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3681/ The manufacture of a single
2 gram computer chip consumes thirty-six times its weight
in chemicals, 800 times its weight in fuel, and 1600 times
its weight in water.
3682/ 'Cyber' was introduced
into the English language back in the 1950's by Norbert Wiener's
word 'cybernetics' which referred to the science of control
over systems. He derived it from the kybernetes for
helmsman or guide.
3683/ Two of the towering figures
of physics received their nobel prizes simultaneously. The
1921 Nobel Prize for Physics was delayed for a year, and then
awarded to Einstein in the same ceremony at which Niels Bohr
received the 1922 prize.
3684/ In 1857, Jules Lissajous
showed that a tuning fork can be kept vibrating indefinitely
with an electric current. A tuning fork sounds a single note
with a fixed number of cycles or pulses per second. If the
sound has a frequency of 10 kilohertz, then every 10,000 pulses
equals precisely one second.
3685/ IBM was founded as the
Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. They made mechanical calculating
devices based on punch cards which could process data much
faster than manual methods.
3686/ A ruby laser has an efficiency
of something like 20 per cent, which means that only one-fifth
of the energy input comes out in the laser beam.
3687/ A laser pointer is the
simplest laser device. One of the useful features of lasers
is that the beam consists of almost parrallel rays and does
not spread out like the beam from a torch. The spot from the
pointer is practically the same size and brightness at one
metre or ten.
3688/ The storage dimples on
a cd are 830 nanometres across, whilst those on a dvd are
400 nanometres across (a million nanometres equals one millimetre).
The total track length on current 4.7gb dvds adds up to about
12km.
3689/ The first transatlantic
fibre-optic cable was laid in 1988. Fibre-optic cables now
criss-cross the developed world.
3690/ LASIK stands for Laser
Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis. A excimer laser is used to
re-shape the cornea. Dr Sato in Japan proposed the prinviple
of reshaping the eye to correct short-sightedness in the 1930s;
but it was not until Dr Svyatoslav Fyodorov carried out extensive
work in Russia in the 1960s and 1970s that a viable surgical
procedure was established to treat short-sightedness.
3691/ Einstein showed in 1908
that a small amount of matter could be converted into a huge
amount of energy. His famous equation E = MC² indicates
just how much energy can be released from matter. Put into
English, this equation says that the energy contained in an
object is equal to its mass multimplied by the speed of light
(C), then multiplied by the speed of light again. 'C' is a
huge number - light travels at 186,000 miles per second -
and the energy in one kilogram of matter is equal to the energy
released by burning over 10 million tons of coal. Or to put
it another way, it is equal to 10 million tons of explosive.
3692/ On the 6th August 1945
the first atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima.
The bomb caused total devestation over a wide area. According
to a 1946 estimate, 45,000 people were killed on the first
day, with another 21,000 dying of their injuries over the
following four months.
3693/ The flash of heat from
the Hiroshima nuclear bomb was so intense that people within
a few hundred metres of the explosion were vaporized, leaving
nothing but shadows etched on to walls and pavements.
3694/ Despite this Japan wavered,
but did not surrender. Three days later a second atomic strike
was ordered. The primary target, the city of Kokura, was obscured
by cloud, so the B29 bomber went on to its secondary target,
Nagasaki. Over 40,000 people were killed.
3695/ The first nuclear electricity
was generated in the US in 1951, lighting four bulbs. But
it was the Russians who achieved the first Nuclear Power Plant
at Obinisk in 1954, generating five megawatts of power. The
US and Britain were close behind though, with their own reactors
starting up in the following two years.
3696/ The mastermind behind the
Soviet hydrogen bomb was the physicist Andrei Sakharov, later
known as a human rights campaigner and winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize.
3697/ "The bomb will
never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives"
- Admiral Leahy on the eve of the first atomic bomb test in
1945.
3698/ "CS Gas" a type
of tear gas is not actually a gas. It is spread as a fine
dust or liquid droplets in the air. CS was first isolated
by Carson and Soughton, two American chemists who gave their
initials to the discovery, but it was converted into an effective
riot control agent by the British Porton Down Chemical Defence
Experimental Establishment in 1956.
3699/ CS gas causes pain, burning
and irritation of exposed mucous membranes and skin, and will
incapacitate an individual in agony for up to ten minutes.
After being gassed by riot police in South Korea, the writer
PJ O'Rourke described the effects as being like 'trying
to breathe fish bones'.
3700/ In April 1960 the US launched
its first weather satellite. This was TIROS I, the Television
Infrared Observation Satellite. It was a joint venture between
Nasa, the US Army, US Navy and the Weather Bureau, and it
was seen as having strategic importance.
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