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
Year 2, Volume #05
Monday 10 August 2015
EDITORIAL:
Another seven days of all that the Internet has to offer in #histSTM gathered together for your delectation in the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly links list for the histories of science, technology and medicine.
Three weeks ago in our editorial we described the Trinity Test on 16 July 1945, as the greatest ever fall from grace of science and technology. Three weeks after this test science, technology, politics and ethics were hurled into a vortex of conflict in the mushroom cloud that rose over Hiroshima as the first atomic bomb used in war exploded above that Japanese city on 6 August 1945, killing at least 140 000 people. Three days later this crime against humanity was compounded, as the second, and till now last, atomic bomb used in warfare exploded above Nagasaki killing another 70 000.
There are very few moments in history that ‘changed the world for ever’ as the purveyors of hyperbole are all to fond of parroting but the moment when that first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima is truly one such.
Now seventy years later the Internet has spat out many words documenting this inhuman tragedy. We have collected many of them together for this edition of Whewell’s Gazette that is humbly dedicated to the victims and survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The watch of Kengo Nikawa which stopped forever at 8.15 on the day the nuclear bomb fell on Hiroshima.
“It was like something out of hell, and I didn’t feel like taking many pictures.” — Yoshito Matsushige
“’Little Boy’ kills 140000 on August 6 in Hiroshima, ‘Fat Man’ kills 70000 on August 9 in Nagasaki at first moment”.
“The use of the atomic bomb on Japan will come to be seen as one of the greatest blunders in all of history.” – Leo Szilard
The bomb was dropped at 11:02 a.m., 1,650 feet above the city [Nagasaki]. The explosion unleashed the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. h/t @ferwen
Dannen.com: International Law on the Bombing of Civilians
Dannen.com: Groves-Oppenheimer Transcript, August 6, 1945
Dannen.com: A Petition to the President of the United States
Dannen.com: Oak Ridge Petition, July 13, 1945
Dannen.com: Oak Ridge Petition, mid-July, 1945
Dannen.com: The Franck Report, June 11, 1945
The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: Were there alternatives to the atomic bombings?
The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: The Kyoto misconception
The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: Were there alternatives to the atomic bombings?
The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: The Hiroshima Phone Call (1945)
The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: A Day Too Late
The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: Atomic Editorial Cartoons (August 1945)
The New Yorker: Nagasaki: The Last Bomb
Tech Times: Interview: Alex Wellerstein and David Saltzberg Discuss Getting History and Science Right on ‘Manhattan’
IDEAS: What options were there for the United States regarding the atomic bomb in 1945?
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Ray Gallagher and Fred Olivi’s Interview – Part 1
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Lawrence Litz’s Interview (2012)
Voices of the Manhattan Project: The Hiroshima Mission
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Jacob Besser’s Lecture
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Ray Gallagher’s Accounts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Missions
AHF: Using the Atomic Bomb – 1945
Scientific American: Cross Check: Bethe, Teller, Trinity and the End of the Earth
Scientific American: Cross Check: Historian Contemplates “Ugly” Reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
AP Was There: US drops atomic bombs on Japan in 1945
The National Security Archive: The Nuclear Vault: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II
L.A. Times: New evidence of Japan’s effort to build atom bomb at the end of WWII
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Seven decades after Hiroshima, is there still a nuclear taboo?
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The harrowing story of the Nagasaki bombing mission
The Boston Globe: The deterrent that wasn’t
Smithsonian.com: How Physics Drove the Design of the Atomic Bombs Dropped on Japan
Chicago Tribune: Was using an atomic bomb necessary to end WWII?
