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1 Oliver Evans and an early American steam powered amphibian
[steamboat, transportation, steam engine, auto, Oructor]
2 The Jacquard loom and the invention of the computer
[weaving, Babbage, cards, textile]
3 The monk who flew in 1005 AD
[flight, medieval, Firnas, glider, Benedictine, airplane]
4 Benjamin Thompson/Count Rumford and the conservation of energy
[heat, American Revolution, Lavoisier, thermodynamics]
5 The pendulum clock escapement and the merger of science and technology
[Bacon, Galileo, Huygens, Hooke, science]
6 Jouffroy: one of the first successful steamboat makers.
[Newcomen, France, d'Auxiron, transportation]
7 Fokker and the machine gun interrupter mechanism
[flight, war, WW-1, airplane]
8 Pittsburgh in 1816
[steamboat, iron, coal, industry, glass]
9 The Cistercian order and power technology
[Benedictines, water wheels, factory, religion, White]
10 The Medieval character of the wild West
[America, saddle, whiskey, log cabin, cowboy, White]
11 Electric lights in the 80 years before Edison
[arc light, incandescent, Grove, Swan, Davy, de la Rue]
12 A definition of the words: science, technology, and engineering
[techni, ingenuity]
13 Dionysius Lardner and early steam power technology
[handbook, conservation, coal, ecology, pyramids, environment]
14 John Fitch and the first commercially successful steamboat
[Fulton, Watt, Rumsey, Philadelphia, Kentucky]
15 Early inventions of the electric telegraph
[Morse, electrostatic, Watson, LeSage]
16 Homo Technologicus
[techni, technology, anthropology, tools]
17 Marc Isambard Brunel and his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel
[Great Eastern, tunnel, Great Western, materialism]
18 How some contemporary poets saw the Industrial Revolution
[Shelley, Blake, Burns, Scott, literature]
19 The Crystal Palace and the great 1851 exhibition
[Paxton, Queen Victoria, Brunel, design, architecture]
20 Genetic mutations of wheat and the invention of farming
[emmer, anthropology, agriculture, genetics, grain, biology, mutation]
21 Santos-Dumont, Zeppelin, and the great airships
[Giffard, dirigible, balloons, flight, airplane]
22 The first American iron production in Saugus, Mass.
[nails, smelting, mill, forge, wrought iron, Colonial]
23 The light bulb and the vacuum tube
[Edison effect, Fleming, telegraphy, radio tube]
24 The wheel: a very difficult concept
[crank, rotational motion, invention]
25 NASA's "crawler transporter," the world's largest land
transportation vehicle
[space, NASA, tracked vehicle]
26 Three-field crop rotation and the origins of Western technology
[agriculture, grain, protein, horse, ox, plow, White]
27 Vannevar Bush and the great Rockefeller Differential Analyzer
[analog, digital, computer]
28 The first American steam engine
[Hornblower, Schuyler, Adams, Colonial America, Franklin]
29 The Windmill: A device that has come, gone, and may come again
[Cervantes, Quixote, power, propeller, Watt]
30 Colonial America, 1776: A new nation of glorious amateurs
[Fitch, Barlow, Jefferson, Monticello, Franklin]
31 The century-long retention of masts and sails on steamships
[Savannah, Great Western, Monitor, Merrimac, transportation]
32 The Wright brothers battle for priority over Langley
[Aerodrome, Walcott, Curtiss, Abott, NASA, flight]
33 Perpetua Mobile and the Medieval mind
[perpetual motion, Bhaskara, power, machine]
34 The Douglas DC-3: an airplane for all seasons
[transportation, flight, Rockne, Fokker triplane, DC-1, DC-2, Shang-Ri-La]
35 Does war influence technological evolution? Some surprising facts
[airplane, speed, production, invention]
36 The Erie Canal
[transportation, Great Lakes, Buffalo, Hudson, Niagara, Jefferson, Gallatin, Clinton]
37 The first twenty years of transatlantic flights
[Zeppelin, Lindbergh, Alcock, Brown, Ortieg, transportation, Ryan]
38 The development of the seemingly uncomplicated window pane
[soda-lime, Alexandria, stained glass, crown glass, plate glass]
39 Balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard, the first barnstormer
[flight, Franklin, transportation, Jeffries, Washington, Philadelphia]
40 The invention of money -- an abstraction of goods and services
[talent, trade, coin, notes, computers, exchange, anthropology]
41 Frankenstein -- the monster of our obsessiveness
[Shelley, Byron, Lardner, literature, Romantic, Wollstonecraft]
42 Our radar warning of the Pearl Harbor attack
[communications, war, Hulsmeyer]
43 Vespucci and the naming of America
[Columbus, Waldseemuller, exploration, geography, transportation]
44 The invention of the parachute
[Leonardo da Vinci, flight, Lenormand, Renaissance]
45 Fahrenheit and thermometry
[heat, science, Newton]
46 The clock as preparation for modern science
[Baroque, feedback, art]
47 Moment of inertia and satellite stability
[Landon, Sputnik, Explorer, space, NASA, Bracewell, failure, RCA]
48 The lowly, but not-so-simple, dressmaker's pin
[clothing, Cowper, Smith, robot, mass production, machine]
49 Some technology that we don't see when we first look
[horn, gears, 3-M, invention]
50 Mark Twain and the Paige Compositor
[Linotype, design, machine, Merganthaler, production, printing, function]
51 A short discourse on tunneling
[Whittier, aqueduct, canals, railroads, transportation, Hoosac, Brunel]
52 Man the measure -- man the meter
[folklore, units, Watt, temperature, power, length]
53 Technology in Alexandria, ca. 200 BC
[Alexander, Euclid, Hellenistic, Archimedes, Ptolemy, feedback, water clock]
54 O'Shaughnessy and the Indian telegraph system
[Morse, Crimean war, Sepoy, communication, electricity]
55 How we name our machines
[flight, airplane, refrigerator, engine, machine, computer, steam engine, automobile]
56 An encounter with Einstein
[science]
57 Ceremony in the manufacture of a Samurai sword
[metallurgy, standards, forging, iron, steel]
58 Crossing the English Channel without ships
[flight, tunnel, Gossamer Albatross, Kremer prize]
59 The transatlantic telegraph cable
[Field, Gisborne, Great Eastern, Queen Victoria, Buchanan, communication]
60 A critique of Bushnell's invention of the submarine
[Turtle, Hopkinson, transportation, war, Colonial America]
61 The skyscraper and the great Chicago fire
[elevator, steel, Chicago, design, iron]
62 Joseph Stalin and Russian aircraft records in the 1930s
[flight, Tupolev, records, war]
63 Some thoughts about engineering systems
[design]
64 Rudolf Diesel and his wonderful engine
[engine, power, priority, internal combustion]
65 Some summary thoughts after the first 64 episodes
[Einstein, Edison, education]
66 Technologies that put an end to record-setting
[speed, aircraft, microwave, transportation]
67 The story of a failed airplane design -- the XP-75
[design, Ford, Berlin, General Motors, Loren, flight]
68 A question of size -- some notions about scale
[dimensional analysis, similitude]
69 Steam engines in England during the 18th century
[Watt, Savery, Newcomen, power, England]
70 Some thoughts on fame and fortune in technology
[Bible, Quixote, invention, Boelter]
71 The Guillotine and the democratization of death
[execution, France, Rumford, Lavoisier, death]
72 The invisible invention of the clock
[water clock, Honnecourt, di Dondi, time]
73 The tragic tale of Evariste Galois
[Napoleon, Ecole, algebra, group theory, mathematics]
74 Germs and the Broad Street Well
[Snow, Koch, Lister, cholera, medicine, disease]
75 On the rediscovery of lighter-than-air flight
[dirigible, Zeppelin, flight, aircraft, blimp, Hindenburg, transportation]
76 The alchemists and chemistry before the middle 19th century
[Aristotle, caloric, phlogiston, science]
77 Napoleon Bonaparte and iron construction in France
[Ecole, bridges, Eiffel, monuments]
78 The development of the bicycle
[automobile, Macmillan, hobbyhorse, transportation]
79 A horseless carriage offered to Anne Boleyn
[England, automobile, power]
80 On the absence of women in the history of technology
[Cowan, Pursell, Masters, engineering]
81 Two unsinkable ships: the Titanic and the Great Eastern
[Brunel, accidents, safety, invention]
82 Late 18th century competition among roads, canals and railways
[transportation, power, mines, mining]
83 Alfred Ely Beach's secret subway
[Tammany, Scientific American, New York, Tweed, transportation]
84 Thomas Sopwith's hundredth birthday
[flight, von Richtofen, transportation, war, aircraft]
85 The development of the helicopter
[Forlanini, da Vinci, aircraft, flight, transportation, Sikorsky, Cornu, autogyro]
86 The discovery of oxygen and scientific revolution
[Priestley, Lavoisier, Scheele, Kuhn, Dalton, chemistry]
87 John and Washington Roebling, and the Brooklyn Bridge
[Hegel, suspension bridge, construction]
88 A concern about computers and the redefinition of reality
[computer graphics, Torrance, movie]
89 On saying goodbye to lighthouses and cabooses
[obsolete, obsolescence]
90 Georg Cantor, the man who counted beyond infinity
[mathematics, set theory, science, infinity]
91 Liberty ships: an amateur takes over the trade
[transportation, war, construction, design, Kaiser]
92 Occam's razor and engineering design
[Shakers]
93 Teaching the American public to use the telephone
[Bell, telegraph, communication]
94 The Black boxing of technology
[education, invention]
95 On superconductors and steamboats
[Chu, invention, science, electricity, Fulton]
96 Streamlining the American public
[design, automobile, airfoil]
97 Medieval masons and their cathedrals
[medieval, stone, construction]
98 George Everett Hale and BIG telescopes
[Palomar, optical, optics, astronomy]
99 The hourglass: the poor man's clock, the poor man's metaphor
[timekeeping, Renaissance]
100 The invention and selling of the typewriter
[communication, Monaco, Remington, business]
101 Interchangeable parts
[design, manufacture, Franklin, Gutenberg, Whitney, guns, Ford]
102 Lord Byron's daughter, first computer programmer
[Babbage, Ada, analytical engine, literature, women]
103 Covering up Soviet technological disasters
[Russia, flight, safety]
104 Baroque violins, ice cream, and DC-3's
[design, flight, music]
105 Eighteenth century water wheel technology
[power, Pompadour, de Parcieux, turbine, Smeaton]
106 Stability: not always a virtue
[design, flight, aircraft, mechanics]
107 The wind and its technologies in the ancient mind
[literature]
108 Trench warfare and the technology of war
[Tuchman, guns, automatic weapons, Maginot]
109 High-pressure steam engines and transportation
[railroad, Watt, Cugnot, Trevithick, power]
110 Nevil Shute: engineer and author
[literature, airplanes]
111 Topsell's history of four-footed beasts and serpents
[zoology, printing]
