September 3, 2021

Happy 200th, Electric Motor

On 3 September 1821, Faraday observed the circular rotation of a wire as it was attracted and repelled by magnetic poles. In 1820, the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted had noticed the peculiar behavior of a compass near a charged wire. Building on that work, Faraday, and many others, would turn electricity from a parlor trick to a core mechanism of our everyday world.
posted by nickggully at 12:57 PM PST - 25 comments

OverDriven?

Writing for The New Yorker, Daniel A. Gross dives into “the surprisingly big business of library e-books”: (archive.org)
[P]ublishers [mostly] do not sell their e-books or audiobooks to libraries—they sell digital distribution rights to third-party venders, such as OverDrive, and people like Steve Potash sell lending rights to libraries. These rights often have an expiration date, and they make library e-books “a lot more expensive, in general, than print books,” Michelle Jeske, who oversees Denver’s public-library system, told me.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:33 AM PST - 41 comments

The Wheel Of Time – Official Teaser Trailer

The first three episodes of The Wheel of Time premiere on Amazon Prime Video starting on Nov. 19, with new episodes dropping each Friday through the season finale on Dec. 24. [more inside]
posted by Pong74LS at 6:07 AM PST - 135 comments

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