Tomb of King Tut Discovered 1922

Though several of the foremost excavators over the past century had declared there was nothing left to find in the Valley of the Kings, Howard Carter and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, spent a number of years and a lot of money searching for a tomb they weren't sure existed. In November 1922, they found it. Carter had discovered not just an unknown ancient Egyptian tomb, but one that had lain nearly undisturbed for over 3,000 years. What lay within astounded the world.

The Coffinette for the Viscera of Tutankhamun on display during the press viewing of the 'Tutankhamun & The Golden Age of the Pharaohs' exhibition on November 13, 2007 in Greenwich, London, England.

Uncertainty

Work feverishly continued on the afternoon of November 4th through the following morning. By late afternoon on November 5th, 12 stairs (leading downwards) were revealed; and in front of them, stood the upper portion of a blocked entrance. Carter searched the plastered door for a name but of the seals that could be read, he found only the impressions of the royal necropolis. Carter was extremely excited:

The design was certainly of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Could it be the tomb of a noble buried here by royal consent? Was it a royal cache, a hiding-place to which a mummy and its equipment had been removed for safety? Or was it actually the tomb of the king for whom I had spent so many years in search?²

To protect the find, Carter had his workmen fill in the stairs, covering them so that none were showing. While several of Carter's most trusted workmen stood guard, Carter left to make preparations. The first of which was contacting Lord Carnarvon in England to share the news of the find. On November 6th, two days after finding the first step, Carter sent a cable: "At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered same for your arrival; congratulations."³

It was nearly three weeks after finding the first step that Carter was able to proceed. On November 23rd, Lord Carnarvon and his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, arrived in Luxor. The following day, the workers had again cleared the staircase, now exposing all 16 of its steps and the full face of the sealed doorway. Now Carter found what he could not see before, since the bottom of the doorway had still been covered with rubble - there were several seals on the bottom of the door with Tutankhamun's name on them.

Now that the door was fully exposed, they also noticed that the upper left of the doorway had been broken through, presumably by tomb robbers, and resealed. The tomb was not intact; yet the fact that the tomb had been resealed showed that the tomb had not been emptied.

 a picture of the back of King Tutankhamun's throne.

The Golden Coffin of King Tut..

Golden Shrine with godess.

The King as he is today

1928 - Penicillin Discovered

Penicillin is one of the earliest discovered and widely used antibiotic agents, derived from the Penicillium mold. Antibiotics are natural substances that are released by bacteria and fungi into the their environment, as a means of inhibiting other organisms - it is chemical warfare on a microscopic scale.

• Alexander Fleming

• born August. 6, 1881 , Darvel, Scotland
• died March 11, 1955 , London, England

In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming observed that colonies of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus could be destroyed by the mold Penicillium notatum, proving that there was an antibacterial agent there in principle. This principle later lead to medicines that could kill certain types of disease-causing bacteria inside the body.

At the time, however, the importance of Alexander Fleming's discovery was not known. Use of penicillin did not begin until the 1940s when Howard Florey and Ernst Chain isolated the active ingredient and developed a powdery form of the medicine.

History of Penicillin

Originally noticed by a French medical student, Ernest Duchesne, in 1896.

 Penicillin was re-discovered by bacteriologist Alexander Fleming working at St. Mary's Hospital in London in 1928. He observed that a plate culture of Staphylococcus had been contaminated by a blue-green mold and that colonies of bacteria adjacent to the mold were being dissolved. Curious, Alexander Fleming grew the mold in a pure culture and found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. Naming the substance penicillin, Dr. Fleming in 1929 published the results of his investigations, noting that his discovery might have therapeutic value if it could be produced in quantity.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

Hodgkin used x-rays to find the structural layouts of atoms and the overall molecular shape of over 100 molecules including penicillin. Dorothy's discovery of the molecular layout of penicillin helped lead scientists to develop other antibiotics.

