Precision Power: the First Half Century of Bodine Electric Company. By Howard F. Bennett. New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1959. Pp. xiv + 336. $6.00.

1960 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-376
Author(s):  
Harold C. Passer
1948 ◽  
Vol 135 (879) ◽  
pp. 133-147

In 1880 George Eastman commenced the manufacture and sale of gelatin photographic dry plates in Rochester, New York. From that undertaking, the Eastman Kodak Company, incorporated as an American company in 1902, has developed. In 1912 Mr Eastman decided to organize a laboratory, independent of the factory laboratories, which should carry out work on both the science and practice of photography. He was influenced by his observation of the success of industrial research under Dr Whitney’s direction at the research laboratory of the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, U. S. A. and of the laboratories of the great German dye works. He had been particularly impressed by the work done by the Bayer Company at Elberfeld. In 1906 I had completed my thesis for the doctorate of science at University College, London, the subject being the theory of the photographic process, and had joined the old-established but very small firm of Wratten and Wainwright, Ltd., of Croydon as joint managing director. At Croydon both the conduct of research on photography and its application to the manufacture of photographic materials were continued actively, so that by 1912 many new materials had been introduced, especially panchromatic plates and the light filters and dark-room safe-lights required for their use; and the little firm was flourishing.


1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-254
Author(s):  
W. E. May

During the last half-century authors who have had occasion to write about the history of the magnetic compass have quoted extensively from The Intellectual Rise in Electricity, by Park Benjamin (New York, 1895). The wealth of references given by this writer to substantiate his statements promises a reliability which is at times sadly lacking. In one part of this book the statement is made that: ‘A single Finnish Compass has been discovered for which the people claim great antiquity, the card or scale of which is marked for a latitude where the sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstices differ by sixty degrees.’ For this the author gives as authority Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, Vol. xvii, page 414 (Paris, 1823), but in fact this reference contains no suggestion of the discovery of an ancient Finnish compass. All there is, is a brief reference to the ancient Finnish method of dividing the compass card which, instead of four cardinal points, had six, spaced sixty degrees apart. This information was said to be based on an article in a monthly miscellany, published in Finland under the name of Mnemosyne. Captain D. Daragan of Helsinki has been kind enough to obtain for me a copy of the original article, which was printed in Swedish, and Rektor S. Nydell has been so good as to translate it into English.


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