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scientificamerican.com/magazine/saDECEMBERPostcard Invention
“The Austrian Government has in-
troduced a novelty in postage,
which might be introduced with
great benefit in all countries. The
object is to enable persons to send
off messages of small importance,
without the trouble of obtaining
paper, pens, and envelopes. Cards
of a fixed size are sold at all the
post offices for two kreutzers, one
side being for the address and the
other for the note. It is thrown into
the box, and delivered without en-
velopes. A halfpenny post of this
kind would certainly be very con-
venient, especially in large towns.”Maddening Thought
“Our brains are seventy-year clocks.
The Angel of Life winds them up,
then closes the case, and gives the
key into the hand of the Angel of
the Resurrection. Tic-tac! tic-tac!
go the wheels of thought; our will
cannot stop them; they cannot stop
themselves; sleep cannot still them;
madness only makes them go fast-
er; death alone can break into the
case, and seizing the ever-swinging
pendulum, which we call the heart,
silence at last the clicking of the
terrible escapement we have car-
ried so long beneath our wrinkled
foreheads. If we could only get at
them, as we lie on our pillows and
count the dead beats of thought
after thought and image after im-
age jarring through the over-tired
organ! —Oliver Wendell Holmes”extraordinary things happen—
things quite irreconcilable with
our present concepts of time and
space and mass and dimension.
We are tempted to laugh at him,
to tell him that the phenomena he
suggests are absurd because they
contradict these concepts. Nothing
could be more rash than this. We
must be quite as well prepared to
have these conditions reveal some
epoch-making fact as was Galileo
when he turned the first telescope
upon the skies. And if this fact re-
quires that we discard present
ideas of time and space and mass
and dimension, we must do so
quite as thoroughly as our medi-
eval fathers had to discard their
notions of celestial ‘perfection.’ ”1869
Flight Fail
“An exhibition
of a flying machine, named by its
inventor, Mr. Frederick Mariott,
‘The Avitor,’ took place in a room
of the Avitor Works, at Shell
Mound Lake, Calif. We give here-
with an illustration of the machine.
The hopes which were first raised
by the success of the experiment as
performed under cover, have been
since dashed by unsuccessful at-
tempts to navigate the machine
against currents of wind. This was
only a trial machine, the balloon
being cigar-shaped, thirty-seven
feet in length. The boiler and fur-
nace are together only a little over
a foot long and four inches wide.”SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,
VOL. XXI, N0. 23; DECEMBER 4, 1869
1969
Attitudes
to Pot
“The prevailing public attitude
toward marihuana in the U.S. is
charged with a hyperemotional
bias. In part this is the product of
an ‘educational campaign’ initiated
in the 1930’s by the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics, a campaign that has
disseminated much distortion and
misinformation about the drug.
The still powerful vestige of the
Protestant ethic in this country con-
demns marihuana as an opiate
used solely for the pursuit of plea-
sure (whereas alcohol is accepted
because it lubricates the wheels
of commerce and catalyzes social
intercourse). Marihuana’s effect in
producing a state of introspection
and bodily passivity is repellent to a
cultural tradition that prizes activi-
ty, aggressiveness and achievement.”A New Year’s Greeting
“The following verses were written
after the poet W. H. Auden had
read ‘Life on the Human Skin,’
by Mary J. Marples [Scientific
American, January 1969]:“On this day tradition allots
To taking stock of our lives,
My greetings to all of you, Yeasts,
Bacteria, Viruses,
Aerobics and Anaerobics:
A Very Happy New Year
To all for whom my ectoderm
Is as Middle-Earth to me.I should like to think that I make
A not impossible world,
But an Eden it will not be:
My games, my purposive acts,
May become catastrophes there.
If you were religious folk,
How would your dramas justify
Unmerited suffering?”1919
The Nature
of Things
“Dr. Einstein tells us that when ve-
locities are attained which have
but just now come within the
range of our close investigation,1969191918691869: The “Avitor” flew nicely as a model but failed against real-world conditions.© 2019 Scientific American