Eunice Newton Foote

In 1856, Foote became the first person to make a connection between the Earth’s temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere, though she’s rarely credited for it. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We have
done various episodes related to the environment on the show before,

(00:21):
so things like the Donora smog and the Cuyahoga River
fires and the London smog of n two. We talked
about extinctions in our episode on endlings, and about invasive species,
and our episode on Australia's rabbit proof Fence, and then
in more recent times in our episode on Kutzoo that

(00:42):
came out not too long ago. While all of these
topics are related to the environment and humans and industries
impacts on the environment, none of it's really about climate.
I don't know that we've ever talked about the climate, uh,
in terms of the current climate crisis. We've talked about

(01:02):
things like the year without a Summer, which was a
climactic phenomenon. Yeah, and we've talked about ways different scientists
have measured various aspects of the climate a little bit. Yeah,
some of that has come up in Unearthed. Yeah, not
climate itself specifically, Yeah, and the warming of the climate

(01:23):
in particular, which is an ongoing emergency, obviously, so today
we are going to remedy that. We're going to talk about.
Eunice Newton Foot and in eighteen fifty six she became
the first person to make a connection between the Earth's
temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere.
That credit, though, usually goes to John Tendall, who made

(01:47):
the same connection a few years later. Eunice Newton was
born in Goshen, Connecticut, on July eighteen nineteen, and she
was baptized on September twenty nine of that year. Her
father's name was Ice Newton, Jr. Which is a delightful
coincidence considering Eunice's path in life, and her mother's name
was Thursday, and Eunice was the eleventh of their twelve children.

(02:11):
Isaac not a scientist or a philosopher, but a farmer,
and although he seems to have been very successful at this,
he also liked to invest in various business ventures, and
these did not always work out, and by the time
he died in eighteen thirty five, he was deeply in debt.
Sometime after Unice was born, but well before her father's death,

(02:34):
the family moved to East Bloomfield, New York, and that's
where Eunice's parents would live for the rest of their lives.
And really beyond that, we just don't know much about
her early life, except that in eighteen thirty six, when
she was about seventeen, she enrolled at Troy Female Seminary
that later became known as the Emma Willard School after
its founder. It's possible that Unice left journals, correspondence, or

(02:57):
other personal accounts of her time in Troy or other
times in her life, but if she did, they have
not been brought to light. So we don't really know
much more about her time at the seminary than we
do about her earlier life. But there are a couple
of conclusions that we can draw. One is that her
education there would have had a really strong foundation in science,

(03:18):
and that's something that wasn't really typical for a women's
school at the time. Emma Willard corresponded and collaborated with
Amice Eaton, who was co founder of the Renseller School
that's now Rinseller Polytechnic Institute that was about seven miles
or eleven kilometers away from Troy. Eaton was a natural

(03:39):
scientist and an educational reformer, and his reforms included a
focus on learning by doing rather than focusing on memorization.
So Willard's curriculum for the Women's Seminary incorporated a lot
of these ideas. So Unice would not only have attended
lecturers on the scientists, she also would have learned about
designing and conducting speriments as part of scientific study. It's

(04:02):
also possible that Eunice's time at the seminary influenced a
connection that would happen later in her life. Eunice was
at the Seminary from eighteen thirty six to eighteen thirty eight,
and later on she would live near and work with
Elizabeth Katie Stanton, who graduated from Troy Female Seminary in
eighteen thirty two. So it is possible, but not really

(04:23):
documented anywhere, that these two women felt a connection thanks
to their having gone to the same school. On August twelfth,
eighteen forty one, when Eunice was twenty two, she married
Elisha Foote, who was about ten years older than she was.
After their marriage, they moved to Seneca Falls, New York,
also home to Elizabeth Katie Stanton. At one point, Elisha

(04:45):
actually bought the home that's known today as the Elizabeth
Katie Stanton House, although it doesn't look like the Foot's
ever lived in that house. Both of Unice and Elisha's
children were born in Seneca Falls, and those were Mary,
who was born on July twenty one, eighteen forty two,
and Augusta, who was born October eighteen forty four. In

