Whewell’s Gazette
Your weekly digest of all the best of
Internet history of science, technology and medicine
Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell
Volume #16
Monday 06 October 2014
EDITORIAL:
You are now reading the sixteenth edition of the #histSTM weekly inks list Whewell’s Gazette. In most American States and in the UK sixteen is the age of sexual consent. Whewell’s Gazette has been including links to articles on the history of sex and sexuality since its conception and has recently added the very stimulating Notches (re)marks on the history of sexuality to its sources for interesting posts if you aren’t already reading it you should be.
On the 27 September the #histSTM community lost one of its prominent members with the death of British historian of mathematics Jacqueline Stedall.
Jacqueline Stedall (Photographer unknown)
An expert on seventeenth-century algebra she is particular dear to our editorial staff for her pioneering work on Thomas Harriot’s contribution to this genre. She was also author of the excellent The History of Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction and Mathematics Emerging: A Sourcebook 1540 – 1900 as well as co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Mathematics.
Thomas Fuller: “History maketh a young man to be old, without either wrinkles or gray hairs; privileging him with the experience of age.” h/t Darrin Hayton (@dhayton)
“If your history does not admit the weird then it’s not good history” Colin Dickey (@colindickey)
“Worse by far than a straw man is a straw man dressed in the designer suit of your choosing.” Liam Heneghan (@DublinSoil)
“One’s mind is a place where the past becomes present – required for historians.” Kate Morant (@KateMorant)
ON THE WEB BLOGS AND WEBSITES:
A Technical and Astronomical Birthday:
On Oct 4 1957 the Russians launched the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1. On 4 October 1959 the Russian satellite Luna 3 gave humanity its first view of the far side of the moon.
Wired: Oct. 4. 1957: Soviets Put Man-Made Moon in Orbit!
Sputnik
GIZMODO: Humans first saw the far side of the moon 55 years ago today
NASA: Solar System Exploration: Mission to the Moon: LUNA 3
Yovisto: Willy Ley – Founder of the German Rocket Society
Yovisto: Robert Goddard – the Man who ushered in the Space Age
Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945)
History Physics: This year saw India’s 1st satellite. 50 years ago, Canada orbited ‘Alouette 1’
Science Notes: Today In Science History – October 1 – NASA
This Month’s Special:
Never heard of Dr Richard Mead (1673–1754)? Amongst other things he was Isaac Newton’s physician. The Foundling Museum have dedicated an exhibition to the “Generous Georgian” and launched a blog to accompany the exhibition. Want to know more then read Frances Spiegel’s post at Decoded Past.
Allan Ramsay, Dr Richard Mead, 1747, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Coram in the care of the Foundling Museum
The Foundling Museum: Exhibition: The Generous Georgian: Dr Richard Mead
Exhibition Blog: The Generous Georgian: Dr Richard Mead
Decoded Past: The Generous Georgian: Dr Richard Mead –an Exhibition at the Foundling Museum
A collection of Posts to International Coffee Day
The Recipes Project: Coffee: A Remedy Against Plague
Early Modern Medicine: The Coffee Controversy
The Paris Review: Blinded by Coffee
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
Tycho Girl: her head full of stars (a tribute to Henrietta Swan Leavitt)
Case Western Reserve University: Institute for the Study of the UniversIty in Society: “Failure” Leads to Breakthrough
National Geographic: In a Planet-or-Not Debate, Some Astronomers Say “Long Live Planet Pluto”
Demoss: Scholars Discover Early Astronomical Drawings
AIP History: Oral History Transcript – Otto R. Frisch
New York Times: The Difficulties of Nuclear Containment: Espionage Threatened the Manhattan Project, Declassified Report says
Stanford News: Stanford’s Martin L. Pearl, winner of 1995 Nobel Prize for discovery of tau lepton, dead at 87
Ptak Science Books: Anti-Gravity Anti-Gravitas
The London Punch via Ptak Science Books
Atomic Heritage Society: Britain
The Renaissance Mathematicus: The unfortunate backlash in the historiography of Islamic Science
BBC: Caesium: A brief history of timekeeping
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
Board of Longitude Project: Time to Solve Longitude: the timekeeper method
City Lab: My 5 Favorite Maps: Bill Rankin
Map of Yamashiro Province, Author Unknown (19th Century)
Fiction Reboot: Daily Dose: MedHum Monday: Stones, Clocks, and Stars at the National Maritime Museum
MEDICINE:
Two Nerdy History Girls: A physician reports in autumn 1810
Science Museum: Brought to Life: Thomas Sydenham (1624–89)
History of Medicine in Ireland: Cows, contagion and sanitation and Victorian Dublin
Panacea: Policing Medical Practice in the 17th Century
From the Hands of Quacks: Wilson’s Common Sense Ear Drums
Ad Wilson’s Ear Drum 1900 Getty Images
The advertisements for Wilson’ Ear Drums indicated that with the device, a d/Deaf person would be happier as they were able to participate in hearing society and include themselves in ways previously denied to them.
