HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Discovery of phosphorus

2012-01-14T21:00:00.000-08:00

Element of phosphorus was originally discovered by Dr. Hennig Brandt of Hamburg. Brandt, a German chemist was living at the Michaelisplatz in Hamburg in the newer part of the city.

When his alchemical experiments revealed the beautiful light giving element, Brandt called it cold fire (kaltes feuer), or affectionately, ‘mein Feuer.’’ It was accidentally discovered when Brandt was engaged in searching for the Philosopher’s stone.

It was first isolated from urine in 1669. It consisted in evaporating putrid urine to dryness, and distilling the residue at an intense heat in a stoneware retort. The method obtaining it remained secret till it was a second time discovered by Kunkel in the year 1680.

One hundred year later after the discovery that much higher concentrations could be found in teeth and bones though now it is obtained from ore deposits.

In the year 1774, the Swedish chemists, Ghan and Sceheele, made the important discovery, that phosphorus is contained in the bones of animals and they improved then processed for procuring it.

Actually, the use of phosphorus materials as fertilizers was practiced unknowingly long before the isolation and discovery of phosphorus. As early as 200 BC the Carthaginians recommend and employed bird droppings to increase the yields for their fields.

The Incas of Peru prized guano and bird droppings on their islands so highly that it was made a capital offense to kill birds.

Discovery of phosphorus

History of Islets of Langerhans

2011-12-09T18:30:00.000-08:00

The islets of Langerhans, which are embedded in the exocrine pancreatic tissue, are known to secrete three hormones: insulin, glucagon and somatostatin.

In 1869, a medical student named Paul Langerhans described systems of cells in the pancreas which he thought were lymph glands.

It was the eminent French histologist Edouard Laguesse whom in 1893 reported these spots while examining the pancreas of an executed criminal; he generously added ‘I provisionally designate them by the name islets of Langerhans, thereby immortalizing the name’.

In 1901, Eugene Opie of Johns Hopkins Unversity, associated diabetes with an alteration in the islets of Langerhans and proposed that they were the source of an internal secretion.

Late in the nineteenth century, scientists had realized there was a connection between the pancreas and diabetes. The connection was further narrowed down to the islets of Langerhans.

Sharpey-Schafer, the leading British physiologist of the time, proposed that the islets of Langerhans secreted a substance that controlled the metabolism of carbohydrate.

From 1910 to 1920, Oscar Minkowski and others tried unsuccessfully to find and extract the active ingredient from the islets.

The role of the islets of Langerhans in diabetes mellitus was suspected in 1909 by J. de Meyer, who named the hypothetical secretion insulin, but this was not proved until 1921, when F. G Banting and C. H Best successfully extracted insulin from the pancreas.
History of Islets of Langerhans

History of computer chips

2011-11-28T21:06:00.001-08:00

Central processing unit contains the electronic heart of the computer: the microprocessor chip. The chip is a piece of silicon on which has been printed a complex circuit that processes the instruction to the computer.

The idea of a single chip computer was around even as early as the 1950s but at that time electronics and integrated circuit technology were still in their infancy.

The creation of the transistor in 1947 and the development of the integrated circuit in 1958-59, is the technology that formed the basis for the microprocessor.

Around that time, there were many companies in the field trying to develop a single chip computer and one of them was Intel. Intel released its 4-bit all-purpose chip, the Intel 4004, in November 1971.

The world’s first commercial microprocessor chip was released by Intel on November 15, 1971. It was developed for a Japanese calculator company, Busicom, as an alternative to hardwired circuitry.

The personal computer was first made possible by the development of the microprocessor during that year. Single chip computers could dramatically cut costs and expand the effectiveness of systems.

In April 1974, Intel introduced the 8080 microprocessor ,which was 10 times faster than the earlier 8008 and addressed 64kb of memory.

By the late 1990s, technology had developed printable, affordable personal computers, known as laptops, which could be carried anywhere.
History of computer chips

History of Bacteria Discovery

2011-10-03T22:23:00.000-07:00

Anton van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutchman first observed bacteria through his single-lens microscope in 1674. He made his own simple lenses to try to satisfy his curiosity about living things.

He observed the bacteria in suspension of white material he obtained from his teeth – dental plaque.

Later, Louis Pasteur demonstrated that the fermentation process was caused by the growth of microorganisms or bacteria.

Pasteur discovered the process of pasteurization – killing bacteria by heating – and invented a number of vaccines including one against rabies.

This was followed by Robert Koch’s experiments on bacteria as a source of disease, specifically the anthrax bacillus, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1905. Robert Koch, a German Doctor showed the first time in 1876 that bacteria can cause disease.

