SYMHC Classics: Eunice Newton Foote

This 2021 episode covers Eunice Newton Foote, who became the first person to make a connection between the Earth’s temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere in 1856. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Holly Frey?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Every small business owner has that one moment that could have broken them, but remarkably, it didn't. Hi, I'm Kathleen Griffith, co-host of The Unshakeables, along with Stevie Barron, CEO of Chase for Business. We have more incredible stories of overcoming the impossible still to come in season three. Listen to The Unshakeables wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at chase.com/podcast. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase and Company.

• 1:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Happy Saturday. If you're not caught up on this news, the US federal government has been cutting funding for wind and solar projects and pushing for increased use of fossil fuels and proposing to illegally terminate the orbiting carbon observatory satellites that monitor carbon dioxide growth and plant growth, just sending functional satellites to burn up in the atmosphere and otherwise sabotaging American contributions to the global effort to try to slow the rate of climate change. That is something that will have a destructive impact on the entire planet, but especially some of the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the world, many of which are already struggling with things like extreme weather and sea level rise.

• 2:35Holly Frey?

  So for today's Saturday classic, we are replaying our episode on Eunice Newton Foot, the first scientist known to make a connection between greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and a warming climate. She did this almost 170 years ago in 1856. And this episode originally came out on September 8th, 2021.

• 2:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Here about to write us an email saying that we only care about the climate during the Trump administration. Joe Biden was president then.

• 3:09Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 3:23Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 3:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  We have done various episodes related to the environment on the show before. So things like the Denora smog and the Cuyahoga River fires and the London smog of 1952. We talked about extinctions in our 2018 episode on endlings and about invasive species in our episode on Australia's rabbit-proof fence. And then in more recent times, in our episode on kudzu that 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 in terms of

• 4:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  like the current climate crisis. We've talked about things like the year without a summer, which was a A climactic phenomenon.

• 4:16Holly Frey?

  Yeah, and we've talked about ways different scientists have measured various aspects of the climate a little bit.

• 4:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, some of that has come up in Unearthed.

• 4:25Holly Frey?

  Yeah, not climate itself specifically.

• 4:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, and the warming of the climate 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 1856, 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 Tyndall, who made the same connection a few years later.

• 4:57Holly Frey?

  Eunice Newton was born in Goshen, Connecticut, on July 17, 1819, and she was baptized on September 29 of that year. Her father's name was Isaac Newton Jr., which is a delightful coincidence, considering Eunice's path in life. And her mother's name was Thirza, and Eunice was the 11th of their 12 children. Isaac, not a scientist or 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 1835, he was deeply in debt.

• 5:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sometime after Eunice was born, but well before her father's death, 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 1836, when she was about 17, she enrolled at Troy Female Seminary, that later became known as the Emma Willard School after its founder.

• 6:01Holly Frey?

  It's possible that Eunice left journals, correspondence, or 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.

• 6:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  One is that her education there would have had a really strong foundation in science, and that's something that wasn't really typical for a women's school at the time. Emma Willard corresponded and collaborated with Amos Eaton, who was co-founder of the Rensselaer School, that's now Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. That was about seven miles or 11 kilometers away from Troy. Eaton was a natural 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 Eunice would not only have attended lectures on the scientists, she also would have learned

• 7:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  about designing and conducting experiments as part of scientific study.

• 7:10Holly Frey?

  It's 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 1836 to 1838, and later on, she would live near and work with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who graduated from Troy Female Seminary in 1832. So it is possible, but not really documented anywhere, that these two women felt a connection thanks to their having gone to the same school.

• 7:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  On August 12th, 1841, when Eunice was 22, she married Elisha Foote, who was about 10 years older than she was. After their marriage, they moved to Seneca Falls, New York, also home to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. At one point, Elisha actually bought the home that's known today as the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, although it doesn't look like the Foote's ever lived in that house. Both of Eunice and Elisha's children were born in Seneca Falls, and those were Mary, who was born on July 21st of 1842, and Augusta, who was born October 24th, 1844.

