1901, THE FIRST GREAT TEXAS OIL GUSHER IS DISCOVERED

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the first great Texas oil gusher, that was discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas, on a day like today in 1901.

Spindletop is an oil field located in the southern portion of Beaumont, Texas, in the United States. The Spindletop dome was derived from the Louann Salt evaporite layer of the Jurassic geologic period.

On January 10, 1901, a well at Spindletop struck oil (came in). The Spindletop gusher blew for 9 days at a rate estimated at 16,000 m3 of oil per day. Gulf Oil and Texaco, now part of Chevron Corporation, were formed to develop production at Spindletop. The Spindletop discovery led the United States into the oil age. Prior to Spindletop, oil was primarily used for lighting and as a lubricant. Because of the quantity of oil discovered, burning petroleum as a fuel for mass consumption suddenly became economically feasible.

The frenzy of oil exploration and the economic development it generated in the state became known as the Texas oil boom. The United States soon became the world's leading oil producer.

Pattillo Higgins sought a source of natural gas for his brickyard and envisioned producing oil and gas from Sour Spring Mound, convinced it was an anticline. The eventual oil field would be called Spindletop, after a hill one mile to the east, and four miles south of Beaumont. The hill had the appearance of a spindle due to trees on its hilltop (cimas de boneteros, tops of spindle-trees).

The mound was famous for its gas seeps, which Higgins lit for his Baptist Sunday school class. In August 1892, George W. O'Brien, George W. Carroll, Pattillo Higgins, and J.F. Lanier formed the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company to do exploratory drilling. The company tried drilling two test wells, but ran into trouble trying to penetrate below 90 m, encountering a quicksand-like formation. Higgins quit the venture in 1896.

Pattillo Higgins then teamed with Captain Anthony F. Lucas, the leading expert in the U.S. on salt-dome formations. Lucas made a lease agreement in 1899 with the Gladys City Company and a subsequent agreement with Higgins. Lucas drilled to 180 m before running out of money. He secured additional funding from John H. Galey, James M. Guffey, and Andrew Mellon of Pittsburgh, and the Guffey Petroleum Company was formed. Yet, the deal left Lucas with only an eighth share, and Higgins with nothing.

Lucas and Galey employed the Hamill brothers for the drilling, while Galey picked the well site on land leased from the Beaumont Pasture Company. This tract of land was near the top of Sour Spring Mound. The well was spudded on 27 October 1900.

At 50 m, they hit the quicksands that had stopped earlier efforts. A solution consisted of driving an eight-inch casing pipe through the sand over the next 20 days, with a four-inch wash pipe to flush out the sand from the bottom of the hole with water. At around 80 m, Lucas improvised a check valve to prevent the increased gas pressure from forcing sand into the casing, enabling them to reach a depth of 140 m, and past the 90 m thick quicksand formation.

At a depth of 200 m, they adopted eighteen-hour shifts for continuous operations, drilling during the day, and keeping circulation going at night, to prevent a gas blowout. In early December, they hit a pocket of coarse water sand, when they adopted another innovation, mixing mud into the water which prevented the heavier water from dissipating into the sand. This drilling mud stabilized the hole, and soon they were drilling into a clay formation called gumbo.

At 240 m they reached limestone, and on 9 December, oil started showing up in the slush pit. The oil was coming from a 10 m thick oil sand at a depth of 270 m. Yet, that oil sand was too soft and fine to develop at that time, and Caroline Lucas convinced Galey to continue drilling to 370 m, per contract.

On Christmas Eve, they landed six-inch pipe below the sand at 270 m, then enjoyed the holiday, returning New Year's Day. They hit another gas pocket, which forced water and mud out of the hole for ten minutes. Then, at 290 m, they reached a sulphur layer, followed by more layers of limestone.

On 10 January, they needed to replace the dull fishtail drill bit. While lowering the pipe down the hole, they only got to about 35 joints of pipe, or about 210 m, before a low rumble sent mud, and then drill stem out of the hole. This was followed by silence, an explosion of more mud and gas, more silence, a flow of oil, and then a loud roar.

