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EXPERIMENT IN LONELINESS

IN an underground “sensory deprivation chamber” at the VA Hospital in Oklahoma City sits an eight-foot-deep tank of water. It is part of a project designed to examine the mental stresses—especially hallucinations— that may afflict persons in environments of solitude, weightlessness, darkness and silence.

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Dr. Tesla Claims New Discoveries
CLAIMING that the propositions of relativity are false, and asserting that he has discovered a new apparatus for transmitting mechanical energy without wires and to any distance, Dr. Nikola Tesla, world famous scientist made formal announcement of his discoveries on his 79th birthday recently.
Should his announced energy transmitter prove successful, it would become the most sought for device in the world.

This article sounds like it could have been written today, except the authors seem more accepting of evolution.

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The Conflict Between Science and Religion

A Discussion by Leaders in American Life, with an Introduction By BRUCE BARTON

Author of “The Man Nobody Knows” and “The Book Nobody Knows”

THE printing of these statements is a public service. It ought to bring us closer to the day when the absurd phrase “the conflict between science and religion” will be permanently in the discard.

When theologians presume to prescribe the boundaries of truth they put themselves in the impossible position of most of their predecessors through the Middle Ages. When scientists presume to announce that man is merely material, coming from nothing and bound nowhere, and that the universe is a meaningless riddle, they are equally out of their depth.

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Atomic Force Measured In Giant Electronic Test Tube
PENETRATING deeper into the mysteries of science Dr. M. A. Tuve and his assistant, Dr. L. R. Hafstad, of the Department of Terrestial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institute of Washington hope to measure atomic force on instruments developed by them through years of research.
Working in the institute’s laboratories the two scientists have set up elaborate equipment for making the measurements. One of the devices used by them is a huge static electricity instrument looking very much like a giant test tube and distiller. With this device and similar electronic devices they may find the answer to a problem which has for years puzzled scientists throughout the world. Similar research is being conducted in schools throughout the world.

All my life, I’ve believed that practice makes perfect and that the hand is quicker than the eye. Now stupid, meanie science has to come and shatter all of my dreams. Damn you science!!!

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SCIENCE SAYS… It Ain’t So

Before you read the story on the following pages, mark these items TRUE or FALSE, then check the answers in the text. If your score is 16 or better, you’re smarter than science thinks you are.

1. Ground glass will always kill you
2. Brain power declines rapidly with age
3. Your body is symmetrical
4. Geniuses are sickly and die young
5. Faces reveal character
6. Alcohol is a stimulant
7. Women have more intuition than men
8. Practice makes perfect
9. Ptomaine poisoning causes most food sickness
10. You’re more efficient in cold climate
11. Milk prevents tooth decay
12. Cats can kill babies by sucking their breath
13. Marriage between cousins produces morons
14. Goldenrod is the main cause of hayfever
15. Pasteurization kills all germs in milk
16. Don’t keep food in opened cans
17. Blood tests can prove paternity
18. The hand is quicker than the eye
19. Don’t drink water with meals
20. Hypnotized people won’t act against their will
21. Tuberculosis and syphilis are hereditary
22. Rust causes lockjaw
23. Sleeping on the left side is bad for the heart
24. Treat frostbite by rubbing with snow

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How to Run An Atomic Power Plant

Nuclear research piles give preview of methods that may be used to make tomorrow’s electricity.

By Martin Mann

You—as a citizen—own a part of the 2-1/2 billion-dollar atomic-energy industry. Although your individual share is only one in 143,000,000, it is probably the most important single thing you own. It provides the most powerful weapon in our arsenal for war, promises cures for many diseases, and will eventually furnish cheaper electricity and transportation.

YOU’VE heard a lot about atomic energy. But you probably have a lot of questions because so few people have actually seen an atomic engine. Well, I have. I was one of a small group of reporters who saw two nuclear piles early this winter. While they were operating, I touched them, stood on top of one, saw it turned on and off, watched as “hot” radioactive materials were taken out of it. So maybe I can help you visualize the process and get rid of some of the mystery. Let’s imagine you have just gotten a job running an “atom furnace.” Sure I mean you! Some day such jobs will be as common as locomotive engineers. The engines of die future will be like the experimental piles I saw at the Argonne National Laboratory, which the University of Chicago runs for the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, used to transfer heat out of power piles, but what that material will be is still a question. That’s one reason nobody has built a real power pile yet. A good heat-transfer fluid will probably be found among the metals that melt easily—bismuth might be a possibility.

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SCIENCE IS KING
“Men who made civilization what it is today were not famous statesmen, conquerors or philosophers. They were—and are—men engaged in the mechanical sciences”

BY LOWELL THOMAS

OVER the airwaves comes a desperate appeal to the radio station at Nome. “For God’s sake, send help, if you can. We’re starving and dying. There’s an epidemic. Almost everybody is flat in bed.”

“What do you need? Food?”

