February is African American History Month. Celebrate by browsing the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors and our computing and engineering diversity websites.

Readers interested in inventions by African Americans may want to view the following blogs: Martin Luther King Day (January 20),  Ice cream scoop invented (February 2),  First patent by African American Inventor Latimer (February 10), First African American woman to receive an American medical degree (March 1),  First African American to recieve a patent (March 3),  The Real McCoy (July 12),  First African-American in Space, (August 30), Howard University founded in 1866 (November 20), John Hopkins hospital performs first open heart surgery (November 29), Rosa Parks Day (December 1), and Birth of first self-made millionairess (December 23).

Today in History – February 2, 1897 – Ice cream scoop patented by Alfred L. Cralle, the first African-American in Pittsburgh to receive a patent. His patent became the model for ice cream scoops in households soon after and the basis for many scoops today. Cralle was born in Lunenberg County, Virginia on September 4, 1866, was educated in the common schools of the county, and later worked with his father in the carpenter. This work sparked his interest in mechanics and he took advanced courses at Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C. Although educated, his career path was to move to Pittsburgh where he served as a porter in Markell Brothers’ drug store and the St. Charles Hotel. He advanced to assistant manager when the Afro-American Financial, Accumulating, Merchandise and Business Association was organized.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on African American scientists, engineers & inventors or our engineering diversity website. For curricular resources, browse our resources on product and industrial design or visit the Mechanical Engineering Education community site.

Also on this date in history in 1923, ethyl gasoline is first marketed. Tomas Midgley, inventor and chemical engineer, credited with playing a major role in its development. Alas, he did not foresee all of the environmental issues associated with it and the product was later outlawed after many years of public action and scientific analysis. For more information, see the Engineering Pathwa’s resources on gasoline, petroleum additives and tetra-ethyl lead or Chemical Engineering Education.

January 20, 1986 – First federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Through fifteen years of the persistent efforts of Congress Members John Conyers (Michigan), Shirley Chisholm (New York) and an army of other supports, Martin Luther King Day legislation was passed in 1983. A number of changes were required for it to be acceptable as a federal holiday. The date was changed to the third Monday in January, rather than his birthday of January 15, so as to distance it from Christmas and New Years. Several states resisted celebrating the holiday for various reasons. Several southern states included celebrations for various Confederate generals on that day. Arizona voters didn’t approve the holiday until 1992 after pressure from a tourist boycott. Only recently in 2000 was it first officially observed in all 50 states.

Ironically in 2008, the original Martin Luther King Day of January 20 fell on the inauguration of the first acknowledged African American President. Barack Obama’s “This is your victory” election day speech spoke of a nation of hope “where all things are possible”. “Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a bit better than the one we inhabit today”.

Advocates of Martin Luther King Day promote it as a day to focus on service activities using the motto “make it a Day ON, Not a Day Off!”. In fact, the 1994 King Holiday and Service Act designates the holiday as a national day of volunteer service, asking “Americans of all backgrounds and ages to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy by turning community concerns into citizen action.”

Martin Luther King brought together a diverse cross-section of the American citizenry to break down barriers and join forces in a common cause of justice and equity. Unfortunately, we still have much further to go in achieving diversity and inclusion in engineering. Community service learning projects have been proven to be an effective tool in developing integrative thinking and societal context in engineering education, as well as a means of attracting and motivating underrepresented engineers. One of the most successful efforts is the EPICS (Engineering Projects for Community Service) program originated in the College of Engineering at Purdue and the 2005 winner of the National Academy of Engineering‘s prestigious Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Martin Luther King and community service learning. Or view our Engineering Diversity or our Computing Diversity educational community sites. View Michael Smith’s December 10th Engineering Education blog on the anniversary of his Nobel Peace Prize. The title of his Nobel lecture was “The Quest for Peace and Justice”.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. The first one was on January 20, 1986 as a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Through fifteen years of the persistent efforts of Congress Members John Conyers (Michigan), Shirley Chisholm (New York) and an army of other supports, Martin Luther King Day legislation was passed in 1983. A number of changes were required for it to be acceptable as a federal holiday. The date was changed to the third Monday in January, rather than his birthday of January 15, so as to distance it from Christmas and New Years. Several states resisted celebrating the holiday for various reasons. Several southern states included celebrations for various Confederate generals on that day. Arizona voters didn’t approve the holiday until 1992 after pressure from a tourist boycott. Only recently in 2000 was it first officially observed in all 50 states.