112 The failure of the Comet jet-liner, and Nevil Shute's anticipation of it.
[literature, airplanes, safety, design]
113 Galileo, Torricelli, and von Guericke; and the idea of a vacuum
[Savery, Magdeburg, pumps, power, steam engine]
114 The brief day of the great flying boats
[flight, transportation, Martin, Hughes, seaplanes]
115 Guido da Vigevano's handbook for a crusader
[war, medieval, design, invention]
116 Ceredi's re-invention of Archimedes' pump
[invention, Galileo, Aristotle, philosophy]
117 The Korean "Turtle Boat" -- the first ironclad
[war, Japan, naval, navy, design]
118 The English and 18th century ballooning
[England, Lunardi, flight, transportation, invention]
119 J. Willard Gibbs, America's greatest scientist
[science, thermodynamics, Yale, physics]
120 Su-Sung's wonderful 11th century water clock
[China, timekeeping, escapement]
121 The Second Law of Thermodynamics and time's arrow
[LaChatelier, Braun, entropy]
122 Diderot's Encyclopedie and the French revolution
[dictionary, encyclopedia, France, literature]
123 Recovering from the Black Death
[disease, medicine, Renaissance, printing, timekeeping]
124 The camera obscura, waiting for someone to provide the film
[photography, France, lithography, Kepler, Niepce]
125 On finding the first internal combustion-engine driven auto
[Benz, de Rochas, Marcus, invention, transportation]
126 Some thoughts on liability and reasonable risk
[safety, Hamurabi, nuclear]
127 Black American inventors before the Civil War
[McCormick, Whitney, cotton gin, reaper, Davis, Blair]
128 The Liberty Bell
[American Revolution, metallurgy, casting]
129 The mad scientist -- an unshakable image
[Frankenstein, Faust, Marlowe, Shelley, literature]
130 Urban archaeology provides a window to the past
[anthropology, Brown, Ashton villa, Galveston, mansion]
131 Henry Adams ponders the Virgin and the Dynamo
[science, medieval, Langley, exhibition]
132 The Kansas City, Hyatt-Regency skywalk failure
[safety, design]
133 How the 1903 Cadillac brought American cars to England
[automobile, transportation, interchangeable]
134 A ghostly Japanese navy at the bottom of Truk Lagoon
[war, shipwrecks]
135 On learning to use coal
[power, metallurgy, wood]
136 Herbert Hoover: Humanitarian and Engineer
[Stanford, mining, geology]
137 Music-making: the first human technology
[Bible, art, anthropology, Shakespeare, Stevens]
138 Albrecht Durer: Germany's answer to Leonardo
[printing, perspective, geometry, engraving, art, Renaissance]
139 Herbert and Lou Hoover meet Georgius Agricola
[Stanford, mining, geology, metallurgy, Renaissance, women]
140 Technological half-truths and technical literacy
[heat, thermodynamics]
141 Benjamin Franklin's experiments in heat transfer
[thermodynamics, light, science, radiation]
142 Max Jakob: a breath of fresh air in a new land
[war, Einstein, heat transfer, science, Germany]
143 L.M.K. Boelter: A great engineering educator.
[heat transfer, education]
144 Lord Kelvin's miscalculation of the age of the earth
[Bible, science, heat transfer, Fourier, Darwin, Heaviside]
145 General Electric and the product-driven innovation cycle
[design, manufacturing, Langmuir, electric light bulb]
146 Garrett A. Morgan: a Black American inventor
[traffic, safety]
147 Hydrogen, hot air balloons, 19th century chemistry
[science, Montgolfier, Charles, phlogiston, flight, transportation]
148 Continuous-aim firing: a diagnosis of an ill-received idea
[navy, war, design, invention, guns]
149 Thoughts on the extent of technological change in one generation
[generation, tecnological, change, information revolution]
150 Are we alone in the universe?
[astronomy, Spielberg, Sagan, radio telescopes]
151 Rediscovering the sunken Union Monitor
[Civil War, Merrimack, navy, gun turret, shipwrecks]
152 John Atanasoff's invention of the digital computer
[Sperry, design, Honeywell, Mauchly, ENIAC]
153 Flying the Aegean Sea in Daedalus' slipstream
[flight, transportation, MIT, design, Greece]
154 Charles Richard Drew and the development of blood banks
[Black, plasma, medicine]
155 Some musings on the nature of experimental proofs
[science, Fresnel, Poisson]
156 Robert Fulton's last ship, the Steam Battery catamaran
[navy, war, invention, design, propeller]
157 Thomas Crapper: The man who didn't invent the flush toilet
[valve]
158 Lewis Latimer, a Black pioneer of electric lighting
[Edison, Maxim, Bell]
159 Lowell, Massachusetts: a "Utopian" industrial city
[textile mills]
160 The first Red Cross Ambulance
[medicine, war, Red Cross, Solferino, Dunant, Barton]
161 The Indian canoe -- a perfected technology
[design, boat, transportation]
162 Otto Lilienthal and Orville Wright -- one died and the other lived
[flight, gliders, Chanute]
163 Numismatics -- coins as a historical record
[anthropology, money]
164 Computers and the human mind
[neural network]
165 Changes in hand-tools for wood-working, through the Industrial Revolution
[Industrial Revolution, wood working, hand tools]
166 Galileo's experiment on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
[science, Aristotle, mechanics]
167 The sewing machine in American life
[Singer, Willcox-Gibbs, Saint, design]
168 The Lunar Society and 18th century revolution
[Darwin, Watt, Priestley, Boulton, Wedgwood, Herschel, Smeaton]
169 Some trivia in the history of technology and its implication
[velcro, valves, Joule]
170 Technologies of the Texas Republic
[medicine]
171 Electric power comes to Telluride, Colorado
[generator, Edison, Pelton, mining]
172 Herbert J.L. Hinkler, Australian almost-hero of aviation
[flight, transportation, Australia]
173 On being shaped by a new computer -- or by any new technology
[machine, computer, technology]
174 Nikola Tesla -- another sort of creative mind
[Yugoslavia, Edison, Westinghouse, electricity, Rayleigh]
175 Some 2500 year old Chinese bells harbor a secret
[music, anthropology, acoustics]
176 On wanting to build my own crystal set
[radio, communication, Marconi]
177 Two wealthy men: Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller
[iron, steel, oil, business, money, industry]
178 Reflections on growing up in the media
[radio, communication, war]
179 On the Invention of the electric chair
[death, Tesla, Edison, Faust, electricity]
180 Figuring out the value of Pi
[mathematics, Bible]
181 The Industrial Revolution comes to America
[Evans, Crystal Palace, millwright, industry]
182 Black and White in pre-revolutionary Virginia
[Jefferson, religion]
183 Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and a change in science
[Bacon, Pope, Royal Society]
184 Count von Zeppelin learns about flying in St. Paul, Minnesota
[balloons, dirigible, Hindenburg, flight, transportation]
185 Justus Liebig and the first research laboratory
[Gay-Lussac, dye, chemistry, Edison, benzene, aniline]
186 Fourier, Egypt, and modern applied mathematics
[science, heat transfer, Napoleon, France]
187 In which I learn that technology is communication
[design]
188 We build a dirigible to get to the gold rush
[America, Giffard, balloon, transportation, flight, Porter]
189 The two Eiffel towers
[Statue of Liberty, France, construction, Iron]
190 The secret dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London
[Wren, construction, design, architecture]
191 Hoover Dam: "Replenish the earth and subdue it."
[water management, mead, power, hydroelectric]
192 John Tyndall: measuring sound without electronics
[Spenser, music, science, flames]
193 A picture of New York Harbor painted in 1852
[artist, Lane, ships, steamboats, transportation, Gold Rush]
194 On being unreasonable: a repudiation of common sense
[Gilbert, invention]
195 Radio Days -- a tribute to early radio
[Wells, radio tubes, Hindenburg, communication, media]
196 A visit to the art museum -- artists and technology
[Remington, art, sculpture, modern art]
197 The Holland Tunnel -- a story you've heard before
[construction, ventilation]
198 Dionysius Lardner looks at a rapidly changing world
[handbooks, power, steam, coal, conservation, water power]
199 Ford's star-crossed Eagle boat
[ship, war, design, navy, production, design, construction]
200 In which we study an old machinist's handbook
[Nicholson, millwright, Industrial Revolution, Dickens]
201 The rush to build the Western riverboats
[safety, steamboats, Pittsburgh, transportation]
202 A look at Edwardian patents: 1901-1902
[perpetual motion, Fleming, radio tube, flight]
203 The Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1768 to now
[dictionary, encyclopedia, Industrial Revolution]
204 Robert A. Millikan, a man who didn't want to be a physicist
[science, Roentgen, Curie, Planck]
205 Cyrus McCormick and the 1876 Centennial Exhibition
[America, machinery, Lincoln, industry, business, invention]
206 Astronomy, the pole star, and the wheel
[Bronowski, Easter Island]
207 George Seldon, Henry Ford, and Clyde Barrow
[automobiles, transportation, Duryea, Gibbs]
208 Technology, art, and the Upper Paleolithic period
[invention, anthropology, archaeology, Neanderthal, Cro Magnon, tools]
209 Joseph Priestley: Ben Franklin's "honest heretic"
[Industrial Revolution, oxygen, Aristotle, Lunar Society, Boulton, Watt, Darwin, Wedgwood, religion]
210 Maxim's airplane
[Ader, flight, transportation, Wright, invention]
211 Anesthesia, another "Who got there first?" question
[medicine, chemistry, Long, Wells, Victoria, Morton]
212 Niepce, Daguerre, and the first 30 years of photography
[camera obscura, chemistry]
213 The Pythagorean "feminist" philosophers
[Theano, Pythagoras, Plato, mathematics, geometry, Greek, women]
214 Cognac grapes growing from Texas rootstocks
[Munson, wine, agriculture, botany]
215 Hypatia's mathematics
[Hellenistic, astrolabe, densitomiter, Alexandria, women]
216 In which we watch books growing old
[library, paper, papyrus, printing, linen, parchment]
217 The saintly Witch of Agnesi
[Newton, Italy, mathematics, women, geometry, calculus]
218 The globe-girdling flight of Voyager
[Rutan, Yeager, transportation, aircraft, materials]
219 Emilie de Breteuil: only a mind in a gilded cage
[Newton, women, Voltaire, France, mathematics]
220 Pride goeth before the fall of the Quebec Bridge
[safety, steel construction, cantilever, Cooper]
221 Caroline Herschel: more than meets the eye
[women, astronomy, mathematics, Uranus, comets, nebulae]
222 A Good Crystal Ball is Hard to Find
[Watt, Edison, transportation, phonograph, communication]
223 Sophie Germain and French applied mechanics
[women, mathematics, LaGrange, Gauss, Eiffel]
224 Mary Fairfax Somerville
[women, mathematics, science, Babbage, Ada Byron]
225 Sonya Corvin-Krukovsky Kovalevsky
[women, mathematics, Weierstrass, mechanics]
226 Emmy Noether, the gentle mathematical powerhouse
[women, mathematics, algebra, Einstein, Weyl, Germany]
227 Some summary thoughts on women in mathematics
[Hroswitha, engineering]
228 The limestone quarries of Northern France
[pyramids, stone, cathedral, safety, construction]
229 Computer systems and railroad track widths
[standardization, design]
230 The round earth: a smaller world than the flat one
[Columbus, Pythagoreans, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Egypt]
231 The real McCoy
[Black inventor, lubrication, railroads]
232 The ritual origins of technology
[Egypt, balance]
233 Balsa wood and composite materials
[design, construction, composite materials, boats, airplanes]
234 Dolly Shepherd -- on parachutes, risk, and technology
[women, balloons, flight, Buffalo Bill, Garnerin, space]
235 Harrison's wonderful watch
[timekeeping, invention, clocks, navigation, Royal Society]
236 Norbert Rillieux and multistage evaporation
[Black inventor, agriculture, thermodynamics, Civil War]
237 Early submarines
[Verne, Turtle, transportation, war, ships, Fulton, Bauer]
238 The Momsen Lung, a technology that needn't have been
[safety, navy, submarines, design, Bauer, war]
239 Chester Carlson and the XeroX machine
[printing, communication, invention]