“Food, yes, and milk. But above all, serum. This whole settlement will be wiped out if we don’t get serum.”

By dog-sled and man-power it would take two weeks and a lot of luck to carry the needed supplies to that stricken community. But there is Joe Crosson with his plane. Can he make it? The problem is put up to him.

“We’ll do our durndest,” he replies, speaking for himself and plane.

We won’t go in to the trouble and danger he goes through. For one thing, it’s an old story to Joe Crosson. He has done it before probably will have to do it again several times. The point at this moment is that he does it. An entire settlement in the frozen North is saved from extinction.

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Why is it that the gorilla speaking like he’s in a minstrel show?

I tol’em and I tol’em!
Yes, I did
“Being chief engineer on one of these red hot
projects ain’t hay and the big gripe is that no matter
what goes wrong I can’t fix it. That’s why at the start
when the confusion is still gently confined to the breadboard
you should call in Sigma. Confusion is an old story to
those boys. — actual unsolicited testimonial by I. M. A. Ape, Sc.D., chief engineer, Simian Products Company, Kivu Heights, Africa.
OK, now that you’ve had the hard-sell, we do have a relay that we’d like to talk about. It does some difficult jobs very well. Here are the basic specifications:

SIGMA SERIES 22
Miniature [.not sub-miniature] sensitive double pole sensitive relay. Excellent combination of small size and high performance.

If you are interested, we’ll be glad to send you a bulletin sheet on the Series 22, or a complete catalog if you prefer.

This is a condensed version of a talk titled “There’s plenty of room at the bottom” that Richard Feynman gave in 1959. It is generally considered to be the first speech about nanotechnology.

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There’s plenty of room at the bottom, says noted scientist as he reveals —
How to Build an Automobile Smaller than this dot -> .

At 42, Richard Phillips Feynman, Ph.D., enjoys world renown as a theoretical physicist, local fame as a “marvelous” performer on the bongo drums, and campus admiration as a man with a pixyish humor that turns a lecture on quantum electrodynamics into a ball. You’ll see why when you read his impassioned and witty plea to think small.

This tall, slim, dark-haired scholar helped importantly in developing the atomic bomb and watched its first test explosion. In 1954 he won the $15,000 Albert Einstein Award, one of the nation’s highest scientific honors.

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This article is the last in Scientific American series on Automatic Control. It covers Information theory and processing. It has some great tidbits such as primitive tagging system for books by Vanevar Bush that used binary coded descriptors on microfilm. Also I’d have to say the author deserves to gloat over this quote: “It is almost certain that “bit” will become common parlance in the field of information, as “horsepower” is in the motor field.”

• Part 1 - Automatic Control
• Part 2 - Feedback
• Part 3 - The Role of the Computer
• Part 4 - Automatic Machine Tools
• Part 5 - Information

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Information

The surprising discovery that it is subject to the same statistical treatment as heat facilitates its storage and handling in automatic control systems

by Gilbert W. King

THE “lifeblood” of automatic control is information. To receive and act on information is the essential function of every control system, from the simplest to the most complex. It follows that to understand and apply automatic control successfully we must understand the nature of information itself. This is not as simple as it may seem. Information, and the communication of it, is a rather subtle affair, and we are only beginning to approach an exact understanding of its elusive attributes.

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Whew, now I know where to go for all of my high-voltage ionizing radiation needs. Thank you High Voltage Engineering Corporation!

because . . .

The ionizing intensity of its electron beam, at 2 MeV, is several thousand-fold greater than the most powerful radioactive sources now available. The same accelerator will deliver 5000 roentgens per minute of x-radiation at 10 centimeters.

The cost of radiation energy from a Van de Graaff, in terms of gram-rep in the irradiated material, is only a tiny fraction of the costs associated with natural or artificial radioactivity.

The electron or x-ray beam from a Van de Graaff is fully controllable in direction and shape, permitting efficient utilization of energy output.

Your specific questions about Van de Graaff equipment will be answered fully and promptly. Our experience in applied radiation energy is at your disposal in planning your research program.

High Voltage Engineering Corporation

7 UNIVERSITY ROAD CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS

Normally I don’t post articles without pictures, but this one just floored me. This little blurb from 53 years ago perfectly sums up the greenhouse effect and global warming.

Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature
Earth’s ground temperature is rising 1-1/2 degrees a century as a result of carbon dioxide discharged from the burning of about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal and oil yearly. According to Dr. Gilbert N. Plass of the Johns Hopkins University, this discharge augments a blanket of gas around the world which is raising the temperature in the same manner glass heats a greenhouse. By 2080, he predicts the air’s carbon-dioxide content will double, resulting in an average temperature rise of at least four percent. If most of man’s industrial growth were over a period of several thousand years, instead of being crowded within the last century, oceans would have absorbed most of the excess carbon dioxide. But because of the slow circulation of the seas, they have had little effect in reducing the amount of the gas as man’s smoke-making abilities have multiplied over the past hundred years.