

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Today in History – May 22, 1906 – Wright brothers patent improvements to “flying machine”. From the patent: Our invention relates to that class of fly ing machines in which the weight is sustained by the reactions resulting when one or more aeroplanes are moved through the air edge-wise at a small angle of incidence, [...]

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Today in History -  May 20, 1899 – the American Physical Society (APS) is founded for the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. It was originally formed at Columbia University by 36 scientists from 17 institutions who elected Henry Rowland as their first president and A.A. Michelson as the first vice-president. It has [...]

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Today in History – May 18, 2004 – Founding of the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT). Alas women now only represent a small fraction of computer science graduates and are not fully represented in the world of information technology and computing. This is one reason I enthusiastically agreed to co-found and serve as [...]

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Today in History – May 17, 1954 – Official groundbreaking of the CERN laboratory occurred in Geneva. A small number of scientists first envisioned CERN vision as an opportunity to bring nations together through science and build a world-class laboratory for nuclear and particle physics in Europe. CERN’s founding convention emphasized that that it should [...]

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