History of science
How we found out: the experiments, arguments and accidents behind what we know.
4 articles
History of science
Why is a keyboard in QWERTY order?
The letters on every phone and laptop are arranged in an order chosen for a machine nobody has used for fifty years. The famous explanation is that it was designed to slow typists down, and that is not what happened.
History of science
Why did ten days vanish in 1582?
People went to bed on the fourth of October and woke up on the fifteenth. Nothing happened to the Sun, and nobody lost any time. A rounding error had been accumulating for sixteen centuries, and somebody finally paid it off.
History of science
Why are there 60 minutes in an hour?
Everything else we count goes in tens. Time stubbornly does not, and the reason is a choice made five thousand years ago by people who had no easy way of writing a third.
History of science
How did one doctor work out that hands were killing his patients?
Two maternity clinics stood in the same Vienna building, a few steps apart. In one of them, mothers died nine times as often. Nobody could see why, and one doctor worked it out anyway.