The Golden Elixir is an introduction to some facets of the history and doctrines of Chinese alchemy. It consists of a collection of articles, primary sources, bibliographic tools and other materials. This page provides direct access to all documents. If you want to read short descriptions of each item, follow the links to the main sections of this website on the left column
Discovered in early nineteen hundreds, radio promissed to be the most influential technology of the twentieth century. Because of the amazing speed, reliability, as well as the relatively low cost of communication, it became widely used by governments and private enterprises all over the world. This paper examines development of radio broadcasting in the United States and the newborn then Soviet Union.
Christian Huygens was born at the Hague on April 14, 1629, and died in the same town on July 8, 1695. He generally wrote his name as Hugens, but I follow the usual custom in spelling it as above: it is also sometimes written as Huyghens. His life was uneventful, and there is little more to record in it than a statement of his various memoirs and researches.
The background to a Web page describing elemental and molecular heritage at Imperial College chemistry department is described. Photographs are shown of the original samples of elemental bromine and crystalline silicon, and molecular ferrocene and mauveine. 3D "Hyperactive" models of these systems are shown, together with a recently discovered heterocyclic systems scorpionine, which like mauveine is made by a deceptively simple chemical synthesis.
The History of Medicine is taught and studied in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Manitoba. The History of Medicine Programme is supported, in part, with funding obtained from the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine.
I worked on the company's first sell pay computer totalizator system that was installed in Brisbane. This system superseded an electromechanical totalizator which was a descendant of the original invention. I was impressed by the craftsmanship and the ingenuity of this old system, parts of which dated back to circa 1926. I saw one of these totalizator systems bulldozed and realised that this history could easily be lost. Along with peers I started to save shaft adders from the oldest totalizator at Ipswich. The shaft adders would be analogous to part of the central processing unit in modern day terminology.
This site contains a list of the most important people who have contributed to the development of chemistry. It is planned to include a biography with the most important details of their life and their scientific contribution. The list is chronological by the date of birth. To locate someone on the list, the browser's 'find' function can be used.
The very first ancient documents about plants (Babylonian souces, the Old Testament, HOMER's works) that came down on us regarded plants mainly under the aspects of utility and medicinal use. The interest of the old Greek philosophers focused more on the comparison of animal and man on one hand and plants on the other. EMPEDOCLES FROM AGRIENT, for example, dwelt on the question whether plants have a soul while ARISTOTLE ranks them in the middle between the inanimate and the animate. THEOPHRASTUS wrote two works of a general nature on plants: The Natural History of Plants and About the Reasons of Vegetable Growth . Both had a formative influence on the botanical research of following scientists.
This site includes about 50 lengthy essays on botany and the history of botany, many of which are very technical. Technical words in each essay are linked to other essays and a glossary of detailed descriptions complete with images. Also included here are full text articles and books including Charles Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" and "Origin of Species" and Gregor Mendel's "Experiments in Plant Hybridization" as well as articles by Y. Ogura, Hans Kerp and others. Brief biographies of important botanists including Hans Meinhardt can also be found here. Historians of botany, biology and German science in the 20th century should find this site useful.
In 1982 I began to photograph the Century Freeway Corridor in Los Angeles. Initially, I had no idea what was taking place on this swath of land. I only wanted to capture the sense of "abandoned suburbia" I saw and felt. As such, In Our Path began as a very personal response to home and environment. However, it soon took on different and broader meanings
This site documents the decades-long construction of the Century Freeway in Los Angeles through a series of photographs and accompanying text and essays. The Century Freeway project displaced thousands of families from homes in its path, and the photographer, Jeff Gates, offers images that paint a striking picture of transportation/housing problems faced by many cities throughout the country. The pictures were taken in the early 1980' and 90's.