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21 Farnsworth, Philo Taylor
[br]b. 19 August 1906 Beaver, Utah, USAd. 11 March 1971 Salt Lake City, Utah, USA[br]American engineer and independent inventor who was a pioneer in the development of television.[br]Whilst still in high school, Farnsworth became interested in the possibility of television and conceived many of the basic features of a practicable system of TV broadcast and reception. Following two years of study at the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, in 1926 he cofounded the Crocker Research Laboratories in San Francisco, subsequently Farnsworth Television Inc. (1929) and Farnsworth Radio \& Television Corporation, Fort Wayne, Indiana (1938). There he began a lifetime of research, primarily in the field of television. In 1927, with the backing of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the collaboration of Vladimir Zworykin, he demonstrated the first all-electronic television system, based on his early ideas for an image dissector tube, the first electronic equivalent of the Nipkow disc. With this rudimentary sixty-line system he was able to transmit a recognizable dollar sign and file the first of many TV patents. From then on he contributed to a variety of developments in the fields of vacuum tubes, radar and atomic-power generation, with patents on cathode ray tubes, amplifying and pick-up tubes, electron multipliers and photoelectric materials.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsInstitute of Radio Engineers Morris Leibmann Memorial Prize 1941.Bibliography1930, British patent nos. 368,309 and 368,721 (for his image dissector).1934, "Television by electron image scanning", Journal of the Franklin Institute 218:411 (describes the complete image-dissector system).Further ReadingJ.H.Udelson, 1982, The Great Television Race: A History of the American Television Industry 1925–1941, University of Alabama Press.O.E.Dunlop Jr, 1944, Radio's 100 Men of Science.G.R.M.Garratt \& A.H.Mumford, 1952, "The history of television", Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers III A Television 99.KFBiographical history of technology > Farnsworth, Philo Taylor
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22 Whipple, Squire
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering[br]b. 1804 Hardwick, Massachusetts, USAd. 15 March 1888 Albany, New York, USA[br]American civil engineer, author and inventor.[br]The son of James and Electa Whipple, his father was a farmer and later the owner of a small cotton mil at Hardwick, Massachusetts. In 1817 Squire Whipple moved with his family to Otego County, New York. He helped on the farm and attended the academy at Fairfield, Herkimer County. For a time he taught school pupils, and in 1829 he entered Union College, Schenectady, where he received the degree of AB in 1830; his interest in engineering was probably aroused by the construction of the Erie Canal near his home during his boyhood. He was first employed in a minor capacity in surveys for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and for the Erie Canal. In 1836–7 he was resident engineer for a division of the New York and Erie Railroad and was also employed in a number of other railroad and canal surveys, making surveying instruments in the intervals between these appointments; in 1840, he completed a lock for weighing canal boats.Whipple received his first bridge patent on 24 April 1841; this was for a truss of arched upper chord made of cast and wrought iron. Five years later, he devised a trapezoidal truss which was used in the building of many bridges over the succeeding generation. In 1852–3 Whipple used his truss in an iron railroad bridge of 44.5 m (146 ft) span on the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad. He also built a number of bridges with lifting spans.Whipple's main contribution to bridge engineering was the publication in 1847 of A Work on Bridge Building. In 1869 he issued a continuation of this treatise, and a fourth edition of both was published in 1883.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsHonorary Member, American Society of Civil Engineers.IMcN -
23 Science
It is a common notion, or at least it is implied in many common modes of speech, that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of sentient beings are not a subject of science.... This notion seems to involve some confusion of ideas, which it is necessary to begin by clearing up. Any facts are fitted, in themselves, to be a subject of science, which follow one another according to constant laws; although those laws may not have been discovered, nor even to be discoverable by our existing resources. (Mill, 1900, B. VI, Chap. 3, Sec. 1)One class of natural philosophers has always a tendency to combine the phenomena and to discover their analogies; another class, on the contrary, employs all its efforts in showing the disparities of things. Both tendencies are necessary for the perfection of science, the one for its progress, the other for its correctness. The philosophers of the first of these classes are guided by the sense of unity throughout nature; the philosophers of the second have their minds more directed towards the certainty of our knowledge. The one are absorbed in search of principles, and neglect often the peculiarities, and not seldom the strictness of demonstration; the other consider the science only as the investigation of facts, but in their laudable zeal they often lose sight of the harmony of the whole, which is the character of truth. Those who look for the stamp of divinity on every thing around them, consider the opposite pursuits as ignoble and even as irreligious; while those who are engaged in the search after truth, look upon the other as unphilosophical enthusiasts, and perhaps as phantastical contemners of truth.... This conflict of opinions keeps science alive, and promotes it by an oscillatory progress. (Oersted, 1920, p. 352)Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. (Einstein & Infeld, 1938, p. 27)A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (Planck, 1949, pp. 33-34)[Original quotation: "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, dass ihre Gegner ueberzeugt werden und sich as belehrt erklaeren, sondern vielmehr dadurch, dass die Gegner allmaehlich aussterben und dass die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist." (Planck, 1990, p. 15)]I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science. (Planck, 1949, p. 46)If you cannot-in the long run-tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless. (SchroЁdinger, 1951, pp. 7-8)Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached. (Heisenberg, 1958, p. 168)The old scientific ideal of episteґmeґ-of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge-has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative forever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be "absolutely certain." (Popper, 1959, p. 280)The layman, taught to revere scientists for their absolute respect for the observed facts, and for the judiciously detached and purely provisional manner in which they hold scientific theories (always ready to abandon a theory at the sight of any contradictory evidence) might well have thought that, at Miller's announcement of this overwhelming evidence of a "positive effect" [indicating that the speed