Épistémocritique: Eighteenth-Century Archives of the Body (PDF)
BBC: How blind Victorians campaigned for inclusive education
The History of Emotions Blog: The religious roots of cancerphobia
Early Modern Medicine: True English Bloodletting
NYAM: Revisiting the Fabrica Frontispiece
PACHS News and Notes: Remembering the Veteran: Disability, Trauma, and the American Civil War, 1861-1915
Science Notes: Today In Science History – October 3 – Frank Pantridge
Early Modern Medicine: Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine
Hagley Museum and Library: History of Patent Medicine
Huffington Post: Five Things From the Mary Rose That’ll Make You Go ‘Oooh’
Royal College of Physicians: Sir Francis Prujean, PRCP 1650-4
Dittrick Museum Blog: Body Snatching, You Say?
Museum of Health Care: Mandrakes, from Mythology to Museum Collectable
Yovisto: James Lind and a Cure for Scurvy
Science Daily: HIV pandemic’s origin located: Likely to have emerged in Kinshasa around 1920
CHEMISTRY:
Conciatore: Lixiviation Reprise
Tycho’s Nose: The Shiny Bits of Science: Chemical Notation from Ciphers to Calligraphy
Examples of ways to draw methionine.
Dscript.org: Artistic Science or Scientific Art – Chemical Calligraphy (PDF)
Science Notes: Today in Science History – October 5 – Dirk Coster
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Nautilus: The Sound So Loud That It Circled The Earth Four Times
Houghton Library: Hugh of Fouilly De bestiis et aliis rebus [ca. 1230-1250]
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature: Who is the type of Homo sapiens?
Academia Edu: Tortoises and the Exotic Animal Trade in Britain from Medieval to Modern
Science Daily: Unexpectedly speedy expansion of human, ape cerebellum
Huffington Post: 6 Things Aristotle Got Wrong
Mental Floss: 11 Images from the American Museum of Natural History’s Archives
Spitalfields Life: An Auricula For Thomas Fairchild
TECHNOLOGY:
Science Notes: Today In Science History – September 29 – Rudolf Diesel Mystery
Tameshigiri: The Art of Cutting: Comparing Medieval images of European and Japanese sword polishers
Georgian Gent: So you think you can sew, Mr Saint?
In The Dark: The Origin of CERN
Nautilus: A Vehicle of Wonder
Conciatore: The Blue Tower
Yovisto: The Unfortunate Inventions of Charles Cros
Fortune: Walter Isaacson on the women of ENIAC
Jean Jennings (left), Marlyn Wescoff (center), and Ruth Lichterman program ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, circa 1946.
