METEOROLOGY 1929

by CHARLES FITZHUGH TALMAN
Librarian, U. S. Weather Bureau

THE aviator now is getting weather information along the principal commercial flight-ways   of  the world. As the information is supplied by radio broadcasts, it is available to the entire community, and it is found to have many useful applications altogether outside the domain of aeronautics.

Since July 1, 1929, we have had in the United States a service of radio weather bulletins and forecasts every three hours, day and night, covering a belt 400 miles wide extending from coast to coast along the Transcontinental Airway. Though established for the benefit of aviators, it is of such general utility that the great cost of maintaining it would probably be justified even if there were no such thing as aviation. Hence the inauguration of this new service, which foreshadows similar arrangements for the whole country and marks a milestone in the history of practical meteorology.

The British have begun broadcasting weather maps and facsimile weather bulletins by radio, using the Fultograph process. A new French sounding balloon sends out automatic reports by radio of the temperatures and barometric pressures encountered throughout its flights. The nations of the world have agreed upon a plan of securing regular and uniform radio weather reports from a total of 1,000 selected ships upon the high seas.

ANTHROPOLOGY 1929

by CLARK WISSLER, PH.D.
Curator of Anthropology,
American Museum of Natural History

A REVIEW of anthropology reveals an increase in the number of institutions and endowments supporting the study of prehistoric man and the contemporary less civilized races, accompanied by a corresponding gain in the number of investigators.  Almost every part of the land surface of the world is under observation. National governments are giving more attention to the preservation of antiquities and to recording the customs and arts of their subject races. The year has not been a period of new discoveries, but has been characterized by steady progress in following the leads offered by those of recent years and the testing of previous observations.

As usual the time of man’s first appearance in America is a major interest, and new evidence has come bearing upon his presence here in late Pleistocene times. There are now four places in the United States where stone implements have been found in apparent Pleistocene association, so we can say that this year marks the advancement of the American Pleistocene man problem to its final stage. Definite conclusions may be expected at any moment. In Europe, Africa, and the Near East the data for the early Stone Age cultures have been enriched.

Respecting the study of existing races mention should be made of progress in the exploration of New Guinea and investigations of the remaining few tribes in Australia and Melanesia living in a near-primitive state.

GEOLOGY 1929

by ALFRED C. LANE
Professor of Geology and
Mineralogy, Tufts College

PERHAPS the great achievement of 1929 is the enlistment of more precise physical and chemical methods to help in unraveling the history of the earth and its structure.    For instance, by studying its electric conductivity, more conductive strata have been located perhaps thirty miles down.

Again, the records of the relatively new station for the reception of earthquake waves at Honolulu have identified two or three different layers of rock. Adams and his colleagues of the Geophysical Laboratory have been testing the properties of rocks so that we can tell the velocities with which granites, basalts, etc., propagate such waves, and thus identify the rocks.

Delicate tests of gravitative force have been carried on not only at sea, showing that the sea floor is heavier than the continental rocks, but also in the search for oil. Wells for oil have been carried deeper with startling rapidity. Only a short time ago the deepest well in the United States was 7,756 feet. Now Texas and California are racing with a number of wells over 8,000 and up to 8,600 feet deep.

The age of the upper Cambrian trilobite-bearing shales of Sweden has been estimated by the amount of helium and lead produced from the uranium they contain.  Arthur Holmes has estimated the age of two igneous rocks from the ratio of the helium produced. It seems to me that we may look forward to an approximate dating of geologic strata by the helium ratio within ten years, and that we may look as an ultimate goal to a year-by-year, climatic history of the earth comparable to that which Huntington has worked out from the rings of the California great trees for the last three thousand years. Only this will go back more than three hundred thousand thousand!

PHOTOGRAPHY 1929

by C. E. KENNETH MEES, D.Sc.
Director, Research Laboratory,
Eastman Kodak Company

AMONG the scientific applications of photography, there should be noted a considerable advance in the photography of the infra-red spectrum. This has been made possible by the application of Neocyanine plates. Such plates have been used for photographing the infra-red end of the solar spectrum and were also employed at the Sumatra eclipse with good results.

