Tag: history

Not just lemon juice

Two Michigan State University researchers have unlocked the secret invisible-ink formula used by the former East Germany secret police, the Stasi: The Stasi’s technique of transferring top-secret messages worked like a piece of carbon paper. An agent would place a piece of paper impregnated with the chemical cerium oxalate between two pieces of plain paper. …

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The curious case of Dr. Carefoot

Bob McDonald, director of membership and legal services for the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan,, recently tipped me to the strange case of a Dr. Carefoot, disciplined by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Province of Saskatchewan in the 1920s for diagnosing and treating patients using an Abrams Machine. “A …

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Aboriginal science

In 2000, Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Saskatchewan-born singer, artist, teacher and Academy Award-winning songwriter, was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters Degree by Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. During her convocational address, she mentioned some of the breakthroughs of aboriginal peoples in science and technology. Inspired by her address, Lakehead University shortly thereafter set …

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Happy birthday, HAL

Last month a very important celebrity marked his birthday. He wasn’t an actor, though he was in a movie; he wasn’t an author, though he appeared in a book. And strangest of all, he died almost 30 years before he was born. He was HAL, the artificial intelligence that guided the spacecraft Discovery to its rendezvous with …

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Money

We handle money every day–though perhaps not as much of it as we would like–but we’re more interested in what the coins and bills will buy than how they are made (except, of course, for the new two-dollar coin, which we like to throw, hammer and jump up and down on, on the off chance …

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Money, money, money

We handle money every day–though perhaps not as much of it as we would like–but we’re more interested in what the coins and bills will buy than how they are made (except, of course, for the new two-dollar coin, which we like to throw, hammer and jump up and down on, on the off chance …

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The Dead Sea SCrolls

Two thousand years ago mass-produced books did not exist. Knowledge was handed down from generation to generation either orally, or in fragile, handwritten documents. Because of that only fragments of the knowledge of that time survives today: inscriptions on stone, a few papyrus and parchment fragments. Creating an image of the distant past is like …

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Herakleion

In Disney’s new summer animated blockbuster Atlantis, a team of intrepid explorers searches the sea-bottom for the legendary lost continent. Atlantis is only a legend, but in the non-animated world, real researchers have recently made discoveries almost as sensational, locating the fabled city of Herakleion, along with two of its suburbs, Canopus and Menouthis, underwater …

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Vitalogy

“In this age of education and progress, the Science of Health is no longer the exclusive possession of a profession, but is made an open book for those who have the wisdom to learn.” That’s a very modern-sounding statement, isn’t it? But it’s not referring to the Web. In fact, it’s from the preface to …

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The science of swing

With Ken Burns’s epic documentary Jazz airing on PBS, millions of people who never really gave much thought to this musical form before are suddenly learning all about its fascinating history—and more than once, they’ve heard that for music to be jazz, it’s got to swing. Or, as Duke Ellington put it, “It don’t mean …

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Calendars (2000)

It’s almost 2001, which means it’s time to take down your old Star Trek: Voyager calendar and put up your new one. Okay, so maybe you have a Teddy Bears calendar instead, or an Everybody Loves Raymond calendar. The point is, for us, a calendar is a much an aesthetic and/or advertising medium as it is a way to see what …

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Beethoven’s hair

Ludwig van Beethoven was known for being both a brilliant composer and a difficult human being. For most of the almost two centuries since his death, his tendency toward irritability and depression has been put down to the fact he was a genius, since there’s a common perception that genius and eccentricities go hand in …

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