Milestones: April 30, 2024

April 30, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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A CHUNK OF LAND — NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE completed on April 30, 1803, when representatives of the United States and Napoleonic France finalized a transaction of $11,250,000 and assumed claims of its citizens against France in the amount of $3,750,000. Thus, the U.S. doubled the size of its territory with this massive land scale that in some ways was a surprise even to the young nation. The acquired territory, about 828,000 square miles of land, stretched between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains but did not include Texas or New Mexico, and it didn’t encompass other parcels of land that the United States already controlled. France and Spain had traded the territory back and forth from the time of the French and Indian War, and a series of alliances between those two nations and that threatened American expansion and access to the Mississippi River, had the U.S. growing skittish. President Thomas Jefferson sent Robert Livingston to negotiate with French minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand for the purchase of New Orleans and was surprised when Talleyrand offered to sell the whole parcel to the U.S.

A formal treaty for the Louisiana Purchase was signed two days later, but antedated to April 30.

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THE ELECTRON DISCOVERED — BRITISH PHYSICIST J.J. THOMSON on April 30, 1897, announced his discovery that atoms were made up of smaller components, a finding that revolutionized the way scientists thought about the atom and had major ramifications for the field of physics. Though Thomson referred to them as “corpuscles,” what he found is more commonly known today as the electron. A highly-respected professor at Cambridge, Thomson had determined the existence of electrons by studying cathode rays, and discovering that the particles comprising the rays were 1,000 times lighter than the lightest atom. To him, this proved that something smaller than atoms existed. Thomson likened the composition of atoms to plum pudding, with negatively charged “corpuscles” dotted throughout a positively charged field.

Thomson won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 for his work exploring the electrical conductivity of various gases. His six research assistants also later won Nobel Prizes in physics and two, including Ernest Rutherford, who won Nobel Prizes for chemistry.

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THE FIRST WORLD’S FAIR — THE NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR opened on April 30, 1939, in New York City, with 63 nations participating, and with a ceremony featuring speeches by both President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had been governor of New York, and by New York Gov. Herbert Lehman. That event ushered in the first day of television broadcasting in New York. Flushing Meadow Park in Queens served as the fairground, and two now-demolished structures made the spot iconic: the “Perisphere” and the “Trylon.” The World’s Fair showcased such new technology as FM radio, robotics, fluorescent lighting and a crude fax machine. Norman Bel Geddes was an American theatrical and industrial designer, described in 2012 by the New York Times as “a brilliant craftsman and draftsman, a master of style, the 20th century’s Leonardo da Vinci” had works on exhibit, One feature was a Futurama ride for General Motors, and users were transported through an idealized city of the future.

Norman Bel Geddes was the father of actress Barbara Bel Geddes.

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INTERNET LAUNCHED — FOUR YEARS FRUIT PAID OFF COMPUTER SCIENTIST TIM BERNERS-LEE on a proposal for “an idea of linked information systems, on April 30, 1993. He released the source code for the world’s first web browser, originally named Mesh and that would become the Worldwide Web, the first royalty-free, means of browsing the emerging information network that developed into the internet. The computer that Berners-Lee used, a NeXT desktop, became the world’s first internet server.

Nowadays, people around the world use the Internet for research, watching movies and of course paying bills, and leading to the need for cybersecurity development.

See previous milestones, here.