One Thousand Years of Domelessness
For more than 900 years, between the fifth century and the Renaissance, Romans didn’t cap their buildings with domes. Why?
Talking with Machines: Computer Programming as Language
The proliferation of different types of computing machines in the 1950s enabled—or perhaps forced—the creation of programming languages.
Electric Fish and the First Battery
Allesandro Volta invented the voltaic pile, the earliest electric battery, in part because of his investigations into the torpedo, an electric ray fish.
Gray’s Music: Over the Telegraph
Inventor of the telephone Elisha Gray also pioneered the world’s first purpose-built electric musical instrument.
The Trouble with Reentry
Reentry of space junk in the 1970s forced First Nations communities into a reckoning with Cold War geopolitics and a burgeoning envirotechnical disaster.
Expanding the Possibilities for Preservability
A new tool from NYU Libraries helps authors, publishers, and preservation specialists assess the preservability of evolving digital scholarship.
Robert FitzRoy and the Laws of Storms
When FitzRoy distributed barometers to local fishing communities, he empowered individual sailors to use their own judgment about the weather forecast.
Caitlin D. Wylie on the Hidden Labor of STEM Research
An interview with Caitlin D. Wylie, a social scientist who analyzes “behind-the-science work” to understand how knowledge is produced and who produces it.
Popular Science—but Make It North Korean
In the 1950s, science in North Korea was presented in a way that fired children’s imaginations and encouraged youth to develop ideas that served the state.