Old Wires and New Waves- The History of the Telegraph, Telephone and Wireless By Alvin F. Harlow. Originally published in 1936. FOREWORD: THERE may be those who will think that a disproportionate amount of space is given in this book to the early history of the telegraph, as against the remarkable technical develop ments of the past quarter or half century. May it be suggested that the birth and infancy of ideas are intrinsically more note worthy, more important, than their middle age The centuries of groping for a method of quick communication, the one long century of mans striving to make electricity his servant, the pioneer days of the telegraph, when not only it but all America was simple and crude these are to most folk to-day so exotic, the last-named phase is to the student so significant a picture of the youth of American society and the nation, that, in the judgment of the author, they should be dealt with in detail for the benefit of a generation which knows them not. On the other hand, the rapid developments in telegraph, tele phone, and wireless in recent days are described at length in newspapers and magazines as they appear and they come so swiftly and we are so inured to them that the astounding inven tion of yesterday has to-day become a commonplace, and to morrow is superseded by something still more miraculous. It is therefore scarcely worth while for so slowly built and so final a publication as a book to attempt chronicling all the - minor de tails of recent progress in communication, especially since these matters become so complex and so abstruse that full explanation of their development and functioning would be too complicated for non-technically minded readers.Nevertheless, these modern developments have not been neglected, but are treated as fully as space limitations and the need for clarity seem to dictate. As usual, I have leaned heavily in my research upon the original documents and other materials in the collections of the New York Public Library and the New York Historical So ciety. The latters Henry ORielly Collection is one of the most valuable telegraph sources in existence. The great communications companies have all been very help ful. Through the good offices of Mr. William P. Banning, Assis tant Vice-President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, I spent many hours in personally conducted tours through that companys three huge operating buildings in New York City, any one of which is worth a trip to New York to see I was overwhelmed with pamphlets, reports, documents, magazine articles, and books and any and all photographs I desired for illustrations were at my disposal. Mr. Langdon, the librarian Miss Winburg, keeper of the photographs Messrs. Fowler and Mills of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Rood and Lea of the Long Lines Building Carl and Sedgwick of the New York Telephone Company, all gave their assistance with the courtesy characteristic of the organization. Mr. E. W. Goode, of the publicity department of the Inter national Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, supplied all the data at his command, loaned books not to be found elsewhere, procured permission for me to see the companys operating rooms, gave me whatever photographs I desired, and searched the country over for older ones which were not in his files. The Radio Corporation of America, through Messrs. Galvin, Wright, and Weaver, was also veryhelpful. I was conducted through its operating building and was supplied with photographs and technical information as needed...

Meaningful or meaningless? Purposeful or pointless? When we look at nature, whether at our living earth or into deepest space, what do we find? In stark contrast to contemporary claims that the world is meaningless, Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt reveal a cosmos charged with both meaning and purpose. Their journey begins with Shakespeare and ranges through Euclid's geometry, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics, the periodic table of the elements, the artistry of ordinary substances like carbon and water, the intricacy of biological organisms, and the irreducible drama of scientific exploration itself. Along the way, Wiker and Witt fashion a robust argument from evidence in nature, one that rests neither on religious presuppositions nor on a simplistic view of nature as the best of all possible worlds. In their exploration of the cosmos, Wiker and Witt find all the challenges and surprises, all of the mystery and elegance one expects from a work of genius.

This volume brings together essays from leading thinkers to examine what role Asian traditions of knowledge played in the rise of modern science in Europe, the implications this has for the epistemology of science, and whether pre-modern Asian traditions can provide resources for advancing scientific knowledge in future.

This volume offers a comprehensive history of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL), one of the major marine laboratories in the United States and a leader in using marine organisms to study fundamental physiological concepts. Beginning with its founding as the Harpswell Laboratory of Tufts University in 1898, David H. Evans follows its evolution from a teaching facility to a research center for distinguished renal and epithelial physiologists. He also describes how it became the site of major advances in cytokinesis, regeneration, cardiac and vascular physiology, hepatic physiology, endocrinology and toxicology, as well as studies of the comparative physiology of marine organisms. Fundamental physiological concepts in the context of the discoveries made at the MDIBL are explained and the social and administrative history of this renowned facility is described.