On January 10, 1901, at a depth of 347 m, what is known as the Lucas Gusher or the Lucas Geyser blew oil over 50 m in the air at a rate of 16,000 m3/d per day. Nine days passed before the well was brought under control using a Christmas Tree devised by the Hamills.

By late June, there were 13 gushers on Spindletop. These included those by David R. Beatty on 26 March, the Heywood Brothers Oil Company, two more from the J.M. Guffey Company, and the Higgins Oil and Fuel Company on 18 April.  Then in July 1901, the Hogg-Swayne Syndicate leased 15 acres from J.M. Guffey.

Spindletop was the largest gusher the world had seen and catapulted Beaumont into an oil-fueled boomtown. 

Beaumont's population of 10,000 tripled in 3 months and eventually rose to 50,000. Speculation led land prices to increase rapidly. By the end of 1902, more than 500 companies had been formed and 285 wells were in operation.

Spindletop produced 17,420,949 barrels of oil in 1902, but only half that much in 1903 as production declined. Yet Spindletop inspired wildcatting along the Gulf Coastal Plain. Significant salt dome oil fields included Sour Lake and Saratoga in 1902, Batson Prairie in 1903, the Humble oil field in 1905, and the Goose Creek Oil Field in 1908.

Standard Oil, which then had a monopoly or near-monopoly on the petroleum industry in the eastern states, was prevented from moving aggressively into the new oilfield by state antitrust laws. Populist sentiment against Standard Oil was particularly strong at the time of the Spindletop discovery.

In 1900, an oil-products marketing company affiliated with Standard Oil had been banned from the state for its cutthroat business practices. Although Standard built refineries in the area, it was unable to dominate the new Gulf Coast oil fields the way it had in the eastern states. As a result, a number of startup oil companies at Spindletop, such as Texaco and Gulf Oil, grew into formidable competitors to Standard Oil.

Production at Spindletop began to decline rapidly after 1902, and the wells produced only 1,600 m3/d by 1904. Unfortunately the developers had signed a 20-year contract to sell 25,000 barrels per day at $0.25 per barrel to Shell Oil. When the price climbed above $0.35 per barrel, the operation was stressed and Mellon who had lent money for Spindle Top's development took control of the company, won a lawsuit allowing Mellon to renege on the contract, and in 1907, created Gulf Oil.

On November 14, 1925, the Yount-Lee Oil Company brought in its McFaddin No. 2 at a depth around 800 m, sparking a second boom, which culminated in the field's peak production year of 1927, during which 3.3 GL were produced.  

Spindletop continued as a productive source of oil until about 1936. Stripper wells continue producing to this day. It was then mined for sulfur from the 1950s to about 1975.

More information: Drillers

In the 20th century, the United States endured
two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts;
the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics;
oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president.
Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

Warren Buffett

STEVE JOBS INTRODUCES THE ORIGINAL IPHONE IN 2007

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the first iPhone, that was introduced by Steve Jobs, on a day like today in 2007.

The iPhone, retroactively referred to as the iPhone 2G or iPhone 1, is the first iPhone model and the first smartphone developed and marketed by Apple Inc. 

After years of rumours and speculation, it was officially announced on January 9, 2007, and was released in the United States on June 29, 2007. Development of the iPhone began in 2005 and continued in complete secrecy until its public unveiling at Macworld 2007. The device broke with prevailing mobile phone designs by eliminating most physical hardware buttons and eschewing a stylus for its finger-friendly touch interface.

The iPhone instead featured only a few physical buttons and a touch screen. It featured quad-band GSM cellular connectivity with GPRS and EDGE support for data transfer, and it used continuous internet access and onboard processing to support features unrelated to voice communication. Its successor, the iPhone 3G, was announced on June 9, 2008.

