Tag: history

Sputnik

  This Saturday marks the 40 anniversary of one of the most pivotal events in 20th century science:  the launch by the late Soviet Union of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. Nowadays, of course, we take satellites for granted:  we see photographs taken by satellites every evening on the news, we watch television signals …

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Frankenstein

It’s a safe bet most of those who dressed as Frankenstein’s monster on Hallowe’en didn’t do so to honor the birth of a new form of literature and a new way of looking at the world–but Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, was both. At first glance, Frankenstein seems like just another Gothic novel, full of dank castles, wandering …

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Canadian inventions

As a boy in Texas, I learned that Americans invented just about everything worth inventing, from the cotton gin to the steamboat to the electric light bulb to the telephone (more on that later). But, like so many other things I learned in school, it “ain’t necessarily so.” In honor of National Science and Technology …

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Marconi

I rarely listen to radio, but many other people (my girlfriend, for instance) listen to it constantly–usually CBC. (Are you listening, Mr. Chretien?) Most people, if asked who invented radio, would tell you, “Marconi.” But very few people know much about Guglielmo Marconi beyond that bare fact. I’m here to rectify that. Marconi didn’t invent …

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Mathematics

I’m going to say something which, alas, will probably immediately alienate me from a large number of readers: I’ve always enjoyed math. Times tables held no terrors for me, fractions I found fascinating, and algebra–ah, algebra! When I first started taking algebra, I enjoyed it so much I’d make up equations out of thin air …

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Candles

There’s something about the flickering flame of a candle that we seem to find irresistible. When we want to create a special mood, or a feeling of warmth and hominess when the weather and the world are cold and frightful, we light a candle–but we seldom meditate on its history and science. As usual, I’d …

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ENIAC

Fifty years ago this month, a machine in the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering solved in 20 seconds an equation that would have required a human mathematician using a desk calculator 40 hours. The feat astounded the world, and launched the age of computers. The machine was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and …

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Calendars

It’s 1996, which means it’s time to take down your old Star Trek calendar and put up your new one. Okay, so maybe you don’t have a Star Trek calendar. Maybe you have a World’s Fastest Cars calendar, or even (gag) a Friends calendar. The point is, for us, a calendar is a much an aesthetic and/or advertising medium as it …

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The science of New Year’s

The end of one year and the beginning of another has been a time of celebration from time immemorial. But celebrating the new year on January 1 is a relatively new innovation. In the Middle Ages most European countries used the Julian calendar (still used by Orthodox churches), and each New Year began, not on …

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Secret codes

Like most kids, I was fascinated by secret messages. No, I didn’t have a secret decoder ring–I guess my parents bought the wrong kind of cereal–but I spent hours writing things out in code and trying to write with lemon juice (the original invisible ink). The trouble was, I never had anybody to send a …

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The Internet

Internet this and Internet that. Everybody talks about the Internet (approximately 127,498 journalists and their dogs have already done stories on it), but there are still lots of people who aren’t exactly sure what “The Internet” is. The Internet grew out of ARPAnet (ARPA stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency), a U.S. military project unveiled …

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Alcohol

Yeasts, rather dull life forms in most respects, have one endearing trait: provided with sugar, they produce carbon dioxide…and an interesting chemical called “alcohol.” Nobody knows who first discovered that yeast could turn ordinary grape juice or grain brew into something quite different, but by 1500 B.C., beer and wine-making were well-established in the Middle …

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