Ironically in 2008, the original Martin Luther King Day of January 20 fell on the inauguration of the first acknowledged African American President. Barack Obama’s “This is your victory” election day speech spoke of a nation of hope “where all things are possible”. “Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a bit better than the one we inhabit today”.

Advocates of Martin Luther King Day promote it as a day to focus on service activities using the motto “make it a Day ON, Not a Day Off!”. In fact, the 1994 King Holiday and Service Act designates the holiday as a national day of volunteer service, asking “Americans of all backgrounds and ages to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy by turning community concerns into citizen action.”

Martin Luther King brought together a diverse cross-section of the American citizenry to break down barriers and join forces in a common cause of justice and equity. Unfortunately, we still have much further to go in achieving diversity and inclusion in engineering. Community service learning projects have been proven to be an effective tool in developing integrative thinking and societal context in engineering education, as well as a means of attracting and motivating underrepresented engineers. One of the most successful efforts is the EPICS (Engineering Projects for Community Service) program originated in the College of Engineering at Purdue and the 2005 winner of the National Academy of Engineering‘s prestigious Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Martin Luther King and community service learning. Or view our Engineering Diversity or our Computing Diversity educational community sites. View Michael Smith’s December 10th Engineering Education blog on the anniversary of his Nobel Peace Prize. The title of his Nobel lecture was “The Quest for Peace and Justice”.

Today in History – December 23, 1867 – Birth of first self-made millionairess (Sarah Breedlove for hair straightener invention, products and services). Born in poverty in 1867 (left graphic is of her birth house) on the shores of the Mississippi River in northeast Louisiana, her parents died of ‘yellow fever‘ while she was a young child of seven. Her parents, Owen and Minera Breedlove, were former slaves to “Robert W. Burney’s Madison Parish farm which was a battle-staging area during the Civil War for General Ulysses S. Grant and his Union troops”. Walker was an entrepreneur and made her fortune through her self-made hair products. She developed a product to straighten African American women’s hair. She claimed that the invention of her hair product came to her in a dream. Although it was thought she did this to help African American women conform their hair to that of whites, she argued that she created the treatment in order to encourage good treatment and growth in African American women’s hair. She began selling her product door-door. In due time she sophisticated her marketing approach and by 1906 she and her husband Charles Joseph Walker toured the country promoting her hair products. She moved to a mail order operation and established a beauty training school. “In 1910 they moved the central operations to Indianapolis, then the country’s largest manufacturing base, to utilize that city’s access to eight major railway systems.”

Although illiterate when she started her business, Walker took lessons in public speaking, penmanship and developed a striking personality, wearing fine clothing and employing a chauffeur-driven electric carriage. She was to establish a tradition of giving back to the community by contributing to African American orphanages, old-age homes, schools, colleges, and a new civil rights organization, the NAACP. The first self-made millionaires, Walker succeeded despite being an orphan. Madame CJ Walker’s contributions in hair care established her as a prominent role model to woman, still, today, as “one of the most successful business executives in the early half of the twentieth century”.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on women inventors, African American scientists and engineers or our engineering diversity website. For curricular resources, visit the Chemical Engineering Education community site.

Also on this date in history in 1975, Congress passes Metric Conversion Act. Also in 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager complete the first non-stop circumnavigation of the world, nonstop, without refueling their plane, the Voyager. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on metric conversion, airplane design and aeronautics, or Aeronautical Engineering Education.

