b. April 16, 1766 and d. November 3, 1832

St. Andrew’s and Edinburgh Universities

Scottish physicist. He was the inventor of the differential thermometer, by which he was greatly aided in his researches concerning the nature of heat; he also invented the hygrometer which led to his discovery of the process of artificial freezing. He wrote “An Essay on the Nature and Propagation of Heat”; “Elements of Geometry”; and “Philosophy of Arithmetic.”

As the barometer foretells the storm
While still the skies are clear, the weather warm
So something in us, as old age draws near,
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.
The nimble mercury, ere we are aware,
Descends the elastic ladder of the air;
The telltale blood in artery and vein
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage,
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon,
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon:
It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,
But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,
The burning and consuming element,
But that of ashes and of embers spent,
In which some living sparks we still discern,
Enough to warm, but not enought to burn.

—Henry W. Longfellow

287-212 B. C.—Archimedes discovered the principle of displacement and specific gravity.

b. November 2, 1823 and d. ?

American machinist. Invented a machine for boring, turning and cutting the heads on spools or bobbins used in factories; also a combined anvil, shears and punching machine (1866), and a swage for spreading saw-teeth to a uniform width and shape and cutting the edge at a single operation.

Where, by ruddy flames,
Vulcan’s strong sons with nervous arms around
The steady anvil and the glaring mass,
Clatters their heavy hammers down by turn,
Flattening the steel; from their rough hands receive
The sharpened instruments.

—The Fleece: John Dryer

Fling wide the grain for those who throw
The clanking shuttle to and fro,
In the long row of humming rooms,
And into ponderous masses wind
The web, that, from a thousand looms,
Comes forth to clothe mankind.

—W. C. Bryant

1870, July—Aury G. Coes patented a machine for the manufacture of screw-wrenches for forging heads of wrenches called the header, and in 1871, April, what is called the “up-setter.”

1793, August 3-1869, October 15—John Nesmith lived. He invented a machine for making wire fences.

1832-1870, May 4—Zerah Colburn lived. In 1847 he was a mechanic in Lowell’s machine-shop. He made improvements in locomotives, and published valuable papers, among them works on “Iron Bridges” and “American Locomotives and Rolling Stock.”

b. ? 1819 and d. November 2, 1874

Scottish organic and agricultural chemist. His earliest researches were on a new mineral species and on the atomic weight of nitrogen. He conducted an elaborate inquiry into “The Products of the Destructive Distillation of Animal Substances,” and discovered a new pyridine series and certain fatty amines. He examined the action of sulphur on fixed oils and obtained a new, definite organic sulphide. He wrote on the Platino-pyridine Bases, and on the Polymerisation of Pyridine and Picoline.

If you seek for strange things you shall find them,
But the finding shall bring you to grief;
The dead lock the portals behind them,
And he who breaks through is a thief.
The soul with such ill-gotten plunder
With its premature knowledge oppressed,
Shall grope in unsatisfied wonder
Alway by the shores of unrest.

—Unrest: Ella Wheeler Wilcox

1660, October 21-1734, May 14—George Ernest Stahl lived. He invented the theory of “phlogiston” and held that every muscular action proceeds from an impulse of the mind. He founded the animistic school of medicine, and wrote 250 medical works.

1832—William Crookes, English physician and chemist was born. 1861—His method of producing extreme vacua. 1861—Discovered the metal thallium. 1865—Crookes discovered the sodium amalgamation process for separating gold and silver from their ores.