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It’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 hist
by hprotagonist 6y ago
It’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?