Today in History – December 10, 1964 – Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The title of his Nobel lecture was “The Quest for Peace and Justice”. Martin Luther King, Jr. attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Historically Black College in Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. He completed his doctorate in theology at Boston University in 1955. King was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1957, he and other black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — 28 August 1963 — saw more than 250,000 protesters; here King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Martin Luther King and community service learning. Or visit our Engineering Diversity or Broadening Participation in Computing Portal community sites.

Also on this date, Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 and Robert S. Mulliken the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1966.

Albert Einstein entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics in 1896. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctorate. Einstein’s well chronicled research includes Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important. In the 1920′s, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory.

In the 1920′s, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

Robert Mulliken earned a B.Sc. Degree in 1917 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and a Ph.D. degree at the University of Chicago, Ill., in 1921. He was an American physicist and chemist, primarily responsible for the early development of molecular orbital theory, i.e. the elaboration of the molecular orbital method of computing the structure of molecules. Robert Mulliken received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1966.

For related curricular resources, visit the Nuclear Engineering Education and the Chemical Engineering Education disciplinary communities.

This date also marks the one-millionth Model T Ford assembled in 1915. The Ford Model T (colloquially known as the Tin Lizzie and the Flivver) was an automobile produced by Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Company from 1908 through 1927. The model T set 1908 as the historic year that the automobile came into popular usage. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, the car that “put America on wheels”; some of this was because of Ford’s innovations, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting.

For related curricular resources on Henry Ford and automotive engineering. Or visit the Manufacturing Engineering Education, the Industrial Engineering Education and the Mechanical Engineering Education disciplinary communities.

Today in History – December 2, 1982- Dr. William C. DeVries carried out a series of five implants in Utah over the next three years using the Jarvik total artificial heart. Although the first patients did not live past a year, further patients received the artificial heart designed by Robert K. Jarvik, MD, as a temporary device while awaiting heart transplants. The unusual openness of this medical experiment allowed doctors and designers to learn how to improve the clinical outcomes in subsequent patients with the Jarvik 7, “a device that is still used today and has the highest success rate of any mechanical heart or assist device in the world.” For more information see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on the Jarvik artificial heart and the human heart and heart transplants.

Readers may want to view our November 29 blog on the first open heart surgery in 1994 that laid the foundation for today’s heart surgery. Working as a team, the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s chief surgeon, Dr. Alfred Blalock (center photo), surgical technician Vivien T. Thomas (portrait, second from right), and pediatric cardiologist Dr. Helen Taussig (right photo) developed a method for improving the flow of oxygen into the blood by connecting one of the heart’s major arteries with another feeding into the lungs.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on biomedical engineering or go to the Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Education Community site.

Also on this date in history in 1957 the first full-scale U.S. nuclear power plant begins operating in Shippingport, Pennsylvania – 15 years to the day after Fermi’s experiment at the University of Chicago. The reactor plant was designed by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in cooperation with the Division of Naval Reactors of the Atomic Energy Commission. The Shippingport nuclear powerplant was retired in 1982. Concerns about public safety, terrorist use of nuclear materials and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident killed the commerical nuclear indutry in the U.S. However, the nuclear option is being reconsidered in light of its lighter environmental impact over fossil fuels for generating electricity. As with all technologies, engineers must work with the public to evaluate the ethical and social consequences of any technological development and deployment. See the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on nuclear energy or visit the Nuclear Engineering Education community site for more information.

Today in History – December 1, 1955 – Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus in Montgomery and galvanized the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks showed the world that a single courageous act could positively change the course of history. How can we use engineering and human-centered technologies to positively impact local communities? How do we integrate human-centered approaches into our curricula? See the Engineering Pathway’s resources on human-centered design and computing and on community service learning. Of note is the EPICS (Engineering Projects for Community Service) program originated in the College of Engineering at Purdue and the 2005 winner of the National Academy of Engineering‘s prestigious Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

December 1 also marks the day of notable inventions in the twentieth century. Ford introduced the continuous moving assembly line in his Highland Park, Detroit, Michigan, factory. Faster than the “push” assembly processes before, it was capable of delivering a car every 2-min 38-sec. Using a continuous moving chassis line the method was so successful that the Ford Motor Company became the world’s largest car manufacturer in the world. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on automotive engineering and manufacturing processes. Additional curricular materials on modern manufacturing practices can be found on the Manufacturing Engineering Education or the Industrial Engineering Education community sites.