F. F. Lucas of the Bell Telephone Laboratories has made great progress in the use of ultra-violet light in microscopy. This work was originally done in connection with metallography, but he has now applied his methods to biological photographs and has obtained most interesting and valuable results, especially in the photography of tumors.

Amateur cinematography continues to develop. A color process which was introduced in 1928 is finding a wider extension in this field.

In standard motion picture work, there has been a great development of sound photography, and the “talkies” are now universal.

A sensation of 1929 has been the introduction of wide film by means of which a large picture of much greater width is being shown. It is expected that this wide film will have a great future in the industry.

Color motion pictures have been introduced on a large scale during 1929, and a considerable portion of the pictures shown are now in color. Preparations are being made throughout the industry to extend the use of color, as well as of wide film and of sound.

ARCHEOLOGY 1929

by NEIL M. JUDD
Curator of American Archeology,
United States National Museum

WITHIN the Americas, the most notable achievement unquestionably has been the National Geographic Society’s establishment of a chronology that adds some 1,500 years to history; determines the age of Pueblo Bonito, most famous ruin of the southwestern United States; and dates some forty other villages heretofore indefinitely classified as prehistoric. Henceforth it will be possible, by correlation, more closely to approximate the relative ages of divers New World peoples whose dead civilizations are gradually being revivified by various research institutions.

From Europe and Asia come echoes of new discoveries by the Pennsylvania-British Museum expedition at Ur of the Chaldees, by the British Academy in Constantine’s Hippodrome at Constantinople, by Italians throughout Italy and in Crete, by French archeologists at Delos and Delphi, by Russians in the Crimea, and by Americans at Corinth and elsewhere.

PSYCHOLOGY in 1929

by A. T. POFFENBERGER, PH.D.
Professor of Psychology, Columbia University

THE outstanding event in the psychological world during 1929 was the ninth International Congress of Psychology, held for the first time in America, at Yale University, September 1 to 7. Twenty-one foreign countries were represented by from one to twenty-two psychologists. There was a total attendance of more than 1,000, the largest group of psychologists ever brought together.

Of particular interest were the reports of the ten representatives from the Union of Socialistic Soviet Republics. Their extreme centralization of education, business, and industry offers particularly favorable ground for applying psychology on a grand scale. As an indirect result of the congress, plans have been made for making this work as well as that of other countries more generally accessible, through translations and otherwise.

Particularly significant is the publication by the dark University Press (Worcester, Mass.) of the Psychological Register, containing the names of contemporary psychologists throughout the world, together with a bibliography of the publications of each individual.

The formal announcement of the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University marks a new era in the study of human problems. Its aim is to study man in his social setting, and it will bring together all the sciences which can aid in this undertaking, including—in addition to psychology—sociology, anthropology, law, medicine, and others. Many problems hitherto too complex tor solution by any one scientific group should respond to this joint attack.

MINING AND METALLURGY 1929

by SCOTT TURNER, E.M.
Director, U.S. Bureau of Mines

ONE interesting development in the mining field in 1929 has been the steady advance in prospecting methods, by which many valuable mineral deposits heretofore unknown have been discovered.

Remarkable increases in efficiency are reported at various mines developing large low-grade ore bodies. This has been achieved by the application of the caving method of mining and by thorough underground organization. By changing from the usual advancing method to the retreating method, in Michigan copper mines several thousands of feet deep, the former menace of crushing from heavy rock pressure has been removed. At other mines in Michigan, Tennessee, and Canada, ore extraction is started at the lowest levels, the work progressing from the bottom up. This system eliminates prohibitive pressures, saves timber, disposes easily of waste from developments, and gives less inflow of surface waters and greater safety.

Improvements in mine ventilation have added greatly to labor efficiency.

The most important developments in ferrous metallurgy have been the Ashton process for producing wrought iron in large tonnages at low cost, the tremendous increase in the production of stainless steels and irons, the introduction of nitrided steel, and the introduction of tungsten carbide as a machine tool. In nonferrous metallurgy, the advances to be noted include a willingness on the part of industry to invest money to effect small savings in metal recovery and the development of lighter and stronger alloys for aircraft.

