Tag: Science
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Einstein on Irrelevancies
Albert Einstein visited the U.S. for the first time in April 1921. On a two-month tour, ostensibly to raise money for the proposed Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Einstein met President Warren Harding and delivered a series of soldout lectures about his theory of relativity. Harding admitted that he didn’t understand Einstein’s theory at all, and…
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Criminal Is a Defective, but Not a Type
Which matters more for influencing criminal behavior: nature or nuture? This 1919 paper from England, “the most complete first hand scientific study of the criminal that exists in any language,” found it was nature. Presenting what seems to be the most complete first hand scientific study of the criminal that exists in any language, it…
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The Laying On of Hands for Fingerprints
In 1919, “The fingerprints of every sailor and soldier serving the United States are on record… In Argentina it is true of every civilian. In time it may be true of all the world.” Indeed. By 2009, the FBI had 63 million fingerprints on file. Their database started in 1924, just five years after this article…
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World’s Scientists in Life-and-Death Race
“These pictures are six months old,” says a quote from an army officer to begin this 1918 article, “so the devices they show are, of course, perfectly obsolete.” World War I sparked a massive technological boom, a silver lining to an otherwise horrific blemish on humanity’s history. That would come to be true of World…
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Propaganda to German People by Balloon Routes
“Ironclad ignorance and skillfully applied misinformation are the two hypnotizing agents by which the military masters of Germany’s restless and suffering millions keep them loyal and obedient.” How to combat this? Henry Louis Smith, President of Washington and Lee University, proposed an idea that could only be considered legitimate in the pre-internet age: send balloons with …
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Doctors Ready to Go, at Tremendous Sacrifice
Physicians called up for wartime medical service during World War I took tremendous pay cuts in the name of patriotism. The highest professional income in the corps is said to be $140,000 earned annually heretofore by a New York surgeon. In the seven hospital units of this city it is estimated that there are more…
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One-Man Submarine Invention of an American
Small submarines definitely still exist today, though to my knowledge the operator sits inside. I’m not aware of a current design which requires lying on one’s stomach and pedaling. Although the pictured invention might look a bit silly to a modern day viewer, the idea behind the invention still has merit to it: “The only…
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Scientists’ Belief in a Personal God Probed
A survey was sent out to 1,000 scientists by a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr in 1917, asking whether they believed in a personal god. Dividing them into those of “greater” and “lesser” eminence. (The division into “lesser” and “greater” scientists, or really any classification of people in general whether by occupation or other…
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Military Training Would Make Us a New Race
Johns Hopkins University professor Dr. Hugh H. Young did not appear to legitimately believes that more military training would literally turn us into a new species, but he did advocate mandatory military training as some other countries such as Switzerland did. He writes: “If our American boys could have such physical training under scientific supervision,…
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Compulsory Insurance Help to Medical Science
Should we have universal health insurance? The American public in 2016 is divided but leans towards yes, with a Gallup poll in May finding that 56 percent support a federally funded healthcare system for all. Vermont was about to become the first state to implement that policy on a statewide level, but their governor (a…
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