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1930 The Box of Mr. Skinner (book p. 97)
The psychologist B.F. Skinner constructed a special box for the study of learning behaviour in animals. Skinner didn’t name it "Skinner Box", but the term quickly became popular. Hewas even suspected of having raised his second daughter Deborah in a Skinner Box (which was not true). Here a segment from a documentary about Skinner. Skinner Box
1938 The 28-Hour Day (book p. 107)
One of the great unsolved mysteries of sleep research at that period was whether the human sleep–wake rhythm of 24 hours was merely a habit changeable at any time or whether people had an internal, hard-wired body clock.
So sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman set out to search a location where there was no difference between day and night. He found it in a 20-metre wide and 8-metre high rock chamber in the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, where he and his student Bruce Richardson wanted to try out the 28 hours day: sleeping for 9 hours, working for 10 and having 9 hours’ worth of leisure. They spent 32 days in the cave. Richardson adapted to the new cycle after just a week. Kleitman, who was 20 years older, failed to adapt . Below some old news footage from the experiment. Sleep Experiment in Mammoth Cave
1945 The Great Famine (book p. 110)
"Will You Starve That They Be Better Fed?" ran the slogan on the leaflet that the biologist Ancel Keys had circulated to community service workers. Keys wanted to test how to bring semi-starved people back to normal. For finding out ne needed semi-starved people. For the selected 36 volunteers the experiment that followed remained "the most significant event in their lives". Right up to the 1990s, they regularly held reunions.
After the experiment, three of them changed their profession and became chefs. In this documantary a former test subject comments on historical footage of the experiment.
Starving for Science
1946 Holidaying in a Draught (book p. 120)
When researcher at the British Government’s Common Cold Unit in Salisbury 90 miles southwest of London tried to find out how one gets a cold they were in for a surprise: their experiments demonstrated that the common cold had nothing to do with cold temperatures. Although most people believe differently that is true to this day. Being a guniea pig was especially popular with students. They considered it a cheap holiday: free accommodation in spacious flats which were fully equipped with books, games, a radio and telephone and spend your leisure time playing table tennis, badminton, or golf. You even got paid three shillings a day for your trouble. The only risk was: one could catch a cold. Watch this hilarious movie about the experiment. Common Cold Research at Salisbury
1951 Nosediving in the Vomit Comet (book p. 132)
To this day, nobody has managed to create a machine that could produce even the slightest reduction in gravity at ground level. The only way of getting 35 seconds of weightlessness was invented in 1951: by flying a bombtrajectory with a plane. The KC-135, a military version of a Boeing 707, that was later used to train astronauts was aptly called "vomit ccomet". Anyone who doubts that people in the cabin of the KC-135 really attain a state of weightlessness during parabolic flight should watch the film Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks. The film crew hired out the actual ‘Vomit Comet’ to shoot the relevant scenes. The Vomit CometHere is world famous physicist Stephen Hawking who was on board of the vomit comet in 2007. Stephen Hawking flies in the Vomit Comet
1954 Frankenstein for Dogs (p. 137)
Russian surgeon Vladimir Demikhov had carried out a heart transplant operation on dogs, and had subsequently conducted lung transplants and bypass operations as well. In 1954 he approached the ultimate transplantation: he sewed a young dog's head onto a second dog’s neck.
Even at the time, there was controversy over what insights were supposed to be gained from these experiments, but they did succeed in raising Demikhov’s profile. After the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I in 1957 made it the first nation to put a satellite into orbit, Demikhov’s operations were hailed as the "Sputnik of surgery".
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