October 3, 2007
Science and Technology — It's Fun, You'll See!
A jury of science professionals unveiled their picks for the top ten most important scientific achievements in Chicago history. The list, from most to least important:
Congratulations, Maroons; most of these are affiliated with the University of Chicago (numbers 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10).
This is all part of Chicago Science in the City 2007, a citywide program that encourages all of us to explore and to delight in the beauty of science. The City's hosting a shitton of events of the next few weeks, including a lecture tonight at Uncommon Ground about viruses that cause cancer, a Lego engineering class on Saturday (sadly, for 4th and 5th graders; we are all about a grown-up one next year, CSitC), a robotics workshop for teens and adults, and a bunch more cool stuff. Lots of it is geared to the kiddies, but plenty of it — like a science of gender lecture or discussion about the science of dance — are definitely for an adult crowd.
Why yes, the headline is a shout-out to an '80s PSA.
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james koh is going to kiss you for this post
At risk of insulting the persons involved with the above advances, I would like to suggest one scientific achievment that did not make this Top Ten list.
The advance that I am nominating is described in the following sentence from the Wikipedia entry for "Turbine": "....1903: Commonwealth Edison Fisk Street Station opens in Chicago, using 32 Babcock and Wilcox boilers driving several GE Curtis turbines, at 5000 and 9000 kilowatts each, the largest turbine-generators in the world at that time. Almost all electric power generation, from the time of the Fisk Station to the present, is based on steam driven turbine-generators..."
It seems to me (and I'm not an engineer or anything) that this scientific advance (i.e., large-scale use of steam driven turbines to power a city) has had more impact on the daily lives of people around the world than has most of the Chicago-based achievements listed in the above Top Ten list.
By the way, one of the original GE turbines from Fisk is in a museum somwhere out east, while the Fisk Station still operates at the south edge of Pilsen, though the building that stood in 1903 is gone.