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 #30
Monday 08 February 2016
EDITORIAL:
We are back again with the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette your weekly #histSTM links list bringing you once again all the histories of science, technology and medicine that we could vacuum up out of cyberspace over the last seven days.
We are just five and a half weeks into the year and it’s already time to wish you a lucky New Year once again as 8 February is New Years Day on the Chinese lunar calendar. Like the Christian Easter the Chinese New Year is a movable feast falling on the first new moon following the 21 January. It is also known as the Spring Festival. Monday marks the beginning of the Year of the Monkey in the Chinese twelve-year cycle and year 4714, 4713 or 4653 depending on which system of counting you adhere to. It is also New Year in a large number of other Asian countries.
All of this just highlights how arbitrary our calendar systems are and to warn you to gear up for the Persian New Year that falls on 20 March this year, that’s in six weeks!
Quotes of the week:
“The west was not settled by men and women who had taken courses in ‘How to be a pioneer.'” – Unknown h/t @JohnDCook
“Atheists believe in a God who does not exist“. – @fadesingh
Source: AsapSCIENCE
“what idiot called them communion wafers and not Corpus Crispies” – John Gallagher (@earlymodernjohn)
Birthday of the Week:
Clyde Tombaugh born 4 February 1906
Clyde W. Tombaugh at his family’s farm with his homemade telescope in 1928, two years before his discovery of Pluto. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Aip: Clyde Tombaugh
KU History: Planetary Man
EarthSky: This date in science: Clyde Tombaugh discoverer of Pluto
The Wichita Eagle: Arizona home of Pluto research dedicates year to icy world, Kansas discoverer
Panorama Archives: Tombaugh Family Donates Astronomer’s Papers to NMSU
NASA: Happy Birthday Clyde Tombaugh: New Horizons Returns New Images of Pluto
PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCE:
Yovisto: Sir George Stokes and Fluid Dynamics
Yovisto: Rudolf Mössbauer and the Mössbauer Effect
AHF: Marie Curie
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Mac and Vera Jo MacCready’s Interview
Yovisto: Nobel Laureate Emilio Segrè
Atlas Obscura: When The Pope Made 10 Days Disappear
A detail on Pope Gregory XIII’s tomb, carved by Camillo Rusconi, shows the Pope being presented with a plan for what would become the Gregorian Calendar. (Image: WikiCommons )
Atlas Obscura: Why Can’t We Get Rid of the 7-Day Week
Atlas Obscura: 100 Wonders: The Atomic Clock
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Colonel Franklin Matthias’s Interview
Voices of the Manhattan Project: Sir Rudolf Peierls’s Interview
Ancient Origins: The Magnificent Observatory and Discoveries of Johannes Hevelius
AHF: Espionage
AIP: Ralph Alpher
AHF: Soviet Atomic Program – 1946
Linda Hall Library: Scientist of the Day – Ulugh Beg
Ulugh Beg’s Astronomical Observatory
Islamic Insights: Muslim Contributions to Astronomy
AHF: Niels Bohr
AIP: Vera Ruben
Palm Beach Post: Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, 85, dies in West Palm Beach
AstroWright: Mercedes Richards (1955–2016)
Yovisto: Mariner 10 and the Swing-By at Planet Venus
Yovisto: The Quantum Hall Effect
EXPLORATION and CARTOGRAPHY:
USC Libraries: Online Asian Maps Collection
The Public Domain Review: Maps from Geographicus
Derry Journal: Ancient map paints fascinating picture of Derry and Inishowen
British Library: Online Gallery: Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi, 1025–1050
The Guardian: Africa mapped: how Europe drew a continent
MEDICINE & HEALTH:
The Public Domain Review: The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Musings: People’s History of the NHS
Thomas Morris: The woman whose skin turned blue
the institute: How Marie Curie Helped Save a Million Soldiers During World War I
![Marie Curie [right] and her teenage daughter, Irène, operated the "Petite Curies" and established a program to train other women to use the X-ray equipment. Photo: Popperfoto/Getty Images](https://whewellsghost.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/2wtitechhistoryf2popperfotogettyimages78963761-1453926449106.jpg)
Marie Curie [right] and her teenage daughter, Irène, operated the “Petite Curies” and established a program to train other women to use the X-ray equipment.
