CHAIN REUNIONS

The 12^th September seems to be a day related to explosive multiple reactions and unification.

Gatling

Dr. Richard Gatling, the American inventor and best known for his invention of the Gatling gun, the first successful machine gun, was born on the 12^th September 1818.

It was on the 12^th September that the Hungarian born scientist Leó Szilárd conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction. Journalist and historian Richard Rhodes described Szilárd's moment of inspiration:

Szilárd 

In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilárd waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilárd told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilárd stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come.

Kilby

On this day in 1958, Jack Kilby demonstrates the first integrated circuit. Jack St. Clair Kilby was an American engineer who took part (along with Robert Noyce) in the realization of the first integrated circuit in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000. He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer. In mid-1958, Kilby was a newly employed engineer at Texas Instruments who did not yet have the right to a summer vacation. He spent the summer working on the problem in circuit design that was commonly called the “tyranny of numbers” and finally came to the conclusion that manufacturing the circuit components en masse in a single piece of semiconductor material could provide a solution. On 12^th September 1958 he presented his findings to the management: he showed them a piece of germanium with an oscilloscope attached, pressed a switch, and the oscilloscope showed a continuous sine wave, proving that his integrated circuit worked and thus that he solved the problem.

As to unifications (and eventual splits), The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed in Moscow (in what was still the USSR), on 12^th  September 1990, and it paved the way for German Reunification in October 1990.

Jacqueline Kennedy at Hammersmith Farm

in Newport, Rhode Island on her wedding

day 12^th September, 1953.

It was also on the 12^th September 1846 that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning, and on that same day in 1953, U.S. Representative John Fitzgerald Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at St Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island. Very High Society.