• 8:15Holly Frey?

  In 1848, while living in Seneca Falls, both Eunice and Elisha were involved with the Women's Rights Movement and the Seneca Falls Convention. Eunice 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 reproductions of that document, Eunice's signature is fifth, after Lucretia Mott, Harriet Katie Eaton, Margaret Pryor, 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.

• 8:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  While living in Seneca Falls, Eunice became a member of the American Art Union, which worked to promote the creation and sale of American art. Elisha became district attorney for Seneca County and then a judge of the Court of Common Please.

• 9:14Holly Frey?

  Eventually, the Footes moved from Seneca Falls to Saratoga Springs, New York. And regardless of where they lived, both Elisha and Eunice 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 1856, which is where we are at chronologically in this story. But we're going to have a lengthier discussion of Eunice's scientific work later, so for now, we will move on to the rest of what we know about her life.

• 9:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to their published scientific work, both Elisha and Eunice applied for and were granted multiple patents. Eunice's patents included one for a, quote, "filling for soles of boots and shoes." This kept the boots and the shoes from squeaking. That patent was issued in 1860. Later, she developed a paper making machine. According to a favorable write-up of this machine in the Boston Post in 1864, one Massachusetts paper maker that put this invention into use was saving $157 a day in materials. Which would have been a significant amount in 1864. That same article suggested that wrapping and printing papers that were made using this

• 10:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  method would cost two or three cents less per pound than other paper did.

• 10:44Holly Frey?

  One of Elisha's specialties as an attorney was patent law, and he represented himself in legal disputes involving his patents. And 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 US Supreme Court in Silsby versus Foote. This was honestly too convoluted a case to be summed up in an episode that is not about Elisha, or potentially even just that case, but a similar device already existed when Foote's patent was granted. But this case also just includes a ton of back and forth about who had been allowed

• 11:26Holly Frey?

  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.

• 11:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, when we've done 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 cross. I was like, I can't, what are you even saying here? So in 1864, though, Elisha was appointed to the US Patent Office Board of Appeals. And then in 1868, he became the 11th Commissioner of Patents for the United States. His work at the Patent Office would have required him to be in Washington DC. By this point, the Foote daughters, Mary and Augusta, were grown. They were soon to be married. It's not entirely clear whether they and Eunice went with him.

• 12:17Holly Frey?

  But we do know that Eunice did at least visit. On April 16th, 1868, Susan B. Anthony's newspaper, The Revolution, published a piece by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which recounted a trip to Washington DC.

• 12:31Holly Frey?

  It read in part, "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 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, who, in his recent attack on his fair countrywomen, said that there had been no inventors among our sex. And there we found many witnesses against the unhappy Todd. Mrs. Eunice Foote has herself taken out several patents and is occupied at this time making a new kind of paper."

• 13:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  A bit later Stanton went on to say, "Mrs. Foote remarked to us that she had no doubt that half the patents there were the inventions of women. But as men had 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."

• 13:36Holly Frey?

  Elisha was the commissioner of patents for a little less than a year, until April of 1869, and then he returned to his private law practice. By the late 1870s, 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 US Senator for Missouri from 1862 to 1869, and was co-author of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which outlawed slavery except as punishment for a crime.

• 14:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is another one of those moments where 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 US 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 daughter marrying the co-author of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution probably means that they were all against slavery in this context, but not something that's particularly written down anywhere.

• 14:43Holly Frey?

  Yeah, one would hope, but as we know today, not everyone in a family feels the same way.

• 14:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, and not everybody in New York or any of the other places they live 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 22, 1883. And Eunice's life after that point is pretty much a mystery. She died on September 30, 1888, in Lenox, Massachusetts, at the age of 69. Both she and Elijah were interred in the Foot Family Mausoleum in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

• 15:25Holly Frey?

