History, Natural History & the Arts
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, there were a growing number of adventurers anxious to explore the sea, find new lands, chart new islands, and if they made their fortune while doing it, all the better.
There were also those just trying to get away from home and signing on to a whaling ship seemed the adventure of a lifetime. [Read more…] about James Eights: An Albany Artist-Scientist Who Explored Antarctica in 1830
I joined the faculty of Syracuse University in 1975. I was surprised to learn that my institution once had a farm and hopes for a college of agriculture.
To my chagrin, I learned that my school lost out to Cornell back in 1904 when Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954) bested Syracuse University’s Chancellor James R. Day in getting legislation passed in Albany to provide Cornell with state funding for an agricultural school. [Read more…] about Cornell Agricultural Dean Liberty Hyde Bailey: A Man for All Seasons
December 12th, 1799, was a freezing cold day in Virginia, but the weather conditions did not stop President George Washington riding out on horseback for the daily inspection of his Mount Vernon plantation. On return, he developed a fever and respiratory distress.
As there were no means to diagnose or treat a bacterial infection, doctors believed that bloodletting would improve a patient’s condition. In addition to the application of crude purgatives and emetics, over half of Washington’s blood was drained in just a few hours. Today, it is widely held that the President died from aggressive bloodletting which resulted in severely low blood pressure and shock.
Recurrent yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia and George Washington’s medical treatment contributed to a fierce politico-medical fall out in which the issue of bloodletting took center stage.
[Read more…] about Barber-Surgeons, Bloodletting & The Leeches of Manhattan
The Capital District’s Dudley Observatory is considered “the oldest non-academic institution of astronomical research in America.” Originally, it was located north-east of downtown Albany, NY.
Construction there began in 1852 and the facility was dedicated in 1857. Albany’s Congressman Erastus Corning, the founder and first president of the New York Central Railroad, was instrumental in donating a high quality telescope and time-keeping system at the new Dudley Observatory in Albany. [Read more…] about The Albany Origins of the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop
Lighting up Niagara Falls at night goes back to before the Civil War, when simple chemical flares that burned blue were used in honor of visiting English royalty.
In 1907, Walter D’Arcy Ryan, a General Electric lighting engineer used 44 searchlights with gelatin filters (similar to “gels” used in film production today) to project various colors onto the falls. [Read more…] about Lighting Up Niagara Falls: The Schenectady Connection
Wilson Bentley (1865-1931) lived his entire life in Jericho, Vermont, where he developed a passion for snowflakes at an early age.
He started by collecting snowflakes and trying to create detailed drawings of each one, but the snow crystals’ tiny size and the speed at which they melted made this a futile task.
At age 15, with a microscope gifted to him by his mother, Bentley began experimenting with photography as a means of capturing the elusive design of a snowflake. [Read more…] about How to Preserve a Snowflake
In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. This purchase included the vital port city of New Orleans. But the United States did not just acquire the city’s land, peoples, and wealth – the American government also inherited the city’s Yellow Fever problem.
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Kathryn Olivarus, author of Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (Belknap Press, 2022), leads us on an exploration of yellow fever, immunity, and inequality in early New Orleans. [Read more…] about Yellow Fever, Immunity, and Early New Orleans
What do the following items have in common: the Declaration of Independence, Da Vinci’s notebooks, Bach’s musical scores, Rembrandt’s drawings, Shakespeare’s plays, and the Magna Carta?
Give up?
These examples, along with countless other documents ranging from the historically important to the more mundane, were all recorded using iron gall ink, which is made – in part – from the protrusions created after oak gall wasps lay their eggs within oak trees. [Read more…] about Making Ink From Oak Galls: Some History & Science
The relationship between politics and science has always been complicated, and at times, disastrous.
The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by the British scientist Francis Galton who advocated that society should promote the marriage of the “fittest” individuals by providing monetary incentives.
Numerous intellectuals and political leaders (Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes in Britain; Woodrow Wilson and Alexander Graham Bell in the United States) came to accept the idea that society should strive for the improvement of the human race through governmental intervention. [Read more…] about Lethal Chambers: The Curse of Anglo-American Eugenics
Smallpox was the most feared disease in North America and in many parts of the world before its eradication in 1980. So how did early Americans live with smallpox and work to prevent it? How did they help eradicate this terrible disease?
Over the next two episodes of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, we’ll explore smallpox in North America. We’ll investigate how smallpox came to North America, how North Americans worked to contain, control, and prevent outbreaks of the disease, and how the story of smallpox is also the story of immunization. [Read more…] about Smallpox in North America: Inoculation to Vaccination