Newsletter for Thursday 12 December

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY NEWSLETTER - 12 DECEMBER

Feature for Today

Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849) was a French-English engineer and inventor who solved the historic problem of underwater tunneling through water-bearing strata and built the Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel in the world constructed under a navigable waterway. His son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel continued in his father's profession and remains celebrated as one of the most important engineers of the Victorian era. A biography of Sir Mark Isambard Brunel from The Great Triumphs of Great Men (1875) describes the difficulties, dangers and perseverance involved in driving the tunnel under the River Thames. It is a story everyone should know.

Book of the Day

On 12 Dec 1927, Robert Noyce was born, who coinvented the integrated circuit and cofounded a company that became Intel Corporation. Today's Science Store pick is: The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, by Leslie Berlin. Noyce was no geeky physicist, but did have such a risk-taking zeal to create new things, that he was once called the Thomas Edison and the Henry Ford of Silicon Valley. Noyce was that important for the birth of a new industry. Isaac Asimov called the invention of integrated circuit “the most important moment since man emerged as a life form.” This biography both provides the early history of the development of the chip and a very revealing portrait of Robert Noyce, and will expand your knowledge of this hugely important development that took place in your lifetime. It is available New from $6.38. Used from $2.92. (As of time of writing.). For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science History Science Store home page.

Quotations for Today
	Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words 'Eat or be eaten!' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice! - Erasmus Darwin, English physician, poet, philosopher, botanist and naturalist (born 12 Dec 1731).
	Nature never jests. - Albrecht von Haller, Swiss physiologist and biologist (died 12 Dec 1777).
	Freedom is the oxygen without which science cannot breathe. - David Sarnoff, American inventor (died 12 Dec 1971).

Quiz
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.
Births
	Eugen Baumann (1846-1896) was a German chemist who discovered that the thyroid gland was rich in an element not known before that to occur naturally in animal tissue, making the thyroid gland unique in being the only tissue to contain this element. What is this element?
	Philip Drinker, born 12 Dec 1894, was an engineer a device that through the late 1920's and into the 50's, was considered to be state of the art, high tech, life support technology. Such devices were recommended treatment for certain victims of poliomyelitis. Can you name this invention?
Deaths
	David Sarnoff (1891-1971) was a pioneer in the development of both radio and television broadcasting. He became a wireless operator and met Marconi in 1906. Foreseeing the multiple possibilities of radio, he became commercial manager of American Marconi in 1917. RCA grew from the Marconi group (1919). In 1926, he founded a television network. Which television network did he establish?
	Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) was an American astronomer known for her discovery of the relationship between period and luminosity in Cepheid variables, pulsating stars that vary regularly in brightness. In 1912, she announced what has since become known as the Period-Luminosity. To what measurement is this relationship applied today?
Events
	On 12 Dec of a certain year, Guglielmo Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio signal from Poldhu in Cornwall, which was received by Percy Wright Page in St John's, Newfoundland. In which decade was this radio signal sent across the Atlantic Ocean?
	On 12 Dec 1955, Christopher Cockerell filed his first patent for the new form of transportation he fathered. What form of transportation did he develop?

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 12 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 11: James Lewis Kraft • lighthouse lights • pituitary gland • Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt • Britain and France.

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Copyright

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