Chronography of Atomic Power and Electricity
Page last
modified 21/3/2022
See also Science
and Technology
Real-time data on UK
national grid here, http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
The atom
and atomic power � see Appendix 1 below
Appendix 2a, Nuclear bomb tests
Appendix 2b, Nuclear energy, power
stations
Electricity � see Appendix 3
below
Electric Light � See Appendic
3.5 below
Appendix 1 � The atom and atomic power
2014,
Particles called B mesons were observed to decay to leptons in ways that
appeared to contradict the Standard Model, possibly suggesting that leptons may
consist of yet smaller particles.
4/7/2012,
The Higgs Boson
was discovered at CERN. Its existence was first theorised by British physicist Peter Higgs
(born 1929) in 1964.
17/11/2010,
Scientists at the CERN Large Hadron Collider announced they had trapped anti-matter
for the first time in
human
history.
13/10/2003, Bertram
Brockhouse, subatomic physicist, died.
25/6/1995, Ernest
Walton, winner of the Nobel Physics Prize in 1951 for his work in
subatomic physics, died.
5/6/1995,
Bose-Einstein
condensate was created.
23/2/1989,
Stanley Pins
and Martin
Flieschmann announced Cold Fusion at the University of Utah.
1/9/1988,
Luis Walter
Alvarez, researcher into subatomic particles, born 13/6/1911 in San
Francisco, California, died in Berkeley, California.
15/2/1988, Richard
F Feynman, theoretical physicist, died.
31/5/1986, James Rainwater, physicist who help0ed
determine the shape
of atomic nuclei, died.
11/1985, In the UK, the Nuclear Industry
Radio-Radio-Active Waste Executive (NIREX) was established.
8/4/1984, Pyotr Kapitza,
Soviet low-temperature physicist, died aged 89.
22/9/1979,
Otto Frisch,
Austrian-British
nuclear physicist, died aged 74.
5/2/1977, Oscar Klein,
particle physicist, died.
1974, A team led by Martin Lewis
Perl discovered an even heavier version of the electron, called the tau. This
had a mass 3,400 times the electron,
13/11/1974, Karen Silkwood,
activist over nuclear industry safety concerns, died in unclear circumstances
in a car crash.
1968, Protons were found to contain
smaller particles, known as quarks.
18/9/1967, Sir John
Cockroft, British scientist who along with Ernest Walton split the atom,
died.
1960, Radiocarbon dating was discovered by
Willard Libby.
15/11/1959, Charles Thomson
Rees Wilson, Scottish physicist who invented the cloud chamber
for detecting the tracks of subatomic particles, died in Carlops, Peebleshire.
28/8/1958, Ernest O
Lawrence, US nuclear scientist, died aged 57.
2/10/1957, Poland,
along with Hungary
and East Germany,
outlined its Rapacki Plan for a denuclearised
central Europe to the UN General Assembly.
15/1/1957, Columbia
University physics department announced that parity is not conserved for weak interactions.
1956, Individual atoms were see for the
first time, in an ion microscope.
1956, The neutrino was first detected at Los
Alamos laboratory, USA. The anti-neutrino
was detected at California University, USA. The existence of the neutrino had
been theorised since the 1930s, by Wolgang Pauli when studying radioactive dccay.
The decay products of radioactive atoms needed a further as yet unknown
particle to satisfy the law of conservation of momentum. The neutrino has a
tiny mass, about one millionth of that of the elctron.
22/9/1956, Frederick Soddy,
English radiochemist, died aged 79.
17/3/1956, The
daughter of Pierre
and Marie
Curie died of leukaemia, possibly brought on by working with
radioactive materials.
15/6/1955, The USA and
Britain signed an atomic energy agreement, providing for the exchange of
information between them.
15/2/1955, The UK
Government announced it would build 12 nuclear power stations in the next 10
years. Nuclear power was expected to be much cheaper than that from coal fired
power stations; the costs of safety and
the disposal of nuclear waste had been overlooked.
28/11/1954, Enrico Fermi,
atomic physicist, died in Chicago, USA.
29/9/1954, CERN, the Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire, was founded.
21/1/1954.
The world�s first nuclear submarine,
USS Nautilus, was launched from Groton in Connecticut.
1953, CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, was set up near Geneva.
19/12/1953,
R A Millikan,
US subatomic physicist, died aged 85.
8/12/1953,
President
Eisenhower made his �Atoms for Power� speech, proposing to the
United Nations General Assembly the establishment of an International Atomic
Energy Authority to monitor the spread of atmic technology for peaceful
purposes.
1952, The Bubble Chamber was invented by Donald Glaser.
It utilises the tracks made by subatomic particles in a� pressurised liquid medium to study fission
products.
14/6/1952, Construction began on the world�s
first nuclear submarine.
30/4/1950. Britain
The UK�s Atomic Energy Commission accused the Scientific American journal of
publishing secrets on how to build a Hydrogen Bomb. 30,000 copies were seized
and destroyed.
Einstein and Relativity
26/7/2018, Observations
of a Black Hole by the Very Large telescope in Chile confirmed Einstein�s
predictions of a gravitational redshift of light.
18/4/1955. Albert Einstein, born 14/3/1879, died in Princeton, New Jersey, of a stroke. He became
an American citizen in 1940 after having signed a famous letter to President F D
Roosevelt warning that Germany
might try and build an atomic bomb.
30/3/1953, Albert Einstein
announced a revised
Unifield Field Theory.
26/12/1949. Albert Einstein
published his new Generalized Theory of Gravitation.
17/10/1933, Albert Einstein
arrived in the US as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
11/11/1930, Albert Einstein
and Leo Szilard
received US Patent No. 1781541 for the Einstein
Fridge, This appliance needed no moving parts, so was less liable to seal
failure, which had killed a Berlin family when a fridge seal failure leaked
toxic fumes. However the Einstein Fridge was less efficient than other designs,
and was abandoned when non-toxic Freon was invented, although freon was later
discovered to deplete the ozone layer.
