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πŸ”— Inventors killed by their own inventions

πŸ”— Death πŸ”— Lists πŸ”— Invention

This is a list of inventors whose deaths were in some manner caused by or related to a product, process, procedure, or other innovation that they invented or designed.

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πŸ”— The Machine Stops

πŸ”— Novels πŸ”— Radio πŸ”— Novels/Science fiction πŸ”— Novels/Short story

"The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories. In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs, predicted technologies similar to instant messaging and the Internet.

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πŸ”— Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

πŸ”— Economics πŸ”— Systems πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Sociology πŸ”— Organizations πŸ”— Engineering πŸ”— Systems/Project management

Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization.

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πŸ”— United States Camel Corps

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— Military history/United States military history πŸ”— United States/American Old West πŸ”— Military history/Military logistics and medicine πŸ”— Military history/American Civil War

The United States Camel Corps was a mid-19th-century experiment by the United States Army in using camels as pack animals in the Southwestern United States. While the camels proved to be hardy and well suited to travel through the region, the Army declined to adopt them for military use. The Civil War interfered with the experiment and it was eventually abandoned; the animals were sold at auction.

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πŸ”— Category:Obsolete occupations

πŸ”— Economics πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Sociology πŸ”— Occupations

This is a category of jobs that have been rendered obsolete due to advances in technology and/or social conditions.

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πŸ”— Bernoulli discovered e by studying a question about compound interest

πŸ”— Mathematics

The number e is a mathematical constant approximately equal to 2.71828 and is the base of the natural logarithm: the unique number whose natural logarithm is equal to one. It is the limit of (1 + 1/n)n as n approaches infinity, an expression that arises in the study of compound interest. It can also be calculated as the sum of the infinite series

e = βˆ‘ n = 0 ∞ 1 n ! = 1 1 + 1 1 + 1 1 β‹… 2 + 1 1 β‹… 2 β‹… 3 + β‹― {\displaystyle e=\sum \limits _{n=0}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{n!}}={\frac {1}{1}}+{\frac {1}{1}}+{\frac {1}{1\cdot 2}}+{\frac {1}{1\cdot 2\cdot 3}}+\cdots }

The constant can be characterized in many different ways. For example, it can be defined as the unique positive number a such that the graph of the function y = ax has unit slope at x = 0. The function f(x) = ex is called the (natural) exponential function, and is the unique exponential function equal to its own derivative. The natural logarithm, or logarithm to base e, is the inverse function to the natural exponential function. The natural logarithm of a number k > 1 can be defined directly as the area under the curve y = 1/x between x = 1 and x = k, in which case e is the value of k for which this area equals one (see image). There are alternative characterizations.

e is sometimes called Euler's number after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (not to be confused with Ξ³, the Euler–Mascheroni constant, sometimes called simply Euler's constant), or as Napier's constant. However, Euler's choice of the symbol e is said to have been retained in his honor. The constant was discovered by the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli while studying compound interest.

The number e has eminent importance in mathematics, alongside 0, 1, Ο€, and i. All five of these numbers play important and recurring roles across mathematics, and these five constants appear in one formulation of Euler's identity. Like the constant Ο€, e is also irrational (i.e. it cannot be represented as ratio of integers) and transcendental (i.e. it is not a root of any non-zero polynomial with rational coefficients). The numerical value of e truncated to 50 decimal places is

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πŸ”— Imperial Airship Scheme

πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Aviation/aircraft πŸ”— United Kingdom πŸ”— British Empire πŸ”— Aviation/Defunct Airlines

The British Imperial Airship Scheme was a 1920s project to improve communication between Britain and the distant countries of the British Empire by establishing air routes using airships. This led to the construction of two large and technically advanced airships, the R100 and the R101. The scheme was terminated in 1931 following the crash of R101 in October 1930 while attempting its first flight to India.

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πŸ”— Chicken Eyeglasses

πŸ”— Agriculture πŸ”— Birds πŸ”— Veterinary medicine

Chicken eyeglasses, also known as chicken specs, chicken goggles, generically as pick guards, and under other names, were small eyeglasses made for chickens intended to prevent feather pecking and cannibalism. They differ from blinders in that they allow the bird to see forward, whereas blinders do not. One variety used rose-colored lenses, as the coloring was thought to prevent a chicken wearing them from recognizing blood on other chickens, which may increase the tendency for abnormal injurious behavior. They were mass-produced and sold throughout the United States as early as the beginning of the 20th century.

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πŸ”— Formula of the day: Jeans length

πŸ”— Physics

In stellar physics, the Jeans instability causes the collapse of interstellar gas clouds and subsequent star formation, named after James Jeans. It occurs when the internal gas pressure is not strong enough to prevent gravitational collapse of a region filled with matter. For stability, the cloud must be in hydrostatic equilibrium, which in case of a spherical cloud translates to:

d p d r = βˆ’ G ρ ( r ) M e n c ( r ) r 2 {\displaystyle {\frac {dp}{dr}}=-{\frac {G\rho (r)M_{enc}(r)}{r^{2}}}} ,

where M e n c ( r ) {\displaystyle M_{enc}(r)} is the enclosed mass, p {\displaystyle p} is the pressure, ρ ( r ) {\displaystyle \rho (r)} is the density of the gas (at radius r {\displaystyle r} ), G {\displaystyle G} is the gravitational constant, and r {\displaystyle r} is the radius. The equilibrium is stable if small perturbations are damped and unstable if they are amplified. In general, the cloud is unstable if it is either very massive at a given temperature or very cool at a given mass; under these circumstances, the gas pressure cannot overcome gravity, and the cloud will collapse.

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πŸ”— Yarn Bombing

πŸ”— Public Art πŸ”— Textile Arts πŸ”— Graffiti

Yarn bombing (or yarnbombing) is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colourful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fibre rather than paint or chalk. It is also called wool bombing, yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting, or graffiti knitting.