(05:07):
eighteen forty eight, while living in Seneca Falls, both Eunice
and Elisha were involved with the women's rights movement and
the Seneca Falls Convention. Unice was one of the five
women on the committee that was tasked with keeping the
conference proceedings. She and Elisha also both signed the Declaration
of Sentiments that was crafted during the convention. On most

(05:29):
reproductions of that document, Eunice's signature is fifth after Lucretia Mott,
Harriet Katie Eaton, Margaret Prior, and Elizabeth Katie Stanton. Again,
we don't have a lot of personal remembrance of her,
but all of this suggests that she was an active
and involved participant in this phase of the women's rights
movement in the United States. While living in Seneca Falls,

(05:53):
Unice became a member of the American Art Union, which
worked to promote the creation and sale of American art.
All Aisha became District attorney for Seneca County and then
a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Eventually, the
Foots moved from Seneca Falls to Saratoga Springs, New York.
And regardless of where they lived, both Elisha and Unice

(06:14):
seemed to have both been really interested in experiments and inventions.
Their published work suggests that they set up laboratories in
their homes where they did experimental work that they hoped
would be worthy of publication. This includes the papers that
were read at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science meeting in eighteen fifty six, which is where we

(06:35):
are at chronologically in this story. But we're going to
have a lengthier discussion of Unice's scientific work later, so
for now we will move on to the rest of
what we know about her life. In addition to their
published scientific work, both Elisha and Unice applied for and
were granted multiple patents. Unite's patents included one for a

(06:57):
quote filling for souls of boots and shoes that's kept
the boots in the shoes from squeaking that patent was
issued in eighteen sixty Later, she developed a paper making machine.
According to a favorable write up of this machine in
the Boston Posts in eighteen sixty four, one Massachusetts paper
maker that put this invention into use was saving a

(07:20):
hundred and fifty seven dollars a day in materials, which
would have been a significant amount. In eighteen sixty four.
That same article suggested that rapping and printing papers that
were made using this method would cost two or three
cents less per pound than other paper did. One of
a Lisha's specialties as an attorney was patent law, and
he represented himself in legal disputes involving his patents, and

(07:44):
since some of his patents were financially valuable, there were
several of those. For example, one of his inventions was
a device to regulate the draft of stoves, and a
dispute over this patent led all the way to the U. S.
Supreme Court in Sills be versus Foot. This was honestly
too convoluted a case to be summed up in an
episode that is not about Elisha, or potentially even just

(08:07):
that case. But a similar device already existed when Foot's
patent was granted, but this case also just includes a
ton of back and forth about who had been allowed
to introduce what into evidence and how much money was
owed to whom. It was a big tangle, not really
in the scope of today's show. Yet. When we've done

(08:28):
Supreme Court cases on the show before, I've usually really
enjoyed reading the text of the Supreme Court decision, but
this one just made my eyes crossed. I was like,
I can't what are you even saying here. So in
eighteen sixty four, though Elishah was appointed to the U. S.
Patent Office Board of Appeals, and then in eighteen sixty

(08:49):
eight he became the eleventh Commissioner of Patents for the
United States. His work at the Patent Office would have
required him to be in Washington, d C. By the
point the foot daughters, Marian Augusta were grown. They were
soon to be married. It's not entirely clear whether they
and Eunice went with him, but we do know that

(09:10):
Unite did at least visit. On April sixteenth, eighteen sixty eight,
Susan B. Anthony's newspaper The Revolution published a piece by
Elizabeth Katie Stanton which recounted a trip to Washington d C.
It read, in part quote Judge Foote and his scientific
wife escorted us to the Patent Office, which, like all
other departments of government, we are told, is used for

(09:32):
political ends. We did not go there, however, to lay
bare its corruptions and favoritisms, but merely that we might
have it in our power to refute the assertion of
the Reverend Dr Todd, trepanned by Gail Hamilton's, who, in
his recent attack on his fair countrywomen, said that there
had been no inventors among our sex. And there we

