Category: history
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Innovation and the ‘Creation’ of Time
I make no secret of being a huge fan of Matt Ridley’s body of work, and his latest addition to this, The Rational Optimist, seems like a welcome addition. A wonderful summary of the book’s main theme–that innovation and the spreading of theories and ideas is the key to a prosperous future and we should…
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A History of the Climate Change Controversies
After obtaining and analysing the documents and emails from the Climate Research Unit email controversy (the so-called Climategate emails), Der Spiegel “reveals how the war between climate researchers and climate skeptics broke out, the tricks the two sides used to outmaneuver each other and how the conflict could be resolved”. The result is an exceptional and…
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The Most Important Century
The next 50 years will bring technological, social and geopolitical change greater than we can imagine, says Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, but the emerging problems of population growth and climate change make this century arguably the most important in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history, even from the perspective of an astronomer. It’s sometimes wrongly imagined that…
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History of the 160 Character Text Message
I’ve never given much thought to this, and maybe that’s a sign of how well it was designed and implemented: the history and (high-level) technical development of text messaging. Would the 160-character maximum be enough space to prove a useful form of communication? Having zero market research, [the research commitee] based their initial assumptions on…
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The History of Puns
For The New York Times, Joseph Tartakovsky provides a short, surprisingly groanless, history of the pun. The inglorious pun! Dryden called it the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” To Ambrose Bierce it was a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” Universal experience confirms the adage that puns don’t…
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A Short History of Fingerprints
Cabinet of Wonders provides us with everything you’ve ever wanted to know about fingerprints, but were afraid to ask. I particularly enjoyed this tidbit: Spider monkeys, whose prehensile tail-tips are so sensitive and flexible that they can pick a dime up off a floor, also have prints on the bare spot at the end of…
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Two Stories of Escaping WW2 POW Camps
The fascinating story of how Waddington’s Monopoly sets were used to help captured Allied soldiers escape from Nazi POW camps: In 1941, the British Secret Service approached Waddington with its master plan, and before long, production of a “special edition” Monopoly set was underway. For the top-secret mission, the factory set aside a small, secure…
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Committed to Past Constraints: QWERTY
Something I’ve never thought of reading before: the history of the QWERTY keyboard: With the assistance of […] Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule, [Christopher Sholes] built an early writing machine for which a patent application was filed in October 1867. However, Sholes’ “Type Writer” had many defects, [including] the tendency of the typebars to…
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Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Earth
Bad Astronomy compiles a list of ten things you don’t know about the Earth. You probably (hopefully?) know a few of these already. The Earth is smoother than a billiard ball The Earth is an oblate spheroid The Earth isn’t an oblate spheroid The Earth is not exactly aligned with its geoid Jumping into a…
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Maps of Great Journeys: From Magellan to Kerouac
Interactive maps of history’s greatest journeys, with details. Some fictional; others not. There’s Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, Kerouac’s Sal Paradise traversing the US, Livingstone’s explorations in Africa, and many more. via Kottke