BBC: Hiroshima marks 70 years since atomic bomb
British Library: Sound and vision blog: Memories of Hiroshima and After
New York Times: Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Survivors Pass Their Stories to a New Generation
The Curious Wavefunction: The enduring legacy of Leo Szilard, father of the atomic age
Priceonomics: Leó Szilárd: A Forgotten Father of the Atomic Bomb
Ars Technica: The bomb and a new scientific and technical landscape
Scientific American: Survivor of the Hiroshima Nuclear Bomb Recalls the Bombing and Its Aftermath
Scientific American: Survivor of the Nagasaki Atom Bomb Describes His Experience
Members.peak.org: Leo Szilard, Interview: President Truman Did Not Understand
Jappan Times: How the Japan Times reported the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: Nuclear Notebook: Nuclear Arsenals of the World
The Bigger Picture: Science Service, Up Close: Covering the Atom, August 1945
History Today: Truman and the Bomb
Newclear Thinking: Remembering Hiroshima: Death, Tourism, and Social Media
Circulating Now: The First Calamity of the Nuclear Age
Oregon Live: Hiroshima at 70: The Oregonian’s front page coverage of 1945 atomic bomb was chilling, apocalyptic (photos)
The Conversation: The little-known history of secrecy and censorship in wake of atomic bombings
Smithsonian Institution Archive: The Manhattan Project Videohistory Collection
The New York Times: Nagasaki, the Forgotten City
The Guardian: Nuclear fallout: the mental health consequences of radiation
Roger Williams University Docs: The United States Strategic Bombing Survey: The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, June 30, 1946
Pressing Issues: When Truman Failed to Pause in 1945 – and the War Crime That Followed
The Irish Times: The Irish eyewitness to the atomic bomb at Nagasaki
Quotes of the week:
Can we please get over the idea that “many technologies” “progress” exponentially? – Patrick McCray (@LeapingRobot)
“It is a rare occurrence that a census taker has ever heard of a physicist…one is often tempted to register as a chemist” – A. W. Hull, 1944
“The æther will come back. This old and faithful comrade of the human mind in its imaginative flights cannot be dead forever” – K. Darrow 1944
‘Books are deadlier than drugs. It is a pity that we do not burn our libraries once a century.’ – (Sunday Express, 1922) h/t @harbottlestores
“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers he is one who asks the right questions”
“The sources of history are threefold: written, spoken, & neither written nor spoken. The last falls to the archaeologist.” – C.R. Fish 1910 h/t @ProfDanHicks
“Journalists: Ban “scientists say” from your lexicon. You wanna know why? Scientists say.” – Josh Rosenau (@JoshRosenau)
“Reading an underlined library book is like being interrupted during a great conversation by a yappy dog. You, underliner, are the yappy dog.
“There is something reassuring in the fact that those who deface library books by underlining them rarely make it out of chapter one”. – Liam Heneghan (@DublinSoil)
“I wonder if I’ll live long enough to witness people understanding that science and engineering are not the same thing”. – Bev Gibbs (@bevgibbs)
“Remember, there is a happy space between impostor syndrome and unrepentant bullshitting. Find it & live there…” – David Andress (@ProfDaveAndress)
“Why does philosophy matter?”
“I don’t know, why does science matter?”
“Well because scie…”
“Annnnnnnd you are doing philosophy”
“The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant”. – Plato
“As an ‘extremely young earth’ creationist, I’m not sure I believe that the eighties actually existed”. – @gravbeast
“The father of Zoology was Aristotle … but the name of its mother has not come down to us” – Ambrose Bierce
“There is nothing more necessary to the man [sic] of science than its history” – Lord Acton, quoted by Popper and now by David Wootton
“And what should the scientist & citizen learn from the hist of sci?” Wootton adds in The Invention of Science. “That nothing endures.” h/t Philip Ball (@philipcball)
“Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.” – Melvin Kranzberg
“What astrologers say about the influence of the constellations should really be attributed to the Sun”. – Athanasius Kircher
“The most damaging phrase in the language is: “we have always done it this way”.” – Grace Hopper
Birthdays of the Week:
P.A.M. Dirac born 8 August 1902
Paul Dirac with his wife in Copenhagen, July 1963
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Graham Farmelo: The Strangest Man
Science Notes: Today in Science History – August 8 – Paul Dirac
AIP: P. A. M. Dirac – Session I
Yovisto: Paul Dirac and the Quantum Mechanics
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY:
NPR: Cosmos & Culture: Pinning Down One Scientist’s Legacy
Vintage Ads: Atomic Ads, a Sunday Sampler
AIP: Marlan Scully
Tand Online: John Tyndall and the Early History of Diamagnetism (oa) (pdf)
Irish Philosophy: What has Hamilton to do with philosophy?
Early Modern Experimental Philosophy: Crucial Instances in the Principia
Starts With a Bang: Einstein, Edison and an Aptitude for Genius
Yovisto: Victor Franz Hess and the Cosmic Radiation
Collections Online: Letter from Benjamin Franklin to [John Franklin] (copy), 25 December 1750
AIP: Roger Penrose
Yovisto: Sir Roger Penrose and the Singularity
ESA: GAIA: A History of Astrometry – Part I Mapping the Sky From Ancient to Pre-Modern Times
Stone tablet of Shamash, the Sun-god, from the ancient Babylonian city of Sippar. Credit: © Trustees of the British Museum.
