Just about everybody has heard of Isaac Newton, who figured out a lot of stuff that’s pretty basic to modern science and engineering. But just because Newton came up with his his principles and observations didn’t mean that everybody simply said “Oh, yes, that’s a better way to understand the universe.” It’s science, after all,… Continue reading

If you’ve ever found technical drawings useful, particularly those with 3-D projections, raise a glass and toast the anniversary of the birth of Gaspard Monge. He was born May 9, 1746 in France, and invented those things, as well as differential geometry (which you could use to describe the surface of that glass you’re raising). … Continue reading

If you like American musical theater, you must know the name Oscar Hammerstein, who, as part of the duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, contributed many of the classic musicals to the genre. What you might not know is that Hammerstein was Oscar Hammerstein II. His grandfather was Oscar Hammerstein I, who founded the multigenerational Hammerstein musical… Continue reading

Now that we’re in the digital age, it can be hard to remember that a great many of the things we enjoy because of digital circuitry were available in the past, in analog form. For instance, we take it for granted that we can snap a picture and see the results right away. There’s nothing… Continue reading

If you had been a resident of Speyer in the mid 1600s, you would probably have known about Johann Joachim Becher, who was the leading intellectual of that area. The city of Speyer is still around, and now it’s in Germany. When Becher was born, on May 6, 1635, it was in the Holy Roman… Continue reading

Today marks a weird historical coincidence in the state of Idaho in the US. It all started in 1942, in the small town of Caldwell. Clement Leroy Otter was born there on May 3. His father was a sort of traveling electrician, and the family moved around quite a lot. Otter attended no fewer than… Continue reading

If you love good old-fashioned space opera stories where scientifically ridiculous space ships engage in ray-gun-powered dogfights in interstellar space, today is a good day to celebrate. On the other hand, if you’re a casual home baker who enjoys creating cakes and pies, but uses packaged mixes because they’re so convenient, today is a good… Continue reading

It’s the first of May, and in the US, that means Mother’s Day is coming up soon. It’s a strange holiday in many respects, and seems to mostly exist to support the greeting card, candy, flower shop, and restaurant industries. And it was founded by Anna Maria Jarvis, who was born May 1, 1864 in… Continue reading

A master’s thesis is not typically a work of entirely original research or scholarship, like a PhD dissertation. Instead, it’s supposed to demonstrate, well, “mastery” of a field. But every once in a while, a student writes a master’s thesis that’s original and even groundbreaking. That’s what Claude Shannon did, back in the late 1930s. … Continue reading

Have you noticed that there’s a certain cycle of “technological dangers” that for a while are probably going to end life as we know it — then something else comes along and the first one is mostly forgotten. Nuclear winter was one, nanotechnology was another, and the current existential threat and generator of countless essays… Continue reading