50 & 100 years ago

50 YEARS AGO

“Nuclear magnetic resonance and electron spin resonance” — It is no new idea that most of the advances in the techniques of chemistry have come from the use of apparatus and methods originally devised by physicists. This is particularly true of spectroscopy, where the main applications associated with the different frequency bands have moved over, one after another, from the pure physicist to the chemist... It would appear that during the past eighteen months a similar move has been taking place with the two new techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance and electron spin resonance... As with all techniques which study the interaction of atoms with external forces, it soon became clear that these new methods also had very great potentialities as tools for chemical investigation, and during the past few years these applications have been brought to light in a very striking way. D. J. E. Ingram

From Nature 4 August 1956.

100 years ago

“Strength of a Beetle” — Last night a small beetle (Aphodius fossor), the length of which is ½ inch, flew in at my window and alighted on a table next to me.As it buzzed about I put a lid of a tin box over it, but to my surprise the beetle walked about bearing the lid on its back. I then put the tin box on top of the lid, and was absolutely amazed to find that the insect tilted up a corner of the combined box and lid, and nearly escaped. The weight of the beetle when dead was ½ grain, alive I suppose it was a little more; but the box and lid weighed 1758 grains! Assuming that the living insect weighed 1 grain, it must have tilted up 1758 times its own weight! Of course, the strength required to tilt up a box on edge is nothing like so great as that required to actually lift the weight, but nevertheless the feat seems to me sufficiently astounding. The dimensions of the box are $3^{\stackrel{1}{}/\underset{8}{}}$ × $2^{\stackrel{1}{}/\underset{8}{}}$ × 1^½ inches.

From Nature 2 August 1906.