(09:53):
found many witnesses against the unhappy Todd. Mrs Unis Foote
has herself taken out several patents and is occupied at
this time making a new kind of paper. But later
Stanton went on to say, quote Mrs Foote remarked to
us that she had no doubt that half the patents
there were the inventions of women. But as men had

(10:14):
the money to get up the models and loved notoriety,
they had been taken out in their names. If the
Reverend Todd will take the trouble to investigate this matter
for himself, he will no doubt find this to be true.
Elisha was the Commissioner of Patents for a little less
than a year until April of eighteen sixty nine, and

(10:34):
then he returned to his private law practice. By the
late eighteen seventies, he and Eunice had moved to St.
Louis to live with their daughter Mary, who had married
John B. Henderson. Henderson had served as the U. S.
Senator for Missouri from eighteen sixty two to eighteen sixty
nine and was co author of the thirteenth Amendment to
the U. S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery. Accept his punishment

(10:56):
for a crime. This is another one of those movements
were not really having a lot of personal accounts about
or from her means we don't know a lot of
what was going on behind the scenes. So this whole stretch,
you know, has happened over a period of time that
included the U. S. Civil War, and we just don't
have a lot of information about anything in their lives
related to that. We can reasonably conclude though, that their

(11:20):
daughter marrying the co author of the thirteenth Amendment to
the Constitution probably means that they were all against slavery
in this context, but not something that's particularly written down
anywhere yeah, one would help. But as we know today,
not everyone in a family feels the same way. Yeah,

(11:41):
and not everybody in New York or any of the
other places they lived was totally aligned on that, even
though the states in question had outlawed slavery by the
time the Civil War started. Anyway, to return to the story,
Elijah died of heart disease at the Henderson home on
October three, and Unice's life after that point is pretty

(12:03):
much a mystery. She died on September eight in Lenox, Massachusetts,
at the age of sixty nine. Both she and Elishah
were interred in the Foote family Mausoleum in Greenwood Cemetery
in Brooklyn, New York. According to a nineteen fifteen Newton
family genealogy that was compiled by ERMINA. Newton Leonard, Unice

(12:23):
was quote a fine portrait and landscape painter. She was
an inventive genius and a person of unusual beauty. No
picture of Unice survives, at least not one that has
been unearthed yet, but her science writing does, and we'll
talk more about that after a sponsor break. The American

(12:50):
Association for the Advancement of Science was established in Boston
in eighteen forty seven, and it held its first meeting
in Philadelphia in eighteen forty eight. The organization's purpose was
to both promote and advance science, and to that end,
it had an official membership roster, but it also arranged
annual meetings that were open to the public. In terms

(13:11):
of its membership, in those early years, there were no
strict criteria. Anyone who was nominated with someone else seconding
the nomination was admitted as a member. It was incredibly
rare for someone to be denied, and for the most part,
once you were remember you were a member for life
as long as you paid your dues. But that rule
only came into being after the organization realized that there

(13:33):
were a lot of people on its membership lists who
were not paying dues and weren't really active anymore. It
was one of those moments where people were looking at
the membership list, like, who are these people? Are they
even still alive? Don't really know. Elisha Foote was elected
to the American Association for the Advancement of Science at
its tenth meeting, which was held in Albany, New York,

(13:56):
in August of eighteen fifties. Six and at that meeting
he also read a paper that he had written, which
was titled on the Heat of the Sun's Rays. According
to the program, he was to read his paper on
Friday August, but some accounts place that is happening on
the Unice's paper is listed in the program immediately after Elisha's,

(14:17):
with a note that it was to be read by
Professor Henry. That was Professor Joseph Henry, who was the
first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a past president
of the Triple A S. Although the program that was
printed ahead of the meeting shows both of the Foot's
papers with the same title. When Unicees was printed later,
it was with the title Circumstances Affecting the Heat of