240 Mathematics is too hard for me to learn!
[education, mathematics, learning]
241 Giordano Bruno and the radicalization of Copernicus
[science, astronomy, religion]
242 The Chinese origin of the bombard
[gunpowder, war]
243 What ever became of Babbage's Analytical Engine?
[computer]
244 Cable cars: the right technology in the right place
[transportation, electric trolley, steam engine]
245 Delaunay Deslandes misses the Industrial Revolution
[plate glass, manufacturing, France]
246 The book on weirs from the Turriano Codex
[da Vinci, dams, water management]
247 Jean Piaget watches children analyze machines
[education, bicycles, psychology]
248 Ninety years before the Golden Gate Bridge
[Gold Rush, Fremont, Strauss, safety]
249 Amy Johnson -- an improbable heroine
[Earhart, women, flight, transportation, aircraft]
250 Escalator: the magical stairways
[steam, exhibition, electricity, Otic, Reno]
251 The timber square set: a mining revolution in Virginia City
[invention, construction, Deidesheimer]
252 Archimedes' legendary death ray: Did it exist?
[Greek, war, navy]
253 Gaining a concrete understanding of cement
[Eddystone Lighthouse, plaster, Smeaton, tuff]
254 Charlie Taylor builds the Wright Brother's engine
[flight, invention, design, Ford]
255 The Chrysler Airflow: the Car of the Future
[design, automobile, transportation]
256 Reuleaux's kinematics: the soul of a machine
[kinematics, mechanics]
257 Charles Preuss maps the American West
[surveying, Fremont, Kit Carson, cartography]
258 Hieronymus Bosch's documentary demons
[art, pharmacy, chemistry, medicine, communication]
259 Surveying: a no-longer-recognizable technology
[surveying, surveyors]
260 150 years of the metric system of units
[dimensions, measurement]
261 Aesop's Fables and scientific illustration
[Gilbert, Gheeraerts, science, zoology]
262 Light, Experience, and the rise of 17th century science
[art, Hals, Pope, Newton, medicine]
263 The Garden of Eden in a computer simulation
[science]
264 Oliver Evans -- revised version
[transportation, auto, steamboat, oructor amphibolos, vacuum]
265 In which Friederich Kekule sees snakes and the benzene ring
[science, invention, Liebig, architecture, chemistry, crime]
266 Galileo roughs upon the Aristotelian moon
[art, astronomy, Hariot, Donne]
267 An engine to drive the new dynamos
[electric generators, steam engines, steam turbines, Parsons]
268 Diving into an Etruscan shipwreck
[archaeology]
269 Mechanical ears in WW-II
[war, acoustics, sound, radar]
270 The Deep: Diving into the shipwreck of the RMS Rhone
[steamships, packets]
271 Mercer's mad museum of just-abandoned technology
[archaeology, anthropology, tools]
272 The railroads and standard time
[clocks, timekeeping]
273 Ice, diamonds, and the heat pipe
[Trefethen, invention, heat transfer, condensation]
274 The Luddites and thoughts about technological change.
[manufacturing]
275 The form and shape of things -- of nature and cities
[nature]
276 Charles Proteus Steinmetz -- brilliant engineer and would-be socialist.
[GE, electricity, technocracy]
277 The power output of you and of your favorite machine
[anthropology]
278 Of mummies and the North Pole
[Hellenistic, flight, transportation, invention]
279 The Smithsonian acquires a domestic hydraulic elevator
[Otis]
280 The wreck of the Cairo
[Civil War, ship, steamboat, gunboat, war, anthropology, archaeology]
281 van Rysselberghe's invention of long-distance telephone service
[electricity, communication, Bell, telegraph]
282 The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Failure -- the reenactment of an old disaster
[safety, suspension bridge, accidents]
283 An 1869 Harper's article on flight
[transportation, ornithopters, Wright Brothers, internal combustion]
284 The aerial map: a dream that was a long time in coming
[photography, Daguerreotype, balloons, flight, surveying]
285 Oliver Evans: an American original
[millwright, manufacturing, steam engines, handbooks]
286 The musical instrument shop in Colonial Williamsburg
[violin, harpsichord, tools]
287 Some reflections on amateurs, professionals, and invention
[Goddard, Corelli, rockets]
288 Octave Chanute and the wedding of engineering with flight
[gliders, airplanes, engineering, Wright, transportation]
289 In which we watch women join the new technology of flight
[war, transportation, Wright, Curtiss, Scott, Clark, Quimby, Stinson]
290 Mapping the moon
[Galileo, Hevelius, Borman, astronomy]
291 The French horn and the industrial revolution
[music, invention, music, pipe]
292 The Scapa Flow ship cemetery
[war, navy, shipwrecks, Royal Oak]
293 Johann Joachim Becher, mercantilism, phlogiston, and gold
[science, alchemy, chemistry, metallurgy]
294 Hroswitha, Durer, and medieval feminism
[art, mathematics, science, women, literature, printing]
295 Putting a leap second in an elastic year
[timekeeping, cesium clock, calendars, standards, measurement]
296 The Anthropic Principle
[science, philosophy, Anaxagoras, Blake, Wheeler, anthropology]
297 Wieliczka Sol, the great salt treasure
[Poland, mining]
298 A prediction about aerial warfare made in 1909
[flight, transportation, Zeppelin, dirigible, guns]
299 Stereotomy: Mathematics, Masonry, and the trumpet squinch
[Architecture, construction, design, geometry]
300 The Gallerie des Machines and the 1889 Paris Exhibition
[France, Crystal Palace, Adams, Carnot, construction, iron]
301 The marriage of art with medical dissection
[medicine, Aristotle, da Vinci, Dickens, Twain]
302 On the purpose pursued by airplane inventors
[war, Wright]
303 The Battle of Lepanto and the last of galleys
[Cervantes, ships, war, galleasses]
304 In which Robert Fulton tries to build a submarine
[Turtle, Napoleon, steam, Bushnell]
305 Lisa Meitner, the reluctant mother of the atomic bomb
[science, chemistry, physics, radiation, women, war]
306 Mothers of invention: women inventing for women
[liquid paper, Nesmith, Newmar, Lamar, Baker, invention]
307 A visit to a home that was occupied for 230,000 years
[Peking Man, cave, anthropology, tools]
308 The Last of the 7 Wonders of the World, The Great Pyramid
[Colossus, Philon, Hellenistic, Sputnik, computer]
309 Hunter-gatherers turn into farmers in Roseburg, Oregon
[lumber, logging]
310 The Fairmount Waterworks in old Philadelphia
[Twain, turbines, hydraulics, pumps, steam, water wheels, Latrobe, Dickens]
311 The CycloCrane: half helicopter and half blimp
[balloons, dirigibles, flight, logging, invention]
312 Old technology faces new at the Battle of Hastings
[war, England, horse, armor, arrows]
313 We find the history of trolleys in the middle of a forest
[transportation, electric, cable car, railroads]
314 Hippocrates and the oath to do holistic medicine
[Hippocrates, medicine, Greek, human body, cutters]
315 The 1909 Sears-Roebuck catalog and 20th century America
[Montgomery-ward, manufacturing, typewriter, phonograph]
316 John, Washington, and Emily Roebling; and suspension bridges
[construction, wire rope, Lackawaxen]
317 Edwin Armstrong, FM radio, and the superheterodyne
[communication, electricity, radio tubes, Sarnoff]
318 Charles Lindbergh, Alexis Carrel, and the invention of the heart pump
[flight, medicine, artificial organs]
319 Galen, the driven Roman genius of experimental medicine
[Galen, experimental medicine, medical, dissection, Hippocratic]
320 On providing and elevator for the Eiffel Tower in 1889
[construction, Otis, exhibition, buildings]
321 About Galileo, China, and sunspots
[science, telescopes, Japan, astronomy]
322 Marriot's Avitor airship and the California Gold Rush
[transportation, flight, balloons, dirigibles, Porter]
323 Frozen-out wine, burnt wine, and the invention of brandy
[food, alchemy, chemistry, processes, liquor, beer]
324 The Chinese invention of seismography
[instrumentation, science, geophysics, earthquake]
325 Andreas Vesalius, renaissance artists, and experimental anatomy
[medicine, dissection, surgery, art, Shakespeare, da Vinci]
326 Sybilla Masters, the first and last Colonial woman inventor
[America, agriculture, fabric, weaving, patents, women]
327 Ambroise Pare turns butchery into humane surgery
[medicine]
328 We find a 2300 year old model airplane in the Cairo Museum
[Egypt, flight, transportation, Hellenistic]
329 Production and usury: trying to make money without making things
[production, invention, innovation]
330 In which we try not to "yield with grace to reason"
[Frost, Isaacks, Jefferson, desalination, engines, Second Law of Thermodynamics]
331 Greth's California Eagle and Baldwin's California Arrow fly over San Francisco
[flight, transportation, airship, dirigibles]
332 Teaching mechanics and science by involving student in the thought process
[education, Hudson, Casey, MacGyver]
333 Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. The Northwest Passage
[Arabia, Sweepstakes, Huron, Superior, Michigan, Erie, Ontario, St. Lawrence]
334 Lucretius and modern atomic theory, 2000 years too soon
[science, Rome, physics, poem, poetry, Aristotle]
335 Erasmus Darwin, poet laureate of the Industrial Revolution
[poem, poetry, literature]
336 William Harvey, the doctor who unraveled blood flow
[heart, medicine, anatomy, Padua]
337 On life, death, and riding roller coasters
[Thompson, Astroworld, gravity, Texas Cyclone]
338 The brief bright day of the Clipper Ship
[transportation, steam, sailing]
339 Henry David Thoreau: technologist
[literature, lead pencils, invention, transcendentalists]
340 Unwilling Chinese pioneers of kite flight
[Marco Polo, balloons, Rozier, Montgolfier, Baden-Powell]
341 Scientific literacy: a many-sided problem
[education]
342 Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass": a photograph of America
[literature, camera, poem, poetry]
343 A 6000 year old roadway in neolithic England
[Stone age, construction, highway, transportation, tools]
344 Measuring the distance from Earth to the moon
[space, laser, instrumentation, accuracy]
345 Watching the space shuttle glow in the dark
[telescope, atmosphere, chemistry, kinetic theory, corrosion]
346 America learns consumerism
[advertising, design, retail sales]
347 Shrodinger's metaphysical cat
