LaGuardia and Wagner 2013 Calendar Archives www.cuny.edu/inventingthefuture Dear Friends and Colleagues, For more than 30 years, the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives has produced exem- plary calendars and lesson plans on a variety of subjects, including the history of the I am very pleased to introduce the CUNY/New York Times in College 2013 calendar, New York City Council and the origins of public housing. For the past eight of those “Inventing the Future: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math in America.” This years, the archives has produced the CUNY/New York Times in College calendar proj- well-timed calendar not only highlights the importance of the STEM fields to the ects, consisting of printed calendars, Web sites, and curricula focused on the following advancement of new discoveries but also emphasizes the collaborative nature of topics: voting rights and citizenship, women’s leadership, immigrants, city life, freedom, scientific breakthroughs. For example, the incandescent light bulb was the work of public higher education, health, and the economy. a large group of scientists at Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park “invention factory” who The commitment of the calendar’s sponsors has been particularly important. were competing with other research teams to complete the first marketable electric CUNY offers special thanks to JPMorgan Chase Chairman and C.E.O. Jamie Dimon, bulb. Alexander Graham Bell is best remembered for inventing the telephone, but JPMorgan Chase Foundation President Kimberly Davis, Senior Vice Presidents Leon- his greatest legacy may be Bell Labs, which conducted research to create the first fax ard Colica, Michael Nevins and Timothy G. Noble, and Executive Director Kim Jasmin. machine in 1925, the transistor in 1947, the laser in 1958, and the first orbital com- We are deeply appreciative of our ongoing partnership with our esteemed munications satellite in 1962. No single inventor can take credit for these and other colleagues at The New York Times in College for making the calendar widely inventions and innovations; it was the brilliant collaboration of many great minds in accessible, facilitating the curricular elements and providing access and publication the STEM disciplines that developed them. rights to The New York Times’s archival photos. With the help of The New York Chancellor Matthew Goldstein During World War II, universities also became central to STEM research. Harvard Times in College, accessible online at www.nytimes.com/edu, CUNY is collaborating and the University of Pennsylvania were pioneers in early computer research. With with faculty, administrators, and students in states nationwide. In particular, we want the onset of the Cold War, the federal government greatly increased its funding of to acknowledge and thank these Times colleagues: Diane McNulty, executive direc- public and private research universities and they became centers of both applied and tor community affairs and media relations; Susan Mills, managing director, education; basic research, including the foundations of what would become the Internet. Stephanie Doba, Newspaper in Education manager; and Tom Glieden and Walter The STEM theme is timely for both the nation and The City University of New Barleycorn, education account managers. York. To compete in the world economy, the United States must invest in STEM disci- Thanks are also due to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City plines. CUNY’s Decade of Science initiative, begun in 2005, has strengthened the Uni- Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall. versity’s commitment to STEM participation and proficiency. Enrollment in CUNY’s Their historic support and funding of the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and its STEM disciplines increased by 35 percent from 2005 to 2010, and there has been a 25 calendars and curricula have helped the archives to preserve history and make it percent increase in STEM faculty since 2006. CUNY is also constructing new science available and accessible to the public. facilities, most notably the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC), scheduled to “Inventing the Future” is a work of scholarship, enabling an understanding of open on the City College campus in 2014. The ASRC will provide high-end equip- the history of science, technology, engineering and math and the impact that break- ment and space for research in photonics, nanotechnology, water and environmental throughs in these fields have on society. The University takes great pride in the sensing, structural biology, and neuroscience. Other major initiatives include the partnerships that allow the calendar to bring this history to life. CUNY Energy Institute, which is conducting research to improve the efficiency of electric, electrochemical and thermal energy storage to enable utilization of renew- Matthew Goldstein, Chancellor able energy sources, and the Environmental Crossroads Initiative, an internationally recognized research center dedicated to the analysis of strategic local, regional and global environmental challenges. CUNY is also increasing its public outreach through the development of CUNY TV programs like Science & U, which examines the world of science through today’s headlines and demonstrates its importance in everyday life, referencing many of the themes in this year’s calendar. At the bottom of each month is a QR code that links to an episode of Science & U related to that month’s theme. The concept and development of the 2013 “Inventing the Future” calendar and Web site have been guided by CUNY Senior Vice Chancellor for University Relations and Board Secretary Jay Hershenson and LaGuardia Community College President Gail O. Mellow. Their vision has been realized by Richard K. Lieberman, director of the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and professor of history at LaGuardia Commu- nity College, and his colleagues at the archives, Associate Project Directors Steven A. Levine and Stephen Weinstein, and Assistant Project Director Tara Jean Hickman. The project has received valuable input from some of the University’s finest scholars, whose participation underscores the integrity of the content. The calendar’s one-of- RIGHT Model of CUNY’s Advanced Sci- ence Research Center on the campus of a-kind images were sourced from both the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and The City College in Harlem. New York Times photo archives. Original crew of the U.S.S Monitor playing games William Saunders, an American horticulturalist working for the U.S. Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Prize winner, works with a The Aerodyne, designed by Alexander Lippisch, 1950. Dr. Patricia Bath invented a on deck while on the James River (Virginia), 1862. Patent Office, arranged for the importation of seedless or navel vacuum pump in his lab at Oregon State University. new device and technique for orange trees from Bahia, Brazil, in the late 1860s. Here mammoth cataract surgery known as oranges are shipped on the Southern Pacific Railroad, 1909. “laserphaco” that has helped many blind people to see. Milestones for Inventing the Future

New York suffers 3,513 deaths and begins planning to bring clean water April 28, 1852 Boston establishes the first electric-powered fire alarm 1800S to the city from an upstate source. system with call boxes to indicate the location of the fire. January 21, 1801 The Philadelphia Water Works opens, making Philadelphia February 25, 1836 Samuel Colt patents the revolver, a handgun November 11, 1856 English metallurgist Henry Bessemer receives a U.S. the first major city in the U.S. to provide clean drinking water citywide. “that featured a rotating cylinder with multiple chambers for bullets.” patent for a process that converts pig iron to steel, establishing a much lower cost method for producing steel in large quantities. March 29, 1806 Thomas Jefferson signs legislation committing the federal January 11, 1838 Samuel F.B. Morse uses electric signals to shift an government to build the Cumberland (later National) Road west from electromagnet in a patterned print across paper, known as Morse code. March 23, 1857 The first safety elevator for passengers in America, designed Cumberland, MD. by Elisha Otis, is installed at 488 Broadway in New York in E.V. Haughwout’s 1839 Charles Goodyear invents vulcanized rubber, which maintains its porcelain and glassware shop. August 17, 1807 Robert Fulton takes the steamboat Clermont up shape despite exposure to pressure and heat. Goodyear receives his the Hudson River from New York to Albany; reliable upriver steam travel patent in 1844. November 30, 1858 John L. Mason patents the Mason jar, enabling America revolutionizes intercity trade and transportation. to preserve perishable goods. October 14, 1842 The Croton Aqueduct provides New York with its first 1818 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley writes “Frankenstein,” about a creature clean supply of water needed to combat disease, fight fires, and meet the 1861 Richard Gatling invents the Gatling gun, forerunner of the revolving produced by scientific activity in a laboratory. demands of a rapidly growing city. machine gun, under the mistaken impression that it would reduce battlefield casualties by reducing the number of soldiers needed. He receives a patent October 26, 1825 The Erie Canal connects the port of New York to the May 24, 1844 Samuel F.B. Morse builds the first telegraph line, extending on May 9, 1865. Great Lakes via the Hudson River. By 1840, New York moved more freight from Baltimore to Washington, DC. than the ports of Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans combined. October 24, 1861 High-speed telegraph communication begins between 1845 Innovations by Elias Howe and Isaac Singer lead to the modern, the Pacific and Atlantic coasts as the Western Union Company completes May 24, 1830 America’s first railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, travels 13 miles practical sewing machine. its telegraph line between St. Joseph, MO, and Sacramento, CA. from Baltimore to Ellicott City, Maryland; the line extends to Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1853. October 16, 1846 The first public demonstration of ether as anesthesia July 27, 1866 The Transatlantic cable opens between Newfoundland and Val- takes place during surgery performed by Dr. William T.G. Morton at entia, Ireland, forever changing communication between American and Europe. July 1832 Cholera strikes New York and cities along the eastern seaboard; Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Communication that once took two to three weeks now takes minutes.

Patent issued to Bell Labs for the transistor, 1950. Tetrahedral kite designed by Carl Rakeman’s painting of the first American macadam Broadway Elevated Railroad, New York, City, 1866. Howard Coffin with steam car he built while a Alexander Graham Bell, c. 1910. road, n. d. student at the University of Michigan, 1899.

page 1 Edison storage battery assembly department, New Jersey, 1915. Stone’s Marvelous Mental The meeting of the rails at Promontory Point, UT, on May 10, 1869. Edison battery-operated truck used by the The inventors of the transistor at Bell Labs, William Calculator, 1880. Metropolitan Opera Company of New York. Shockley (seated), John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, 1947.

September 4, 1882 Thomas Edison’s Pearl Street Station in New York 1889 Boston’s West End Street Railway opens the first large scale rapid 1800S begins the first successful commercial production of electricity in America, transit system operating on electric power. June 23, 1868 Christopher Latham Sholes and his associates patent the distributing direct current to 203 customers in lower Manhattan within four March 20, 1890 University of Wisconsin professor Stephen Babcock invents first practical typewriter; five years later he introduces the QWERTY months. The New York Times building is lit up on this first night. the butterfat tester, giving birth to the Wisconsin cheese industry. arrangement of keys to avoid jamming. 1883 American inventor Charles Fritts creates the first solar cell. July 10, 1893 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performs one of the first successful Bessemer Steel’s first “blow” is made at the Cleve- September 8, 1868 March 20, 1883 Jan Ernst Matzeliger invents a shoe and boot-lasting machine open-heart surgeries, at Provident Hospital in Chicago. land Rolling Mills, inaugurating an American industrial revolution; the cities that increases shoemaking speed by 900%. of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago would soon anchor the new 1895 H.G. Wells writes “The Time Machine,” about the wonders of time industrial heartland of the nation. May 24, 1883 The Brooklyn Bridge opens, connecting the nation’s largest travel in a spaceship. and third largest cities, New York and Brooklyn. Its towers were the tallest May 10, 1869 The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads forge link structures in America. January 8, 1896 William Roentgen discovers x-rays; the first clinical x-ray at Promontory Point, UT, opening train travel between the eastern U.S. is taken at the Dartmouth University Medical School. and California. 1885 William Seward Burroughs creates a “calculating machine.” November 24, 1874 Joseph Glidden introduces barbed wire fencing, 1884-1885 America’s first skyscraper, Chicago’s 10-story Home Life S enabling herds to remain on private ranches. Insurance Building, utilizes a lightweight fireproof steel structure made 1900 possible by the Bessemer process of steel manufacturing. January 2, 1900 The direction of the Chicago River is reversed so that it Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, signaling March 10, 1876 flows into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, thereby cleansing the city’s the decline of the telegraph industry. March 20, 1886 William Stanley demonstrates the first practical use of Lake Michigan drinking water. alternating current electrification, distributing electrical illumination in 1879 Constantine Fahlberg and Ira Remsen of Johns Hopkins University Great Barrington, MA. March 20, 1900 Nikola Tesla is granted a U.S. patent for a “system of discover saccharine, the first synthetic sweetening agent. transmitting electrical energy” (the radio patent) and another patent for 1888 Nikola Tesla develops the first motor for translating alternating current “an electrical transmitter.” January 27, 1880 Thomas Edison receives a patent for the electric light bulb; (AC) to mechanical energy. the first successful test had occurred on October 22, 1879. July 17, 1902 Willis Carrier designs an air-conditioning system for a February 2, 1888 The nation’s first electric streetcar system opens in Brooklyn printing plant. December 20, 1880 New York’s Broadway receives its first electric lights Richmond, VA. Frank Sprague and the Richmond Union Passenger Railway between 14th and 34th streets. The stretch between 23rd and 34th streets Company operate 10 streetcars in its nascent network. 1903 The first steam turbine generator, pioneered by Charles Curtis, is becomes known as The Great White Way for its brightly illuminated put into operation at the Newport Electric Corporation in Rhode Island. advertisements. September 4, 1888 George Eastman receives a patent and begins marketing his first Kodak camera.

Inauguration of air mail delivery by U.S. Post Office, 1918. John von Neumann and J. Robert Oppenheimer at Mirror fusion test facility magnet at Lawrence Hampton Institute (Virginia) class in mathematical Telstar, the first telecommunications satellite, the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 1952. Livermore National Library, 1981. geography studying earth’s rotation around the sun, 1899. developed at Bell Labs, 1962. page 2 Engineering students examine aircraft engine Mastodon Corn made possible Agricultural explorer Frank N. Meyer in Chinese Turkestan on a Steam-powered elevated railway in lower Manhattan on East Texas farmer rolling up old barbed wire at Michigan State University, c.1955. with Maule seeds. mission to bring back plants of economic value; the gingko biloba, great curve at Coenties Slip, 1895. near Harleton, TX, 1939. kaki (Chinese persimmon) and the Meyer lemon, (a hybrid between a lemon and a mandarin or orange) c.1910.