Photo: Popperfoto/Getty Images
Thomas Morris: More astounding than true
Early Modern Medicine: Versatile Ear Wax
Philly.com: Lead in Flint: This is America
Providentia: The Horror of Alfred Binet
Thomas Morris: The man with the rubber jaw
The Recipes Project: All in the Mind? Competing Models of Hysteria in John Ward’s Diaries
Arnau: Quién es Arnau de Vilanova
The Walrus: This Might Hurt
STICK SHIFT (left to right) Glass irrigation syringe with cork stopper and coiled-thread seal, in use until the early twentieth century; large enema syringe from the late nineteenth century; and twentieth-century models with removable needles. The glass and metal one (bottom right) could be disassembled and disinfected for reuse. This killed some pathogens, but it made others more resilient. An increasingly sophisticated understanding of cross-contamination led to the disposable plastic syringe with removable needle (top right), and to the first fully disposable plastic syringe, invented in the 1950s but not used widely until the ’80s.
Thomas Morris: A ludicrous mistake
Thomas Morris: Poisoning pooches in the park
The Recipes Project: Gluttony and “Surfeit” in Early Modern Europe
TECHNOLOGY:
Yovisto: Felix Wankel and the Rotary Engine
Yovisto: America’s First Movie Studio – the Black Maria
Edison’s Black Maria, the world’s first film studio, ca 1890
The Mary Rose: The Ship’s Bell
Conciatore: Incalmo
Conciatore: Alberico Barbini
Conciatore: Cousin Philip Neri
Engineering and Technology History Wiki: Milestones: Development of the HP-35, the First Handheld Scientific Calculator, 1972
storify: CHF: Fellow Friday: Plastics Roksana Filipowska
EDN Network: Polygraph first used to convict criminals. February 2, 1935
Atlas Obscura: Astronomical Clocks are the Most Beautiful Way to Track Hours, Years, and the Moon
Atlas Obscura: Objects of Intrigue: Ancient Persian Water Clocks
It’s like looking down at your watch. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)
Atlas Obscura: The Robot Clocks of 12th-Century Turkey
Geekdad Passport: Bletchley Park
Computer History: Pixar’s Luxo Jr.
My medieval foundry: Modern information that helps us understand casting practices
Yovisto: The Chronometers of Thomas Earnshaw
Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame: Sir William Arrol (1839–1913)
Bodycote: An Interactive History of Metallurgy
Twisted Stifter: The Mystery of Prince Rupert’s Drop at 130,000 FPS
Curiosities and Wonders: Mildred Parson Burns
Mildred Parsons Burns became the first woman linotype operator at the Herald-Leader Company in April 1949.
Atlas Obscura: Peek Inside a Private Clock Museum in Austria
ENIAC in Action: ENIAC Errors in Issacson’s “The Innovators”
Places: Indexing the World of Tomorrow
Tonbridge History: 1850: Dickens and the Telegraph
University of Reading: 155-year old mouse trap claims its latest victim
EARTH & LIFE SCIENCES:
Geological map of Anglesey John S. Henslow 1821
The Friends of Darwin: John Stevens Henslow
KEW Royal Botanic Gardens: Missing for a lifetime: the story of the “lost” orchid
The Conversation: Piping as poison: the Flint water crisis and America’s toxic infrastructure
Forbes: Charles Darwin and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Dart Blog: An Audience With – The Linnean Society
Notches: Operation Hyacinth and Poland’s Pink Files
Yovisto: Gideon Mantell and the Iguanodon
Yovisto: The Burst of the Tulip Bubble
The Atlantic: The Nitrous Oxide Philosopher
Molar Archaeology: The Archaeology of Greater London online map
Strange Science: John Gould
Forbes: De Loys’ Ape Was a Well Played Anthropological Fraud
The rare version of the complete photography of de Loys´ ape – “Ameranthropoides loysi”, from MONTANDON 1929 (image in public domain).
Science League of America: The Three Balfours
AMNH: Six Extinctions in Six Minutes
Notches: Rape and Manhood in Nineteenth-Century Caucasus
Extinct: Casting Authority
The New York Times: The Explorers Club Once Served Mammoth at a Meal. Or Did It?
Yovisto: John Lindley and His Love for Plants
White Rose: eTheses Online: City of Beasts: Horses & Livestock in Hanoverian London
Wired: Twitter Nerd Fight Reveals A Long, Bizarre Scientific Feud
TrowelBlazers: Margaret Hems
Margaret Hems, with the pelvis of the Steppe Mammoth that she discovered in the cliffs at West Runton, Norfolk, in 1992
Geographical: The Invention of Nature
A Clerk of Oxford: ‘Unwinding the water’s chain’: Spring, Thaw, and Some Anglo-Saxon Poems
Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin: Evolution and religion in Britain from 1859 to 2013
МУЗЕЙ МАМОНТА В ХАТАНГЕ: Siberian permafrost ice cave
CHEMISTRY:
Yovisto: Dmitri Mendeleev and the Periodic Table of Elements
Wellcome Library: Madame Rupert’s beauty secrets
Photograph of Anna Ruppert from the Chemist and Druggist, 20 January 1894. Image credit: Wellcome Library.