The German medical scientist Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) developed the first theory concerning how bacteria cause diseases and how the immune system fights these micro-organisms.

During the years from 1878 to 1884 Burrill, in Illinois , working on the well-known fire blight of apples and pears discovered that it was caused by bacteria.

Wakker a young Dutch pathologist, working on the so-called yellow disease of hyacinth, proved it to be caused by bacteria. He published his result from 1883-89.

In early 1900s, Russian immunologist Dr. Eli Metchnikoff, suggested that a synergistic interaction exists between bacteria and their host. He proposed that a link existed between better health and longer life after noted the longevity of Bulgarian peasants who ate a lot of yoghurt.
History of Bacteria Discovery

Heliocentrism theory

2011-10-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

The long-held belief of geocentric theory was challenged by Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) and mathematically confirmed by Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).

Their theory was called heliocentric, meaning that the sun was the center of solar system, and Earth and the other planets revolved around it.

The first person who put forward the heliocentric hypothesis was Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BC). He was known as ‘the mathematician’ and his theoretical contributions to geography. He elaborated the heliocentric theory of the universe.

Aristarchus perhaps influenced by the work of Heraclides of Pontus suggested that a simple world system would result if the sun were put at the center of the universe and of the moon, the earth, and the five then-known planets revolved around the sun in orbits of different sizes and speeds.

Mathematician Pythagoras, in the sixth century before our era also proposed the same ideas. After him Philolaus, had suggested the movement of the earth and planets about a central fire but its definitive formulation appears to be Aristarchus work.

However, Copernicus worked out his system in full mathematician detail. Nicolaus Copernicus read the ideas of ancient Greek astronomers and mathematicians.

In 1512, Copernicus published a description of his ‘heliocentric’ model of the solar system. In this model, the sun was the center of the solar system.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) an Italian mathematician and scientist later proved the heliocentric theory.

His telescope also showed that the moon had peaks and valleys, crags and carters and that the sun had spots that appeared and disappeared, disapproving the Aristotelian-Christian belief of pristine heavens.
Heliocentrism theory

Christiaan Eijkman

2011-09-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

Christiaan Eijkman was a Dutch physician and pathologist who demonstrated that beriberi is caused by poor diet. He discovered that beriberi is a vitamin deficiency disease.

He was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He shared the prize with Sir Frederick Hopkins.

Christiaan Eijkman was born on August 11, 1858 at Nijkerk in The Netherlands.

In 1875, Eijkman became a student at the Military Medical School of the University of Amsterdam. He received a medical degree in 1883 with honors by written thesis ‘On Polarization of the Nerves’.

Later he served as medical officer in the Dutch East Indies in the year of 1883-85.

Eijkman was a director of the Geneeskundig Laboratorium (medical laboratory) in Batavia from 1888 to 1896 and during that time he made a number of important researches in nutritional sciences.

Because of his fundamental studies on fowl and the rice diet, he was knighted by Queen Wilhelmina with the Order of the Dutch Lion in 1920.
Christiaan Eijkman

Discovery of W and Z boson

2011-08-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

First experimental evidence flavoring a unified description of the weak and electromagnetic interactions had been obtained in 1973 with discovery of neutral current interactions of neutrinos at CERN.

Result from neutrino experiments could be used to predict their mass to be around 80-90 GeV and the search for these bosons was given the higher priority.

In 1976, the Italian physicist Carlo Rubbia presented a paper with the idea of converting an existing accelerator at that time into a storage ring for protons and antiprotons, with the hoped it would have sufficient energy to detect the W and Z bosons.

The Dutch physicist later Simon Van der Meer invented a method that made Rubbia’s idea possible. The W and Z boson was particles were found and both were awarded Nobel Prize for physics in 1984.

In January 1983, scientist at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron collider discovered the W boson.

A few months later a new paper published which provided the first evidence for the neutral intermediate Z boson.

With the discovery of the heavy gauge bosons W and Z in 1983, the theory of electroweak interactions was firmly established.

The discoveries of neutral currents and of the W and Z bosons marked a watershed in the fortune of CERN.

Decades after the discovery that the photon had no mass, its massive siblings the gauge bosons of the weak force – were observed in the laboratory.
Discovery of W and Z boson

DNA Structure Discovery

2011-07-22T21:20:00.000-07:00

In 1953, two young scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick made one of the most important
discoveries of the twentieth century.

They worked out the structure of DNA - large molecule found in every cell of our body that
contains all the information required for life.