The main purpose of this book is to introduce a broader audience to emergence by illustrating how discoveries in the physical sciences have informed the ways we think about it. In a nutshell, emergence asserts that non-reductive behavior arises at higher levels of organization and complexity. As physicist Philip Anderson put it, "more is different." Along the text's conversational tour through the terrain of quantum physics, phase transitions, nonlinear and statistical physics, networks and complexity, the author highlights the various philosophical nuances that arise in encounters with emergence. The final part of the book zooms out to reflect on some larger lessons that emergence affords us. One of those larger lessons is the realization that the great diversity of theories and models, and the great variety of independent explanatory frameworks, will always be with us in the sciences and beyond. There is no "Theory of Everything" just around the corner waiting to be discovered. One of the main benefits of this book is that it will make a number of exciting scientific concepts that are not normally covered at this level accessible to a broader audience. The overall presentation, including the use of examples, analogies, metaphors, and biographical interludes, is geared for the educated non-specialist.

Since its appearance in 1859, Darwin's long awaited treatise in genetic biology had received reviews both favorable and damning. Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce presented arguments for and against the theory in a dramatic and widely publicized face-off at the 1860 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxford. Their encounter sparked a vigorous, complex debate that touched on a host of issues and set the stage for the Royal Society s consideration of whether or not they ought to award Darwin the Copley Medal, the society s most prestigious prize. While the action takes place in meetings of the Royal Society, Great Britain s most important scientific body, a parallel and influential public argument smoldered over the nature of science and its relationship to modern life in an industrial society. A significant component of the Darwin game is the tension between natural and teleological views of the world, manifested especially in reconsideration of the design argument, commonly known through William Paley s Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802) and updated by Wilberforce. But the scientific debate also percolated through a host of related issues: the meaning and purposes of inductive and hypothetical speculation in science; the professionalization of science; the implications of Darwinism for social reform, racial theories, and women s rights; and the evolving concept of causation in sciences and its implications for public policy. Because of the revolutionary potential of Darwin s ideas, the connections between science and nearly every other aspect of culture became increasingly evident. Scientific papers and laboratory demonstrations presented in Royal Society meetings during the game provide the backdrop for momentous conflict, conflict that continues to shape our perceptions of modern science.

Reacting to the Past is a series of historical role-playing games that explore important ideas by re-creating the contexts that shaped them. Students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in particular moments of intellectual and social ferment.

An award-winning active-learning pedagogy, Reacting to the Past improves speaking, writing, and leadership skills, promotes engagement with classic texts and history, and builds learning communities. Reacting can be used across the curriculum, from the first-year general education class to capstone experiences. A Reacting game can also function as the discussion component of lecture classes, or it can be enlisted for intersession courses, honors programs, and other specialized curricular purposes."

Francis Willughby together with John Ray revolutionized the study of natural history. They were motivated by the new philosophy of the mid 1600s and transformed natural history in to a rigorous area of study. Because Ray lived longer and more of his writings have survived, his reputation subsequently eclipsed that of Willughby. Now, with access to previously unexplored archives and new discoveries we are able to provide a comprehensive evaluation of Francis Willughby's life and works. What emerges is a polymath, a true virtuoso, who made original and imaginative contributions to mathematics, chemistry, linguistics as well as natural history. We use Willughby's short life as a lens through which to view the entire process of seventeenth-century scientific endeavor. Contributors are Tim Birkhead, Isabelle Charmantier, David Cram, Meghan Doherty, Mark Greengrass, Daisy Hildyard, Dorothy Johnston, Sachiko Kusukawa, Brian Ogilvie, William Poole, Chris Preston, Anna Marie Roos, Richard Serjeantson, Paul J. Smith and Benjamin Wardhaugh.