1910 Gulf Oil, Texas Refining and Sun Oil introduce asphalt manufactured April 15, 1917 Wisconsin is the first state to adopt a numbering system as S from byproducts of the oil-refining process. Suitable for road paving, it is less the network of roads increases. The idea gradually spreads across the country. 1900 expensive than natural asphalt mined in and imported from Venezuela. December 17, 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright conduct the first 1917 American Gas & Electric, an investor-owned utility, establishes the first motor-powered flight at Kitty Hawk, NC. August 19, 1912 Garrett Morgan files a patent for his “breathing device” to be long-distance high-voltage transmission line. The line originates from the first used by the Cleveland Fire Department. His invention is later incorporated into major steam plant to be built at the mouth of a coal mine, virtually eliminat- 1904 Benjamin Holt, a California manufacturer of agricultural equipment, the gas masks used by the U.S. military in World War I. ing fuel transportation costs. develops the first successful crawler tractor, equipped with a pair of tracks rather than wheels. Dubbed the ‘caterpillar’ tread, the tracks help keep heavy tractors 1913 The University of Kansas School of Medicine discovers that corn oil November 2, 1920 Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse-owned KDKA, the first com- from sinking in soft soil and are an inspiration for the first military tanks. is good for cooking. mercial radio station in the United States, broadcasts election results. By 1922, three million Americans own radios. 1905 Jay Brownlee Davidson designs the first professional agricultural November 5, 1913 The Los Angeles-Owens River Aqueduct opens, bringing engineering curriculum at Iowa State College. Courses include agricultural water by gravity to the Los Angeles basin from the eastern Sierra Nevada July 1, 1925 Cleveland opens the first municipal airport in the U.S. in con- machines, agricultural power sources, farm building design, rural road con- mountains, more than 230 miles to the north. tinuous operation; 100,000 visitors celebrate the occasion. struction and field drainage. December 1, 1913 Ford introduces the moving assembly line for the mass November 13, 1927 Completion of the Holland Tunnel beneath the Hudson September 26, 1905 Albert Einstein publishes the special theory of relativity. production of autos in Highland Park, MI, a concept borrowed from the River links New York City and Jersey City, NJ. It is named for engineer meat-packing industry. Workers perform a single task rather than master Clifford Holland, who solved the problem of venting the build-up of deadly December 24, 1906 Reginald Fessenden conducts the first wireless radio whole portions of automobile assembly. car exhaust by installing 84 electric fans, each 80 feet in diameter. broadcast of entertainment and music in Brant Rock, MA. November 14, 1914 Dodge introduces the first car body made entirely January 7, 1927 Philo Farnsworth files a patent for the first electronic September 26, 1908 Jersey City, NJ, becomes the first city in the U.S. to of steel, fabricated by the Budd Company of Philadelphia. television set. begin chlorination of its water supply. Death rates from waterborne diseases, typhoid in particular, begin to plummet. January 25, 1915 Alexander Graham Bell makes the first transcontinental May 21, 1927 Charles Lindbergh completes the first nonstop solo flight telephone call to Thomas Watson – from New York to San Francisco. across the Atlantic Ocean, traveling 3,600 miles from New York to Paris. July 13, 1907 Belgian scientist Leo Baekeland files a U.S. patent for Bakelite, the first completely man-made plastic material, which marked the birth of 1916 Clarence Birdseye begins experiments in quick-freezing. Birdseye August 19, 1927 “The Jazz Singer” is the first featured-length motion the plastics industry. develops a flash-freezing system that moves food products through a picture to have synchronized sound. refrigerating system on conveyor belts. This causes the food to be frozen 1910 Thomas Hunt Morgan’s experiments with fruit flies show that heredity very fast, minimizing ice crystals. February 22, 1928 Charles Adler, Jr., invents the first modern electric was in part determined by genes carried by chromosomes. traffic signal, which is installed at a Baltimore intersection.

Biologists at the University of North Dakota, 1960s. University of Arkansas graduate student, Hong Wen, Packeting floor of the Seed Distribution Bureau, Students with giant slide rule at Michigan State Woman living at Casa Grande Valley transferring a nanomaterial sample from a molecular beam Washington, DC., 1905. University, 1960. Farms, Pinal County, AZ removing page 3 epitaxy machine to a scanning tunneling microscope, c. 2005. the cover from her electric washing machine, 1941. New York City youngsters in the Federal Art Project Cleveland inventor Garrett Milky Way, the galaxy next door, seen from NASA’s Galaxy Nobel Prize winner Luis Alvarez Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working D r. N o r a D. Vo l k o w , p i o n e e r e d learn metal craft, c. 1937. Morgan developed the first Evolution Explorer, 2012. and his son Walter, near Gubbio, on missile development for the U.S. Army, 1951. the use of brain imaging to investi- safety hoods for the local fire Italy where they dated the extinc- gate the toxic effects of drugs. department, in 1912. tion of dinosaurs, 1981.

other assistance so that rural cooperatives could build and run their own October 1, 1940 The Pennsylvania Turnpike opens as the country’s first S electrical distribution systems. roadway with no cross streets, no railroad crossings and no traffic lights. 1900 Built on an abandoned railroad right of way, it includes 7 miles of tunnels 1929 Frigidaire markets the first room cooler, designed to be located out- November 12, 1936 Englishman Alan Turing and American Alonzo Church through the mountains, 11 interchanges, 300 bridges and culverts, and 10 side the house, or in the basement. introduce an algorithm that describes what information can be computed service plazas. and provided a model for computing. March 15, 1929 Working at the Carnegie Observatories in California, December 30, 1940 The Arroyo Seco Parkway (today known as the astronomer Edwin Hubble publishes a scientific paper claiming that distant May 27, 1937 The Golden Gate Bridge opens, connecting San Francisco Pasadena Freeway) opens, connecting Pasadena and Los Angeles. This first galaxies were moving away from each other at a rate constant to the with Marin County. freeway in southern California begins a wave of highway construction that distance between them. transforms urban transportation in America. 1937 The paving of Route 66 linking Chicago and Santa Monica, CA, is com- 1932 The U.S. Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, plete. Stretching across eight states and three time zones, the 2,448-mile- August 13, 1942 The Manhattan Engineering District is founded with the begins a study to record the natural history of syphilis in hopes of justifying long road is the country’s main thoroughfare, bringing farm workers from mission to design and build a nuclear bomb. treatment programs for African-Americans. The Tuskegee Study of Untreated the Midwest to California and contributing to California’s post-World War II Syphilis in the Negro Male is conducted without the patients’ informed population growth. November 20, 1942 The Alaska Canada Military Highway (the Alcan) is consent. Although penicillin becomes widely available for use against syphilis completed, linking Dawson Creek, British Columbia and Delta Junction, A window air conditioner using Freon is marketed by Philco-York as in 1947, patients never receive it. Originally projected to last six months, the 1938 Alaska. Built by African American and white soldiers of the Army Corps the “Cool-Wave.” The Philco air conditioner plugs into an electrical outlet. experiments continue until 1972. of Engineers, the Alcan has been called “the road to civil rights.” October 22, 1938 Physicist Chester Carlson invents xerography. December 26, 1933 Edwin H. Armstrong patents frequency modulation, December 2, 1942 The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs at the University of Chicago in an experiment led by physicist Enrico Fermi. or wide-band FM, radio. August 2, 1939 Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to President Roosevelt explaining the need to build a nuclear bomb to counter Nazi May 18, 1933 Congress passes legislation establishing the Tennessee Valley July 16, 1945 The U.S. Army’s Manhattan Engineer District tests the first Germany’s effort. Authority (TVA), a federal corporation providing electrification to homes and atomic device at Alamogordo, NM, under the code name Trinity. businesses in the Tennessee Valley. October 1939 John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State College August 6, 1945 The atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy is dropped on Hiroshima, design the first electronic computer, which incorporates binary arithmetic Japan; three days later another bomb, Fat Man, is dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. February 28, 1935 DuPont chemist Gerard Berchet of the Walter Caroth- and electronic switching. ers research group invents nylon, intending it to replace silk in stockings. October 8, 1945 Engineer Percy Spencer accidentally discovers the possibil- 1940 Oldsmobile introduces the first mass-produced fully automatic ity of making a microwave oven during an experiment with electromagnetic May 11, 1935 President Roosevelt signs an executive order establishing transmission, named Hydra-Matic, in its cars. radiation while working at Raytheon. the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). The REA provided loans and

University of Maryland Terrapin rocket program, c.1956. First filmed boxing match takes place at the Coney Philco Predicta Model 4654 Chinese student working in the food chemistry Early road-paving machine in Tennessee. Island Athletic Club (1899); Jeffries defeats Sharkey. Film- television produced in 1959. laboratory at Purdue University. ing requires 200 special arc lights of 400 candle power page 4 each – strongest artificial light ever created. Valencia Community College students conduct a biology B-24 bombers on the assembly Baldwin locomotive at the Philadelphia Centennial Fair, Aeroplane Graflex camera in action, c. 1918. U.S. Food and Drug Administration consumer safety officer experiment, 2009. line at Willow Run, MI, during 1876. working at the border crossing at Nogales, AZ, prepares tomato World War II. samples for testing by the FDA mobile lab unit, c. 2011.

October 1, 1951 Stanford University sponsors Stanford Industrial Park, 1956 The first transatlantic telephone cable, the TAT-1, is installed from 1900S a research facility containing Hewlett-Packard, General Electric and Lock- Scotland to Nova Scotia, providing telephone service between North Ameri- heed; area becomes known as Silicon Valley. can and the United Kingdom. Additional circuitry links London to Western February 14, 1946 John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr. put the first Europe. October 4, 1951 Henrietta Lacks dies at Johns Hopkins University Hospital electronic computer into operation at the University of Pennsylvania. in Baltimore from cancer of the cervix; her living cancerous cells removed June 29, 1956 President Eisenhower signs a new Federal Aid Highway Act, The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) weighs 30 tons from her body and preserved in a lab later launch a medical revolution. committing $25 billion in federal funding to link all state capitals and most and includes 18,000 vacuum tubes, 6,000 switches and 1,500 relays. cities with populations larger than 50,000. December 20, 1951 In Arco, ID, Experimental Breeder Reactor I produces August 1, 1946 President Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act, transferring the first electric power from nuclear energy, lighting four light bulbs. December 8, 1956 Larry Curtiss, a junior at the University of Michigan, nuclear authority from the Army to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. constructs the first glass-clad fibers and inaugurates the use of fiber-optics 1952 Grace Murray Hopper, a senior mathematician at the Eckert-Mauchly Mass-produced, low-cost window air conditioners become possible as in medical research. 1947 Computer Corporation and a programmer for Harvard’s Mark I computer, a result of innovations by engineer Henry Galson, who sets up production develops the first computer compiler, a program that translated computer 1957 FORTRAN (for FORmula TRANslation), a high-level programming lines for a number of manufacturers. For the first time, many homeowners instructions from English into machine language. language developed by IBM, becomes commercially available. Other enjoy air conditioning without having to buy a new home or renovate their programming languages quickly follow, including ALGOL in 1958 and heating system. 1953 Ray Bradbury writes “Fahrenheit 451,” a dystopian tale about a futuristic COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) in 1959. society where books are banned. October 14, 1947 U.S. Air Force pilot Capt. Charles “Chuck” Yeager pilots December 2, 1957 The world’s first large-scale nuclear power plant begins the first manned supersonic flight aboard the Bell X-1. 1953 Scientists James Watson and Francis Crick discover the structure of operation in Shippingport, PA, supplying electricity to the Pittsburgh area. DNA, the substance that contains the genetic instructions for all living things. December 24, 1947 John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William B. December 12, 1958 Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments (and Robert Noyce Shockley, scientists at Bell Labs, build the first transistor that can amplify December 8, 1953 President Eisenhower delivers his “Atoms for Peace” of Fairchild Semiconductor independently) invents the integrated circuit. and switch electronic signals. speech before the United Nations, calling for greater cooperation in the development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. 1958 The Seagram Building, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe’s “glass box” master- American physicist Willard Libby and his colleagues December 23, 1949 piece opens in New York and shapes the appearance of many American cities. develop radiocarbon dating, revolutionizing the field of archeology. 1954 Gordon Teal, a physical chemist with Texas Instruments, creates transistors from pure silicon, thereby demonstrating the first mass-produced September 2, 1958 The National Defense Education Act authorizes a $1 Isaac Asimov writes “Foundation,” a science fiction story about a 1951 transistor. billion four-year program of federal financial assistance to strengthen science, group of scientists who try to preserve knowledge as civilization regresses. mathematics and foreign-language instruction. April 25, 1954 Bell Labs demonstrates the first practical silicon solar cell.

