AUGUST 1959

WAVES—“Man would like to learn the ways of the waves merely by watching them, but he cannot, because they set him dreaming. Try to count a hundred waves sometime and see. The questions asked by the wave watchers are nonetheless being answered by intensive studies of the sea and by the examination of waves in large experimental tanks. The new knowledge has made it possible to measure the power and to forecast the actions of waves for the welfare of those who live and work on the sea and along its shores. In the large tank at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, artificial irregular waves approach the variability of those in the deep ocean. In our photograph, the ship model proceeds under its own power; its motions are recorded by means of the apparatus above it.”

AUGUST 1909

CELESTIAL VISITOR—“The approach of Halley’s comet is the most important astronomical event of the years 1909 and 1910. Every seventy-five or seventy-six years this remarkable body completes its far-stretching and extremely elliptical orbit around the sun. It was last seen at the Cape Observatory in May, 1836, but although it vanished from the sight of men, its onward track through space was known with as great accuracy, relatively, as sailors know the way of a ship over the trackless deep. No small emulation is being witnessed between those observatories endowed with large telescopes, as to which one of them will be the first to pick up the returning voyager from far-distant shores.”

PROTO-TELEVISION—“Mr. Ernest Ruhmer, of Berlin, well known for his inventions in the field of wireless telephony and telegraphy, has succeeded in perfecting what is probably the first demonstration apparatus which may be said actually to solve the problem of tele-vision. The writer has had an opportunity of inspecting this curious machine immediately before its being sent to Brussels, in order there to be demonstrated before the promoters of the Universal Exhibition planned for next year. In fact, a complete and definite tele-vision apparatus, costing the trifling sum of one and a quarter million dollars, is to be the clou of this exposition.”

BLRIOT'S TRIUMPH—“The dramatic flight of Louis Blriot across the English Channel has set a milestone of progress which must forever be memorable. No one, surely, would be so unjust as to belittle this great performance by reference to earlier and longer flights over the land. In point of risk and daring, that bold, early morning dash across the Channel stands in a class by itself. The fact that the first flying machine to cross the Channel was of a monoplane design has raised the prestige of that type.”

AUGUST 1859

GOLD GRAVES—“The aboriginal inhabitants of Central America, who occupied it at its discovery by the white men of the East, had a custom of burying their dead surrounded with gold. We learn that new discoveries have been made at David, Chiriqui [in Panama]. There is now a great emigration to these novel ‘diggins,’ and reports say gold is very profuse. But we are inclined to think that after the country has been so well ransacked in the sixteenth century, there cannot be so much as rumor would have us believe. The images are cast and polished, and exhibit much ingenuity in the modeling. The people by whom such objects were made must have been considerably advanced in civilization. The study of American antiquities will doubtless be advanced by the discovery of these remarkable images, and we think they should be preserved, instead of being thrown into the refiner’s melting-pot, like an unfashioned nugget or scaly dust.”

The entire article is available at www.ScientificAmerican.com/aug2009