The Conversation: From chrome plating to nanotubes: the modern’ chemistry first used in ancient times
Heroes of History: Marie Curie
META – HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY, RESOURCES and OTHER:
The Character of DNE: Science Communication: Embrace the Mess
Historiens de la santé: La Fabrique de Vésale. La mémoire d’un livre Actes des journées d’étude Vésale du 21-22 novembre 2014 Contents
HSS: Lecturing on the History of Science in Unexpected Places: Chronicling One Year on the Road
Harvard Business Review: Renaissance Florence was a Better Model for Innovation that Silicon Valley Is
Whipple Library Books Blog: Robert Whipple, scientific book and instrument collector
The Recipes Project: Transcribing early Modern Recipes With The Crowd on Shakespeare’s World
shakespearesworldzoo: On Close Reading and Teamwork
UCL: museums & Collections Blog: UCL students identify mystery specimens in the Grant Museum
Res Obscura: How to Write the History of Science
Yovisto: Johannes Gutenberg – Man of the Millennium
Gesellschaft Deutsche Chemiker: Geschichte der Chemie Mitteilungen Online
Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh: RCPE completes new online archive of 30,000 historical medical records
deadline: Scots female astronomer in lead for £10 note
HSS: IsisCB Explore History of Science Index (oa)
Chemistry World: Minsky’s microscope
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog: Nuclear history bibliography, 2015
Health, History and Culture: What does Health, History and Culture mean to you?
NICHE: Counterbalancing Declensionist Narratives in Environmental History
Nursing Clio: Sunday Morning Medicine: A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news
ESOTERIC:
The British Museum: A medieval alchemy book reveals new secrets
A page from the 18th-century copy of al-‘Irāqī’s Book of the Seven Climes (British Library, Add. MS 25724, fol. 50v)
distillatio: Transmission of alchemical ideas via travellers and books
BOOK REVIEWS:
John Gribbin Science: Doomed: Dark Matter and Dinosaurs
Science Book a Day: Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry
Public Discourse: Science, Philosophy, and God
Geographical: The Mapmakers’ World: A Cultural History of the European World Map by Marjo T Nurminen
Advances in the History of Psychology: A Critical History of Schizophrenia
Yale Climate Connections: Bookshelf: Engineering the Atmosphere
NEW BOOKS:
Historiens de la santé: Work, Psychiatry, and Society 1750–2010
Historiens de la santé: Localization and Its Discontents. A Genealogy of Psychoanalysis and the Neuro Disciplines
Egan History: History for a Sustainable Future
Advances in the History of Psychology: A History of ‘Relevance’ in Psychology
Historiens de la santé: History of Infectious Disease Pandemics in Urban Society
New Books in Science, Technology, and Society: Back to the Breast: Natural Motherhood and Breastfeeding in America
ART & EXHIBITIONS
Jack’s Adventures in Museum Land: Scholar, Courtier, Sorcerer: The Magical World of John Dee
JHI Blog: Darkness Regained
Royal College of Physicians: Scholar courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee 18 January29–July 2016
Dee’s obsidian Aztec “Scrying Mirror”
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Wellcome Collections: States of Mind 4 February–16 October 2016
CHF: The Art of Iatrochemistry
University of Oklahoma: Galileo’s World: National Weather Center: Exhibits
The English Garden: Visit the RHS Botanical Art Show
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Luxury of Time Runs until 27 March 2016
Royal College of Physicians: “Anatomy as Art” Facsimile Display Monday to Friday 9.30am to 5.30pm
JHI Blog: Dissenting Voices: Positive/Negative: HIV/AIDS In NYU’s Fales Library
St John’s College: University of Cambridge: Fred Hoyle: An Online Exhibition
Culture 24: Small but worldly maps exhibition makes sense of human wandering at London’s Store Street gallery
Manchester Art Gallery: The Imitation Game
The John Rylands Library: Magic, Witches & Devils in the Early Modern World 21 January–21 August 2016
Museum für Naturkunde Berlin: Dinosaurier in Berlin: Brachiosaurus as an Icon of Politics, Science, and Popular Culture 1 April 2015–31March 2018
Universty of Cambridge: Research: Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare – and a jar of ectoplasm: Cambridge University Library at 600
allAfrica: Algeria: Exhibition on Algeria (cartography) Marseille 20 January–2 May 2016
Osher Map Library: Masterpieces at USM: Celebrating Five Centuries of Rare Maps and Globes 19 November 2015–12 March 2016
Advances in the History of Psychology: Mar. 12th Pop-Up Museum Explores Contributions of Women of Colour in Psych