29/7/1923, Albert Einstein
lectured in pacifism in Berlin.
9/11/1921, Albert Einstein
was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Physics.
2/4/1921, Albert Einstein
gave lectures on his Theory of Relativity in New York.
2/6/1919, Albert Einstein,
aged 40, married his cousin Elsa Lowenthal, aged 43. See 14/2/1919.
29/5/1919, Albert Einstein�s
Special Theory of Relativity, asserting that light will be bent as it
approaches a massive body, was confirmed by Arthur Eddington�s observations
of a solar eclipse on Principe, west Africa.
14/2/1919, Albert Einstein,
aged 39, divorced his wife Mileva Maric after 16 years marriage, see
6/1/1903, 2/6/1919.
20/3/1916, Einstein�s
Theory of
Relativity was published in German. The Theoiry accounted for the
slow rotation of Mercury, and revolutionised physics and astronomy.
1915, The start of the General Theory of Relativity was
derived from the Special Theory of Relativity.
28/9/1905,
Albert
Einstein published what is now known as his Special Theory of Relativity. This
argued that light travelled at a constant speed for all observers regardless of
position or motion, that e = mc2,
and that time slowed down as one approached lightspeed.
30/6/1905, Albert Einstein
published his article �On the Electrodyamics of Moving Bodies�. This was the
first paper to mention special relativity, which revolutionised modern
physics.
17/3/1905, Albert Einstein
completed his scientific paper detailing his Quantum Theory of |Light, now a
cornerstone of modern physics.
6/1/1903, Albert Einstein,
now aged 23, married Mileva Maric (see 14/2/1919)
23/6/1902. Albert Einstein began work in the Swiss
Patent Office.
14/3/1879. Albert Einstein, physicist and mathematician,
was born in Ulm, Bavaria, to Jewish parents.
1/12/1949, US Physicist Willard Libby invented carbon dating.
1947, The pion (pi-meson) was discovered in
cosmic rays. Its existence had been predicted by Japanese
physicist Hideki
Yukawa in 1935. It explains the transmission of nuclear force.
4/10/1947, The German physicist, Max Planck, died at his home in
Gottingen, aged 89. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918 for his work on quantum physics
and black-body
radiation.
1946, The isotope Carbon-13 was discovered.
Bloch and Purcell discovered the phenomenon of magnetic resonance.
29/10/1945. The Harwell Atomic Energy Research
Establishment was set up.
1941, US chemist Glenn Seaborg isolated Plutonium, a key element in a nuclear bomb.
1940, The critical mass of
Uranium-235 was first calculated. The possibility of a �superbomb� (atom bomb)
was now a reality.
30/8/1940, Sir Joseph John Thomson, British
scientist who discovered the electron in 1897, died in Cambridge.� He was buried near Isaac Newton in the nave of
Westminster Abbey.
27/2/1940, The isotope Carbon-14 was discovered by Martin Kamen at Berkeley University, California.
18/12/1938, Nuclear fission
first achieved. German chemist Otto Hahn succeeded in splitting the uranium
atom, releasing energy.
19/10/1937. The New
Zealand born physicist Lord Rutherford died in Cambridge, England..
He is regarded as the founder of atomic energy.�
He won the Nobel Prize in 1908.
1936, Carl Anderson and Seth
Neddermeyer discovered, in cosmic rays, a negatively-charged particle
that was bent less by an electric field than an electron was, suggesting it was
heavier. This particle was the muon. It had a mass 207 times the electron.
27/1/1936, Samuel Chao
Chung Ting was born in Arbor, Michigan. In 1974 he discovered a new
subatomic particle, the J/psi particle.
4/7/1934. French physicist, Marie Curie, died of leukaemia.
She contracted the disease from the radiation she was exposed to, before its
dangers were properly understood.. She was born in Poland in 1867 (nee Sklodowska)
married to Pierre
Curie in 1895, and pioneered the medical uses of radioactivity.
1933, US scientists C D Anderson
and Robert
Millikin, whilst analysing cosmic rays, discovered positrons
(positively-charged electrons).
12/9/1933, Jewish
Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard first conceived of the �chain reaction�,
the mechanism behind a nuclear weapon. He worked on the Manhattan Project in 1945, but later became a vehement opponent pof
nuclear weapons.
3/9/1933, Jeffry
Goldstone, subatomic particle researcher, was born in Manchester,
England.
1932, English
physicist Sir
James Chadwick (1891-1974) discovered the neutron.
1932, US physicist Carl Anderson (1905-1991)
discovered the positron,
an electron with a positive charge. The existence of the positron, found in
cosmic rays, had been predicted by Paul Dirac in 1928.
14/4/1932, Sir James
Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split a lithium nucleus into two
alpha particles, producing excess energy, using a particle accelerator.
5/12/1932, Sheldon Glashow
was born in New York City, USA. In 1964 he introduced the concept of �charm�
in quark theory.
29/12/1931,
US
chemist Harold
C Urey of Columbia University
announced the discovery of heavy water.
15/9/1929,
Murray
Gell-Mann, US physicist who researched sub-atomic particles, was
born.
1928, The
Gieger-Muller Counter was
invented by H
Geiger and W Muller. It was the first practical version
of the Geiger Counter, first developed by Hans Geiger (1882-1945) in 1908. The counter
contains a gas, e.g. argon, that is ionised by an incoming radioactive particle.
The gas container has two wires connected to a loudspeaker and amplifier. When
the gas is ionised a current flows between the wires and an electric pulse
produces a click.
1/9/1927,
German
physicist Werner
Karl Heisenberg formulated his famous Uncertainty Principle � the more one
knows about the position of a subatomic particle, the less one knows about its
motion, and vice versa.
