Word: light
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Before the last concert had taken place, Pittsfield was hit by the worst wind and rain storm in local history. Outside the little white auditorium, like a chambered nautilus, the hurricane howled. But to chamber-music fans, storms are merely a loud noise. When the lights went out, they rigged up light for the musicians from an automobile battery, listened away in the dark...
...schoolboy wore lace frill collars, a tunic and square-toed shoes, was considered peculiar by his mates. They were quite right. When he was hardly past 30, Maxwell invented electro-magnetic waves (e.g., wireless waves) out of his head, then proved mathematically that their speed must equal that of light. British physical scientists rank Maxwell second only to Isaac Newton. His immortal set of four equations, deemed a thing of beauty by scientific esthetes, is Exhibit A for apprentice theorists...
...Germany's Max von Laue. who was finding curious bright spots when X-rays are diffracted by crystals. Father and son joined forces, undertook intensive study of X-ray diffraction. They not only measured the wave lengths of X-rays (thousands of times shorter than those of visible light) but also penetrated the secrets of atomic architecture in crystalline substances. For these achievements William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg were jointly awarded a Nobel Prize...
...theorem that "the camera cannot lie" is one banality which no self-respect-ing photographer ever repeats. Unless a camera is skilfully used it can produce mechanical lies on the negative, and in many kinds of light or shadow even expert photographers do not yet know how to reproduce what they see. Under the best technical circumstances, moreover, a photograph tells precisely that fraction of truth allowed by the camera's brief interval of exposure and limited field of vision. This fraction may be very slight or very great, depending on the photographer's luck, care and awareness...
...Land of the Free (TIME, April 25), Evans' selection in his own book is many-sided, disinterested, clinical. The photographs are uncaptioned yet arranged to be looked at in order. In each the camera has caught the essential moment, memorized in detail some significant things: the early morning light on hundreds of back yards in an industrial city; four sour people on a Bronx bench on Sunday; a pompous Legionnaire with waxed mustaches, looking brave...