Whewell’s Gazette: Year 2, Vol. #25

Whewell’s Gazette

Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Year 2, Volume #25

Monday 04 December 2015

EDITORIAL:

Assuming you survived the artillery barrage and the alcohol excesses of the New year’s celebrations you now have before you the first 2016 edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list, which continues to bring you are that we could find of the histories of science, technology and medicine over the last seven days throughout cyberspace.

Strictly the New Year’s celebration welcoming the beginning of the year 2016 CE only apply to those whose lives are regulated by the arbitrary prescriptions of the Gregorian calendar, which like all calendars is merely a social convention.

Those who live according to the Jewish calendar are still in the middle of the year AM 5776 which will end at sunset on 2 October 2016 according to the Gregorian calendar. The year will also end around 2 October for those living according to the Islamic calendar but in their case it will be the end of the year 1437 AH. Persians and Afghanis who live according to the Solar Hijri calendar will celebrate the end of their year 1394 on 19 march 2016. The tradition Chinese New Year celebrating the beginning of year 33 in their 60-year cycle will be on 8 February 2016 according to the Gregorian calendar.

For those who prefer to mark the passing of time according to the four principal points of the solar year, vernal or spring equinox falls on 20 March 2016 and the autumnal equinox on 22 September. The summer solstice is on 20 June and the winter solstice is on 21 December.

Whichever calendar you follow and whenever your year begins and ends we hope you will continue to follow Whewell’s Gazette the whole year round.

Quotes of the week:

“The problem with the future is that is keeps turning into the present.” – Bill Watterson “Calvin & Hobbes”

Math with Bad Drawings: A Mathematician’s New Year’s Resolutions

“I just read this on @‪TheAtlantic “There is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever” and then my brain fell out of my ear”. – @Schrokit

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”― Rudyard Kipling h/t @ESA_History

Jonathan Swift

“Consider in last 10 seconds of 2015 – If earth´s age would be 1 year, written history of humankind would start at 23:59:46” – David Bressan (@David_Bressan)

“Smoking is a leading cause of statistics.” – Fletcher Knebel h/t @intmath

“Statistics means never having to say you’re certain”. – Murray Bourne (@intmath)

“I have not time nor Paper to describe this horrid spot of Hills, the like of which I never yet saw” – Halley unimpressed by Snowdonia. h/t @KateMorant

“Often history will work when nothing else will.” – J.H. Robinson (1863-1936) h/t @tabosaur

“…the pursuit of evidence is probably the most pressing moral imperative of our time.” – Alice Dreger (@AliceDreger)

“Anyone who finds “Lord of the Flies” incredible has not spent enough time in a British Isles’ secondary school”. – Liam Heneghan (@DublinSoil)

“Man produces evil as a bee produces honey…” William Golding (1965) h/t @DublinSoil

“What distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is our capacity for hypocrisy”. – Peter Coles (@telescoper)

“I would like 2016 to be the year when people remembered that science is a method of investigation and NOT a belief system”. – John Cleese (@JohnCleese)

Birthday of the Week:

Ceres the asteroid discovered 1 January 1801

A view of Ceres in natural colour, pictured by the Dawn spacecraft in May 2015.

Motherboard: The 19^th Century Space Controversy That Sparked a Planet Truther Movement

astropa.unipa.it: Bode’s Law and the Discovery of Ceres

The first element transmutation 3 January 1919 by Ernest Rutherford

AHF: Ernest Rutherford

Isaac Asimov celebrated his birth on 2 January 1920

PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCE:

Royal Museums Greenwich: Conserving Galileo

AIP: Maarten Schmidt

MSFC history Office: “The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration”

erittenhouse: The Art of Making Leyden Jars and Batteries According to Benjamin Franklin

AHF: Klaus Fuchs

Darin Hayton: Maria Wants Her Sextant Back

The first building completed at Vassar College was the observatory, long called the Maria Mitchell Observatory.

Cooper Hewitt: The Great Moon Hoax of 1835

Atlas Obscura: In 1844, the Philippines Skipped a Day, and it Took Decades for the Rest of the World to Notice

Perimeter Institute: Pioneering Women of Physics

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Just another day

APS: Historic Sites Initiative

BBC Future: How the most expensive structure in the world was built

The ISS may lack the drama of missions like Apollo 13, but that’s how mission control would prefer it (Credit: Nasa)

New Historian: Demon Star Influenced Egyptian Calendars

Huff Post: The Blog: Peake and the Women that Science Forgot

AHF: John von Neumann

AHF: Jumbo

Atlas Obscura: Jantar Mantar

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Cornell University Library: Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections: Persuasive Cartography

Barron Maps Blog: The persuasive power of maps – the Danzig Crisis & Nazi Propaganda map postcards, 1933–1939

Big Think: Is This Map Australia’s Clumsy Attempt at Fabricating a Japanese Invasion During WWII?