[physics, quantum, philosphy, reality]
348 The riddle of the camera and reality
[Holmes, Orvell, stereoptican, photography, manufacturing]
349 Morrel's California Ariel: a great forgotten dirigible failure
[flight, transportation, balloon, Zeppelin]
350 Robert Boyle, and his laboratory assistants: Hooke and Papin
[steam engine, pressure cooker, science]
351 Mapping Antarctica
[Amundsen, Byrd, geography, geology, South Pole, exploration]
352 The 15th century origin of the suction pump
[Columbus, sailing ships, mining, drainage, bilge, laboratory]
353 James Porteous and the invention of the Fresno Scraper
[California, American West, earth moving, heavy equipment, agriculture, civil engineering]
354 Thomas Burnet and the scale of geological time
[Newton, cosmology, science, geology, Gould, Earth, religion, Bible]
355 The remarkable level of engineering in the Neolithic stone age
[pyramids, Egypt, archaeology, construction, tools]
356 The folly of naming the first inventor
[light bulb, Edison, Grove, electricity, steamboat, Fitch, Davy, invention, Swan, de la Rue]
357 The 2nd Anniversary of The Engines of Our Ingenuity
[invention]
358 Giovanni Battista Morgagni: Father of anatomical pathology
[medicine, surgery, disease]
359 The Dolni Vestonice Venus: ceramic art of the Upper Paleolithic period in Czechoslovakia
[anthropology, archaeology]
360 Woodland's and Silver's invention of the bar code
[computer, laser, retail, information]
361 Water witching, dowsing, and the psychology of finding water
[Carolyn Kraus, water witching, drowsing, dowsers]
362 Reducing body temperatures for surgery: Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest
[medicine, blood]
363 Mapping the ocean floor
[geography, Magellan, Ross, Bache, Franklin, measurement, instrumentation, geology]
364 Abraham Trembley and the "Hydra" pylop
[botany, biology, zoology, science, reproduction]
365 The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey measures America
[geography, instrumentation]
366 A.A. Milne's moral fables for an unproductive America
[Christopher Robin, production, literature, trade]
367 Diving into what was once a Minoan shipwreck, 4250 years ago
[archaeology, anthropology, Greece, Bronze age]
368 The size of things: How big or small is the world around us?
[astronomy, stars, science, earth, geology]
369 Civil War ironclads -- a lot more of them than you thought
[military, ships, steamboats, guns]
370 Domenico Fontana moves a 327 monolith for Pope Sixtus V
[architecture, civil engineering, Egyptian obelisk, St. Paul's]
371 Martin Luther King shows us how the inventive mind works
[Black, race relations, nonviolence]
372 A sundial honors Kentucky's Viet Nam dead
[war, architecture, astronomy, memorial]
373 Flying like a bird: on mimicking life with machines
[biology, flight, airplane, design, invention, transportation]
374 The Cubitt treadmill: a prison "reform" that failed in America
[power, penology, sociology, mills]
375 On reaching the limits of smallness
[computers, calculators, nanometer, size, laser well, measurement, materials]
376 The inexorable leaning of the Tower of Pisa
[construction, foundation, architecture, masonry]
377 The wheelbarrow, a medieval invention in the West and an ancient one in the East
[Chinese, cathedral, wheel]
378 Women in the Academy
[science, Curie, Poullain, Gozzadini]
379 Hutton's geological theory: A world that neither begins nor ends
[science, religion, cosmology, stratigraphy, Playfair, Scott]
380 The Chinese invention of equal temperament in music
[scales, tuning, Back, Chu, Tartini, Mersenne, Ricci]
381 Using submarines in the Civil War
[Bushnell, Fulton, David, Hunley, Housatonic]
382 Mary Wollstonecraft: feminism and 18th century revolution
[Frankenstein, women, Paine, Blake, Priestley, Godwin]
383 Eli Terry brings wooden clocks to the Midwestern frontier
[Lincoln, sales, medieval, marketing]
384 Samuel Slater reinvents spinning technology in early America
[weaving, textile, cloth, industry, manufacturing, Brown, Quaker, women, patent, invention]
385 The Haya people make carbon steel in ancient Africa
[Black, iron, metallurgy, anthropology, smelting]
386 Some thoughts about invention, inventors, and cooperation
[creative, cooperation]
387 James Nasmyth: an engineer designs heavy machinery with an artist's eye
[Industrial Revolution, Crystal Palace, invention]
388 Towing an iceberg out of the way
[offshore, design, high-pressure, oil, ships, drilling, ocean]
389 The Mayan city of Coba -- a story of technology in isolation
[anthropology, agriculture, Yucatan, city, architecture, archaeology]
390 Some thoughts about the origins of writing
[Sumerian, Egyptian, heiroglyph, Africa, Black, invention]
391 Simplicity gives America its 1st jet fighter, the Lulu-Belle
[Skunk Works, airplane, flight, war, invention, design]
392 Margaret Cavendish: a 17th century natural philosopher
[science, women, salon, France, England]
393 Thoughts on the dangers posed by electric fields
[Franklin, lightening, electrostatic, power lines, AC]
394 How did Prometheus really steal fire?
[myth, matches, anthropology, flint, invention]
395 John Herschel, modest inheritor of an "astronomical" legacy
[telescope, science, women, astronomy, Babbage,calculus]
396 Bread, wine, and beer: the origins of fermentation
[alcohol, Bible, vinegar, agriculture, food, chemistry, anthropology]
397 Maria Merian, the mother of entomology
[women, entomology, biology, trades, painting, textiles, anthropology]
398 Taming the beast: in which we forge a relation with animals
[anthropology, zoology, agriculture]
399 How we got from the Stone Age to the Iron Age
[metals, ore, smelting, alloy, Egypt, Greece, furnaces]
400 How the Chinese missed the Industrial Revolution and succumbed to opium
[drugs, tobacco, clocks, Jesuits, China]
401 Herman Hollerith streamlines the 1890 Census and starts IBM
[computer, business, invention]
402 What ever became of solar energy?
[power, nuclear, hydroelectric, dam, wind, tidal, sun]
403 In which we yield to nature and build the Panama Canal
[civil engineering, locks, de Lessups, yellow fever, construction]
404 A night at the opera: The most highly refined technology
[music, theater, Saint-Saens, composition, orchestra, violin, singing, acoustics]
405 Time's Arrow, Times Cycle: Jay Gould talks about time
[Hampton, Black, geology, science, cosmology, Burnett]
406 Why do you and I have legs instead of wheels?
[zoology, design, invention]
407 German women astronomers in the the 17th century
[trades, Germany, Cunitz, science]
408 Measuring the creative genie, and fleeing from him
[invention, Coleridge]
409 The inclined railway on Lookout Mountain at Chattanooga
[Civil War, cable, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, Indians]
410 Coleridge, Newton: Romantic poets and Victorian science
[Blake, Rationalism, English, England, literature]
411 Unraveling the Mysteries of Stonehenge
[Hoyle, Lockyer, Neolithic, Druids, Aubry, Solstice, astronomy, archaeology]
412 How an old analog computer outlived its species
[design, compressed, compressor, digital, natural gas, SwRI]
413 Edwin Hubble and the 15 billion light year universe
[telescope, NASA, space shuttle, astronomy, nebulae, relativity, Adams]
414 The ancient Chinese South-Pointing Chariot rediscovered
[design, Honda, auto, car, steering, gears, feedback control, China]
415 The chequered history of observation balloons
[Garnerin, Nero, Walpole, France, Franklin, Napoleon, McClellan]
416 The sad story of the Bavarian Polytechnical Society in Nazi Germany
[Hitler, Nazi, von Linde, von Weber]
417 On finding another language to tell what scientists know
[words, Gilbert, fluid flow, teaching, Latin]
418 200 Anniversary of the U.S. Patent and Copyright Office
[famous, law, invention, lawyer, creativity]
419 In which we watch Eliphalet Nott build Union College
[education, university, Hamilton, Burr, Princeton]
420 Leaving domination behind and building the New Jerusalem
[women, Neolithic, Paleolithic, Houston, society, anthropology]
421 William Gibbs and the steamship United States -- 30 years too late
[shipping, design, transportation, marine, Queen Mary, flight]
422 The invention of the shot tower: an exercise in perception
[invention, manufacturing, guns, Watts, processes]
423 Frederick Terman, Stanford University, and Silicon Valley
[electronics, electricity, innovation, Klystron, San Jose]
424 So many questions we never thought to ask
[invention, clocks, sundials]
425 Mining cold water to make power and grow food in Hawaii
[OTEC, energy, agriculture, farming]
426 Oliver Heaviside -- an electrical sage in solitude
[mathematics, Maxwell, Rayleigh, Hertz, Gibbs, Vector]
427 Printer's marks & devices: brands of the new information age
[Gutenberg, books, Guillard, Fust, Schoeffer, books, symbols]
428 Marie Mitchell: a pioneer of American astronomy
[Annie Jump Cannon, science, Vassar, Nantucket, women]
429 The mismeasure of man: bigotry hides behind numbers
[race, Black, women, Gould, anthropology, Agassiz, Morton]
430 Mining the moon
[metals, metallurgy, space, vacuum]
431 Killing the first person in the search for objectivity
[language, writing, expression]
432 John Montgomery's airplane and its prophet, Victor Loughead
[Lockhead, flight, transportation, Chanute, California, gliders]
433 Kinematic waves in traffic -- a social contract
[transportation, automobiles, highways]
434 Fast, cheap, and out of control: the MIT Insect design lab
[robots, artificial intelligence, computers, manufacturing]
435 Hedy Lamarr: The inventor behind the mask of beauty
[women, electronics, control, movies, invention, Antheil]
436 Why bombs can't kill a city
[war, airplanes, sociology, production, WW-II, Viet Nam]
437 An old electricity handbook reminds us that we're smart
[telephone, technology, learning]
438 Redheffer's perpetual motion machine
[science, Philadelphia, power]
439 Building the Great Pyramid and building Chartres Cathedral
[architecture, archaeology, religion, medieval masons, Egypt]
440 The day we threw out the library's card catalog and replaced it with a computer
[information, books, bibliography]