Smoke-shrouded Pittsburgh in early afternoon, 1940s. Sheet music heralded the The Flip-Flop or Loop-the-Loop defied the laws of Patent issued to the Wright Art Reeves “Sensitester” used to Chuck Jennings and his stage coach vs. Air Mail, c. 1930. arrival of automobiles, electric gravity at Coney Island, 1895. Brothers for flying machine, examine the degree of contrast in railroads, and telephones, 1900. 1906. the camera negative, 1939. page 5 Glider in flight, 1910. Herman Hollerith operating the Hollerith Patent for life-preserving coffin in doubtful cases of actual Dr. Charles Drew developed the first Kaiser-Frazer motor car company Mario Molina, Mexican- tabulator at the U.S. Census Office, 1904. death, 1843. blood plasma bank. assembly line, Willow Run, MI, 1946. American Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. 1962 Consumer activist Rachel Carson writes “Silent Spring,” documenting the 1968 Arthur C. Clarke writes “2001: A Space Odyssey” in conjunction with the 1900S dangers of pesticide use to humans and wildlife, and leading to the ban on DDT. film directed by Stanley Kubrick. 1959 Research Triangle Park is created near Raleigh, NC, by state and local February 20, 1962 John Glenn pilots the Mercury Friendship 7 spacecraft July 20, 1969 Astronaut Neil Armstrong is the first man to step on the government, nearby universities, and business community; it’s home today to in the first U.S. human orbital flight. moon during the Apollo 11 mission. over 130 research and development facilities, including the largest IBM location in the world, employing 11,000. July 11, 1962 The first transatlantic transmission of a television signal takes October 29, 1969 The first ARPANET message is sent from UCLA to the place using the TELSTAR satellite. Stanford Research Institute; the inauguration of sharing a message digitally December 29, 1959 Richard Feynman, a Cal Tech physics professor, delivers launches the Internet revolution. a speech on nanotechnology, declaring that storing vast amounts of data in 1963 The first touch-tone telephone is introduced, with the first commercial minute objects was possible. service available in Carnegie and Greensburg, PA, for an extra charge. June 30, 1970 AT&T inaugurates picture-phone service in Pittsburgh, but the idea fails to catch on. May 9, 1960 The era of modern contraception begins when the Food and 1963 Kurt Vonnegut writes “Cat’s Cradle,” about life in a post-Hiroshima world. Drug Administration approves the birth control pill for distribution. 1971 Intel introduces a “computer on a chip,” the 4004 microprocessor. January 14, 1964 James E. West and Gerhard M. Sessler, working for Bell Labs, Costing $1,000, it was as powerful as ENIAC, the vacuum-tube computer May 16, 1960 Theodore Maiman creates the first working laser (an acronym receive a patent for their “electroacoustic transducer,” a microphone that is used today in almost all telephones, camcorders, baby monitors and hearing aids. of the 1940s. Executing 60,000 operations per second, it changes the face for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) at the Hughes of modern electronics by making it possible to include data processing in Research Laboratories in California. 1965 Frank Herbert writes “Dune,” set in an imaginary desert landscape. hundreds of devices.

1961 Robert A. Heinlein writes “Stranger in a Strange Land,” about a human 1965 James Russell invents the compact disc. 1973 Martin Cooper, the director of research at Motorola, invents the cell who comes to earth from the planet Mars. phone. 1965 Ralph Nader writes “Unsafe at Any Speed,” charging that the American February 21, 1961 Otis Boykin invents the electrical resistor that is later used automobile industry is neglecting consumer safety issues. 1975 The Altair 8800, widely considered the first home computer, is in computers, radios and televisions. marketed to hobbyists. Bill Gates and Paul Allen form a partnership called 1967 A Texas Instruments team led by Jack Kilby invents the first handheld Microsoft and write a version of BASIC for the new computer. November 22, 1961 The U.S. Navy commissions the world’s largest ship, the calculator. U.S.S. Enterprise. It is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with the ability to 1976 Stanford University professor Martin Hellman and graduate student June 21, 1967 Stanford University professor Douglas Engelbart applies for operate at speeds up to 30 knots for distances up to 400,000 miles without Whitfield Diffie invent public key cryptography, which enables users on the a patent for his invention of the computer mouse as a pointing device. refueling. Internet to transmit private data securely.

1962 The U.S. military introduces ARPANET, a network of two computers 1968 Philip K. Dick writes “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” a tale about 1977 Citibank introduces the 24-hour automated teller machine (ATM), a post-apocalyptic future. that grew to more than a million computers by 1992. which revolutionizes customers’ access to their money.

Schematic mechanism for base- Mural of Benjamin Banneker, U.S. Marine Corps, bedding down a big barrage balloon Patent issued to Steinway Computer pioneer Grace Hopper examining the sequence Dr. Jerome Tobis, of Coler Hospital, NYC, ball stitching machine, 1948. 18th century surveyor, inven- at Parris Island, SC, 1942. & Sons for wood bending mechanism of the Harvard Mark 1 electromechanical computing mid-1950s, researching ways to improve the page 6 tor and astronomer. machines, 1880. machine, 1944. mobility of severely disabled children. Charles Adler Jr., inventor of the Moving the Brighton Beach Hotel 100 feet from the Atlantic Ocean required George Sidney of Metro-Goldwyn- Governor DeWitt Clinton celebrates the opening of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams traffic light, tinkering with models six locomotives, over 10,000 ropes and nearly a ton of chains, 1888. Mayer with film, cameras and lenses. the Erie Canal in 1825. performed the first successful open-heart surgery, at Provident Hospital in Chicago, 1893. 8088 microprocessor and an operating system, MS-DOS, designed by April 11, 2003 The Human Genome Project is completed, identifying 1900S Microsoft. Fully equipped with 64 kilobytes of memory and a floppy disk and mapping the approximately 20,000 to 25,000 genes of the human 1977 Piers Anthony writes the first in his series of fantasy novels, “The Xanth.” drive, it costs $1,565. genome.

April 16, 1977 Apple Computer, founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, 1982 “Tron” is the first motion picture to use computer-generated imagery. August 30, 2006 The California Senate passes the Global Warming Solutions releases the Apple II, a desktop personal computer for the mass market that Act, requiring a 25% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 (or back 1984 Apple introduces the Macintosh, a low-cost, plug-and-play personal features a keyboard, video monitor, mouse and RAM that can be expanded to 1990 levels). computer. Although it doesn’t offer enough power for business applications, by the user. its easy-to-use graphic interface finds fans in education and publishing. January 9, 2007 Steve Jobs of Apple introduces the iPhone at a technology conference in San Francisco, forever changing the way we communicate. July 3, 1977 Dr. Raymond Damadian completes the first full-body magnetic 1985 Margaret Atwood writes, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian novel about resonance imaging (MRI) in order to distinguish between cancerous and a totalitarian Christian theocracy that has overthrown the U.S. government. 2009 Kodak announces the discontinuance of Kodachrome film. noncancerous tissue. Dr. Patricia E. Bath invents a new device for cataract surgery May 17, 1988 July 3, 2012 Scientists at the multinational research center CERN, August 1977 Orson Scott Card’s “Enders Game” first appears in the magazine known as the “laserphaco.” Analog Science Fiction. headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, announce that they have discovered a new subatomic particle (the Higgs Boson) that helps explain life in the 1990 Tim Berners-Lee invents the Web by creating the first Web browser 1978 The U.S. government launches a satellite-based navigation system for and Web pages, which could be accessed by the Internet. universe. military purposes which, adapted to civilian life, becomes the GPS. August 15, 2012 NASA safely lands a one-ton robotic rover named 1991 The World Wide Web becomes available to the general public. March 28, 1979 The worst accident in U.S. commercial reactor history Curiosity on Mars, over 150 million miles away from Earth. occurs at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station near Harrisburg, PA. 1994 Linus Torvalds creates the Linux open source operating system. August 17, 2012 IBM creates an efficient photovoltaic cell using materials June 6, 1980 Nobel Award winner in Physics Luis Alvarez and his son, 1995 “Toy Story” is the first all computer-generated feature movie. abundant on Earth (copper, zinc and tin). geologist Walter Alvarez, publish a scientific paper in Science magazine theorizing that 65 million years ago a giant asteroid had struck earth, killing January 1, 1998 Larry Page files a patent for PageRank, the forerunner August 30, 2012 The U.S. federal government finalizes an agreement the dinosaur population. of Google, which revolutionized how we conduct research. with the 13 leading automobile makers to achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon fuel economy by the model year 2025. 1981 Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a new disease when 2000S September 5, 2012 The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), an symptoms are noted in many young men in Los Angeles and New York. immense federal project involving 440 scientists from 32 labs around the November 10, 2001 Apple starts selling the iPod, a portable digital audio world, reveals how the non-gene parts of DNA, previously regarded as junk August 12, 1981 IBM introduces the Personal Computer using the Intel player that revolutionizes listening to music. DNA, contribute to human diseases.

Wrought Iron Bridge Company, Canton, OH, c.1870. Aeroplane ambulance, c. 1918. Patent for telephone issued to Bridge on Orange & Alexandria (Virginia) Railroad, as Frank Oppenheimer and Bob Thornton examine cyclotron Alexander Graham Bell, 1876. repaired by army engineers, 1865. at Lawrence National Laboratory.

page 7 Astronomy

LEFT Jupiter and its moon Io, NASA photo of the day, April 8, 2012.

BELOW Galileo’s observations of Earth’s Moon and the moons of Jupiter in “Starry Messenger, “1610

RIGHT Apollo 15 lunar module pilot Jim Irwin loads the lunar rover with tools and equipment in preparation for the first lunar spacewalk at the Hadley-Apennine landing site, 1971.

hat are the wonders in the sky that we see at night? Humans have been pondering this question since before recorded history, often giving supernatural powers to the stars and planets. Prehistoric farmers used the movement Wof constellations to know when to plant and harvest their crops. Early Chinese astronomers charted the paths of comets, while the heelstone at Stonehenge in England was constructed in alignment with the Summer Solstice. The ancient Greeks first developed theories about the nature of the movement of stars and planets. Although heliocentric theories (where the Earth revolves around the Sun) had first been advanced by Aristarchus in the 3rd century B.C.E., Aristotle’s 4th century B.C.E. hypothesis that the Sun and the other stars and planets revolved around the Earth (geocentrism), later codified by Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd Century C.E., became the foundation of the Catholic Church’s (and the West’s) belief placing the earth at the center of the universe. Not until 1543 did the Polish mathematician and astronomer Copernicus challenge geocentrism. The Church declared heliocentrism to be heretical in 1616, setting the stage for a confrontation with the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, whose astronomical observations proved Copernicus correct. Galileo’s pioneering use of the telescope helped him to discover sunspots, the phases of Venus, the four moons orbiting Jupiter and the mountains on the Moon. His findings fundamentally weakened the Ptolemaic theory and theological ideas placing humans at the center of the universe. In 1633, the Church’s Holy Inquisition judged Galileo “vehemently suspect of heresy,” and forced him to recant his views and spend the remainder of his life under house arrest. Although persecuted in his own time, Galileo’s ideas later became the basis for modern astronomy, the scientific seed that ultimately led, centuries later, to the Apollo missions to the moon. Perhaps most importantly, the Inquisition’s judgment against Galileo is a lesson that scientific inquiry should not be restricted by any kind of influence from church, state or private donor, but must be based on free evidence. While the work of scientists and scholars will always reflect the larger society in which they live, that society should not place barriers in the way of knowledge. JANUARY S M T W T F S

NEW YEAR’S DAY 1 KWANZAA ENDS 2 3 4 5

LEFT Astronaut Ellen Baker and colleague in STS-71, Shuttle Atlantis, 1995.

THREE KINGS DAY, F EAST 6 OF THE EPIPHANY 7 ORTHODOX CHRISTMAS 8 9 10 11 12

1838 Samuel F.B. Morse uses electric signals to shift an electro- magnet in a patterned print across paper, known as Morse code. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

1964 James E. West and Gerhard M. Sessler, working for Bell Labs, receive a patent for their “electroacoustic transducer,” a microphone that is used today in almost all telephones, camcorders, baby monitors and hearing aids.

MAWLID AL-NABI DR. MARTIN LUTHER (MUHAMMAD’S 20 21KING JR. DAY (OBSERVED) 22 23 24 BIRTHDAY) 25 26 TU B’SHVAT

1801 The Philadelphia Water Works opens, making Philadelphia the first major city in the U.S. to provide clean drinking water citywide.

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION 27 IN MEMORY OF THE 28 29 30 31 VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

1880 Thomas Edison receives RIGHT Dr. Jill Bargonetti, Profes- a patent for the electric light bulb; sor of Biological Sciences, Hunter the first successful test had occurred College, researches the impact of CUNY TV Science & U on October 22, 1879. chemotherapeutic drugs on DNA.

DECEMBER 2012 FEBRUARY

SM TW TF S SMTW TFS Go to your App Store 1 12 LaGuardia to download our free 34 56 789 2345678 and Wagner This Date in History App. 9101112131415 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Archives 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 30 31 31 Science Fiction

LEFT Jules Verne, “From the Earth to the Moon,” 1874.