The iPhone quickly became Apple's most successful product, with later generations propelling it to become one of the world's most profitable companies. The introduction of the App Store allowed established companies and startup developers to build careers and earn money, via the platform, while providing consumers with new ways to access information and connect with other people. The iPhone largely appealed to the general public, as opposed to the business community BlackBerry and IBM focused on at the time. By integrating existing technology and expanding on usability, the iPhone turned the smartphone industry on its head.

In 2000, Apple CEO Steve Jobs envisioned an Apple touchscreen product that the user could interact with directly with their fingers rather than using a stylus. The stylus was a common tool for many existing touchscreen devices at the time including Apple's own Newton, launched in 1993. He decided that the device would require a triple layered capacitive multi-touch touch screen, a very new and advanced technology at the time. This helped with removing the physical keyboard and mouse. The same as was common at the time for tablet computers, human machine interfaces, and point of sale systems.

Jobs recruited a group of Apple engineers to investigate the idea as a side project. When Jobs reviewed the prototype and its user interface, he saw the potential in developing the concept into a mobile phone to compete with already established brands in the then emerging market for touch screen phones. The whole effort was called Project Purple 2 and began in 2005. Apple purchased the iphone.org domain in December 1999.

Apple created the device during a secretive and unprecedented collaboration with Cingular Wireless, now part of AT&T. The development cost of the collaboration was estimated to have been $150 million over a thirty-month period. Apple rejected the design by committee approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessful collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular Wireless gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house.

The original iPhone was introduced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, in a keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo held in Moscone West in San Francisco, California. 

In his address, Jobs said, This is a day that I have been looking forward to for two and a half years, and that today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. Jobs introduced the iPhone as a combination of three devices: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communicator.

Six weeks prior to the iPhone's release, the plastic screen was replaced with glass. This was after Jobs was upset when he saw that his keys scratched the prototype in his pocket. The quick switch led to a bidding process for a manufacturing contractor that was won by Foxconn, which had just opened up a new wing of its Shenzhen factory complex specifically for this bid.

The original iPhone received largely positive reviews.

More information: Seamgen

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator...
these are NOT three separate devices!
And we are calling it iPhone!
Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
And here it is.

Steve Jobs

HERMAN HOLLERITH & HIS PUNCHED CARD CALCULATOR

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Herman Hollerith, the German-American inventor who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards and patented on a day like today in 1889.

Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860-November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting.

His invention of the punched card tabulating machine, patented in 1884, marks the beginning of the era of mechanized binary code and semiautomatic data processing systems, and his concept dominated that landscape for nearly a century.

Hollerith founded a company that was amalgamated in 1911 with several other companies to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company.

In 1924, the company was renamed International Business Machines (IBM) and became one of the largest and most successful companies of the 20th century. Hollerith is regarded as one of the seminal figures in the development of data processing.

Herman Hollerith was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1860, where he also spent his early childhood.

At the suggestion of John Shaw Billings, Hollerith developed a mechanism using electrical connections to increment a counter, recording information.

Hollerith determined that data in specified locations on a card, arranged in rows and columns, could be counted or sorted electromechanically. A description of this system, An Electric Tabulating System (1889), was submitted by Hollerith to Columbia University as his doctoral thesis, and is reprinted in Brian Randell's 1982 The Origins of Digital Computers, Selected Papers.

On January 8, 1889, Hollerith was issued U.S. Patent 395,782.

Hollerith had left teaching and began working for the United States Census Bureau in the year he filed his first patent application. Titled Art of Compiling Statistics, it was filed on September 23, 1884; U.S. Patent 395,782 was granted on January 8, 1889.

Hollerith initially did business under his own name, as The Hollerith Electric Tabulating System, specializing in punched card data processing equipment. He provided tabulators and other machines under contract for the Census Office, which used them for the 1890 census. The net effect of the many changes from the 1880 census: the larger population, the data items to be collected, the Census Bureau headcount, the scheduled publications, and the use of Hollerith's electromechanical tabulators, reduced the time required to process the census from eight years for the 1880 census to six years for the 1890 census.

