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| NEWSLETTER - DECEMBER 9 | |
| Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page. | |
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| Quotations for Today | |
| "They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise." - Rear-Admiral Grace Hopper (born 9 Dec 1906) "I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that this delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes. There the snow lay around my doorstep - great heaps of protons quietly precessing in the earth's magnetic field. To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery." (1952) - Edward Mills Purcell, American Nobel prize-winning physicist (born 9 Dec 1926) "The field of scientific abstraction encompasses independent kingdoms of ideas and of experiments and within these, rulers whose fame outlasts the centuries." - Fritz Haber, German industrial chemist (born 1868) | |
| QUIZ | |
| Births | |
| Grace Murray Hopper, born 9 Dec 1906, was an American mathematician and a pioneer in computer technology, helping to devise Univac I, and military applications for a new computer language. It is said that after finding a dead moth in the wire circuitry of an early computer, she coined the term "bug" to refer to unexplained computer failures. Which computer programming language did she help develop for military applications? | |
| Clarence Birdseye, born 9 Dec 1886, was the inventor of the deep freezing food method and co-founder of General Foods Corp. His invention was inspired while on Arctic trips as a field naturalist for the United States government. With which food did he begin his commercial processing? | |
| Deaths | |
| An English-born paleoanthropologist (1913-1996) made several of the most important fossil finds subsequently interpreted and publicized by her husband, also a noted anthropologist. As "the woman who found our ancestors", her work in East Africa shed new light on human evolution. After her husbands death, she made the spectacular find of three trails of fossilised hominid footprints 3.6 million years old, showing man's ancestors were walking upright at a much earlier period than previously believed. Who was this anthropologist? | |
| Events | |
| On 9 Dec 1968, the first demonstration was given of his new invention by Doug Engelbart at a computer conference at Stanford University, California. He displayed its use with a graphical user interface, display editing of integrated text and graphics and hyper-documents. What was the invention being demonstrated? | |
| On 9 Dec of a certain year, the first U.S. patent for ball-bearing roller skates was issued. This design allowed until then unseen speed. In what decade was this patent issued? | |
| Answers | |
| When you have your answers ready to all the questions above, you'll find all the information to check them, and more, on the December 9 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers. | |
| Fast answers for the previous newsletter for December 8: photosynthesis; muskets; George Boole, Boolean algebra; the decade containing the year 1994. | |
| Feedback | |
| If you enjoy this newsletter, the website, or wish to offer encouragement or ideas, please write. |
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