1923, The existence of the photon
was proved by US physicist AH Compton. It transmits the electromagnetic
force.
3/1/1919, Rutherford
split the atom.
He bombarded nitrogen nuclei with alpha particles, obtaining oxygen and
hydrogen. From this he deduced that all atoms must be composed of hydrogen nuclei,
a particle which was termed the proton in 1920. He also theorised that atomic
nuclei must contain a second neutral particle or neutron.
10/12/1918, Max Planck
won the Physics Nobel prize for his work on quantum mechanics.
11/5/1918, US
quantum physicist Richard Feynman was born (died 1988).
5/2/1915, Robert
Hofstadter was born in New York City, USA. In 1961 he determined the
internal
structure of the proton and neutron.
12/9/1917, Leo James
Rainwater was born in Council, Idaho. In 1949 he worked on the idea
that the atomic
nucleus was not spherical.
1913, Danish
scientist Neils
Bohr (1881-1962) described the structure of the atom. British scientis Peter Soddy
coined the term �isotope�.
30/8/1912, Edward Mills
Purcell, US atomic physicist, was born.
7/3/1911,
New Zealand
physicist Ernest
Lord Rutherford (1871-1937) discovered the atomic nucleus. He conducted an
experiment in which he fired alpha particles (helium nuclei) at a sheet of gold
foil just 0.0004 mm thick, with detectors placed around the sheet, Some
particles passed through but some were deflected or even bounced back.Tnis
suggested that atoms had a small region of strong central resistance in a much
less dense area occupied by the electrons.
16/2/1910. Madame Curie
succeeded in isolating one tenth of a milligram of Polonium, which was more
radioactive than Radium. She named the element after her native Poland.
25/2/1909, Lev Andreevich
Artsimovich, Soviet physicist, was born in Moscow. He developed the Tokamak
fusion design.
1908, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden
found that positive atomic particles could pass through gold foil, suggesting that
atoms were mostly empty space with a small nucleus.
17/12/1908, Birth of
US chemist Willard
Frank Libby, who developed radio-carbon dating.
10/12/1908. Ernest
Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on radioactivity
and the atom.
25/8/1908, Henri Becquerel,
French
scientist who studied radioactivity, died (born 1852).
15/1/1908, Edward Teller,
who invented the Hydrogen Bomb, was born in Budapest.
1907, The concept of �half-life�
was first used, as the time it takes for the radiation emission levels of an
isotope to fall by 50%.
4/3/1907, Soviet
physicist Vladimir
Iosifovich was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine. In 1945 he designed an
improved particle
accelerator.
19/4/1906,
Pierre Curie,
French scientist who discovered Radium, was run over and killed in Paris.
3/9/1905,
Physicist Carl
David Anderson was born in New York City, USA. In 1932 he discovered
the positron,
a positively-charged antimatter version of the electron. This proved correct
the 1928 prediction of Paul Dirac (1902-1984), that negative-energy
particles corresponding to our positive energy ones should exist.
22/11/1904,
Hannes
Alfven of Sweden was born. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize
for work in plasma physics.
1/10/1904,
Austrian-British physicist Otto Robert Frisch was born in Vienna. He
developed the fission theory, in 1939, for the bombardment of uranium by
neutrons.
10/12/1903. Marie Curie, aged 33, won the
Nobel Prize jointly with her husband for the discovery of radioactivity.
11/7/1902, Samuel Goudsmit,
physicist, was born in The Hague, Netherlands. In 1925, along with George
Uhlenbeck (born Batavia, Indonesia, 6/12/1900), he formulated the
hypothesis of the electron spin.
29/9/1901, Enrico Fermi,
atomic physicist, was born in Rome, Italy.
27/6/1901, Atomic
physicist Merle
Tuve was born in the USA.
1900, The gamma ray (high energy photon) was
discovered. It is a very high-frequency X ray.
1900, In Britain, William Crookes separated the
isotopes of uranium.
14/12/1900, German
physicist Max
Planck proposed a quantum theory of energy. This solved the problem
with radiation from Black Bodies, which without quantum theory would be
theoretically infinite in amount, His theory led Einstein to propose that light
also came in discrete packets he called photons. From here De Broglie proposed a theory of
particles as waves, this being developed into a theory of particle behaviour
based on wave dynamics by Erwin Schrodinger in the 1920s. Meanwhile
German physicist Werner Heisenberg created a mathematical equivalent to Schrodinger�s
theory, but with only linear algebra, not wave theory. US physicist Richard Feynman
then created the modern theory of quantum mechanics known as Quantum
Electrodynamics, explaining how charged subatomic particles interact within
electric and magnetic fields.
1899, The alpha particle was discovered.
26/12/1898,� Radium was
discovered and isolated by Pierre and Marie Curie and G Bemont.
1897, British physicist Sir Joseph
Thomson (1856-1940) discovered the electron. This destroyed the idea that the �atom�, meaning indivisible� in Greek,
was a single entity. He also showed that each element was characterised by having
a certain set number of electrons (protons) in its atoms.
1897, CTR Wilson invented the Cloud Chamber,
for the study of radioactive decay.
27/5/1897, John Cockroft,
nuclear physicist, was born in Yorkshire.
11/2/1897,
Hungarian-US physicist Leo Szilard was born in Budapest. In 1939 he
researched self-sustaining nuclear reactions.
1896, French physicist Henri Becquerel
discovered radioactivity.
29/4/1893, Physicist
Harold
Clayton Urey was born in Walkerton, Indiana. In 1932 he discovered deuterium
or heavy hydrogen.
20/10/1891, Sir James Chadwick, who discovered the neutron in 1932, was born
in Manchester.
7/10/1885, Niels Henrik Bohr was born in Copenhagen. In 1911 he first attempted to link
Planck�s constant to atomic structure.
8/3/1879, Birth of Otto Hahn,
discoverer of nuclear
fission, who received the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1944.
30/8/1871, Lord Rutherford,
British
scientist noted in the field of atomic research, was born in Spring Grove, near
Nelson, South Island, New Zealand.
18/12/1856, Sir Joseph John
Thomson, discoverer of the electron, was born in Cheetham Hill near
Manchester.� He was the son of a
bookseller.
Appendix
2a, Nuclear bomb tests
9/9/2003. Edward Teller, the scientist
known as the father of the H-bomb,
died aged 95. Teller
was born in Hungary and fled Hitler�s rule to work on the Manhattan Project in the USA to develop
atomic weapons. He produced the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which
brought about Japan�s surrender and the end of World War Two. However Teller
had argued for exploding this atomic bomb high in the skies above Tokyo, where
it would do no damage but �shock and awe� the population into surrender. Robert
Oppenhiemer, the scientist in charge of building the Japanese
A-bombs, disagreed with Teller. Later, Teller persuaded President Harry
Truman of the need to develop a more powerful H-bomb. This was
tested at 7am on 31/10/1952. The fireball was larger than expected, frightening
observers; the entire island of Elugelab, a mile across, vanished. The blast
was 500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima blast of 1945. Two years later
an even bigger bomb was exploded at Bikini Atoll, making it as sparse as the
garment it gave its name to. Soon, however, the Russians had their own H-bomb. Oppenheimer,
having seen the damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, disagreed with building the
H-bomb, saying the A-bomb was powerful enough for America�s purposes. This led
the USA to suspect Oppenheimer of disloyalty and Communist
sympathies at the time of the McCarthy witch hunts. Oppenheimer died in
1967, aged 62. Teller was admired by President Ronald Reagan, whose election
Teller described as �a miracle for Western civilisation�. The �Star Wars�
defensive shield for the USA was Teller�s idea, enthusiastically adopted by
Reagan. This was a set-back to the USSR, already suffering financially from its
efforts to keep up militarily with the USA, and Star Wars may have even
hastened the break-up of the Soviet Union. Teller saw his native Hungary suffer first
Fascist, then Communist, tyranny; he saw the USA as a bastion of freedom, and
the H-bomb as its �trusty sword�. At the time of his death, Teller,
father of two, was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institute in
Stanford, USA. Although Mr Teller lived modestly, liking playing the
piano and tennis, he persuaded the USA to spend billions on nuclear weapons, on
Star wars, and on nuclear shelters in case of nuclear war. Most of this is now
scrap, but the dividend for the USA was the collapse of Soviet Communism.
24/9/1996, The USA and other nuclear powers signed a treaty halting all testing of
nuclear weapons, above or below ground. The USA alone had conducted 1,030
such t4ests since 1945, creating serious health hazards both locally and
globally.
29/1/1996, France bowed to
international pressure and announced it had ended the current series of atomic
tests at Mururoa Atoll in the south Pacific.
5/9/1995, France exploded a 10-kiloton
nuclear device under the Pacific atoll of Mururoa. Anti-French riots broke out
in Papeete, the capital of Tahiti, necessitating French paratroopers to be sent
in to maintain order. Australia and new Zealand condemned the test, and there
were fears of a worldwide boycott of French exports.
11/2/1987, The US tested an atom
bomb in Nevada.
9/8/1981, In the USA, President
Reagan announced the decision to proceed with the neutron bomb.
18/5/1974. India exploded its first
nuclear bomb. Pakistan, which lost its third war with India in 1970, was
nervous.
21/7/1973, France
resumed nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, despite protests from Australia and New
Zealand.
25/8/1968, The French
exploded their first Hydrogen Bomb.
18/2/1967, Robert
Oppenheiner, American scientist who developed the US atom bomb, died
in Princeton, New Jersey.
1964, China
exploded its first nuclear bomb, near Lop Nor, Sinkiang.
5/12/1962, Britain
exploded a thermonuclear device underground in Nevada.
21/1/1962 . It was announced that, 20 years after the
birth of the atomic Age, the world now possessed 280 atomic bombs, 40 of them
in Britain
3110/1961, The USSR
detonated a 50-megaton yield
hydrogen bomb known as Tsar Bomba
over Novaya Zemlya, the largest man-made explosion ever. Too large to be fit
inside even the largest available warplane, the weapon was suspended from a
Tupolev Tu-95 piloted by A.E. Durnovtsev, a Hero of the Soviet Union. A
parachute slowed the bomb's descent so that the airplane could have time to
climb away from the fireball, and at an altitude of four kilometres, was
exploded at 8:33 AM GMT Although the news drew protests around the world, the
event was not reported in the Soviet press. The �Tsar Bomba� (King Bomb) yielded the equivalent of 59 million tonnes
of TNT, some 3,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. There was nothing
to be gained from more powerful nuclear bombs as they would simply punch up
through the Earth�s atmosphere and most of the yield would be lost to space.
13/2/1960. France
exploded its first atom bomb, in the Sahara.
17/8/1958, Britain announced
plans to resume Atom Bomb testing on Christmas Island.
8/4/1958, President Eisenhower of the USA
proposed mutual inspections as a means of enforcing the mutual Test Ban.
15/5/1957. Britain�s
first H Bomb was exploded on
Christmas Island in the southern Pacific Ocean.
10/5/1957, The USSR
appealed to the US and Britain to cease nuclear tests.
23/4/1957, Albert
Schweitzer write to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, urging
mobilisation of world opinion against nuclear tests.
17/2/1955, The UK
Government announced it would proceed with the manufacture of H-Bombs.
1/3/1954, A US test of a 12 megaton hydrogen bomb
exposed 23 Japanese fishermen, 70 to 90 miles away, to such severe radiation
that one subsequently died. The bomb, weighing ten tons, named Bravo, was
expected to deliver just 5 megatons and so the 10,000 observers were relatively
near and the Marshall Islands, 100 miles away, were not evacuated. Some
Marshall islanders also suffered radiation sickness. In the event the bomb
delivered 15 megatons, the fireball
was 4 miles across, and the heat could easily be felt 30 miles away. America
now realised that just one Hydrogen Bomb could obliterate a major city such as
New York.
12/8/1953.
The USSR tested its first
hydrogen bomb,
in the Pacific.� Moscow announced the
test explosion on 20/8/1953.� Both
superpowers now had them.
7/1/1953, US
President Harry
Truman announced that the US now had a Hydrogen Bomb, a thousand times more powerful than the Atom Bomb.
1/11/1952, The USA
exploded its first hydrogen bomb at
Eniwetok Atoll, Pacific Ocean.
3/10/1952. The first
British Atomic Bomb exploded, aboard a ship in the Monte Bello Islands, in
the Pacific off north west Australia.
The ship was almost totally vaporised, apart from a few hot fragments which
fell on neighbouring islands, starting fires. Watching news reporters felt the
blast 4 minutes 15 seconds after the flash, from a distance of 65 miles.
26/2/1952, Winston
Churchill announced that Britain had produced its own atom bomb.
31/1/1950. President
Truman told US scientists to make an H-Bomb.
23//9/1949, The USSR
conducted its first atom bomb test. The
USA no longer had a monopoly on these weapons of mass destruction.
19/4/1948, The USA
tested a plutonium bomb at Eniwetok Atoll.
1/7/1946. The first
US atom bomb test at
Eniwetok atoll. A second test with an underwater bomb was on 25/7/1946.
1945, The first atom bomb explosion was achieved, at Alamogordo, USA.
See
Japan for bomb attacks in World War Two
6/11/1945. The USSR
said it would build its own atom bomb.
15/1/1905, Edward Teller,
who developed the Hydrogen Bomb in 1952, was born to Jewish parents in
Budapest.
Appendix 2b, Nuclear energy, power stations
1995, Sizewell
B nuclear power station opened, see 1966.
30/4/1986, After unusually high
radiation levels were detected in Scandinavia, the USSR acknowledged that an
accident had taken place at Chernobyl.
26/4/1986. The nuclear
power station at Chernobyl, near Kiev, suffered a major fire,
explosion, and radiation leak. 31 were killed directly, but many thousands more
were exposed to radiation. Unseasonably warm weather on 25/4/1986 led to number
4 reactor being shut down; with coolant systems down, an engineer ordered more
power to test a turbine; this caused the no.4 reactor to explode.
23/3/1980.
In a referendum, Sweden
approved the use of nuclear power.
9/4/1979, Officials
declared Three Mile Island nuclear
power station to be safe, see 29/3/1979.
29/3/1979, Valves in
the cooling system at Three Mile Island
nuclear reactor malfunctioned, and due to staff error part of the reactor
was left without coolant and melted. Radioactive steam escaped outside. A
meltdown was averted. This pushed public opinion in the
USA and Europe strongly against nuclear power. See 9/4/1979.
17/10/1956. Calder Hall, Britain�s first nuclear
power station, in Cumbria, was opened by Queen Elizabeth II.� Generation of power had begun on 20/8/1956.
1974, The Dounreay nuclear reactor, Scotland, began
operations.
24/8/1970.
Radioactive leak at Windscale,
Cumbria.
19/1/1970. India�s
first nuclear power station opened.
1966, The first nuclear power station at Sizewell, Suffolk, England , opened,
see 1995.
5/4/1963, Bradwell nuclear power station opened in
the UK.
15/6/1962, Berkeley nuclear power station in
Gloucestershire began operating.
14/11/1959, The Dounreay fast breeder reactor in
Scotland began operating.
2/5/1959, The first
nuclear power station in Scotland, at Chapelcross,
began operations.
8/12/1958, The last of
the four nuclear reactors at Calder Hall
began operating.
17/10/1957. A fire at
Windscale (now Sellafield) nuclear plant shut down one of the piles producing
Plutonium and released radioactivity into the air. Thousands of gallons of milk
from some Cumbrian cows had to be dumped, due to radio-iodine contamination,
despite government assurances that the radiation had been carried out to sea.
10/10/1957. A major
radiation leak was detected at Windscale after an accident three days earlier.
29/7/1957. International Atomic Energy Agency
established.
20/8/1956. Calder Hall, the world�s first
large-scale nuclear power station, began operating.
8/8/1955, The
International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Power opened in Geneva.
17/7/1955. The first
atomic powered electric power station in the USA began operations, in Arco,
Idaho. For two hours between 8pm and 10pm the town was disconnected from the
national power grid and plugged in to the new power source. The experiment was
a success.
1/8/1954,
The UK Atomic Energy Authority was
founded.
27/6/1954.
The first Soviet
nuclear power station was opened, at Obninsk, 55 miles from Moscow.
1/3/1954,
The UK Parliament approved of
establishing an Atomic Energy Authority.
22/7/1953, Construction of Calder Hall nuclear power station began.
25/2/1952, The
Plutonium plant at Windscale began operations.
19/11/1951, The
world�s first atomic central heating
plant began operating, in Harwell.
15/12/1948.
France�s first nuclear reactor began
operating.
15/8/1947.
The UK�s first atomic reactor, at
Harwell, began operating.
20/12/1942. The US began
to produce electricity from nuclear fission.
2/12/1942. Controlled release of energy by nuclear
fission was first achieved. The first atomic pile began operating in
Chicago.� It was at Stagg Field,
University of Chicago, under physicists Enrico
Fermi and Arthur Compton.
12/1/1903, Igor Vasilevich
Kurchatov was born in Sim, Russia. In 1946 he became director of the
first Soviet nuclear reactor.
12/5/1901, Christopher
Hinton was born in Tisbury, England. In 1956 he opened Calder Hall
reactor in England, the first large-scale nuclear plant designed for peaceful
purposes.
Appendix 3� � Electricity See also lighting.
15/10/1985, Sir Clive Sinclair, maker of the C5 electric tricycle, called in the
receivers.
10/1/1985, Clive Sinclair
launched the C5, a battery-powered
tricycle. Priced at �399, the C5 could be driven by 14 year olds without a
licence, insurance or helmet, and was not subject to road tax. A factory that
could produce 200,000 C5s a year was to open at Merthyr Tydfil in June 1985.
14/3/1982, Nikolay
Petrovich, Soviet electrical engineer, died.
27/12/1968, ECStoner,
69, English theoretical physicist known for his discoveries in ferromagnetism,
died aged 69.
26/11/1966. Charles De Gaulle in Brittany opened the
world�s first tidal power station.� It
was in the Rance Estuary, in the Golfe de St Malo. The station, first planned
in 1955, cost French Francs 420 million (UK� 42 million) to build.
15/12/1963, In the UK, the CEGB's 400 kV Supergrid was first
tested when High Marnham Power Station was connected to Monk Fryston
substation, near Selby.
1956, The Tesla
was declared to be the official unit of strength of a magnetic field.
1954, The Bell
Telephone Company in the USA announced the development of a solar battery capable of converting
sunlight into electricity.
1954,
Over 90% of US farms had electricity, up from 11% in 1935.
1950, Over 75% of US farms
were electrified, up from 33% in 1940.
15/7/1950, Lord Citrine opened the British Electricity
Laboratories (now the Central Electricity Research Laboratories) at
Leatherhead.
UK domestic electrification
1949, 86% of UK homes had electricity. 79% of UK homes
had gas, and 68% had both utilities.
1/1/1940. Two thirds of Britain�s houses were wired
for electricity, compared to one in seventeen in 1920.
12/1946, The first village in
northern Scotland, Finstown in Orkney, received an electricity supply, under
the North of Scotland Highland Electricity Board scheme for Remote Villages.
1938, The UK now had 8,920,000
electricity consumers, up from 2,844,900 in 1929 and 730,000 in 1920.
1929, In
Britain, around 4% of rural households were connected to the electricity
supply.
13/8/1947, In Britain the Electricity Bill received Royal
Assent. This provided for the nationalisation of the electricity supply
industry.
7/1/1943. Nikola Tesla, the Croatian-American
scientist who developed alternating current, died.
18/6/1939, Arthur Edwin Kennelly, British-US electrical
engineer, died in Boston, Massachusetts.
29/10/1937, The first truly national electricity grid
was created in Britain.
Before 1926 private generating companies supplied power, all at different
standards and voltages. A standard national system would have been better, but
the Conservative Government pf the time was against �socialist�
nationalisation, so a compromise was reached. A �National Gridiron� of power
lines was to be created, connecting up the most reliable power companies; in
fact several regional �grids� were established, with emergency connections if
needed. This �gridiron� was set up under the Electricity Supply Act of 1926,
and the regional Grids were completed by September 1933. On this day in October
1937 electricity engineers, without authorisation, connected up all the Grids
to make one national grid. Everything worked fine, and the Grid has remained
National ever since.
18/10/1931. The
prolific inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, died in
the USA,
aged 84. He was most famous for inventing the light bulb, but
he also invented� the phonograph, the
ticker tape machine, much of the technology of moving pictures, and some 1,300
other items. Born in 1847 in Ohio, Edison was bottom
of the class in school and left to be a newsboy at 12. He moved to Boston in
1866 and became very interested in electricity. He set up a laboratory in New
Jersey and worked on improving telegraphy. In 1878 he worked on electric light
and produced a commercially viable bulb in 1879. By 1900 he was also
researching in chemistry.
3/2/1925, Oliver Heaviside,
English physicist and electrical engineer, died in Paignton, Devon.
1911,
Dutch
scientist Heike
Kamerlinghe Onnes discovered superconductivity.
He liquefied helium
at 4.2 Kelvin; at this temperature electrons associate in Cooper Pairs and move
through the metal without resistance.
8/11/1908, William Edward
Ayrton, English electrical physicist, (born 14/9/1847 in London)
died in London.
12/10/1908, London
hosted an international conference to agree on standardised electrical units,
with 18 countries attending.
1907,
The Hurley Machine Co of Chicago began selling the first electric washing machine, the Thor, in the US.
9/12/1907, Noel Walton Bott,
pioneer of wave energy for electrical power, was born. (died 7/6/1996)
1905, The Cathode Ray Tube was
first produced. It is a vacuum tube in which cathode rays can be projected onto
a fluorescent screen. It was later to be used for television.
21/1/1901, Elisha Gray,
US electrical inventor, died (born 2/8/1835).
20/12/1901, Robert Van de Graaff,
inventor of the Van de Graaff generator, was born.
1900,
Magnetic tape was invented.
22/1/1900, David Hughes,
electrical scientist, died (born 16/5/1831)
30/10/1898, Josiah Clark,
British electrical engineer, died (born 10/3/1822).
1/8/1896, Sir William Grove,
electrical innovator, died (born 11/7/1811).
10/3/1894, Paul Jablochkov,
Russian electrical engineer, died (born 14/9/1847).
Start of
hydroelectric power
1889, The first
dam built to serve a hydroelectric plant was built at Oregon City, Oregon, USA,
on the Williamette River.
30/9/1882, Water
power was used to produce electricity for the first time, at a plant on the
Fox River near Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.
1888,
Electric sockets incorporating an on/off switch were patented by the English
inventor David Salomons.