441 Where have all the entomologists gone?
[science, entomology, biology, insects, bugs]
442 Responsibility, accountability, and the design of software
[computers, management, design]
443 The International Date Line: an intellectual teaser
[geography, Pacific, timekeeping, exploration, Magellan]
444 The Royal Geographical Society: science and dreams
[Burton, Speke, exploration, Scott, Amundsen, Livingstone, Hillary]
445 The second American Revolution
[Romantic, literature, Blake, Barlow, Wollstoncraft, Priestley, Franklin, Godwin, invention, Brown, Industrial Revolution]
446 The Mt. Graham red squirrel and the U. of Ariz. observatory
[environmentalists, telescope, biology, regulation, forest]
447 Synthetic and real things in 1910 America
[production, Santayana, manufacturing, Chaplin, society, advertising, environment]
448 High heat flux in Japan: The provenance of an idea
[energy, invention, innovation, research, science, physics]
449 The Shinkansen "Bullet Train"
[transportation, railroad, safety, inventions, innovation, Japan, earthquake, seismology]
450 The fiction of a "Balance of Nature"
[ecology, habitat, pollution, change, environment]
451 Roy Chapman Andrews and his fossils in the Gobi Desert
[exploration, archaeology, dinosaurs, China, Komodo]
452 Diamonds: a fabrication of the mind
[epitaxy, abrasives, heat conduction, materials, crystal, science, invention]
453 The "Man-midwife" usurps a woman's preserve
[birth control, mercantilism, plague, medieval, medicine, birth, sex, women]
454 Arcana of Science and Art: Changing the world in 1832
[Industrial Revolution, vanadium, thermostat, flare, England, America, silk, invention, design, Babbage, Somerville, Blake]
455 In which Rhode Island rum-runners create the U.S. Navy
[military, ships, frigate, Colonial, America, smuggling, Bligh]
456 Synectics: engineering design takes on a more personal face
[invention, psychology]
457 Invicta: on fighting fire ants with fire ants
[science, environment, ecology, entomology]
458 Trebuchet: A story about Rome, China, and Medieval Europe
[military, arms, catapult, slings, bow and arrow, swape, lever, gunpowder, cannons]
459 Tabby and Cob: a construction material for everyman
[masonry, concrete, building, houses, Yeats, Innisfree]
460 Making hotels and prisons out of large building blocks
[construction, concrete, prefabrication, Zachry]
461 The computer joins stage-set design
[theater, Wagner, Bartok, CAD]
462 Fuseli's Nightmare
[Shelley, Wollstonecraft, Byron, art, Frankenstein, Romantic, Gothic, revolution, painting]
463 Chimneys and fireplaces thaw the chill of Northern Europe
[domestic heating, medieval, Wenceslas, smokestacks, Villon, ventilation, cold, heating]
464 Is the Clovis dating of Native Americans Under Attack
[achaeology, anthropology, Indians, radio carbon dating, science, sociology]
465 The Waning of American Science and Engineering Education
[engineering, engineers, science, education]
466 The Iconography of Women and Science: Images and Realities
[art, printing, Rousseau, Kant, Bacon, du Chatelet]
467 The First Steamboat in San Francisco Bay
[Donner, Lienhard, Sacramento, Sitka, California Gold Rush, pioneers]
468 The Man-made Infestation of Starlings in America
[ecology, environment, birds, biology, Darwinian selection]
469 Nicolaus Steno, a sharp observer of nature and possible saint
[Catholic Church, geology, paleontology, science, fossils]
470 The Japanese Zero a airplane with things to teach us
[flight, production, invention, World War Two]
471 Have I really seen technological change in my lifetime?
[technology, icebox, refrigerator, radio]
472 About an old geometry text at the Battle of Charleston
[Civil War, Foster, Legendre, navy, ship, steamboat, gunboat]
473 On making water fit to drink
[civil, environmental, carcinogens, flouride, chlorine, chemistry, Rook, Bellar]
474 John Dee: mathematician, scientist, and sorcerer
[alchemy, Euclid's geometry, England]
475 Are men and women the same or different? An old mischief
[anatomy, du Chatelet, Kant, Rousseau, gender]
476 Lynn White, the stirrup, and the feudal system
[medieval warfare, Martel, horse, Knights in armor]
477 Mary-Claire King and the grandmothers
[Argentina, biochemistry, genetics, women, revolution, Carlton, Wheaton, mathematics]
478 A quiet man in a bow tie: Not as dull as you think
[engineer, design, stereotype, tractor, winch]
479 In which Japan learns Shakespeare and adopts Western culture
[literature, art museum, Macbeth]
480 Parents and children: About the legacy of creativity
[Dunbar, Symons, sanitary engineering, water quality, environment, women, astronaut, civil]
481 The computer earns a grandmaster rating in Chess
[chess, robot, Kasparov, IBM, Deep Thought]
482 The Cornish pump: a wonderfully adaptive technology goes west
[steam engine, mining, Newcomen, Watt, Irish]
483 Dorothea Erxleben, Germany's first woman doctor
[women, science, Halle, medicine]
484 K.G. Englehardt, the Robot Lady, makes humane machines
[design, women, robotics, production, service]
485 Of dinosaurs and dogs: How do our joints work
[zoology, anatomy, biology, science]
486 A look at voting machines
[Edison, vote, politics]
487 The Tollund Man and other bog people of Northern Europe
[archaeology, anthropology, iron age, embalming, Denmark, religion, food]
488 Success, failure, and Biosphere-2 experiment
[ecology, space, NASA, Oracle, Arizona, waste, Bass, greenhouse, Matson]
489 A sonic measurement of the ocean's temperature
[acoustics, global warming, whales, sound, globe, Heard]
490 A countess balloons over Italy's Apennine mountains.
[aviation, flight]
491 Tom Swift: prophetic assembly line stories
[literature, Bobbsey Twins, Rover Boys, invention]
492 Books: more than we thought they were
[literature, Candide, paper, computers]
493 Competition among steam, electricity, and internal combustion cars, in 1900
[engines, automobiles, power, starter, Stanley Steamer, Ford, market driven]
494 Lysenko's mad Marxist evolutionary theory
[genetics, Russia, Soviet, McCarthy, communism, Lamark, Mendel]
495 Srinivas Ramanujan: an inexplicable mathematical genius
[India, Hardy, Hindu, number theory, mathematics]
496 Teilhard de Chardin and Piltdown "conspiracy"
[evolution, theology, Cro-Magnon, archaeology, anthropology, Dawson]
497 The Piper Cub observes its 60th birthday
[airplane, flight, transportation, design, Pullman, Snake River Canyon]
498 Women primatologists close their conference to men
[feminist, anthropology, biology, Santa Cruz, sociology]
499 How old will you get? Writing the longevity equation
[gerontology, Hildebrand, aging, medicine, disease]
500 A Christmas observation of the 500th episode
[creativity, risk, minority]
501 The Maldive Islands: a dream going under water
[environment, global warming, ocean, greenhouse effect, ecology, polution]
502 Flat TV screens: American invention -- Japanese development
[television, computers, electronics, production, innovation, liquid crystals]
503 PCs, electric motors, and more thoughts about change
[computers, factories, steam engines]
504 An Ethiopian shaman uses digital arithematic
[African, Black, mathematics, arithmetic, computers]
505 The shark's tail: better design than we ever thought
[design, screwdriver, zoology, ichthyology, swimming, fish, evolution, hydrodynamics, biology]
506 Unfinished engineering in the state of Washington
[concrete bridges, library, tunnels, design, canals, University of Washington, Seattle]
507 Igor Sikorsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff make airplanes
[helicopters, airplanes, transportation, Pushkin, design, Russia, WW-I, WW-II, seaplanes, amphibians]
508 Ferris' Great Wheel: Thrust out into the sky!
[Chicago World's fair, roller coaster, consciousness, Jaynes, bicameral, Eiffel]
509 The Technological Muse: An art exhibit on technology
[museum, Katonah, techni, Buxtehude, organ, painting]
510 Ben Franklin, electricity, and revolution
[lightning rods, Louis XV]
511 Paracelsus hides real science behind magical alchemy
[chemistry, medicine, Frobenius, Erasmus, Switzerland]
512 The fever thermometer enters medical practice
[medicine, physiology, science]
513 DNA, RNA, and scientific literacy
[biophysics, biology, biochemistry, genetics, genes, science]
514 Tyrannosaurus Rex helps us to understand dinosaurs -- and ourselves.
[zoology, paleontology, extinction, ecology, evolution]
515 Science fiction and German rocketry
[von Braun, Goddard, Oberth, Valier, V2 rocket, Lang, Opel]
516 The Tuskegee Airman help desegregate the Army, and win WW-II
[flight, war, Black, airplane]
517 Sojourner Truth: A slave reshapes America
[Black, women, segregation, slavery, Civil War, Lincoln, Douglas, Garrison, Stowe, King, religion, abolitionist]
518 Colonial slaves teach us about smallpox inoculation
[Cotton Mather, Boston, Black, medicine, Franklin]
519 Benjamin Banneker, The Black "Poor Richard"
[almanacs, Black, Franklin, Jefferson, Washington DC, Rush]
520 Great Zimbabwe: A once great African city state
[Black, Rhodesia, iron age, architecture, masonry, archaeology]
521 Black soldiers in the Civil War: Defining freedom
[war, military]
522 Jan Matzeliger and the first automatic last machine
[shoes, manufacturing, invention, black, Massachussetts]
523 Edison fails and succeeds in converting low grade ore
[iron, steel, electricity, Ogdensburg, Mesabi, taconite]
524 Einstein as an inventor and patent holder
[physics, Szilard, refrigerator, gyrocompass, Mach, manufacturing, special relativity, electricity]
525 Cities and farms: Do cities drive consumption or reduce it?
[environmentalists, ecology, history, mass transit sociology]
