TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 22 SEPTEMBER
On 22 Sep 1791, the prolific researcher, Michael Faraday was born, whose name will be very familiar to any student of physics.
He was also very popular lecturer, who started a series of Christmas Lectures for a juvenile audience, complete with interesting demonstrations. These lectures continue under his name to this day, from the same lecture theatre, and broadcast to an even wider television audience.
His theme for the 1860 Christmas Lectures was A Course of Six Lectures on the Various Forces of Matter, and Their Relation to Each Other. Decades before Edison claimed fame for his invention of a practical light bulb, electric lighting existed in the form of arc lamps. In sixth of these lectures, Light-House Illumination—The Electric Light, Faraday explains the optics of lighthouses, and the early efforts to replace oil burners with electric lighting. Which of course, necessitated the generation of electricity. And who better to explain that than Faraday, the renowned investigator of electromagnetism.
You can read this facinating lecture here.
On 22 Sep 1791, Michael Faraday was born, who discovered electromagnetic induction. His lectures engaged the public. Faraday is one of the most significant figures in experimental physical science. Today's book pick is: The Electric Life of Michael Faraday, by Alan W. Hirshfeld. You may find this biography so compelling and inspiring that you may find tears in your eyes as you read in the last pages of his funeral, at the end of such a productive life. This is a scientist everyone should know as a person.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $69.99. Used from $8.82. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
| | I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion. — Michael Faraday, English physicist and chemist (born 22 Sep 1791).  |
 | Today we no longer ask what really goes on in an atom; we ask what is likely to be observed—and with what likelihood—when we subject atoms to any specified influences such as light or heat, magnetic fields or electric currents. — Otto Robert Frisch, Austrian-British nuclear physicist (died 22 Sep 1979). |
 | [The human control of atomic energy could] virtually provide anyone who wanted it with a private sun of his own. — Frederick Soddy, English chemist and physicist (died 22 Sep 1956). |
| 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 | |
| | Michael Faraday, born on 22 Sep 1791, made many experiments that contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism. Although one of the greatest experimentalists, he was largely self-educated. He began with an appointment to be assistant to Sir Humphry Davy. Faraday initially concentrated on analytical chemistry, and discovered benzene in 1825. By far, however, his most important work was in electromagnetism, in which field he discovered electromagnetic induction. At which laboratory did he and Davy work? |
| Deaths | |
| | Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) was an English chemist and physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1921 for investigating radioactive substances. He studied, and coined the name of “isotopes.” Formed from two Greek words, what is the meaning of the word “isotope”? |
| Events | |
 | On 22 Sep 1955, commercial television broadcasting began in Britain by ITV, starting with a station serving the London area. The first advertisement was shown at 9:12 pm showing Gibbs SR toothpaste in a block of “ice.” What was the name of this first English commercial TV station? |
 | On 22 Sep of a certain year, the first time train dispatching by telegraph in the U.S. took place when superintendent Charles Minot, of the Erie Railroad telegraphed 14 miles to Goshen, N.Y., to delay a train so that his train would not have to wait. Within weeks, all Erie trains were controlled by the telegraphed orders of a train dispatcher. Until that time the timetable was the sole authority for moving trains on the line. In what decade did this occur? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for September 21: bubble chamber • macadamized roads, tarmacadam, “tarmac” (asphalt) • he prepared squares of cotton gauze at intervals along an adhesive strip. As a cotton buyer at Johnson & Johnson, he suggested the idea which led to Band-aids. • decade containing the year 1895 • ammonia fertilizer, being broken up with dynamite.
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