Historical Medical Library: Online Exhibition: Under the Influence of the Heavens: Astrology in Medicine in the 15th and 16th Centuries
British Museum: The Asahi Shimbun Displays: Scanning Sobek: mummy of the crocodile god Room 3 10 December 2015–21 February 2016
Closing soon: Horniman Museum & Gardens: London’s Urban Jungle Run until 21 February 2016
Somerset House: Utopia 2016: A Year of Imagination and Possibility
New York Public Library: Printmaking Women: Three Centuries of Female Printmakers, 1570–1900
New-York Historical Society: Silicon City: Computer History Made in New York 13 November 2015–17 April 2016
CLOSING SOON: Royal Geographical Society: Enduring Eye: The Antarctic Legacy of Sir Ernest Shackleton and Frank Hurley 21 November 2015–28 February 2016
CLOSING SOON: The Huntarian: The Kangaroo and the Moose Runs until 21 February 2016
Science Museum: Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age
Museum of Science and Industry: Meet Baby Meet Baby Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, & Saturday
Science Museum: Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Genius 10 February 2016–4 September 2016
The Mary Rose: ‘Ringing the Changes’: Mary Rose Museum to re-open in 2016 with unrestricted views of the ship
Royal Museums Greenwich: Samuel Pepys Season 20 November 2015–28 March 2016
Royal College of Surgeons: Designing Bodies 24 November 2015–20 February 2016
CLOSING SOON: Natural History Museum, London: Bauer Brothers art exhibition Runs till 26 February 2017
Science Museum: Ada Lovelace Runs till 31 March 2016
Closing soon: British Library: 20th Century Maps 4 November 2016–1 March 2017
Closing soon: Royal Pavilion, Brighton: Exotic Creatures 14 November 2015–28 February 2016
National Maritime Museum: Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution Runs till 28 March 2016
Closing Very Soon! Bethlem Museum of the Mind: The art of Bedlam: Richard Dadd Runs till 6 February 2016
National Library of Scotland: Plague! A cultural history of contagious diseases in Scotland Runs till 29 May 2016
Science Museum: Churchill’s Scientists Runs till 1 March 2016
Oxford University Museum of Natural History: Henry Walter Bates Until 26 February:
THEATRE, OPERA AND FILMS:
Royal Shakespeare Company: Doctor Faustus Swan Theatre Stratford-Upon-Avon 8 February–4 August 2016
ChoM News: Center for the History of Medicine: Screening of “Mystery Street” 24 February 2016
Gielgud Theatre: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Booking to 18 June 2016
The Regal Theatre: The Trials of Galileo International Tour March 2014–December 2017
Coming Soon: The Crescent Theatre: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
EVENTS:
Countway Library of Medicine Harvard Medical School: Talk: Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England 8 March 2016
Waterhouse Room Gordon Hall Harvard Medical School: The Unknown Story of Art and Artists in Louis Pasteur’s Personal and Professional Life 3 March 2016
Royal Holloway – Management Building Lecture Theatre: Public History and Fiction 25 February 2016
University of York: Lecture: “Not Everyone Can Be Gandhi”: The Global Indian Medical Diaspora in the post WWII Era 3 March 2016
Bletchley Park: Alan Turing Through His Nephews Eyes 3 April 2016
CHF: Joseph Priestly Society: Roger Nielson: Abbey Color: Entrepreneurship in a 150-Year-Old Industry 11 February 2016
College of Charleston: Lecture: Steve Silberman Author of NeuroTribes 10 February 2016
NCSE: Darwin Day approaches
University of Leeds: Lecture: History & Philosophy of Science in 20 Objects (2) 16 February 2016
Discover Medical London: “Dr Dee” & The Magic of Medicine A Special Half Day Tour 23 March & 27 May 2016
CHF: Brown Bag Lectures Spring 2016
Discover Medical London: Walking Tour: Harley Street: Healers and Hoaxers
Royal College of Physicians: Dee late: inside Dee’s miraculous mind
CRASSH: Cambridge: Workshop: Orientalism and its Institutions in the Nineteenth Century 18 February 2016
Schwetzingen: Astronomie-Tagung: Von Venus-Transit zum Schwarzen Loch 19 März 2016
Bath Literary and Scientific Institution: Inaugural Darwin Day Lecture 12 February
PAINTING OF THE WEEK:
Lesson in Astronomy (ca. 1758) by Giuseppe Angeli
TELEVISION:
Channel 4: Walking Through Time Trailer
Channel 4: Walking Through Time
SLIDE SHOW:
VIDEOS:
Youtube: Gresham College: Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace – Professor Raymond Flood
Museo Galileo: Kepler’s Laws
Gresham College: No Need for Geniuses: Scientific Revolutions and Revolutionary Scientists in the City of Light
Youtube: History of Women Philosophers: Who was Ada L?
