TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 7 DECEMBER
On 7 Dec 1869, the Thames Tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping in London, the world's first tunnel under a navigable river, was re-opened with the East London Railway line. Work had started on 2 Mar 1825. Excavation was engineered by Marc Brunel, for which he invented the tunneling shield to reduce the danger of collapse while digging through soft sediments. Beginning his own engineering career, his son Isambad Brunel assisted. They persevered through 18 years, including floods, human disasters, and delays caused by financing difficulties. Planned ramps for use by carts and freight traffic were never added due to cost, but it was opened for pedestrian use on 25 Mar 1843. The later installation of rail service became a well-used transport route across the Thames, which has continued in use to the present day as the oldest part of the London Underground.
If you visit London, you can still take a train and travel under the Thames through the world's oldest tunnel built below a navigable waterway. An American travel writer, David W. Barlett, visited England in the mid-19th century, and was impressed by the well-developed railway infrastructure. His trip was at a time that the Thames Tunnel was still a pedestrian experience. In fact, in that era, it was regarded as quite an adventure, an engineering wonder. He described his Visit to the Thames Tunnel in What I Saw in London (1853), and it gives an interesting insight into the early history of the tunnel.
Your Webmaster was lucky enough to be there on a one of the rare days that the public, in limited numbers, were able to take a walk through the tunnel and see it up close and personal. That makes Bartlett's travel tale especially meaningful.
In 1872, the H.M.S. Challenger, was readying for the world's first scientific voyage around the world. The vessel set out from Sheerness, Kent, for Portsmouth, England, arriving on 11 Dec 1872. After loading more stores, the world's first global scientific voyage embarked on 21 Dec 1872, with a group of scientists and expert navigators to research the oceans. The Challenger was a military corvette sailing ship with auxiliary steam power, converted at Sheerness for the scientific voyage. The ship had a natural history laboratory where specimens were examined, identified, dissected and drawn; a chemistry laboratory; and scientific equipment. During the 4 year journey, ending on 24 May 1876, the voyage zig-zagged around the globe to visit every continent, sounded the ocean bottom to a depth of 26,850-ft, found many new species, and provided collections for scores of biologists. The Space Shuttle Challenger was named after this ship because both embarked on voyages of substantial scientific value. Today's book pick is: The Silent Landscape: The Scientific Voyage of HMS Challenger, by Richard Corfield, who outlines one of the most important sea voyages of its era. Corfield punctuates the history of discoveries of the Challenger crew with brilliant descriptions of the technology used at the time, the personal trials undertaken by the crew, and the conditions of life aboard the ship. A large portion of the book also relates the voyage's endeavours to modern knowledge.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $109.11. Used from $4.00. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | The whole numbers have been made by dear God, everything else is the work of man. — Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician (born 7 Dec 1823).  |
 | The principal result of my investigation is that a uniform developmental principle controls the individual elementary units of all organisms, analogous to the finding that crystals are formed by the same laws in spite of the diversity of their forms. — Theodor Schwann, German physiologist (born 7 Dec 1810). |
| 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 | |
 | Richard Brooke Roberts, born 7 Dec 1910, was an American biophysicist who contributed most to the discovery of “delayed neutrons” that are crucial in the operation of a fission reactor which Without the margin of safety provided by the delayed neutrons, nuclear reactors might not be practical at all. What are delayed neutrons? |
 | On 7 Dec 1905, Gerard Peter Kuiper was born, a Dutch-born American astronomer. The Kuiper Belt is so-named after his original suggestion of its existence outside the orbit of Neptune before it was confirmed as a belt of small bodies. He discovered the moon Miranda. Miranda is a moon of which planet? |
| Deaths | |
 | Walter Karl Friedrich Noddack (1893-1960) was a German chemist who discovered a new element (Jun 1925) in collaboration with his wife Ida Tacke. Since 1922, he had searched for undiscovered elements. After three years, the careful fractionation of certain ores yielded the new element, a rare heavy metallic element that resembles manganese. Named after a river in his homeland, it was the last stable element to be discovered. What is this element? |
| Events | |
 | On 7 Dec of a certain year, the first execution by lethal injection in the U.S. was performed on Charles Brooks in Texas. Several intravenous drips provide an anesthetic, followed by a chemical to paralyse breathing, and another to stop the heart. In which decade was this execution? |
 | On 7 Dec 1909, Leo Baekeland received the first U.S. patents for a thermosetting artificial plastic - “an improvement in methods of making insoluble condensation products of phenol-formaldehyde” - commonly referred to as the “heat and pressure” patent. This gave birth to the modern plastics industry. What name did he give this plastic? |
 | On 7 Dec 1889, a Scottish inventor, was issued a patent for his pneumatic tyre. In 1887, when his 9-yr-old son complained of the rough ride he experienced on his tricycle over the cobbled streets of Belfast. His name is still in use by a manufacturer of tyres. Can you name this inventor? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for December 6: cryolite, Greenland • Law of Combining Volumes - that when gases combine their relative volumes bear a simple numerical relation to each other • telegraph industry • carbon dioxide • graphite pencil • decade including the yeat 1906, from a hydrogen balloon • He was in Europe, where the transit happened after sunset..
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