ABOVE Lunar module on Apollo 11 mission to the moon, 1969.

cientific and technological advances do not occur in a vacuum and many scientists have looked to science Connections between science fiction and space technology increased in the late 20th century, as television fiction as fuel for their imagination. CUNY physicist and co-creator of string field theory Michio Kaku has shows like “Star Trek” and “Lost in Space” helped kids imagine the technologies of the future. While NASA Scredited Flash Gordon as an early inspiration. So, too, Jules Verne’s 1865 novel, “From the Earth to the developed the Apollo program in the mid 1960s, “Star Trek’s” creators portrayed contemporary social and Moon,” animated future generations of scientists to develop space travel and rocketry. Indeed, Verne’s story political conflicts in the 23rd century and imagined the technologies of the future. Although traveling faster of a rocket-propelled trip to the moon eerily foreshadowed events that would occur100 years later. than light “warp speed” appears impossible, “Star Trek’s” writers imagined devices like floppy disks, e-books In Verne’s story, three Americans blasted off to the moon from a giant cannon in a rocket named Columbiad and tablets years before scientists and engineers made them a reality. and parachuted safely in the Pacific Ocean on their return. Apollo 11’s commander Neil Armstrong, the first In the late 1980s “Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Enterprise” introduced a holodeck, a virtual reality man to step on the moon, acknowledged his crew’s intellectual debt to Verne during the mission. “A hundred room where people could become characters in holo-novels and create scenarios of their own. Within the years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the Moon. . . It seems appropriate to us to share with holodeck, the ship’s computer simulated all forms of matter, including people and other living organisms. you some of the reflections of the crew as the modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the This level of sophistication does not appear likely anytime soon, but the holodeck has captured the imagination planet Earth and the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow.” of scientists, engineers and technology corporations as they refine and improve virtual reality. FEBRUARY S M T W T F S

LEFT 1 2 GROUNDHOG DAY “Modern Electrics,” LEFT 1911. LEFT Science 1888 The nation’s first electric “The Steam Fiction LEFT Frank RIGHT streetcar system opens in Man of the tale, “The Reade, Jr’s Holodeck Richmond, VA. Frank Sprague and Prairies,” by Rocket,” by “Weekly from Star Trek: the Richmond Union Passenger Edward S. Allyn Draper, Magazine,” The Next Railway Company operate 10 street- Ellis, 1868. 1899. 1902. Generation. cars in its nascent network. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY VASANT PANCHAMI 10 CHINESE NEW YEAR 11 12 MARDI GRAS 13 ASH WEDNESDAY 14 VALENTINE’S DAY 15 (HINDU OBSERVANCE) 16 (SHROVE TUESDAY) 1946 John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr. put the first electronic computer into operation at the University of Pennsylvania. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) weighs 30 tons and includes 18,000 vacuum tubes, 6,000 switches and 1,500 relays.

WASHINGTON’S PURIM (BEGINS AT 17 18 PRESIDENTS’ DAY 19 20 21 22 BIRTHDAY 23 SUNDOWN)

1962 John Glenn pilots the Mercury 1961 Otis Boykin invents the electri- 1928 Charles Adler, Jr. invents the Friendship 7 spacecraft in the first cal resistor that is later used in first electric traffic signal, which is U.S. human orbital flight. computers, radios and televisions installed at a Baltimore intersection.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 24 PURIM 25 26 27 INDEPENDENCE DAY 28 1935 DuPont chemist Gerard Berchet of the Walter Carothers research group invents nylon, intend- ing it to replace silk in stockings.

RIGHT CUNY Vice Chancellor for Research Dr. Gillian Small researches organelle biogenesis and molecular regulation of lipid metabolism. CUNY TV Science & U

JANUARY MARCH

SM TW TFS SMTW TFS Go to your App Store 12 345 12 LaGuardia to download our free 67 8910 11 12 34 56 789 and Wagner This Date in History App. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Archives 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 27 28 29 30 31 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 n May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened to the public, revolutionizing However, the Tappan Zee Bridge was not built to last. Unable to reach the bedrock 300 bridge construction and transportation in the United States. John Roebling and to 800 feet below sea level, the engineers designed its foundation to float above bedrock. Ohis son Washington had connected New York and Brooklyn, the nation’s first Like many other post-World War II bridges, it was built to be “non-redundant,” based on a Bridges and third largest cities, using the new suspension bridge technology and spinning of steel belief that computer technology made redundancies unnecessary. This means that a loss of cables. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, new bridges utilizing suspension cables, structural integrity in any load-bearing member could lead to bridge collapse because the cantilevers and arches made it possible to conquer previously unspannable distances. weight or load in that area can’t be transferred and supported by another section. Designed While bridge technology incorporated more concrete and steel, engineers to carry 100,000 vehicles per day, it now averages 140,000 and has peaked at 170,000. gained a greater understanding of the fundamentals of physics, and bridges of a The New York State Thruway Authority is currently developing a plan for a new bridge longer span, like the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (below left) were built. In the post- and a debate is taking place whether to include rail and/or bus rapid transit on it. World War II era, these bridges helped connect highways through the Interstate Building on the success of the High Line in New York City and the Walkway-Over- Highway System that began in 1956. One such structure, the Tappan Zee Bridge, The-Hudson, which reuses an abandoned railway bridge in Poughkeepsie, the Tappan spans the Hudson River between Tarrytown and Nyack, NY, north of New York Bridge Park Alliance has begun a campaign to turn the existing structure into a park City at its second greatest width (to avoid the jurisdiction of the Port Authority of and pedestrian/bicycle path. While the Thruway Authority proposes its demolition, New York and New Jersey), and is a key connection of the New York State Thruway, the Alliance hopes to create a large recreational park and transportation alternative which stretches from New York City to Buffalo. beyond the automobile (sketch of proposed redevelopment below right).

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge linking Brooklyn and Staten Island under construction, c.1962

RIGHT Plan for a Tappan Bridge Park by Milagros Lecunda, 2012. MARCH S M T W T F S 1 2

LEFT Dr. Marie Filbin, Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences, Hunter College, LEFT Digging the caisson investigates spinal cord injury. for the Brooklyn Bridge.

INTERNATIONAL 3 4 5 6 7 8 WOMEN’S DAY 9

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS 10 TIME BEGINS 11 12 13 14 15 16 MAHA SHIVRATRI (HINDU OBSERVANCE)

1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, signaling the decline of the telegraph industry.

VERNAL EQUINOX 17ST. PATRICK’S DAY 18 LENT (ORTHODOX) 19 20 (SPRING BEGINS) 21 22 23

1857 The first safety elevator for passengers in America, designed by 1883 Jan Ernst Matzeliger invents a Elisha Otis, is installed at 488 Broad- shoe and boot-lasting machine that way in New York in E.V. Haughwout’s increases shoemaking speed by 900%. porcelain and glassware import shop.

SECOND DAY OF PASSOVER (BEGINS FIRST DAY OF PASSOVER 24 PALM SUNDAY 25 AT SUNDOWN) 26 PASSOVER 27 28 HOLY THURSDAY 29 GOOD FRIDAY 30 HOLI (HINDU OBSERVANCE)

31 EASTER 1806 Thomas Jefferson signs 1979 The worst accident in U.S. legislation committing the federal commercial reactor history occurs government to build the Cumber- at the Three Mile Island nuclear land (later National) Road west power station near Harrisburg, PA. from Cumberland, Maryland, MD. The New York Times

FEBRUARY APRIL

SMTW TFS SM TW TFS Go to your App Store 12 123456 LaGuardia to download our free This Date in History App. 34 56 789 78 910111213 and Wagner 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Archives 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 28 29 30 31 31 Green Architecture

V “He was building a sod house. The walls had now risen breast-high; in its half-finished condition, rainstorm could often lead to wet clothes and bedding. Settlers would later add wood lean-tos for TOP LEFT Sylvester Rawling family in front the structure resembled more a bulwark against some enemy than anything intended to be a human additional rooms and white-wash the interiors to lighten the space and protect it from the elements. of sod house, north of habitation. And the great heaps of cut sod, piled up in each corner might well have been the stores The sod house was a practical response by the pioneers, but they generally built wood homes as Sargent, Custer County, of ammunition for defence of the stronghold.” soon as they could afford them, showing that culture plays a large role in our material choices. NE, 1886; — A description of a 19th century sod house on the Great Plains Sod houses no longer play a role in contemporary architecture, but designers still attempt to ABOVE Atop the by Norwegian immigrant O. E. Rölvaag in “Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie” create environmentally sustainable buildings. The Wedge House (below) is a three bedroom house 1919 Standard Motor built to reduce energy consumption, using stack effect cooling and structural insulated panels. This Products building on Northern Boulevard in vailable materials shape and influence the structures we home provides a model for reducing energy in a single family home environment. Long Island City sits live, work and play in. Nowhere was this truer than in While architects today use synthetic materials more than ever before, some of them have also the flagship farm of the Brooklyn Grange, 2012. Athe Great Plains of the United States. In the late 19th returned to the sod roof, in particular, the rooftop garden pictured above. Agriculture had been century, as settlers came into Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, integral to the urban environment into the early 20th century, but planning ideas removed food Montana and Wyoming, they found few trees to build homes. production from the city in favor of a more remote agribusiness based system. With the rising They turned to sod as their building material, using wood only popularity of locavore and organic agriculture and concern that industrial agriculture is a for the door and windows. Sod worked as an insulator keeping contributor to global warming, rooftop gardens and other forms of urban agriculture are homes cool in the summer and warm in the winter. However, becoming increasingly popular as they shorten the distance required to supply food and use less a sod roof did not completely seal out the weather, and a heavy energy-intensive means to grow them. APRIL S M T W T F S

1 APRIL FOOL’S DAY 2 LAST DAY OF PASSOVER 3 456

LEFT Dr. Lesley Davenport, Professor of Chemistry, Brooklyn College, investigating complex biomolecules with her lab group.

WORLD HEALTH DAY 7 YOM HASHOAH 8 9 10 11 12 13 (HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY)

YOM HAATZMAUT ISRAEL 14 15 16 INDEPENDENCE DAY 17 18 19 20

1977 Apple Computer, founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, 1917 Wisconsin is the first state to releases the Apple II, a desktop adopt a numbering system as the personal computer for the mass network of roads increases. The market that features a keyboard, idea gradually spreads across the video monitor, mouse and RAM, country. which can be expanded by the user.

TAKE OUR ADMINISTRATIVE DAUGHTERS AND 21 22 EARTH DAY 23 24 PROFESSIONALS DAY 25SONS TO WORK DAY 26 ARBOR DAY 27

1954: Bell Labs demonstrates the first practical silicon solar cell.

ORTHODOX PALM 28 SUNDAY 29 30

RIGHT The Wedge House, 1852 Boston establishes the first designed by the San Francisco electric-powered fire alarm system architectural firm Min/Day for with call boxes to indicate the a location in Phippsburg, Maine, CUNY TV Science & U location of the fire. 2011.

MARCH MAY SMTW TFS SMTW TFS Go to your App Store to download our free 12 1234 LaGuardia This Date in History App. 34 56 789 5678 91011 and Wagner 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Archives 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 26 27 28 29 30 31 31 “Modern Times” “Modern Times, “ 1936.

harlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” brilliantly satirized the assembly line, which dominated U.S. manufactur- “management must also see that those who prepare the bricks and the mortar and adjust the scaffold, etc., ing during the Great Depression. The film highlighted the power, efficiency and increased productivity of for the bricklayers, cooperate with them by doing their work just right and always on time; and they must also Cthe machine age, while showing how it dehumanized the lives of workers. In 1913, Henry Ford adapted inform each bricklayer at frequent intervals as to the progress he is making, so that he may not unintentionally the assembly line to automobile production, reducing the chassis assembly time of the Model T from 14 to fall off in his pace.” 1.5 hours. From 1908 to 1927 Ford was able to reduce the price of his revolutionary car from $950 to $280, Chaplin charmed the audience with his antics, but he tapped into a brutal reality; machines once designed while increasing his company’s revenues and profits. These improvements to productivity and price reductions to aid humans were now their masters, improving profits but not working lives. As Phil Stallings, a Ford transformed the automobile from a toy of the wealthy to a mass-produced product for the middle classes. assembly line worker in Chicago, recounted to Studs Terkel in “Working,” “I don’t understand how come more These and other advances in industrial manufacturing benefitted the consumer and the owner, but Chaplin guys don’t flip. Because you’re nothing more than a machine when you hit this type of thing. They give better made the human costs clear in his comical dance through the monotony and alienation of the assembly line. care to that machine. And you know this. Somehow you get the feeling that the machine is better than you The film implicitly critiques Frederick W. Taylor’s theory of scientific management. “Taylorism,” used scientific are.” In the last century, technological advances and increases in productivity have made consumer items analysis of the workplace to streamline, simplify and speed up the work process and increase productivity, from the automobile to the computer tablet less expensive. The greater cost is the dehumanizing of factory but strengthened management’s control and reduced workers’ power. Taylor argued that in bricklaying, workers, whether they are producing cars in Chicago or smart phones at Foxconn factory in China. MAY S M T W T F S

LEFT Dr. Mandë Holford, WORLD PRESS Assistant Professor of Chemical 1 MAY DAY 2 3 FREEDOM DAY 4 Biology at Hunter College, focuses on reconstructing the evolution- ary history of venomous marine gastropods (cone snails, terebrids, and turrids), and investigates their toxins as biochemical tools for characterizing cellular communica- tion in the nervous system and as potential drug development targets.

