ArchiveMay 2019

The birth of Lucas Heights

A historian friend, Neil Huybregts, pointed me to George Dalton. A New Zealand engineer, he joined Harwell in 1947, worked on the British breeder, then transferred back home in 1949. In 1955 he was snapped up by the Australian Atomic Energy Commission’s chief scientist, Charles Watson-Munro (whom I know quite well through his early role in Canada’s atomic efforts). Dalton returned to. . .

Electricity in Chicago

Anyone who has been to Chicago agrees it’s a grand city but I didn’t know this: On an atlas of worldwide electrical cultivation, the brightest zone, the very most intense buildup, would center around Chicago in the decade from 1918 to 1929, when a majority of homes in the city were wired up. Chicago was the most electrified city in the world, with an average per-capita annual. . .

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