African American inventor and draftsman Lewis Latimer’s parents self-emancipated to give their children the opportunities afforded to those born into freedom. A Chelsea native, Latimer’s career took him from the Navy, to a patent law firm, to the prestigious circle of Thomas Edison’s pioneers.
Continue reading Lewis Latimer, Master Inventor (episode 120)
Although Cotton Mather is best known for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, he also pioneered smallpox inoculation in North America, using a traditional African method he learned from a man named Onesimus who Mather enslaved. This week, you’ll hear about Boston’s history with smallpox, including multiple epidemics, the controversy surrounding Mather’s inoculation movement, and the final outbreak in the 20th century. We first covered this topic way back in Episode 2, but these days we’re better at researching, writing, and recording, so this episode should be a step up.
With New Year’s Eve comes the ball drop in Times Square at the stroke of midnight. But in the late 1800s, Boston dropped a ball every day to mark the stroke of noon, because telling the time was serious business. The time ball, along with telegraphic signals and fire alarm bells, announced the exact time to the public, at a time when the exact time was critical to navigation on the high seas and safety on the newfangled railroads. With ultra-precise clocks made by local jewelers and true astronomical time announced daily by the Harvard Observatory, Boston Standard Time became the de facto standard for a wide swath of the country long before time zones were officially proposed and adopted.
This week’s show relates three incidents across three centuries when daytime turned to darkness in the skies over Boston. They weren’t solar eclipses. Instead, they were a different natural phenomenon, one that was completely unpredictable and each time led to speculation that the end of the world was at hand.
During an era more associated with the Wild West, a group of women in Cambridge made historic advances in the field of astronomy, discovering new stars and fundamental principles about how our universe works. In the beginning, they were treated as menial clerical workers and paid a fraction of what their male counterparts got. Only decades later did they win academic respect, earning advanced degrees and finally the title Professor. They were the Human Computers of the Harvard University Observatory.
Continue reading Episode 58: Harvard’s Human Computers Reach for the Stars
This episode examines the life of Walter Dodd, who started his career as a janitor at Harvard Medical School before becoming a pharmacist, physician, and the Father of American Radiology. Though as you will hear, his journey was not without great personal sacrifice.
Your humble hosts are traveling this week, trying to see the first total eclipse of our lifetimes. While we’re gone, listen to the story of the 1806 eclipse, the first total eclipse seen in Boston after European colonization.