Youtube: Royal College of Physicians: A constellation for John Dee by Jeremy Millar, 2016
RADIO:
City Arts and Lectures: Steve Silberman: The Untold History of Autism 28 March 2016 Live on Public Radio
BBC Radio 3: Essay: Art The Secret Mathematicians
BBC Radio 3: Essay: Music The Secret Mathematicians
BBC Radio 3: Essay: Literature The Secret Mathematicians
BBC Radio 3: Essay: Secret Artist The Secret Mathematicians
BBC Radio 4: In Our Time: Chromatography
BBC Radio 4: Science Stories: Einstein’s Fridge
PODCASTS:
Science Friday: A Science Hero, Lost and Found
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Institute of English Studies: School of Advance Studies: University of London: A History of Maps and Mapmaking 20-24 June 2016
University of Liverpool: Workshop for Postgraduates and Early-Career Researchers: Philosophies of Nature: Schelling and his Contemporaries 14–126 June 2016
Wellcome Library: History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series, Spring 2016
Notches: CfP: Histories of Music and Sexuality
University of Bristol: CfP: Philosophy of Biology in the UK 8–9 June 2016
Notches: CfP: Histories of Sexuality in Antiquity
University of Pittsburgh: Speakers series in the Philosophy of Science
University of Kent: CfP: Bridging the Divide: Literature and Science 3 June 2016
University of Denver: Symposium: Weapons of Mass Destruction: World War Two and the Cold War 16 March 2016
Early Science and Medicine: CFP: Matter and Perception Deadline 1 August 2016
Tallinn University of Technology: Estonian Philosophy Conference, Science, technology and society 3–4 June 2016
Leuphana University Lünaburg: Sommer School on Simulation in Science 26–30 September 2016
University of Twente, Enschede: How Philosophy Meets the World 20–22 April 2016
Hagley Museum & Library: Conference: CfP: Making Modern Disabilities: Histories of Disability, Design, and Technology 28 October 2016
University of California, Santa Cruz: Science Communication: Director and Teaching Professor
The National Museum of Computing: Call for Entries: 2016 Tony Sale Award for Computer Conservation
BSHM: Undergraduate Essay Prize
Hotel Bildungszentrum, Basel: Summer Institute: Reconceiving and Explaining the Success of Science 1–12 August 2016
Australian National University, Canberra: Environmental History PhD Workshop 23–27 May 2016
SIGCIS: Submissions: The Mahaney Prize: Outstanding article in the History of Computing and Information Technology
ICOHTEC: 43rd Annual Meeting: Technology, Innovation, and Sustainability: Historical and Contemporary Narratives 26–30 July Porto, Portugal
LOOKING FOR WORK:
Center for the History of Family Medicine (CHFM): 2016 CHFM Fellowship in the History of Family Medicine
Bletchley Park: Education Manager – Schools and Families
University of Groningen: Postdoc position Eighteenth Century Medicine
University of Stanford: Suppes Center for History and Philosophy of Science: Doctoral Fellowship
Smithsonian Institutions: Archives Specialist
British Library: Untold lives blog: Tracing Hans Sloane’s Books: A PhD Placement Opportunity
Scientific Instrument Society: SIS Grants
The Museum of Flight: Senior Curator and Director of Collections
Harvard University: Lecturer in History of Modern Medicine
University of Utrecht: Descartes Centre: Fellowships
King’s College London + Royal Air Force Museum: The Professor Sir Richard Trainor PhD Scholarships 2016–17: The Business History of the British Aircraft Industry
National Museum of American History: Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship: History of Technology etc.
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