Watson and Crick used experimental results obtained buy Rosalind Franklin to help build their model showing the shape of DNA.

Crick and Watson wrote-up their findings and had them published in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953 in an article titled “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid”.

Following the discovery of the first practical microspore in late 17th century by A. van
Leeuwenhoek (1623-1723), research was dominated for several decades by cytologists doing
observations of all kind of material under the microsphere.

In 1665, Robert Hooke named cells the smallest living biological structure surrounded by walls observed in cork.

It was in 1869, a young Swiss physician, Friedrich Miescher isolated a substance that he called ‘nuclein’, now known as DNA.

Only a few years earlier Gregor Mendel had finished series of experiments with peas and made observations that turned out to be so closely connected the the finding of nuclein. This was the starting of the science of genetics.

Linus Pauling (1901-1994) was the one who study the DNA and get credit for the discovery of double helix.

And it was Rosalind Franklin (1921-1958), whose X-ray images of DNA crystals gave clues about the double helical structure.

Franklin used –x-ray diffraction techniques, to experimentally examine the structure of DNA.

The earliest studies reveled genes to be discrete factors that were retained throughout the life of an organism and then passed on tor each of its progeny.

Over the following century, these hereditary factors were shown to reside on chromosomes and to consist of DNA, a macromolecule with extraordinary properties.

The discovery of the form of the DNA molecule and its code is considered by many to be one of the most important discoveries of modern science.

It wasn’t until the mid seventies, with new technologies of replicating and ‘cutting and pasting’ DNA that the genetic information explosion took off.
DNA Structure Discovery

Agriculture in History

2011-06-30T06:32:00.001-07:00

At the end of the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), some 12,000 years ago, after hundreds of thousands of years of biological and cultural evolution, human societies were able to make increasingly varied, sophisticated and specialized tools.

Near 8000 BC, people made the major technological advance of domesticating animals and plants.

Observations of a very early date that bear on their relationship have come down today from the civilization that developed in the Sumerians valley of the Euphrates and Tigris.

Large scales of agriculture began when the valley first hooked animals up to a plow and to wheeled carts. These peoples also built ships, which mean they soon need to devise methods of navigation across the sea.

Thus the demand of agriculture, the first occupation, after hunting for which man became organized, led to the accumulation of knowledge and to processes of generalization. The advanced were purely practical but they were some of the earliest examples of people using logic and putting ideas together of understand some small part of the word.

The early part of this agriculture revolution or Neolithic revolution also occurred independently in the Middle East, the orient, New Guinea and the Americas.

A settled agricultural civilization demands tools. Technology developed. The age of stone passed into the age of metals.

The treatments of ores and the working of metals called for a class with special knowledge. Copper was the first metal to be employed and it was in use from as early as 64000 BC, initiating a period sometimes called the Copper Age.

The development of rights in land demanded some sort of surveying. Greek traditions has it that the inundation of the Nile, by obliterating all landmarks, forced on the Egyptian as annual re-measurement of their field. Thus geometry was born.

Major developments of the period following the agriculture revolution were largely in astronomy, mathematics and technology.
Agriculture in History

Microscope

2011-06-12T04:14:00.000-07:00

The origin of microscope can be traced to the ancient world. This was by the evidence of magnifying lenses found in ancient Iraq.

It is also the evidence that craftsmen in Rome used magnifying glass for their fine arts work.

In the first century A.D Seneca described actual magnification by a globe of water. He wrote that letters could be enlarged and made clear by viewing though a globe of glass filled with water.

A thousand years later the Arabian scholar Alhazan wrote a major work on optical principles and described the anatomy of the eye and how the lens focuses images.

The Dutch draper or linen merchant and option Anton van Leeuwenhock (1632 – 1723) ground a single lens with a magnification of about t 500 power in the 1670s.

Leeuwenhock was the first to discover microscopic. His magnifying lenses were small in diameter and had to be held extremely close to the eye and to the specimen.

Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703) made improvements by the 1660s to the device, with which he discovered the cellular structure of plants.

In the 20th century. The electron microscope represented a break through to much higher magnification.
Microscope

Discovery of Electron

2011-05-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Discovered by Joseph John Thomson in 1897, the electron was the first elementary particle it be clearly identified. During that time he was working at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, and he had been Cavendish professor of Experimental Physics for 12 years.

He demonstrated conclusively that cathode rays are negatively charged atom-like particles which he called ‘corpuscles’ and which are now called electrons.

He proved that cathode rays consisted of electrically charge particles of about one-thousandth the mass of the hydrogen atom.

