Science History - Daily

August fourteenth carries a wonderfully nerdy distinction in the history of computing and mathematics, thanks to a Scottish laird and mathematician named John Napier, who is generally credited with publishing his revolutionary work on logarithms in the early seventeenth century, an invention that would go on to change the way humans calculated everything from astronomical positi...

On this day back in 1913, a rather serendipitous discovery took place in the gritty industrial city of Sheffield, England, that would go on to shape kitchens, skyscrapers, surgical tools, and cutlery drawers around the entire world. A metallurgist named Harry Brearley was hard at work trying to solve a very practical military problem. Gun barrels at the time wore out quickly bec...

On August 12th, 1877, Thomas Edison achieved something that would fundamentally change how humanity experiences sound and memory. Working in his Menlo Park laboratory in New Jersey, Edison completed his design for the phonograph, the first device capable of both recording and reproducing sound. According to the popular account, he tested the machine by shouting the nursery rhyme...

On August 11th in the year 1999, millions of people across a narrow corridor stretching from the Atlantic coast of Europe all the way through the Middle East and into South Asia looked up to witness the last total solar eclipse of the twentieth century, a celestial farewell often nicknamed the Eclipse of the Century. The path of totality began its journey over the Atlantic Ocea...

On August 10th, 1846, President James Polk signed into law the act establishing the Smithsonian Institution, one of the great turning points in American science history. The story behind it is wonderfully odd. A British scientist named James Smithson, who never once set foot in the United States, died in 1829 and left his entire fortune to a nation he had never visited, with ins...