50 Years Ago

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. […]

Humans

From the June 7, 1930, issue

COMET MAY CAUSE METEORIC DISPLAY If you watch the sky during the nights of early June, you may be treated to an unusual display of meteors, or “shooting stars.” For comet 1930d, as the astronomers call the new visitor to the heavens discovered by the Germans Schwassmann and Wachmann, is expected to cause a meteoric […]

Humans

From the November 26, 1932, issue

BOYS WORSE OFFENDERS To aid the harassed parents of temperish youngsters, Dr. Florence L. Goodenough of the Institute of Child Welfare, University of Minnesota, has made a scientific study of anger in young children–what are the immediate causes of outbursts, what are the underlying causes, what methods are commonly used to suppress it, and what […]

Humans

From the May 31, 1930, issue

A PHARAOH’S TOMB The picture on the cover of this week’s SCIENCE NEWS-LETTER shows how an archaeologist masters the “human fly” trick when he must measure the stones that form the sloping walls of a pharaoh’s tomb. The scene is the famous pyramid at Meydum, Egypt, supposedly built by King Snefru. The Museum of the […]

Humans

From the November 19, 1932, issue

NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY IS AWARDED DR. LANGMUIR The award of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Dr. Irving Langmuir, the General Electric Research Laboratory chemist, adds laurels to a system of investigation of nature’s secrets as it recognizes a great scientist. Langmuir has never been a mere inventor or applier of knowledge to […]