Further investigation of the properties of the electron led the way into the new world of quantum mechanics.

Before that Julius Plucker of the University of Bonn discovered cathode rays in 1859. The other line of research was on the so-called ‘Edison Effect’ discovered in 1883 by Thomas Alva Edison.

By 1879 William Crookes, English physicist an chemist has shown that cathode rays had momentum and also definite energy.

In 1891, the word electron was coined by Johnstone Stoney.

Thompson, coincident with his discovery of the electron proposed a model of the atom having negatively charged electrons sprinkled about like raisins in a cake.
Discovery of Electron

Archimedes of Syracuse

2011-04-01T02:37:00.000-07:00

Archimedes of Syracuse established a reputation as an inventor of practical machines but became more famous for his discoveries in mathematics and physics. Archimedes (287-212 BC) was born in Syracuse, the large Greek settlement in Sicily. He was born into a wealthy family and well connected.

His father, Pheidias, was well known as a respected astronomer. As a son of a scientist and member of the upper class, Archimedes received good education.

He studied in Alexandria as a young man, but presently return to Syracuse in Sicily, where he lived on close terms with king of that city.

The king was a relative. He had plenty of time to indulge his passion – mathematics, physics and engineering.

Archimedes quickly established his reputation as a creative inventor.

Archimedes did much of his work for King Hero. On one famous story, the king suspected that a goldsmith had not made a new coin of pure gold, but had mixed in some less costly silver.

The king asked Archimedes t find out if the goldsmith has cheated. Archimedes used the law of displacement to compare the amount of water displaced by the coin to the amount of water displaced by an equal weight of pure gold.

The coin displaced less water and so it was not pure gold. The goldsmith had cheated.

Archimedes devised all sorts of amazing devices based on scientific principles.

In 212 the Romans attacked Syracuse and Archimedes was urged to help defend the town. He is said to be invented machines for hurling enormous weights at the Roman ships, great cranes which could pluck them out of the water.

He even used huge mirror to focus the heat of the sun on approaching Roman ships and set them on fire.

He is one of the earliest but also most important scientist who ever lived.

His mathematical discoveries were much more important. He wrote more than 20 books about his discoveries in diverse branches of mathematics and physics.

One of Archimedes’ finest mathematical achievements was his perfection of the method of exhaustion.
Archimedes of Syracuse

The Discovery of Vitamin E

2011-03-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

Vitamin E was discovered in 1922 by Evans and Bishop as an unidentified factor in vegetable oils required for reproduction in female rats.

The observation was published in 1922. First named ‘factor X’ and the ‘antisterility factor’, Evans suggested adopting the letter E to designate the factor following the then recognized vitamin D.

A vitamin E active compound was isolated from wheat germ oil in 1936.

Because this compound permitted an animal to have offspring, research group named the compound alpha-tocopherol from Greek word ‘tocos’ (meaning childbirth) and ‘ferein’ (to bring forth), relating to its essentiality for rats to bear young. To indicate the presence of an OH group in the molecule, ‘ol’ was added to the ending.

Its correct structure was given in 1938 and the substance was first synthesized by P. Karrer, also in 1938.

In 1940s, a team of Canadian physicians discovered that vitamin E could protect people from coronary heart disease.

Demand for vitamin E has rapidly increased. Along with market demand, the number of product types available to the pharmaceutical food, feed, and cosmetic industries has increased.

In 1968 the Food and Nutrition Boards of the National Academy of Sciences officially recognized vitamin E as an essential nutrient.
The Discovery of Vitamin E

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

2011-02-01T02:06:00.000-08:00

Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle born in 384 BC at Stagira, a Greek town not far from the borders of the semi barbarian kingdom of Macedonia.

Aristotle grew up under the influence of the Hippocratic tradition of medicine which is father practiced and which may well have influenced him but its emphasis on empirical investigation and respect for the evidence of concrete particularities.

Aristotle arrived in Athens in 367 to join Plato’s Academy as a student. He stayed, so the tradition goes, for twenty years and these two decades formed the first great phase of his intellectual career.

Aristotle followed closely after Hippocrates and although not himself a physician, had a profound effect on medical thought and practice for succeeding centuries.

Indeed he can regarded as one of the greatest scientific geniuses the world has ever seen.

Although Aristotle never dissected a human being, he carried out anatomical studies of a wide range of animals, laid the foundation of embryology by studying the developing chick, and gave an accurate account of the life of bees.

He laid the basis of the doctrine of evolution, describe a ladder of nature ascending through lower plants, higher plants, insects, fish, mammals to man.

