Frank Eugene Austin was born June 12, 1873 in Amesbury, Ma. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1895. In 1896, he, Prof. Edwin Frost and Dr. Gilman Frost took the first x-ray photograph of the human body when they x-rayed the hand of a boy who had fallen while ice skating. In 1901 Austin was hired as a Professor of Electrical Engineering by the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, from which he retired in 1921. In the years following retirement he established "The Austin Workshop" where children worked with tools and where he developed a variety of gadgets and toys. Out of his work with children came the idea for an ant farm which was developed in 1931 and became a commercial success. Prof. Austin was also the author of several books on engineering and was an inventor. He died in Florida at the age of 91 in 1964.
