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American Academy of Family Physicians

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Links
  • Medicine/Behavioral Science
  • Primary Source
  • Professional Association
URL: 

http://www.aafp.org/

Author: 
American Academy of Family Physicians
Excerpt: 

The CDC asked the AAFP on Sept. 3 to remind FPs to be vigilant in considering West Nile virus infection in pregnant women presenting with unexplained fever and/or neurologic illness in areas where West Nile transmission is occurring.

Annotation: 

Founded in 1947, the American Academy of Family Physicians is the national association of family doctors. It is one of the largest national medical organizations, with more than 89,400 members. This is the organization's main Web site, and it contains information for members, the general public and medical students. It also has a series of governmental (state and federal) policy papers. Currently (Apirl 2004) there is no history of medicine on the site.

About Goddard Space Flight Center

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Aviation/Space Exploration
  • Biographical
  • Engineering
  • Government
  • Images
  • Industrial/Military Technology
  • Links
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Physical Sciences
URL: 

http://pao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/welcome/history/history.htm

Author: 
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Excerpt: 

The father of modern rocket propulsion is the American, Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard. Along with Konstantin Eduordovich Tsiolkovsky of Russia and Hermann Oberth of Germany, Goddard envisioned the exploration of space. A physicist of great insight, Goddard also had an unique genius for invention.
By 1926, Goddard had constructed and tested successfully the first rocket using liquid fuel. Indeed, the flight of Goddard's rocket on March 16,1926, at Auburn, Massachusetts, was a feat as epochal in history as that of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. Yet, it was one of Goddard's "firsts" in the now booming significance of rocket propulsion in the fields of military missilery and the scientific exploration of space.

Annotation: 

This site from NASA contains a brief biography and photograph of the physicist and "father of modern rocket propulsion," Robert Hutchings Goddard. Among the many firsts by Goddard listed, is the first liquid fuel rocket (1926), which led to the development of military missiles and the possibility of space exploration. A link on the liquid fueled rocket leads to several photographs and engineering sketches and an account of its inaugural flight. Statistics (size, employees, locations, funding, milestones) about the NASA center which is named after Goddard are also available.

Albert Einstein Online

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Images
  • Links
  • Physical Sciences
  • Primary Source
  • Professional Association
URL: 

http://www.westegg.com/einstein/

Author: 
Steven M. Friedman
Excerpt: 

Have located the film "Einstein's Universe." It is a 2-hour film produced by the BBC in 1979 and is distributed in 16mm and NTSC VHS formats by: Corinth Films, 34 Gansevoort, New York, NY 10014, Tel. 800-221-4720
Purchase price is a hefty $250.00, and rental price is $175.00 for a one-time showing. Unfortunately, unless it is available from some other source, such as the BBC, it shall remain largely inaccessible for home viewing by the general public.

Annotation: 

Not presenting any original material of its own, this site is a portal for all things related to Albert Einstein. The long list of links includes over 30 references to online material on Einstein's life and work. There are also links to photographs, primary materials, quotations of and by Einstein. In addition, there are links to sites explaining Einstein's complicated physics; some of these sites are designed for advanced science students only, while others are designed for a general audience. Links to dozens of other sites on Einstein, from serious to humorous, round out the site.

Alexander Graham Bell's Path to the Telephone

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Artifacts
  • Biographical
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Consumer Technology
  • Images
  • Links
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Primary Source
  • University
URL: 

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/albell/homepage.html

Author: 
Profs. Michael Gorman and W. Bernard Carlson - University of Virginia
Excerpt: 

This site is an attempt to reconstruct, in fine-grained detail, the path taken by Alexander Graham Bell, with links to other inventors and ideas. Click on the buttons at the top of the page to begin to explore this growing resource, whose initial development was funded, in part, by a grant from the History and Philosophy of Science program of the National Science Foundation. Pending further funding, this site remains woefully incomplete: your comments are most welcome.

Annotation: 

This University of Virginia site uses flow charts to show Alexander Graham Bell's invention process for the telephone in the 1860s and 70s. The flow charts show which breakthroughs occurred when, and which innovations led to subsequent technological advances. Beyond showing Bell's invention process diagrammatically (and showing earlier Bell creations which helped him develop the telephone) the site contains a long essay on the historic invention of the telephone, with notes and references to offline works. The author has annotated the flow charts (in plain language) to help the reader understand what Bell was doing in each of his experiments. In addition, Bell's patent applications from the 1870s are reproduced on the site.