of light is not independent from the motion of the observer, as Einstein's theory of relativity demands] in his presidential address to the American Physical Society on December 29th, 1925, his audience would have instantly abandoned the theory of relativity. Or, at the very least, that scientists-wont to look down from the pinnacle of their intellectual humility upon the rest of dogmatic mankind-might suspend judgment in this matter until Miller's results could be accounted for without impairing the theory of relativity. But no: by that time they had so well closed their minds to any suggestion which threatened the new rationality achieved by Einstein's world-picture, that it was almost impossible for them to think again in different terms. Little attention was paid to the experiments, the evidence being set aside in the hope that it would one day turn out to be wrong. (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 12-13)The practice of normal science depends on the ability, acquired from examplars, to group objects and situations into similarity sets which are primitive in the sense that the grouping is done without an answer to the question, "Similar with respect to what?" (Kuhn, 1970, p. 200)Science in general... does not consist in collecting what we already know and arranging it in this or that kind of pattern. It consists in fastening upon something we do not know, and trying to discover it. (Collingwood, 1972, p. 9)Scientific fields emerge as the concerns of scientists congeal around various phenomena. Sciences are not defined, they are recognized. (Newell, 1973a, p. 1)This is often the way it is in physics-our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. I do not think it is possible really to understand the successes of science without understanding how hard it is-how easy it is to be led astray, how difficult it is to know at any time what is the next thing to be done. (Weinberg, 1977, p. 49)Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in a position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophize without "foundations." (Putnam, 1987, p. 29)Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Science
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24 Fado
Traditional urban song and music sung by a man or woman, to the accompaniment of two stringed instruments. The Portuguese word, fado, derives from the Latin word for fate ( fatum), and the fado's usage does not distinguish the sex of the singer. Traditionally, wherever the fado is performed, the singer, the fadista—who is often but not always a woman wearing a shawl around her shoulders—is accompanied by the Portuguese guitarra, a 12-stringed mandolin-like instrument or lute, and the viola, a Spanish guitar. There are at least two contemporary variations of the fado: the Lisbon fado and the Coimbra or university student fado. While some authorities describe the song as typical of the urban working classes, its popularity and roots are wider than only this group and it appears that, although the song's historic origins are urban and working class, its current popularity is more universal. The historic origins of the fado are not only obscure but hotly debated among scholars and would-be experts. Some suggest that its origins are Brazilian and African, while others detect a Muslim, North African element mixed with Hispanic.After the Revolution of 25 April 1974, there was talk that the fado's days were numbered as a popular song because it seemed an obsolete, regime-encouraged entertainment, which, like a drug or soporific, encouraged passivity. In the new Portugal, however, the fado is still popular among various classes, as well as among an increasingly large number of visitors and tourists. The fado is performed in restaurants, cafes, and special fado houses, not only in Portugal and other Lusophone countries like Brazil, but wherever Portuguese communities gather abroad. Although there do not appear to be schools of fado, fadistas learn their trade by apprenticeship to senior performers, both men and women.In fado history, Portugal's most celebrated fadista was Amália Rodrigues, who died in 1999. She made her premier American debut in New York's Carnegie Hall in the 1950s, at about the same time Americans were charmed by a popular song of the day, April in Portugal, an American version of a traditional Portuguese fado called Fado de Coimbra, about Coimbra University's romantic traditions. The most celebrated fadista of the first decade of the 21st century is Marisa dos Reis Nunes, with the stage name of Mariza, who embodies a new generation of singers' contemporary interpretation of fado. The predominant tone of the Lisbon variation of the fado, sung often in the areas of Alfama, Mouraria, Bairro Alto, and Alcântara, is that of nostalgia and saudade — sadness and regret. Traditionally, the Coimbra version has a lighter, less somber tone. -
25 Pierce, George Washington
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 11 January 1872 Austin, Texas, USAd. 25 August 1956 Franklin, New Hampshire, USA[br]American physicist who made various contributions to electronics, particularly crystal oscillators.[br]Pierce entered the University of Texas in 1890, gaining his BSc in physics in 1893 and his MSc in 1894. After teaching and doing various odd jobs, in 1897 he obtained a scholarship to Harvard, obtaining his PhD three years later. Following a period at the University of Leipzig, he returned to the USA in 1903 to join the teaching staff at Harvard, where he soon established new courses and began to gain a reputation as a pioneer in electronics, including the study of crystal rectifiers and publication of a textbook on wireless telegraphy. In 1912, with Kennelly, he conceived the idea of motional impedance. The same year he was made first Director of Harvard's Cruft High- Tension Electrical Laboratory, a post he held until his retirement. In 1917 he was appointed Professor of Physics, and for the remainder of the First World War he was also involved in work on submarine detection at the US Naval Base in New London. In 1921 he was appointed Rumford Professor of Physics and became interested in the work of Walter Cady on crystal-controlled circuits. As a result of this he patented the Pierce crystal oscillator in 1924. Having discovered the magnetostriction property of nickel and nichrome, in 1928 he also invented the magnetostriction oscillator. The mercury-vapour discharge lamp is also said to have been his idea. He became Gordon McKay Professor of Physics and Communications in 1935 and retired from Harvard in 1940, but he remained active for the rest of his life with the study of sound generation by birds and insects.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPresident, Institute of Radio Engineers 1918–19. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1929.Bibliography1910, Principles of Wireless Telegraphy.1914, US patent no. 1,450,749 (a mercury vapour tube control circuit). 1919, Electrical Oscillations and Electric Waves.1922, "The piezo-electric Resonator", Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 10:83.Further ReadingF.E.Terman, 1943, Radio Engineers'Handbook, New York: McGraw-Hill (for details of piezo-electric crystal oscillator circuits).KFBiographical history of technology > Pierce, George Washington
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