Arts
Postcard from Taiwan
The Alishan Forest Railway runs from the coastal plain into the heart of Taiwan’s empty highlands. It was built in 1912 by the Japanese for the purpose of transporting timber from the mountains for the [more…]
Science
Engineering
Invisible Writing
Herbert O Yardley was a a code clerk in the US State Department who took an interest in codes and ciphers. He taught himself as much as he could and he proposed a cryptographic bureau. [more…]
Ethics
Medicine – Part Ten
At last we reach the end of our little sojourn through the history of medicine. We have come a long way from drilling holes in people’s heads and whipping ourselves to drive off the plague [more…]
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part Three
More information on laser speckle can be found here: Speckle pattern A Mirror Alignment Tool The most important part of constructing a ruby laser (or any laser with external mirrors) are getting the mirrors alligned [more…]
Hobbies
The Fields Medal
“Rise above oneself and grasp the world” These are awarded every four years for advancement in the field of mathematics. There is an age limit of 40 on the recipients. It is a recognition [more…]
Engineering
The Gestation Period of the Me 262
The world’s first operational jet powered fighter was the Me 262 , the fighter version was known as the Swallow (Schwalbe) and the fighter-bomber was the Storm Bird (Sturmvogel). We are once again indebted to [more…]
20th Century
Medicine – Part Nine
A great deal of medical progress in the 20th Century, you will be unsurprised to hear, was driven by warfare. In 1900 Karl Landsteiner classified blood in to three groups, O, A and B. Alfred von [more…]
America
Hobbies
Euler’s Totient Function
Euler’s totient function counts the number of positive integers up to that are relatively prime to , where is considered to be relatively prime to all . These numbers are called the totatives of . [more…]