Whewell’s Gazette: Year 2, Vol. #06

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 #06

Monday 24 August 2015

EDITORIAL:

After a brief surgical break Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM is back bringing you all that the Internet has to offer in the histories of science, technology and medicine or at least all that we could find of it.

I entered the Internet #histsci community somewhat more than seven years ago. Five years ago one of my, by then, good #histsci colleagues, Rebekah Higgitt, announced that she would be co-leading a major research project into the activities of the British Board of Longitude in the long eighteenth century.

Over the last five years this research project carried out by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and Cambridge University has been incredibly active and I have got to know most of those involved through their diverse activities. These include Richard Dunn, Alexi Baker, Katy Barrett, Sophie Waring, Katherine McAlpine and Nicky Reeves. The project has finally come to an end and the results have been quite stunning. This small group of dedicated scholars have produced an amazing amount of absolutely first class history of science material.

If you don’t know it already you can spend many a happy hour reading the contributions to the project’s blog, an exemplary use of Internet communication. The latest contribution to the blog is a farewell to the project written by Maritime Museum team co-leader Richard Dunn.

If you want to know what the participants have been doing for the last five years then go to the Board of Longitude Project: Project Outcomes Page, you will knocked out by their productivity.

This project has set standards for anybody contemplation research into a #histSTM subject and can be held up as a role model for all such researchers. We at Whewell’s Gazette wish to congratulate all those involved and wish them well in their future endeavours.

Quotes of the week:

“The only qualification for being a writer is actually writing. All else is angst and bullshit.” – Henry Rollins h/t @cultauthor

“Hellenologophobia is a fear of Greek terms”. – @weird_hist

“Yet again twttr reminds me how many scientists think that all science works the same way their sub sub field of science does”. – Justin Kiggins (@neuromusic)

“Old math teachers never die, they just lose control of their functions.” – @intmath

“autocorrect, can you please stop changing ‘scicomm’ to ‘sickroom’? thank you” – Tori Herridge (@ToriHerridge)

“Shelf-righteous adj: a feeling of superiority about one’s bookshelf” – Powell’s Compendium of Readerly Terms

“Dear Apple, if I change back something you’ve autocorrected, Don’t. Autocorrect. It. Again.” – Eric Marcoullier (@bpm140)

“I’m starting a new band called Terrifying German Bibliography. Our first album will be called Intimidating Footnotes” – Kirsty Rolfe (@avoiding_bears)

“logic is like a secret society in this country. Hardly anyone knows how to use it.” –‪@Goethelover h/t @jondresner

“Ask a man his philosophy and he’ll be annoying for an hour; teach a man to do philosophy and he’ll be annoying for life”. – Keith Frankish (@keithfrankish)

“I quite realized,” said Columbus,

“That the earth was not a rhombus,

But I am a little annoyed

To find it an oblate spheroid.”

E. Bentley h/t @JohnDCook

Birthday of the Week:

Denis Papin baptised (born?) 22 August 1642

Denis Papin holding the plans for his steam engine.
Unknown artist 1689
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Science Notes: Today in Science History – August 22 – Denis Papin

Yovisto: Denis Papin and the Pressure Cooker

Papin’s steam digester 1679
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Renaissance Mathematicus: A household name

Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric (Georges) Cuvier born 23 August 1769

Georges Cuvier Portrait by François-André Vincent, 1795
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Embryo Project: Georges Cuvier (1769–1832)

Embryo Project: Essay: The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate

Letters From Gondwana: Mary Anning’s Contribution to French Paleontology

Yovisto: Georges Cuvier and the Fossils

Forbes: How do we know what extinct species looked like?

