October 2024: History of science 50, 100, and 150 years ago

October 2024: History of science 50, 100, and 150 years ago

Mark Fischetti

1974

Best batting order in baseball

“Managers and baseball strategists put a lot of thought into batting order, following principles such as putting the best runners up first and the big hitter in the ‘cleanup’ or fourth position. Does it make any difference?” says R. Alan Freese of the University of British Columbia. Operations Research“The effect of using the best batting order instead of the worst is less than three wins per 162-game season,” Freese wrote. Freese ran computer simulations of about 200,000 baseball games with a traditional lineup, a second lineup arranged in descending order of productivity, and a third lineup arranged in ascending order.

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1924

The life and limbs of airmail

“We salute the men and women of the Post Office Transcontinental Air Mail Service, who took the greatest steps ever to make commercial aviation a reality, day and night. The words of Captain Hyde Pearson, a World War I veteran, spoken just before losing his life in the Air Mail Service are so true: ‘We risk our lives, we give our lives, we perfect our service for the benefit of the whole world.’ While you sit in the safety of your office or sleep securely in your bed, these boys may be flying day and night, through rain, snow, fog and the darkness of night, risking death at every turn. Theirs is a job with little pay, great risk, and only reward in the gratitude and admiration of the American people.”

Unraveling the Mystery of the Mummies

“At the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, we have been able to take X-rays of the body packs of Peruvian mummies. Opening these mummies to see if they contain anything of particular interest would mean destroying the bodies. X-rays allow us to learn what was buried with the bodies. In the body packs examined so far, we have found ears of corn, pottery, clay vessels with shells, metal fragments, gourd vessels, beads, clay figurines, cut bones, and in some cases, nothing at all. It is also possible to get definite information about the age, sex, and state of the bone structure of the bodies buried there.”

Mrs. Edison, inventor and entrepreneur

“Lady Edison, as she is called, is the creator of 47 inventions, the variety of which is truly astonishing. Lady Edison is Miss Beulah Louise Henry of New York. Some of her inventions include: telephone ring lists, handbags with interchangeable covers, hair curlers, ice cream freezers, pencils, electric fan shields, rubber weight-loss clothes, “kids clocks” for school hours, glove snaps, and roulette tops. Miss Henry does not claim to have any special mechanical talents, and she rejects the idea that invention is the product of solitude. “The solution to the snap that secures the corners of an umbrella to the frame came to me one day while I was getting ready to go to a matinee movie with my mother,” she recalls. “The biggest umbrella maker in the country said it couldn’t be done. Of course I didn’t believe them. I have patented my inventions in four countries and am president of two newly founded companies.”

1874

Call me a scientist

“Mr. Proctor recently asked for a word to mean ‘scientist.’ Mr. Goss recently suggested the name ‘scientist,’ which was seconded by A. J. Ellis at the Academy on September 19th. ‘I beg your pardon to formally introduce the word scientist, and to suggest that this strictly formed two-syllable word should replace the American barbaric three-syllable scientist.’ However, from one correspondent’s letter we learn that the word is not entirely unproblematic, for if spoken in the plural it can be confused with science. We suggest that our cousins ​​call him ‘scientist,’ which will do either in the singular or plural.”