In 1896, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company (in 1905 renamed The Tabulating Machine Company). Many major census bureaus around the world leased his equipment and purchased his cards, as did major insurance companies. Hollerith's machines were used for censuses in England & Wales, Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria, Canada, France, Norway, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, and again in the 1900 U.S. census.

He invented the first automatic card-feed mechanism and the first keypunch. The 1890 Tabulator was hardwired to operate on 1890 Census cards. A control panel in his 1906 Type I Tabulator simplified rewiring for different jobs. The 1920s removable control panel supported prewiring and near instant job changing. These inventions were among the foundations of the data processing industry, and Hollerith's punched cards (later used for computer input/output) continued in use for almost a century.

In 1911, four corporations, including Hollerith's firm, were amalgamated to form a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). Under the presidency of Thomas J. Watson, CTR was renamed International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) in 1924.

By 1933, The Tabulating Machine Company name had disappeared as subsidiary companies were subsumed by IBM.

Herman Hollerith died November 17, 1929. Hollerith is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in the Georgetown neighbourhood of Washington, D.C.

Hollerith cards were named after Herman Hollerith, as were Hollerith strings and Hollerith constants.

More information: Adam Smith Institute

 You can have data without information,
but you cannot have information without data.

Daniel Keys Moran

JUAN RULFO, ONE OF THE GREATEST MEXICAN WRITERS

Today, The Grandma has been reading some works written by Juan Rulfo, the Mexican writer, who died on a day like today in 1986.

Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, best known as Juan Rulfo (16 May 1917-7 January 1986), was a Mexican writer, screenwriter, and photographer. 

He is best known for two literary works, the 1955 novel Pedro Páramo, and the collection of short stories El Llano en llamas (1953). This collection includes the popular tale ¡Diles que no me maten! (Tell Them Not to Kill Me!).

Rulfo was born in 1917 in Apulco, Jalisco (Disputed as being in San Gabriel, Jalisco) Mexico, although he was registered at Sayula, in the home of his paternal grandfather. Rulfo's birth year was often listed as 1918, because he had provided an inaccurate date to get into the military academy that his uncle, David Pérez Rulfo -a colonel working for the government- directed.

After his father was killed in 1923 and his mother died in 1927, Rulfo's grandmother raised him in Guadalajara, Jalisco. Their extended family consisted of landowners whose fortunes were ruined by the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War of 1926-1928, a Roman Catholic revolt against the persecutions of Christians by the Mexican government, following the Mexican Revolution.

Rulfo was sent to study in the Luis Silva School, where he lived from 1928 to 1932. He completed six years of elementary school and a special seventh year from which he graduated as a bookkeeper, though he never practiced that profession. 

Rulfo attended a seminary (analogous to a secondary school) from 1932 to 1934, but did not attend a university afterwards, as the University of Guadalajara was closed due to a strike and because Rulfo had not taken preparatory school courses.

Rulfo moved to Mexico City, where he entered the National Military Academy, which he left after three months. He then hoped to study law at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In 1936, Rulfo was able to audit courses in literature at the University, because he obtained a job as an immigration file clerk through his uncle.
At the University Rulfo began writing under the tutelage of a coworker, Efrén Hernández. 

In 1944, Rulfo co-founded the literary journal Pan. Later, he was able to advance in his career and travel throughout Mexico as an immigration agent. In 1946, he started as a foreman for Goodrich-Euzkadi, but his mild temperament led him to prefer working as a wholesale traveling sales agent. This obligated him to travel throughout all of southern Mexico, until he was fired in 1952 for asking for a radio for his company car.

Rulfo obtained a fellowship at the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. There, between 1952 and 1954, he was able to write two books.

