September Calendar of Famous Inventions and Birthdays

Guillotines

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From the first-known copyright that was granted in Venice in 1486 to the publishing of the first book on the Gutenberg printing press, September is a historically significant month in many ways, including famous birthdays like Michael Faraday, the inventor of the electric motor.

Whether you're looking for what happened on this day in history or trying to find famous figures who share your September birthday, plenty of great things happened in September. Many of the people and inventions on the list below are science and technology-based, but a few influential pop culture icons have been thrown into the mix, too.

Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights

Explore the patents, trademarks, and copyrights that were granted on each day throughout the month of September to find what famous invention shares your birthday. The candlestick, for instance, was patented on September 8, 1868, by William Hinds while the hand controller video game was patented on September 29, 1998, 

September 1

  • 1486: The first known copyright was granted in Venice.

September 2

  • 1992: The Southern California Gas Company purchased the first motor vehicles powered by natural gas.

September 3

  • 1940: A patent for the production of diuretics was obtained by Bockmuhl, Middendorf, and Fritzsche.

September 4

September 5

  • 1787: The constitutional clause concerning patents and copyrights was adopted by the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

September 6

  • 1988: The Combined Cap and Baseball Mitt Patent Number 4,768,232 was granted.

September 7

  • 1948: Patent Number 2,448,908 was granted to Louis Parker for a television receiver. His "intercarrier sound system" is now used in all television receivers in the world, and without it, TV receivers would not work as well and would be more costly.

September 8

  • 1868: William Hinds patented a candlestick.
  • 1994: Microsoft gave Windows 95 its new name. Previously, the operating system had been referred to by its code name of "Chicago."

September 9

  • 1886: Ten countries, not including the U.S., joined the Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works.

September 10

  • 1891: The song "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-Der-E" by Henry J. Sayers was registered.
  • 1977: Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant and convicted murderer, became the last person to date executed by the guillotine.

September 11

  • 1900: A motor vehicle patent was granted to Francis and Freelan Stanley.

September 12

  • 1961: Patent Number 3,000,000 was granted to Kenneth Eldredge for an automatic reading system for utilities.

September 13

  • 1870: Patent Number 107,304 was granted to Daniel C. Stillson for the improved monkey wrench.

September 14

  • 1993: "The Simpsons" television show was registered by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

September 15

  • 1968: An Wang obtained a patent for a calculating apparatus, a basic component of computer technology.

September 16

  • 1857: The words and music to the famous Christmas song "Jingle Bells" were registered by Oliver Ditson and Company under the title "One Horse Open Sleigh."

September 17

  • 1918: Elmer Sperry received a patent for the gyrocompass, essential to modern ship navigation.

September 18

  • 1915: Louisa May Alcott's book "Little Women" (first published October 3, 1868) was registered.
  • 1984: Software Arts and VisiCorp settled their lawsuit over VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. VisiCalc, invented in 1979, was the first "hot-selling software product" for the personal computer.

September 19

September 20

  • 1938: Patent Number 2,130,948 was granted for "synthetic fiber" (nylon) to Wallace Carothers.

September 21

  • 1993: A patent for Baseball Batting Apparatus, Patent Number 5,246,226, was granted.

September 22

  • 1992: The Poolside Basketball Game was granted Patent Number 5,149,086.

September 23

  • 1930: Johannes Ostermeier was issued a patent for the flash bulb used in photography.

September 24

  • 1877: Fire destroyed many models in the Patent Office, but the important records were saved.
  • 1852: A new invention, the dirigible or airship, was first demonstrated.

September 25

  • 1959: The song "Do-Re-Mi" from the "Sound of Music" by Rodger and Hammerstein was registered.
  • 1956: The first transatlantic telephone cable went into operation.

September 26

  • 1961: The patent for an aerial capsule (satellite) emergency separation device was obtained by Maxime Faget and Andre Meyer.

September 27

September 28

  • 1979: The pilot episode of the TV series "M*A*S*H" was registered.

September 29

  • 1998: A hand controller for a video game was patented as Design Patent Number 398,938.

