Anecdotes about Scientists found in Newspaper Archives Published on June 11th - An Engineer's Aspect

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Thursday, June 10, 2010

Anecdotes about Scientists found in Newspaper Archives Published on June 11th

1887 - Michael Faraday
The Marion Daily Star, Marion, Ohio, June 11, 1887.

"Stored Up" Force in Water.

An error concerning water has arisen from a remark imputed to Faraday that "in every drop of water is stored up the energy of a stroke of lightning," which has been largely used by Keeley motor and other speculators to further their schemes. There is no force of any kind "stored up" in water; and the statement made by Faraday, if he ever did make it, simply referred to the small quantity of electricity developed in a lightning flash, which would hardly be enough to decompose into its constituent gases a single drop of water. The powerful effects of lightning are due to the great tension of electricity, like a very small boiler in which the steam is at an enormous pressure. --Popular Science News.

1896 - Nikola Tesla
The Elgin Echo, June 11, 1896.

Nicola Tesla began his career as an electrical inventor when he was fifteen.

Mr. Tesla's improved electric light, by which 10 per cent instead of 3 per cent of the electric power is converted into light, is said to illumine a room so completely that photographs can be taken by it in two seconds. A brighter electric light than the one now in use for the same money would be a welcome advance, but more light for less money is what is claimed for the Tesla invention.

1897 - Nikola Tesla
The New Oxford Item, New Oxford, Pennsylvania, June 11, 1897.

Nicola Tesla says that the cause of the curious sunburn effects upon the hands by the X-rays is not the rays themselves, but the ozone generated by them in contact with the skin. The hands may be protected by immersing them in oil beforehand, and thus preventing an access of air.

1897 - Nikola Tesla
The Lime Springs Sun, Lime Springs, Iowa, June 11, 1897.

Nikola Tesla, of New York, announces that he has perfected his scheme of sending telegraph messages without wires.

1902 - Thomas Edison
The Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, Wednesday, June 11, 1902.

The Wizard's Dream.

Thomas A. Edison announces that he has perfected a storage battery which will propel vehicles a hundred miles before the electric power is exhausted and the battery has to be recharged. The wizard is happy and exultant. "Goodbye," he says, "to the horse for commercial purposes." For, the past quarter of a century inventors have been bidding adieu to the horse, but the faithful animal is still with us. No adequate substitute has yet been discovered for "man's best friend" in the animal kingdom. Perhaps Mr. Edison, as he claims, has at last devised, a substitute. His invention, as he describes it, is certainly a fascinating one. Instead of hitching a horse to a cart or wagon, man will simply put a light battery in his vehicle. Motive power will be cheap. A speed of a mile a minute can be obtained. Heavy roads and steep grades will not affect the movements of the horseless vehicle. In town and in country the electric carriage, cart and wagon can pursue the even tenor of their way and stand not upon the order of their going until they have run the distance limit. Mr. Edison sees the finish of the horse, but perhaps he is too sanguine. The horse may survive this delightful invention and neigh in triumph over "the Wizard of Menlo Park."

There are millions of farmers in the country. Does Mr. Edison propose to equip them with electric ploughs? Can his storage battery propel vehicles through snow drifts, swamps and miry fields? And where is the farmer to have his batteries recharged? Shall he hitch his reliable old horse to the horseless vehicle and haul the latter to town every time a fresh supply of motive power is required? The "wizrd" is jubilant, but he has not yet made the horse an anachronism or reduced him to a state of "innocuous desuetude." --Baltimore Sun.

1904 - Charles Darwin
The Evening News, Saturday, June 11, 1904.

Man of Science Did Not Bite.

Miss Daisy Leiter has brought back from London a story about Charles Darwin.

"Two English boys," said Miss Leiter, "being friends of Darwin, thought one day that they would play a joke on him. They caught a butterfly, a grasshopper, a beetle and a centipede, and out of the creatures they made a strange, composite insect. They took the centipede's body, the butterfly's wings, the grasshopper's legs and the beetle's head and they glued them together carefully. Then, with their new bug in a box, they knocked at Darwin's door.

"We caught this bug in a field," they said. "Can you tell us what kind of bug it is, sir?"

Darwin looked at the bug and then he looked at the boys. He smiled slightly.

"Did it hum when you caught it?" he asked.

"Yes," they answered, nudging one anothre (sic).

"Then," said Darwin, "It is a humbug."--New York Tribune.

1907 - Nikola Tesla
The Post-Standard, Syracuse, New York, Tuesday Morning, June 11, 1907.