Dr. Howard Florey

It was not until 1939 that Dr. Howard Florey, a future Nobel Laureate, and three colleagues at Oxford University began intensive research and were able to demonstrate penicillin's ability to kill infectious bacteria. As the war with Germany continued to drain industrial and government resources, the British scientists could not produce the quantities of penicillin needed for clinical trials on humans and turned to the United States for help. They were quickly referred to the Peoria Lab where scientists were already working on fermentation methods to increase the growth rate of fungal cultures. One July 9, 1941, Howard Florey and Norman Heatley, Oxford University Scientists came to the U.S. with a small but valuable package containing a small amount of penicillin to begin work.

Pumping air into deep vats containing corn steep liquor (a non-alcoholic by-product of the wet milling process) and the addition of other key ingredients was shown to produce faster growth and larger amounts of penicillin than the previous surface-growth method. Ironically, after a worldwide search, it was a strain of penicillin from a moldy cantaloupe in a Peoria market that was found and improved to produce the largest amount of penicillin when grown in the deep vat, submerged conditions.

Andrew J. Moyer

By November 26, 1941, Andrew J. Moyer, the lab's expert on the nutrition of molds, had succeeded, with the assistance of Dr. Heatley, in increasing the yields of penicillin 10 times. In 1943, the required clinical trials were performed and penicillin was shown to be the most effective antibacterial agent to date. Penicillin production was quickly scaled up and available in quantity to treat Allied soldiers wounded on D-Day. As production was increased, the price dropped from nearly priceless in 1940, to $20 per dose in July 1943, to $0.55 per dose by 1946.

As a result of their work, two members of the British group were awarded the Nobel Prize. Dr. Andrew J. Moyer from the Peoria Lab was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame and both the British and Peoria Laboratories were designated as International Historic Chemical Landmarks.

Andrew J Moyer Patent

On May 25, 1948, Andrew J Moyer was granted a patent for a method of the mass production of penicillin.

Resistance to Penicillin

Four years after drug companies began mass-producing penicillin in 1943, microbes began appearing that could resist it.

The first bug to battle penicillin was Staphylococcus aureus. This bacterium is often a harmless passenger in the human body, but it can cause illness, such as pneumonia or toxic shock syndrome, when it overgrows or produces a toxin.

(Gr. anti, "against"; bios, "life") An antibiotic is a chemical substance produced by one organism that is destructive to another. The word antibiotic came from the word antibiosis a term coined in 1889 by Louis Pasteur's pupil Paul Vuillemin which means a process by which life could be used to destroy life.

Henry Ford Changes the World, 1908

Henry Ford Changes the World, 1908

At the beginning of the 20th century the automobile was a plaything for the rich. Most models were complicated machines that required a chauffer conversant with its individual mechanical nuances to drive it. Henry Ford was determined to build a simple, reliable and affordable car; a car the average American worker could afford. Out of this determination came the Model T and the assembly line - two innovations that revolutionized American society and molded the world we live in today.

Henry Ford did not invent the car; he produced an automobile that was within the economic reach of the average American. While other manufacturers were content to target a market of the well-to-do, Ford developed a design and a method of manufacture that 

Henry Ford and his first car the Quadricycle, which he built in 1896

steadily reduced the cost of the Model T. Instead of pocketing the profits; Ford lowered the price of his car. As a result, Ford Motors sold more cars and steadily increased its earnings - transforming the automobile from a luxury toy to a mainstay of American society.

The Model T made its debut in 1908 with a purchase price of $825.00. Over ten thousand were sold in its first year, establishing a new record. Four years later the price dropped to $575.00 and sales soared. By 1914, Ford could claim a 48% share of the automobile market.

Central to Ford's ability to produce an affordable car was the development of the assembly line that increased the efficiency of manufacture and decreased its cost. Ford did not conceive the concept, he perfected it. Prior to the introduction of the assembly line, cars were individually crafted by teams of skilled workmen - a slow and expensive procedure. The assembly line reversed the process of automobile manufacture. Instead of workers going to the car, the car came to the worker who performed the same task of assembly over and over again. With the introduction and perfection of the process, Ford was able to reduce the assembly time of a Model T from twelve and a half hours to less than six hours.