The first book was a collection of harshly realistic short stories, El Llano en llamas (1953). The stories centered on life in rural Mexico around the time of the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War. Among the best-known stories are ¡Diles que no me maten! (Tell Them Not To Kill Me!), a story about an old man, set to be executed, who is captured by order of a colonel, who happens to be the son of a man whom the condemned man had killed about forty years ago, the story contains echoes of the biblical Cain and Abel theme as well as themes critical to the Mexican Revolution such as land rights and land use; and No oyes ladrar los perros (Don't You Hear the Dogs Barking), about a man carrying his estranged, adult, wounded son on his back to find a doctor.

The second book was Pedro Páramo (1955), a short novel about a man named Juan Preciado who travels to his recently deceased mother's hometown, Comala, to find his father, only to come across a literal ghost town -populated, that is, by spectral figures. Initially, the novel met with cool critical reception and sold only two thousand copies during the first four years; later, however, the book became highly acclaimed. Pedro Páramo was a key influence for Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez. Pedro Páramo has been translated into more than 30 languages, and the English version has sold more than a million copies in the United States.

The book went through several changes in name. In two letters written in 1947 to his fiancée Clara Aparicio, he refers to the novel he was writing as Una estrella junto a la luna (A Star Next to the Moon), saying that it was causing him some trouble. During the last stages of writing, he wrote in journals that the title would be Los murmullos (The Murmurs). With the assistance of a grant from the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, Rulfo was able to finish the book between 1953 and 1954; it was published in 1955.

In passages of the novel Pedro Páramo, the influence of American novelist William Faulkner is notorious, according to Rulfo's former friend, philologist Antonio Alatorre, in an interview with the latter made by journalists of Mexican newspaper El Universal in November 1998, which was published on 31 October 2010.

Between 1956 and 1958, Rulfo worked on a novella entitled El gallo de oro (The Golden Cockerel), which was not published until 1980. A revised and corrected edition was issued posthumously in 2010. 

The Fundación Rulfo possesses fragments of two unfinished novels, La cordillera and Ozumacín. Rulfo told interviewer Luis Harss that he had written and destroyed an earlier novel set in Mexico City.

From 1954 to 1957, Rulfo collaborated with La comisión del rio Papaloapan, a government institution working on socioeconomic development of the settlements along the Papaloapan River.

From 1962 until his death in 1986, he worked as editor for the National Institute for Indigenous People.

More information: BBC

 Nothing can last forever.
There isn't any memory,
no matter how intense,
that doesn't fade out at last.

Juan Rulfo

'WE THREE KINGS OF ORIENT ARE' BY JOHN H. HOPKINS

We three Kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar
Field and fountain
Moor and mountain
Following yonder star

O star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

Born a King on Bethlehem's plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again
King for ever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign

O star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

Frankincense to offer have I
Incense owns a Deity nigh
Prayer and praising, all men raising
Worship Him, God most high
You might also like

O star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

Myrrh is mine
Its bitter perfume breathes
A life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone cold tomb

O star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

Glorious now behold Him arise
King and God and Sacrifice!
Al-le-lu-ia, al-le-lu-ia
Heaven to earth replies

O star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

John Henry Hopkins Jr., 1857

 

 

En la nit, tres mudats

cavallers fan sa via.

Són tres reis d’Orient
que han sortit d’un país
sense nom.

Si teniu en el cor fantasia,
inventeu-ne un de bell
per al món més feliç.

 

In the night, three molts
knights make their way.
They are three kings of the East
who have left a country
with no name.
If you have fantasy in your heart,
invent a beautiful one
for the happiest world.
 

Joana Raspall

THE SOCIET VENERA 5 SPACE PROBE IS LAUNCHED IN 1969

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Venera 5, the Soviet space probe that was launched on a day like today in 1969.

Venera 5, in Russian Венера-5 meaning Venus 5, was a space probe in the Soviet space program Venera for the exploration of Venus.

Venera 5 was launched towards Venus to obtain atmospheric data. The spacecraft was very similar to Venera 4 although it was of a stronger design. The launch was conducted using a Molniya-M rocket, flying from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

When the atmosphere of Venus was approached, a capsule weighing 405 kg and containing scientific instruments was jettisoned from the main spacecraft. During satellite descent towards the surface of Venus, a parachute opened to slow the rate of descent. For 53 minutes on 16 May 1969, while the capsule was suspended from the parachute, data from the Venusian atmosphere were returned.

