RSC Blog

130 years ago a man showed the world how an electric charge run through a fine carbon filament in an evacuated glass chamber could emit light suitable to replace oil lamps or candles. This man had just unveiled one of the most important inventions in history, and most people reading will by now realise I’m talking about legendary American inventor Thomas Edison.

Except I’m not.

In the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society in 1879, it was a Sunderland-born polymath named Joseph Swan who publicly demonstrated for the first time “a practicable incandescent light bulb”. The RSC honoured his brilliance last week by awarding a Chemical Landmark to the Lit & Phil.

Joseph Swan Chemical Landmark Plaque

To highlight this wonderful achievement, the RSC put out the call to find the UK’s longest burning light bulb. We found the Livermore Centennial Light in California has been burning 109 years; surely there’s a bulb in the UK that’s been burning longer? We can but hope.

I was chatting about Swan’s invention and the competition with Carol Off on “As It Happens“, a Canadian radio show on CBC Radio 1, and she posed the question “how many chemists does it take to change a light bulb?” I’m afraid to say world-renowned British wit failed me that day, and I could give no humourous response.

Does anyone out there have a decent punchline?

It has long been known that most research articles start with “it has long been known”. This is generally followed by something you sort of knew, but not quite how, or when you learned it; yet it has “long been known”. But you know what they mean.

Anyone who has authored a paper knows it must be written in the secret, arcane language of scientific research. To the casual reader it may appear perfectly reasonable, but each publishing scientist has a kind of built-in universal translator – they know that when something “has long been known”, the author just couldn’t be bothered to find out who had first reported it.

A lone (rebel) scientist, C.D. Graham, Jr., flouted the vows of secrecy and published a glossary of research terms and their actual meanings in a 1957 issue of Metal Progress. I’ve reproduced it after the jump; use as a handy guide for the next time you read “it is generally believed that” and suspect the real meaning is “a couple of my friends think so too”. (more…)