(14:40):
the Sun's Rays. So side note here. For reasons that
are not clear to me at all, neither Elisha's nor
Unice's papers was printed in the proceedings of this eighteen
fifty six Triple A S meeting, nor were they included
in the list of papers that were not being printed
because their authors hadn't turned in a copy to be printed,

(15:02):
which delights me that that was a list in there,
and that there were seventies six papers on it, which
just feels like a lot. It's tricky to tell how
that number of seventies six papers compares to the total
number of papers that were read, though, because in the
program some of the papers were read more than once.
So I tried to figure that out to be like, Okay,

(15:24):
how many people read a paper and didn't turn in
a copy of the paper, And then I was like,
I'm gonna have to print all this thing out and
cross off duplicates, and that's just not happening today. So
both these papers, though, were later printed in volume twenty
two of the American Journal of Science and Arts that
was in November of eighteen fifty six. Each of the

(15:44):
papers was noted as having been read at the Triple
A s meeting. So it's just kind of a mystery
exactly what went on in terms of the proceedings. Given
their similar subject matter and some common elements in their methods,
it's likely that Elisha and Unice collaborated with one another
on their experiments and their papers. Elisha's used a variety

(16:07):
of setups to compare the ambient temperature to the temperature
that the thermometer recorded when it was placed in the sun.
Measuring what he called the quote relative heat of the
Sun's rays, which got stronger when the ambient temperature was hotter.
He also did the same experiment using a burning glass
to focus the sun's rays. Unice's experiment looked at how

(16:28):
the heat of the sun affected different gases, and her
words quote the experiments were made with an air pump
and two cylindrical receivers of the same size, about four
inches in diameter and thirty in length in each were
placed two thermometers, and the air was exhausted from one
and condensed in the other. After both had acquired the

(16:49):
same temperature, they were placed in the sun side by side,
and while the action of the sun's rays rose to
a hundred and ten degrees in the condensed tube, it
attained only eighty eight degree in the other. She concluded
in this part of the paper that quote, this circumstance
must affect the power of the Sun's rays in different
places and contribute to their feeble action on the summits

(17:11):
of lofty mountains. She doesn't specify what these cylinders were
made of, but they were presumably glass. Unite repeated the
same experiment using air that had been saturated with moisture
in one tube and air that had been dried with
calcium chloride in the other. And she found that when
the cylinders were placed in the sun, the air that
was full of water vapor got hotter than the dry

(17:33):
air did. And third, she repeated the same experiment with
common air in one tube and carbonic acid gas, which
was the term used at the time for carbon dioxide
in the other. She wrote, quote, the highest effect of
the Sun's rays I have found to be in carbonic
acid gas. She also noted that quote the receiver containing

(17:54):
the gas became itself much heated, very sensibly more so
than the other, and on being removed, it was many
times as long in cooling. Foot concluded by saying of
the carbonic acid gas, quote, an atmosphere of that gas
would give to our earth a high temperature. And if,
as some suppose, at one period of its history, the

(18:16):
air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present,
an increased temperature from its own action, as well as
from increased weight, must have necessarily resulted. On comparing the
Sun's heat in different gases, I found it to be
in hydrogen gas one hundred four degrees in common air
one hundred six degrees, in oxygen gas on eight degrees,

(18:39):
and in carbonic acid gas one twenty five degrees. The
significance of this wasn't really understood at the time, but
this makes Unice Newton Foot the first person to connect
carbon dioxide and water vapor, which we know today as
greenhouse gases, to the Earth's climate and the possibility of
a warmer planet. There are a lot of sources that

(19:02):
say that Unice was prohibited from reading this paper at
the Triple A S meeting because she was a woman,
and that that's why Joseph Henry read it on her behalf.
And there were definitely men in the Triple A S
who did not think women belonged there, but the association
did allow women as members. The first woman to be
elected was astronomer mur Riya Mitchell in eighteen fifty. Entomologist

(19:25):
Margaretta Morris was elected that same year. Triple A S
meetings were open to the public, and the Triple A
S had issued an open invitation for women to attend
its first meeting in eighteen forty eight, and women frequently
did attend, although again there were certainly men in the
Triple A s, who considered women more like companions and