It landed at 3°S 18°E. The spacecraft also carried a medallion bearing the State Coat of Arms of the Soviet Union and a bas-relief of Lenin to the night side of Venus.

Given the results from Venera 4, the Venera 5 and Venera 6 landers contained new chemical analysis experiments tuned to provide more precise measurements of the atmosphere's components. Knowing the atmosphere was extremely dense, the parachutes were also made smaller so the capsule would reach its full crush depth before running out of power as Venera 4 had done.

Venera 5 was launched into an Earth parking orbit on 5 January 1969 at 06:28:08 UTC and then from a Tyazheliy Sputnik (69-001C) towards Venus. After a mid-course maneuver on 14 March 1969, the probe was released from the bus on 16 May 1969 at a distance of 37,000 km from Venus. The probe entered the nightside atmosphere at 06:01 UTC and when the velocity slowed to 210 m/s the parachute deployed and transmissions to Earth began. The probe sent read-outs every 45 seconds for 53 minutes before finally succumbing to the temperature and pressure at roughly 320 °C and 2,610 kilopascals.

The photometer detected a light level of 250 watts per square meter and confirmed the high temperatures, pressures, and carbon dioxide composition of the atmosphere found by Venera 4.

More information: NASA

Anyone who has spent any time in space
will love it for the rest of their lives.
I achieved my childhood dream of the sky.

Valentina Tereshkova

JACOB LUDWIG KARL GRIMM, LAW OF LINGUISTICS & FOLK

Today, The Grandma has been reading some tales written by Jacob Grimm, the German linguist, philologist and folklorist, who was born on a day like today in 1785.

Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785-20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He formulated Grimm's law of linguistics, and was the co-author of the Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie, and the editor of Grimms' Fairy Tales. He was the older brother of Wilhelm Grimm; together, they were the literary duo known as the Brothers Grimm.

Jacob Grimm was born 4 January 1785, in Hanau in Hesse-Kassel. His father, Philipp Grimm, was a lawyer who died while Jacob was a child, and his mother Dorothea was left with a very small income. Her sister was the lady of the chamber to the Landgravine of Hesse, and she helped to support and educate the family. Jacob was sent to the public school at Kassel in 1798 with his younger brother Wilhelm.

In 1802, he went to the University of Marburg where he studied law, a profession for which he had been intended by his father. His brother joined him at Marburg a year later, having just recovered from a severe illness, and likewise began the study of law.

Grimm's Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (History of the German Language) explores German history hidden in the words of the German language and is the oldest linguistic history of the Teutonic tribes. He collected scattered words and allusions from classical literature and tried to determine the relationship between the German language and those of the Getae, Thracians, Scythians, and other nations whose languages were known only through Greek and Latin authors. 

Grimm's results were later greatly modified by a wider range of available comparisons and improved methods of investigation. Many questions that he raised remain obscure due to the lack of surviving records of the languages, but his book's influence was profound.

Grimm's famous Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar) was the outcome of his purely philological work. He drew on the work of past generations, from the humanists onwards, consulting an enormous collection of materials in the form of text editions, dictionaries, and grammars, mostly uncritical and unreliable.

Jacob is recognized for enunciating Grimm's law, the Germanic Sound Shift, which was first observed by the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask. Grimm's law, also known as the Rask-Grimm Rule or the First Germanic Sound Shift, was the first law in linguistics concerning a non-trivial sound change.

Grimm's monumental dictionary of the German Language, the Deutsches Wörterbuch, was started in 1838 and first published in 1854.

Jacob Grimm died on 20 September 1863, in Berlin, Germany from disease, at the age of 78.

More information: University of Pittsburgh

How often when we are comfortable,
we begin to long for something new!

Jacob Grimm