PASCHA (ORTHODOX EASTER) 5 6 7 8 V-E DAY 9 ASCENSION THURSDAY 10 11 CINCO DE MAYO

1869 The Union Pacific and Central 1960 The era of modern contracep- Pacific Railroads forge link at tion begins when the Food and Drug Promontory Point, UT, opening Administration approves the birth train travel between the eastern control pill for distribution. U.S. and California.

SHAVUOT (BEGINS FIRST DAY OF LAST DAY OF 12 MOTHER’S DAY 13 14 AT SUNDOWN) 15 SHAVUOT 16 SHAVUOT 17 18 ARMED FORCES DAY

1933 Congress passes legislation establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal corpora- 1988 Dr. Patricia E. Bath invents a tion providing electrification to new device for cataract surgery homes and businesses in the known as the “laserphaco.” Tennessee Valley.

WESAK (BUDDHA’S 19 PENTECOST 20 21 22 23 24 25 BIRTHDAY)

1883 The Brooklyn Bridge opens, 1927 Charles Lindbergh completes connecting the nation’s largest and the first nonstop solo flight across third largest cities, New York and the Atlantic Ocean, traveling 3,600 Brooklyn. Its towers were the tallest miles from to New York to Paris. structures in America.

MEMORIAL DAY 26 27 (OBSERVED) 28 29 30 31

The New York Times

APRIL JUNE

SM TW TF S SM TW TFS Go to your App Store 1 123456 LaGuardia to download our free 78 910111213 2345678 and Wagner This Date in History App. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 9101112131415 Archives 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 That’s Entertainment

echnological innovations of the late 19th century transformed the American entertainment industry and above left Soldiers increased the privatization of American life. Today, Americans experience more entertainment in their gathered around a home rather than in public movie theaters and concert halls. Technological changes in instrument design Steinway “victory T piano” and several have transformed more than just the entertainment mediums; they have changed the way people interact with guitars in the field each other. during World War II, Americans embraced the radio and especially the television at an unprecedented rate. In the 1920s, a culture c. 1943. that had previously emphasized communal participation in piano-based live entertainment now turned to the above Men gather phonograph and the radio, which created passive listeners. The broadcasting power of radio also intensified the around a radio in possibilities of mass culture, as stations across the country sent public events, from political rallies to sporting Harlem to listen to competitions and vaudeville shows, into the private homes of millions. When Texas Instruments put the transistor music, c. 1930s. inside the Regency TR1 pocket-sized radio in 1954, entertainment became even more personal. Radio now fit into the pocket of American teenagers eager to listen to rock and roll on the go. right La Guardia Community Television intensified the trend that began with radio, as it reinforced the culture of social isolationism in home College, CUNY, stu- entertainment. The advent of nationally broadcast television shows in the 1960s emphasized a normative culture dents Anthony across America, although they sometimes exacerbated the country’s deep racial, class and gender divisions. Williams, Kellian Today, the top-down economic business model of the entertainment industry has given way to the more Quallo, Moenette Alston, Drá Vicki democratic DIY entertainment option. In 2001, the iPod’s ability to store lots of music in a relatively small Bartholomew and device revolutionized the music industry. Now consumers control how and when they listen to music by utilizing Nveka Charles during electronic media. Since home entertainment systems have become more affordable, pay services such as Internet break between classes, access and on-demand cable television provide both entertainment and communication for the majority of 2012. American households at a cost of $1,000 a year per person. As more Americans opt to stay home, movie theaters across the country have closed. Technological and stylistic changes such as IMAX, digital images, and social media have forced directors, cinematographers, producers and actors to reinvent their craft. Social media also offers cheaper and faster outlets for marketing greater musical diversity. JUNE S M T W T F S

FAR RIGHT James West (pictured) and Gerhard Sessler received a 1 patent for their electroacoustic LEFT Dr. Vicki Flaris, Associate transducer, a microphone that is Professor of Chemistry, Bronx used today in almost all telephones, Community College, researches camcorders, baby monitors and polymer and material science. hearing aids.

RIGHT Nikola Tesla’s transmission RIGHT James West’s patent for of electrical energy (radio), 1900. the Electroacoustic Transducer.

ANNIVERSARY DAY FEAST OF CORPUS (BROOKLYN-QUEENS DAY) 2 CHRISTI 3 4 5 6 7 8

1980 Nobel Award winner in Physics Luis Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, publish a scientific paper in Science magazine theorizing that 65 million years ago a giant asteroid had struck earth, killing the dinosaur population.

PHILIPPINES 9 10 11 12 INDEPENDENCE DAY 13 14 FLAG DAY 15

SUMMER SOLSTICE/ 16 FATHER’S DAY 17 18 19 20 WORLD REFUGEE DAY 21 SUMMER BEGINS 22

1967 Stanford University professor Douglas Engelbart applies for a patent for his invention of the computer mouse as a pointing device. Engelbart also develops the graphical user interface (GUI).

1868 Christopher Latham Sholes and his associates 23 patent the first practical 24 25 26 27 28 29 typewriter. 30

CUNY TV Science & U

MAY JULY SMTW TFS SM TW TFS Go to your App Store 1234 123456 to download our free LaGuardia This Date in History App. 5678 91011 78 910111213 and Wagner 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Archives 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 26 27 28 29 30 31 28 29 30 31 CUNY NOBEL LAUREATES CUNY TV Science & U IN SCIENCE, TECHNOL OGY, ENG INEERING AN D M ATH JULIUS AXELROD ARNO PENZIAS Nobel Prize for Medicine, Nobel Prize for Physics, 1970 1978 City College City College Class of 1933 Class of 1954

LEON LEDERMAN JEROME KARLE Nobel Prize for Physics, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1988 1985 City College City College Class of 1943 Class of 1937

ROBERT ROSALYN YALOW HOFSTADTER Nobel Prize for Medicine, Nobel Prize for Physics, 1977 1961 Hunter College City College Class of 1941 Class of 1935

HERBERT GERTRUDE ELION HAUPTMAN Nobel Prize for Medicine, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1988 1985 Hunter College City College Class of 1937 Class of 1937

ARTHUR STANLEY COHEN KORNBERG Nobel Prize for Medicine, Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1986 1959 Brooklyn College City College Class of 1943 Class of 1937 Advertisement for Ratekin’s Corn Seed House, Iowa, 1913

n ear of fresh domestic corn use in 1980-81 to almost sweet corn 25% in 2007-08. Ais one of the Corn’s omnipotence today owes much joys of summer, but to federal government policy. In the 1970s it represents a small government farm policy increased subsidies fraction of the more than 10 billion bush- for corn farmers, making corn less expensive. els of corn produced in the United States Although processors began converting corn in 2012. Although corn yields increased starch into high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) slowly from 1870 to World War II (1.1 in the 1940s and 1950s as a cheap alternative billion to 2.2 billion), the advent of war to sugar, it was only in the 1970s when they and the resulting manpower shortage en- began using it in large quantities. In 1980, couraged the use of technology to rapidly Coca-Cola, for instance, began using HFCS in increase production. J.L Anderson, a lead- soft drinks; by 1984 both Coke and Pepsi no ing historian of the agrarian Midwest, has longer used sugar at all. Using HFCS rather pointed to the close relationship between than sugar has kept the price of the product corn and cattle and argued that in the down, but both HFCS and sugar have the immediate post-war period, too, “farmers same number of calories. Consumption of decreased production costs by substitut- soda in America has skyrocketed since the ing machines for labor, used pesticides to 1960s, when soda manufacturers sold their destroy weed and insect pests that were product in 6 ½ ounce bottles; today, their obstacles to high crop yields and livestock bottles contain 20 ounces. Over the past gains, fertilized fields with chemicals, 25 years, for instance, American per capita installed automated feeding systems, and consumption of soda per year has grown added feed supplements that accelerated from 28 gallons to nearly 45 gallons. animals’ ability to absorb nutrients and The revolution in corn production has calories.” Without nitrogen-based fertil- also affected cattle feeding and the modern izer (pioneered by German scientist Fritz beef diet. Modern beef factories congregated Haber), mechanical harvesting equipment on the southern plains in western Kansas and hybrid corn (advanced by Vice Presi- hold as many as 100,000 cattle in confined dent and Agriculture Secretary Henry feedlots in contrast to the late 19th century Wallace) this unprecedented growth feedlots which rarely contained more than would not have been possible. Later, 1,000 head. Cattle in today’s giant feedlots in the mid-1990s, genetically modified are fattened for about six months on cheap, organisms, developed by corporations surplus corn, protein supplements and drugs, like Monsanto, came to represent more including antibiotics and growth hormones, than 75% of the acreage devoted to the in order to reach a “finished” weight of production of corn. Today corn plays an 1,250 pounds because those raised solely on ever-present role in our lives. grass take longer to reach slaughter weight, Scientific advancements to increase and the modern meat industry wants to corn yields have made it easier to feed extinguish a beef calf’s life at 14-16 months, a growing population in the United as opposed to the life span of 4-5 years in States and the world, but these chang- the early 20th century. es have also meant the industrialization Ironically, corn growers have not of the food systems which bring food benefitted from the increased yields that from the farmer’s field to our plates. scientific breakthroughs and subsidies have These advancements have transformed made possible. Growers are often plagued corn into a primary ingredient in the by overproduction, which leads to lower cattle, poultry and pork feed and the commodity prices and little or no profit. ethanol used in gasoline. Indeed, corn They sell their corn primarily to a few large used for fuel alcohol production in- processors, which process it for use in soda, creased from less than 1% of total U.S. animal feed, and ethanol. JULY S M T W T F S

1CANADA DAY 2 3 4 INDEPENDENCE DAY 5 6 1925 Cleveland opens the first municipal airport in the U.S. in continuous operation; 100,000 visitors celebrate the occasion.

LEFT Maize was the staple crop of North Americans in the pre-Columbian era.

7 8 9 RAMADAN BEGINS 10 11 12 13

1962 The first transatlantic transmis- sion of a television signal takes place using the TELSTAR satellite.

FAST OF TISHA B’AV BASTILLE DAY (BEGINS AT SUNDOWN) 14 15 16 TISHA B’AV 17 18 19 20

1902 Willis Carrier designs an air- 1969 Astronaut Neil Armstrong is conditioning system for a Brooklyn the first man to step on the moon printing plant. during the Apollo 11 mission. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

1866 The Transatlantic cable opens between Newfoundland and Valentia, Ireland, forever changing communi- cation between America and Europe. Communication that once took two to three weeks now takes minutes. 28 29 30 31

RIGHT Dr. Eleanore Wurtzel, Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehman College, incorporates genomic tools to investigate carotenoid accumulation in important food crops such as maize, wheat and rice. CUNY TV Science & U

JUNE AUGUST SM TW TFS SM TW TF S Go to your App Store 123 1 LaGuardia to download our free 2345678 4567 8910 and Wagner This Date in History App. 9101112131415 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Archives 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 30 31 Atomic Energy

he scientific breakthroughs that led to the creation of nuclear fission and the atomic bomb ABOVE LEFT Norris began with Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity in 1905 and his formula E=mc² Bradbury, group leader for (Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared). Bringing this to fruition would bomb assembly, stands next T to the partially assembled require four decades of research experiments and the military impetus to create a bomb during Gadget atop the test tower World War II. Like most scientific breakthroughs, it was not the work of a single scientist, but a in the New Mexico desert, long-term effort in which scientists built upon the theories and experiments of others, including 1945. Ernest Rutherford, Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, Niels Bohr, Frédéric Joliot, Hans von Halban, Lew ABOVE Albert Einstein Kowarski, Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence and Leo Szilard. As these scientists collaborated and visits City College, where competed to advance nuclear physics, they thought more about the science and potential he delivers lecture to economic implications of applying atomic energy for domestic industrial uses, such as the faculty, 1921. generation of power, than the military implications of splitting the atom. This changed when a war with Nazi Germany, which had its own atomic weapons program, RIGHT Ernest O. Lawrence, Glenn T. Seaborg and seemed inevitable. On August 2, 1939, Albert Einstein, together with Leo Szilard, wrote President J. Robert Oppenheimer Franklin Roosevelt that Germany could develop an atomic bomb and that the United States control the magnet of the must begin its own program. In 1942 this became the Manhattan Project. Under the leadership 184-inch cyclotron, which of Lieutenant General Leslie Groves and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, it brought together is being converted from its wartime use to its original 200 of the world’s leading physicists and chemists, many of them Jewish refugees, to develop an purpose as a cyclotron, atomic bomb in Los Alamos, NM, while nuclear reactors in Oak Ridge, TN, and Hanford, WA, 1946. created the fissionable elements Uranium 235 and Plutonium as the fuel for the atomic bombs. At a cost of $2 billion, the United States had created the first atomic weapons. Completed after Nazi Germany had surrendered, the United States dropped two atomic weapons, in a still highly debated decision, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading the Japanese to surrender. AUGUST S M T W T F S 1 2 3

LEFT The 90-inch cyclotron, LEFT Dr. Ruth Stark, Distinguished installed at Lawrence Livermore 1939 Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard Professor of Chemistry, City College, National Laboratory in 1954 was write a letter to President Roosevelt uses NMR techniques to study the a leading particle accelerator in its explaining the need to build a molecular structure of fatty acid time. The machine operated until nuclear bomb to counter Nazi binding proteins. 1971. Germany’s effort.