(19:46):
ornaments for the male membership than participants, like active participants
with knowledge and interests of their own. Unie was not
a member of the Triple A S, but non members
also presented papers at every Triple A S meeting between
eighteen forty eight and eighteen sixty. Strangely, Triple A S
records of non member activity don't record any non members

(20:08):
presenting in eighteen fifty six. That may be because Joseph
Henry read Unite's paper for her, or because she was
considered to be covered under her husband's membership. That list
also assumes the non members in question are men, so
it also wasn't unheard of for people's papers to be
read by someone other than the author themselves. At that

(20:30):
eighteen fifty six meeting, Arthur shots paper on the geology
of the lower Rio Bravo was read by topographical engineer W. H. Emery,
who was a major in the U. S. Army. Emery
also read Marine T. W. Chandler's on the meteorological phenomena
observed at various points on the Boundary Survey and the

(20:50):
reasons for Emery reading these two papers and proxy for
someone else that's not really noted anywhere. So it's possible
that the organizer of the Triple A S meeting in
eighteen fifty six prevented units from reading her own paper
because she was a woman. But if that is the case,
it's just not documented anywhere, and the ongoing involvement of

(21:12):
women in the Triple a S at this point suggests
that there may have been some other explanation. Foot is
the only woman known to have presented a paper that year,
even though it was presented by proxy, and as a
note on that proxy, Joseph Henry was extremely prominent and
well respected in the scientific community, so it's also possible

(21:33):
that his reading of the paper was intended as an honor.
He also seems to have felt compelled to make some
remarks on the subject of women's roles in science, although
there's no word for word transcript of what these remarks
were anywhere. They were summarized and in eighteen fifty seven
volume that was edited by David A. Wells, and this

(21:54):
was titled we have a long title which everyone knows
we love Annual of Scientific Discovery or Yearbook of Facts
in Science and Art for eighteen fifty seven exhibiting the
most important discoveries and improvements and mechanics, useful arts, natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geology, geography, antiquities, etcetera,

(22:19):
together with a list of recent scientific publications, a classified
list of patents, obituaries of eminent scientific men, notes on
the progress of science during the year eighteen fifty six, etcetera.
It's a zippy one, just rolls off the tone. I
got almost to the end of the list of subjects
before I had to take a breath. Before summarizing the

(22:43):
content of Foot's paper, Wells characterized Henry's comments this way quote.
Professor Henry then read a paper by Mrs Unice Foot,
prefacing it with a few words to the effect that
science was of no country and of no sex. The
sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful,
but the true. If Eunice Newton Foot was indeed prohibited

(23:06):
from reading her own paper in the eighteen fifty six
Triple a s Meeting, that prohibition seems to have been
lifted the next year, eighteen fifty seven. That year, she
was scheduled to read on a new source of electrical
excitation at the annual meeting in Montreal. According to the program,
she was to present her paper on Friday, August fourteenth,

(23:27):
and there is no notation in the program that would
suggest that she did not read it herself, although there's
another report that suggests that she was introduced again by
Joseph Henry. This second paper documented an experiment she had
done over the course of eight months, again using pumps
to either condense or evacuate air in a container. She

(23:48):
concluded quote the compression or expansion of atmospheric air produces
an electrical excitation. There are only two physics papers known
to have been written by women and published in American
journals prior to eighteen eighty nine, and they are these
two papers by Eunice Newton Foot. She also wrote two

(24:10):
of the only sixteen physics papers known to have been
published by American women in the entire nineteenth century. Also
in eighteen fifty nine, after ongoing discussion with the Triple
A s about women's roles in the organization, this statement
was printed in the proceedings of its thirteenth meeting, quote,
no action is necessary in regard to the motion to

(24:31):
admit Ladies as members. Inasmuch as two ladies have already
been admitted, it's not clear whether that motion that's referenced
was made and addressed before or after educator and scientist
Elmira Lincoln Phelps became a member, which happened at that meeting.
Elmira Lincoln Phelps, Maria Mitchell, and Margaretta Morris are the
only three women known to have officially been Triple As

(24:53):
members before eighteen sixty, although since many people on the
member list included only their initial as, there might have
been others. We'll talk about how Eunice Newton Foots papers
were received and their impact after another quick sponsor break.

