In August 1968, NASA made a bold decision: in just sixteen weeks, the United States would launch humankind's first flight to the moon. Only the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback after…
"During World War II, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate jet velocities and plot missile trajectories, they recruited an elite group of young women--known as human computers--who, with only pencil, paper, and mathema…
Wingless flight: the lifting body story
by Reed, R. Dale, Lister, Darlene
fromNASA SP (Series)
NASA's history is a familiar story, peaking with Neil Armstrong's small step on the Moon in 1969. But America's space agency--and in particular its Apollo lunar-landing program--wasn't created in a vacuum. It was assembled from pre-existing parts, drawing together some of the be…
"What is the Golem? In Jewish mythology the Golem is an effigy or image brought to life. While not evil, it is a strong, clumsy, and incomplete servant. Through a series of case studies, ranging from relativity and cold fusion to memory in worms and the sex lives of lizards, Har…
"In NASA and the Space Industry Joan Lisa Bromberg explores how NASA's relationship with the private sector developed and how it works. She outlines the various kinds of expertise public and private sectors brought to the tasks NASA took on, describing how this division of labor…
"In NASA and the Space Industry Joan Lisa Bromberg explores how NASA's relationship with the private sector developed and how it works. She outlines the various kinds of expertise public and private sectors brought to the tasks NASA took on, describing how this division of labor…
"Scientists have been trying to confirm the existence of gravitational waves for fifty years. Then, in September 2015, came a 'very interesting event' (as the cautious subject line in a physicist's email read) that proved to be the first detection of gravitational waves. In Grav…
This study asked if there was evidence of Thomas E. Watson’s (1856-1922) shifting racial views in the histories he published between 1899 and 1912. Watson is famous for his integrated populist campaigns of the early to mid-1890s, and infamous for his subsequent call for black di…
The dissertation investigates three early Old French prose histories, clustered around a specific event—namely the fourth crusade of 1204 and its ensuing conquest of Constantinople, the Byzantine capital of Eastern Christendom. Robert de Clari's La Conquête de Constantinople , G…
This study considers Philip the Good of Burgundy (1419–1467) as a patron of history writing and of illuminated manuscripts, concentrating on the visual and literary projects that supported his efforts to launch a crusade. Several manuscripts commissioned in the mid-1450s are par…
In the thesis: Histories of plastic word, we intend to study the use of the written and storytelling languages in the field of visual arts. In this sense, the inclusion of the verbal register in the art discourse marked a turning point for the first avant-gardes and, since then,…
"Since the 1980s historians have been influenced by two anthropological concepts: cultural distance and awareness of small-scale interactions. Recent work, however, has shifted away from these notions. We now see that cultures cannot be studied as units with internal coherence a…
"The first comprehensive one-volume history of twentieth-century physics, the book takes us from the discovery of x-rays in the mid-1890s to superstring theory in the 1990s. Kragh writes about pure science with the expertise of a trained physicist, while keeping the content acce…
"The first comprehensive one-volume history of twentieth-century physics, the book takes us from the discovery of x-rays in the mid-1890s to superstring theory in the 1990s. Kragh writes about pure science with the expertise of a trained physicist, while keeping the content acce…
Biographical profiles of Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and other twentieth-century physicists feature observations and insights from a fellow scientist who knew the subjects personally.
