Newsletter for Wednesday 23 October

 

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY

NEWSLETTER - OCTOBER 23

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.

On 23 Oct 1873, William Coolidge was born, American engineer who developed tungsten filaments that made possible the modern X-ray tube and incandescent lamps. To this day, X-ray tubes for medical applications are patterned after  the design he patented in 1916. His work also included high-quality magnetic steel, improved ventilating fans, the electric blanket, World War II radar, and 83 patents during his 101-year lifetime. Today's Science Store pick is William David Coolidge: A Centenarian and His Work, by Herman Alfred Liebhafsky, out of print, but available used from $0.99 (as of time of writing). Yesterday's pick: Copies in Seconds: ... Chester Carlson and the Birth of Xerox. For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science Science Store home page.

Browse the new Science Store pages of Science Titles in Bargain Books.

Quotations for Today

"Tungsten, X-rays, and Coolidge form a trinity that has left an indelible impression upon our life and times. The key word in this triad is Coolidge, for his work brought the element tungsten from laboratory obscurity to the center of the industrial stage and gave the X-ray a central role in the progress of medicine throughout the world." - biographical memoir about William David Coolidge (born 23 Oct 1873) written by C.G. Suits. (source) "Throughout the past one half century, my hobby was to observe, measure and analyze data on damaging winds and their parent clouds, in an attempt to unlock the mystery of small but violent airflows which escape detection by conventional wind-measuring devices. Fortunately, my hobby was identical to my occupation ... I recall that I was able to walk on a series of stepping stones marked 'good luck' ever since I (left) postwar Japan..." - Ted "Mr Tornado" Fujita (born 23 Oct 1920) (source) "I am sure my fellow-scientists will agree with me if I say that whatever we were able to achieve in our later years had its origin in the experiences of our youth and in the hopes and wishes which were formed before and during our time as students." - Felix Bloch, Swiss-born American Nobel prize-winning physicist (born 23 Sep 1905)

QUIZ

Births

G.N. Lewis, born 23 Oct, was an American chemist whose theory of the electron pair fostered understanding of the covalent bond and extended the concept of acids and bases. He first introduced the notion of a covalent bond in which the chemical combination between two atoms derives from the sharing of a pair of electrons, with one electron contributed by each atom.  In what decade did he first introduce the idea of a covalent bond?

Deaths

A Scottish inventor (1840-1921) was a pioneer of the pneumatic tyre. In 1887, when his 9-yr-old son complained of the rough ride he experienced on his tricycle over cobbled streets, he devised and fitted rubber air tubes held on to a wooden ring by tacking a linen covering fixed around the wheels. Due to the major improvement in riding comfort, he continued development, until he patented the idea. Can you name this inventor?

Events

On 23 Oct 1977, American paleontologist Elso S. Barghoorn of Harvard announced the discovery of Pre-Cambian spherical one-celled algae microfossils (named Eobacterium), earth's earliest life forms, by rubidium and strontium dating. The fossils are examples of Prokaryotes, organisms with simple cell wall containing organic chemicals. A huge number of varieties exist today. They all produce oxygen; and, in the Precambrian period, began to change the earth's primordial reducing atmosphere to the oxygenated one we have today.  How old are these fossils - to the nearest half-billion years?

On 23 Oct 1803, a very famous English scientist read his Essay on the absorption of gases by water, at the conclusion of which he gave a series of atomic weights for 21 simple and compound elements.  Can you name this scientist?

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 October 23 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers.

Fast answers for the previous newsletter for October 22:  vitamin C; transit of Venus across the sun; the decade including the year 1938; a hole in the top of the parachute.

Feedback

If you enjoy this newsletter, the website, or wish to offer encouragement or ideas, please write.

--
If you do not want to receive any more newsletters, Unsubscribe

To update your preferences and to unsubscribe visit this link