(25:18):
After Joseph Henry read Unice Newton Foot's paper at the
eighteen fifty six meeting of the Triple A s, it
got some attention in both the United States and Europe
in both popular and scientific journals. As we said earlier,
both the Foot's papers were published in full in the
American Journal of Science and Arts, and David A. Wells

(25:39):
Annual of Scientific Discovery paraphrase both of their papers, as
well as Henry's introductory remarks of Unice's paper. Even though
Unice's paper is much shorter than her husband's. His synopsis
of a little longer than the one of of her
husband's is perhaps she was so succinct he felt you

(26:00):
needed to like really make sure people understood. Uh. The
September eighteen fifty six issue of Scientific American included an
article titled Scientific Ladies Experiments with Condensed Gases. It commented
on women's participation in science, reading in part quote, owing
to the nature of women's duties, few of them have

(26:21):
had the leisure or the opportunities to pursue science experimentally.
But those of them who have had the taste and
the opportunity to do so have shown as much power
and ability to investigate and observe correctly as men. This
article then described Foots experiments and her conclusions before dipping
a toe into a debate that was going on at

(26:42):
the time between the plutonists and the neptunists. Briefly, plutonists
argued that the Earth had previously been molten and that
rocks were formed through volcanic activity, while neptunists argued that
rocks had formed from sediment in the oceans. Now, either
of these two ideas was totally right, and neither one

(27:03):
was totally wrong. They both had some valid points and
some inaccuracies, but geologists were just divided into these two camps.
The author of this Scientific American article contended that foots
experiments provided quote a more rational cause for quote ancient
great atmospheric heat uh than the idea of the earth

(27:27):
having previously been a fiery ball. This piece ended by saying, quote,
the columns of the Scientific American have been oftentimes graced
with articles on scientific subjects by ladies, which would do
honor to men of the highest scientific reputation, and the
experiments of Mrs Foote afford abundant evidence of the ability

(27:47):
of woman to investigate any subject with originality and precision.
The October eighteen fifty six edition of United States magazine
was overall not as flattering as that was. It's article
Science and Savans in America, which was written under the
pen name Anthroposts, covered the eighteen fifty six Triple A

(28:08):
S meeting, noting that no women or people of color
were included in the organization's membership list. It's not clear
what whoever wrote this article was using as the list
that they were working from, because the list that was
published in the conference proceedings included both Maria Mitchell and
Margaretta Morris. This article, though, claims that Foote and Mitchell

(28:30):
were both considered to be members, while not mentioning Morris
at all. This article mentions Henry reading Foot's paper and
quote apologizing as he did so for the lady, who,
he said, although thus devoting her time to science, had
a feminine heart. We protest against such apologies and feel
that it is the opposite fact that so few of

(28:53):
our countrywomen can be found who give any attention to
science as amateurs. Pardon the solcism or investing eiders. It
is this fact that needs either explanation or apology. This
goes on to describe quote ladies of perfect breeding and
finish gracing by their presence the chambers in which the
sessions were held and listening intently to the enunciation of

(29:15):
obstruse principles and mathematical and physical science. Uh. This sort
of sounds like it could be leading into a discussion
of the barriers to women's participation in science, but it
does not do that. Instead, it becomes insulting, saying, quote,
we could not help asking ourselves, why does it not
occur to this portion of our race, that they have

(29:36):
faculties of observation and reason as well as we, and
that instead of displaying the last new bonnet and the
richest lace on the side seats, or perhaps whispering and
tittering over some trifling, ludicrous incident in the proceedings, it
is their prerogative, not less than that of man, to
bring upon the tapist before a scientific body, the results

(29:58):
of their investigations, discoveries and deductions, and the common world
of matter and mind, which, with them we jointly inhabit.
It started so good, and then at lands with why
are you so dingy? Women? I really thought as I
started reading it, I was like, oh, man, I really
think this is gonna be talking a lot about, like

(30:19):
why there weren't women and people of color and involved
in this more? No, it just became a bunch of sexistencils. Nice.
A summary of the eighteen fifty six meetings of the
British and American Associations of the Advancement of Science, was
published in the Canadian Journal of Industry, Science and Art.