This period of Aristotle’s life came to an end with the death of Plato and the succession of Plato’s nephew Speusippus to the headship of the academy.

He left Athens, accompanied by Xenocrates and went to Atarnea, in Mysia, to his friend and fellow disciple, Hermias, the ruler of that town , whose sister or niece, Pyhtias, h subsequently married.

After the fall and death of Hermias (345 BC) Aristotle went to Mytilene. From there he returned to Athens and open the school of rhetoric, in which he set up as an opponent to Isocrates.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Vitamin B Discovery

2011-01-31T05:24:00.000-08:00

The Englishman Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins is given credit for approaching the discovery of the vitamin concept, when in 1906, he determined that food contains essential ingredients beyond carbohydrates, minerals fats, proteins and water.

The term vitamin was first used for water soluble substance which was necessary for the nutrition of infants and which was separated from wheat germ, yeasts and milk.

In fact this term was used after the first discovery of anti-beriberi factor by Casimir Funk in 1912. The first vitamin B discovered was vitamin B1 by Funk that was extracted from police rice husk.

It was then isolated in pure and crystalline form by B.C.P Jansen in 1925.

Casimir coined the term ‘vital amine’ to describe the class of chemicals that he and other researchers were studying, and the word was simplified to ‘vitamin’ by 1920.

Three years after this discovery, Elmer Vernon McCollum and Marguerite Davis labeled it ‘water soluble B’ which British biochemist Jack Cecil changed to vitamin B in 1920.

Casimir Funk (1884-1967), a Polish born American biochemist, collected all published literature in the issue of deficiency diseases. He was the first to isolate niacin, latter called vitamin B3.
Vitamin B Discovery

The Discovery of Venous Valve

2010-12-15T00:07:00.000-08:00

The Discovery of Venous Valve
The fact the veins of the body have valves that regulate the flow of blood to the heart was discovered in 1579 by Girolano Fabrizio (1537-1619), whose Latinized name was Gironomo Fabricius.

In the same traditions in the study of anatomy as Vesalius, Fabrizio studied under Fallopius, who himself was a student of Vesalius.

Fabrizio followed Fallopius in the chair of medicine at the University of Padua and was in turn a teacher of William Harvey (1578-1657), who developed the understanding of the circulation of blood.

Fabrizio also described the location of the lens of the eye, worked out the anatomy of the larynx and investigated the mechanics of respiration and the action of the muscles.

Fabrizio demonstrated the working of the venous valves in 1579, but worked for more than two decades on his studies, not publishing his results, in De Venatrum Ostiolis, until 1603. He also studied the late fetal stages of various animals, described the placenta, and speculated on the process of human conception.

Like others on the tradition begun by Vesalius, Fabrizio was willing to use dissection and experimentation to challenge traditions, contributing to the growth of the scientific spirit that merged more fully in the century following his death.
The Discovery of Venous Valve

Early History of Computing Hardware

2010-11-17T22:57:00.000-08:00

Early History of Computing Hardware
Many people believe that Stonehenge the famous collection of rock monoliths in Great Britain, is an early form of calendar or astrological calculator.

The abacus which appeared n the sixteenth century BC, was developed as an instrument to record numeric values and on which a human can perform basic arithmetic.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, built and sold gear- driven mechanical machines, which performed whole number addition and subtraction.

Later in the seventeenth century, a German mathematician, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, built the first mechanical device designed to do all four whole number operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Unfortunately, the state of mechanical gears and levers at that time was such that the Leiniz machine was not very reliable.

In the late eighteenth century, Joseph Jacquard developed what became known as Jacquard’s loom, used for weaving cloth. The loom used a series of cards with holes punched in them to specify the used of specific colored thread and therefore dictate the design that was woven into the cloth.

Although not a computing device, Jacquard’s loom was the forts to make use of an important form of input: the punched card.

It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the next major step was taken this time by a British mathematician, Chares Babbage designed what he called his analytical engine.

His design was too complex for him to build with the technology of his day, so it was never implemented.

His vision however, included many of the important component of today’s computer.

Babbage’s design was the first to include a memory so that intermediate values did not have to be reentered.

His design also included the input of both numbers and mechanical steps making used of punched cards similar to those used in Jacquard’s loom.

During the later part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, computing advances were made rapidly. William Burroughs produced and sold a mechanical adding machine.

Dr. Herman Hollerith developed the first electro mechanical tabulator, which read information from a punched card.

