Volume 11 , Issue 30

That's The Way It Was - 1905

1905 events taken from The People's Chronolog, edited by James Trager, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, copyrighted in 1979, first edition, includes a historical chronology, ISBN 0-03-017811-8, with 1206 pages, including the index.

1905 -- A paper on the special theory of relatiity by Swiss theorectical physicist Albert Einsteing, 26, is published at Bern and revises traditionally held Newteonian views of space and time. Einstein introduces the equation E=mc? in "The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" and predicts that light (or radio) waves moving from one planet to another will be bent off their path by massive body like the sun, slowing them down for a fraction of a second.

Procaine (novocaine) is introduced into clinical use by German surgeon Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Braun, 43. The local anesthetic would find wide use in dentistry.

Wildcat oil prospectors in Oklahoma Territory make a big strike in the Glenn Pool near a village on the Arkansas River called by its residents Tulsey Town. It was quickly built up into Tulsa, "Oil Capital of the World."

The Stanley Steamer sets a speed record of 127 miles per hour, but its quiet, nonpolluting external combustion engine requires a 30-minute warm-up and must take on fresh water every 20 miles.

The Wright brothers improve their flying machine of 1903 to the point where they can fly a full circle of 24.5 miles in 38 minutes, a feat they demonstrated at Dayton, Ohio. Their machine was patented in May of 1906, and they gave a series of exhibitions in the United States and Europe to popularize flying.

L.C. Smith & Brothers sells is first typewriter to the New York Tribune for the paper's newsroom. The Syracuse, New York firm was for years the largest producer of typewriters.

Nonfiction The Life of Reason, volume 1 of five volumes, by Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (Jorge Ruis Santayana y Burrais) 42, wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Ty Cobb signs with the Detroit Tigers to begin an outstanding baseball career. Outfielder Tyrus Aymond Cobb, 18, had been nicknamed "The Georgia Pach" by sportwriter Grantland Rice for his prowess with the Augusta team of the South Atlantic League. Ty Cobb would play 22 seasons for Detroit and two more for the Philadelphia Athletics before retiring in 1928. Cobb had a lifetime batting average of .367 with a record 4,191 hits; scored a record 2,244 runs; played a record number of 3,033 games; batted above .300 for a record of 23 games; and stole a record 829 bases.

The New York Giants win the World Series by defeating the Philadelphia Athletics 4 games to 1.

Palmolive Soap is introduced by Milwaukee's 42-year-old, B. W. Johnson Soap Company, who Caleb Johnson had bought a new soap milling machine he saw at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. The toilet soap was made from a formula that included some hydrogenated palm and olive oils, using the hydrogenation process invented by England's William Normann, 1901. It was advertised with the slogan "Keep that Schoolgirl Complexion," and the Johnson company would be reincorporated in 1917 under the name, The Palmolive Company.

President Roosevelt creates a Bureau of Foestry in the US Department of Agriculture, February 1, with Gifford Pinchot as chief forester. Congress passes a bill transferring US forest reserves form the Department of the Interior to the USDA. The reserves are soon designated National Forests as Pinchot works to make the Forest Service a defender of the public lands against private interests.

The Wichita Mountains Refuge for big game is established by President Roosevelt in Oklahoma territory.
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