ESA: GAIA: A History of Astrometry – Part II Telescope Ignites the Race to Measure Stellar Distances
Yovisto: Ernest Lawrence and the Cyclotron
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
British Library: Collection items: Anglo-Saxon world map
History Extra: The Northwest Passage search: behind the scenes of the expedition that found Franklin’s HMS Erebus
Atlas Obscura: 7 Gorgeous Sea Maps From the Age of Exploration
Frederik De Wit’s 1654 Dutch Sea Atlas. Image courtesy of the Harvard Map Collection
Yale News: Hidden secrets of Yale’s 1491 world map revealed via multispectral imaging
British Library online Gallery: Depiction of the Isle of Wight 1600
Medievalist.net: Medieval Maps of Britain
MEDICINE & HEALTH:
William Savage: Pen and Pension: Daily Medicine: Georgian-style
NPR: How a Scientist’s Slick Discovery Helped Save Preemies’ Lives
Nurcing Clio: A Pot of Herbs, A Plastic Sheet, and Thou: A Historian Goes for a “V-Stream,”
Forbes: Why Did My Grandmother Try LSD for Multiple Sclerosis in the 1960s?
Derelict Places: Selly Oak Hospital
Vesalius Fabrica: A Guide to the Historiated Capitals of the 1543 Fabrica
R Cap A continuation of the theme of Q. Three medical putti dissecting a thorax.
Yovisto: Johann Friedrich Struensee – A Royal Affair
Yovisto: Joseph Carey Merrick – the Elefant Man
Ask the Past: How To Use Chocolate, 1672
The Recipes Project: Swimming in Broth: Medicated Baths in Eighteenth-Century Europe
CHSTM: News and Notes: Treating the Black Body: Race and Medicine in American Culture, 1800–1861
Advances in the History of Psychology: BBC Mind Changers: New Episodes on Carol Dweck and B.F. Skinner
Advances in the History of Psychology: BBC Mind Changers: Carl Rogers and the Person-Centred Approach
New York Times:Louis Sokoloff, Pioneer of PET Scan, Dies at 93
Conciatore: Filippo Sassetti
NYAM: Adventures in Rare Book Cataloging
Anthony Rhys: Victorian Photographs of Disability
MetaFilter: RIP Frances O. Kelsey, Ph.D., M.D.
BBC: Anti-thalidomide hero Frances Oldham Kelsey dies at 101
Dr Kelsey received a presidential award from John F Kennedy in 1962
NPR: Frances Kelsey, FDA Officer Who Blocked Thalidomide, Dies at 101
The Cut: What the 17th Century Can Teach Us About Vaginas
Photo: Getty Images
TECHNOLOGY:
Slide Rule Museum: Circular Slide Rules and selected Disc Charts
Mashable: 1890–1968 Flying Cars
Atlas Obscura: The History of Vending Machines Goes Back to the 1st Century
Iowa State University Library Special Collections Department Bog: Engineering the Home: Domestic Comfort via Science
Science Notes: Today in Science History – 4 August – Phoenix Mars Lander
NYC Department of Records: Hindenburg (Airship)
Yovisto: On the Road with Bertha Benz
Bertha Benz and the ‘Patent Motorwagen’
Yovisto: Road Trippin’ with Alice Ramsey
Alice Ramsey
(1886 – 1983)
Image: Library of Congress
Independent: The London: After 350 years, the riddle of Britain’s exploding fleet is finally solved
Conciatore: Decolorization of Glass
Neatorama: The Wonderful World of Early Computers
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Made in Nürnberg
Schöner Celestial Globe 1535
Source: Science Museum London
Wired: Birth of the Microphone How Sound Became Signal
Science Notes: Today in Science History – 6 August – Electric Chair
History Today: The First Execution by Electric Chair
DSFP’s Spaceflight History Blog: Failure Was an Option: What If an Apollo Saturn Rocket Exploded on the Launch Pad?
KCET: When Oil Derricks Ruled the L.A. Landscape
ESA: History Of Europe in Space: ESA’s ‘First’ Satellite: COS-B
Atlas Obscura: The Almost Perfect World War II Plot to Bomb Japan With Bats
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
jardine’s book of martyrs: The Scottish Hurricane of 1675
Dr Jennifer Evans: A Little find in the archive
The Sloane Letters Blog: Shell Games: Martin Lister and the Conchological Collections of Sir Hans Sloane
Melo aetheopica, Sloane 2374, Natural History Collection next to its portrayal by Susanna Lister in the Historiae, Table 801. Note she altered the perspective so it is possible to see the distinguishing characteristic of the umbilicus. Photo by Anna Marie Roos, © The Natural History Museum, London.
