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
Volume #46
Monday 04 May 2015
EDITORIAL:
You are feasting your eyes on the forty-sixth edition of Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list bringing you all the best in the histories of science technology and medicine out of the Internet over the last seven days.
We all have a vague idea that technology is somehow socio-politically neutral. Machine, tools etc. have no feelings and so are free from all forms of prejudice but is the really true? Think how many tools and appliances are designed to be used by right-handed people causing left-handed people all sorts of problems and stress. The most visual example being Jimi Hendrix, possibly the greatest rock guitarist ever, playing a right-handed guitar upside down. These days any reasonably sized town has a left-handed shop supplying all sorts of everyday tools and gadgets for the left-handed minority.
But racism, is it possible for technology to be racist. There is a famous episode known to jazz fans concerning the electronic instrument the Theremin. For reasons that I forget the Theremin doesn’t work for some people and unfortunately one of those people was the black jazz keyboarder, and eccentric, Sun Ra, who was a big fan of the early electronic instruments. After seeing and hearing it demonstrated and then being frustrated by his own failure to produce a sound out of the Theremin, Sun Ra declared the instrument to be racist!
It’s almost impossible to suppress a wry smile at the image of the great Sun Ra condemning a machine as racist but it turns out to be no laughing matter that colour photography is really racist. Colour film and colour cameras are optimised from white skin tones with the result that it is very difficult with colour film systems to depict black people properly. To learn more read the following articles. For me this opens up the question, are there other forms of prejudiced technology?
Priceonomics: How Photography Was Optimized for White Skin Colour
Youtube: Ha ha ha HP Computer’s face tracking camera doesn’t recognize black people
NPR: Light and Dark: The Racial Biases That Remains in Photography
Christina O’Gorman 1913
Photo: Mervyn O’Gorman (1871-1958)
Quotes of the week:
“Be the person your dog thinks you are.” – Bill Murray
“The second most important job in the world, second only to being a good parent, is being a good teacher.” – S.G. Ellis
“To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.” – Aristotle
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
‘…a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance’ – Terry Pratchet
“We live in a culture where we don’t embrace failure.” How will you know your strengths w/o exploration – Deborah Berebichez
“Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing. ”― Gertrude Stein
“If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.” – Thomas Hardy
“The problem with straining at gnats is that it increases the chances of swallowing camels”. – John D. Cook
“I hate travelling & explorers…adventure has no place in the anthropologists profession.” – Claude Lévi-Strauss
“Only a man who sees giants can ever stand upon their shoulders.” – @fadesingh
“People will mock religion as a fantasy for those who won’t face reality, but think building warp drive is just a matter of can-do spirit”. – Sean M Carroll
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
Corpus Newtonicum: Why? You endeavoured to embroil me with women
Brain Pickings: Einstein on the Common Language of Science in a Rare 1941 Recording
NPR: Hubble’s Other Telescope and the Day it Rocked Our World
The Hooker 100-inch reflecting telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, just outside Los Angeles. Edwin Hubble’s chair, on an elevating platform, is visible at left. A view from this scope first told Hubble our galaxy isn’t the only one.
Courtesy of The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science Collection at the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.
This Day in History: 4977 Universe is created, according to Kepler
Forbes: Einstein: A Radical, But Not A Rebel
PDF Books for Free: Great Astronomers: Galileo Galilei by Sir Robert S. Ball (1907)
MIT News: 3 Questions: Marcia Bartusiak on black holes and the history of science
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Unsung? I hardly think so.
Lise Meitner und Otto Hahn im Labor, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie, 1913
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Optics & Photonics: Charles Hard Townes: The Second Half-Century
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Myfanwy Pritchard-Roberts’ Interview
UC San Diego: Digital Collections: Leo Szilard and Aaron Novick Research Files
UC San Diego: Digital Collections: Leo Szilard Papers
The H-Word: Halley’s Eclipse: a coup for Newtonian prediction and the selling of science
Astrogeo.oxfordjournals.org: Halley and his maps of the total eclipses of 1915 and 1724
Ptak Science Books: Gorgeous Gearworks – a Model of the Solar System, 1817
“Planetary Machines, the New Planetarium for Equated Motions by Dr. Pearson”. London, for Rees’ Cyclopedia, 1817; 8×10″.
Source: Ptak Science Books
Ars Technica: Scanning meteorites in 3D may flesh out solar systems origin story
AIP: Oral History Transcript – Dr. Steven Weinberg
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
Board of Longitude Project Blog: Thomas Earnshaw’s troublesome chronometer
Marine chronometer no. 512, by Thomas Earnshaw, about 1800 (National Maritime Museum ZAA0006)
Viatimage: Image database of expeditions into the Alps.
