50 YEARS AGO

“Man and his machines” — After expressing the fear that technical colleges are not educational institutions but teaching shops, [Mr Harry Rée] emphasized that “in building a world where machines do the work which used to be done by men, it is not good enough to build men who can only work like machines”...

He concluded by envisaging the great contribution educational institutions could make by a counter attack on the creeping disease of passive pleasures which is eating away the soul of modern man. “If we could make the effort...we should look upon automatic factories and computing machines as our benefactors enabling us and our children to taste to the full the real joys of life.”

From Nature 1 October 1955.

100 YEARS AGO

“The omission of titles of addresses on scientific subjects” — What this busy world wants is help to get at what we are interested in with the least possible waste of time.

This hot haste may seem unbecoming to men of science, or perhaps it may appear that we Americans are in too big a hurry — that we are too much impressed with the motto “time is dollars.” But there are many other nimble things we are trying to keep up with, and one of those is the progress of science in Europe, along the lines in which we are especially interested.

If a member of so young and giddy a nation might venture to make a suggestion to older and wiser people, it would be in favour of requesting or requiring the presidents of the various scientific organisations and sections of the British Association to provide headings for their addresses so that those of us who have not the time to read all of these good things may be able at a glance to pick out what we want especially to see.

From Nature 28 September 1905.