The Dead Media Project consists of a database of field Notes written and researched by members of the Project's mailing list.
The Dead Media List consists of occasional email to that stout band of souls who have declared some willingness to engage in this recherche field of study.
A timeline history of the IBM Typewriter with old ads to show what the machines looked like. Click on the thumbnail to see an enlargement of that ad.
Twain was also keenly aware, however, of the limitations of technology. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court shows technology improving communication, productivity, and personal hygiene. But it is unable to conquer what Twain considered the true problem: a society in which people do not think for themselves. Machines can be wonderful tools, Twain suggests, but they are only tools. The finest technology in all the realm does not excuse us from exercising our own judgment, a theme Twain would doubtless return to were he publishing today.
As we enter a new millennium, we take for granted much of what was new and marvelous to the people of Twain's era. Understanding the technological developments of Twain's lifetime (1835 - 1910) may provide greater appreciation of this novel, one of the first science fiction novels written in America.
This subject has a rich history attached to it. In order to understand the full discovery and development of moving pictures, we must study the various elements of not only this medium, but all others which are related to cinematography and especially photography. This timeline will provide more than a substantial glimpse into the discoveries of these elements which include; optics, pinhole images, camera obscura, persistence of vision, showmen, magic lanterns, light, lenses, light-sensitive substances, phantasmagoria, motion study analysis, photography, and stop-action series photography in the overall growth of photography and ultimately, the movement of pictures.
This website presents a retrospective history of the dawn of film, and a pre-history of cinema. In fifteen chapters, broken down chronologically, the text deals with the origin of motion pictures and the ancestors of cinema, culminating with the birth of motion pictures in the nineteenth century. This site provides a substantial glimpse into the history and discovery of the marriage of photography, light and shadow, optics and lenses, glass and celluloid, into movement known as cinematography. Each chapter includes brief essays on various innovations and important figures in the development of new technologies, as well as numerous images. A bibliography and page of links to related sites should provide researchers with additional avenues to explore.
In retrospect, the sixth decade of the nineteenth century was truly remarkable with respect to the development of the science of biology. By the end of those ten years all of the pieces were in place for the maturation of what had been a purely observational discipline into one with a strong theoretical basis. The key elements of what would become modern biology had been discovered and formulated. However, it took more than eighty years to bring all of them together (1). The result, the field of molecular biology and its attendant sub-disciplines, is grounded philosophically in a mechanistic, deterministic and reductionist view that derives from the logical empiricist setting in which it was born and which has not changed, despite the radical shift that has come about in the physical sciences.
Ancient Greeks struggled to understand the nature of matter
Empedocles (around 490 to 444 BC) thought there were four original elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. He thought everything else came about through their combination and/or separation by the two opposite principles of Love and Strife.
Leucippus (around 460 to 420 BC) and Democritus (around 460 to 370 BC), supposedly a pupil of Leucippus, are considered the founders of atomism. Leucippus regarded atoms as imperceptible, individual particles that differ only in shape and position.
Plato (about 427 to 347 BC) in his work, the Timaeus, proposes a mathematical construction of the elements - earth, air, fire, water. Each of these elements is said to consist of particles or primary bodies. Each particle is a regular geometrical solid- the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron and icosahedron. Each of these particles is composed of simple right triangles. The particles are like the molecules of the theory; the triangles are its atoms.
Plato's beliefs as regards the universe were that the stars, planets, Sun and Moon move round the Earth in crystalline spheres. The sphere of the Moon was closest to the Earth, then the sphere of the Sun, then Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and furthest away was the sphere of the stars. He believed that the Moon shines by reflected sunlight.
Foundation stone laid by the Prince of Wales on June 16, 1846, for the Royal College of Chemistry, with a close-up. The original building still exists, in Oxford Street, London, but is now the home of a shoe shop.
Sample of elemental potassium in the departmental archives, still lusterous more than 100 years after it was sealed in a glass tube. Original samples of metallic Sodium and Magnesium and gaseous Chlorine made by Humphrey Davy around 1806 can be seen at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, about two miles east of Imperial College. Samples of the other alkali metals (Rb, Cs) are suspected to exist at Heidelberg, in Germany where Bunsen worked. For a diagram of the 3D atomic structure of metallic potassium, click here.
Queen Elizabeth I of England ascended to the throne in 1558. The last women of sole political power had been a Greek Egyptian Pharaoh named Cleopatra in the mid-1st century B.C. She reemerged in the 16th century as Elizabeth I. Her century is marked by the break away of Protestant churches from the authority of the Pope, whose Catholic authority had been instituted by the sword of the French King, Charlemagne, in the 8th century. Elizabeth was raised during intense religious strife between the Catholics and Protestants. She began her reign with rejections of marriage alliances with Spain, France and English nobles to rule as the Virgin Queen. As Queen she managed to pass a unification act that created a single Church of England that excluded papal authority. Elizabeth, however, seemed to be more enchanted with the arts encouraging the works of Shakespeare.
Architects of the periodic table
How did Lavoisier classify elements known in his time?
What are some Web sites and paper references on the history of the periodic table?
Where I can find information on Julius Lother Meyer?
Can you give me some biographical tidbits about Mendeleev?
The ashes of Marie Curie and her husband Pierre have now been laid to rest under the famous dome of the Panthéon, in Paris, alongside the author Victor Hugo, the politician Jean Jaurès and the Resistance fighter Jean Moulin. Through her discovery of radium, Marie Curie paved the way for nuclear physics and cancer therapy. Born of Polish parents, she was a woman of science and courage, compassionate yet stubbornly determined. Her research work was to cost her her life.
