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Short Stories of Science and Invention

A Collection of Radio Talks by
Charles F. Kettering

INDEX

Weekly, from September 1942 to July 1945, Charles F. Kettering gave five-minute intermission talks about Science and Invention during the radio broadcasts of the General Motors Symphony of the Air.

Kettering invented the first automobile self-starter, and for 31 years directed a research laboratory for General Motors.

These radio talks are a fascinating legacy from the mind of a prolific inventor. The obvious anachronisms now add a historical perspective of the war-time period in which they were written.

These web pages now preserve some of the most popular stories for a new generation to read The text and art come from a General Motors booklet of selected talks. (Reprint, March 1959)

57.  Flying Death
A Radio Talk by
Charles F. Kettering

     Just as Roger Bacon seven hundred years ago encouraged the alchemists of the Middle Ages to use a more scientific approach in their work, so our modern research men have taken the black magic of our South American jungle and separated the facts from the superstitions. By using this process they have uncovered several new principles of value to the doctor. The more we investigate the customs and medicines of so-called savage tribes, the more we appreciate their contributions to our modern world. Through their intimate contact with nature, and under the pressure of necessity, they have, through the centuries, developed or discovered drugs and cures that now have world-wide use.

     We all know of the value of quinine, and our war in the tropics has greatly emphasized its importance, but it is not well known perhaps that the South American Indians used extract of quinine to treat malaria hundreds of years before a Jesuit priest brought the first knowledge of it back to civilization.

     Or perhaps we do not know that the leaves of the coca bush from which Cocaine is derived was used by these Indians to reduce pain in certain skull operations hundreds of years before anaesthetics were developed here.

     Only recently a material first mentioned by Sir Walter Raleigh 350 years ago has received a great deal Of attention from the medical profession. It is called Curare here and "the flying death" in the South American jungle. It gets its name "flying death" from the fact that it is used to tip the arrows shot by the Indians from their blow guns.


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- 100 -
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William Harvey
Johann Goethe
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Carl Gauss
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- 90 -
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Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
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Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
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Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
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John Watson
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Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
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