526 Should Scientific American have fired Forrest Mims, a Creationist and Fundamentalist?
[Walker, religion, science, science writing]
527 Cox's "perpetual motion machine:" A barometer-driven clock
[Weeks, science, windmills, water wheels, solar energy]
528 Villard de Honnecourt and the decline of Gothic Cathedrals
[Strasbourg, masons, Notre Dame, clock escapements, Reims, invention]
529 Panoramas: The IMAXs of 1800
[theater, movies, art, Barker, Fulton, motion pictures, Reynolds, Constable, painting]
530 Johann Traugott Wandke: Texas' first organ builder
[music, Round Top, Galveston, craftsmanship]
531 John Tyndall fuses practical physics and Romantic poetry
[heat, thermodynamics, philosophy of science, experiment]
532 George Bernard Shaw: Music critic
[theater, literature, Rossini, Parry, reviews, Sullivan, opera]
533 Old cures and superstitions: more effective that we thought
[medicine, science, bleeding, Egypt, malaria mosquitoes, Jenner, fever, Burton, Reed]
534 A cleansing fire in Australia
[ecology, environment, Drake, ethnology, Drake, anthropology, Botany Bay]
535 An evening at a University of Chicago choral concert
[Hassler, Distler, Byrd, Purcell, Poulenc, Vaughn-Williams, Handl, education, music]
536 Edwin Land, polarization, Polaroid, and the Land Camera
[stress analysis, photoelasticity, invention]
537 The Victoria "Dutch" windmill, first windmill in Texas
[power, Witte, grist, turret, Dutch, West]
538 Some facts and reflections on the pace of life
[anthropology, psychology, sociology, tobacco, heart, Watts]
539 The surprise gift of love, invention, and creativity
[DC-3, Wright, flight, aviation, Boeing, B-52]
540 Inventing agriculture: A new look at an old story
[farming, Neolithic, emmer, Natufians, botany, archaeology]
541 Drugs and other modern troubles: a question of scientific literacy
[cocaine, recovery, addiction, AIDS, psychology, neurophysiology]
542 People who knew each other? A question of connectedness.
[Wedgwood, Coleridge, Davy, Watt, Wollstonecraft, Boulton, Godwin, anesthesia, Lunar Society, Rachmaninoff, Sikorsky, Twain, Tesla, Franklin, Small, Priestley, revolution]
543 A program based on a randomly selected date: 584 AD
[Byzantium, Hagia Sofia, Mohammud, Anthemius of Tralles, Greek fire, Bosporus, science, Gothic, Roman arch]
544 Women in medicine, in the ancient classical world
[Hippocratic, Cos, Greece, abortion, Agnodice, Athens]
545 Energy Inventory: On paying environmental costs at the gas pump.
[Boulton, Johnson, Boswell, Watt, Blake, fuel, power, solar, nuclear, economics, tax, Valdez, ozone, pollutants]
546 Trotula and medieval women's medicine
[medieval Europe, Italy, Salerno, childbirth, birth control, gynecology, obstetrics, infertility, Victorian, sex]
547 Bertha E. Jaques and an American school of etching
[Chicago, prints, art, invention, women]
548 A visit to the Taj Mahal and the meaning of technology
[India, architecture, monuments, Moguls]
549 Antonj Leeuwenhoek -- a lesson in simplicity and honesty
[biology, science, microscopes, Hooke, lenses, information]
550 Crossing the Atlantic under steam -- 1819 and 1838
[transportation, steamboat, Brunel, Smith, Lardner, marine, engine, Savannah, Sirius, Great Western]
551 The sounds of silence -- cancelling noise with noise
[acoustics, Simon, active noise control, ANC, MRI]
552 A domestic wind generator, a century before its time
[windmill, solar energy, power, Brush, environment, ecology, electric lights, arc lights, Edison, dynamo]
553 Mulholland waters LA -- and damn the Owens Valley
[Eaton, California, civil engineering, agriculture, ecology, aqueducts, irrigation, construction]
554 Fooling ourselves: great minds against themselves conspire
[Purcell, Dido and Aeneas, simplicity, pipeline, design]
555 Niels Christensen: a combative old man invents the O-ring
[Boeing, seals, gaskets, invention, patents]
556 Melancholy railroad: icon of American growth and change
[steam locomotives, commerce, transportation, Chicago, meat packing, livestock, Whitman, Sandburg]
557 Manufactured sounds: more change than we can bear in music?
[Erard, pianoforte, Mozart, clarinet, organ, synthesizer, Goodman, electric guitar, electronic music, Moog, A. Lienhard]
558 The lost myths and folkways: Bettelheim, Bly, and Revels
[music, psychology, myth, theater]
559 Rates of technological improvement: doubling in a lifetime
[clocks, power plants, transportation, invention, cars, trains]
560 Humankind: one race -- not a thousand subspecies
[biology, evolution, anthropology, Smith, Layton, cichlids, Black, natural selection, zoology, taxonomy]
561 Bad dreams: Engineers worry about their designs
[Wordsworth, Hoover, nuclear safety, depressurization, Hamurabi, creativity, invention, design, Ellis, Golden Gate Bridge]
562 Charles Dupin gets English secrets for France after Waterloo
[French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, bridges, naval, England, risk, reform, education]
563 Buckminsterfullerene, Bucky balls, or carbon 60
[diamond, graphite, carbon, Smalley, materials, geodesic domes, superconductivity]
564 Various ways to age
[biology, gerontology, rockfish, zoology, salmon, sickle cell, Huntington's, diet, Shakespeare]
565 The first American patent: a process for making potash
[potassium, chemical process, Hopkins, alkalai, Bly]
566 Writing equations for profit, at the cost of the environment
[economics, Hotelling, Peru, ecology, fish, zoology]
567 Chickens, beriberi, and the discovery of vitamins
[Batavia, Eijkman, bacteriology, immunology, Funk, thiamin]
568 A survey of job satisfaction among women engineers
[Baum, Cooper Union, education]
569 Edwin Link's trainer: organs to airplanes to oceanography
[player pianos, trainer, flight, transportation, music, Wurlitzer, diving, war]
570 An urban anthropologist studies New York's crack houses
[dope, sociology, Hamid, narcotics, psychology]
571 The origins of Native North American Agriculture
[farming, anthropology, archaeology, grain, corn, wheat, Indian, Mississipi-Ohio, maize, urbanization]
572 The Boy Scientist: A 1925 book for boys
[technology, education, engineering, Einstein, X-rays]
573 The search for the first naval artillery
[cannons, firearms, gunpowder, war, Renaissance]
574 Cornelius Drebbel invents the 1st modern feedback controller
[Renaissance, alchemist, alchemy, engraving, chemistry, invention, dye, submarine, thermostat, economics]
575 Ancient ziggurats: Was one of them the Tower of Babel?
[Bible, construction, composite materials, civil engineering, archaeology, Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar]
576 Ernst Mach, Einstein, and thought experiments
[Galileo, science, relativity, Aristotle, philosophy]
577 Coming out of the Dark Ages: An old building in Poitiers
[Roman architecture, France, Medieval, Rome, Gothic cathedral]
578 The Ceide Peat Bogs: And old environmental assault
[ecology, Ireland, Irish, fuel, archaeology, anthropology, agriculture]
579 Turning a penal colony in modern Australia
[Sydney, Botany Bay, cathedral, agriculture, water]
580 Vitruvius' ten volumes on technologies of the Roman world
[Rome, architecture, Alexandria, Egypt, siege, war, invention, water organ, Ctsebios, Africa]
581 Anthony Michell, a gentle genius from the Australian bush
[lubrication, invention, rotary engines, bearings]
582 Drilling deep into the Earth
[geology, earthquakes, plate tectonics, well logging, oil wells, Moho]
583 Abelard and Heloise: a parable of creative transcendence
[medieval religion, philosophy, poetry, monastery]
584 Appropriate technology: fitting the machine to the culture
[design, anthropology, third world]
585 The new vision of cities: 1925
[urban sociology, architecture, buildings, construction, modern art]
586 Wilson's vision of an Ibsen play: Death takes a vacation.
[theater, Stevens, art, artist, drama]
587 Alexander Graham Bell invents after the telephone.
[invention, hydrofoil, kites, Keller, electricity, flight, Buckminster Fuller, geodesic dome, tetrahedron]
588 About Mozart, Beaumarchais, and the Marriage of Figaro
[music, opera, theater, France, revolution, Caron, genius clock escapement, invention]
589 Gender and heart attack: medical sexism or medical realism?
[medicine, disease, illness, risk, cholesterol]
590 Frederic Remington, naive maker of the Western American icon
[art, sculpture, Spanish-American War, military, Custer, illustration, painting]
591 In which Virtual Reality takes control of our dreams
[computers]
592 Shaping the Shaker gift of simplicity
[religion, communal, communism, Civil War, architecture, design, buzz saw, table saw, clothespin, weaving, furniture, invention]
593 A 20th century trebuchet in Shropshire, England
[invention, medieval war]
594 George & William Chaffey irrigate Mildura, Australia
[irrigation, agriculture, electricity, California, farming]
595 George Perkins Marsh, a pioneering environmental scholar
[ecology, camel, linguistics, philology, Vermont, pollution]
596 Corbusier invites the airplane to indict the city
[architecture, construction, Milhaud, flight, transportation]
597 Archives in 2001: What's happening to information storage?
[library, books, museums, science education, electronic, Gorman]
598 The Sforza Horse: Leonardo da Vinci's unmakable monument
[art, sculpture, foundry, casting, Renaissance, women]
599 Florence Merriam Bailey: A pioneering American naturalist
[birds, women, conservationist, ecology, ornithology]
600 Walking the Bayou: Thoughts about change and creativity
[health, fitness, exercise, Schweizer, Gibbs]
601 Norman Heatley and the production of penicillin
[Biochemistry, medicine, Fleming, Florey, Oxford, Moberg, antibiotics, chemistry, pharmaceuticals]
602 Blue Planet: IMAX lets us see Earth whole
[art, environment, ecology, space]
603 Ambroise Pare studies birth defects in 1571
[Renaissance, medicine, surgery, biology, science]
604 Chirality: Pasteur learns about left-handed molecules
[chirality, chemistry, science, Biot, light, polarization]
605 Alfred Nobel makes dynamite and wages peace
[blasting gelatin, Kinsky, explosives, war, nitroglycerin, invention, Nobel Prizes, Sweden]