Developing the Model T

The Ford Motor Company manufactured its first car - the Model A - in 1903. By 1906, the Model N was in production but Ford had not yet achieved his goal of producing a simple, affordable car. He would accomplish this with the Model T. Charles Sorensen - who had joined Henry Ford two years earlier - describes how Ford had him set up a secret room where design of the new car would be carried out:

"Early one morning in the winter of 1906-7, Henry Ford dropped in at the pattern department of the Piquette Avenue plant to see me. 'Come with me, Charlie,' he said, 'I want to show you something.'

I followed him to the third floor and its north end, which was not fully occupied for assembly work. He looked about and said, 'Charlie, I'd like to have a room finished off right here in this space. Put up a wall with a door in big enough to run a car in and out. Get a good lock for the door, and when you're ready, we'll have Joe Galamb come up in here. We're going to start a completely new job.'

The room he had in mind became the maternity ward for Model T.

It took only a few days to block off the little room on the third floor back of the Piquette Avenue plant and to set up a few simple power tools and Joe Galamb's two blackboards. The blackboards were a good idea. They gave a king-sized drawing which, when all initial refinements had been made, could be photographed for two purposes: as a protection against patent suits attempting to prove prior claim to originality and as a substitute for blueprints. A little more than a year later Model T, the product of that cluttered little room, was announced to the world. But another half year passed before the first Model T was ready for what had already become a clamorous market...

The summer before, Mr. Ford told me to block off the experimental room for Joe Galamb, a momentous event occurred which would affect the entire automotive industry. The first heat of vanadium steel in the country was poured at the United Steel Company's plant in Canton, Ohio.

Early that year we had several visits from J. Kent Smith, a noted English metallurgist from a country which had been in the forefront of steel development...

The 1908 Model T. Two forward gears, a 20 horsepower engine and no driver doors. They sold like hot cakes

Ford, Wills, and I listened to him and examined his data. We had already read about this English vanadium steel. It had a tensile strength nearly three times that of steels we were using, but we'd never seen it. Smith demonstrated its toughness and showed that despite its strength it could be machined more easily than plain steel. Immediately Mr. Ford sensed the great possibilities of this shock-resisting steel. 'Charlie,' he said to me after Smith left, 'this means entirely new design requirements, and we can get a better, lighter, and cheaper car as a result of it.'

It was the great common sense that Mr. Ford could apply to new ideas and his ability to simplify seemingly complicated problems that made him the pioneer he was. This demonstration of vanadium steel was the deciding point for him to begin the experimental work that resulted in Model T...

Actually it took four years and more to develop Model T. Previous models were the guinea pigs, one might say, for experimentation and development of a car which would realize Henry Ford's dream of a car which anyone could afford to buy, which anyone could drive anywhere, and which almost anyone could keep in repair. Many of the world's greatest mechanical discoveries were accidents in the course of other experimentation. Not so Model T, which ushered in the motor transport age and set off a chain reaction of machine production now known as automation. All our experimentation at Ford in the early days was toward a fixed and, then wildly fantastic goal.

By March, 1908, we were ready to announce Model T, but not to produce it, On October 1 of that year the first car was introduced to the public. From Joe Galamb's little room on the third floor had come a revolutionary vehicle. In the next eighteen years, out of Piquette Avenue, Highland Park, River Rouge, and from assembly plants all over the United States came 15,000,000 more."

Birth of the Assembly Line

A few months later- in July 1908 - Sorensen and a plant foreman spent their days off developing the basics of the Assembly Line:

"What was worked out at Ford was the practice of moving the work from one worker to another until it became a complete unit, then arranging the flow of these units at the right time and the right place to a moving final assembly line from which came a finished product. Regardless of earlier uses of some of these principles, the direct line of succession of mass production and its intensification into automation stems directly from what we worked out at Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1913...

As may be imagined, the job of putting the car together was a simpler one than handling the materials that had to be brought to 

The old fashioned way - limousines are assembled at individual stations by a Pittsburg manufacturer, 1912

it. Charlie Lewis, the youngest and most aggressive of our assembly foremen, and I tackled this problem. We gradually worked it out by bringing up only what we termed the fast-moving materials. The main bulky parts, like engines and axles, needed a lot of room. To give them that space, we left the smaller, more compact, light-handling material in a storage building on the northwest comer of the grounds. Then we arranged with the stock department to bring up at regular hours such divisions of material as we had marked out and packaged.

