A Jarring Revelation | Damn Interesting
“Over time, however, Dr. Andrews grew even more unconventional. He eventually bade adieu to Jones by telling her that he wanted to devote himself to thoughts of colonizing Mars.
The ever-curious Jones also took up a new interest: inventing. “
Reginald Fessenden and the Invention of Sonar | Distillations | Science History Institute
“Uncharacteristically, Fessenden compromised. As his wife and biographer, Helen, would later explain, he couldn’t resist the challenge of outwitting “those soundless perils of rock and shoal, of iceberg and fog, dumb agencies of Nature to menace and destroy.” Also, he needed a job.”
Who Invented Radio: Guglielmo Marconi or Aleksandr Popov? | IEEE Spectrum
“Now, it’s not always the case that museums know what’s in their own collections. The origins of equipment that’s long been obsolete can be particularly hard to trace. With spotty record keeping and changes in personnel, institutional memory can lose track of what an object is or why it was important.”
Put A Propeller On It: the Golden Age of Tinkering | The Appendix
“Alberto Santos-Dumont is beloved in Brazil as the inventor of the airplane (his heart is even preserved in formaldehyde at Rio de Janeiro’s Air and Space Museum). But it was in Paris, the global capital of ballooning, that the debonair Brazilian made his name. In 1898 he decided that he was not satisfied with the haphazard nature of navigation in his balloon. So he put an engine and a propeller on it. Soon, he was the only man in the world flying a dirigible—even winning a prize for maneuvering around the Eiffel Tower.”