100 YEARS AGO

The vexed question as the exact meaning of the phrase “one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise” in the Local Government Act, 1888, referring to the lighting of bicycle lamps, was settled from a legal point of view in a Divisional Court on Thursday last. It had been held that sunset at Greenwich was meant, and the Bristol justices convicted a cyclist for riding a bicycle without a light an hour after sunset thus defined. The alleged offence was committed on August 19, 1898, at 8.15 p.m., which was less than an hour after sunset at Bristol, but more than an hour after sunset at Greenwich. An appeal was made against the decision of the Bristol magistrates; and at Thursday's Court the appeal was allowed, and the conviction quashed, their Lordships holding that the phrase in the Act referred to must not be understood to mean Greenwich time, but local time.

From Nature 2 February 1899.

50 YEARS AGO

The medical, social and economic problems created by a rapidly ageing population were the subject of a symposium ⃛ at the British Association meeting at Brighton on Friday, September 10, 1948. The subject was introduced by Sir Ernest Rock Carling, who reminded his audience that the great majority of the elderly are healthy and independent — they outnumber the ailing and decrepit by more than 30 to 1 — and for them the most pressing problem is how to maintain to the end of their days the standard of living of their working life. The time has come for the elderly to revolt against the convention, based on sociological, not biological, grounds, that there is a fixed retirement-age beyond which they are unfit for further work. It is a truism that chronological age is no guide to capacity in the individual; but what we want to know is, how far the increased expectation of life in the last fifty years has extended working-capacity. ⃛ Ageing begins at birth, and an athlete is ‘old’ at thirty-five. ⃛ Laziness, Sir Ernest maintained, is at the bottom of much facile acceptance of ‘too old at forty, fifty, or sixty’. If the Civil servant must retire, why does not the clergyman? If the barrister ceases to practice, why not the judge?

From Nature 5 February 1949.