People fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin – more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of humanity.
1803
English scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.
1826
The USS Vincennes leaves New York on a voyage to become the first warship to circumnavigate globe.
1928
In San Francisco, Philo Farnsworth demonstrates a television system featuring his Image Dissector camera tube to the press for the first time.
1833
The first issue of the first daily newspaper in the U.S., The New York Sun, is published by Benjamin H. Day. By 1836, the penny paper will have a circulation of thirty thousand papers, the largest in the nation.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
The current curriculum undermines the authority of the education system by revealing to tech-savvy children how antediluvian it is.
But, more importantly, the curriculum is disabling rather than enabling for most kids, because it is preparing them for a technological world that is vanishing before their eyes. Training children to use Microsoft Office is the contemporary equivalent of the touch-typing courses that secretarial colleges used to run for girls in the 1940s and 1950s – useful for a limited role in the workplace, perhaps, but not much good for life in the modern world.
1837
Professor Daubeny, Professor Torrey, and Alfred Vail attend a demonstration of Samuel F. B. Morse’s telegraph at New York University. Vail becomes interested. Vail and Morse will be the first two telegraph operators on Morse’s experimental line between Washington, DC, and Baltimore
1890
Guglielmo Marconi demonstrates radio transmission at Three Mile Hill in Salisbury Plain, England for officials from the General Post Office, the Navy, and the Army present.
1930
The first non-stop airplane flight from Europe to the US is completed by Captain Dieudonne Coste and Maurice Bellonte of France when they arrive in Valley Stream, New York, aboard the Question Mark after a thirty-seven hour flight.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
There is a new imperative to look busy in public, to be texting, talking to someone on the phone and to be checking e-mail (preferably all at the same time). In cafes, once locations for talking, flirting, daydreaming, you now find ranks of freelancers, connected to their laptops by the umbilical cords of their earphones, eyes down. Jobs contributed to a complete reconfiguration of our social architecture.
1486
The first copyright in history is granted in Venice, Italy.
1804
One of the largest asteroid belts in the solar system, Juno, is discovered by German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding.
1858
The first transatlantic cable fails after less than one month of service.
1859
A solar flare is observed for the first time by astronomer Richard C. Carrington, who will write about his discover in Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1960. “While engaged in the … observation of … solar spots … two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out. … I therefore noted down the time, … and seeing the outburst to be very rapidly on the increase … I hastily ran to call some one to witness … and on returning within 60 seconds, was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled. Very shortly afterwards the last trace was gone. In this lapse of 5 minutes, the two patches of light traversed a space of about 35,000 miles.”
Read the rest of this entry » » »
508
CSS
XHTML
Website Credits &
Disclaimers