Coïncidentally I'm reading Bill Bryson's _A Brief History of Everything_, where I'm informed that I was mistaken about the "aluminum/aluminium" story. I'd always heard that it was named "aluminium", but an early news article about in the USA misspelled it "aluminum" and the misnomer stuck.
Bryson, though, says that the discover named it "aluminium" and then, for unknown reasons, changed it to "aluminum" some years later. I add, however, that a) both stories could be true - that is, the discoverer of aluminium (who was American, IIRC) may have changed to aluminum because he saw that the cause was already lost and declined to fight a losing battle. And b) there are a number of unhappy inaccuracies in _A Brief History of Everything_. It's very interesting, and tells us a lot about famous scientists that we didn't already know. Asimov, in his marvelous science-history book about our understanding of the atom, gives us a great deal of technical information in his inimitable fashion, making much of it more comprehensible than it was to me before. But he didn't have much to say about Edwin Hubble's personality, or Einstein's mistaken beliefs, the abrasiveness of one scientist and the generosity of another. So I'm still reading Bryson's book. But I don’t feel obliged to believe ~all~ its scientific claims. --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. -Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Wayne Bickerdike Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2020 23:17 Is that why you took the U out of COLOUR and LABOUR and the I from ALUMINIUM? Or is it the Elizabethan English that America adopted? Perpetuating Manglish? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