EID AL-FITR 4 5 6 HIROSHIMA DAY 7 8 (RAMADAN ENDS) 9 10

1945 The atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan; three days later another bomb, Fat Man, is dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

FEAST OF THE 11 12 13 14 V-J DAY 15 ASSUMPTION OF MARY 16 17

1981 IBM introduces the Personal Computer using the Intel 8088 microprocessor and an operating 1807 Robert Fulton takes the steam- system, MS-DOS, designed by Micro- boat Clermont up the Hudson River soft. Fully equipped with 64 kilobytes from New York to Albany; reliable of memory and a floppy disk drive, upriver steam travel revolutionizes it costs $1,565. intercity trade and transportation.

RAKSHA INTERNATIONAL BANDHAN (HINDU DAY FOR THE 18 19 20 21 OBSERVANCE) 22 23 REMEMBRANCE OF THE 24 SLAVE TRADE AND ITS ABOLITION

1912 Garrett Morgan files a patent for his “breathing device” to be used by the Cleveland Fire Department. His invention is later incorporated into the gas masks used by the U.S. military in World War I.

WOMEN’S EQUALITY 25 26 DAY 27 28 29 30 31

CUNY TV Science & U

JULY SEPTEMBER

SM TW TFS SM TW TFS Go to your App Store 123456 12 34 567 LaGuardia to download our free 78 910111213 8910 11 12 13 14 and Wagner This Date in History App. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Archives 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 28 29 30 31 29 30 31 Toys

he popularization of new, middle-class conceptions of childhood as a period of Tlife largely free of adult responsibilities helped create a consumer market for toys in the United States by the late 19th century. Urban department stores and specialty retailers met the growing demand for toys by stocking the latest imported and domestically-manufactured playthings. Some amusements—such as Milton Bradley’s enormously successful board game The Checkered Game of Life (1860), which encouraged players to avoid temptations like idleness and intemperance on their path to wealth and success—carried strong moral lessons; others were designed purely for fun. Animated clockwork toys from Germany—whose subjects included running animals, oarsmen rowing boats, boys riding velocipedes, and, later, automated suffragettes—joined simple, less-expensive, offerings from American manufacturers such as dolls, wood blocks, and vehicles or figures cast in iron or tin. Despite the popularity of animated toys, however, some observers warned these toys risked robbing children of the chance to exercise their own imaginations. Popular children’s novelist Kate Wiggin, for example, argued that the “more imagination and cleverness the inventor has put into the toy, the less room there is for the child’s imagination and cleverness and genius.” The American toy industry remained small throughout the nineteenth century, but its fortunes brightened considerably in subsequent decades as increasing prosperity and a general trend to more indulgent parenting styles helped foster year-round demand for toys. Manu- facturers maintained close ties with retailers to gauge changing consumer tastes, advertising budgets swelled, and toy makers adopted modern production methods. These developments, coupled with boycotts of German-made goods during the First World War, allowed the U.S. toy industry to expand some 1,300 percent between 1905 and 1920. In the early decades of the 20th century, toys reflected a widespread public fascination for science and technology, while at the same time reinforced social norms concerning gender- appropriate play. Girls, for example, received dolls, kitchen sets, and other child-sized domestic technologies to socialize them as future homemakers, while boys got construction toys, tools chests, and scientific-oriented offerings like chemistry outfits, toy microscopes, and wireless radio sets. An entire category of ‘career-oriented’ toys promised to train young minds and hands for the modern world. The success of Erector (pictured abaove right), created by the A.C. Gilbert Co. in 1913, placed Connecticut—which was also home to model train maker, the Ives Company—at the center of the American toy industry, and, more significantly, helped spur innovations in child-centered advertising. Inspiring boys to aspire to engineering careers remained constant. In the wake of Charles A. Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight in 1927, the American Boy magazine established the Airplane Model League of America—a nationwide club for boys sponsored, in part, by the Ford Motor Co.—to encourage boys’ dreams of aviation industry careers. Similarly, the Fisher Body Company sponsored an annual model- making contest from 1930 onward for teenage boys with an eye on training future generations of car designers. During the Cold War, the popularity of model rocketry clubs nationwide fueled young visions of exploring space. Innovations in modern computing crept into toy design in the 1970s. In 1972, for example, Magnavox released ‘Odyssey,’ the first home video game system and a precursor to more advanced systems by Atari, Nintendo, and X-box, and in 1978, Texas Instruments developed the first toy to utilize a computer chip, the Speak and Spell, a learning toy replete with a speech synthesizer. Interestingly, the development of the multi-billion dollar video game industry— as well as efforts to incorporate wearable computing, like those from Valve (pictured right) and Google glasses—has only renewed debates about the player’s passivity and lack of creativity that first arose in the 19th century. LEFT Patent issued to La Marcus A. Thompson for the first roller SEPTEMBER coaster in America, 1885.

S M T W T F S

ROSH HASHANAH FIRST DAY OF ROSH SECOND DAY OF 1 2 LABOR DAY 3 45(BEGINS AT SUNDOWN) HASHANAH 6 ROSH HASHANAH 7

1882 Thomas Edison’s Pearl Street Station in New York begins the first successful commercial production of electricity in America, distributing direct current to 203 customers in lower Manhattan within four months.

WORLD TRADE CENTER YOM KIPPUR (BEGINS GRANDPARENTS DAY 10 REMEMBRANCE DAY AT SUNDOWN) 8 9 11 12 13 14 YOM KIPPUR

1868 Bessemer Steel’s first “blow” is made at the Cleveland Rolling Mills, inaugurating an American industrial revolution; the cities of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago would soon anchor the new industrial heartland of the nation.

EL GRITO DEL SUKKOT SUKKOT (BEGINS AT DOLORES (MEXICAN CITIZENSHIP DAY SUNDOWN) INTERNATIONAL DAY 15 16 INDEPENDENCE DAY) 17 (CONSTITUTION DAY) 18 19 CHUSEOK (KOREAN 20 HARVEST MOON 21OF PEACE FESTIVAL)

AUTUMNAL LAST DAY OF SUKKOT SHEMINI ATZERET SIMCHAT TORAH EQUINOX/AUTUMN (HOSHANAH RABBAH) BEGINS 22 23 24 25 26 SIMCHAT TORAH 27 NATIVE AMERICAN SHEMINI ATZERET DAY 28 (BEGINS AT SUNDOWN) (BEGINS AT SUNDOWN)

1905 Albert Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity. 29 30

RIGHT Dr. Myriam Sarachik, Dis- tinguished Professor of Physics, City College, researches superconductiv- RIGHT Schematic mechanism ity, disordered metallic alloys and for baseball stitching machine, metal-insulator transitions in doped 1948. semiconductors. CUNY TV Science & U

AUGUST OCTOBER SM TW TFS SM TW TFS Go to your App Store 123 12 345 LaGuardia to download our free 4567 8910 67 8910 11 12 and Wagner This Date in History App. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Archives 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 27 28 29 30 31 Computers

ike most advances in science and technology, the computer has no single inventor or eureka moment John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton led a group of engineers and scientists of creation. The word computer once described people, predominantly women, who did repetitive in developing the MANIAC computer, which made the calculations necessary to develop the hydrogen Lmathematical calculations. Only in the 20th century did it come to mean an electronic-based bomb in 1952. calculating machine. One of the roots of the modern computer lay in Herman Hollerith’s punch card In the 1950s, computers were very large and few in number, but transistors made them smaller and tabulating machine, used to count the 1890 U.S. census. Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company was commercialization driven by IBM made them more common in the 1960s. However, few would have consolidated into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. in 1911, which was renamed IBM in 1924. predicted in 1970 that computers would become a ubiquitous part of the home and office. By the late World War II gave rise to an alliance between the military and academia that marked a turning point 1970s, computers had advanced from hobbyist kits to the Apple II and Radio Shack TRS 80 and within a for computer development. During WW II, Harvard scientist Howard Aiken and U.S. WAVE Grace Hopper few years IBM had entered the personal computer market, run with Microsoft software. The progressive designed an electromechanical computing machine that IBM built and sent to Harvard in 1944. The Mark increase in computer speed and memory made it possible to transform the Internet, a computer network I solved complicated math calculations for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships. The ENIAC, developed by John created by the U.S. Defense Department and research universities in the 1970s, into the locus of informa- Mauchly and John Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, utilized 17,000 vacuum tubes tion and commerce that has transformed our world. As computer microchips have become smaller and to make math calculations a thousand times faster than earlier machines. Military and academic researchers faster, computers can now fit in our phones, eyeglasses and perhaps our bodies. The possibilities seem limit- were the primary users of the ENIAC and its successors, the EDVAC and ORDVAC. In the early 1950s, less, but threats to privacy are real as is the specter of a world in which technology dominates our lives.. OCTOBER S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5

1951 Henrietta Lacks dies at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Balti- LEFT Dr. Corinne Michels, more from cancer of the cervix; her Distinguished Professor of Biology, living cancerous cells removed from Queens College, researches the her body and preserved in a lab later regulation of gene expression. launch a medical revolution. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

EID AL-ADHA (FEAST 13 14 COLUMBUS DAY 15 OF SACRIFICE) 16 NATIONAL BOSS’S DAY 17 18 19

1842 The Croton Aqueduct provides New York with its first clean supply of water needed to combat disease, fight fires and meet the demands of a rapidly growing city.

20 21 22 23 24 UNITED NATIONS DAY 25 26

1825 The Erie Canal connects the port of New York to the Great Lakes via the Hudson River. By 1840, New York moved more freight than the ports of Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans combined.

27 28 29 30 31 HALLOWEEN

RIGHT Mathematician Mina S. Rees served as president of the Graduate School and University Center at CUNY. CUNY TV Science & U

SEPTEMBER NOVEMBER SMTW TFS SM TW TFS Go to your App Store 12 12 34 567 LaGuardia to download our free 8910 11 12 13 14 34 56 789 and Wagner This Date in History App. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Archives 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 29 30 31 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Collective Innovation

nnovations applying fiber optics, mobile phones and satellites have been the result of The Edison Electric Illuminating Company developed a central generating station on Pearl simultaneous inventions and incremental improvements rather than the achievement of the Street in lower Manhattan, which opened on September 4, 1882. Edison’s team at the Pearl Ilone inventor enjoying an eureka moment. The myth of the sole inventor persists because Street station installed six “Jumbo” dynamos, each weighing 27 tons and capable of powering it supports our celebration of the rugged individualist, who by (usually his) own bootstraps more than 1,100 lights. His collaborators included Lewis Latimer, holder of a patent for rises to conquer all obstacles. This self-reliance of independent scientists and engineers from improved carbon filaments, (see photo above and left, patent), who worked at the Edison Eli Whitney to Samuel F. B. Morse, Thomas Edison and on to Henry Ford has been Electric Light Company in New York from 1884 to 1896 as a patent investigator and draftsman. the mainstay of our folklore. In the 20th century Bell Labs offers the best evidence of collaborative innovation. In reality, scientific discoveries result from steady increments in knowledge, the Opened in Manhattan in 1925, Bell Labs moved to the New Jersey suburbs after World War uninterrupted social interaction between scientists, systematic methods of inquiry and II, where its long corridors and mandatory open-door policy fostered interaction among en- the consequences of their time. Robert K. Merton, the noted sociologist, argued that “the gineers, physicists, chemists, materials scientists and mathematicians. Bell Labs believed that pattern of independent multiple discoveries in science is in principle the dominant pattern, innovation best occurs when people of different talents work in an environment conducive rather than a subsidiary one.” to open dialogue. The transistor (1947) resulted from the teamwork of William Shockley, The laboratories of Thomas Edison (see above) in Menlo Park, New Jersey and New York Walter Brattain and John Bardeen which sparked the invention. Bell Labs contributed greatly provide a good example of the collective basis of innovation. In Menlo Park, Edison and Francis to the telecommunications system of the mid-20th century through its innovations in Upton developed a carbon filament that did not melt; this new design led to a long-lasting (up transistors, lasers, communication by satellites, charge-couple devices (CCD), silicon solar to 40 hours) lamp. Thus, in late 1879 Edison introduced the first practical incandescent bulb. cells and the UNIX computer operating system. NOVEMBER S M T W T F S

1 ALL SAINTS DAY 2 ALL SOULS DAY

LEFT Dr. Maribel Vazquez researches brain cancer infiltration and nano- 1920 Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse- technology approaches for protein owned KDKA, the first commercial labeling. She is currently Associate radio station in the United States, Professor of Biomedical Engineering RIGHT Patent for transistor broadcasts election results. By 1922, at City College. issued to Bell Labs, 1950. three million Americans own radios.

