This Month in the Archives

Dive into 173 years of groundbreaking research
 
Scientific American

This Month in the Archives
With a Print & Full Archive Subscription, you'll have exclusive access to more than a century and a half of groundbreaking articles by leading experts in their fields. This month we pay homage to the dog days of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) by examining a revolutionary invention: the air conditioner. We admire the bane of picnics everywhere: ants. And Scientific American turns 173! We celebrate with a collection of past literary reviews.
 
 
Summer Heat, Cool Air
“It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” from 1934
Before AC, only the wealthy could afford winter ice carefully packed to provide cooling in the summer. But in the 20th century Willis Carrier invented a device that used electricity to make indoor air cooler and drier, at first for manufacturing processes, then for people.
  • April 1933: With a view on “future prosperity” and a nod to “human comfort,” Willis Carrier describes “The Economics of Man-Made Weather.”
  • August 1934: “Dispelling Popular Fallacies about Air Conditioning” emphasizes that these systems cool the air and dry it: they don’t just scent it or push it around.
  • May 2017: India might just be able to show everyone else how to balance the soaring demand for air conditioning with a sensible supply of electricity.
  • May 2018: The technology for producing our indoor environment opens up an ecological niche for organisms such as Legionnaires disease.
The Astounding Ant
Amazonian “slave-raiding” ant steals an egg, 1975.
There are a million times more ants than there are humans. Luckily, except for a few species, most are harmless. In fact, they are amazing creatures and have been the subject of curiosity for millennia.
  • July 1857: An article from Lexington, Missouri, covers observations on ants and ant trails—and gives a pioneer’s approval for the hard-working ant.
  • March 1958: Edward O. Wilson reports on a new invasive species from South America—the fire ant.
  • June 1975: Some ants enslave other ants—and have become so specialized as slaveholders that they can no longer even feed themselves.
  • February 2016: Ant colonies work without central control. How they accomplish this with their teeny brains has implications for another decentralized system—the Internet.
Beach Reading
The crowded offices of Nature magazine in 1950
There’s no better summer blockbuster than, ahem, Scientific American, but we’ve scrutinized many notable works over the years.
  • June 1896: An article on grafting mentions the “amusing creatures” (“ox-hog-men”) in “Island of Dr. Moreau” by H. G. Wells, but complains his imagination had “too free a run.”
  • January 1950: A review of Nature says “the renowned British scientific journal is a faithful mirror” of science. I’m glad we were nice to them as they now own us.
  • July 1992: Stephen Jay Gould says Philip E. Johnson’s “Darwin on Trial” is “full of errors … abysmally written,” and proceeds to skewer this anti-evolutionist work.
  • May 2002: Daniel Kevles looks at Francis Fukuyama’s “Our Posthuman Future” and considers the proposition that biotechnology will change human nature.
Current Issue:
August 2018
The immune system may act, along with taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing and proprioception as a seventh sense, monitoring pathogens in the body and sending signals to the brain.
READ THIS ISSUE


Enjoy the journey!
Dan Schlenoff, editor of “50, 100 & 150 Years Ago”
 
 
 

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