September 30

  • 1997: A roller skate was invented by Hui-Chin from Taiwan and received Patent Number 5,671,931.
  • 1452: The first book was published in Johann Gutenberg's printing press: The Bible.

September Birthdays

From the birth of Ferdinand Porsche to that of the inventor of the first automobile, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot, September is the birth month of many famous scientists, inventors, and artists of all varieties. Find your September birthday twin and discover how their lives' works helped change the world.

September 1

  • 1856: Sergei Winogradsky was a noted Russian scientist who pioneered the cycle-of-life concept.

September 2

  • 1850: Woldemar Voigt was a noted German physicist who developed the Voigt transformation in mathematical physics.
  • 1853: Wilhelm Ostwald was a German physical chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1909.
  • 1877: Frederick Soddy was a British chemist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on radioactivity due to the transmutation of elements.
  • 1936: Andrew Grove was an American computer chip manufacturer.

September 3

  • 1875: Ferdinand Porsche was a German car inventor who designed the Porsche and Volkswagen cars.
  • 1905: Carl David Anderson was an American physicist who won the 1936 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of positron.
  • 1938: Ryoji Noyori was Japanese chemist and a Nobel Prize winner in 2001 for the study of chirally catalyzed hydrogenations.

September 4

  • 1848: Lewis H. Latimer was an American inventor who drafted the patent drawings for Alexander Graham Bell's application for the telephone, worked for Thomas Edison, and invented an electric lamp.
  • 1904: Julian Hill was a noted chemist who helped develop nylon.
  • 1913: Stanford Moore was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1977.
  • 1934: Clive Granger was a Welsh economist and Nobel Prize winner for his contributions to non-linear time series.

September 5

  • 1787: François Sulpice Beudant was a French geologist who studied crystallization.

September 6

  • 1732: Johan Wilcke was a noted Swedish physicist.
  • 1766: John Dalton was a British physicist who developed the atomic theory of matter.
  • 1876: John Macleod was a Canadian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1923.
  • 1892: Edward V. Appleton was a noted British physicist who pioneered radiophysics.
  • 1939: Susumu Tonegawa is a Japanese molecular biologist who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for his discovery of the genetic mechanism that produces antibody diversity.
  • 1943: Richard Roberts was a British biochemist who won a Nobel Prize.

September 7

  • 1737: Luigi Galvani was a noted Italian physicist who made studies of the anatomy.
  • 1829: August Kekule von Stradonitz discovered the benzene ring.
  • 1836: August Toepler was a noted German physicist who experimented with electrostatics.
  • 1914: James Van Allen was an American physicist who discovered the Van Allen radiation belts.
  • 1917: John Cornforth was an Australian chemist who won the Nobel Prize.

September 8

  • 1888: Louis Zimmer was a famous Flemish clockmaker.
  • 1918: Derek Barton was a British chemist who won a Nobel Prize in 1969.

September 9

  • 1941: Dennis Ritchie was a noted American computer scientist who created the C programming language and the Unix operating system.

September 10

  • 1624: Thomas Sydenham was a noted English physician.
  • 1892: Arthur Compton was a noted American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect of electromagnetic radiation.
  • 1898: Waldo Semon was an American inventor who invented vinyl.
  • 1941: Gunpei Yokoi is a Japanese inventor and video game designer for Nintendo.

September 11

  • 1798: Franz Ernst Neumann was a noted German professor of mineralogy and physics who was an early researcher of optics.
  • 1816: Carl Zeiss was a German scientist and optician known for the lens manufacturing company he founded called Carl Zeiss.
  • 1877: Feliks Dzjerzjinski was the Lithuanian founder of the KGB.
  • 1894: Carl Shipp Marvel was an American polymer chemist who worked with temperature-resistant polymers called polybenzimidazoles. Marvel won the first ACS Award in Polymer Chemistry in 1964, the Priestley Medal in 1956, and the Perkin Medal in 1965.

September 12

  • 1818: Richard Gatling was the American inventor of a hand-cranked machine gun.
  • 1897: Irene Joliot-Curie was the daughter of Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for the synthesis of new radioactive elements.

September 13

  • 1755: Oliver Evans invented a high-pressure steam engine.
  • 1857: Milton S. Hershey was a famous chocolate manufacturer who started the Hershey candy company.
  • 1886: Sir Robert Robinson won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1947 for his researches in organic chemistry, and he also worked for the Shell Chemical Company.
  • 1887: Leopold Ruzicka won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939 for his studies of natural substances, and he invented many of the scents for various perfumes.

September 14

  • 1698: Charles Francois de Cisternay DuFay was a French chemist who studied the force of repulsion, noting that most things could be electrified just by rubbing them and that materials conduct better when wet.
  • 1849: Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist known for "Pavlovian responses"; he won the Nobel Prize in 1904.
  • 1887: Karl Taylor Compton was an American physicist and atomic bomb scientist.

September 15

  • 1852: Jan Matzeliger invented the shoe-lacing machine.
  • 1929: Murray Gell-Mann was the first physicist to predict quarks.

September 16

  • 1893: Albert Szent-Gyorgyi was a Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1937 for discovering vitamin C and the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle.

September 17

  • 1857: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a pioneer in rocket and space research.
  • 1882: Anton H. Blaauw was a Dutch botanist who wrote "The Perception of Light."

September 18

  • 1907: Edwin M. McMillian won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 for discovering plutonium. He also had the idea for "phase stability," which led to the development of the synchrotron and synchro-cyclotron.

September 19

  • 1902: James Van Alen invented the Simplified Scoring System for tennis.

September 20

  • 1842: James Dewar was a British chemist and physicist who invented the Dewar flask or thermos (1892) and co-invented a smokeless gunpowder called cordite (1889).

September 21

  • 1832: Louis Paul Cailletet was the French physicist and inventor who was the first to liquefy oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and air.

September 22

  • 1791: Michael Faraday was a British physicist and chemist who is best known for his discoveries of electromagnetic induction and the laws of electrolysis. His biggest breakthrough in electricity was his invention of the electric motor.

September 23

  • 1915: John Sheehan invented a method for the synthesis of penicillin.

September 24

September 25

  • 1725: Nicolas Joseph Cugnot invented the first automobile.
  • 1832: William Le Baron Jenney was the American architect considered the "father of the skyscraper."
  • 1866: Thomas H. Morgan won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1933 for discoveries that defined the role that the chromosome plays in heredity. 

September 26

  • 1754: Joseph Louis Proust was a French chemist best known for his research work on the steadiness of composition of chemical compounds.
  • 1886: Archibald B. Hill was an English physiologist and pioneer of biophysics and operations research who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his elucidation of the production of heat and mechanical work in muscles.

September 27

  • 1913: Albert Ellis was an American psychologist who invented rational emotive behavior therapy.
  • 1925: Patrick Steptoe was the scientist who perfected in vitro fertilization.

September 28

  • 1852: Henri Moissan won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1906.
  • 1925: Seymour Cray was the inventor of the Cray I supercomputer.

September 29

  • 1925: Paul MacCready was an American engineer who created the first human-powered flying machines and the first solar-powered aircraft to make sustained flights. 

September 30

  • 1802: Antoine J. Ballard was a French chemist who discovered bromine.
  • 1939: Jean-Marie P. Lehn is a French chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987 for synthesizing cryptands.
  • 1943: Johann Deisenhofer is a biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 for determining the first crystal structure of a membrane protein.
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Bellis, Mary. "September Calendar of Famous Inventions and Birthdays." ThoughtCo, Jul. 31, 2021, thoughtco.com/today-in-history-september-calendar-1992506. Bellis, Mary. (2021, July 31). September Calendar of Famous Inventions and Birthdays. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/today-in-history-september-calendar-1992506 Bellis, Mary. "September Calendar of Famous Inventions and Birthdays." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/today-in-history-september-calendar-1992506 (accessed March 29, 2024).