The last time the Chicago Cubs make headway the World Series , spaceflight was trammel to the page of scientific discipline fable novel , smallpoxwas still drink down millions of people across the ball , and Einstein was yet to publish hisTheory of General Relativity . The year was 1908 , and scientific discipline was in many ways adhere on first base .
Nevertheless , many of the seeds of today ’s high - technical school world were being sow the last time the Commissioner ’s Trophy rest in the Windy City , and with the Cubs having finallybroken their 108 - year voodoo , it ’s the everlasting metre to contemplate on how the consequence of 1908 shaped the scientific century that followed .
The First Ford Model T Was Produced
On October 14 , 1908 , the Cubs seal a 4 - 1 World Series win over the Detroit Tigers with victory at Bennet Park in Detroit . Across Ithiel Town at the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant , the first ever mass - make cars were rolling off the fabrication line , pave the way for the automobile to become one of the capital American ikon of the twentieth century .
It ’s reasonable to say that Henry Ford really come to one out of the car park when he add up up with the conception of the production line , which not only wreak low-cost automobiles to the American pot , but provided the design for the hereafter of manufacturing across the world . Today , everything from McDonald ’s hamburger to(occasionally exploding ) smartphonesare make on an industrial scale using this model .
Henry Ford famously say he could make a machine in any color you require – as long as it ’s black . Richard Thornton / Shutterstock
The Ford Model T also ignited mankind ’s love affair with the undetermined road , transforming the way that we interact with the earth around us . And while the ever - expanding ball-shaped connection of main road continues to make transportation more convenient , it also brings with it a unexampled set of environmental concerns , as fumes fumes add toair toxicitylevels andforests are cut downto make agency for new roads .
Cars have sure enough amount a long way since those first the great unwashed - produced Fords , and it looks increasingly as though the time to come now lies in driverless vehicle . However , the metropolis of Chicago may have to await a while before the first self-reliant cars strike its street , as local official have purpose toban themuntil all prophylactic concerns have been put to rest .
liquified Helium Was Invented
In 1908 , Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes liquefied helium for the first clock time , and while his invention did n’t have many pragmatic app at the fourth dimension , it would later help to propel science into the space age .
The European Space Agency ( ESA ) , for example , used melted He to chill heat - sensitive constituent of itsHerschel space observatoryto -271 ° C ( -456 ° F ) when it was launched in 2009 , enable it to comprehend subtle temperature changes in far - off clouds of debris and gas . This allow it to nail the positioning ofprotostars , which are new stars in the early level of creation , and has serve us to increase our understanding of how sure ethereal object are formed .
Overall , Herschel has been credited with over 35,000 scientific observations – although that ’s just a ballpark figure .
Edward Teller Was put up
On January 15 , 1908 , Hungarian - American physicist Edward Teller was born in Budapest , and would later go on to invent the hydrogen turkey .
As one of the trailblazer of America ’s atomic artillery program , Teller helped set up theManhattan Project , which eventually give rise to the nuclear turkey that were send away on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II . As part of this endeavor , inquiry quickness like the Los Alamos National Laboratory were set up to contrive nuclear engineering , while a serial of reactors were created across the US in social club to generate radioactive isotopes .
Despite the fact that these adroitness were built by the American warfare machine , they in reality ended up doing the earthly concern some good as well . Most notably , they allowed for the production ofradioisotopeslike iodine-131 , which is used in radiotherapy for Crab .
Yet the Manhattan Project also bedevil a monumental curveball that nobody saw coming , as the radiation produce by nuclear testing – both in the US and in the South Pacific – permanently altered the chemistry of the satellite . The concentration of isotopes likecarbon-14 in the ocean and the grime has shifted vastly since these tests were carry out in the 1950s , meaning that we all now carry these in our body as well .
Some scientist therefore claim that the first check atomic explosion marked the daybreak of a new geological age , as human race ’s actions warp the surroundings and ushered in theAnthropocene .
Nuclear arm examination in the 1950s has had an irreversible effect on the total satellite . Everett Historical / Shutterstock
The Geiger Counter Was Invented
mouth of radioactivity , 1908 also saw the invention of the Geiger counter , which is used to valuate background signal radiation and later became fundamental to the destiny ofSchrödinger ’s cat , which is magnificently both alive and dead at the same time .
In the scenario reflect by Schrödinger , a cat is trapped in a box with a ampule of radioactive poison , a Geiger counter , and a mallet . The deadly substance has a 50 per centum prospect of decay over the course of an minute , and if it does , it will set off the release of the power hammer , smashing the ampule and kill the computerized axial tomography . Thus , from outside the corner , an percipient has no musical theme if the cat has survived .
The point of this thinking experiment is to illustrate the construct ofquantum principle of superposition , whereby an object can be in two opposing states at once . Impossible as it may seem , scientists have actually demonstrated this phenomenon in the real world , and in one display case managed to suspend a bug in two unlike positions at the same meter .
So while the Chicago Cubs have been struggling to whelm thecurse of the billy goatand in conclusion win a World Series , science has been hit home base run after home run .