His device revolutionized the census taken every ten years in the United States. Hollerith later formed a company today known as IBM.
Early History of Computing Hardware

Brief History of Mathematics

2010-09-04T03:37:00.000-07:00

Witten number, in the form of tallies at first, preceded any known form of written words.

A major development of the period after the Agriculture Revolution was the inventions ways more complex than tallies to record numbers, leading eventually to numeration systems.

The Greeks place the origin of their mathematics in Egypt, but it seems that Egyptian mathematics was limited to practical mathematics.

The Egyptian has a decimal numeration system, but the place value was not clear; they used fraction, which they always decomposed into the sums of unit fractions with 1 as numerator.

In Mesopotamia the early ways of recording numbers seem to have led directly to writing. The earliest evidence of written texts at the end of the fourth millennium BC consists of records of names as well as commodities and their quantities.

It is not clear how writing arose in other parts of the world, but numerals probably preceded words in eastern Asia and in the America as well.

By 4000 years ago, positional notation was in use in Mesopotamia, with separate developments by the Chinese and the Maya some hundreds or thousands of years later.

In Mesopotamia, the base 60 system of numeration led to a mathematics capable of solving quadratic equations.

The Mesopotamian kept exact records of astronornical observation for long period of time.

Geometric designs are even older than the first recorded numbers, but it is a big step from craving a triangle to measuring it and computing its area.

Systems of measurement, like numeration systems, appear to have arisen from trade needs. Later, something closer to true geometry also progressed in both Egypt and Mesopotamia, with improvements in the ability to measure area and volume and the discovery of the Pythagorean theorem.

They used a sexagesimal system of numeration with place value and also used sexagesimal fractions; however they lacked a cipher to denote zero until the 4th century BC.

Toward the end of the period, symbols for zero as a placeholder were introduced.

The prehistoric period ended in Egypt and Mesopotamia in 3000 BC, and a little later in the valleys of the large rivers in India and China.

By the century, the Mayas in central America also possessed a numeration system,. with base 20.
Brief History of Mathematics

The Origin of Abacus

2010-07-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

The Origin of Abacus
First mechanical counting device developed from the practice of writing on a board or slab covered with sand or counting pebbles.

Several races including the Chinese, the Aztecs, the Greeks, the Etruscans and the Egyptian developed their own devices to deal with numbers.

The ancient Greek abacus, made a series of holes with matching counting pegs, may have alternatively derived its name from its resemblance to a bachus or wall cupboard with a linear arrangement of cups.

The old Semitic word abaq for sand suggests a Hebrew origin. The only extant early Greek abacus in the form of a marble table, discovered on the Island of Salamis in 1846, is currently exhibited in Athens.

A reference to a Chinese abacus, made of balls threaded on frames, is found in a Chinese text dating back to AD 1593.

It suggests that the Chinese abacus was known in AD 200. The early Greek abacus was copied by the Romans and was reintroduced into Europe by Gerbert or Pope Sylvester II of Aurillac, France around AD 970.

Adelard of Bath wrote an early treatise, around 1130, on the rules of the abacus.

During medieval times in Europe, the abacus with some modifications was known as mensa Phythagorica.
The Origin of Abacus

Ancient Ideas of Technology and Sciences

2010-06-12T04:16:00.001-07:00

Ancient Idea of Technology and Sciences
There remain many unsolved mysteries about the technologists of the ancient world. There is evidence that in Mesopotamian, craftsmen knew how to use electrical currents for electroplating metals.

The ancient Polynesian, without the aid of compasses or charts, navigated the Pacific.

The Egyptians not only constructed the pyramids but also were able to lift massive stone obelisks onto their ends by some unknown method.

The ancient Egyptians built a canal to link the Red Sea with the Mediterranean and other technological and mathematical innovations took place in India, China and central Asia.

In pre-Bronze Age Britain and on the continent of Europe, builders somehow moved heavy stones to build monuments with apparent astronomical orientations such as at Stonehenge.

The ancient Greeks used a complicated navigational device that was a sort of early geared analog computer to locate the positions of the stars and planets know as Anikythera computer.

The workings of that strange machine, found by a sponge fisherman off the Greek island of Syme in 1900, were partially unraveled by 1974 by a historian of technology, Derek de Solla Price.

In Americas, the Mayans, Toltecs, and subjects of the Inca knew about wheeled pull toys, but they never used wheels for vehicles or even wheelbarrows.

Yet the Mayans used the concept of the mathematical zero several centuries before the Europeans.