606 Did Newton really see an apple fall?
[Principia, Leibnitz, Voltaire, du Chatelet, De Breteuil, calculus, mathematics, physics, gravity, invention, Candide]
607 Hi-technology windmills come to Kent in 1200 AD
[England, Canterbury, Becket, windmills, water wheels, power generation, King Richard, King John, law, courts, litigation]
608 Collodion: yesterday's Band Aid, and a spur to invention
[medicine, Hyatt, explosives, plastics, chemistry, Nobel, environment, synthetics, nylon, celluloid, Chardonnay, Pasteur, fibers]
609 The parents of invention: Pleasure and Freedom
[prisons, Bunyan, Galois, Archimedes]
610 Paracelsus and Oporinus: The alchemist and the printer
[Froben, Frobenius, Vesalius, magic, science, medicine, anatomy, alchemy, chemistry, books]
611 Drunk on ink: An invention you probably never thought about
[writing, Egypt, chemistry, emulsion, printing, gum Arabic, Shakespeare, writing, books]
612 Godly Play: in which we wiegh the danger of humor
[Berryman, religion, Medieval Church, Benedictine, monastic, reality, creativity, truth]
613 William Gilbert and de Magnetica
[Kepler, Galileo, science, Sullivan, electricity, cosmology, Queen Elizabeth, alchemist, alchemy, electric field, physics]
614 Robert Fludd: the last alchemist
[Paracelsus, Aristotle, Plato, alchemy, Galileo, Bacon, science, perpetual motion, Harvey, blood circulation]
615 Learning to fly: a reflection on learning to fail
[invention, design, Wright Brothers, flight, transportation]
616 19th century engravings tell us about invention and travel
[automobile, car, transportation, flight, railroad, bicycle, engravings, woodcuts, lithography, art, magazines, submarines, ships, airplanes, gunboats, steamers]
617 Darwin: a racist champion of human rights
[evolution, Tahiti, missionary, Lincoln, slavery, science, Black, Gould]
618 Black Americans and salt: a fable about racial superiority
[medicine, heart disease, kidney, metabolism, anatomy, sugar, sickle cell anemia, Darwinian advantage, Diamond]
619 Rattlesnakes and other pit vipers: the Rolls-Royces among Reptiles
[biology, zoology, sensors, invention, fear]
620 Phillis Wheatley: a Colonial slave prodigy writes poetry
[Black women, Hancock, slavery, literature, Colonial America]
621 Alchemists bring magic to the theater and to modern science
[theater, Jones, Jonson, Fludd, Dee, architecture, alchemy, Vitruvius, stagecraft]
622 Ignaz Semmelwies: the unhappy hero of birthing mothers
[Hungary, Hungarian, medicine, germs, antiseptic, obstetrics, childbirth, Lister]
623 Drilling for Heat: Lord Kelvin's energy legacy
[thermodynamics, engines, OTEC, evolution, geothermal energy, geology, science, power production, environment]
624 In which John Tyndall tries to find God in his physics
[science and religion, philosophy of science]
625 The crossbow competes with guns and long bows -- and loses
[military, armament, firearms, gunpowder, Hastings, catapult, long bow, Crecy, Pare, disarmament, arms]
626 Maria Montessori, harded-headed apostle of the child's mind
[education, teaching, creativity, invention, religion, women]
627 The King, his mistress, Flamsteed, and Greenwich Observatory
[astronomy, Columbus, St. Pierre, Wren, Hooke, Charles II]
628 On learning to print music
[Gutenberg, Fust, Schoeffer, block printing, Haultin, musical scores, Ballard, Attaignant, movable type, typesetting]
629 Johann Gregor Mendel: the shy creator of modern genetics
[peas, chromosomes, biology, zoology, Darwin, science]
630 John Joseph Merlin: The Ingenious Mechanick
[Gainsborough, Johnson, Walpole, Bach, clockwork, perpetual motion, roller skate, robots, musical instruments, harpsichord, pianoforte, barrel organ, keyboards, Babbage]
631 In which knowledge flows out through an orifice
[fluid mechanics, viscosity, preservation of knowledge]
632 Joseph Haydn, Primitivus Niemecz, and three barrel organs
[Beethoven, mechanical, clockwork organs, music, revolution, Rationalism, Malzel]
633 The Gentleman's Magazine: the first magazine
[Cave, Johnson, Franklin, journalism, printing, telegraph, submarine, electricity, Bach, Fulton]
634 About using our creative best to heal and influence
[effect, influence]
635 Furnace Town: An old smelter rises out of the rain
[forced draft, steel, smelting, America, Widener, Nassawango, forced draft, iron, Maryland]
636 Gertrude Stein and the invention of the gear shift
[women, Toklas, transmission, Stevens, syncromesh, Bendix, ambulance]
637 Leonardo da Vinci teaches us anatomy and he teaches us how to see
[Harvey, dissection, medicine, art, painting]
638 David Bushnell/Dr. Bush invents the submarine
[naval warfare, Turtle, American Revolution, navy, mines]
639 A Christmas greeting for 1991
[Rodenmeyer, Drake, hydrology, rainfall runoff, thermodynamics]
640 Aslihan Yener finds her tin birthright in ancient Turkey
[tin, lead, silver, copper, bronze, metallurgy, archaeology, women, cuneiform, Yener, chemistry, isotopes, Anatolia, Assyria, art]
641 Visit to a junkyard: a lesson in preservation and prejudice
[ecology, environment, automobile]
642 Tyndall, microbes, and the spontaneous generation of life
[Mary Shelley, microbiology, bacteria, germs, physics, medicine, optics, light]
643 Hall Jackson, Colonial doctor
[medicine, eye surgery, war, digitalis, dropsy, purple foxglove, heart disease]
644 The Peerless gas odorizer: the not-so-sweet smell of success
[New London explosion, Cronkite, disasters, natural gas, industrial safety, accidents, inventions]
645 Sarton and the sensate source of modern experimental science
[Sarton, women, deSolla Price, Lavoisier, Galvani, chemistry, electric battery, steam engine, history of science, poetry, literature, philosophy of science, thermodynamics]
646 Babbage, Ada, and Babbage's 19th century computer legacy
[difference engine, analytical engine, Ada Byron, calculator, mathematics, women]
647 An old magazine still borrows from Europe, but not for long
[magazine, periodical, America, Dickens, diet, car, nutrition, steam automobile, boiler, transportation, technology transfer]
648 Orville Wright and Amelia Earhart try to read flight's future
[transportation, commercial airlines, seaplanes, women]
649 Gertrude Elion, Nobel Prize winning inventor of medicines
[biochemistry, drugs, pharmaceuticals, Hitchings, cancer, chemotherapy, virus, women]
650 Luigi Salvaneschi and the deprofessionalization of business schools
[liberal education, MBA, Forbes]
651 No Furgeson's Rifles to save Furgeson, at King's Mountain
[war, military tactics, American Revolution, South Carolina, guns, invention, Brown Bess muskets]
652 The Butterfly Effect: Edward Lorenz exposes chaos
[Gleick, meteorology, weather, mathematics, initial conditions]
653 The Kronos Quartet teaches us about living in the present
[musical composition, minimilism, invention, postmodern music]
654 X-rays promise infinite possibility in 1896
[Roentgen, cathode ray tubes, futurism, invention, science, medicine, radiation therapy, breast cancer]
655 Matthias Baldwin gives us locomotives, and a better world
[transportation, America, steam power, steamboat, locomotive, Black sufferage, railway, woodblock printing, calico, textiles]
656 Modern medicine begins to take the shaman's herbs seriously
[pharmaceutical, pharmacological, drugs, healing, folk medicine, Brazil rain forests, curare, Pacific Yew, Taxol]
657 Order out of Chaos: The computer takes us where mathematics could not
[Second Law of Thermodynamics, computer, Jupiter, Melville]
658 Albrecht von Haller, troubled genius of 18th C physiology
[anatomy, poetry, literature, medicine, Gottingen]
659 Percy Julian, grandson of a slave, invents pharmaceuticals
[chemistry, Black, drugs, hormones, cortesone, DePauw, Glidden]
660 Inventing the future: a task of both inventor and consumer
[invention, telephone, typewriter, Edison, phonograph, Watt, steam power, electronics, Akahabara]
661 Franz Schubert walks around the post-modernists
[lieder music, German Romantic poetry, Schopper, homosexual, gay, literature, nature, Industrial Revolution, von Schlegel]
662 In which invention pre-empts expectation.
[computer, library, information retrieval, information systems, serendipity, CD-ROM, HARLiC, Wilson]
663 The Zipper teaches us a lesson about design
[Velcro, Judson, invention, clothing, Huxley, fasteners, Sundback]
664 Hezekiah builds a waterworks -- and he builds it well
[Gihon Spring, water supply, Bible, Old Testament, Jerusalem, geology, Karst, Israel, Gill]
665 A walk through the Inventors Hall of Fame
[Edison, Pasteur, Alvarez, Julian, Carver, Matzeliger, Elion, Bell, Wright, Marconi, Morse, McCormick, Whitney, Atanasoff, Carothers, Ford, Fermi, American patent, neoprene, nylon, Otto]
666 Wallace Carothers dies -- giving birth to nylon and neoprene
[rubber, du Pont, organic chemistry, invention]
667 Dog-sledding the Iditarod in Alaska: The Last Great Race
[transportation, athletics, sport]
668 Ivan Veniaminov, priest and engineer among the Aleut people
[religion, Alaska, Russian, instrument making, churches, anthropology, ethnography, Native American, Indians, chess]
669 Baidarka -- Aleut kayak -- a marvel of boat design in bone, driftwood, and sealskin
[Native American, transportation, boats, canoes, ethnography, anthropology, Indian, Dyson]
670 Goe and catche a falling starre: The Tunguska meteorite
[Donne, asteroids, neutron bomb, comets, astronomy, poetry]
671 Your quiet place -- find it or die.
[library, books, Yeats, Sartre, peace, poetry]
672 Why the reckless, or at least recklessNESS, survives
[Darwinian selection, psychology, Konner, creativity, invention]
673 A dream of nuclear power -- overblown and slow in coming
[atomic bomb, atom bomb, nuclear reactor, Hanford, journalism, Hiroshima, Seaborg, Laurence, Weinberg, Oppenheimer]