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME ENDS MUHARRAM (ISLAMIC 3 4 NEW YEAR) 5 ELECTION DAY 6 7 8 9 DIWALI (HINDU FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS)

1913 The Los Angeles-Owens River Aqueduct opens, bringing water by gravity to the Los Angeles basin from the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, more than 230 miles to the north.

10 11VETERANS’ DAY 12 13 14 15 16

2001 Apple starts selling the iPod, a portable digital audio player that revolutionizes listening to music. 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 1942 The Alaska Canada Military Highway (the Alcan) is completed, linking Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and Delta Junction, Alaska. Built by African American and white soldiers of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Alcan has been called “the road to civil rights.”

THANKSGIVING DAY CHANUKAH (BEGINS 24 25 26 27 AT SUNSET) 28 FIRST DAY OF 29 30 CHANUKAH

1874 Joseph Glidden introduces barbed wire fencing, enabling herds to remain on private ranches. CBS Morning News

OCTOBER DECEMBER

SM TW TFS SM TW TFS Go to your App Store 12 345 12 34 567 LaGuardia to download our free 67 8910 11 12 8910 11 12 13 14 and Wagner This Date in History App. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Archives 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 27 28 29 30 31 29 30 31 Water

n the late 18th and early 19th century Philadelphia, Boston, New York and other coastal cities in the United southwest of the United States. Las Vegas, one of the fastest growing urban areas of the last decade, annually States grew rapidly, powered by increased trade, manufacturing and immigration. These changes led to receives only 4.5” of rain and has to rely on Lake Mead, a reservoir created by the Hoover Dam on the Iincreased demand for water and public health problems arising from polluted water supplies. The first U.S. Colorado River, for 90% of its water. A severe drought threatens this supply and it is possible that the lake city to confront this problem was Philadelphia, which grew from 41,000 in 1800 to 1.3 million in 1900. After could run dry by 2021. outbreaks of yellow fever in the 1790s killed thousands of people, Philadelphia sought cleaner supplies. Its To look at the fountains on the strip in Las Vegas, the city and its economic engine appear to be profligate leaders turned to the engineer Benjamin Latrobe, who developed a waterworks by diverting the Schuylkill users of water, but the reality is different. For instance, the spectacular water show at the Bellagio Hotel uses River and using steam engines to pump water to a high level to distribute to the population. Philadelphia recycled ground water so it places minimal strain on Lake Mead. On a larger scale, the Southern Nevada completed the first section in 1801, but it quickly became inadequate and turned to an expanded system Water Authority recycles 40% of its wastewater to use in power plants, construction and irrigation, compared in what is now Fairmount Park between 1812 and 1815. (See above). to a national average of 6%. With a growing population and worsening droughts that many scientists regard Urban areas have continually struggled to meet increased demand for water, but conservation has as due to global warming, the United States will have to increase conservation and wastewater recycling to become an increasingly important tool. This is particularly true in the desert environments of the west and maintain adequate supplies of water to cope with these changes. DECEMBER S M T W T F S WORLD AIDS AWARENESS LAST DAY OF MUHARRAM DAY (FIRST MONTH OF ISLAMIC CALENDAR) LAST DAY OF CHANUKAH 1 2 3 456 PEARL HARBOR DAY FIRST DAY OF ADVENT 7

1942 The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs at the Univer- sity of Chicago in an experiment led by physicist Enrico Fermi.

FEAST OF THE FEAST OF OUR LADY 8 IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 9 10 HUMAN RIGHTS DAY 11 12 OF GUADALUPE 13 14

1953 President Eisenhower delivers his “Atoms for Peace” speech before the United Nations, calling for greater cooperation in the develop- ment of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

16 17 18 19 WINTER SOLSTICE/ 15 20 21WINTER BEGINS

1880 New York’s Broadway receives its first electric lights between 14th and 34th streets. The Broadway theater district would eventually 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright move north and become known as conduct the first motor-powered The Great White Way for its blazing flight at Kitty Hawk, NC. illumination.

KWANZAA BEGINS 22 23 24 CHRISTMAS EVE 25 CHRISTMAS DAY 26 BOXING DAY 27 28

1947 John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William B. Shockley, scientists at Bell Labs, build the first transistor that can amplify and switch electronic signals.

29 30 31NEW YEAR’S EVE

RIGHT Professor Thomas Onorato, LaGuardia Community College, stud- ies the fertilization of star fish and is trying to create the first star fish cell line, 2012. CUNY TV Science & U

NOVEMBER JANUARY 2014

SMTW TFS SMTW TFS Go to your App Store 12 1234 LaGuardia to download our free 34 56 789 This Date in History App. 5678 91011 and Wagner 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Archives 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 26 27 28 29 30 31 31 Bio Art

io-art blurs the distinction between science and art by using new technologies to manipulate living organisms into artwork. An early example in the 1990s Bwas a genetically modified phosphorescent rabbit named Alba. Other examples include using electron microscopes to look at things like muscle cells or bacteria. However, the ethics of using living organisms for art remains controversial. JANUARY 2014 S M T W T F S

NEW YEAR’S DAY LEFT Dr. Neepa Maitra, Associate 1KWANZAA ENDS 2 3 4 Professor of Physics at Hunter Col- lege, has a background in theoretical chemical physics and focuses her studies more specifically on time- dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), a method to describe electronic excitations and dynamics in atomic, molecular, chemical systems and solids.

THREE KINGS DAY, F EAST 5 6 OF THE EPIPHANY 7 ORTHODOX CHRISTMAS 8 9 10 11

1838 Samuel F.B. Morse uses electric signals to shift an electro- magnet in a patterned print across paper, known as Morse code.

MAWLID AL-NABI (MUHAMMAD’S 12 13 BIRTHDAY) 14 15 16 TU B’SHEVAT 17 18

1964 James E. West and Gerhard M. Sessler, working for Bell Labs, receive a patent for their “electroacoustic transducer,” a microphone that is used today in almost all telephones, camcorders, baby monitors and hearing aids.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY 19 20 (OBSERVED) 21 22 23 24 25

1801 The Philadelphia Water Works opens, making Philadelphia the first major city in the U.S. to provide clean drinking water citywide.

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF COMMEMORATION 26 27 IN MEMORY OF THE 28 29 30 31 VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

1880 Thomas Edison receives a patent for the electric light bulb; the first successful test had occurred on October 22, 1879. CUNY TV Science & U

DECEMBER FEBRUARY 2014 SM TW TFS SM TW TF S Go to your App Store 12 34 567 1 LaGuardia to download our free This Date in History App. 8910 11 12 13 14 2345678 and Wagner 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 9101112131415 Archives 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 PHOTO CREDITS

FRONT COVER of Maryland Rocket program, courtesy of the Office of Digital Col- Wright Brothers Model Plane: photo courtesy of John DeVilbiss, lections and Research, University Libraries, University of Maryland; Utah State University; Supersonic Jet Plane, Nick Kaloterakis Coney Island Athletic Club, courtesy of the Library of Congress, @ collected. Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-102696; Dr. Volkow, courtesy of the National Institute on Drug Abuse; Philco television, INSIDE FRONT COVER courtesy of the Museum of the Moving Image; Purdue University Photo courtesy of CUNY. student working in food chemistry laboratory, courtesy of Purdue University Archives and Special Collections; Tennessee road paving MILESTONES CREDITS machine, courtesy of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Blount PAGE 1 County Public Library, Maryville, Tennessee. U.S.S. Monitor, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-B8171-0490, James F. Gibson photographer; PAGE 5 Mammoth California orange, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Valencia Community College biology students, courtesy of Valencia Albert Einstein, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19095; Linus Paul- Community College; B-24 bombers on assembly line, courtesy of the Rabbi Stephen A. Wise ing, courtesy of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, Special Col- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; Baldwin Loco- and Mayor Fiorello H. lections, Oregon State University Libraries; Aerodyne, courtesy of motive, courtesy of the Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of LaGuardia celebrate Iowa State University Archives; Dr. Patricia Bath courtesy of Dr. Bath; Philadelphia; Aeroplane Graflex, courtesy of the NARA, Department Rabbi Wise’s 60th Bell Labs patent, courtesy of the United States Patent and Trademark of Defense, Department of the Army; Checking tomatoes, courtesy of birthday at the Hotel Office; Tetrahedral kite, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Smoke-shrouded Pittsburgh, Astor in New York, 1934. and Photographs Division, Gilbert H. Grosvenor Collection of courtesy of Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh, Smoke Photographs of the Alexander Graham Bell Family; Carl Rakeman Control Lantern Unit; Dawn of the Century sheet music, courtesy macadam road, courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration, of Wikipedia Commons; Loop-the-Loop, courtesy of the Library of FEBRUARY 2013 SCIENCE FICTION SEPTEMBER 2013 TOYS United States Department of Transportation; Broadway elevated, Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-63370; Wright Verne book cover courtesy of Wikipedia Commons; Lunar module, See-Saw patent and Thompson patent, courtesy of the United States courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Brothers patent, courtesy of the United States Patent and Trademark courtesy of NASA; Rocket, courtesy of Bowling Green State Uni- Patent and Trademark Office; Erector set, courtesy of the Library of LC-USZ62-108312, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper; Howard Office; Sensitester, courtesy of the Museum of the Moving Image; versity Commons; CUNY Vice Chancellor Gillian Small, courtesy of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; Valve Software, courtesy Coffin, courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Stage coach courtesy of Cull A. White Collection, MASC, Washington CUNY; StarTrek Holodeck, courtesy of CBS Licensing and of Stuart Isett/The New York Times; Baseball stitching machine, cour- Michigan, BL000228. State University Libraries, ID# pc086b01f048_1. Paramount Pictures. tesy of the Archives Center, NMAH, Smithsonian Institution; Dr. Myriam Sarachik, courtesy of CUNY. PAGE 2 PAGE 6 MARCH 2013 BRIDGES Edison storage battery department and Edison battery-operated Glider in flight, courtesy of the Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts Verrazano Narrows Bridge, courtesy of MTA Bridge and Tunnel OCTOBER 2013 COMPUTERS truck, courtesy of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, University; Hollerith tabulator, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Special Archive; Tappan Zee Bridge Park, courtesy of Milagros Lecu- Women holding motherboards, courtesy of the U.S. Army Photo National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior; Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-45687; Life Preserving ona; Dr. Marie Filbin, courtesy of CUNY; Brooklyn Bridge drawing, number 163-12-62; Google glasses courtesy of Shutterstock.com; Promontory Point, courtesy of the Oakland Museum of California; Coffin, courtesy of the United States Patent and Trademark Office; Dr. courtesy of the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, CUNY. Computer technicians, courtesy of the Regents of the University of Transistor inventors, courtesy of Alcatel Archives; Air Mail delivery, Charles Drew, courtesy of NARA 43-0937a; Kaiser-Frazer, courtesy California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; CUNY twitter courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; of the Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University; Mario APRIL 2013 GREEN ARCHITECTURE page, Dr. Mina Rees and Dr. Corinne Michels, courtesy of CUNY. von Neumann and Oppenheimer, courtesy of The Shelby White and Molina, courtesy of the Nobel Foundation; Baseball stitching machine, Nebraska sod house, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Digital courtesy of Archives Center, NHAM, Smithsonian Institution; Banneker and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-8276; Rooftop farm, courtesy NOVEMBER 2013 COLLECTIVE INNOVATION Collections, Princeton, New Jersey; Giant magnet, courtesy of the mural, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs of the Brooklyn Grange; Dr. Lesley Davenport, courtesy of CUNY; Edison workers, courtesy of the Thomas Edison National Historical Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, United States Department Division, LC-DIG-highsm-09905; Barrage balloon, courtesy of the Wedge House, courtesy of Min/Day. Park, National Park Service, United States Department of the Inte- of Energy; Hampton Institute, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security rior; Lewis Latimer, courtesy of the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-62376, Frances Benjamin Administration/Office of War Information,LC-USW361-1055, Alfred MAY 2013 MODERN TIMES CUNY and the Queens Borough Public Library; Latimer patent and Johnston photographer; Telstar, courtesy of Alcatel Archives. T. Palmer photographer; Steinway and Sons patent, courtesy of the Modern Times © Roy Export S.A.S. Scan courtesy Cineteca Bell Labs, courtesy of the United States Patent and Trademark Office; United States Patent and Trademark Office; Grace Hopper, courtesy di Bologna; Dr. Mande Holford, courtesy of CUNY. Dr. Maribel Vazquez, courtesy of CUNY. PAGE 3 of Archives Center, NHAM, Smithsonian Institution; Dr. Jerome Tobis, Michigan State University women, courtesy of the Michigan State courtesy of David Tobis, Principal, Maestral International. JUNE 2013 THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT DECEMBER 2013 WATER University Archives & Special Collections; Mastodon Corn, courtesy WW II Soldiers, courtesy of LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, CUNY Fairmount and Waterworks, courtesy of the American Philosophical of Archives Center, NHAM, Smithsonian Institution; Frank Meyer, PAGE 7 and U.S. Army Air Corps; Harlem radio listeners, courtesy of the Library; Professor Thomas Onorato, courtesy of Steven A. Levine. courtesy of the NARA, Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Traffic light inventor, courtesy of the Archives Center, NMAH, Smith- New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Research Service, Horticultural Crops Research Branch; Lower sonian Institution; Brighton Beach Hotel, courtesy of the Library Culture; LaGuardia Community College students, courtesy of Tara JANUARY 2014 BIOART Manhattan Elevated Railroad, courtesy of the Library of Congress, of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-53843; Jean Hickman; Dr. Vicki Flaris, courtesy of CUNY; Tesla patent and BioArt image, courtesy of Dr. Douglas Cowan, Harvard Medical Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-96204; East Texas farmer George Sidney, courtesy of the Museum of the Moving Image; Dr. West patent, courtesy of the United States Patent and Trademark School, Children’s Hospital Boston; Dr. Neepa Maitra, courtesy of with barbed wire, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Daniel Hale Williams, courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, Office; Jim West, courtesy of Jim West. CUNY. Photographs Division, LC-ISF33-012120, Russell Lee photographer; National Institutes of Health; Governor Clinton, mural located in Biologists, courtesy of the Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special DeWitt Clinton High School, New York City, courtesy New York CENTERFOLD AWARD-WINNERS PHOTO CREDITS Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota; State Canals; Wrought Iron Bridge Canton, courtesy of the Library Mentor Award and CUNY’s 2012 Science All Star Team and CUNY Einstein, Wise and LaGuardia photograph courtesy of the University of Arkansas Hong Wen, courtesy of the University of of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; Aeroplane Ambulance, Nobel Winners, courtesy of CUNY. LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, CUNY. Arkansas; Seed Distribution Bureau, courtesy of the NARA, Depart- courtesy of the National Museum of the History of Medicine, Otis ment of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry; Slide rule, courtesy Historical Archives, AFIP, Reeve Collection 63082; Bell Telephone JULY 2013 CORN ACKNOWLEDGMENTS of the Michigan State University Archives and Special Collections; patent, courtesy of the United States Patent and Trademark Office; Corn seeds advertisement, courtesy of the Archives Center, NMAH, Hospital for Special Surgery, courtesy of Tara Jean Hickman. Washing Machine, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Civil War railroad bridge, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints Smithsonian Institution; Dr. Eleanore Wurtzel, courtesy of CUNY. Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War and Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-4589; Frank Oppenheimer, BACK COVER Information, LC-USF33-012689-M4, Russell Lee photographer. courtesy of The Regents of the University of California, Lawrence AUGUST 2013 ATOMIC ENERGY All WPA posters courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Berkeley National Laboratory. Gadget, courtesy of the United States Department of Energy; Einstein Photographs Division, NYC Municipal Airports, 3g04242, Keeping Up PAGE 4 photo courtesy of the City College of New York Archives; Oppenheimer With Science, 3b48702, Museum of Science and Industry, 3b48895, Federal Art Project, courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, JANUARY 2013 ASTRONOMY photograph, courtesy of The Regents of the University of California, Law- Occupations Related to Mathematics, 3b49003, Plains Farms Need NARA; Garrett Morgan, public domain; Milky Way, courtesy of Io: courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona; Lunar landing, rence Berkeley National Laboratory; Dr. Ruth Stark, courtesy of CUNY; Trees, 3b48715, Adler Planetarium, 3b48791. NASA/JPL-Caltech; Alvarez, courtesy of The Regents of the Univer- courtesy of NASA; Astronaut Ellen Baker courtesy of NASA STS-71, Cyclotron, courtesy of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, sity of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; University Shuttle Atlantis, 1995; Dr. Jill Bargonetti, courtesy of CUNY. United States Department of Energy Digital Archive. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, student Laura Aguilera and Rima Coleman, PhD, of the Hospital for Special Surgery conduct mineralized tissue research.