This book shows how Bohmian mechanics overcomes the need for a measurement postulate involving wave function collapse. The measuring process plays a very important role in quantum mechanics. It has been widely analyzed within the Copenhagen approach through the Born and von Neumann postulates, with later extension due to Luders. In contrast, much less effort has been invested in the measurement theory within the Bohmian mechanics framework. The continuous measurement (sharp and fuzzy, or strong and weak) problem is considered here in this framework. The authors begin by generalizing the so-called Mensky approach, which is based on restricted path integral through quantum corridors. The measuring system is then considered to be an open quantum system following a stochastic Schroedinger equation. Quantum stochastic trajectories (in the Bohmian sense) and their role in basic quantum processes are discussed in detail. The decoherence process is thereby described in terms of classical trajectories issuing from the violation of the noncrossing rule of quantum trajectories.

The Dutch seventeenth century, a 'Golden Age' ridden by intense ideological conflict, pioneered global trade, participatory politics and religious toleration. Its history is epitomized by the life and works of the brothers Johan (1622-1660) and Pieter de la Court (1618-1685), two successful textile entrepreneurs and radical republican theorists during the apex of Dutch primacy in world trade. This book explores the many facets of the brothers' political thought, focusing on their ground-breaking argument that commerce forms the mainstay of republican politics. With a contextual analysis that highlights the interaction between thinking and acting, between intellectual and cultural history, the book reveals the international significance of this commercial republicanism and it proposes a novel, rhetorical approach to seventeenth-century Dutch political culture.

The Editors invited selected authors who had participated in or observed the explosive development of biochemistry and molecular biology particularly in the second half of this century to record their personal recollections of the times and circumstances in which they did their work. The authors were given a completely free rein with respect to both content and style and the editors have made no attempt to impose any sort of uniformity in the chapters. Each reflects the flavour of the personality of the author.

The contributors to this volume encompass a wide variety of experiences in many different countries and in very different fields of biochemistry. Some have worked close to the laboratory bench throughout their scientific life and are continuing to do so. Others have been closely engaged in organisational matters, both nationally and internationally. All mention incidents in their own career or have observed those in others that will be of interest to future historians who will record and assess the period in which our contributors lived and worked. It was an extremely exciting time for life sciences.

This book explores the interconnections and differentiations between artisanal workshops and alchemical laboratories and between the arts and alchemy from Antiquity to the eighteenth century. In particular, it scrutinizes epistemic exchanges between producers of the arts and alchemists. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the term "laboratorium" uniquely referred to workplaces in which chemical operations were performed: smelting, combustion, distillation, dissolution and precipitation. Artisanal workshops equipped with furnaces and fire in which chemical operations were performed were also known as laboratories. Transmutational alchemy (the transmutation of all base metals into more noble ones, especially gold) was only one aspect of alchemy in the early modern period. The practice of alchemy was also about the chemical production of things--medicines, porcelain, dyes and other products as well as precious metals and about the knowledge of how to produce them. This book uses examples such as the "Uffizi" to discuss how Renaissance courts established spaces where artisanal workshops and laboratories were brought together, thus facilitating the circulation of materials, people and knowledge between the worlds of craft (today s decorative arts) and alchemy. Artisans became involved in alchemical pursuits beyond a shared material culture and some crafts relied on chemical expertise offered by scholars trained as alchemists. Above all, texts and books, products and symbols of scholarly culture played an increasingly important role in artisanal workshops. In these workplaces a sort of hybrid figure was at work. With one foot in artisanal and the other in scholarly culture this hybrid practitioner is impossible to categorize in the mutually exclusive categories of scholar and craftsman. By the seventeenth century the expertise of some glassmakers, silver and goldsmiths and producers of porcelain was just as based in the worlds of alchemical and bookish learning as it was grounded in hands-on work in the laboratory. This book suggests that this shift in workshop culture facilitated the epistemic exchanges between alchemists and producers of the decorative arts."