December 1 also marks the day that the first U.S. patent was issued for the soil-less culture of plants in a large commercial hydroponicum (No. 2,062,755) to Ernest Walfrid Brundin and Frank Farrington Lyon as a “system of water culture” in 1935. Hydroponics – the growing of plants with their roots suspended in water containing mineral nutrients found in soil – was coined in the early 1930s by Professor Gericke at the University of California at Los Angeles from two Greek words: “hydro” (water) and “ponos” (work, labor). See our educational resources in hydroponics and agricultural engineering. Or visit our Biological Systems and Agricultural Engineering Education Community site.

Today in History – November 29, 1944 – doctors at Johns Hopkins performed the surgery that laid the foundation for today’s heart surgery, such as coronary bypass surgery. Working as a team, the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s chief surgeon, Dr. Alfred Blalock (left photo), African American surgical technician Vivien T. Thomas (center portrait), and pediatric cardiologist Dr. Helen Taussig (right photo) developed a method for improving the flow of oxygen into the blood by connecting one of the heart’s major arteries with another feeding into the lungs. First used on a young girl with a combination of heart defects that so starved her for oxygen that her skin was literally blue, it became known as the Blue Baby Operation.

All three members of the team continued to make huge contributions to medical research and practice. Alfred Blalock was elected to the National Academy of Science and received the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, the Passano Award, the Matas Award, and the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award.

Dr. Taussig becamame one of the most influential and pioneering women in medicine, being considered the founder of pediatric cardiology. She has received widespread recognition and honors for her contributions to cardiology, including the French Chevalier Legion d’Honneur, the Italian Feltrinelli Prize, the Peruvian Presidential Medal of Honor, and the United States of America Medal of Freedom.

Vivien Thomas’ achievements became widely recognized as well. He supervised the surgical laboratories at Hopkins for over 35 years, and in 1976 he was appointed instructor in surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1976, he was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Laws, by the Johns Hopkins University.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on biomedical engineering or go to the Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Education community site. Readers may also be interested in our resources on gender equity and African American Engineers and Scientists.

Also on this date in history in 1877, Thomas Edison demonstrates hand-cranked phonograph. See the November 21 blog on Edison’s announcement of his “taking machine” and the contrast with the release of “Toy Story”, the first full-length movie created entirely by computer animation. Or browse the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on Edison and digital music.

Today in History – November 20, 1866 - Howard University founded in Washington, D.C. On November 20, 1866. Members of The First Congregational Society of Washington decided to establish a school that catered to the teaching of African American clergymen (preachers). In the span of a few weeks this idea was on the road to being a reality and included the provisions to create a university. Within two years the university included Liberal arts and medicine. The members then decided to name the university after Major General Oliver O. Howard who was known as a civil war hero and also a Commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau, which was established to too aid freed blacks.

Today alumni at Howard include a Rhodes scholar, a Truman scholar, six Fulbright scholars and nine Pickering Fellows. The university has since expanded and now it consists of 12 schools and college with over 10,500 students. It has more than 120 areas of study, including the School of Engineering, Architecture and Computer Science, allowing students to receive undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees it has been ranked in the Top 100 for best colleges in America by U.S news. Howard campus produces more on campus African-American PhD’s than any other university in the world and continues to contribute to American history.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on Howard University and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Also see our resources on African American scientists and engineers or our computing diversity and engineering diversity websites.

Also on this date in history in 1931, the first commercial teletype service is launched by AT&T.