674 Tournament species or pair bond species: which are we?
[anthropology, zoology, biology, gender, Bakhtiari, sex, Jaynes]
675 Abacus II: A drab little machine changes history
[computer chips, integrated circuits, welding, calculators, Texax Instruments, production, manufacturing, robotics]
676 Alice Liddel and Charles Dodgson in Wonderland
[Alice in Wonderland, photography, mathematics, psychology, literature, fantasy, children, Lewis Carroll]
677 Hero's steam turbine and modern atomic theory
[science, alchemy, power production, steam engine, vacuum, Galileo, Torricelli, Boyle, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexandria]
678 James Watt, Joseph Black, and the separate condenser
[steam engine, power, energy, design, thermodynamics, latent heat, specific heat, invention, Glasgow]
679 In which we build the last Heathkit
[do-it-yourself, model building, Goldwater, Heath Company, computers, electronics]
680 Electronic information media: Swimming in the Ocean of the Stream of Stories
[Rushdie, library science, information, retrieval, journals, computers, books]
681 The Chudnovsky brothers scale the mountains of Pi
[mathematics, computers, number theory, Russia, KGB, Preston]
682 In which Ole Roemer learns the speed of light in 1675
[astronomy, physics, Tyndall]
683 In which we weigh animal life against human life
[vivisection, biology, medicine, insulin, diabetes, blood flow]
684 Midgely invents ethyl gas and Freon -- a Pyhrric triumph
[Lowell, Kettering, Ethyl, Freon, chemistry, periodic table]
685 Vannevar Bush tries to predict our world in 1945
[digital computer, analog computer, analogue, NACA, future, information storage, library, books]
686 In the beginning: On recreating the earth
[environmental, ecology, Copland, Bible, religion, Genesis]
687 A Gift of Books: on scrolls, codices, and Pergamon's Library
[Rome, Egypt, Alexandria, Turkey, parchment, vellum, papyrus, Anthony, Cleopatra, Attalus, Attalid, Eumenes, writing, codex]
688 Willis Carrier wields the witchcraft that conditions our air
[Milam Building, air conditioning, psychrometry, refrigeration, Newcomen Society]
689 Michael Servitus: the blood flow of a martyr
[Tertullian, Galen, Paracelsus, alchemy, alchemists, Calvin, Protestant Reformation, Harvey, anatomy, medicine, religion]
690 Ginaca's machine gives Hawaii independence -- until it stops running
[agriculture, Liliuokalani, food, production, Dole, design, tourism]
691 Francois Arago holds James Watt up as a model for French intellectuals
[Napoleon, Ecole Polytechnique, science, Steam engines, production, Japan, power, productivity, Dickens, social reform]
692 In which the player piano plays counterpoint to our dreams
[music, pianola, phonograph, Clark]
693 Rebuilding a child destroyed by silence: A parable of engineering design
[psychology, linguistics, child abuse, language]
694 Hiram Maxim: a brilliant inventor plays at war
[machine guns, armament, flight, invention, electric lighting, gas illumination]
695 John Ericsson: 19th century agent of creative change
[Monitor and Merrimac, ironclad, steam engines, hot air engine, topographical mapping, solar energy, tidal energy, Sweden, screw propeller, Civil War, navy]
696 Menocchio the miller is caught in the printing revolution
[Italy, Inquisition, religion, books, Decameron, cosmology, Bible, theology, big bang, Koran]
697 Queen Mary: an old old lady who still serves us
[ships, navigation, transportation, ocean liners, Masefield, war, Spruce Goose]
698 Othmar Ammann defines 20th century bridge design
[Verrazano Narrows, architecture, New York, Le Corbusier, functionalism, suspension bridges]
699 The Gaia Hypothesis: Mother Earth wears a human face
[cosmology, ecology, biology, religion, Lovelock, Margulis, intelligence, geology, chemistry, spectroscopy, temperature]
700 In which we learn that life is instability
[Gaia, biology, Wright Brothers, chemistry, thermodynamics, solar system, atmosphere, feedback control, freedom]
701 The Age of the Marvelous: An art exhibit tells of scientific change
[Renaissance, Platonism, Aristotle, science, Pare, Topsell, Galileo, Durer, opera, theater, Leonardo da Vinci, alchemy, printing press]
702 Trompe-l'oeil: in which 17th century artists show us that our eye can't always be trusted
[Rembrandt, painting, Platonic, Aristotle, Zeuxis, alchemy, Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance]
703 In which Leonardo da Vinci takes up embryology
[anatomy, medicine, art, sex, reproduction, birth, Clark, Fabricius, procreation]
704 Arago, Humboldt, and Gay-Lussac set the course of 19th century science
[astronomy, meteorology, balloons, slavery, geography, atmosphere, Liebig]
705 The ambulance: the spawn of necessity instead of invention
[war, transportation, Larrey, McKinley, medicine, funeral, Barton]
706 A genetic search for the historical Eve
[Gould, anthropology, mitochondria, biology, religion, Gaia]
707 Darwinian individualism, cooperation, and a lost bird
[ecology, biology, zoology, Gaia, electronic communications, Hillel, Gould, competition, Japan, starlings]
708 The end of books? Maybe not.
[library, computers, harpsichords, pianos, change, cars, automobiles, electronic media, information storage]
709 The US Constitution: A mirror of the Iroquois Nation
[American Indians, Native Americans, government, Canassatego, constitution, political science, Franklin]
710 In which Franklin, Lavoisier, and Guillotin debunk Mesmerism
[guillotine, magnetism, electricity, medicine, Mozart, Gould, healing, MRI]
711 In which Old Joe Camel get his nose under the tent
[drugs, DiFranza, cigarettes, advertising, law, legal, courts, scientific method]
712 William James and Nathaniel Shaler: one remembered, one forgotten
[Agassiz, Harvard, paleontology, Darwin, Gould, Kentucky, science, psychology, anthropology]
713 A look below the surface of a technical meeting
[boiling, condensing, condensation, nuclear power, steam power, Japan, America, accidents, cold fusion]
714 The old school tie; interior change catches up with us
[Berkeley, California, biology, sociology]
715 Communication and collaboration -- not the same thing
[Schrage, Edison, Bohr, Franklin, Braque, Picasso, Crick, Watson, Monet, Renoir, trust]
716 Circling about to view Rodin and Rilke
[sculpture, art, poetry, literature]
717 Harry Moseley: Explained the Periodic Tables, then died in war at 27
[military, particle physics, X-ray, WW-I, atom, radioactive, Rutherford, radiation]
718 Of engines, machines, and ingenuity: misunderstood words
[etymology, literature, Chaucer, Scott, Le Corbusier, words]
719 QWERTY: the mindless invention of your computer keyboard
[typewriter, evolution, Gould, invention]
720 Petr Kropotkin: a saintly naturalist and anarchist
[Russia, Darwin, Huxley, biology, sociology, Marx, anarchy, political science]
721 In which Ray Dolby invents more than a hiss suppressor
[electronics, acoustics, Indian music, tape recorders, digital]
722 Julius Robert Mayer: a tale of blood and energy conservation
[medicine, first law of thermodynamics, Joule, physics, heat, energy, Tyndall, Rilke]
723 Computer dating: no prince charming, but a new community
[networks, electronic communications, modem, Sorenson, e-mail]
724 A Swedish conference about creativity and context
[sociology, geography, invention, Sigtuna, Sweden]
725 A second self or a joint self? You and your computer
[Turkle, hacker, Pac-man, sociology]
726 Little yellow Post-its -- a footnote to invention
[3-M, sales, office, merchandising, invention, Silver, Fry]
727 James Black, Joseph Black, upset stomachs, and Tagamet
[medicine, Pharmacology, chemistry, invention, histamine, antihistamine, beta-blockers, cimetidine, antacid]
728 Gould contemplates the severed head of Lavoisier
[France, French Revolution, Marat, Corday, science, chemistry, oxygen, Franklin, Lacepede, Lagrange]
729 Banting, MacLeod, Best, Collip (and more) create insulin
[diabetes, Scott, Paulesco, medicine, pharmacology]
730 Design and visual cues: When words fail us
[signs, button, door, visual, cues]
731 Coming up to speed on wooden race tracks
[Oldfield, transportation, automobile, car, racing, Ford, Stanley Steamer, Prince, Runyan]
732 In which you help me teach a new thermodynamics class
[information theory, entropy]
733 The Bay Psalter: Mrs. Glover and our country's first press
[Colonial America, printing, Daye, Day, Dunster, Green, Indians, Pilgrims, religion, women, Bay Psalm Book]
734 The Discover invention awards: you make the choice
[videophone, tires, recycled polyester plastics, computer]
735 The Peerless Gas Odorizer: a father's legacy to his son
[natural gas leaks, accidents, ASME]
736 Was there a scriptorium at Buildwas Abbey? Probably.
[book writing, scribes, Cistercians, indexing, pagination]
737 Crossing the Bonneville Salt Flats -- in 1846 and 1970
[Walker, pioneers, Lienhard, Salt Lake, racing cars, Gabelich, Campbell, Breedlove, Thompson, stock car, ecology, environment]
738 King Camp Gillette turns his Occam safety razor on human affairs
[Lewis, Chase, Ford, Roosevelt, Metropolis, sociology, Utopian socialism, invention, Nickerson]
739 Benjamin Rush, idiosyncratic founder of American Psychiatry
[medicine, psychology, Franklin, America, Declaration of Independence]
740 Rainbows, curve balls and other wonders of the natural world
[physics, education, physical phenomena, boiling, bubbles]
741 Michael Faraday learns science in a book bindery
[dyslexia, educational psychology, electricity, magnetism, Davy, Marcet, political economics, Africa, Maxwell, Tyndall, religion, Sandemanians]
742 Carlos Prieto: An engineer plays unaccompanied Bach
[design, cello music, den Hartog, aeolian vibrations, MIT, Sarton]
743 The Rev. Mr. Robert Stirling and his hot air engine
[music boxes, nonelectric fan, jet plane, jet engine, turbojet]
744 Mrs. Marcet, alias Mrs. B, teaches chemistry and pedagogy
[Haldimand, thermal radiation, political economics, electrical, teaching, Faraday, women]
745 The lady cujus ingenium huad absurdum: a lesson in feminism
[Sallust, Marcet, Latin, chemistry, political economics, women]
746 Rescuers of the holocaust: a parable about creative risk
[Nazis, Wallenberg, Houseman, genocide, art museum]
747 Watching the Titanic sink: a lesson in objective science
[ships, books, scientific method, psychology]
748 Inventing the telephone: Putting the user in the equation
[telegraphy, Reis, Bell, Webb, monopoly, regulation, economics, communications, Sandburg]
749 Information and twilight of hierarchy
[electronic networks, printing, books, patent and copyright law]
750 Louis Agassiz founders on evolution in the Galapagos
[biology, Gould, James, Lowell, geology, creationism]
751 Actors use art to complete their story-telling
[Caruso, painting, sculpture, Bellamy, Fonda, Laurie, Quinn, Falk, Woronov, Mostel, Winters, theater, movies, creativity, film, Pickins, Beery, Bowie, Warhol, psychology]
752 In which Spanish doctors try to understand Aztec medicine
[Cortez, pharmacology, Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle, Phillip II, Bravo, sarsaparilla, Lopez de Hinojosis, Farfin, herbs, religion]
753 Gutenberg: borrowing for twenty years to invent movable type
[Gensfliesch, printing, books, Dritzehn, Fust, Schoeffer, books]
754 IF HARMONY IS WHAT YOU CRAVE THEN GET A TUBA BURMA-SHAVE
[advertising, marketing, consumers, shaving, Burma-Shave, tuba]
755 About luck, recognition, and invention
[creativity, Post-its, Watt, chemical processes, steam engines, Pasteur, Burma-Shave]
756 In whi |
