50 Years Ago: From Babbage to Google

Industrial chemist hard at work, trying to figure out how to turn waste into profit, 1912 Image: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, VOL. CVI, NO. 24; JUNE 15, 1912

JUNE 1962

From Babbage to Google
?The possibility of applying machines of the digital-computer type to the twin problems of mechanical translation and information retrieval has spurred an increasing number of workers to reexamine language. If we could per??fect a translating machine, a great stride would have been made toward removing language barriers. If we could perfect an information-retrieval machine, the wisdom accumulated in the libraries of the world would be more readily available.?

Magnet Leap
?Superconducting magnets are par?ticularly intriguing in the field of power generation, both for magneto?hydrody?namic devices and for controlled nuclear fusion. This latter application is one of the most interesting and po?tentially the most important. There are many prob?lems that must be solved before fusion power becomes a practical reality. One is the confinement of hot ionized gases, or plasmas, in some sort of container. Because the plasmas will be at temper?atures in the range of 100 million de?grees centigrade, no material substance can be used to contain them. They can, however, be confined by the force of a magnetic field. Current thinking in?volves the use of superconductors to provide the magnetic field.?

JUNE 1912

Hydraulic Shock Absorber
?The latest ?impossibility? which George Westinghouse has made a success is the air-spring for automobiles. One day some men from up-state New York brought him a contrivance which they had de?signed and tried. They frankly said it was imperfect, and asked him for advice. The man who had done so much with compressed air for train-brakes would surely know, if any one could know, how to seal the air in cylinders which might be substituted for motor-car springs. Mr. Westinghouse bought the control of the invention and then set about perfecting it. He sealed the air with oil, and invented and inserted a little automatic pump to keep the oil in the proper places. Not many months since he placed it on the market in readiness for the season of 1912.?
For a look at the cutting edge of motor?cars and trucks in 1912, see the slide show at www.ScientificAmerican.com/jun2012/automobile

Transformation of Waste
?The most fantastic tale that ever appeared in the Arabian Nights is no more astonishing than the feats performed with waste material by the German industrial chemist. To the German a dump heap is a kind of gold mine. He demonstrated the truth of Lord Palmerston?s saying: ?Dirt is merely matter in the wrong place.? It was the German, for example, who taught us how to use the by-products of the blast furnace. One interesting example of German industrial thrift is the briquetting of enormous quantities of flue dust produced in the iron foun?dry, which generally contains consid?erable coke and iron ore.?

JUNE 1862

Difference Engine
?At the London Exhibition, an?other curious instrument is Mr. Babbage?s great calc?ulating machine, which will work quadrations and calculate logarithms up to seven places of figures. It was the account of this invention written by the late Lady Lovelace?Lord Byron?s daughter?that led the Messrs. Scheutz, of Stockholm, to improve upon it. This improvement was at once bought up precisely by the English government, but it is not now shown at the exhibition, as it is very busy at Somerset House night and day working out annuity and other tables for the Registrar General.?

Sea of Meat
?A shoal of whales ran ashore lately at Whiteness, Isle of Shetland, and getting into shallow water, immense numbers?four hundred, it is said?were captured by the islanders. They were attacked both by sea and land; almost the entire shoal was captured. People came from miles around, and a number of riflemen hurried to the spot to enjoy the novel sport of whale shooting.?

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