A History of Chinese Science and Technology (Voulumes 1, 2 & 3) presents 44 individual lectures, beginning with Ancient Chinese Science and Technology in the Process of Human Civilizations and An Overview of Ancient Chinese Science and Technology, and continuing with in-depth discussions of several issues in the history of science and the Needham Puzzle, interspersed with topics on Astronomy, Arithmetic, Agriculture, and Medicine, The Four Great Inventions, and various technological areas closely related to clothing, food, shelter, and transportation. This book is the most authoritative work on the history of Chinese Science and Technology. It is the Winner of the China Book Award, the Shanghai Book Award (1st prize), and the China Classics International (State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of The People's Republic of China) and offers an essential resource for academic researchers and non-experts alike. It originated with a series of 44 lectures presented to top Chinese leaders, which received very positive feedback. Written by top Chinese scholars in their respective fields from the Institute for the History of Nature Sciences, Chinese Academic Sciences and many other respected Chinese organizations, the book is intended for scientists, researchers and postgraduate students working in the history of science, philosophy of science and technology, and related disciplines. Yongxiang Lu is a professor, former president and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Galileo is known as a pioneer of science - especially of mechanics and astronomy, but far less attention has been paid to his work on the senses, and on vision in particular. In this book, two experts on the history of science look at the novel ways in which Galileo looked at the heavens through his telescope, and, in the process, emphasised the importance of contrast phenomena and visual resolution within astronomical observations. He also described the senses and their perception in terms that found an echo in doctrines advanced by nineteenth century sensory physiologists. In a fascinating and accessible style, Marco Piccolino and Nick Wade analyse the scientific and philosophical work of Galileo Galilei from the particular viewpoint of his approach to the senses (and especially vision) as a means of acquiring trustworthy knowledge about the constitution of the world. For Galileo the senses were potentially ambiguous, hence reliable information capable of penetrating the complexity of reality could only be obtained by interpreting the sensory data critically. The philosophical background of Galileo's attitude to the senses was his awareness that nature had not developed a specific language aimed at communicating with senses generally and human senses in particular. The culture of his age was based mainly on mechanistic approaches to the world. In this context, Galileo's analysis of the senses corresponded closely to a fundamental tenet of modern sensory physiology and psychophysics - the absence in the world of specific sensory signals like sounds, colours, tastes, and odours. Fully illustrated throughout, this book is an important contribution to psychology and the vision sciences, but more broadly to our knowledge of a pioneering figure in the history of science.

This book is open access under a CC BY license. This is the first account of Britain's plans for industrial development in its Caribbean colonies - something that historians have usually said Britain never contemplated. It shows that Britain's remedy to the poor economic conditions in the Caribbean gave a key role to laboratory research to re-invent sugarcane as the raw material for making fuels, plastics and drugs. Science at the end of empire explores the practical and also political functions of scientific research and economic advisors for Britain at a moment in which Caribbean governments operated with increasing autonomy and the US was intent on expanding its influence in the region. Britain's preferred path to industrial development was threatened by an alternative promoted through the Caribbean Commission. The provision of knowledge and expertise became key routes by which Britain and America competed to shape the future of the region, and their place in it. -- .

If science has the equivalent of a Bloomsbury group, it is the five men born at the turn of the twentieth century in Budapest: Theodore von Karman, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller. From Hungary to Germany to the United States, they remained friends and continued to work together and influence each other throughout their lives. As a result, their work was integral to some of the most important scientific and political developments of the twentieth century.
They were an extraordinary group of talents: Wigner won a Nobel Prize in theoretical physics; Szilard was the first to see that a chain reaction based on neutrons was possible, initiated the Manhattan Project, but left physics to try to restrict nuclear arms; von Neumann could solve difficult problems in his head and developed the modern computer for more complex problems; von Karman became the first director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, providing the scientific basis for the U.S. Air Force; and Teller was the father of the hydrogen bomb, whose name is now synonymous with the controversial "Star Wars" initiative of the 1980s. Each was fiercely opinionated, politically active, and fought against all forms of totalitarianism.
Istvan Hargittai, as a young Hungarian physical chemist, was able to get to know some of these great men in their later years, and the depth of information and human interest in The Martians of Science is the result of his personal relationships with the subjects, their families, and their contemporaries.