This simplification of handling cleaned things up materially. But at best, I did not like it. It was then that the idea occurred to me that assembly would be easier, simpler, and faster if we moved the chassis along, beginning at one end of the plant with a frame and adding the axles and the wheels; then moving it past the stockroom, instead of moving the stockroom to the chassis. I had Lewis arrange the materials on the floor so that what was needed at the start of assembly would be at that end of the building and the other parts would be along the line as we moved the chassis along. We spent every Sunday during July planning this. Then one Sunday morning, after the stock was laid out in this fashion, Lewis and I and a couple of helpers put together the first car, I'm sure, that was ever built on a moving line.

We did this simply by putting the frame on skids, hitching a towrope to the front end and pulling the frame along until axles and wheels were put on. Then we rolled the chassis along in notches to prove what could be done. While demonstrating this moving line, we worked on some of the subassemblies, such as completing a radiator with all its hose fittings so that we could place it very quickly on the chassis. We also did this with the dash and mounted the steering gear and the spark coil."

Implementation

The basics of the Assembly Line had been established but it would take another five years for the concept to be implemented. Implementation would await construction of the new Highland Park plant which was purpose-built to incorporate the assembly line. The process began at the top floor of the four-story building where the engine was assembled and progressed level by level to the ground floor where the body was attached to the chassis.

End of the Line. The Model T's body is joined to its chassis at the Highland Park plant

"By August, 1913, all links in the chain of moving assembly lines were complete except the last and most spectacular one - the one we had first experimented with one Sunday morning just five years before. Again a towrope was hitched to a chassis, this time pulled by a capstan. Each part was attached to the moving chassis in order, from axles at the beginning to bodies at the end of the line. Some parts took longer to attach than others; so, to keep an even pull on the towrope, there must be differently spaced intervals between delivery of the parts along the line. This called for patient timing and rearrangement until the flow of parts and the speed and intervals along the assembly line meshed into a perfectly synchronized operation throughout all stages of production. Before the end of the year a power-driven assembly line was in operation, and New Year's saw three more installed. Ford mass production and a new era in industrial history had begun"

References:
   Charles Sorensen's account can be found in: Sorensen, Charles, E., My Forty Years with Ford (1956); Banum, Russ, The Ford Century (2002); Brinkley, Douglas, Wheels for the world: Henry Ford, his company, and a century of progress, 1903-2003 (2003).

1929..US Stock Market collapses..BLACK THURSDAY

Stock Market Crashes (1929): The enthusiasm and optimism of the 1920s in the United States led many people to invest their savings into the stock market. As the bull market (when stock prices are rising) continued throughout 1927 and 1928, even more everyday people were enticed to invest.

By early 1929, interest in the stock market reached a fevered pitch. The upward swing in the summer of 1929 convinced many that the high stock prices were going to remain high.

Then panic struck on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. Prices began to plummet. Although there was rally in the afternoon, investors had become frightened.

On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed. Massive number of people were trying to sell their stocks and nearly no one was buying. The stock market didn't bottom out until 1932.

 

October 24 1929, New York, US: Panicked stock traders crowd outside the New York stock exchange on the day of the market crash

October 1929, London, England: The huge 

October 31 1929, London, England: A young telephone operator at St Phalle Limited writes share values on a blackboard as he hears them 

straight from New York via a headset

1930, US: Men eating in a soup kitchen

November 16 1930, Chicago, US: Notorious gangster Al Capone attempts to help unemployed men with his soup kitchen, Big Al's Kitchen for the Needy

Car Radio Invented..1928.

1930: The First Motorola Brand Car Radio

Even the Great Depression couldn't stop Motorola founder Paul V. Galvin. When he learned about technicians fitting home radios into automobiles, he recognized the potential of the new technology. Galvin engaged a team of talented engineers to build and install one of the first commercially successful car radios in the world. Motorola created a new market and ultimately became a global leader in communications technologies.

Difficult times
Paul V. Galvin and his brother Joseph started the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago in 1928 to manufacture battery eliminators. These electronic devices enabled battery-powered home radios to operate on household electric current. But in 1929, a stock market crash devastated the U.S. economy and the battery eliminator was becoming obsolete. The Galvins needed a new product for their small business to survive.