Atomic Veterans History Project

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Images
  • Industrial/Military Technology
  • Links
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Primary Source
  • Professional Association
  • Video
URL: 

http://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/

Author: 
Atomic Veterans History Project
Excerpt: 

The Atomic Veterans History Project contains over 600 personal narratives about the military duties and memories of US Servicemen who witnessed these atomic and hydrogen weapons tests. Many veterans have sent photos, certificates and newspaper articles which we have added. There are over 500 photos from the recently declassified DOE atomic test films. Over 2500 files (stories, pictures and documents) are posted.

Annotation: 

This site has been established by the National Association of Atomic Veterans to provide an online archive of personal accounts of American veterans who served in divisions that were exposed to the effects of atomic weaponry. There are over 400 personal accounts from those who were there at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and military tests of atomic bombs from 1946 to 1962. There are also over 500 photographs from these servicemen and from declassified military archives. These images include the devastation of the Japanese cities in the immediate aftermath of the bombs and the activities of American servicemen in the testing and clean-up of atmospheric (above-ground) weapons testing. The site is also used to gather information about the subsequent medical effects of exposure to high-level radiation during these military exercises.

Chemsoc - The Chemistry Societies Network

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Images
  • Links
  • Physical Sciences
  • Professional Association
URL: 

http://www.chemsoc.org/index.htm

Author: 
The Chemistry Societies Network
Excerpt: 

Welcome to chemsoc - a brand new site for chemists and the home of the RSC's chemistry societies' electronic network. The site provides interesting features and useful services for the chemistry community. The information you find has been made available by various national chemistry societies for dissemination on a single site. Currently around 30 such societies are providing varying levels of information on chemsoc.

Annotation: 

Website maintained by the Royal Society of Chemistry containing a variety of pages of potential interest to researchers ans students alike. An interactive timeline provides an interesting overview of scientific events and discoveries since the Big Bang. They also feature archives of their webzine "chembytes," as well as exhibition of exemplary chemistry projects. Links to a variety of sites, including the Royal Society of Chemistry's Library and Information Centre are made.

Jean Baptist Porta

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Images
  • Life Sciences
  • Links
  • Medicine/Behavioral Science
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Physical Sciences
  • Primary Source
  • Professional Association
URL: 

http://members.tscnet.com/pages/omard1/jportat2.html

Author: 
Scott Lincoln
Excerpt: 

Giambattista della (John Baptist) Porta (1535-1615), was a Neapolitan scholar of notable ability who had devoted great attention to the study of natural and physical science. Porta visited most of his known world to gather and perfect the knowledge utilized in his writings. His first work, "Magia Naturalis"- "Natural Magick" was first published in 1558 in "four" books (written, according to the author, "Porta, " when he was fifteen years old, - see "Preface To The Reader" in "Natural Magick"). It was later expanded to twenty books compended into one volume in 1584. In this form the book had a great vogue, being translated from the original Latin into the principal European languages, and republished in the Latin edition in many places for a hundred years. The version presented here is the final compendium of his life's work, completed when he was fifty years old, transcribed from a original 1658 English translation.

Annotation: 

John Baptist Porta (1535-1615), also known as Giambattista della Porta, was an early modern natural philosopher from Naples. This site by an amateur historian brings together short biographies (generally culled from other sites and works like the Encyclopedia Britannica) as well as primary source material on Porta available in other locations on the Web. Porta was best known for his 1558 book entitled "Natural Magic" (Magia Naturalis), which used an experimental method to describe magnetism and other elements of the physical and chemical sciences. He was also interested in the "occult" sciences and alchemy. This site is best for those with no knowledge of Porta looking for a basic overview and excerpts of his work. Several paintings and drawings of Porta enhance the site.