In the ore-dressing field, there have been steady developments in flotation and classification, resulting in improved grade of product, thus giving richer feed to smelters which were consequently able to produce more metal per unit of slag and impurities. The flotation of nonmetallic and nonsulphide ores has increased greatly. In secondary crushing, cone crushers are gradually replacing rolls and small gyratory breakers.

ASTRONOMY IN 1929

by HEBER D. CURTIS
Director, Allegheny Observatory

NEARLY all the research of our great modern observatories is in the form of vast “continuing programs,” planned to last decades instead of months.

So numerous have been minor but none-the-less valuable accretions to the total of astronomical select any particular one as epoch-making. In one field it may be the finding of a brother Milky Way moving over 2,000 miles per second; in another, the investigation of some maverick star, the sending stations of whose atoms seem to follow no regular law of broadcasting their spectra; in another, the proof that hitherto unexplained spectral lines are due merely to some familiar element under strange and unusual conditions of excitation; in still another field, the laborious calculations which will enable us to predict the vagrant paths of some group of minor planets for a millenium to come.

It is sufficient, for the astronomer at least, to know that more than satisfactory progress continues to be made in the long and laborious research programs of the world’s large observatories.

Perhaps most popular interest continues to center in the project for a great reflecting telescope of 200 inches aperture. This must still remain as a hope for the future, as ten years may prove to be too short a time for its completion. Much preliminary research must be done before we shall even be certain that a 200-inch mirror, weighing thirty tons, is a possibility. But encouraging results have already been secured as to the possibility of making such a mirror of fused quartz. The year 1929 has been marked by progress in such preliminary experimentation, and in the details of the design of this giant instrument, which may be expected to display an outer universe at least fourfold and perhaps eightfold as great as at present.

MEDICINE AND SURGERY 1929

by MORRIS FISHBEIN, M.D.
Editor, Journal American Medical Association
Popular Science Monthly – January 1930

THE following subjects have been of exceeding interest during the year just completed.

The concentrated extract of vitamin D made by irradiating ergosterol and now prescribed and sold as viosterol is of the greatest importance as a preventive and cure of rickets, and for all other vitamin D effects in the body. Ultra-violet rays continue to be of interest, particularly a new quartz mercury vapor bulb developed by the General Electric Company. This gives only the intensity of sunlight and may therefore be used as a home light.

The use of toxic gases in industry aroused the consternation of the public when deaths were found to be due to methyl chloride leaking from certain types of home refrigerators. Means were developed for adding an odorous gas to methyl chloride so that the householder might realize its presence.

Experimentation with cancer in hundreds of laboratories has yielded results of interest, but it is still safe to say that no specific method for the prevention and treatment of cancer has been discovered. The speed of modern life is reflecting itself in a decrease of expectancy of life after forty years of age.

The liver is found to be a vast storehouse of remedies, most conspicuous at this time being the extract used for the specific control of pernicious anemia. Workers in the field of genetics have discovered the specific hormones to control the determination of sex and maturity. Control of the metabolic rate of the egg permits the development of male or female as the experimenter may desire. A skin test for pregnancy is being perfected.

An electrical device for sealing blood vessels permits safer and more rapid operations on the brain. A new method of staining the germ of tuberculosis received a medal of award because it permits the more certain diagnosis of this disease.

The big problem of modern medicine is to furnish scientific medical diagnosis and treatment to all people at a price they can pay.

COMMUNICATION DEVELOPMENTS 1929

by FRANK B. JEWETT, Ph. D.
President, Bell Telephone Laboratories
Source: Popular Science Monthly – January 1930

IMPROVEMENTS in apparatus, circuits, and methods continue to extend the limits of communication and to im-prove its speed, quality, and depend-ability. Illustrative of this is the proposed transatlantic telephone cable, the main link of which will probably extend 1,800 nautical miles from Newfoundland to Ireland. This project has been made possible by many inventions and developments, chief of which are a new alloy, perminvar, used to “load” the copper conductor in the cable, and a new insulating material known as “paragutta.”

Increase from 1,200 to 1,800 in the maximum number of pairs of telephone wires which can be placed in a standard-sized cable sheath, improved switchboard and private branch exchange equipment, improved textile insulation for wire and apparatus, experimental telephone type-writer exchange service, improved methods of intercity telephone cable construction, and accomplishment of television in colors are other developments.