Newsletter for Saturday 7 December

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY NEWSLETTER - 7 DECEMBER

Feature for Today

On 7 Dec 1869, the Thames Tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping in London, the world's first tunnel under a navigable river, was re-opened with the East London Railway line. Work had started on 2 Mar 1825. Excavation was engineered by Marc Brunel, for which he invented the tunneling shield to reduce the danger of collapse while digging through soft sediments. Beginning his own engineering career, his son Isambad Brunel assisted. They persevered through 18 years, including floods, human disasters, and delays caused by financing difficulties. Planned ramps for use by carts and freight traffic were never added due to cost, but it was opened for pedestrian use on 25 Mar 1843. The later installation of rail service became a well-used transport route across the Thames, which has continued in use to the present day as the oldest part of the London Underground. If you visit London, you can still take a train and travel under the Thames through the world's oldest tunnel built below a navigable waterway. An American travel writer, David W. Barlett, visited England in the mid-19th century, and was impressed by the well-developed railway infrastructure. His trip was at a time that the Thames Tunnel was still a pedestrian experience. In fact, in that era, it was regarded as quite an adventure, an engineering wonder. He described his Visit to the Thames Tunnel in What I Saw in London (1853), and it gives an interesting insight into the early history of the tunnel. Your Webmaster was lucky enough to be there on a one of the rare days that the public, in limited numbers, were able to take a walk through the tunnel and see it up close and personal. That makes Bartlett's travel tale especially meaningful.

Book of the Day

In 1872, the H.M.S. Challenger, was readying for the world's first scientific voyage around the world. The vessel set out from Sheerness, Kent, for Portsmouth, England, arriving on 11 Dec 1872. After loading more stores, the world's first global scientific voyage embarked on 21 Dec 1872, with a group of scientists and expert navigators to research the oceans. The Challenger was a military corvette sailing ship with auxiliary steam power, converted at Sheerness for the scientific voyage. The ship had a natural history laboratory where specimens were examined, identified, dissected and drawn; a chemistry laboratory; and scientific equipment. During the 4 year journey, ending on 24 May 1876, the voyage zig-zagged around the globe to visit every continent, sounded the ocean bottom to a depth of 26,850-ft, found many new species, and provided collections for scores of biologists. The Space Shuttle Challenger was named after this ship because both embarked on voyages of substantial scientific value. Today's Science Store pick is: The Silent Landscape: The Scientific Voyage of HMS Challenger, by Richard Corfield, who outlines one of the most important sea voyages of its era. Corfield punctuates the history of discoveries of the Challenger crew with brilliant descriptions of the technology used at the time, the personal trials undertaken by the crew, and the conditions of life aboard the ship. A large portion of the book also relates the voyage's endeavours to modern knowledge. It is available New from $34.89. Used from $1.69. (As of time of writing.). For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science History Science Store home page.

Quotations for Today
	Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gatt gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk. The dear God has made the whole numbers, all the rest is man's work. - Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician (born 7 Dec 1823).
	The principal result of my investigation is that a uniform developmental principle controls the individual elementary units of all organisms, analogous to the finding that crystals are formed by the same laws in spite of the diversity of their forms. - Theodor Schwann, German physiologist (born 7 Dec 1810).

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
	Richard Brooke Roberts, born 7 Dec 1910, was an American biophysicist who contributed most to the discovery of “delayed neutrons” that are crucial in the operation of a fission reactor which Without the margin of safety provided by the delayed neutrons, nuclear reactors might not be practical at all. What are delayed neutrons?
	On 7 Dec 1905, Gerard Peter Kuiper was born, a Dutch-born American astronomer. The Kuiper Belt is so-named after his original suggestion of its existence outside the orbit of Neptune before it was confirmed as a belt of small bodies. He discovered the moon Miranda. Miranda is a moon of which planet?
Deaths
	Walter Karl Friedrich Noddack (1893-1960) was a German chemist who discovered a new element (Jun 1925) in collaboration with his wife Ida Tacke. Since 1922, he had searched for undiscovered elements. After three years, the careful fractionation of certain ores yielded the new element, a rare heavy metallic element that resembles manganese. Named after a river in his homeland, it was the last stable element to be discovered. What is this element?
Events
	On 7 Dec of a certain year, the first execution by lethal injection in the U.S. was performed on Charles Brooks in Texas. Several intravenous drips provide an anesthetic, followed by a chemical to paralyse breathing, and another to stop the heart. In which decade was this execution?
	On 7 Dec 1909, Leo Baekeland received the first U.S. patents for a thermosetting artificial plastic - “an improvement in methods of making insoluble condensation products of phenol-formaldehyde” - commonly referred to as the “heat and pressure” patent. This gave birth to the modern plastics industry. What name did he give this plastic?
	On 7 Dec 1889, a Scottish inventor, was issued a patent for his pneumatic tyre. In 1887, when his 9-yr-old son complained of the rough ride he experienced on his tricycle over the cobbled streets of Belfast. His name is still in use by a manufacturer of tyres. Can you name this inventor?

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 7 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 6: cryolite, Greenland • Law of Combining Volumes - that when gases combine their relative volumes bear a simple numerical relation to each other • telegraph industry • carbon dioxide • graphite pencil • the decade including the yeat 1906, from a hydrogen balloon • He was in Europe, where the transit happened after sunset..

Feedback

If you enjoy this newsletter, the website, or wish to offer encouragement or ideas, please send feedback by using your mail reader Reply button. Your click on a StumbleUpon, Google+ or Facebook social button on the site webpages is also a welcome sign of appreciation. Thank you for using them.

Copyright

To find citations for quotations go to the corresponding webpage by clicking on the “quotes” balloon icon. Sources for the thumbnails appear on today's webpage with the corresponding item. � This newsletter is copyright 2013 by todayinsci.com. Please respect the Webmaster's wishes and do not put copies online of the Newsletter � or any Today in Science History webpage. (If you already have done so, please remove them. Thank you.) Offline use in education is encouraged such as a printout on a bulletin board, or projected for classroom viewing. Online, descriptive links to our pages are welcomed, as these will provide a reader with the most recent revisions, additions and/or corrections of a webpage. For any other copyright questions, please contact the Webmaster by using your mail reader Reply button.

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

To update your preferences and to unsubscribe visit this link