Bucknell University: Archive to Arctic
BBC Earth: How do we know that evolution is really happening?
Natural History Apostilles: On spinach & iron: König 1926
Natural History Apostilles: On spinach & iron: Richardson 1848 & Wolff 1871
NCSE: Fact, Theory, and Path Again, Part 2
Forbes: This 1831 Geological Journey Was Decisive For Darwin’s Scientific Career
Letters from Gondwana: The Legacy of the Feud Between Florentino Ameghino and P. Moreno
The Sloane Letters Blog: Public and Private Gardens in the Eighteenth Century
Public Domain Review: Shells and other Marine Life from Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities (1734)
The Guardian: Sir Jack Goody obituary
National Geographic: Phenomena: Curiously Krulwich
Making Science Public: Carbon Pollution
Heritage Daily: Bones of the Victims at Roman Herculaneum
AGU Blogosphere: 16th century Italian earthquake changed river’s course
Partial reproduction of a 16th century painting showing the position of the Po River (corso principale del Po) and Ferrara (yellow arrow) before the river changed course.
Credit: Egnazio Danti
Smithsonian Libraries: Underworlds: Fossils and Geology: What lies beneath?
The New York Times: The Great Victorian Weather Wars
Nautilus: The Dueling Weathermen of the 1800s
BBC: Tyndal’s climate message, 150 years on
Embryo Project: William Bateson (1861–1926)
Embryo Project: Ernst Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law (1866)
CHEMISTRY:
Science Note: Today in Science History – 3 August – Richard Willstäter
Richard Willstätter (1872-1942) 1915 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Oesper Collections: The Oesper Collections in the History of Chemistry
Science Notes: Today in Science History – August 9 – Amedeo Avogadro
Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856) Italian chemist known for his gas law and the constant that bears his name.
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
The Guardian: Terrawatch: The lost art of specimen illustration
Steven Gray’s Blog: On Pigeonholing
Double Refraction: Are scientists who do history like tourists? Thoughts on Steven Weinberg’s analogy
the many-headed monster: What is History? Or: Doing history/thinking historically
Chemical and Engineering News: Science Historians Revive Ancient Recipes
LIFE CASTING
In the 16th century, encasing living objects—such as flowers in metal was a popular endeavor.
Credit: Making & Knowing Project
The Recipes Project: First Monday Library Chat: Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford
Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources
JHI Blog: Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading in the Archive (II)
MIT Technology Review: Tech’s Enduring Great-Man Myth
The Royal Society: Notes and Records: 350 Years of scientific periodicals Table of Contents
Ether Wave Propaganda: Joseph Agassi’s Philosophy and Influence Resist Simple Answers
The Scientist: Foundations: Science History
George Boole 200*: About George Boole
Frontiers in Psychology: Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases
Ptak Science Books: Books are Weapons in the War of Ideas
Wellcome Collection: A cat among the collection
BHL: The Arcadia Fund Awards Grant to Support The Field Book Project
academia.edu: Legislating Truth: Maimonides, the Almohads and the 13th Century Jewish Enlightenment
ESOTERIC:
Conciatore: Reports from Parnassus
Rafael – El Parnaso (Vatican, Rome, 1511)
Apollo on Parnassus, (fresco detail).
