Corrections

13 January 1920  ·  17 July 1969

Rocket works in a vacuum after all

On 13 January 1920 an unsigned editorial in The New York Times, headed “A Severe Strain on Credulity”, told readers that Professor Robert Goddard’s rocket could not work in space, because there would be nothing for it to push against. It suggested the professor lacked the physics taught daily in high schools.

On 17 July 1969, the day after Apollo 11 left for the moon, the paper printed a short item headed “A Correction”. It accepted that a rocket can work in a vacuum, and closed:

“The Times regrets the error.”

Forty-nine years, six months and four days. Goddard had died in 1945.

Sources: Smithsonian Air & Space, “The Misunderstood Professor”; The New York Times, 13 January 1920 and 17 July 1969.

9 October 1903  ·  17 December 1903

Flying machine early by a million years

On 9 October 1903, two days after a much-publicised flying machine fell into the Potomac, a New York Times editorial headed “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly” estimated that mathematicians and mechanicians might produce one that did in one to ten million years.

On 17 December 1903, at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright flew for 12 seconds and about 120 feet. The brothers flew four times that day. Wilbur’s last flight covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.

The estimate was out by between one million and ten million years, less 69 days. Two bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio did the work.

Sources: The New York Times, 9 October 1903, p. 6; NASA, “120 Years Ago: The First Powered Flight”; Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 1903 Wright Flyer.

8 December 1896

Leading scientist declines to join flying club

On 8 December 1896 Lord Kelvin, one of the most celebrated physicists of his day, wrote from the University of Glasgow to Captain Baden Baden-Powell, declining to become a member of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain.

He said he had enjoyed the captain’s work with kites, but had not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation, other than by balloon.

Seven years later the Wrights flew. The society added “Royal” to its name in 1918 and is still going. It has not asked for the letter back.

Sources: Kelvin’s letter of 8 December 1896 (transcription and scan, zapatopi.net); Royal Aeronautical Society.

6 January 1912  ·  1960s

Continents found to move; geologist was right

On 6 January 1912, in a lecture in Frankfurt, Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had once been joined and had drifted apart. He set it out in full in his 1915 book, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane.

Geologists largely rejected it. The idea never gained acceptance in his lifetime. Wegener died on the Greenland ice sheet in November 1930.

In the 1960s the evidence of seafloor spreading, including a 1963 paper by Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews, led to plate tectonics. His central idea was right. His explanation of how it happened was not, which is the usual way with lunatics.

Sources: US Geological Survey, “This Dynamic Earth: Alfred Lothar Wegener”; Vine and Matthews, Nature, 7 September 1963.

1979  ·  1984  ·  3 October 2005

Doctor drinks the germ; prize follows

In 1979 Robin Warren, a pathologist in Perth, Western Australia, saw curved bacteria in stomach biopsies. Ulcers were blamed on stress and acid, and few believed anything could live in the stomach at all.

In July 1984, unable to infect laboratory piglets, his colleague Barry Marshall drank a culture of the bacteria himself. Within about a week he was ill with gastritis. An endoscopy showed it. He recovered.

On 3 October 2005 the two were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. Most peptic ulcers are now cured with antibiotics.

Sources: Nobel Prize press release, 3 October 2005; Barry Marshall, Nobel Lecture, 2005; Robin Warren, Nobel biography.