The sleepless wizard, Nicola Tesla, has now invented a tidal wave for use in naval combats. This, like many of the past inventions of Mr. Tesla and others, will, no doubt, immediately put an end to war.


1914 - Nikola Tesla
The Milford Mail, Milford, Iowa, June 11, 1914.



In the concluding part of a recent address before the wireless society of London, A. A. Campbell Swinton, speak-Swinton (sic), speaking of the wireless transmission of power, first referred to the strong belief of Messrs. Tesla and Pederson in its future and then called attention to the fact that on a clear day the earth receives from the sun no less than 4,500,000 horsepower to each square mile of surface. This enormous supply of power comes in the form of electro-magnetic waves and via wireless. Evidently, therefore, there is no doubt as to the possibility of transmitting stupendous amounts of energy without wires. Regarding the possibility of using this carrier efficiently for any other purpose than that of simple communication, Swinton seemed skeptical.

1921 - Sir Ernest Rutherford
The Daily Mail, Saturday, June 11, 1921.


BREAKING UP THE ATOM.
---------
PROFESSOR RUTHERFORD'S DISCOVERIES.
---------

Playing billiards with balls 1-30,000,000th part of an inch in diameter or thereabouts, and incidentally causing matter to crumble up and disintegrate, was described in a lecture given yesterday by Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford before the Physical Society at the Imperial College of Science, Kensington.

One of the recent discoveries made by the renowned physicist is that by driving numbers of the alpha particles (which are continuously given off by radium) into a gas such as hydrogen; one such alpha particle in ten million or so will collide "dead-on" with a hydrogen atom and sent it forward with such a spurt that it will travel four times its normal distance. So great is the energy contained in the atom that prodigious forces were at work, he said, in these collisions.

Similar experiments carried out with nitrogen have led to a remarkable discovery--that by making alpha particles charge into the atoms and drive them forward, the collisions break up the structure of the atom to some extent, and some of the nitrogen is automatically set free as hydrogen.

A partial transmutation--infinitely small at present--into hydrogen has been effected by making the alpha particles charge into atoms of fluorine, sodium, aluminium (sic), and phosphorus.

Thus the actual disintegration of what has been looked upon for centuries as unalterable matter has been effected by a man-controlled process, and elements of a certain definite type have been partially transmuted into the parent substance of all matter--hydrogen.

1923 - Thomas Edison
The Evening Independent, Massillon, Ohio, Monday, June 11, 1923, Page 3.






THOMAS EDISON VISITS HIS OLD SHOP

The Wizard of electricity, visits his old shop on Fifteenth St. New York, and looks over the scene of his former and first experiments. He also secured a fine comparison of the old and new in machinery and had his photo taken with the old fashioned automobile that Leon Mendel built when Edison first started his experiments with electric light systems more than 40 years ago.







1926 - Alexander Graham Bell
The Sequoyah County Democrat, Friday, June 11, 1926.

DOM PEDRO AIDS BELL

Brazilian Emperor Assisted
Bell in Securing First
Public Approval

June 5, 1876, was an important day in the history of the telephone.

Alexander Graham Bell, the young inventor, had the infant telephone on display in an obscure corner of one of the buildings at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.

He was hopeful that the distinguished group of scientists making a tour of inspection that afternoon in company with the Emperor Dom Pedro would inspect the telephone.

It was late; the afternoon was hot and the judges were about to pass by the telephone booth without interest.

The scientists were suddenly surprised to see Dom Pedro step forward and greet Bell. He remembered him as the pale young teacher of deaf mutes whose classes he had visited in Boston.

THE TELEPHONE TALKS

Bell asked him to try the telephone. Dom Pedro put the receiver to his ear while Bell went to the transmitter. Suddenly Dom Pedro cried "My God, it talks."

With one accord the now interested scientists gathered about the table and experimented with the instruments until far into the night, and next day the telephone was moved to the place of honor in the judges' pavilion.

1934 - Marie Curie
New Castle News, New Castle, Pennsylvania, Monday, June 11, 1934, Page 8.






Ill Scientist

Mmn. Curie


Overwork is blamed by her associates for the illness of Madame Marie Curie, world-famous discoverer of radium, who is confined to her home in Paris after being obliged to halt work in her radium laboratory. She is 67.
(Central Press)









1937 - Samuel Morse
The Piqua Daily Call, Friday, June 11, 1937, Page 5.

Samuel Morse, famous inventor, was a portrait painter before he became interested in the field of invention.


1938 - Louis Pasteur
Nevada State Journal,Reno, Nevada, Saturday, June 11, 1938, Page 2.

Louis Pasteur was evicted from Paris because he insisted that infection was caused by microbes and that immunity could be gained through vaccines.