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

Thomas Morris: Sober up the nineteenth-century way

National Journal: That is the Brain that Shot President James Garfield: But why? A 135-year-old mystery

Chemical Heritage Magazine: Mummies and the Usefulness of Death

Atlas Obscura: The Toothbrush that Grows on Trees

Embryo Project: Test-Tube Baby

ODNB: Scarburgh, Sir Charles

The Victorianist: The ‘lady Doctor’ and the ‘helpless Native’: Constructing the Female Doctor/Patient Relationship in Nineteenth-Century India

Florence Dissent (From Indian Medical Record). Source: Library, Royal College of Surgeons of England

Ptak Science Books: The Leech Explorers of 1833

Thomas Morris: The child that cried in the womb

Advances in the History of Psychology: Special Issue on Cinema and Neuroscience

Greg Jenner: How did women deal with their periods? The history of Menstruation

Advances in the History of Psychology: The Pasteur Institute and the Study of the Animal Mind

Vesalius Census: New Blog

Vesalius Census: Bibliography as Search Engine

Thomas Morris: Death from too much pie

Wellcome Library: The ‘disease woman’ of the Wellcome Apocalypse

Source: Wellcome Library

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases: The 1899 United States Kissing Bug Epidemic

Thomas Morris: Impaled on a stake

British Library: Vesalius’s Anatomy

The Guardian: Opium-soaked tampons, voodoo elixirs and leeches: welcome to New Orleans’ Pharmacy Museum

CHF: Tryals and Tribulations: In 17^th-century England, doctors battled illness and each other

TECHNOLOGY:

Ptak Science Books: Illustrating the Effect of Destructive Capacity: August, 1914

erittenhouse: The David H.H. Felix Collection and the Beginnings of the Smithsonian’s Museum of History of Technology

Corning Museum of Glass: Souvenirs and Mold-Blown Glass for the Marketplace

Techné: Reading Feynman Into Nanotechnology: A Text for a New Science (pdf)

Conciatore: Ultramarine Blue

Conciatore: Containing Hooke’s Tears

Glass drops or tears coated in glue,
after detonation, (cross section is left)
from Robert Hooke’s
Micrographia 1664, between p. 10, 11.

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Rocket Engine, Liquid Fuel, R. Goddard

The Vault of the Atomic Space Age: The GE Performance Television

Newsworks: First flight or historic hop?

Mental Floss: The Theatrophone: The 19^th-Century Version of Livestreaming

Ptak Science Books: Troncet’s Arithmograpphe, the “Instant Calculator” (1892)

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Demonstrations in Europe

A refinement of the 1905 Flyer, the Wright Model A was flown on demonstration flights in Europe in 1908 and 1909.
Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Smithsonian.com: From Edison’s Light Bulb to the Ball in Time Square

The Telegraph: Robert Boyle’s prophetic scientific predictions from the 17^th century go on display at the Royal Society

Canadian Science and Technology Museums: Collection Online: Cycle, stationary

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

American Scientist: Rereading Darwin

Medium: We’ve been talking about climate change for a long time

The Royal Society: Notes and Records: A Yankee at Oxford: John William Draper at the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford, 30 June 1860

Portrait of John Draper engraved by John Sartain
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Geschichte der Geologie: Vom Bergbau, Waldrodung und Umweltzerstörung

es.ucsc.edu: The Age of the Earth Debate (pdf)

The Public Domain Review: Sex and Science in Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora

Georgian Gentleman: Saartjie Baartman – a reminder of a tragic life – and death – two hundred years ago

The Three Graces – A midget, the Hottentot Venus and an albino woman, shown courtesy of the British Museum

Science League of America: Absurdly Inadequate

Ptak Science Books: Antiquarian Comparative Analysis: Lakes, Islands, Mountains

Once Upon a Time…: A Dino-Lover’s Dream – 1853’s New Year’s Eve Dinner in Crystal Palace Park

Forbes: How to Celebrate the New Year Like a Victorian Paleontologist

Dinner in the Iguanodon Model, at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, London Illustrated News, 7 January 1854 (image in public domain).

Blink: Death of the floating world

Process: Has Environmental History Lost Its Way?

TrowellBlazers: TrowelBlazers 2015 Review

Geschichte der Geologie: Gottes Werk und Teufels Beitrag: Der Vulkan als Gott und Höllentor

CHEMISTRY:

Chemical Heritage Magazine: Cabinets for the Curious

Len Fisher: How Robert Boyle and I Became Chemists

Beautiful Chemistry.net: Beautiful Chemistry Instrument

Boyle’s Vacuum Pump (1660)
Reproduced based on Robert Boyle’s book, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air, and Its Effects (1660).

CHF: Robert Boyle

META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:

Environmental History: Volume 21 Issue 1 January 2016 Table of Contents

eRittenhouse: Vol. 26 2015 Issue 74 Table of Contents

Brooklyn Magazine: From Bumper Cars to Torah Taxidermy: A Guide to 25 of Brooklyn’s Most Unusual Museums