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Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
- hprotagonist 6y agoIt’s always kind of wonderful to read older texts. For one, the style is often much more approachably clear; for another, sometimes you find hidden gems of history. One of my favorite bits of science history is the first edition of a text on metallurgy, that was meant for sales reps for a carnegie steel affiliate company. The purpose of the book was to give sales reps enough clue to not embarrass themselves; it’s evolved and the book, now in its 8th edition or something, is a standard reference text for undergraduates. Anyway the first chapter or so of the 1914 text was explaining the basic chemistry of the universe and went something like: The three things that make up our physical universe are: matter, which is stuff that has mass; energy, which is the capacity to do work; and the luminiferous aether, which is the medium through which light propagates...
- qubex 6y agoI think you mean luminiferous aether, unless there’s a pun in there I’m not getting.
- kwhitefoot 6y agoEther is a perfectly valid spelling in British English. See meaning 3 at https://www.lexico.com/definition/ether https://www.lexico.com/definition/ether.
- Aloha 6y agoIts valid in American English too, frankly and see it used frequently. Out of the ether, Ethernet and so on.
- m463 6y agoso either aether or ether. :) We take the name ethernet for granted now, but it really is quite a clever name. nowadays it is practically just a point-to-point network, but the original implementation was a bunch of clients connected to their private "aether" all shouting out to each other.
- mjklin 6y agoI’ve been reading a lot of H.G. Wells’ nonfiction. As a child in a one-room English schoolhouse, he was still being taught the four “elements” of earth, water, fire, and air. Aristotle would be proud!
- hprotagonist 6y agobut everything changed when the martians attacked.
- commandlinefan 6y agoAnd in a lot of cases, they don’t assume you already know xxx because it was new then.
- Aloha 6y agoWhat is the name of text on metallurgy?
- _sbrk 6y agoI dislike reading a book in my browser. Here's the Project Gutenberg page with all file types for offline viewing. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30688 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30688
- mikermcneil 6y ago“Why does it get hot? Because when the electrons stream through it they bump and jostle their way along like rude boys on a crowded sidewalk. The atoms have to step a bit more lively to keep out of the way.”
- jasperpilgrim 6y agoI can be a bit dense sometimes, and the imagery helps me to grasp the concept. Fortunately, the book is packed full of descriptions like this.
- m463 6y agoYou might enjoy this old radio program where Jean Shepherd discusses getting his Class A ham radio license when still young and in school: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fl5JtoZXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fl5JtoZXU part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR46E_WV6vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR46E_WV6vc part 2