Science

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Rubber is a polymer, naturally occurring molecule, chemically composed of a string of smaller molecules called monomers. It was first put to practical use in the 1700s by chemist Joseph Priestly who discovered that it could rub pencil marks off paper, hence the name rubber. By World War I, however, rubber was far more than a school supply. It had countless uses particularly in wartime applications, but the sources for rubber were in Allied hands, therefore German chemists developed a synthetic rubber from acetone. The search for a synthetic rubber led some chemical companies to seek other uses for man made polymers.

 Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Quote from The Graduate

                                “Ben, I have just one word for you, one word,”

                                “What’s that?”

                                “Plastics.”

Intro. : A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: By the 1920s, radio transmission of newspaper photos was a regular part of print journalism, but the process was of restricted value because it made use of expensive photographic paper that had to be chemically developed. One inventor, a transplanted Brit, William George Harold Finch, wanted to take the idea a step further. He developed a process that used radio waves to transmit written words and pictures to a home receiver similar to an AM radio. The printer was very slow and produced results that were rather crude by current standards, but the idea was so intriguing that several big-city newspaper papers, such as the St. Louis Times-Dispatch, began experimenting with Finch’s equipment and that of his rival John Hogan. Perhaps this was a defensive tactic. Newspapers were a print medium and their publishers had convinced themselves that radio and its infant cousin, television, were too transitory to be satisfactory. They believed that people wanted their news in tangible form.