50 Years Ago

A note released recently by the Rockefeller Institute in New York describes a small radio-transmitting capsule which can be swallowed like a medicinal pill and, as it passes through the body, signals the activity of the digestive tract. This 'radio pill', as it is termed...comprises a plastic capsule, 1/8 in. long and 4/10 in. in diameter, containing a tiny transistor oscillator... In one end of the capsule is housed a minute replaceable storage battery which supplies the small amount of electrical power required and has a life of fifteen hours... When the 'pill' is swallowed by a patient and pursues its course through the gastrointestinal tract, it transmits signals the frequency of which is varied by the pressure changes in the tract. These signals from the capsule are picked up on a suitable receiver with an antenna held close to the body.

From Nature 4 May 1957.

100 Years Ago

Dr H. Charlton Bastian re-affirms his conviction that living organisms continue to arise from not-living material... In the first part of his book he points out that inorganic evolution (recently studied in ways not a little upsetting) has not stopped, and argues against the dogmatism of those who, while admitting that archebiosis probably occurred very long ago, refuse to discuss the possibility of its occurrence now. Because it has been shown that maggots are not really produced by the flesh in which they crawl, it does not follow that minute specks of living matter may not arise de novo in suitable not-living fluids... In a fluid believed to be quite not-living, minute living creatures appear, but observation cannot decide whether they arise from invisible germs or pre-existing organisms, or “whether they have come into being in the mother liquid as a result of life-giving synthetic processes.”

From Nature 2 May 1907.