The fact that wisely dispersed nations and races came upon the same idea, in cases of parallel invention, rather than diffused invention , leave another set of tantalizing.
Ancient Idea of Technology and Sciences

History and Prehistory Humankind

2010-05-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

History and Prehistory Humankind
Scholars customarily draw a a sharp distinction between prehistory and history. Prehistory is taken to be the long era from biological beginnings of humankind over 2 million years ago to the origins of civilization about 5,000 years ago in the first urban centers of the Near East.

The transition to civilization and the advent of written records traditionally mark the commencement of history proper.

Prehistory, because of the exclusively material nature of its artifacts, mainly in the from of stone, bone or certain products has inescapably become the province of the archeologist, while the historical era, with its documentary records, is the domain of the history.

However the single label “prehistory” obscures two distinctly different substages: the Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, which held sway for around 2 million years, is marked by rudimentary stone tools, designed for collecting and processing wild food sources, while the succeeding Neolithic, or New Stone Age, which first took hold in the Near East around 12,000 years ago, entailed substantially more complex stone implements adapted to the requirements of an economy of low intensity food production in the form of gardening or herding.

The technologies of both the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras have left a rich legacy of material artifacts. In constant, only a feeble record exists of any scientific interest in these preliterate societies, mainly in the form of astronomically oriented structures. Thus, at the very outset, the evidence indicates that science and technology followed separate trajectories during 2,000 millennia of prehistory.

Technology of the crafts – formed an essential element of both the nomadic food-collecting economy of Paleolithic societies and the food–producing activities in Neolithic villages, while science , as an abstract and systematic interest in nature was essentially nonexistent, or at any rate, has left little trace.
History and Prehistory Humankind

Copernicus and his discovery

2010-04-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

Copernicus and his discovery
In 1499 Copernicus graduated from the University of Bologna, Italy; was ordained priest in the Catholic Church; and returned to Poland to work for his uncle, Bishop Waczenrode, at the Frauenburg Cathedral.

Copernicus was given the top rooms in a Cathedral tower so he could continue his astronomy measurements.

At that time people still believed a model of the universe created by the Greek scientist, Ptolemy more than 1,500 years earlier.

According to Ptolemy, the earth was the center of the universe and never moved. The sun and planets revolved around the earth in great circles while the distant stars perched way out on the great spherical shell of space.

But careful measurement of the movement of planets didn’t fit with Ptolemy’s model.

So astronomers modified Ptolemy’s universe of circles by adding more circles within circles or epi-circles. The model now claimed that each planet travel along a small circle (epi-circle) that rolled along that planets big orbital circle around the earth.

Century after century, the errors in even this model grew more and more evident. More epi-circles were added to the model so that planets moved along epi-circles within epi-circles.

Copernicus hoped to use “modern” (sixth-century) technology to improve on Ptolemy’s measurements and hopefully, eliminate some of the epi-circles.

For almost 20 years Copernicus painstakingly measured the position of the planets each night. But his tables of findings still made no sense in Ptolemy’s model.

Over the years, Copernicus began to wonder what the movement of the planets would look like from another moving planet. When his calculations based on this idea more accurately predicted the planets’ actual movement, he begin to wonder what the notion of the planets would look like of the earth moved. Immediately, the logic of this notion became apparent.

Each planet appeared at different distances from earth at different times throughout a year. Copernicus realized that this meant Earth could not lie at the center of the other planets’ circular paths.

From 20 years of observations he knew that only the sun did not vary in apparent size over the course of a year.

This meant that the distance form earth to the sun had always remain the same. If the earth was not at the center, then the sun had to be. He quickly calculated that of he placed the sun at the universe’s center and had the earth orbit around it, he could not completely eliminate all epi-circles and have the known planets travel in simple circles the sun.

For fear of retribution from the Church, Copernicus dared not released his findings during his lifetime. They were made public in 1543, and even then they were consistently scorned and ridiculed by the Church, astronomers and universities alike.

Finally, 60 years later, first Johannes Kepler and then Galileo Galilei proved that Copernicus was right.
Copernicus and his discovery

History of Veterinary Medicine

2010-03-25T01:19:00.000-07:00

History of Veterinary Medicine
The practice of veterinary medicine is one of the oldest scientific skills developed by humans.

During the Paleolithic period prior to 8000 BC, our ancestors lived in a symbolic relationship with the wild animals around them, hunting them for food, clothing and other materials necessary for survival.

Animals had not yet been domesticated, except possibly the dog. Survival depended on hunting a variety of animals, which included sheep, cows, horses and pigs.

One can easily imagine an ancient hunter caring for a dog that helps him on his hunt, although no archeological evidence from this period has yet been discovered that suggest this sort of prehistoric veterinary care.

