An older man at the evening function bowed his head and wept quietly but copiously while while a young woman rendered the plaintive ballad, "My Old Kentucky Home."
The hostess tiptoed up to him and inquired tenderly, "Pardon me, are you a Kentuckian?"
"Nay, madam," the tearful one replied, "I'm a musician."
Sir George Thomas BeilbyBorn 17 Nov 1850; died 1 Aug 1924 at age 73.Scottish industrial chemist who developed (1890) the process of manufacturing potassium cyanide (widely used to extract gold from low-grade ore) by passing ammonia over a heated mixture of charcoal and potassium carbonate. Beilby entered the oil-shale industry in 1869 and greatly increased the yield of paraffin and ammonia by introducing the continuous retort. Noting the destruction of metals by ammonia at high temperatures, Beilby researched the flow of solids. He inferred that when a solid is caused to flow, as in polishing, the crystalline surface is broken down to a harder and denser layer. Although much criticized, this theory explained the hardening of metals under cold working and gave valuable stimulus to further research. |
