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G4EBT > SPACE 08.08.08 23:07l 141 Lines 5839 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 478797G4EBT
Read: GUEST
Subj: Re: "When I was eight" GM7HUD
Path: IZ3LSV<IK2XDE<DB0RES<ON0AR<GB7FCR
Sent: 080808/2207Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:11737 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:478797G4
From: G4EBT@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : SPACE@WW
Andy, GM7HUD wrote:-
> I always feel I was born too late. All the cool stuff had been done by
> the time I had an education. Technology is ubiquitous now. My kids have
> grown up with computers, game consoles, DTH satTV, mobile phones,
> microwave ovens, internet comms. They don't appreciate it because it's
> always been there and always around them.
>Whereas I was 8 when Armstrong walked on the moon.
That mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the
moon by the end of the 1960s, which he expressed during a 1961 speech:
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him
safely to the Earth."
Incredible to think that if there was a moon landing nowadays, a lot of
kids probably wouldn't even bother to switch TV channels from watching
Pop Idol or some other pap to watch it.
They'd just say "A man is landing on the moon? So - what's the big deal?".
When I was 8 (1947) space travel was science fiction. That was the year
Sir Edward Appleton was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics, relevant to
radio, astronomy and space travel.
Here's a clip from the Presentation Speech by Professor E. Hulthen,
member of the Nobel Committee for Physics:
Quote:
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.
On 12th December 1901, Marconi succeeded in establishing wireless
communication between the Old World and the New. The way in which the
wireless waves proved to follow the contour of the earth compelled the
assumption that there must be an electrically conducting layer somewhere
high up in the stratosphere.
Thereby, it was thought, the linearly moving radio waves were thrown back
towards the earth just as the rays of the sun are deviated so that its
light can be observed long after the sun has passed below the horizon.
According to Heaviside and Kennelly such a layer which throws back the
radio waves and girdles the whole earth is conceivably due to the ionizing
effects of the ultraviolet rays of the sun on the upper atmosphere.
However, no conclusive proof of this was forthcoming even at the
beginning of the 1920's.
(clip for brevity).
Appleton has carried out far-reaching investigations of the electric waves
which are produced when the lightning strikes. With the help of specially
equipped sounding stations, lightning discharges and thunderstorms which
are 1,000 to 2,000 km away can be located, and the disturbances which
affect radio reception he has found to be due to interplay between
far-distant thunderstorms, especially on the equator.
Thanks to Appleton's contributions a new branch has been added to physical
science, but not only that: the methods which he and his co-workers have
perfected to investigate the atmosphere round the earth by means of radio
waves have also become of immense importance for solving problems within
other sciences, such as astronomy, geophysics and meteorology, and for
radio techniques.
Electromagnetic waves are a subject of the greatest physical importance,
and they are being increasingly applied in different fields of science.
The first arguments on the existence of these waves were advanced more
than a hundred years ago by your countryman Michael Faraday, who was then
searching for the relations between optical and electrical phenomena.
His ideas were worked out in strict mathematical equations by dames Clark
Maxwell in 1873. The waves were finally discovered by the famous German
physicist Heinrich Hertz in the early 1890's. Shortly afterwards their
immense usefulness as radio waves was demonstrated by the Italian inventor
Guglielmo Marconi.
Since then, electromagnetic waves have advanced victoriously in a
multitude of sciences, giving rise, in the hands of men of genius, to
scientific methods and instruments, among which I need only mention the
electronic tube, based on the thermo-ionic laws, so thoroughly
investigated by Sir Owen Richardson.
Now you have added a new link to this beautiful chain, applying the waves
to the study of our own atmosphere. With the aid of these waves you have
reached ethereal regions never before attained by man. You have even
taught us how to listen to the roar from eruptions in the sun and distant
stars in the galaxy.
End clip.
(See: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1947/press.html)
In 1986 when my elder son graduated with an engineering degree from
Loughborough University, Sir Frank Whittle (then approaching his 80th
birthday) inventor of the jet engine, gave a wonderful speech at the
ceremony.
Sir Frank recalled that in writing his thesis at RAF Cranwell in the late
1920s he formulated the fundamental concepts that led to the creation of
the jet engine. He was told that while it was a creative idea, really, it
was fanciful nonsense - the stuff of sci-fi novels.
Undaunted, he took out a patent on his design in 1930, and his performance
on an officers' engineering course earned him a place on a further course
at the University of Cambridge where he graduated with a First.
The rest is history.
So many things around us, which seem quite trivial developments nowadays,
would have been groundbreaking only a few years ago. Just think of memory
sticks - several GBs for a few pounds. Remember when - not so long ago,
4MB of Ram (4 x 1 MB SIMMS) would set you back œ100GBP, and a "computer"
was a Sinclair ZX81?
Quote of the day:
"Progress"
"It has become appallingly obvious that our
technology has exceeded our humanity".
Albert Einstein - 1879-1955
(Nobel Prize for Physics 1921)
Best wishes
David, G4EBT @ GB7FCR
Cottingham, East Yorkshire.
Message timed: 18:03 on 2008-Aug-08
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