It’s always kind of wonderful to read older texts. For one, the style is often much more approachably clear; for another, sometimes you find hidden gems of history.
One of my favorite bits of science history is the first edition of a text on metallurgy, that was meant for sales reps for a carnegie steel affiliate company.
The purpose of the book was to give sales reps enough clue to not embarrass themselves; it’s evolved and the book, now in its 8th edition or something, is a standard reference text for undergraduates.
Anyway the first chapter or so of the 1914 text was explaining the basic chemistry of the universe and went something like:
The three things that make up our physical universe are: matter, which is stuff that has mass; energy, which is the capacity to do work; and the luminiferous aether, which is the medium through which light propagates...
We take the name ethernet for granted now, but it really is quite a clever name.
nowadays it is practically just a point-to-point network, but the original implementation was a bunch of clients connected to their private "aether" all shouting out to each other.
I’ve been reading a lot of H.G. Wells’ nonfiction. As a child in a one-room English schoolhouse, he was still being taught the four “elements” of earth, water, fire, and air. Aristotle would be proud!
“Why does it get hot? Because when the electrons stream through it they bump and jostle their way along like rude boys on a crowded sidewalk. The atoms have to step a bit more lively to keep out of the way.”
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 37.6 ms ] threadOne of my favorite bits of science history is the first edition of a text on metallurgy, that was meant for sales reps for a carnegie steel affiliate company.
The purpose of the book was to give sales reps enough clue to not embarrass themselves; it’s evolved and the book, now in its 8th edition or something, is a standard reference text for undergraduates.
Anyway the first chapter or so of the 1914 text was explaining the basic chemistry of the universe and went something like:
The three things that make up our physical universe are: matter, which is stuff that has mass; energy, which is the capacity to do work; and the luminiferous aether, which is the medium through which light propagates...
Out of the ether, Ethernet and so on.
We take the name ethernet for granted now, but it really is quite a clever name.
nowadays it is practically just a point-to-point network, but the original implementation was a bunch of clients connected to their private "aether" all shouting out to each other.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30688
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fl5JtoZXU part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR46E_WV6vc part 2