50 YEARS AGO

“An Uncollected Report of the Great Sea-serpent” — Though trivial by itself, it corroborates a number of more detailed accounts of a similar monster in the North Atlantic towards the end of the eighteenth century. Thomas Holcroft...describes an interview on board the Kennet (Captain Thompson). After recounting two second-hand stories of the Kraken and comparing these with Pontoppidan's versions, Holcroft continues: “Finding this Leviathan so familiar to their belief, I next inquired if they had heard, or knew any thing of the sea-snake, by some called the sea-worm? To this question I received a still more direct answer. The Mate, Mr. Baird, who certainly was not a liar by habit, whatever mistake or credulity might make him, assured me that, about midway in a voyage to America, in the Atlantic, he had himself seen a fish, comparatively small in the body, of from forty to fifty fathoms in length; and that it had excited great terror in the Captain, who was well acquainted with those latitudes, lest it should sink the ship.”

From Nature 8 October 1955.

100 YEARS AGO

“Type-Writing by Telegraph” —...what a type-writing telegraph has to do is the following:—it has to receive a message and translate it into a series of time or magnitude signals; to transmit these signals electrically over a wire, and to re-translate them into a series of space signals.

...There can be no question after the perusal of Mr. Murray's paper that [his system] possesses many advantages over its forerunners which should enable it to survive. It is stated that the automatic part of the apparatus can be run perfectly up to 200 words (1200 letters) a minute, but that no typewriter will stand the strain of being run at this speed, a maximum of 120 words being all that is allowable.

From Nature 5 October 1905.