Note: For details about the books mentioned in these anecdotes, see the book list given in the 'Selected Bibliography' section of this website (also under the 'OTHER' option).

001. Did you know that following WWII, the Allies forbade German firms to construct certain electronic devices, so that although some German universities (like those of Göttingen where the Max Planck Institute was located, the Technical University of Berlin, and the Munich Institue of Technology) designed and even built experimental computing machines, no commercial models were built until well after 1955 when the ban was lifted. (Standard Elektrik Lorenz, in collaboration with Siemens and Konrad Zuse eventually produced the first commercial computer in 1959.) [see Kenneth Flamm, Creating the Computer]

002. Did you know that ENIAC was considerably faster than its predecessor computing machines and could perform 5,000 operations per second; and that its inventors liked to point out that ENIAC could calculate the trajectory of a speeding shell faster than the shell could fly! [see Campbell-Kelly & Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine]

003. In many monasteries of medieval times, prayers were recited even at night-time, and before mechanical clocks were invented (in the 14^th century), various methods were used for keeping time (such as sundials, waterclocks, sandglasses, and notched candles and graduated ol vessels). Did you know, however, that some monasteries even turned to the stars by appointing junior brothers to note the changing positions of the stars relative to the monastery buildings! One such example states that… ‘On Christmas Day, when you see the Twins lying, as it were, on the dormitory, and Orion over the chapel of All Saints, prepare to ring the bell. And on January 1^st, when the bright star [Arcturus] in the knee of Artophilax [Bootes] is level with the space between the first and second window of the dormitory and lying as it were on the summit of the roof, then go and light the lamps.’ [see H. C. King, The Background of Astronomy]

004. Throughout the years following WWII, Atanasoff received several indications from individuals and industry that the builders of the ENIAC had patents on elements of computer design that originated with Atanasoff and the ABC. Two events are said to have motivated JVA’s interest and involvement in the patent issues surrounding the ENIAC: 1) Clifford Berry’s suspicous death in 1963; and 2) The publication of R. K. Richard’s book Electronic Digital Systems in 1966 in which a serious assertion of origination was made in favour of the ABC as the first electronic digital computer. JVA spent the next several years cooperating with Honeywell Corporation in challenging the ENIAC patents, now held by Sperry Rand Corporation.

The suit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand was filed 26 May 1967 in the U.S. District Courthouse in Minneapolis, MN. The trial began 1 June 1971. The decision, handed down officially on 19 October 1973, held that “Mauchly’s basic ENIAC ideas were derived from Atanasoff, and the invention claimed in ENIAC was derived from Atanasoff.”

[from: https://jva.cs.iastate.edu/jvabio.php]

See also my introduction to the computing section of my website (where it mentions J. V. Atanasoff).

005. In spite of his genius, Isaac Newton wasn’t always correct in his interpretation of science. For example, Newton thought “that any attempt to combine different kinds of glass to make a compound lens to overcome chromatic aberration, the false colour fringes seen in a microscope or in a lens (refracting) telescope, would never be successful. In the late 1750s [years after Newton had died] Newton was to be proved wrong on this last point, but in the meantime it remained unchallenged, and its very error turned out to be actually an advantage because it stimulated Newton to devise the first practical reflecting telescope (a telescope where the front lens is replaced by a curved mirror at the rear end of the tube)”. [see Colin A Ronan, The Cambridge Illustrated History of the World’s Science]

Note: The reflecting telescope is not Newton’s invention since some years earlier the Scots mathematician James Gregory had already designed a mirror (reflecting) telescope. See the ‘Telescopes and Observatories’ section of this website.

006. Following Chernobyl’s disaster in 1986, Germany’s Green Party became increasingly popular with supporters vigorously opposing the construction of nuclear power reactors. Yet, it was not until 2011 that Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel stepped up the country’s decommissioning plans for shutting down the country’s nuclear plants by 2022. By that year only three were still operating and the closure of a number of nuclear power plants had at least two implications. Since its provision of renewable sources weren’t significantly improved, the country was forced to begin burning more coal again, in spite of the country initially moving away from the use of fossil fuels. The second implication was political. As Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border in late 2021 and early 2022, Germany’s hesitation in standing squarely behind the US and European allies in condemning Moscow’s act of aggression was believed in part to have been motivated by Germany’s need for Russian natural gas. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine coincided with the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, constructed by Russia’s majority state-owned Gazprom and intended to provide millions of German homes and businesses with Russian natural gas. [See Ian Fitzerald, Chernobyl]

007. The discovery of stellar proper motions is rightly attributed to the great astronomer Edmond Halley in 1718 after comparing his contemporary star charts with ancient ones. However, the astronomy historian John North interestingly notes that when the Chinese monk I-Hsing began recording ecliptic coordinates of the stars around the year 725 AD and found that many of these differed from those in old star lists, the likely reason for this discrepancy lay not only with instrumental errors and precession but was likely also the result of the stars own (‘proper’) motion. Thus, I-Hsing may have discovered stellar proper motions without actually knowing it. [See John North, The Fontana History of Astronomy and Cosmology]