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citation please?

http://www.trivia-library.com/b/story-behind-inventors-and-inventions-fork.htm

Maybe I have a poor link, but it indicates Byzantine.

If you web search for the text, you will find it quoted in various web pages and books (not all recent).

You're right, e.g., this page seems to have the whole text of the book. However, (a) it is kind of cool to see it so directly, as written by one of Newton's contemporaries, and (b) very few people probably know about it. I'm a physics teacher, and I've been telling people for years that the story was probably true because Newton's niece remembered him telling it to her. I'd never heard that Stukeley also attested to the story. Here's my own transcription of the relevant page.

After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees, only he and myself. Amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself, occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood. Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earth's center? Assuredly the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter. The sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earth's center, not in any side of the earth. Therefore does this apple fall perpendicularly or toward the center. If matter that draws matter, it must be in proportion to its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the earth as the earth draws the apple.

There's also the question of whether the story was actually true. This page quotes Gauss as saying, "Undoubtedly, the occurrence was something of this sort: There comes to Newton a stupid importunate man, who asks him how he hit upon his great discovery. Newton. . . wanted to get rid of the man [and] told him that an apple fell on his nose; and this made the matter quite clear to the man, and he went away satisfied." Actually the Stukeley quote doesn't sound like that at all. It sounds more like Stukely was hanging out with his friend Newton, who was probably somewhere on the Asperger-autism spectrum, and Newton suddenly saw something that triggered a memory, and proceeded to give his friend a total core-dump on his scientific theory.

One of the reasons historians tend to be skeptical about this kind of thing is that scientists tend to rewrite history in order to make themselves seem more original, and their accomplishments more amazing. It's more glamorous to think that Miles Davis played jazz based on pure inspiration. It's less glamorous to imagine Miles Davis practicing scales and arpeggios for hour after hour. You get into similar issues when you try to figure out whether or not Einstein was really influenced by the Michelson-Morley experiment or not.

Newton was quite a character. He was actually more interested in alchemy and arian theology than in physics. If his religious views had been public, he'd have been prosecuted as a heretic for sure. He may have been gay (which would have been another way to get in big legal trouble in that century). (But don't believe the B.S. meme that he was an astrologer. He specifically went on record as saying that he looked into astrology and thought it was stupid.)

Everyone running for office in this election is a cunt, and like bush, whoever wins will be a cunt when he/she is elected.

How true. Even Thomas Jefferson turned into a cunt when he was sworn in.

Apparently, old Jeremiah was teaching Turing's mathematics to homeless Israelites when he told one

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil."

If one of the grad students working on this paper is an Ethiopian who's spent the year in a Taiwanese office rather than in the equatorial sun, we might have all the proof we need to test this ancient riddle.

This is the same bank that has a history of selling unusual insurance policies to anyone with the money...

Someone probably got freaked out at a major company and asked them how much it would cost to insure them against litigation...this is par for course in the insurance industry...it's just making news because it's OSS we're talking bout now.

File this in the same place as a "Happiness Policy" insuring against "Worry Lines" on a model's face (from previous link)...

http://www.trivia-library.com/b/history-of-the-sta nley-steamer-steam-powered-car-part-2.htm

From the article:

Ironically, some of the earlier disadvantages of steam had already begun to be ironed out. The use of condensers, to trap escaping steam and reconvert it to water in the boiler, made constant refilling unnecessary. The "flash boiler" made it possible to use only the amount of steam needed at a given time. An electric starting device, to replace the pilot light, enabled steamers to run in less than two minutes, in summer or winter. The annoying problems associated with steam propulsion were more or less under control.

But it was too late. Companies like White and Locomobile--and over 100 others--gave up on steam as a power source. The Stanleys' company, which had been sold in 1917, was one of very few still making steamers. In 1925 they decided to give up. Ford had conquered.

What was lost? Mainly, an ingenious and clean power source. It is possible to say that today's automobiles might be running on steam if someone as brilliant as Ford had favored it. There have been attempts since F.E. and F.O.'s time to construct viable steamers. But automotive history, built on billions of dollars and millions of hours, has relegated the steamers to museums. Maybe the Stanley Steamer should be the car of the future, rather than the car of the past.

Getting a bit off-topic here, but yes, the US lost the Thresher on April 10, 1963, along with all 129 of her crew. See http://www.trivia-library.com/b/man-made-disasters -sinking-of-the-u-s-submarine-thresher-part-1.htm

The Scorpion was also lost in May of 1968 with all 99 of her crew.

For more info on submarine losses, see http://www.naval.ca/article/young/nuclearsubmarine accidents_bymichaelyoung.html

Keith