The Guardian Maps: The Guardian view on reading maps: so much more than navigation
National Library of Scotland: Map images
Cambridge Digital Library: Longitude Essays: Artificial Horizon
MEDICINE & HEALTH:
Fiction Reboot: Daily Dose: MedHum Mondays Presents: The Application of a Surgeon’s Operating Case
Nautilus: The Man Who Drank Cholera and Launched the Yogurt Craze
Duke Today: Medicine Cabinet of Curiosities: Can you guess how these medical devices were used?
Lancet Psychiatry: Cutting the body to cure the mind
Doctor performing ovariotomy (London, 1882)
The National Library Of Medicine
Diseases of Modern Life: Introducing the India Office Medical Archives Project
Medievalist.net: Project to compare health of Londoners from medieval and industrial eras
Wellcome Library: Thalidomide: an oral history
CHoSTM: One Hundred Years of Health: Changing Expectations for Ageing Well in 20th Century America
Inside the Science Museum: Richard Liebreich’s Atlas of Ophthalmoscopy
RCP: Swiney Cups
TECHNOLOGY:
Conciatore: Eyes of the Lynx
Yovisto: Wallace Hume Carothers and the Invention of Nylon
Ptak Science Books: The Understated Announcement of Bell’s Telephone Patent, 1876
Ptak Science Books: Establishing the (Royal) Aeronautical Society, 1866
Spaceflight Insider: Women in Space: In The Beginning
Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space during the Vostok 6 mission, which lifted off in June 1963. Photo Credit: Commons / Ria Novosti
The Royal Society: Interface: Invention as a combinatorial process: evidence from US patents
IEEE Spectrum: Mildred Dresselhaus: The Queen of Carbon
Ptak Science Books: Feeling and Touching Calculated Numbers in the 18th Century: Palpable Mathematical Devices
Conciatore: Washing Molten Glass
Washing, sorting and carrying cullet
Denis Diderot 1772
IEEE Spectrum: The Murky Origins of “Moore’s Law”
IEEE Spectrum: Moore’s Law Milestones
XPMethod: Unidentified Found Object (UFO)
Ptak Science Books: Quite Images of Great Loses and Heroism – British Navy Losses, 1945
Gizmodo: Why is the Paper Clip Shaped Like It Is?
The 1640’s Picture Book: Anima’dversions of Warre
Ptak Science Books: Episodes in the History of Dropping Things – Baby Bombs, Bomb Babies and Dropping Women on Manhattan
Ptak Science Books: A One-Line Entry into the Computer Revolution: the Transistor, 1949
Conciatore: Scraping the Barrel
Teylers Museum: Horse Mill
Ptak Science Books: An Extremely Early Computer Program for the BINAC, 1949
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Strange Science: Earth Sciences
The Independent: The science of weather forecasting: The pioneer who founded the Met Office
Yovisto: Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki
Wallace Letters: The A. R. Wallace Correspondence Project’s Transcription Protocol
The Unz Review: Vignettes of Famous Evolutionary Biologists, Large and Small
Facebook: On 27 April 1806 Moehanga Discovered Britain
Letters from Gondwana: Alcide D’Orbigny and the Beginnings of Foraminiferal Studies
Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny , 1802.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Arcadia: The Great Fear: The Polesine Flood of 1951
Embryo Project: The Pasteur Institute (1887– )
Yovistro: The Works of Lord Avebury
Embryo Project: Wilhelm His, Snr. (1831–1904)
Yovisto: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Neurons
NCSE: Darwin’s Pallbearers, Part 2
Embryo Project: Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948)
Geschichte der Geologie: Strukturgeologie und Mittelalterlicher Bergbau
Die Schiener bei der Arbeit, Miniatur aus einer Grubenkarte aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. Zu seinen Arbeitsgeräten gehörten Schnüre, Stäbe, Hängekompaß, Setzkompaß, Klinometer, Abstechen (Winkelgerät) und Quadrant.
Yovisto: Vito Voterra and Functional Analysis
CHEMISTRY:
Chemical Heritage Magazine: Harold C. Urey: Science, Religion, and Cold War Chemistry
After helping create the atom bomb as part of the Manhattan Project, Harold Urey focused on uncovering the age and origins of Earth and the solar system. In this 1951 photo Urey inspects a ‘fossilized thermometer’ of belemnite (a prehistoric squid-shaped creature). Urey used information from these fossils to estimate the temperature of oceans from as far back as 100 million years. (USC Digital Library)
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
CELL: Hooke Folio Online
The Stute: Was I Wrong about “The End of Science”?
