TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER • 7 FEBRUARY
On 7 Feb 1814, the American lecturer Gardner Quincy Colton was born, who introduced an anaesthetic gas into dental use. Yet, he wasn't a dentist. He actually began giving public science lectures. You'll probably be able to name the gas he at first showed as a novelty in his lectures. But, did you know his diverse interests included being a Shakespeare scholar? He also invented a model railway in which he used the metal rails in the electrical circuit to power the locomotive's motor. He is remembered for his contributions to dentistry, and for more background on that, read Gardner Quincy Colton and Anesthesia. For a short account of his model railway, read Early Electric Railways.
On 7 Feb 1926, Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov was born, Russian cosmonaut and space engineer who was part of the team that would go on to design the Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz spacecraft. Today's book pick is: The Rocket Men : Vostok and Voskhod, the First Soviet Manned Spaceflights, by Rex Hall, Shayler David who reveal the developmental and operational aspects which were formerly clouded in secrecy (which contrasts to the high profile American programme.) Just as the American one-man Mercury spacecraft gave way to the two-man Apollo series to the Moon with Apollo, the multi-crewed Voskhod series followed the single-seat Vostok. This chronicle of the rise of the Soviet space program draws on recently released archival information showing how the Soviet Union got ahead so quickly in the space race.
It is available from Amazon, typically about New from $32.33. Used from $17.62. (As of earlier time of writing - subject to change.)
 | Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books. — G. H. Hardy, English mathematician (born 7 Feb 1877).  |
 | The neurotic ... is nailed to the cross of his fiction. — Alfred Adler, Austrian psychiatrist and ophthalmologist (born 7 Feb 1870). |
 | The only royal road to elementary geometry is ingenuity. — Eric Temple Bell, Scottish-American mathematician and writer (born 7 Feb 1883). |
| 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 | |
| | Gardner Quincy Colton, born 7 Feb 1814, was an American anesthetist and inventor who was among the first to utilize the anesthetic properties of a certain gas in medical practice. After a dentist suggested the use of the gas as an anesthetic, Colton safely used it in extracting thousands of teeth. What was this anesthetic gas? |
 | A pioneer American inventor, born 7 Feb 1804, was a manufacturer of agricultural implements. Beginning as a blacksmith, he found that frequent repairs were necessary when the wood and cast-iron plows of the eastern U.S. were used in the prairie where he set up business. The local soils were heavy and sticky. By 1838 he had produced three plows of his own new design which led to starting his agricultural machine business. This company is still is well known by his his name. Can you name this man, whose company now is also well-known for tractors? |
| Deaths | |
 | Harvey S. Firestone (1868-1938) was an American industrialist who started the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in 1900. He was responsible for a number of industry innovations, including the production of pneumatic tires, nonskid tire treads, low-pressure balloon tires, and farm tractor tires. By the late 1930s, nearly a quarter of all tires being used in the United States were Firestone tires. On which model car was his straight-side pneumatic tire introduced? |
 | Antoine-Joseph Sax (1814-1894) who took the name Adolphe, was a Belgian-French maker of musical instruments and inventor of the saxophone, saxtromba, and sax horn. By combining the clarinet’s single reed and mouthpiece with a widened oboe’s conical bore, Sax created an new instrument with its distinctive, big sound. What material did Sax use for his first saxophones? |
| Events | |
 | On 7 Feb of a certain year, the “neutron” was described in an article in the journal Nature by its discoverer, James Chadwick, who coined the name for this neutral particle present in the nucleus of atoms. In which decade was this article published? |
 | On 7 Feb 1935, Charles Darrow's game was first marketed. Its symbol was Rich Uncle Pennybags. His patent described a “Board Game Apparatus … intended primarily to provide a game of barter, thus involving trading and bargaining” in which “much of the interest in the game lies in trading and in striking shrewd bargains.” By what name is this game now known? |
Fast answers for the previous newsletter for February 6: Louis Leakey • electrical resistance • oxygen • frozen during Winter • decade which includes the year 1976 • golf.
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