I JUST RECEIVED INVEN tion & Technology today and read with interest the article “From Poison Gas to Wonder Drug” (by Beryl Lieff Benderly, Summer 2002). The article states that mechlorethamine, derived from nitrogen mustard, “provides the M in MOPP, a cocktail of pharmaceuticals used against Hodgkin’s disease.” After surgery I received MOPP along with other drugs over a six-month period, followed by radiation, as treatment for Hodgkin’s disease.
WHEN NUCLEAR POWER WAS FIRST PROPOSED IN THE l940S , it seemed like a gift from heaven: a cheap, clean, and exhaustible source of electricity. In the decades since, scientific research and political developments have brought new advantages to the fore: Nuclear power generates no greenhouse gases, and its fuel does not come from countries of doubtful stability. Yet despite all these selling points, no new American nuclear plant has been ordered in nearly 25 years.
THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS can relocate anything except sunshine. That, in brief, is why modern Florida exists. It would be hard to find a spot anywhere in the lower 48 more inimical to human habitation than South Florida’s Everglades in its wild state: treacherous swamps, frequent floods, dense and dangerous vegetation, swarming insects, deadly diseases, hungry alligators, and the everpresent stifling blanket of heat.
With heavy hearts, car lovers noted the recent passing of Oldsmobile, America’s longestrunning automotive nameplate. Oldsmobiles first went on sale back in 1899, and at the dawn of autodom, when motorcars were still new and brash, the company’s Curved Dash Olds (CDO) taught Americans how to drive. Oldsmobile built more than 19,000 CDOs between 1901 and 1906, outselling any other make. Many owners became so enamored of these simple, rugged machines that they kept them in their barns and garages long after they had graduated to more modern cars.
IN THE SPRING OF 1932, WALT DISNEY previewed a work in progress titled Flowers and Trees , a new cartoon short for his studio’s “Silly Symphony” series. A perfectionist, he was not happy with what he saw. Although the black-and-white woodland fantasy was already half-finished, he decided to scrap it, start from scratch, and do it in color.
In late September 1942, as German U-boats inflicted heavy damage on Allied ships, Geoffrey Pyke—a science adviser to Britain’s chief of combined operations, Lord Mountbatten—proposed building aircraft carriers of ice, to patrol against submarines and carry planes to battle. These “berg ships,” as he called them, would be virtually unsinkable: How do you sink an ice cube? External insulation would guard against evaporation, and forced circulation of cold air would prevent melting.
UNTIL RECENTLY, RE searchers into preWorld War II television had only contemporary descriptions and blurry still photos of glowing screens to rely on. Now, however, a Scotsman named Donald F. McLean has managed to extract moving images from television signals that were recorded onto shellac phonograph disks as early as 1927—when most people were still getting used to radio.
CHARLES LINDBERGH’S SOLO NONSTOP FLIGHT ACROSS THE Atlantic in May 1927 caused widespread public excitement and sped up innovation in aviation around the world. By 1929 more than 400,000 passengers were traveling the world’s airlines, nine times as many as a decade before. Business interests saw a great potential for rapid air transportation of mail, cargo, and passengers, and transatlantic service would be invaluable. But there was one big problem.
IN ANCIENT EGYPT THOSE who wanted a dazzling, white smile used a mixture of wine vinegar and pumice ground into a powder, sometimes with myrrh or powdered eggshells. This acidic and abrasive blend worked all too well, scouring away the enamel of the tooth itself as well as accumulated food and plaque. Prolonged use could expose the underlying layer of dentin, making the teeth more vulnerable to infection and decay.
TRACK STAR MICHAEL JOHNSON MAY NOT BE AWARE OF IT, BUT when he runs the 400-meter dash, he is covering exactly one hundredthousandth of the circumference of the planet. Well, not exactly. More than 200 years ago the men who created the metric system, some of the greatest scientific minds of Revolutionary France, called for a new unit of measurement, the meter, that would equal precisely one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.