The Atlantic: What Was the Worst Prediction of all Time?
Social History of Medicine: Vol. 28 Issue 2 May 2015: Table of Contents
Edge Effects: Why Our Students Should Debate Climate Change
Huff Post: Debunking the Myths of Leonardo da Vinci
FaceBook: Isis Journal: Imogen Clarke interview
ISIS: Table of Contents: Vol. 106 Issue 1 March 2015
Vox: Why Oliver Sacks was so ambivalent about becoming a bestselling author
Neurologist and best-selling author Dr. Oliver Sacks. His new memoir, On The Move, grapples with the tension between being a media personality and a physician.
Chris McGrath/Getty Images
The Washington Post: Philosophy’s gender bias: For too long, scholars say, women have been ignored
The Conversation: Reducing science to sensational headlines too often misses the bigger picture
JHI: Dispatches From the Republic of Letters
Oxford MHS: Newsletter May 2015
teleskopos: Real, replica, fake or fiction?
Nature: A view from the bridge: Metaphor and message
Slate: Science Needs a New Ritual
Nautilus: The Big Bang is Hard Science: It is also a Creation Story
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Object as Subject
Faith and Wisdom in Science: Can Science be more like Music? An Experiment with Light and Song
Leonardo: Codex Madrid
ESOTERIC:
BOOK REVIEWS:
Sun News Miami: Newton and Empiricism
Maclean’s: Einstein’s beef with Schrödinger
Notches: Classroom Wars and Sexual Politics: An Interview with Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
Kestrels and Cerevisiae: Book Thoughts: Pauly’s Controlling Life
The New York Times: ‘Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat’, by Paul Halpern
The Wall Street Journal: The Half-Life of Physicists
British Journal for the History of Science: Outsider Scientists: Routes to Innovation in Biology
New Scientist: The Least Likely Man celebrates a genetic-code-breaking genius
The New York Review of Books: Revelations from Outer Space
New Scientist: Scientific Babel: Why English Rules
NEW BOOKS:
THEATRE:
The Royal Society: A dramatic experiment: science on stage 11 May 2015
Oppenheimer production photos 2014: Photo by Keith Pattison c RSCRsC
FILM:
TELEVISION:
SLIDE SHOW:
VIDEOS:
Youtube: Under the Knife: Episode 8 – Corpse Medicine
The Public Domain Review: The Westinghouse Works (1904)
Youtube: Collider: JJ Thomson’s Cathode-ray tube
‘Fighting for the Vote: Science and Suffrage in World War I’ – Dr Patricia Fara
Vine: Science Museum: Difference Engine No. 2
RADIO:
BBC Radio 4: Archive on 4: The Language of Pain
PODCASTS:
Chemistry World: Acetylene
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
University of Cambridge: HPS Dept: Workshop: Science and Technology in the Context of International Exhibitions 6 May 2015
Royal Museums Greenwich: Maritime Lectures Series: WW1: Three Sisters 7 May – 11 June 2015
Oriel College Oxford: 2015 Thomas Harriot Lecture: Dr Stephen Clucas 28 May
Monash University: CfP: Translating Pain: An International Forum on Language, Text and Suffering 10-12 August 2015
University of the West of England, Bristol: Science in Public: research, practice, impact” 9-10 July 2015
Archives for London: Seminar: Science in the city: the archival life of Robert Hooke 7 May 2015
Freud Museum London: Exhibition: Early Scientific Discoveries: Freud the Physician 30 April–7 June 2015
The Royal Society: Conference: Archival afterlives 2 June 2015
University of Durham: The History of Thermodynamics and Scientific Realism Provisional Programme 12 May 2015
University of Regensburg: Conference: Will our journals go extinct? Further perspectives in scholarly publishing 9 June 2015
BSHS: Useful information about Swansea ahead of #BHSH15
The Recipes Project: Notches CfP: Sex, Food and History Round Table
University of South Carolina: CfP: Art, Anatomy, and Medicine since 1700
Courtauld Institute of Art: Leonardo da Vinci Society Annual Lecture: ‘Leonardo, Luca Pacioli and the Venetian Optic c. 1480-1510’ 8 May 2015
LOOKING FOR WORK:
The Mercurians, a Special Interest Group of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT): Pam Laird Research Grant
The School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science at the University of Leeds: Offers a variety of funding opportunities to support taught postgraduate study.
Society for Renaissance Studies: Postdoctoral and Study Fellowships
UCL:STS: PhD Programmes
University of London: Chair in the Understanding of the Humanities
