100 YEARS AGO

It should not be necessary at this time of day to emphasise the fact of the imperial character of the Royal Gardens, Kew, still it would appear there are many inhabitants of Great Britain whose notion of the value of this establishment is limited by their desire for a local public park suited to the recreation of dwellers in and about London. Several incidents have of late shown this — witness the recent preposterous proposal brought forward in the House of Commons to throw the gardens open to cyclists! Suggestions of this kind are on the face of them, to those aware of the true character of the gardens, too absurd for discussion, yet there is an element of danger in this appeal to the selfish instincts of that large body of pleasure-seekers who are veritable Gallios in their contempt for science, especially when its just claims place an obstacle to the gratification of their pleasure whims.

From Nature 10 August 1899.

50 YEARS AGO

Now that the long-established mechanical unit, the joule, is to assume so much greater importance, there is one matter ⃛ that should be decided, and that is how the word is to be pronounced. There was not long ago a correspondence on the subject in Nature which revealed the most surprising disagreement, and more recent inquiries among various people in Manchester confirm these doubts. Some make the great man's name rhyme with ‘cool’, some with ‘cowl’, and some even with ‘coal’. Thus, Sir Arthur Schuster called him ‘Jowl’, while Prof. H. B. Dixon, who had a curiosity in such matters, said the name was disyllabic as ‘Jo-ull’, which would be nearly ‘Joal’. On the other hand, Osborne Reynolds in his memoir on him, though he never states how the name is spoken, mentions that it derives from the village of Youlgreave in Derbyshire from which his family came, which would make it ‘Jool’, and this is the preference of at least some of the surviving family. However all this may be, the word is now to be international, and it is unreasonable to make foreigners suffer from the horrors of English orthography; it therefore seems best that the joule as a unit of heat should rhyme with the word ‘cool’ — of course, giving the initial ‘j’ its proper English value.

From Nature 13 August 1949.