The domestication of animals and the development of agriculture began between 3000 – 2500 BC.

The first farm animals to be domesticated were pgs, followed by sheep, goats, horse and oxen, which could be used for working in the fields as well as for food.

Although animals had always has diseases in the wild, people had not lived in close enough contact with them to recognize these disease or formulate remedies against them.

But once the animals were domesticated ensuring their health became a real priority.

Not only were the animals important because they provided the means of survival, they were also highly esteemed by primitive people.

For these reason caring for them became a matter of great concern to the early agriculturalists, although there are no record telling the stories of the successes and failures of the first veterinarians.
History of Veterinary Medicine

What is Science?

2010-03-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

What is Science?
Science is often conceived as a body of knowledge. Reflection, however will lead to the conclusion that this cannot be its true nature.

History repeatedly shown that a body of scientific knowledge that ceases to develop soon ceases to be science at all.

The science of one age has often become the nonsense of the next. Consider, for example, astrology; or again, the idea that certain numbers are lucky or unlucky.

With their history unknown, who would see in these superstitious the remnants of far-reaching scientific doctrines that once attracted clear thinking minds seeking rational explanations of the working of the world?

Yet such, in fact is their origin. So too, we agree at the explanation of fossils as the early and clumsier attempts of an All-powerful Creator to produce the more perfect beings that we know ourselves to be.

Science is no static body of knowledge but rather an active process that can be followed through the ages.

The sheer validity and success of the process in our own age has given rise to a good deal of misunderstanding of its native and not a little misapplication of such terns as ‘science’ and ‘scientific’.

There is nothing in the laws of this or any other country which forbids its citizens from giving worlds of their language such significance as they may choose, but science and scientific as employed in these connection have no relation to the great progressive acquisition of knowledge.

The very from of the adjective ‘scientific’ might give pause to those who would force the word to cover such topics as the skill of the boxer, or a knowledge of the theory and practice of the sacraments.

By derivation scientific means knowledge making, and no body of doctrine which is not growing, which is not actually being made, can long retain the attributes of science.
What is Science?

Mathematics of Three Civilizations

2010-02-26T17:44:00.000-08:00

Mathematics of Three Civilizations
There is history to mention the mathematics of three ancient civilizations, interesting in themselves, but of little or no influence on the further course of mathematics: the Minoans-Mycenaeans, the Mayas and the Incas.

Their science is not that of the beginning, but belongs rather to the category of the Ancient Orient.

Mathematical symbols used in administration have been found on the ruins of the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization of Crete and the Greek mainland.

They belong to the scripts called Linear A and B and belong to the period of 1800-1200 BC.

Numbers are represented, as in Egypt (but with different symbols), by special symbols for 1, 10, 100, 1000 in an additive way.

There are also symbols for simple fractions not all unit fractions. Since the scribes did not bake the clay tablets on which they wrote, only those that were baked in the final conflagration of their cities have been preserved, so that we have adequate knowledge of the extend of the mathematical knowledge of this civilization; it may have been comparable to that of Egypt.

The Mayas of Central America, mainly in what is now Yucatan and Guatemala, established a civilization that lasted for a millennium and a half, but reached its height in the so-called classical period, about 200-900 of our era.

The arithmetic of Mayas, mainly deciphered from inscribed stone monuments, some codices, and Spanish chronicles, and closely related to their astronomy, notably their calendric system, was vigesimal (it still is), represented by dots for the units up to 4, and horizontal bars for the fives up to 15.

For larger numbers they used a position system with base 20, powers of 20 being represented by the same symbol as 20, the unit symbol.

There were some modifications for calendric purposes.

This position system required a symbol for zero, often a kind of shell or half open eye sign.

This system with its calendric connections, spread to other peoples of Central America.

The Incas built a large empire in and west of the Andes of South Amreica from the middle of the thirteenth century of our era on, their capital being Cuzco.

Its vast bureaucracy, strong in administration, crafts, and engineering used for communications and information, no writing but so-called quipos.

The simplest quipo has a main cord of colored cotton or sometimes wool, from which knotted cords are suspended with the knots formed into clusters at some distance from each other.

Each cluster has a number of knots from 1 to 9, and a cluster of say, 4 followed by one of 2 and one of 8 knots represents 428.

This is therefore a position system , in which our zero is indicated by a greater distance between the knots.

The colors of the cords represent things: sheep, soldiers, etc; and the position of the cords, as well as additional cords suspended from the cords, could tell a very complicated statistical story to the scribes who could “read” the quipos.
Mathematics of Three Civilizations