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There was a type of employee at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution whose job and livelihood largely vanished in the early twentieth century. This was the horse. The population of working horses actually peaked in England long after the Industrial Revolution, in 1901, when 3.25 million were at work. Though they…
In its most primitive form, life is, therefore, no longer bound to the cell, the cell which possesses structure and which can be compared to a complex wheel-work, such as a watch which ceases to exist if it is stamped down in a mortar. No, in its primitive form life is like fire, like a flame borne by the living…
It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have obtained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form were dangerous, are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants.
[Concerning] phosphorescent bodies, and in particular to uranium salts whose phosphorescence has a very brief duration. With the double sulfate of uranium and potassium ... I was able to perform the following experiment: One wraps a Lumière photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black…
Ingredients: molasses from the United States anise from Spain licorice from France vanilla (bourbon) from Madagascar cinnamon from Sri Lanka cloves from Indonesia wintergreen from China pimento berry oil from Jamaica balsam oil from Peru And that’s just for a bottle of peacetime root beer.
My eye is wet with tears For I see the white stones That are covered with names The stones of my forefathers’ graves. No grass grows upon them For deep in the earth In darkness and silence the organs of life To their primitive atoms return. Through ages the air Has been moist with their blood The ages the seeds of the…
He depicts himself watching in rapture the two adult grey-tailed eagles in the bright sunlight, followed by their young offspring. This moment is transformed into an image of Davy the man of science, hoping to inspire his young scientific protégés to ever greater discoveries. The mighty birds still upward rose In slow…
In Florence, while the guest of the Grand Duke, Davy performed an impressive carbon-based experiment which proved that the most apparently precious of objects — the diamond — could also be the product of nature’s simplest processes. With the Duke’s permission, he commandeered the huge solar magnifying lens at the…
He was warmly received by Cuvier, Ampère and Berthollet, but got into an awkward priority dispute with the gifted young chemist Joseph Gay-Lussac. Gay-Lussac, Davy’s exact contemporary, had made a popular name in France with his intrepid ballooning exploits, and had been hard on Davy’s heels with potassium and sodium…
This is the published version: ‘By degrees as the pleasurable sensations increased, I lost all connection with external things; trains of vivid visible Images rapidly passed through my mind and were connected with words in such a manner, as to produce perceptions perfectly novel. I existed in a world of newly…
Herschel made no bones about the fact that a female assistant, even his sister, would cost half as much as a male. It is possible to be indignant about this, but contemporary standards must be taken into account. Female domestic servants were paid £10 per annum, while a highly trained governess like Mary…
Once upon a time, about ten or fifteen billion years ago, the universe was without form. There were no galaxies. There were no stars. There were no planets. And there was no life. Darkness was upon the face of the deep. The universe was hydrogen and helium. The explosion of the Big Bang had passed, and the fires of…
The aims of pure basic science, unlike those of applied science, are neither fast-flowing nor pragmatic. The quick harvest of applied science is the useable process, the medicine, the machine. The shy fruit of pure science is understanding.
The fact that this chain of life existed [at volcanic vents on the seafloor] in the black cold of the deep sea and was utterly independent of sunlight—previously thought to be the font of all Earth's life—has startling ramifications. If life could flourish there, nurtured by a complex chemical process based on…
The energy liberated when substrates undergo air oxidation is not liberated in one large burst, as was once thought, but is released in stepwise fashion. At least six separate steps seem to be involved. The process is not unlike that of locks in a canal. As each lock is passed in the ascent from a lower to a higher…
Sed tamen salis petrae. VI. Part V. NOV. CORVLI. ET V. sulphuris, et sic facies toniitrum et coruscationem: sic facies artificium. But, however, of saltpetre take six parts, live of young willow (charcoal), and five of sulphur, and so you will make thunder and lightning, and so you will turn the trick. Bacon's recipe…
By examining the model universes we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner. It turns out that it is not only the strengths of the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force that are made to order for our…
If the total energy of the universe must always remain zero, and it costs energy to create a body, how can a whole universe be created from nothing. That is why there must be a law like gravity. Because gravity is attractive, gravitational energy is negative: One has to do work to separate a gravitationally bound…
Though one might imagine "living" organisms such as intelligent computers produced from other elements, such as silicon, it is doubtful that life could have spontaneously evolved in the absence of carbon. The reasons for that are technical but have to do with the unique manner in which carbon bonds with other…
Born like this Into this As the chalk faces smile As Mrs. Death laughs As the elevators break As political landscapes dissolve As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree As the oily fish spit out their oily prey As the sun is masked We are Born like this Into this Into these carefully mad wars Into the sight of…