Photo: Corbis
Ptak Science Books: In the Enigma Machine Family: the Hagelin Cryptographic Machine, 1942
But Does it Float: Photographs of nuclear slide-rules
Mental Floss: 11 of America’s Most Inspiring Cup Holder Patents
The Washington Post: Jerrie Mock, first female pilot to fly solo around the world, dies at 88
META:- HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
Royal Society: The Repository: Circus of science
The British Society for the History of Science: BSHS President Greg Radick
Yovisto: Fritz Kahn and the Mensch Maschine
The Original Poster of the Industrial Palace
From: Fritz Kahn. Das Leben des Menschen
Franckh’sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart
Notches: Historians are gossips who tease the dead
New Humanist: The city and the sublime
The Recipes Project: ‘One does not learn remedies through books’ (Aristotle)
Fiction Reboot: Daily Dose: Medical Humanities: Building a Community
Defence in Depth: The Instrumentalisation of History
Wellcome Trust: Reality behind research: 21 years of oral history with Wellcome Witnesses
Thick Objects: Recreating Science (or, “The amoeba gets it in the end”)
DYNAMIS Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam
VOLUMEN 34 (2) 2014
New Blog – JSTOR Daily also has #histSTM content
CERÆ: VOL 1 (2014) Emotions in History
Cambridge University Press: The History Manifesto
Corpus Newtonicum: Adventures in Huntingdonland, Pt. 2
Making Science Public: Philae: Where space science meets language science
The Burns Archive: The Anatomy & Education Collection
ESOTERIC:
Remedia: A Scientific Guide to Seeing Fairies: A fragment
BOOK REVIEWS:
Somatosphere: Book Forum – Introduction, Jeremy Greene’s “Generic”
Imperial & Global Forum: Exchanging Notes: Colonialism and Medicine in India and South Africa
NEW BOOKS:
Johns Hopkins University Press: More Than Hot: A Short History of Fever
Steven Johnson: How We Got To Now, The Book
THEATRE:
FILM:
Dan’s Papers: HIFF awards Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize to ‘The Imitation Game’
TELEVISION:
VIDEOS:
Youtube: Pierre Descilier’s World Map – The Beauty of Maps – BBC Four
Youtube: Disease! Crash Course World History 203
Arts & Humanities Research Council: ‘Dear Mr Darwin’: What can we learn from 19th century science?
RADIO:
BBC: Germany Memories of a Nation: Strasbourg – Floating City featuring the cathedral clock
PODCASTS:
Royal Society: The private life of Isaac Newton
Royal Society: Longitude: back and forth across the years
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
University of Lincoln: Lecture: Dr Marika Keblusek: A Living Library for Learning: The book collection of Michael Honywood as an intellectual centre in the Dutch Republic (1640-1660) 16 Oct 2014
CHoM News: Lecture: The Birth of the Pill 21 Oct 2014
History of the Physical Sciences at History of Science Society 2014
The British Society for the History of Science Research Grants
University of Leeds History and Philosophy of Science Seminar 2014–15, Semester 1
Advances in the History of Psychology: Oct 6 Talk! BPS History of Psych Disciplines Seminar Series: Professor Roland Littlewood (UCL) “The Advent of the Adversary: Negative Power in Certain Religio-Therapeutic Systems?”
Bundeskunsthalle: Exhibition: Outer Space 3 October 2014 – 22 February 2015
Cheltenham Festival: Talk: A History of the 20th Century in 100 Maps 7 Oct 2014
University of Sydney: Conference: Rethinking Intellectual History 7-9 April 2015
Scientiae: Conference: Disciplines of Knowledge in the Early Modern Period Toronto 2015 27-29 May
ChoM News: October–December Events Calendar
Museums Association: Royal Museums Greenwich consults on redundancies
Manchester Medieval Society: Events – Programme for 2014-15 includes #histSTM
National Center for Science Education: RNCSE 34:5 now on line (includes #histSTM book reviews)
Wellcom Library for the History of Medicine: Ada Lovelace – Wikipedia Ediathron – Tuesday 14 October
Institute of Historical Research: One day colloquium 16 May 2015 The History of the Body: Approaches and Directions
British Society for the History of Science: Dingle Prize 2015
Battle of Ideas: Barbican Centre, London Oct 18-19
LSE Asia Research Centre: Lecture: An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles: The hero’s journey of Alfred Russel Wallace in Southeast Asia Wednesday 15 October
LOOKING FOR WORK?
CENTRE FOR THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN DISCOURSES, THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
Postdoctoral Fellowships on Science and Secularization
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