Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be rainy in the morning, giving way to partly cloudy skies and a daytime high of seventy degrees. Sunrise is 6:30 AM and sunset 7:11 PM, for 12h 41m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 59.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

NASA this week launched the OSIRIS-REx probe to take a sample from an asteroid and return that sample for study. The launch used an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance:

On this day in 1813, Oliver Perry defeats a Royal Navy Squadron at the Battle of Lake Erie:

On September 10, 1813, Perry’s command fought a successful fleet action against a squadron of the Royal Navy in the Battle of Lake Erie. It was at the outset of this battle that Perry famously said, “If a victory is to be gained, I will gain it.”^[21] Initially, the exchange of gunfire favored the British. Perry’s flagship, the USS Lawrence, was so severely disabled in the encounter that the British commander, Robert Heriot Barclay, thought that Perry would surrender it, and sent a small boat to request that the American vessel pull down its flag. Faithful to the words of his battle flag, “DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP” (a paraphrase of the dying words of Captain James Lawrence, the ship’s namesake and Perry’s friend),^[22][23] Perry, with Lawrence’s chaplain and purser as the remaining able crew, personally fired the final salvo,^[24]and then had his men row him a half-mile (0.8 km) through heavy gunfire to transfer his command to USS Niagara.

Once aboard, Perry dispatched Niagara‘s commander, Captain Jesse Elliot, to bring the other schooners into closer action while he steered the Niagara toward the damaged British ships. Like Nelson’s Victory at Trafalgar, Niagara broke the opposing line. Perry’s force pounded Barclay’s ships until they could offer no effective resistance and surrendered. Although he had won the battle aboard Niagara, he received the British surrender on the deck of the recaptured Lawrence to allow the British to see the terrible price his men had paid.^[21]

Perry’s battle report to General William Henry Harrison was famously brief: “We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.”^[22][C]

This was the first time in history that an entire British naval squadron had surrendered, and every captured ship was successfully returned to Presque Isle.^[25][26]

Although the engagement was small compared to Napoleonic naval battles such as the Battle of Trafalgar, the victory had disproportionate strategic importance, opening Canada up to possible invasion, while simultaneously protecting the entire Ohio Valley.^[3][27] The loss of the British squadron directly led to the critical Battle of the Thames, the rout of British forces by Harrison’s army, the death of Tecumseh, and the breakup of his Indian alliance.^[26] Along with the Battle of Plattsburgh, it was one of only two significant fleet victories of the war.^[3]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday brings mostly cloudy skies and a high of eighty-two to Whitewater. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset is 7:13 PM, for 12h 44m 05s of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter today.

On this day in 1965, Sandy Koufax achieved baseball perfection:

Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitched a perfect game in the National League against the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium on September 9, 1965.^[1] Koufax, by retiring 27 consecutive batters without allowing any to reach base, became the sixth pitcher of the modern era, eighth overall, to throw a perfect game. The game was Koufax’s fourth no-hitter, breaking Bob Feller‘s Major League record of three (and later broken by Nolan Ryan, in 1981). Koufax struck out 14 opposing batters, the most ever recorded in a perfect game, and matched only by San Francisco Giants pitcher, Matt Cain, on June 13, 2012. He also struck out at least one batter in all nine innings (Cain did not strike out a batter in the ninth in his perfect game), the only perfect game pitcher to do so to date.

The game was also notable for the high quality of the performance by the opposing pitcher, Bob Hendley of the Cubs. Hendley gave up only one hit (which did not figure into the scoring) and allowed only two baserunners. Both pitchers had no-hitters intact until the seventh inning. The only run that the Dodgers scored was unearned. The game holds the record for fewest base runners (both teams), with two; the next lowest total is four.^[2]

Koufax’s perfect game is a memorable part of baseball lore. Jane Leavy‘s biography of Koufax is structured around a re-telling of the game. An article in Salon.com honoring Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully focuses on his play-by-play call of the game for KFI radio.^[3]This game was selected in a 1995 poll of members of the Society for American Baseball Research as the greatest game ever pitched.^[4]

JigZone‘s daily puzzle is of colorful candy:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will see scattered thunderstorms in the morning, and partly cloudy skies in the afternoon, with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 6:28 AM and sunset 7:15 PM, for 12h 46m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 40% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1966, the first episode of Star Trek airs on NBC:

NBC ordered 16 episodes of Star Trek, besides “Where No Man Has Gone Before“.^[18] The first regular episode of Star Trek,The Man Trap,^[23] aired on Thursday, September 8, 1966 from 8:30–9:30 as part of an NBC “sneak preview” block. Reviews were mixed; while The Philadelphia Inquirer and San Francisco Chronicle liked the new show, The New York Times and The Boston Globe were less favorable,^[24] and Variety predicted that it “won’t work”, calling it “an incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities”.^[25] Debuting against mostly reruns, Star Trek easily won its time slot with a 40.6 share.^[26] The following week against all-new programming, however, the show fell to second (29.4 share) behind CBS. It ranked 33rd (out of 94 programs) over the next two weeks, then the following two episodes ranked 51st in the ratings.^[27][28]

Star Trek‘s first-season ratings would in earlier years likely have caused NBC to cancel the show. The network had pioneered research into viewers’demographic profiles in the early 1960s, however, and, by 1967, it and other networks increasingly considered such data when making decisions;^[30]:115 for example, CBS temporarily cancelled Gunsmoke that year because it had too many older and too few younger viewers.^[24] Although Roddenberry later claimed that NBC was unaware of Star Trek‘s favorable demographics,^[31] awareness of Star Trek‘s “quality” audience is what likely caused the network to retain the show after the first and second seasons.^[30]:115 NBC instead decided to order 10 more new episodes for the first season, and order a second season in March 1967.^[18][32]

The Original Series was digitally remastered for a Blu-ray version in 2009.  Here’s how that first episode, from 1966, looks when compared with the remastered and CGI enhanced version –

JigZone‘s daily puzzle is of ivy & a lamp:

Good morning, Whitewater.