History of Alchemy: Episode 70: Distillation
Atlas Obscura: Edison’s Last Breath at the Henry Ford Museum
BOOK REVIEWS:
Cell Press: The untenability of faithism
H–Environmental Roundtable Reviews: Kendra Smith-Howard Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History since 1900
The Lancet: How chemists came to matter
Nature: Books & Arts Special
Reviews in History: Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science
Chris Aldrich: Musings of a Modern Day Cyberneticist: Breaking the Code – The Economist
The Dispersal of Darwin: The Annotated Malay Archipelago
Science Book a Day: The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
NEW BOOKS:
OUP: Mathematicians and Their Gods: Interactions between mathematics and religion
The Geological Society of America: Recollections of a Petrologist: Joseph Paxson Iddings
The Royal Society: Shortlist for 2015 Winton Prize for Science Books announced
Nature: A scintillating shortlist for the Royal Society prize
Springer: Leibniz’s Metaphysics and Adoption of Substantial Forms
HSS: Isis Books Received April–June 2015
Enfilade: William Hunter’s World
Truman State University Press: Bridging Traditions: Alchemy, Chemistry, and Paracelsian Practices in the Early Modern Era
Routledge: Domestic Disturbances, Patriarchal Values
EM Spanish History Notes: Skaarup, Anatomy & Anatomists in EM Spain
ART & EXHIBITIONS
Journal of Art in Society: Science Becomes Art
Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768)
Royal College of Physicians: Power and beauty: seals, charters and the story of identity 1 September–23 December 2015
New Walk Museum and Gallery Leicester: World of Wallace: Alfred Russel Wallace and his life in the field 22 August–25 October 2015
CHF: The Artist in the Laboratory:
The Hans India: Hyd gallery to be in National Museum map show 11 August–11 October
University of Glasgow Library: Skeletons and Injections: William Hunter’s Lectures on Anatomy and Aesthetics
The Irish Times: The limits of reason: Boolean links between art and science
Chicago Booth Museum: Exhibit Explores Ancient Money and Business
Science Museum: Cosmos and Culture 23 July 2009–31 December 2015
Wellcome Collection: Medicine Man Permanent Exhibition
MOSI: Meet Baby Runs every Tuesday and Wednesday
THEATRE AND OPERA:
The Guardian: Not actually a scientist
“The Element In The Room” being performed at the Tangram Theatre. Photograph: Alex Brenner
Young Vic: A Number: Closes 15 August 2015
National Theatre: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
FILMS AND EVENTS:
Royal College of Physicians: Free drop in tours – monthly, every first Wednesday 1.30pm
Wellcome Library: John Quekett, Victorian Microscopist 11 August 2015
Bethlem Museum of the Mind: Open and Expand Your Mind: A Museum Object Handling Drop-In Session 13 August 2015
PAINTING OF THE WEEK:
Frontispiece of the Rudolphine Tables
Tabulae Rudolphinae: quibus astronomicae …
TELEVISION:
BBC Four: Genius Of the Ancient World: Socrates 12 August 2015
Discover Medical London: Walking Tour: London’s Plagues
SLIDE SHOW:
VIDEOS:
AEON Video: Kempelen’s chess–playing automaton
Youtube: Eddie Izzard Venn
Youtube: Susannah Gibson: “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?”
Climate Denial Crock of the Week: We are The Asteroid
RADIO:
G. C. Gosling: NHS History on Radio 4
PODCASTS:
History of Philosophy without gaps: Juhana Toivanen on Animals in Medieval Philosophy
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
University of Nottingham: Conference: Science, Society and the State (1870–1935) 4 September 2015
University of Bucharest: CfP: Bucharest Colloquium in Early Modern Science 6–7 November 2015
Wikimedia UK: Booking open for Wikipedia Science Conference 2–3 September 2015
University of Oxford: Medicine of Words: Literature, Medicine, and Theology in the Middle Ages 11–12 September 2015
Bodleian Libraries: Gough Map Symposium 2015: Mr Gough’s ‘curious map’ of Britain: old image, new techniques 2 November 2015
Madison: CfP: Workshop: Pharmacopoeias in the Early Modern World 1–2 April 2016
Victorian Persistence: Text, Image, Theory: CfP: Becoming Animal with the Victorians Université Paris Diderot 4–5 February 2016
V & A Museum: Conference: On the Matter of Books and Records: Forms, Substance, Forgeries, and Meanings Beyond the Lines 23 November 2015
Barcelona: CfP: 2016 Joint ESHHS/Cheiron Meeting
National Library of Medicine: Workshop: Images and Texts in Medical History 11-13 April 2016
THATCamp: The History of Science Society hosts its second annual THATCamp on November 19 2015
Pursey House Oxford: Library and Information History Group Conference 2015: Libraries and the Development of Professional Knowledge 19 September 2015
University of Leuven: Conference: What do we loose when we loose a library? 9-12 September 2015
Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal: Call for Papers Women and Science Issue
Contagions: CfP: Medieval Landscapes of Disease ICMS Kalamazoo MI 12–15 May 2016
Technology and Culture: Call for Abstracts: Special Issue Africanizing the History of Technology
LOOKING FOR WORK:
British Museum: Director of Scientific Research
Wellcome Trust: Wellcome Trust Centres
Environmental Humanities: Four new Associate Editors
Yale University: Professor History of Science
University of Warwick: Department of History, Centre for History of Medicine Research Fellow (2 posts)
University of Warwick: Department of History, Centre for History of Medicine Research Fellow (Public Engagement) (2 posts)
AIP: Research Assistant
CRASSH: Visiting Fellows at CRASSH Early Modern Conversations: Religions, Cultures, Cognitive Ecologies
British Library: Applications are invited for Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award 2016
University of Vienna: Four-year doctoral studentship in Epistemology and Philosophy of Science
Science Museum Group: Website Editor
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