September 2026: Science history from 50, 100 and 150 years ago
Scientific American · LC · trust 15/100
September 2026: Science history from 50, 100 and 150 years ago
1876, Sweet Birds of Prey: “It must not be supposed that the food of honey buzzards is restricted to honey, which only forms its dessert; but they devote attention to small birds, insects, and reptiles, as well as rats, mice and small deer. They have also been known to purloin the eggs of other birds.”
Scientific American, Vol. 35, No. 13; September 1876
“If nuclear-fission reactors are to play a substantially enlarged role in generating electricity in the U.S., we must decide on the nature and size of new uranium-enrichment plants. The decision turns on many complex and still largely unresolved issues, such as projections of future energy consumption and the political impact of opposition to nuclear power.
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“One way to postpone such a major decision would be to use some of the large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium stockpiled in the form of nuclear weapons. Currently the total number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal is declining, as obsolete weapons are being dismantled to make way for new weapons. It is estimated that over the next five years or so a significant amount of fissionable material could be taken from the dismantled weapons and used to fuel nuclear power plants, thereby helping to relieve the threatened long-term shortfall in nuclear fuel supply.”
“In humans and other mammals, the average female is smaller than the average male. This relation, however. is by no means universal. In the Quarterly Review of Biology, Katherine Ralls of the Smithsonian Institution reports that species in which females are of greater average size than males can be found in about 30 of the 122 families of living mammals.
“The phenomenon is characteristic of several taxa: the rabbits and hares, one family of bats, three families of baleen whales, a subfamily of seals and two tribes of antelopes.”
“Astronomers have planned a monster telescope, many times greater than the largest now in existence. The proposed reflecting telescope would have an aperture—the reflecting mirror—spanning 25 feet in diameter. If the proposed instrument was as long in proportion to its breadth, the tube would have to be 130 feet in length; but it would be desirable to give the mirror a deeper curvature, reducing the focal length to 1,000 inches, and making the skeleton tube of the instrument 86 feet long overall.
“Photographs taken with this arrangement would show images of the moon nearly two feet in diameter and of Jupiter more than a half-inch across. The 1,600-ton instrument would be a marvel of precision. Its actual construction, however, awaits the necessary funds.”
“Having completed a careful reading of the entire 976 pages of ‘The Splendour of the Heavens,’ the writer feels at a loss for adequate superlatives with which to characterize it. This book is called ‘a popular, authoritative astronomy.’ Each of these words appears to have been thoughtfully chosen. It is popular without being too popular. It is as authoritative as one has a right to expect when told that every one of its 19 co-authors is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, and that the secretary of that famed old association of astronomers acted as one of its editors.
“The tome is an astronomy in that it covers practically all the ground that a general astronomy should cover. It is not, however, a textbook but rather a book to be read, chapter by chapter, with keen interest.”
“Medical record books contain not a few reports of patients living double lives: cases in which there is a periodical loss of one phase of mental life and the assumption or resumption of another very different one, with an entirely different personality. Formerly such alternations of consciousness were explained by spiritual or demonic possession.
“In our more scientific days, the phenomena in question are much more satisfactorily explained by supposing that the patient’s mental life has been carried on by one side of his or her double brain, and that, when the action of that side is arrested by disease, the unused side takes up the intellectual function and continues until another paroxysm shifts the responsibility to the first used side. The reason that such lives are always double and never triple or manifold lies in the fact that we have only two independent brain lobes.”
“Mr. Frank M. Dixon, of Jefferson City, Mo., has invented and patented a contrivance for hitching a horse and fastening a stable door in such a manner that the horse will be freed and the door opened in case of fire in the stable, and a contrivance for sounding an alarm at the same time.”
Jeanna Bryner is editor in chief of Scientific American . Previously she was editor in chief of Live Science and, prior to that, an editor at Scholastic's Science World magazine. Bryner has an English degree from Salisbury University, a master’s degree in biogeochemistry and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland and a graduate science journalism degree from New York University. She has worked as a biologist in Florida, where she monitored wetlands and did field surveys for endangered species, including the gorgeous Florida Scrub Jay. She also received an ocean sciences journalism fellowship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is a firm believer that science is for everyone and that just about everything can be viewed through the lens of science.
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