"sir, there's a second charlie kirk"

Dalén’s third invention was a sunlight-sensitive valve that turned the acetylene off when it was sunny and on when it wasn’t, no humans required. This was especially good for light buoys (which aren’t designed to be staffed), and it was extremely reliable, requiring almost no maintenance. (10/n) 🧪⚛️

hehe …BRILLIANT

Making lighthouses cheaper required two things: greater automation and a different fuel. Acetylene was attractive because it produces a bright light and was manufactured industrially.

Unfortunately, it's also *highly* explosive. Like, "look at it wrong and it goes boom" explosive. (5/n) ⚛️🧪

Now, back to Dalén. Like Alfred Nobel, Dalén was Swedish, born in 1869 in the small farming community of Stengstorp. There’s now a museum there dedicated to him and his inventions, which included a machine to make coffee and turn on the lights in the mornings. #relatable (2/n) 🧪⚛️
www.dalenmuseet.se

So what persuaded the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to award the 1908 Nobel Prize for Physics to Gabriel Lippmann, for inventing a version of colour photography that wouldn’t even let you take a selfie?

The answer, in a word, is “politics”. (8/n) 🧪⚛️

Colour photography is hard, which is why almost all photos from the first ~100 years of photographic history are either black-and-white or artificially tinted. Lippmann's method did away with that. This photo is well over 100 years old, and it's as gorgeous as the day Lippmann took it. ⚛️🧪(4/n)

Part 2 of PHYSICS NOBEL PRIZES YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF is now up: bsky.app/profile/drml...

Absolutely 💯

European economists: Let's the USA do it, they are only hurting themselves. Let's look for new trade alliances with Cambodia, Vietnam, Canada and China. If Europe turns its back on the USA, completely new opportunities will arise.