May 4

Through My Eyes

Sunday May 4

" Picking several horse-chestnut leaves from a tree in the garden next to his lab, Bose found that they responded to various "blows" in much the same way as had his metals and muscles. Excited by the results, he betook himself to his greengrocer and purchased a bag of carrots and turnips, which, of all vegetables, appeared the most stolidly nonsentient, and found them to be highly sensitive. When he chlorformed plants, Bose discovered that they were as successfully anesthatized as animals, and that when the narcotic vapor was blown away by fresh air like animals they revived. Using chloroform to tranquilize a huge pine tree, Bose was able to uproot it and transplant it without the usually fatal shock of such operations...

A year after the foundation of the institute Bose convened a meeting, sponsored by the governor of Bengal, to announce that, after eight years of struggle, he had finally been able to devise a brand new instrument, the crescograph. Through the use of two levers, this extraordinary invention not only produced a ten-thousand fold magnification of movement, far beyond the powers of the strongest telescope, but could automatically record the rate of growth of plants and their changes in a period as short as a minute.With this instrument Bose showed the remarkable fact that in countless plants, growth proceeds in rhythmic pulses, each pulse exhibiting a rapid uplift and then a slower partial recoil of about a fourth of the distance gained. The pulses in Calcutta averaged about 3 per minute. By watching the progress of the movement on the chart of his new invention, Bose found that growth in some plants could be retarded and even halted merely by touching them, and that in others rough handling stimulated growth, especially if they were sluggish and morose.

To determine a method which would allow him instantly to show the acceleration or retardation of a plant's growth in response to a stimulant, Bose now devised what he called a "balanced crescograph," which would allow the plant to be lowered at the same rate as which it was growing upward, thus reducing the marking of its growth on the chart to a horizontal line and allowing any changes in the rate to express themselves as curves. The method was so extremely sensitive that Bose was able to detect variation of the rate of growth as hyperminimal as 1/1500 millionths of an inch per second." ( Pretty amazing isn't it? This was almost a century ago!) I promise to add more tomorrow...

* This is,of course, more from The Secret Life of Plants!


	Through My Eyes Sunday May 4 " Picking several horse-chestnut leaves from a tree in the garden next to his lab, Bose found that they responded to various "blows" in much the same way as had his metals and muscles. Excited by the results, he betook himself to his greengrocer and purchased a bag of carrots and turnips, which, of all vegetables, appeared the most stolidly nonsentient, and found them to be highly sensitive. When he chlorformed plants, Bose discovered that they were as successfully anesthatized as animals, and that when the narcotic vapor was blown away by fresh air like animals they revived. Using chloroform to tranquilize a huge pine tree, Bose was able to uproot it and transplant it without the usually fatal shock of such operations... A year after the foundation of the institute Bose convened a meeting, sponsored by the governor of Bengal, to announce that, after eight years of struggle, he had finally been able to devise a brand new instrument, the crescograph. Through the use of two levers, this extraordinary invention not only produced a ten-thousand fold magnification of movement, far beyond the powers of the strongest telescope, but could automatically record the rate of growth of plants and their changes in a period as short as a minute.With this instrument Bose showed the remarkable fact that in countless plants, growth proceeds in rhythmic pulses, each pulse exhibiting a rapid uplift and then a slower partial recoil of about a fourth of the distance gained. The pulses in Calcutta averaged about 3 per minute. By watching the progress of the movement on the chart of his new invention, Bose found that growth in some plants could be retarded and even halted merely by touching them, and that in others rough handling stimulated growth, especially if they were sluggish and morose. To determine a method which would allow him instantly to show the acceleration or retardation of a plant's growth in response to a stimulant, Bose now devised what he called a "balanced crescograph," which would allow the plant to be lowered at the same rate as which it was growing upward, thus reducing the marking of its growth on the chart to a horizontal line and allowing any changes in the rate to express themselves as curves. The method was so extremely sensitive that Bose was able to detect variation of the rate of growth as hyperminimal as 1/1500 millionths of an inch per second." ( Pretty amazing isn't it? This was almost a century ago!) I promise to add more tomorrow... * This is,of course, more from The Secret Life of Plants!