Thomas Wedgwood: Photography Pioneer
Dubbed as godfather of photography, Thomas Wedgwood, born on May 14, 1771, in Etruria, Staffordshire, England, is credited with his major contribution to photography and technology. He is considered the first man to develop a method to copy visible images chemically to permanent media. He was the son of a potter, Josiah Wedgwood, an early experimenter with Sir Humphry Davy in photography.
He was born into a long line of pottery manufacturers, and was educated at Etruria. A love for art was instilled in his growing years. His short life was also blest associating with painters, sculptors, and poets, to whom he was able to be a patron after he inherited his father’s wealth in 1795. One of them was a good friend, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by which Wedgwood arranged to have an annuity of £150 in 1798 so Coleridge could devote himself to poetry and philosophy.
He died on July 10, 1805, aged 34.
Source and Image Credit: Wikipedia
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First Oral Contraceptive Pill: A Single Pill for Drugs & Sex
Timeline: May 9, 1960 – The Pill for Birth Control.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA ) approved the birth control pill for use. Two days later, Enovid, the first oral contraceptive went on sale.
No one can fully say that the approval of this birth control pill could have prompted the sexual revolution.
Initially, G.D. Searle and Company, the Pharmaceutical creator, was not convinced that healthy women would tale a drug on a daily basis solely to prevent pregnancy. They originally applied for U.S> Govenment approval of the drug as a treatment for gynaecological complaints. However, it was reported that after only a year, one million women were on the pill just in the U.S. alone.
By 1965 more than five million women were taking the drug despite the high doses of estrogen and progesterone that causes side effects.
Feminist writers and historians have often referred to the contraceptive pill as the single most important technological achievement in the 20th century redefining the social and economic roles of women in the society’s structure.
Source:
Dateline. Sydney: Millennium House (2006)
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Anthony Fokker, Aircraft Designer
Anthony Fokker, Aircraft designer
Anton Herman Gerard “Anthony” Fokker (6 April 1890 – 23 December 1939) was a pioneer in aviation and a Dutch aircraft manufacturer. He was born in Blitar, East Java, Netherlands Indies (now Indonesia).
Fokker was educated in the Netherlands. In 1912, he founded the Fokker aircraft works in Germany, which designed and built the Fokker biplanes and triplanes used by Germany in WWI.
After the war, he set up factories in Holland. He emigrated to the United States in 1922 and established the Fokker Aircraft Corporation.
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Couturiers Cristobal Balenciaga and Christian Dior
Couturiers Cristobal Balenciaga and Christian Dior celebrate the same birthday, January 21.
Featuring two famous couturiers and thinkers born January 21:
Cristobal Balenciaga, (1895-1972)
Spanish couturier celebrated for classic design elegance and dramatic simplicity.
Christian Dior, (1905-1957)
French couturier who revolutionized women’s clothes in 1947. He achieved international fame with his long skirted ‘New Look’ followed by the A-line, and ‘the Sack.’
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