TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 2 JANUARY
On 2 Jan 1813, dozens of Luddites were put on trial. You may have heard of the word “Luddite” as now used to mean someone resisting the advance of technological progress. If you don't know where the term came from, or know only vaguely, you are missing an interesting and important part of technological and social history. You can catch up with some of that history in a chapter on the Machinery Riots from James Burnley's The Romance of Invention: Vignettes From The Annals of Industry and Science (1886).
A special Commission opened at York, England on 2 Jan 1813, to put on trial 66 persons for offenses connected with Luddism. Within days, seventeen of them had been executed on the scaffold. Taking their name from (perhaps mythical) Ned Ludd, Luddites vowed to destroy the factory mechanization they blamed for their unemployment. Riots began in 1812, and spread north from Nottingham where half of the population were receiving parish relief. Falling prices for goods, bad harvest increasing prices for food, wages at starvation level, costs of war and lost foreign markets contributed to the economic distress of the working class. One thousand looms were broken up in Nottingham, and a law was passed making destruction of machinery a capital offence. Did you know that participation in machinery riots brought a death sentence?
On 2 Jan 1920, Isaac Asimov was born, a prolific author of science books in which he popularized science (not to mention his widely-read science fiction). Today's book pick is: Asimov's Chronology of Science & Discovery: Updated and Illustrated, by Isaac Asimov. It is written as a chronological encyclopedia with many easy to digest entries. Asimov's accessible writing style conveys complex ideas while staying entertaining. As with any of Asimov's books, it is delightful to read. Your Webmaster has it on his bookshelf. But if your interest runs to something different, you will likely find Asimov wrote about it. Just follow the link, and browse on the author's name.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $79.99. Used from $3.10. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | If our tongues were as sensitive as these radiation detectors, we could easily taste one drop of vermouth in five carloads of gin. — Dixy Lee Ray, American marine biologist (died 2 Jan 1994).  |
| no image | What are they doing, examining last month's costs with a microscope when they should be surveying the horizon with a telescope? [Acerbic comment about directors of Brunner Mond, where he worked.] — Francis Arthur Freeth, British industrial chemist (born 2 Jan 1884). |
 | A neat and orderly laboratory is unlikely. It is, after all, so much a place of false starts and multiple attempts. — Isaac Asimov, Russian-American writer and biochemist (born 2 Jan 1920). |
| 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 | |
| | On 2 Jan 1920, Isaac Asimov was born. As a writer of science fiction, he coined the term “robotics,” and was also a prolific author of science non-fiction books for the layperson. Born in Petrovichi, Russia, he emigrated with his family to New York City at age three. As a trained scientist, he taught at Boston University. In which field did Isaac Asimov teach? |
 | Charles Hatchett, born 2 Jan 1765, was an English manufacturer, chemist, and discoverer in 1801 of a new element, which he called columbium. Forty years later another chemist, Heinrich Rose of Germany, rediscovered the metal and gave it the name by which it is now known. It is used in arc-welding rods for stabilized grades of stainless steel. What is this element? |
| Deaths | |
 | Sir George Biddell Airy (1801-1892) was the seventh British Astronomer Royal. In his life he studied interference fringes in optics, made a mathematical study of the rainbow, and computed the density of the Earth (with experimental measurements made at the top and bottom of a deep mine.) What simple device did Airy use to make the measurements to compute the density of the earth? |
 | Léon-Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (1855-1913) was the French meteorologist who discovered one of the layers of the atmosphere. Using unmanned, instrumented balloons, He found that above an altitude of 7 miles (11 km) temperature ceased to fall and sometimes increased slightly. What name did Teisserenc de Bort give to this layer of the atmosphere? |
| Events | |
 | On 2 Jan of a certain year, the first lunar space shot to escape the Earth's gravitational pull, the unmanned Luna I, was launched by the Soviet Union. It passed to within 4,600 miles of the moon before moving on to a solar orbit. In what decade did this space shot take place? |
 | On 2 Jan 1870, construction began on the Brooklyn Bridge to cross the East River, New York City, USA, with a single span, a breadth of 1,600 feet navigable water. The 13 year project was designed by the father of the engineer who finished the project. The father, a German-American, is known for establishing the first U.S. steel-wire cable factory. (He died from injuries while supervising preliminary construction operations for the Brooklyn Bridge.) Who was the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for January 1: bosons • the patient is injected with slightly radioactive material containing tagged molecules that behave like glucose and are consumed within cancerous tissue which the PET scanner can then detect • rear admiral • Heinrich Hertz • decade including the year 1966 • ENIAC.
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