150 Years of Anesthesia 1846-1996

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Images
  • Links
  • Medicine/Behavioral Science
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Primary Source
  • Secondary Source
  • University
URL: 

http://neurosurgery.mgh.harvard.edu/History/ether1.htm

Author: 
Massachusettes General Hospital
Excerpt: 

One hundred fifty years ago, in the operating theater on the top floor of the MGH’s Bulfinch Building, one of the greatest moments in medicine occurred. On Oct. 16, 1846, William T.G. Morton, a Boston dentist, demonstrated the use of ether during surgery, ending the indescribable pain — and the overwhelming dread — that had been associated with the surgeon’s knife.

Using a specially designed glass inhaler containing an ether-soaked sponge, Morton administered the anesthetic to Gilbert Abbott, a printer who had come to the MGH for treatment of a vascular tumor on his jaw. After several minutes, Abbott was rendered unconscious. John Collins Warren, MD, one of the most widely recognized surgeons of that time, then surgically removed the tumor. Upon wakening, Abbott informed the curious and skeptical physicians and medical students in the theater that he had experienced no pain.

Annotation: 

This site, produced by the Massachusetts General Hospital, examines the history of the first anesthesia, ether. Discovered as an aid to sedate patients in the middle of the nineteenth century, its use was heralded as a breakthrough which would lead to a new, better age of surgery. The 7 short essays on this site, written for a general audience, discuss the discovery of ether, the doctors involved, its use at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the subsequent history and future of anesthesiology. A few photographs and drawings of related materials are included.

MouseSite

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Images
  • Links
  • Primary Source
  • Professional Association
  • University
URL: 

http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite

Excerpt: 

WELCOME to the MouseSite, a resource for exploring the history of human computer interaction beginning with the pioneering work of Douglas Engelbart and his colleagues at Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s.
As a graduate student in electrical engineering at UC Berkeley after World War II Doug Engelbart began to imagine ways in which all sorts of information could be displayed on the screens of cathode ray tubes like the ones he had used as a radar technician during the war, and he dreamed of "flying" through a variety of information spaces.

Annotation: 

This wide-ranging site explores the history of many of the technologies that form the basis of modern personal computing. Many of these advances came from the pioneering work of Douglas C. Englebart and his colleagues at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California in the 1960s. Using primary sources from Englebart and others this site recounts the story of an innovative decade. The computer mouse, the notion of "windows" and the graphical interface associated with them.

Automatic Speech Synthesis & Recognition

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Engineering
  • Links
  • Primary Source
  • Professional Association
URL: 

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/sloan/ASSR/assr_index.html

Excerpt: 

Mechanical devices to achieve speech synthesis were conceived of in the realm of fiction, and first devised in the early 19th century. The invention of the telephone in the late 19th century, and the subsequent efforts to reduce the bandwidth requirements of transmitting voice, led back to the idea. In the 1930s, the telephone engineers at Bell Labs developed the famous Voder, a speech synthesizer that was unveiled to the public to great fanfare at the 1939 World’s Fair, but that required a skilled human operator.
Fully automatic speech synthesis came in the early 1960s, with the invention of new automatic coding schemes, such as Adaptive Predictive Coding (APC). With those new techniques in hand, the Bell Labs engineers again turned their attention to speech synthesis. By the late 1960s they had developed a system for internal use in the telephone system, a machine that read wiring instructions to Western Electric telephone wirers, who could then keep eyes and hands on their work. Further progress led to the introduction, in 1976, of the Kurzweil Reading Machine which for the first time allowed the blind to "read" plain text as opposed to Braille. By 1978, the technology was so well established and inexpensive to produce that it could be introduced in a toy, Texas Instruments’ Speak-and-Spell. Thus, the development of this important technology from inception until fruition took about 15 years, involved practitioners from various disciplines, most of whom are still alive, and had a far-reaching impact on other technologies and, through them, society as a whole.

Annotation: 

This site was established to record the history of artificial voice machines, software and research. Most notably, the site contains numerous oral history accounts by engineers and programmers who developed this field in the second half of the twentieth century, and it is looking to add more of these recollections online. A timeline provides an outline of the major advances in automatic speech synthesis and recognition, and visitors are asked to add their historical notes, photographs and audio clips from early voice technologies. The site maintains an extensive list of links to institutes of higher education and companies that have been at the forefront of artificial speech research and development. Short biographical outlines of important figures are also available, as are citations to seminal papers and reviews from this area of electrical engineering and computer science.

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