Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
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Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
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Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#2It’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...
Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#3It’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 evo…
I think you mean luminiferous aether, unless there’s a pun in there I’m not getting.
Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#4It’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 evo…
I’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!
Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#5It’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 evo…
And in a lot of cases, they don’t assume you already know xxx because it was new then.
Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#6I dislike reading a book in my browser. Here's the Project Gutenberg page with all file types for offline viewing.
Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#7It’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 evo…
I’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!
but everything changed when the martians attacked.
Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#8“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.”
Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#9It’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 evo…
I think you mean luminiferous aether , unless there’s a pun in there I’m not getting.
Ether is a perfectly valid spelling in British English. See meaning 3 at https://www.lexico.com/definition/ether.
Re: Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you mean luminiferous aether , unless there’s a pun in there I’m not getting.
Ether is a perfectly valid spelling in British English. See meaning 3 at https://www.lexico.com/definition/ether .
Its valid in American English too, frankly and see it used frequently.
Out of the ether, Ethernet and so on.