Short Description: Many Christians reject the consensus of contemporary science about the age of the universe, the implications of genetics, and so on. This book presents interviews with 15 eminent scientists who discuss the compatibility of their Christian faith and their mainstream scientific commitments. Features John Polkinghorne, Alister McGrath, John Lennox, Francis Collins, and John Houghton. A collection of exclusive interviews in which 15 eminent scientists talk about their science and their Christian faith. In this collection of interviews, scientists show how Bible-believing Christianity is compatible with contemporary scientific thinking. Christians do not have to choose, they say, between big bang and the Bible. Genesis and genetics can go together. In this book, big questions of the past, the present and the future are asked and answered; the physical impacts and moral implications of climate change are investigated and the intricacies of human DNA and the morality of genetic engineering are unravelled. Physicists, immunologists, astrophysicists, biochemists and mathematicians discuss what it means for humankind to be made in the image of God and how Christians can translate the gospel for our science-savvy society.

Why did science emerge in the West and how did scientific values come to be regarded as the yardstick for all other forms of knowledge? Stephen Gaukroger shows just how bitterly the cognitive and cultural standing of science was contested in its early development. Rejecting the traditional picture of secularization, he argues that science in the seventeenth century emerged not in opposition to religion but rather was in many respects driven by it. Moreover, science did not present a unified picture of nature but was an unstable field of different, often locally successful but just as often incompatible, programmes. To complicate matters, much depended on attempts to reshape the persona of the natural philosopher, and distinctive new notions of objectivity and impartiality were imported into natural philosophy, changing its character radically by redefining the qualities of its practitioners. The West's sense of itself, its relation to its past, and its sense of its future, have been profoundly altered since the seventeenth century, as cognitive values generally have gradually come to be shaped around scientific ones. Science has not merely brought a new set of such values to the task of understanding the world and our place in it, but rather has completely transformed the task, redefining the goals of enquiry. This distinctive feature of the development of a scientific culture in the West marks it out from other scientifically productive cultures. In The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, Stephen Gaukroger offers a detailed and comprehensive account of the formative stages of this development--and one which challenges the received wisdom that science was seen to be self-evidently the correct path to knowledge and that the benefits of science were immediately obvious to the disinterested observer.

This book is about our ordinary concept of matter in the form of enduring continuants and the processes in which they are involved in the macroscopic realm. It emphasises what science rather than philosophical intuition tells us about the world, and chemistry rather than the physics that is more usually encountered in philosophical discussions. The central chapters dealing with the nature of matter pursue key steps in the historical development of scientific conceptions of chemical substance. Like many contemporary discussions of material objects, it relies heavily on mereology. The classical principles are applied to the mereological structure of regions of space, intervals of time, processes and quantities of matter. Quantities of matter, which don't gain or lose parts over time, are distinguished from individuals, which are typically constituted of different quantities of matter at different times. The proper treatment of the temporal aspect of the features of material objects is a central issue in this book, which is addressed by investigating the conditions governing the application of predicates relating time and other entities. Of particular interest here are relations between quantities of matter and times expressing substance kind, phase and mixture. Modal aspects of these features are taken up in the final chapter.

Approaching the intersection of politics and science from the perspective of political history, this book looks at how nineteenth-century British Whigs used the themes of natural science to signal their identities, and how their devotion to a culture of liberality helped to define them. It offers a fresh take on a central theme in Victorian politics.

This book examines comparatively the US and the UK governments' management of Y2K and considers the extent to which such management can be understood as responses to market pressures, public opinion and organized interests. It concludes by providing valuable lessons to those concerned about managing risk and critical infrastructure today.