(30:39):
It summarizes Unice's paper, but makes no mention of her husband's.
The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for eighteen fifty seven summarizes
Unice's paper as well, but since it also mentions Alisha's work,
it's a little unclear which of them the journal is
attributing the experiment to. The German journal Yadresbick printed a
summer of it as well, which was dated eighteen fifty six,

(31:02):
although that actually came out in eighteen fifty seven. Then,
on May eighteenth, eighteen fifty nine, Irish physicist John Tendall
made a similar observation to Eunice Newton Foots about the
ability of water, vapor and carbon dioxide gas to hold heat.
He reported this observation to the Royal Society of London
later that same year, and in his work he credited

(31:26):
French physicist Claude Matthias Poult for having done earlier related work.
And there's been some discussion about whether Tendall knew about
Eunice Newton Foots work and disregarded it because of her sex.
Roland Jackson, who was publishing in the Royal Society Journal
of the History of Science in twenty nineteen, argues that

(31:47):
he probably did not, that this omission is more about
the state of scientific communication across the Atlantic in the
mid nineteenth century. He speculates that Tendell just wouldn't have
been likely to have read any of the journals or
other publications that referenced foots work prior to his own observations.
Tindall's experimental setup was more sophisticated than Foots was, but

(32:11):
unlike her, he did not make the connection between these
gases and the Earth's climate until later in his work.
In eighteen sixty one, he did some research that showed
that carbon dioxide, water vapor, and hydrocarbon gases like methane
absorbed more radiant energy than nitrogen and oxygen, which are
the primary components of air. That's really when he started

(32:32):
to speculate that different concentrations of these gases can affect
the Earth's climate. The first paper to really quantify the
carbon dioxide concentrations involved in the greenhouse gas effect was
published by Swedish scientists Vante august Arian Has in his
later work, also suggests that the burning of fossil fuels

(32:54):
contributes to this process. About ten years after Tindall published
his work on this, he and Joseph Henry became acquainted,
but there's no suggestion that the two of them ever
talked about Foot's work and how it related to Tindall's. However,
there were other people who cited Eunice Newton Foot's work
later on in the nineteenth century. For example, Ethan Samuel

(33:15):
Chapin's book Gravitation The Determining Force references Henry's reading of
Foot's paper at the Triple A s in a section
on conditions likely to affect the temperature of the Moon's surface.
This section of the book discusses matter on the Moon
and how different densities of that matter must have different
capabilities for retaining heat. This is interesting to me because

(33:39):
it suggests not only that people were familiar with what
she had written about, but that they thought it was
important enough to also apply it to other situations than
what she was directly experimenting on. Today, John Tendall, not
Eunice Newton Foot is often known as the founder of
climate science, but over the last decade people have been

(33:59):
trying to correct that attribution. This effort really started in
twenty eleven when Raymond Sorenson published Unice Foot's pioneering research
on CEO two and climate warming that was published in
the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Search and Discovery. Sorenson
had stumbled across that summary of Foot's paper that was

(34:21):
in the eighteen fifty seven Annual of Scientific Discovery and
had realized its significance. There was even less publicly available
information about Unice Newton Foote in eleven than there is today,
Not even the text of her paper had been unearthed
at that point. Sorenson updated his paper in to note
that a copy of her paper had been found in

(34:42):
the Saratoga Springs City Historians files in Saratoga Springs, New York,
and that copy matched the one that was printed in
the American Journal of Science and Arts. This update also
clarified that it was Foote herself who made the connection
between carbon dioxide gas and the Earth's climate, and the
climate having been maybe previously warmer prior to the discovery

(35:06):
of her original paper, though it had not been clear
whether she had made that connection herself or whether it
was something David A. Wells had speculated on when he
was writing up that little summary of it. However, we
should note that claims that Eunice Newton Foote was totally
forgotten until Raymond Sorenson published his paper are not really accurate.