1887,
Electric power first appeared in Japan.
12/6/1885, Henry Jenkin,
British electrical engineer, died (25/3/1833).
1884,
The ammeter came into use in electrical engineering.
17/7/1883, A boat
powered by stored electricity ran from the Temple Pier, London,
to Greenwich in 37 minutes.
1882, Nikola Tesla discovered that atoms have a
magnetic field.
6/7/1882, The first
electric iron was patented, by Henry Seeley of New York.
1/10/1881. The world�s first electric power station
was built at Godalming, Surrey, and began operating this day. It supplied
Godalming town council and a leather mill on the River Wey. However the system
lacked economies of scale and without the prospects of enlarging the customer base
to the everal hundred needed for breaking even, the enterporise shut down on
1/5/1884 and gas lighting was introduced. Electricity did not return to
Godalming until 1901. Similarly in Chesterfield, pioneer electric lighting was
installed in 1881, as public street lighting, following a dispute over terms
between the town and the gas company. However the street lighting did not pay,
and as with Godalming the town reverted to gas lighting on 1/4/1884, with
electricity not returning to Chesterfield until 1901.
1880, Thomas Alva Edison�s first
electric generator, desighed mainly for electric lighting, began operations in London.
1879, The first fatality by
electric shock, when a person in France
made contact with a 250 V AC circuit.
1879, In the UK, the Liverpool Corporation Electric Lighting Act
authorised the corporation to provide electric lighting tp the city; the first
such Act passed.
1879, Thomas Edison invented the circuit-breaker, because surges of
power due to short circuits could damage electrical equipment. However most
circuits were then designed with fuses, to burn out if there was s surge,
instead.
13/5/1878, Joseph Henry, electrical scientist, died (born
17/12/1797).
1873, James Clerk-Maxwell published
his book, Electricity and Magnetism,
explaining the transmission theough space of electrical forces and radiation.
1873, The principle of photo-electric
cells was discovered by Mr May who noticed that the resistance of
selenium varied according to the illumination it was under. In 1888 Mr W Hallwachs
found that zinc lost its charge when under ultra-voilet illumination.
1869, The Belgian-French
inventor Zenobe
Theophile build the first
commercially viable generator for direct current.
25/8/1867. Michael Faraday, scientist
and inventor, pioneer in electromagnetism, died at Hampton Court.
22/1/1867, Sir William Harris, electrical scientist, died
(born 1/4/1791).
2/7/1862, William Henry Bragg was born in Cumberland,
England. In 1910 he discovered that X rays and gamma rays cause a gas to
conduct electricity by knocking electrons from the gas molecules.
1859, Gaston Plante, French physicist,
invented the first rechargeable battery
(see 1800). His lead-acid battery could be recharged by reversing the flow of
electricity through it; it was the precursor of modern 12-volt car batteries.
21/2/1858. The first electric burglar alarm was
installed by Edwin
T Holmes of Boston Massachusetts.
12/6/1854, Charles Algernon Parsons was born in London.
In 1884 he designed and installed the first steam turbine generator for
electric power.
7/7/1854, George Ohm, German
scientist who pioneered work on electricity, died in Munich.
29/3/1853, Elihu Thomson, English inventor who co-founded
the General Electric Company with Thomas Edison,
was born.
11/10/1851, Paul Erman, electrical scientist, died (born
29/2/1764).
4/12/1850, William Sturgeon, who devised the first electro-magnet, died at
Prestwich, near Manchester.
11/2/1847. Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor,
was born.
1841, Physicist James Prescott
Joule discovered thatvwhen a current passes through a homogenous
conductor, the conductor heasts up. This effect is used to produce incandescent
light in light bulbs, also in toasters and elkectric heaters.
25/2/1837. The first practical electric motor was
patented, by Thomas
Davenport of Rutland, Vermont. However in 1850 it was pointed out
that power from these motors was about 25 times more expensive than steam power.
10/6/1836, Andre Ampere, French scientist noted for his
work on electro-magnetics,
died.
1833, In correspondence, Michael Faraday and William Whewell
introduced the terms electrode, anode, ion, cathode, anion, cation, electrolyte and electrolysis.
2/8/1835, Elisha Gray, US electrical inventor, was born
(died 21/1/1901).
25/3/1833, Henry Jenkin, British electrical engineer, was
born (died 12/6/1885).
27/10/1831, Physicist and chemist Michael Faraday,
40, invented a device to convert mechanical energy into electrical current, by
spinning a copper disc between the poles of a magnet. This was the origin of
the dynamo.
17/10/1831, Physicist Michael Faraday
proved that a magnet inserted into a coil of wire and moved would cause a
current to flow in the wire. This showed that mechanical work, or motion, could create a
current; the dynamo principle by which much power is generated
today.
29/8/1831, Michael Faraday
demonstrated the first electrical transformer.
1827, Ohm announced the Law of Electrical
Resistance.
5/3/1827. Death of Count Alessandro Volta,
aged 82, at Como, Italy.� He was born on 18/2/1745.� An Italian, he made the first battery, and
gave his name (Volt) to the unit of
electrical power.
12/3/1824,
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff was born in Konigsberg, Kaliningrad. He discovered in 1857 that static
electric forces and magnetic forces were related by a constant that was
discovered to be the speed of light in a vacuum; the first clue that electromagnetism and light were linked.
1823, German
physicist Thomas
Johann Seebeck (1770-1831) discovered that if heat was applied to
the junction of two different metals in a closed circuit, a compass needle
could be made to deviate,indicating an electric current was flowing. The Seebeck Effect
was utilised in the 20th century in the use of semiconductors.
1822, English physicist William
Sturgeon, aged 40, made the first electromagnet. He varnished an iron bar to
insulate it, wrapped it in copper wire, and connected the wire to a voltaic
pile, to make a device that could lift a few pounds of iron.
