How Engineers Kick-Started the Scientific Method
How Engineers Kick-Started the Scientific Method

In 1627, a year after the death of the philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, a short, evocative tale of his was published. The New Atlantis describes how a ship blown off course arrives at an unknown island called Bensalem. At its heart stands Salo…

ENIAC, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80
ENIAC, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

Happy 80th anniversary, ENIAC! The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, the first large-scale, general-purpose, programmable electronic digital computer, helped shape our world.On 15 February 1946, ENIAC—developed in the Moore School of Elect…

How Robert Goddard’s Self-Reliance Crashed His Rocket Dreams
How Robert Goddard’s Self-Reliance Crashed His Rocket Dreams

There’s a moment in John Williams’s Star Wars overture when the brass surges upward. You don’t just hear it; you feel propulsion turning into pure possibility.On 16 March 1926, in a snow-dusted field in Auburn, Mass., Robert Goddard created an earlier…