A radio parts company founded by William P. Lear was located in the same factory building as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. Lear technicians, including chief production engineer Don H. Mitchell, were experimenting with radio technologies. Despite the worsening economy, the markets for automobile and radio technologies were growing rapidly. Paul Galvin realized that consumer demand would continue. He decided Galvin Manufacturing could develop an affordable radio that could be installed in most popular automobile models.

Paul V. Galvin (left) and Robert W. Galvin, Motorola cafeteria, 1954 (26 KB)

Design challenges
Galvin engaged a team that combined the talents of Lear and Galvin Manufacturing radio engineers. In addition, young Elmer Wavering, who later was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame, joined the effort. The team faced difficult technical problems: overcoming electrical interference, finding space in the car for large radio components, and building it sturdy enough to endure rough roads. Galvin encouraged them to keep working to find a solution.

In May 1930, Galvin announced plans to drive his Studebaker automobile from Chicago, Illinois, to Atlantic City, New Jersey, U.S.A., a distance of about 850 miles (1368 kilometers). He intended to demonstrate the new radio at the Radio Manufacturers Association Convention in June. With only one month left to complete a working model, the team worked day and night.

A few days before Galvin departed, the crew successfully built a radio that received a clear signal with the car motor running. By squeezing some radio parts inside and others under the floor, the radio fit into the car. Although rough roads from Chicago to New Jersey tested the radio to its limits, it withstood the journey.

Public showing
Galvin Manufacturing Corporation wasn’t registered for the June 1930 Radio Manufacturers’ show, and Paul Galvin had no display booth or appointments with prospective customers. There was no money in the company's budget for marketing. Instead, Galvin parked his car at the entrance to the Atlantic City pier and boosted the radio's volume with loudspeakers to attract attention. With his wife, Lillian, helping to demonstrate the radio, he encouraged show attendees to take a look. When visitor traffic was slow, he went inside the hall to convince people to come outside for a demonstration.

Galvin returned to Chicago with enough sales orders to ensure that the company would survive to face the next challenges: sales, manufacturing and installation on a large scale.

Birth of the Motorola brand
Paul Galvin wanted a brand name for Galvin Manufacturing Corporation's new car radio-something memorable. He created the name "Motorola" to suggest sound in motion (from "motor" and the then-popular suffix "ola"). The Motorola brand name became so well-known that Galvin Manufacturing Corporation later changed its name to Motorola, Inc.

A commercial success
The car radio installation continued to challenge the engineers. Elmer Wavering remembered, "If somebody bought a new car and decided to put in a car radio, they'd get a real shock. They saw us go in and rip out the brand new headlining in the car, drill holes into the floor for our batteries, and rig up a whole complicated electrical system with a network of wires." With every installation, the team gained experience.

Paul Galvin and Elmer Wavering traveled around the United States selling radios and teaching new dealers how to install them correctly. With business growing, a fleet of Motorola sales and service trucks with factory-trained sales engineers soon supported radio dealers with sales, service and installation.

Due to determination and innovative engineering, the Motorola model 5T71 radio became one of the world's first commercially successful car radios. With sales that first year reaching internationally to Mexico, the Motorola car radio connected thousands of people with n

First Mickey Mouse Cartoon

What was the world's first Mickey Mouse cartoon?

If you are thinking Steamboat Willie,  you would be wrong

.

Mickey Mouse got his start a a twinkle in the eye of Walt Disney early in 1928 as Walt was returning home on a train

.

Upon his return Walt got his head animator to create the world's first Mickey Mouse cartoon called Plane Crazy but not a single distributor bought it.

Undaunted, work began on the second Mickey Mouse cartoon;Gallopin'Gaucho, but it wasn't released until December 30 1928.

Inspired by the latest and greatest fad in movies, talkies, Walt Disney produced the third Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, which made it's debut on  November 18 1928 and is considered to be Mickey's birthday.

Steamboat Willie was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon aired to the public as well as the first with sound.

The Band Concert, released in 1935 was the first color Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Plane Crazy