TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 1 OCTOBER
On 1 Oct 1880, The Edison Lamp Works, the first electric incandescent lamp factory in the U.S., was opened in Menlo Park, N.J.
A photograph with more information on the building and its electrical equipment is given in the section First Edison Lamp Factory, from Edisonia (1904).
On 1 Oct 1957, the notorious drug thalidomide was first marketed in West Germany. By 1960, worldwide, 10,000 babies had been born with substantial birth defects. Some topics, when you realise how little you really know about them, seem to demand more attention. This is one of those... especially if you did not know that thalidomide is now back in use as a beneficial drug for certain medical problems. Today's book pick is: Dark Remedy: The Impact Of Thalidomide And Its Revival As A Vital Medicine, by Trent Stephens, Rock Brynner who combine their talents as a historian and an embryologist and write about the story of thaldomide in a way that helps us grasp its enormity. The jubilant discovery, demonization, and subsequent rehabilitation of thalidomide also offers a wide-ranging outline of public attitudes toward science following World War II.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $19.99. Used from $3.39. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
| no image | We can distinguish three groups of scientific men. In the first and very small group we have the men who discover fundamental relations. Among these are van’t Hoff, Arrhenius and Nernst. In the second group we have the men who do not make the great discovery but who see the importance and bearing of it, and who preach the gospel to the heathen. Ostwald stands absolutely at the head of this group. The last group contains the rest of us, the men who have to have things explained to us. — Wilder Dwight Bancroft, American physical chemist (born 1 Oct 1867).  |
 | Time... is an essential requirement for effective research. An investigator may be given a palace to live in, a perfect laboratory to work in, he may be surrounded by all the conveniences money can provide; but if his time is taken from him he will remain sterile. — Walter Bradford Cannon, American physiologist and neurologist (died 1 Oct 1945). |
| 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 | |
 | Otto Robert Frisch, born 1 Oct 1904, was an Austrian-British nuclear physicist, who, with his aunt Lise Meitner, described the division of neutron-bombarded uranium into lighter elements. He named the process fission (1939). On what did he base this name? |
 | On 1 Oct 1924, an American President was born. He studied engineering and by 1952 was in a Navy nuclear submarine program. Can you name this U.S. President? |
| Deaths | |
 | Louis S.B. Leakey (1903-1972) was an archaeologist and anthropologist. In 1964, on an expedition to the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, he found fossil remains of, he believed, the earliest member of the genus of human beings. What name did he give this species? |
 | Spyridon Marinatos (1901-1974) was a Greek archaeologist whose most notable discovery was the site of an ancient port city on the island of Thera. The city apparently had about 20,000 inhabitants when it was destroyed by a great volcanic eruption of 1500 BC. The island of Thera is in the southern part of which sea? |
| Events | |
 | On 1 Oct of a certain year, the Anglo-French Concorde broke the sound barrier for the first time. It was the first plane in the world to be entirely controlled by computer. What was the decade in which this flight was made? |
 | On 1 Oct 1908, the Ford Model T car, the first car to be made on an assembly line, was introduced and was an immediate sensation. Before long, it was the largest selling car in the United States, often accounting for over half the sales in the country. What was the introductory price of the Model T (to the nearest $100)? |
 | On 1 Oct 1847, Maria Mitchell, the first woman astronomer in the United States made a discovery for which she was awarded a gold medal by the king of Denmark. What was her discovery? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for September 30: Hans Geiger • Avogadro's number • Charles Richter • H. Ross Perot • sixteen 50-pound-thrust rockets • Appleton, Wisconsin.
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