50 Years Ago

From the July 2, 1932, issue

OUR FRIEND THE BAT With the coming of warm summer weather, and the arrival in number of insects to eat, bats are becoming more noticeable as they make their noiseless nightly patrols. Because of their nocturnal, and therefore mysterious, habits and because of their preference for homes in caves and dark holes, our ancestors came […]

From the June 25, 1932, issue

ARTIFICIAL LIGHTNING FLASHED AT 10 MILLION VOLTS The most powerful manmade lightning is flashing across the cover of this week’s Science News Letter from new equipment in the Pittsfield laboratories of the General Electric Co., which has twice the capacity of any preceding apparatus of its kind. This is a discharge through a 15-foot space […]

From the January 18, 1930, issue

HUGE SHOVEL CAN LIFT CAR OF COAL The largest shovel in the world, with a scoop big enough to pick up an automobile, is the subject of our cover illustration. It is in use at the Fidelity mine of the United Electric Coal Co., near DuQuon, Ill., the greatest coal-stripping enterprise in the world. Electrically […]

From the June 18, 1932, issue

MUDDY MISSISSIPPI YIELDS PEARLS THAT RIVAL ORIENT’S Pearls we usually picture as coming up from limpid greenish tropical sea depths, in the fingers (or perhaps the mouth) of a swimming brown-skinned native. It seems a bit of a comedown to think of pearls coming out of the prosaic waters of the muddy Mississippi–and as a […]

From the January 11, 1930, issue

THOMAS H. MORGAN GIVEN NEW HONOR The American Association for the Advancement of Science has chosen Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan to succeed the eminent physicist Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan as president. To many the name of Thomas Hunt Morgan is synonymous with the modern theory of the gene as the determining factor in heredity. Upon […]

From the June 11, 1932, issue

BUTTERFLIES, “WINGED JEWELS,” ARE GEMS AT START OF LIFE Butterflies have been called “winged jewels” so often that the conceit can hardly be considered poetic any longer. Yet the appropriateness of the old metaphor receives new confirmation when we look at the egg of a butterfly, which represents the humblest beginning of its career of […]

From the January 4, 1930, issue

PILTDOWN MAN EARLIEST HUMAN BEING The ape-man of Darwin was read out of man’s family tree and the dawn-man of Sussex, older than 1,250,000 years, was elevated to the position of man’s progenitor by Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, New York. A new picture was painted by Dr. […]

From the December 28, 1929, issue

YOUTH AND THE SEA “Captain Sylvia,” aged 6 weeks, and her mother, Mrs. J.E. Williamson upon the cover of this week’s issue look at a strange world full of fishes, corals, sharks, morays, and other denizens of the deep. The youthful scientist, symbolic of science itself and its aspirations, was a member of the Field […]

From the June 3, 1932, issue

GENERATOR LOAD DIVIDED FOR BETTER OPERATION Without the pretty girl, this massive stationary winding of a turbine electric generator might appear to be the size of a spool of thread. But contrast emphasizes the machines 83,300 kilovolt-ampere capacity. The black arms are heavily insulated butt-ends of copper bars in which electricity is to be generated. […]

From the May 28, 1932, issue

FLYING ARCHAEOLOGIST MAKES UNIQUE PICTURE RECORD Flying over the far-flung ruins of civilizations, which his own scientific institution is busily exploring from the ground, Charles Breasted of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago has obtained 12,000 feet of unique motion picture film, showing the work of “the largest archaeological research organization in the […]

From the May 21, 1932, issue

GENES, ONCE HYPOTHETICAL, NOW SEEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED Genes, the ultimate units in heredity, have been seen and photographed. So declares Dr. John Belling, biologist on the staff of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Genes have hitherto been dealt with as hypothetical entities by biologists, because no one has ever actually seen them. They were like […]

From the May 14, 1932, issue

DOVE ORCHID MAKES FITTING FLOWER FOR WHITSUNDAY Sunday, May 15, is the Feast of Pentecost, or Whitsunday, when many of the churches commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit. In the lands of tropical America, where delicate orchids can be had by anybody, many an imaginative Latin will mingle poetry with his piety as he […]