AFTER THE ENERGY CRISIS OF 1974, FRANCE embraced nuclear power as a route to energy independence. Today its 58 operating plants provide more than three-fourths of its electricity at much lower cost than in the United States. France has a single governmentowned utility, Electricité de France, whose nuclear installations were built by a single supplier, Framatome. These were originally standardized in two sizes, at 900 and 1,300 megawatts; recently a new size, 1,450 MW, has been added.
IT’S 1960 OR SO, AND YOU’RE A 12-YEAR -old living in a suburb somewhere on the East Coast. It’s late on a school night and you’re in bed, but you’re not sleeping; you’re listening to a big old Atwater Kent radio that you inherited when your mother got one of those new transistor radios for the kitchen. Tonight you’re tuned to WOR in New York at 710 AM, and you’re listening to this guy named Jean Shepherd who’s telling a funny story about when he was a kid and blew up his ham radio one day, scaring his mother and almost burning down the house.
BY THE END OF THE 1960S, ASTRONOMERS WERE FACED WITH increasing blindness. The largest telescope in the world was the 200-inch Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar in California. Since its dedication in 1948, suburban sprawl, with the accompanying light pollution, had made observations increasingly difficult. Moreover, with interest in space science and astrophysics growing enormously, demand for telescope time had far outrun the available supply.
IN THE EARLY 1930S, DEEP WITHIN THE STEEP, ROCKY SLOPES OF Utah’s Oquirrh Mountains, the Utah Copper Company reached a strange milestone. For almost 30 years the company’s giant power shovels had been eating away at a massive mountain of low-grade copper ore that lay at the head of narrow Bingham Canyon.
THE DARK EMPTINESS BEYOND PLUTO, THE FARTHEST planet in our solar system, defies comprehension. The sun is little more than a bright star in that void, Earth lost in its feeble glare. Yet even out there, there’s a little piece of Earth. Almost seven billion miles from home, faithfully calling back to a planet that has almost forgotten it exists, is humankind’s oldest functioning spacecraft, Pioneer 10.
TOM ZOELLNER’S ARTICLE ON THE DE velopment of offshore drilling (“Oil and Water,” Fall 2000) brought back some exciting memories. In 1950 I was one of a small team of geologists working for Magnolia Petroleum out of Morgan City, Louisiana, and it was my good fortune to be present the day we discovered oil on our drill site 25 miles offshore. We ran a routine Schlumberger electric log, and it showed a thick sand unit that looked hydrocarbon-saturated.
THE ART OF MAKING cheese is thousands of years old, but the food most Americans have grown up calling cheese is a twentieth-century invention. A hundred years ago, America lagged far behind Europe in cheese consumption. Dairy scientists and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials resolved to do something about it. The problem, they believed, was the erratic nature of domestic cheese. Even a master cheese-maker couldn’t consistently produce batch after batch of top quality.
MAJ. WILLIAM (“PETE”) KNIGHT WAS in trouble, and he didn’t even know it. It was October 3,1967, and he had just set a world aircraft speed record of Mach 6.7 (6.7 times the speed of sound, or 4,520 mph) in a specially modified X-15 research plane flying at an altitude of 102,000 feet. As Knight approached the dry bed of Rogers Lake, at Edwards Flight Test Center in the Southern California desert, he found himself coming in fast and heavy.
SINCE ANCIENT TIMES , fingerprints have been recognized as a definitive means of establishing who someone is. Unlike faces, handwriting, or other characteristics, they are unique to each person and cannot be imitated. They do not change over time, and despite the attempts of criminals to efface their prints with sandpaper, acid, or surgery, they cannot be disguised or permanently altered.
THE INVENTOR’S WIFE STOOD WITH HER ARMS SPREAD across the filing cabinets, trying to cover the open drawers as three men struggled to remove the files they contained. She knew she couldn’t win, but she thought it might somehow help her husband legally if the men had to use force. The men pulled her away and started loading boxes. Then, with about a third of the files gone, they began to relax their guard.