(35:27):
Sorenson does seem to have been the first person to
directly point out that Foote was the first person to
observe something that Tindall got the credit for, but Sally
Gregory coolesteads the formation of the American scientific Community. The
American Association for the Advancement of Science eighteen forty eighteen
sixty was published by the University of Illinois Press in

(35:49):
nineteen seventy six, and it mentions Foot delivering her paper
on electrical excitation in eighteen fifty seven. In addition to
that information on Foot that's found debt ancestry dot com
also includes a scan of a nineteen seventies six letter
from Deborah Dean Warner, who was then Curator of the
History of Physical Sciences at the Smithsonian, to Dr Judith

(36:13):
Wellman at State University of New York. Warner and Wellman
had talked about Foot at the National Archives Conference on
Women's History, according to this letter, and the letter mentions
both of Foot's papers and their titles. Warner's Science Education
for Women in ante Bellum America, published in the journal ISIS,
a Journal of the History of Science Society in ninety eight,

(36:36):
also cites both of Foot's papers. Wellman's The Road to
Seneca Falls Elizabeth Katie Stanton in the First Women's Rights Convention,
which was published in two thousand four, also mentions both
papers existence but not their subjects, and Lois Arnold's Four
Lives in Science Women's Education in the Nineteenth Century, which
was published in nineteen eighty four, mentions Foot's article on

(36:59):
the from the Sun's Rays, using the eighteen fifty six
Scientific American article as its source on that. So there
were various folks who were definitely talking about Unice Newton
Foot and other contexts before that breaking out. There's also
a short film on Unice Newton Foot called Unice and
that was released in and it is available on YouTube

(37:22):
as a Unice Newton Foot. I have listener mail the
Circles Backs to Invasive Species, which I had flagged to
read back in June when we got it is now August,
and then it just I just didn't somehow I overlooked
it after that, So this is from Wendy, and Wendy wrote,
Dear Holly and Tracy, I have just listened to your

(37:43):
kad Zoo episode and I'm finally prompted to email and
thank you for your excellent program. You succeed in combining deep,
well considered research with an entertaining presentation. The kad Zoo
episode reminded me of the prickly pair story, which my
mother used to tell me as a child. She grew
up in the nineteen nis in Queensland, Australia, where the
prickly pear cactus had become an invasive pest on farmland.

(38:06):
She said it was introduced earlier to start a cokeneal industry,
since the cocon eal insect, which is used to make
red dye, lives on prickly pear plants, but it got
out of hand. In the nineteen twenties, the moth Cacto
blasts cactorum was introduced to Australia as a biological control
since its larvae eat the prickly pear. It was pretty

(38:27):
successful and now there are a very few prickly pear
plants seen in rural areas, although there were still a lot.
When I was a child in the fifties, my mother
was a home science teacher. She gave me her fruit
preserving recipe book from the nineteen thirties, which has a
recipe for prickly pear jelly. It starts with quote, take
four dozen nice ripe prickly pears and put them in

(38:50):
boiling water to soften the prickles. Then take a knife
and scrape them all off, cut into pieces, and boil.
After that, it's like a normal jelly recipe. Straining the
juice from the pulp, adding sugar and boiling sounds like
a lot of work. Thank you for your program. I'm
a great fan of history and never missed an episode. Wendy,
Thank you so much, Wendy for this note. We have
talked a little bit about coconeal in earlier episodes, about

(39:13):
things like dyes and colors, and I don't think I've
realized that the efforts to introduce plants that coconeal could
live on had led to invasive species problems. It's not
entirely surprising, because that does happen when you introduce species
to places they don't normally live sometimes. So thank you

(39:34):
again for your notes. If anyone would like to write
to us about this or any other podcast or a
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(39:58):
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