SENIOR PROJECT DIRECTOR SPECIAL THANKS Mary Hedge, MTA Bridge and Tunnel Special Archive Jay Hershenson, Senior Vice Chancellor for University Relations Deena Adelman, Federal Highway Administration Research Library Thomas Hladek, Executive Director of Finance and Business, and Secretary of the Board of Trustees, CUNY Allen Adon, Jr., Federal Highway Administration Research Library LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Laura Aguilera, Hospital for Special Surgery, NYC Bruce Hoffacker, Executive Associate to the Vice-President for PROJECT ADVISOR Aaron Alcorn Academic Affairs, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Gail O. Mellow, President, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Christopher Alexander, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Nalband Hussain, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Tom Angotti, Hunter College, CUNY Robert Isaacson, Executive Director, CUNY-TV PROJECT DIRECTOR Paul Arcario, Provost, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, Paul Israel, Thomas A. Edison Papers, Rutgers University Richard K. Lieberman, Director of the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Karen Jania, University of Michigan and Professor of History, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Michael Arena, University Director of Communications and Marketing, Richard Jensen, University of Illinois, Chicago Office of University Relations, CUNY Luz Jimenez, Executive Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Research, Thomas Baione, American Museum of Natural History ASSOCIATE PROJECT DIRECTORS CUNY Sigmund Shen, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Steven A. Levine, Coordinator for Educational Programs, LaGuardia and Dr. Ellen Baker, NASA Astronaut (Former) Seth Jordan, University of Tennessee Claire Shulman, Former Queens Borough President Wagner Archives, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Walter Barleycorn, Education Account Manager, The New York Times Liz Kalodner, CBS Licensing Daniel Shure, Managing Editor of CUNY.edu, Stephen Weinstein, Assistant to the Director, LaGuardia and Wagner André Beckles, Photographer/Production Coordinator, Nick Kaloterakis@kollected Office of Communications and Marketing, CUNY Archives, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Office of University Relations, CUNY Maribeth Keitz, National Academy of Engineers Gillian Small, Vice Chancellor for Research, CUNY Joyce Bedi, Smithsonian Institution John Kotowski, Director of City Relations, Melanie Sorsby, Los Alamos National Laboratory Susanne Belovari, Tufts University ASSISTANT PROJECT DIRECTOR Office of University Relations, CUNY Vanda Stevenson, Business Office/Accounting, Tara Jean Hickman, Educational Associate, LaGuardia and Wagner Felisa Bienstock, Business Office/Purchasing, Kim Lange, WET Design LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Archives, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Stacee Gravelle Lawrence, The Monacelli Press Shanequa Terry, Office of University Relations, CUNY Carly Bogen, Museum of the Moving Image Milagros Lecuona, Lecuona Associates David Tobis, Principal, Maestral International Edward Busch, Michigan State University ADMINISTRATION Janet Lieberman, Professor Emerita, Kim Thomas, Federal Highway Administration Research Library Eduvina Estrella, Assistant to the Director, LaGuardia and Wagner Kim Buxton, Office of University Relations, CUNY LaGuardia Community College, CUNY John Van Citters, CBS Licensing Archives, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Alan B. Carr, Los Alamos National Laboratory Samuel Lieberman, Student, SUNY Purchase Sydney Van Nort, The Morris Raphael Cohen Library, City College, Peter Catapano, New York City College of Technology, CUNY Mail Center Staff, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY CUNY Robert Clark, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library WEB DESIGN Larry McAllister, Paramount Pictures Mary Beth Wallace, Wayne State University Livia Nieves, Web Designer, CUNY Brian Cohen Associate Vice Chancellor and University Chief Sean McNally, Museum of the Moving Image James E. West, Johns Hopkins University Information Officer, CUNY Diane McNulty, Executive Director, Marketing, The New York Times Paul West, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Jim Cohen, Emeritus Professor, John Jay College, CUNY CALENDAR DESIGN Miriam Meislik, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh Stan Wolfson, Office of University Relations, CUNY Sandy Chase, Fluid Film Robert Colburn, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University Hourig Messerlian, Deputy to the Secretary, CUNY Board of Trustees Burl Yearwood, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Abigail Sturges, Sturges Design Dr. Rhima Coleman, Hospital for Special Surgery, NYC Barbara Miller, Museum of the Moving Image Phyllis Collazzo, Permissions, The New York Times Michael Miller, American Philosophical Society LAGUARDIA AND WAGNER ARCHIVES STAFF Diane Colon, Director, Administrative and Support Services, Susan Mills, Managing Director, Education, The New York Times Soraya Ciego-Lemur LaGuardia Community College, CUNY John Mogulescu, Senior University Dean for Academic Affairs THIS PUBLICATION IS MADE POSSIBLE Marian Clarke Marian Cordry, CBS Licensing and Dean of the School for Professional Studies, CUNY IN PART BY GRANTS FROM Douglas Di Carlo Dr. Douglas B. Cowan, Harvard Medical School, Angela Leimkuhler Moran, United States Naval Academy Nadeen Elakkad Children’s Hospital Boston Erica Mosnery, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ THE MAYOR’S OFFICE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK Oleg Kleban Kelle Cruz, Hunter College, CUNY Joe Nasr, Ryerson University Michael Bloomberg, Mayor Brian Portararo Jeff Day, Min/Day Architects Barbara Niss, Mount Sinai Medical Center Patricia Harris, First Deputy Mayor Juan Rodriguez Leonard DeGraaf, U.S. Department of the Interior, Mark O’English, Washington State University Michael Rothbard National Parks Service, Thomas Edison National Historic Park Thomas Onorato, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK Jean Carlos Sanchez Aurora Deshauteurs, Free Library of Philadelphia Rene Ontal, Office of Communications and Marketing, CUNY Christine Quinn, Speaker Joshua Whitaker Theresa Desmond, Special Assistant to the Chancellor Peter Parides, New York City College of Technology, CUNY Leroy Comrie, Deputy Majority Leader and Senior Writer, CUNY Robert Passwell, University Transportation Research Center, Domenic M. Recchia, Jr., Chair, Finance Committee EDITORIAL SCHOLARS John DeVilbiss, Utah State University City College, CUNY Ydanis Rodriguez, Chair, Higher Education Committee Carol Groneman, Professor Emerita, John Jay College and Stephanie Doba, Education Manager, The New York Times Gabriella Petrick, George Mason University James Van Bramer, Council Member The Graduate Center, CUNY Allan Dobrin, Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer, Kimberly Porter, University of North Dakota Gerald Markowitz, Distinguished Professor, John Jay College and CUNY Preethi Radhakrishnan, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY JPMORGAN CHASE The Graduate Center, CUNY Donnelly Marks Photography Gregory Raml, American Museum of Natural History Jamie Dimon, Chairman and C.E.O. Robert Edelstein, Marketing, The New York Times Mark Renovitch, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library Leonard Colica, Senior Vice President SENIOR CONSULTING SCHOLAR Richard Elliott, Vice President for Administration, LaGuardia Ed Rhodes, Campaign Officer, Marketing, Invest Kimberly Davis, President, JPMorgan Chase Foundation Geoffrey Zylstra, Assistant Professor, New York City College Community College, CUNY in CUNY Campaign Office Michael Nevins, Senior Vice President of Technology, CUNY Jackie Esposito, Pennsylvania State University Eneida Rivas, College and Community Relations Office, Timothy G. Noble, Senior Vice President Randy Fader-Smith, Marketing and Communications Office, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Kim Jasmin, Executive Director, Northeast Division, CONSULTING SCHOLARS LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Rita Rodin, Senior Editor, Office of Communications and Marketing, Global Philanthropy and Community Relations, JPMorgan Chase Pennee Bender, Associate Director, American Social History Project, Susan Farkas, President, Farkas Media CUNY CUNY Graduate Center Erin Faulder, Tufts University Neill Rosenfeld, Staff Writer, Office of Communications and Marketing, Copyright © 2012 The City University of New York Joshua Brown, Executive Director, American Social History Project, Stephanie Fiorenza, Graduate Center, CUNY CUNY CUNY Graduate Center John Fleckner, Smithsonian Institution Erin Clements Rushing, Smithsonian Institution Libraries The “Inventing the Future” Web site and calendar did not involve Blanche Wiesen Cook, Distinguished Professor, John Jay College, CUNY Sharon Forde, Office of University Relations, CUNY Henry Saltiel, Vice President for Information Technology, the reporting or editing staff of The New York Times. Charles Liu, College of Staten Island, CUNY Robert Friedel, University of Maryland LaGuardia Community College, CUNY Andrea Vasquez, Associate Director, American Social History Project, Tom Glieden, Education Account Manager, The New York Times Samuel Sanchez, The Morris Raphael Cohen Library, City College, CUNY CUNY Graduate Center Patricia Gray, Director of Corporate Relations and Special Events, Frederick Schaffer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs Office of University Relations, CUNY and General Counsel, CUNY Sarah Gustafson, Tufts University Wendy Shay, Smithsonian Institution Shanique Haile-Francois, U.S. Department of Energy Richard Sheinaus, Director of Graphic Design, Richard Hanley, New York City College of Technology, CUNY Office of Communications and Marketing, CUNY Curt Hanson, University of North Dakota Nadine A. Shelbert, WET Design LaGuardia and Wagner Archives www.cuny.edu/inventingthefuture