10/3/1822, Josiah Clark, British electrical engineer, was
born (died 30/10/1898).
4/1820, Hans Christian Oersted, Danish
scientist, discovered that if an electric current was applied to a wire near a
compass needle, the needle could be made to move.
11/7/1811, Sir William Grove, electrical innovator, was
born (died 1/8/1896).
21/12/1809, Tiberius Cavallo, electrical scientist, died
(born 30/3/1749).
23/8/1806, Charles Coulomb, electrical scientist, died
(born 14/6/1736).
8/11/1800, Alessandro Volta invented the first battery, and demonstrated it this day
to the Institut Francais. Made of layers of zinc, cardboard soaked in salt
water, and silver, it generated electricity when a wire was joined to each end,
but it was not rechargeable. See 1859.
17/12/1797, Joseph Henry, electrical scientist, was born
(died 13/5/1878).
22/9/1791, The chemist and physicist Michael Faraday
was born at Newington Butts, London.� He was the son of a blacksmith.
1/4/1791, Sir William Harris, electrical scientist, born
(died 22/1/1867).
1789, Luigi Galvani discovered
galvanic current.
16/3/1789, German physicist Georg Simon Ohm was born in
Erlangen. In 1827 he formulated what became known as Ohm�s Law � that the
current is proportional to the ratio of the voltage and the resistance, or I = V/R.
1784, The Inverse Square Law
of Magnetism was announced by Coulomb.
22/5/1783, William Sturgeon, English
scientist who made the first practical electromagnet,
was born in Whittington, Lancashire.
27/5/1781, Giovanni Beccaria, Italian electrical
physicist, died in Turin (born in Mondovi 3/10/1716).
22/1/1775, Andre Ampere
French mathematician and scientist, and founder of the science of
electromagnetics, was born in Lyons, son of a wealthy merchant.
22/3/1772, John Canton, English scientist died (born
31/7/1718).
29/2/1764, Paul Erman, electrical scientist, was born
(died 11/10/1851).
15/6/1752, Benjamin Franklin demonstrated electricity, by flying� a kite in a thunderstorm.
30/3/1749, Tiberius Cavallo, electrical scientist, was
born (died 21/12/1809).
1747, Abbe Jean Antoine Nollet, born
in Pimprez, France, 19/11/1700, invented the first electrometer.It comprised a suspended pith ball.
18/2/1745, Alessandro Volta,
Italian
scientist, was born in Como.
1742, Musschenbroek discovered the Leyden Jar.
14/6/1736, Charles Coulomb, electrical scientist, was
born (died 23/8/1806).
31/7/1718, John Canton, English scientist
(died 22/3/1772) was born. He developed a method of manufacturing artificial
magnets.
3/10/1716, Giovanni Beccaria, Italian
electrical physicist, was born in Mondovi (died in Turin 27/5/1781).
1600, The term �electricity� was
used for the first time, by Gilbert, who also discovered that the Earth
has a magnetic field. He named the phenomenon after the Greek word for amber, elektron.
600 BC, The Greek writer Thales of
Miletus noted that amber from the shores of the Baltic (which the Greeks called
elektron) when rubbed could attract small
objects.
Appendix 3.5� � Electric Light (See also Light, Cameras, Optics)
9/5/1932. Piccadilly Circus
first lit by electricity.
7/3/1910,
Neon lighting was patented by Georges Claude. Neon
was only discovered in 1898.Other gases can be added tio give different
colours; a trace of argon makes blue light, and adding helium makes white or
yellow light.
19/1/1883, The first electrical lighting system employing overhead wires began
operating at Roselle, New Jersey, USA.
22/12/1882, The first
string of Christmas lights was made by Edward H Johnson, a colleague of Thomas Edison.
4/9/1882, The Edison Electric Illuminating Company
began producing electricity at Pearl Street, New York, USA. It had a total of
85 customers.
12/1/1882. The Edison Electric Light Company at 57 Holborn
Viaduct established London�s
first electric power station. It supplied the area between Holborn Circus
and the Old Bailey with street lighting from 12/1 and with domestic current
from 12/4/1882. In New York, USA, electric power was switched on from 4/9/1882.
However the UK Parliament then passed the Electric Light Act; this discouraged
private building of power stations because it empowered local authorities to
take them over after 21 years. This made it impossible for private investors to
recoup their money, in such a short time span, The Act was amended in 1888 to
make the period of private operation 42 years. However even as late as 1890,
major UK cities such as Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham and Edinburgh had no
electric power.
20/1/1882, A drapers shop in Newcastle on Tyne, England,
became the first shop to be lit by electric light.
4/9/1881. The Edison electric lighting
system went into action in New York as a generator serving 85 paying customers was
switched on.
27/1/1880. Edison patented the electric filament light
(the electric light bulb).
1/10/1880, The Edison
Lamp Works began operations in New Jersey to manufacture the first electric light bulbs.
20/12/1880, Charles F Brush
demonstrated his arc lamps along Broadway, preceding Edison�s
lamp in commercial use.
20/12/1879, Thomas Edison
privately demonstrated his �incandescent
light� at Menlo Park, New Jersey.
21/10/1879. Thomas
Edison successfully demonstrated
the first durable light bulb.
18/12/1878, Joseph Wilson Swan, 50, deomonstrated an
electric light bulb in Newcastle on Tyne, England. However it did not achieve
true incandescence
15/10/1878, The Edison Electric Light Company was
founded.
1878, English physicist Joseph Swan
ran electricity through a carbon filament encased in a glass bulb from which
the air had been evacuated. His prototype incamdescent light lasted for several
hours.
31/10/1828, Sir Joseph Swan, inventor of the electric light bulb independently of Edison,
was born in Sunderland.