50 Years Ago
- Humans
From the January 28, 1933, issue
COMET PRINTS The dark, oblong areas pictured on the front cover are all that remain of a pre–Ice Age collision of cosmical magnitude, the smattering of a part of what is now the southeastern United States with fragments of a comet. This is the belief of Profs. F.A. Melton and William Schriever of the University […]
- Humans
From the January 21, 1933, issue
SEVEN SLEEPERS CATACOMBS EXPLORED BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS One of the most venerable of Christian legends, running back through the middle ages into late antiquity, is that of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus: seven youths who hid themselves from the persecution of a pagan Roman emperor and awoke 200 years later to find the empire Christian. Then, […]
- Humans
From the June 28, 1930, issue
MULTIPLE AILERONS When men first began to dream of flying like birds (which they have done ever since the legendary Daedalus), they watched the flight of birds, hoping to catch their trick and learn to imitate them. The many-faceted Leonardo used to spend hours and days watching and sketching pigeons. And when at last the […]
- Humans
From the January 14, 1933, issue
NEW TYPE OF ATOM-SMASHING GENERATOR NEARS COMPLETION The new type of electrostatic high-voltage generator being constructed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Round Hill, Mass., with a Research Corporation grant will be in operation in a few weeks. Dr. R.J. Van de Graaff, its inventor, President Karl T. Compton of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, […]
- Humans
From the June 14, 1930, issue
WELLAND CANAL Slightly more than a century after the falls and rapids of Niagara were first overcome for water transportation by a canal only 8 feet deep, there has been completed on practically the same site a mammoth structure that will pass giant 600-foot lake grain vessels up and down the 326.5-foot difference in elevation […]
- Humans
From the January 7, 1933, issue
ATOM BUILDING KEEPS STARS SHINING, SAYS A.A.A.S. HEAD The building up of other heavier atoms out of hydrogen stokes the internal heat of the stars, including the sun, Prof. Henry Norris Russell, Princeton University astronomer recently elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggested in the Maiben lecture before the Association. […]
- Humans
From the December 31, 1932, issue
SIX COLORS MIX IN WATER AT BASE OF CAPITOL One of the most spectacular fountain lighting systems places the Capitol at Washington in a new setting, when the building is viewed from the direction of the Union Station. Engineers describe the recently installed system as a fixed color installation. Water in the fountain and terrace […]
- Humans
From the December 17 & 24, 1932, issues
BEAUTY FROZEN IN GLASS SERVES CAUSE OF SCIENCE Gems as fantastically beautiful as any that have ever glittered in dreams of a frosty Christmas fairyland are being made in glass for the American Museum of Natural History by Herman Mueller, reputed to be the world’s most skillful glassblower. They are not mere conventional designs, however, […]
- Humans
From the December 17 & 24, 1932, issues
BEAUTY FROZEN IN GLASS SERVES CAUSE OF SCIENCE Gems as fantastically beautiful as any that have ever glittered in dreams of a frosty Christmas fairyland are being made in glass for the American Museum of Natural History by Herman Mueller, reputed to be the world’s most skillful glassblower. They are not mere conventional designs, however, […]
- Humans
From the June 14, 1930, issue
1,500,000,000 YEARS OF LIFE PORTRAYED IN GREAT HALL OF PAINTINGS Fifteen hundred million years of life on this planet will be unrolled as a single connected epic in a series of three majestic new halls planned for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Fossils, rocks, mounted plant and animal specimens, paintings, and statuary […]
- Humans
From the December 10, 1932, issue
CALVES RETAIN PART OF WILD THINGS’ CHARM Cows are prosaic. Like all the rest of us who have grown into maturity and (alas!) responsibility, they have their workaday jobs in a workaday world, seeing to it that we get butter and, eventually, beefsteaks. But calves still have something reminiscent of the long-lost wild freedom of […]
- Humans
From the December 3, 1932, issue
“QUICKER’N A WINK” Quick as a wink is a great deal too slow. This proverbial epitome of speed is beaten a dozen times over by the newest trick in scientific high-speed photography, which can take 13 “frames” of motion pictures of a human eye during the fortieth of a second it spends in getting shut. […]
