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The Heretofore Unpublished Letters of Ernest Glitch
Roger Curry writes "Letters to Michael Faraday in 1856 from previously unknown victorian experimentalist Ernest Glitch have recently been discovered. The history of science may need to be revised. His letters, and accounts of his work, would appear to indicate the observation of laser action in air, a Victorian Nitrogen Laser, more than a century before Maiman first demonstrated his ruby laser. Also, in a letter dated 8th July 1856 he notes the crystallisation of the fullerene C60 some 150 years before Kroto. Amazingly, there are also accounts of a Liquid-Fuel Rocket Engine detailing the use of hypergolic propellants and deLaval nozzles, a Victorian Tesla Coil, with reference to a possible medieval Coil, and Manned Flight achieved long before the Wright Bros., using Multiple Valve-less Pulse Jets."
It turns out that Aristotle pioneered the use of hyperthreading in x86 microprocessors way back in ancient Greece. Only problem was he couldn't get any decent uptime, what with the lack of electricity and all...
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
... when I see it. I am an American!
The do a sthick like this in "Rozencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead", a fantastic movie with Gary Oldman based on the Top Stoppard favorite.
One of them keeps discovering advanced concepts of physics (the movie is set in the time of Hamlet) playing with potted plants and bowling balls and feathers, but is never able to fully expand on them as he is repeatedly distracted by plot advancement.
Its pretty funny, and this kinda reminded me of that.
"Old man yells at systemd"
On the home page:
Experimenting with Weapons-Grade Fissile Material in the Home.
A Method of Electro-Plating Lizards
Atomic Hydrogen Blowtorch.
Any they just keep geting better
http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/
Can't wait for the Victorian Cyclotron
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Remarkable! I see clear parallels between this pioneering Victorian scientist and the much later experiments chronicled in the televised documentaries of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his faithful assistant Beaker.
Sir Ernest is actually a distant uncle of mine. Instead of the usual transcriptions and whatnot, he convinced Queen Victoria to record his knighting solely using his Numerical Optico-Magnetron. This 3 tonne mechanism transferred images onto a decorative ribbon coated in ferrous suspension.
Because Sir Ernest died soon thereafter (while tearing the warning label from a new mattress), he was unable to invent a playback device for the ribbon, and he and his accomplishments languished in the gloom of commoner history.
Luckily, I stumbled upon the ribbon last year up in the attic (quite literally!) and, to my great surprise, found myself driven to spool same into a MiniDV cassette. The resulting images of a Victorian knighting left me at once startled, and somewhat disappointed: Queen Victoria was indeed much homlier than even her most daring caricaturists had suggested.
Nonetheless, this find at least allowed Sir Ernest to be elevated to the ranks of the historically recognized.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
So, what they're saying is that the toilet was more a collabortaive effort, but for some reason Mr. Crapper has floated to the top.