It’s midweek already, and Wednesday in town will see thunderstorms and a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset is 7:17 PM, for 12h 49m 46s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Summer Paralympics begin today in Rio.  They’ll continue through September 18th.

On this day in 1927, Philo Farnsworth tests a version of television (an ‘image dissector’):

Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor and television pioneer.^[2] He made many contributions that were crucial to the early development of all-electronic television.^[3] He is perhaps best known for his 1927 invention of the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device (video camera tube), the “image dissector“, as well as the first fully functional and complete all-electronic television system. He was also the first person to demonstrate such a system to the public.^[4][5] Farnsworth developed a television system complete with receiver and camera, which he produced commercially in the form of the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation, from 1938 to 1951, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.^[6][7]

In later life, Farnsworth invented a small nuclear fusion device, the Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor, or simply “fusor”, employing inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC). Although not a practical device for generating nuclear energy, the fusor serves as a viable source of neutrons.^[8] The design of this device has been the acknowledged inspiration for other fusion approaches including the Polywell reactor concept in terms of a general approach to fusion design.^[9] Farnsworth held 300 patents, mostly in radio and television….

Farnsworth worked out the principle of the image dissector in the summer of 1921, not long before his fifteenth birthday, and demonstrated the first working version on September 7, 1927, having turned 21 the previous August. A farm boy, his inspiration for scanning an image as series of lines came from the back-and-forth motion used to plow a field.^[50][51] In the course of a patent interference suit brought by RCA in 1934 and decided in February 1935, his high school chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, produced a sketch he had made of a blackboard drawing Farnsworth had shown him in spring 1922. Farnsworth won the suit; RCA appealed the decision in 1936 and lost.^[52] Although Farnsworth was paid royalties by RCA, he never became wealthy. The video camera tube that evolved from the combined work of Farnsworth, Zworykin and many others was used in all television cameras until the late 20th century, when alternate technologies such as charge-coupled devices started to appear.^{[citation needed]}

Farnsworth also developed the “image oscillite”, a cathode ray tube that displayed the images captured by the image dissector.^[53]

Farnsworth called his device an image dissector because it converted individual elements of the image into electricity one at a time. He replaced the spinning disks with caesium, an element that emits electrons when exposed to light.

On this day in 1977, Wisconsin holds her first judicial recall election:

Dane County citizens voted Judge Archie Simonson out of office. Simonson called rape a normal male reaction to provocative female attire and modern society’s permissive attitude toward sex. He made this statment while explaining why he sentenced a 15-year-old to only one year of probation for raping a 16-year-old girl. After the recall election, Simonson was replaced by Moria Krueger, the first woman judge elected in Dane County history. [Source: Initiative & Referendum Institute].

Wednesday’s JigZone puzzle is of a kayak by a lake:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:26 AM and sunset is 7:19 PM, for 12h 52m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 6:15 PM, and her Common Council at 6:30 PM.

A century ago, on this day in 1916, Piggly Wiggly opens the first self-service grocery in America:

Piggly Wiggly was the first true self-service grocery store.^[3] It was founded on September 6, 1916, at 79 Jefferson Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, by Clarence Saunders. A replica of the original store has been constructed in the Memphis Pink Palace Museum and Planetarium, a mansion that Saunders built as his private residence, which was later sold to the city.

The origin of the name “Piggly Wiggly” is unknown. When asked why he had chosen it, Saunders said “So people will ask that very question”. Theories include Saunders seeing some pigs struggling to get over a fence, or a reference to the “This Little Piggy” nursery rhyme.^[4]

At the time of its founding, grocery stores did not allow their customers to gather their own goods. Instead, a customer would give a list of items to a clerk, who would then go through the store himself, gathering them. Like full-service gas stations, this created a greater cost, therefore higher prices. Piggly Wiggly introduced the innovation of allowing customers to go through the store, gathering their own goods. This cut costs, allowing for lower prices.^[5] Others were initially experimenting with this format as well, which initially came to be known as a “grocerteria”, reminding people of cafeterias, another relatively new, self-service idea.^[6]

Piggly Wiggly Corporation secured the self-service format and issued franchises to hundreds of grocery retailers for the operation of its stores. The concept of the “self-serving store” was patented^[7] by Saunders in 1917. Customers at Piggly Wiggly entered the store through a turnstile and walked through four aisles to view the store’s 605 items sold in packages and organized into departments. The customers selected merchandise as they continued through the maze to the cashier. Instantly, packaging and brand recognition became important to companies and consumers.

JigZone today offers a puzzle of a window: