50 Years ago

Since Morrison and Cocconi published the suggestion that there might be advanced societies elsewhere in the Galaxy ... beaming transmissions to us on a frequency of 1,420 Mc./s, Drake has described equipment under construction to look for such transmissions ... Would not this other more advanced society ... be doing what we ourselves are now discussing and are on the point of doing, probably during this century, namely, sending probes to nearby stars ... For this reason we might better devote our efforts to scrutinizing our solar system for signs of probes sent here by our more advanced neighbours.

From Nature 28 May 1960.

100 Years ago

In the Cairo Scientific Journal for February Mr. Harold Sheridan gives an account of that curious musical instrument, the rabába, which was introduced into Europe by the Crusaders, and, with a slight modification of the original name, is now known as the rebeck. It has certainly been evolved from the one-string lyre of the early monuments, the single string twanged with the finger developing into the present double-stringed instrument played with a rude bow and provided with a body. Even in its present state it is a most primitive instrument, made up in the rudest way out of a long iron nail, a cocoa-nut, a few strands of horse-hair (that of the living animal being most in request), a piece of fish-skin, and sundry pieces of wood. The last are coarsely glued together, and the body is made of half the cocoa-nut, over which a piece of moist skin that of the Nilotic fish known as the bayad — is tied tightly until it dries. The tone is regulated by incisions made in the body ... The rabába is thus of considerable interest as marking an early stage in the evolution of the modern violin.

From Nature 26 May 1910.