Cuvier´s secret reconstruction of the Anoplotherium commune, shown in lifelike pose with its skeleton, musculature, and body-outline.
Source: Forbes

PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCE :

Corpus Newtonicum: Newton in Atlantis

arXiv.org: Greek Astronomy PhDs: The last 200 years (pdf)

Inside the Science Museum: How to land on Venus

Scientific American: Cocktail Party Physics: In Memoriam: Jacob Bekenstein (1947–2015) and Black Hole Entropy

Jacob Bekenstein
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Shtetl–Optimized: Jacob Bekenstein (1947–2015)

ESA: The History of Sounding Rockets and Their Contribution to European Space Research (pdf)

Berkeley News: Pursuing charm in a singularly unfeminine profession

A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life: A Watercolour Meteor

Paul Sandby The Meteor of August 18, 1783, as seen from the East Angle of the North Terrace, Windsor Castle.

History Extra: Life of the Week: Marie Curie

The Columbian: Vancouver woman’s Manhattan Project memories

The Local: Seven brainteasers to honour Schrödinger

Science Notes: Today in Science History – August 20 – Fred Hoyle

National Radio Astronomy Observatory: Pre-History of Radio Astronomy

Yovisto: Viking 1 and the Mission to Mars

Restrcted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: Hiroshima and Nagasaki at 70

Science Notes: Today in Science History – August 23 – Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:

Slate Vault: The Roads Around Late–18^th–Century London. Mapped in Close-Up Detail

Atlas Obscura: John Harrison’s Marine Chronometers

Harrison’s first sea clock (H1)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Yovisto: How High/Low Can You Go? – The Explorer Auguste Picard

The Renaissance Mathematicus: Der Erdapfel

Behaim’s Erdapfel
Source: Wikimedia Commons

A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life: Captain Cook Lands on Possession Island

NOAA: Who first charted the Gulf Stream?

MEDICINE & HEALTH:

History Matters: Donald Trump: Galenic Enthusiast?

Yovisto: Thomas Hodgekin – a Pioneer in Preventive Medicine

Yovisto: The Contraceptive Pill – One of the Most Influential Inventions of the 20^th Century

The Recipes Project: Valuing “Caesar’s and Sampson’s Cures”

Rattle-snake with section of rattle and tooth, from Mark Catsby, (1731) The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images

The Recipes Project: Adjudicating “Caesar’s Cure for Poison”

Ptak Science Books: Electropathic Pathology: the Invisible Quackhood of the Electric Brush (1884)

drive.google.com: Quistorp and ‘Anaesthesia” in 1718

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry: From the Archive: Witchcraft and Healing in the Colonial Andes, 16^th-17^th Centuries

Journal of the American Revolution: For to Cure for the Etch

Thomas Morris: Brain of hare and turd of dog

Pinterest: Inside the Vintage Medicine Cabinet

Thomas Morris: Wine, the great healer

Wellcome Library Blog: Diary of an Asylum Superintendent

Thomas Morris: Leeches: for external and internal use

TECHNOLOGY:

Yovisto: Gabriel Lipmann and the Colour Photography

Yovisto: Pierre Vernier and the Vernier Scale

Ptak Science Blog: An Automatic Page Turner, 1887

Yovisto: Making Photography Really Operational – Louis Daguerre

Christie’s The Art People: Mechanical miracles: The rise of the automaton

Engines of Our Imagination: No. 1703: IBM 360 Computer

Motherboard: The Soviet Architect Who Drafted the Space Race

Design for the technology module of the Mir space station (1980). Image: Galina Balashova Archives

Slate: The Mechanical Chess Player That Unsettled the World

The chess-playing Turk baffled and amazed Europe until it was revealed to be a hoax: the figure was actually controlled by a man hidden inside the box. Photographs: Bridgeman Images; AKG-Images

Yovisto: William Murdock ‘enlights’ the 19th century

C&EN: Timeline: A Brief History of the Internet and Chemistry

The New York Review of Books: They Began a New Era

Yovisto: Paul Nipkow and the Picture Scanning Technology

The Guardian: Letters reveal Alan Turing’s battle with his sexuality

Yovisto: E.F. Codd and the Relational Database Model

The Telegraph: England’s last master cooper seeks apprentice

EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:

Niche: The Herbarium: An Interior Landscape of Science

Der Beutelwolf–Blog: Alfred Russel Wallace

Letters from Gondwana: Climate Change and the Evolution of Mammals

Jonathan Saha: Animals in the Asylum