August Birthdays
On August 11, 1860, Otto Blathy was born in Tata, Hungary. He was the co-inventor of the transformer at age twenty-five.
Indeed, Otto literally came up with the name transformer. Not only did the term transformer stick in our industry...
Transformers ultimately became the name of Hasbro's robots in disguise, Bumblebee and his team of heroic autobots, on the hunt for the evil Decepticons loose on earth. Their motto, "Rev up and roll out."
This Rev is not to be confused with the acronym for Reforming the Energy Vision. Though perhaps New York's regulatory initiative could use a motto like "Rev up and roll out."
Four years later, Otto patented the alternating current watt-hour meter. Where would ratemaking be without his meter?
In his spare time, Otto was famous in the chess world. A book of his showed end-games of more than a hundred moves. Including Blathy's monster, with checkmate in two hundred ninety-two moves.
On August 18, 1897, Bern Dibner was born in Kiev, Ukraine. Soon after graduating Brooklyn Polytechnic, while designing Cuba's electric system, he developed the first solderless electric connectors.
Bern's connector designs and patents literally enabled broader electric grids. But he is better known for using his fortune to become one of the greatest collectors of books, papers, etc., on the history of science, now in the Dibner Library at the Smithsonian Institution and elsewhere.
On August 7, 1860, Rene Thury, was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He was actually considered the "King of DC."