Good morning.
Tuesday will be a warm day for Whitewater, at 70 degrees, with a slight chance of rain.
Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
The Wisconsin Historical Society notes that John Bascom, noted educator, was born on this day in 1827:
On this date John Bascom was born in Genoa, New York. A noted educator, university president, and author, Bascom received his B.A. (1848) and M.A. (1852) from Williams College in Massachusetts. In 1855, he entered the Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.
He was appointed president of the University of Wisconsin in 1874. A leader in college education, he devoted his career to improving university standards by encouraging improved high school instruction. Bascom also advocated co-educational instruction, a rarity in the nineteenth century. During his tenure as president, the first Agricultural Experimental Station and the School of Pharmacy were created, and new buildings such as the Washburn Observatory, Old Science Hall, the Library, and Assembly Hall were built.
Bascom was a strong supporter of women’s rights, was a leader in the Prohibition party, and advocated the right of workers to join trade unions and strike for decent wages. He resigned from his university presidency in 1887 and returned to Williams College to lecture in sociology and political science. John Bascom died on October 2, 1911. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, pg. 29]
They had me, right up until the membership in the Prohibition Party (no solution for over-drinking that).
Google’s daily puzzle asks about the US Postal Service: “How much more do you pay to mail a first-class letter by U.S. Postal Service today than your great-grandfather would have on November 3, 1917?”
What if someone actually built ‘The Greatest Machine Never Built?” Charles Babbage (1791-1871) proposed a mechanical form of a computer over a century before anyone first began building one. What if someone actually built that proposed, but never constructed, machine?
Here’s a talk about Babbage’s achievement, and what it would be like if someone built the machine: