TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 23 JULY
On 23 July 1867, Griffith Brewer was born, the first Englishman to fly in an airplane. While visiting America, he was a guest passenger with Wilbur Wright. It was the beginning of a lifetime friendship during which Brewer made other visits and had much firsthand knowledge of the Wrights' work.
Thereafter, Brewer staunchly championed the Wrights' priority against the over-reaching, competing claims of Samuel Langley as the first to achieve powered airplane flight. That was no easy task, as Langley was Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, a formidable publicity machine.
Brewer lectured to the Royal Society in England, wrote to the New York Times. In a letter published in the 9 Mar 1922 issue of the journal Nature, The Langley Machine and the Hammondsport Trials, Brewer attempted to set the record straight. Although it was two decades after the Wrights' first flights, as you read his letter, you will see from the response printed below it, that it was still not an easy task.
On 23 Jul 1906, Marston Bates was born, an American zoologist remembered for his studies of mosquitoes and tropical diseases. Today's book pick is: The Nature of Natural History, by Marston Bates, which he wrote for the non-biologist. In this timeless work, the author's strong interest in the tropics shows in his engaging descriptions, in a style that has been compared to David Attenborough's presentations on nature. Bates provides a good overview of the main issues that concern natural history, including the scientific naming and classification of organisms; the history of life on Earth in context with the geological time-scale; the development of the individual organism; the environment; the behavior of individuals and populations; reproduction; biotic communities; biological geography; adaptations; and evolution.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $6.95. Used from $2.95. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | The late Alan Gregg pointed out that human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled… Four million a month—the equivalent of the population of Chicago… We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical, utilitarian reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem. — Marston Bates, American zoologist and writer (born 23 Jul 1906).  |
 | Sight is a faculty; seeing, an art. — George Perkins Marsh, American conservationist (died 23 Jul 1882). |
 | First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. — Mark David Weiser, American computer scientist and visionary (born 23 Jul 1952). |
| Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page. | |
| Births | |
 | Vladimir Prelog, born 23 Jul 1906, was a Yugoslavian-born Swiss chemist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John W. Cornforth for his work on the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions. By X-ray diffraction, he elucidated the structure of several antibiotics. What is stereochemistry? |
 | Theodore Schneirla, born 23 Jul 1902, was the foremost American comparative psychologist of the mid-1900s. He went so far in his “biphasic A-W theory” as to reduce all behavior to two simple responses: approach and withdrawal. We approach what causes pleasure, and we withdraw from what causes unpleasure or pain. His empirical work was based on the behaviour patterns of which animal? |
| Deaths | |
 | Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916) was a Scottish chemist who was a Nobel laureate (1904) “in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system.” Can you name five of these “inert” gases that he either discovered or co-discovered? |
 | Isaac Merrit Singer (1811-1875) was the inventor of the continuous-stitch sewing machine in 1851. Singer was an itinerant machinist until 1851 when he designed an effective sewing machine using the basic features found on modern machines. A patent infringement settled with Elias Howe, another sewing machine inventor, did nothing to deter Singer. The company he founded was, within the decade, the world's largest sewing machine manufacturer. Singer gained 20 additional patents, but his biggest invention was the new way of marketing to consumers. He spent millions of dollars on advertising, made purchase affordable by offering installment credit, and provided after-sale service. What was Singer's nationality? |
| Events | |
 | On 23 Jul 1937, the isolation of pituitary hormone was announced (Yale University). It is the master endocrine gland in vertebrate animals. The hormones secreted by the pituitary stimulate and control the functioning of almost all the other endocrine glands in the body. Pituitary hormones also promote growth and control the water balance of the body. Where in the body is the pituitary gland found? |
 | On 23 Jul 1903, in Detroit, the Ford Motor Company sold its first automobile. The Ford Model A featured an internal combustion engine designed and manufactured by a little-known Michigan machinist, Henry Ford. How many cylinders were in the engine? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for July 22: being of Jewish descent, he was forced to resign when Hitler took power • Gregor Mendel • he invented the “continuous wave” which superimposed a sound waveform onto a radio wave for transmission • Brooklyn or Niagara River Bridges • Shoemaker-Levy • 11 years old • Wiley Post.
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