Untitled

Dunstan Times, Issue 3148, 18 December 1922, Page 8

It has been (dated on what is sup posed to be good authority that I lie world's total output of pins is at flie rate of 200.000,000 a day. If so. it. may seem surprising that the world isn't becoming carpeted with pins. \\'o know bow easily tbey are lost —whore do they go to? .Most, of them decay into notbingness. for, actually, the pin its not such a time-defying object as il seems. Every pin dropped, in a damp place soon turns into a lew grains of rust. Willi new pins turned out by machinery in sue]) immense numbers our grandmothers' maxims about picking up pins are forgotten, but in the 1 Ith. century, wliem pins \wv<' first, introduced, they were valuable article not to he lightly lost, recalls "Everyday Science." An old law permitted the sale of pins on only two days in the year, the first and second of January. It was then the custom of all Ihe womenfolk to buy their pins for (he following 12 months. A<s is still customary, they went to their husbands or fathers for I lie wherewithal, and hence the term "pin money." Sir Ernest Rutherford, who has been chosen to preside over next year's meeting of the lirilitdl Association al Liverpool, is the leading exponent ol the new science of radio-activity, the foundations of which he laid while working with Professor Soddy in Uiei laboratories of Mc-Gill University, Montreal, lie is a New Zealander by birth, a Cambridge mam by education, ii Canadian by reason of his professor' ship at McGill, and he is known in England as Director of the famous Ca vendish Laboratory at Cambridge, and, the successor of Daw, Tvndall. Audi "J.J." Thomson at the Royal Institution.