The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

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A patent for a device putting wood-cutting blades on a chain, so that people can cut down trees – or, in the wake of hurricanes, cut up ones that have fallen down.

Technically, this patent was merely an improvement on existing chainsaws, with better joints between the tooth-carrying links on the chain.

There’s a metaphor there.

The patent also calls it an “endless chain.”

There’s a metaphor there, too.

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It spins, you know.

This jewelry-making tool was once available from Messrs. H.J. Cooper & Company, on Oxford Street West.

I found it, or at least the magazine in which it appeared, in the Smithsonian archives.

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The European Space Agency has a way with names. This is in their image library as “Engine.”

The description offers little more detail: The ducted fan engine of the Lilium aircraft.

A Lillium aircraft is one of these, a vehicle that looks like something out of Blade Runner or The Fifth Element. The technology is called Vertical Take-Off and Landing; it’s a VTOL aircraft that claims to be able to act like a taxi between London and Paris in an hour.

SONG: “Frozen Atmospheres”.

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE:Record-shattering 2.7-million-year-old ice core reveals start of the ice ages,” Science, 15 Aug 2017, as used in the post “2.7 million-year-old ice shatters records, reveals ancient atmospheres – and ice ages.”

ABSTRACT:
I kinda knew I would be writing about this when I read the story. I just had that image of tiny bubbles trapped under compressed ice for an unimaginable span of time – effervescence stopped in its tracks, lightness un…

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Fans of Roderick on the Line may recognize these as living metaphors for modern marketing offers. But they’re invading the Great Lakes (literally) where they grow to adulthood and (literally) drain the blood of native fish.

On the other hand (not literally), aww! Cute baby animals!

According to the US Geological Survey, where I found this image, the slower they grow, they more likely these lampreys are to be male. No word on how that’ll help control their population….

This is a diagram of how a solar eclipse works, or at least how they thought one worked in the 14th century. It might be one of the very first illustrations of its kind. As explained by the book’s description in archive.org:

This book, which contains Sacro Bosco’s influential, 13th-century astronomy tract, along with works by Peurbach and Regiomontanus, is notable for its color illustrations. In particular, this edition, issued by Erhard Ratdolt in 1485, is considered to be the first …