  According to a 1915 Newton family genealogy that was compiled by Ermina Newton-Leonard, Eunice was, quote, "a fine portrait and landscape painter. She was an inventive genius and a person of unusual beauty." No picture of Eunice 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.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 15:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  It was could rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 16:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 16:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 16:38Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  With the fans' experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 16:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 16:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but

• 17:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown-Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:59Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each

• 18:43Holly Frey?

  other? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:54Speaker 05

  This live check-in is brought to you by State Farm. Porque el bienestar de tu familia también merece protección. Okay, real talk. I'm about to become a dad again. And wow, it hits different the second time. Hi, I'm Wilmer Valderrama and I've done, you know, I've done the red carpets, the long days on set and all that, but nothing prepares you for that moment when you're building a crib and you realize you're building a future. Familia is everything to me. The laughs, the chaos, the unconditional love, but also the pressure. La responsabilidad. If you're stepping into something big right now, starting a family, getting engaged, moving cities, you're not alone. Take one step at a time.

• 19:36Speaker 05

  Why breathe, be present and lean into the people that got your back. Y disfruta. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 19:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  The American Association for the Advancement of Science was established in Boston in 1847, and it held its first meeting in Philadelphia in 1848. 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.

• 20:11Holly Frey?

  In terms 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 a member, 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 were a lot of people on its membership list who were not paying dues and weren't really active anymore.

• 20:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 10th meeting, which was held in Albany, New York in August of 1856. 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 22nd, but some accounts place it as happening on the 23rd.

• 21:13Holly Frey?

  Eunice's paper is listed in the program immediately after Elisha's, 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 AAAS. Although the program that was printed ahead of the meeting shows both of the Foote's papers with the same title, when Eunice's was printed later, it was with the title "Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays."

• 21:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  So, side note here, for reasons that are not clear to me at all, neither Elisha's nor Eunice's papers was printed in the proceedings of this 1856 AAAS 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, which delights me that that was a list in there and that there were 76 papers on it, which just feels like a lot. It's tricky to tell how that number of 76 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, how many people read a paper and didn't

• 22:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 22 of the American Journal of Science and Arts. That was in November of 1856. Each of the papers was noted as having been read at the AAAS meeting, so it's just kind of a mystery exactly what went on in terms of the proceedings.

• 22:55Holly Frey?

  Given their similar subject matter and some common elements in their methods, it's likely that Elisha and Eunice collaborated with one another on their experiments and their papers. Elisha's used a variety 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 "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.

• 23:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Eunice's experiment looked at how the heat of the sun affected different gases. In her words, "The experiments were made with an air pump and two cylindrical receivers of the same size, about four inches in diameter and 30 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 same temperature, they were placed in the sun side by side. And while the action of the sun's rays rose to 110 degrees in the condensed tube, it attained only 88 degrees in the other." She concluded in this part of the paper that "this circumstance must affect the power of the sun's rays in different places and contribute to their

• 24:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  feeble action on the summits of lofty mountains."

• 24:13Holly Frey?

  She doesn't specify what these cylinders were made of, but they were presumably glass. Eunice 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 air did.

• 24:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  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, "The highest effect of the sun's rays I have found to be incarbonic acid gas." She also noted that, quote, "The receiver containing 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."

• 25:05Holly Frey?

  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 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, 104 degrees, in common air, 106 degrees, in oxygen gas, 108 degrees, and in carbonic acid gas, 125 degrees."

• 25:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  The significance of this wasn't really understood at the time, but this makes Eunice 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.

• 26:00Holly Frey?

  There are a lot of sources that say that Eunice was prohibited from reading this paper at the AAAS 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 AAAS who did not think women belonged there. But the association did allow women as members. The first woman to be elected was astronomer Maria Mitchell in 1850. Entomologist Margareta Morris was elected that same year.

• 26:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  AAAS meetings were open to the public, and the AAAS had issued an open invitation for women to attend its first meeting in 1848. And women frequently did attend, although, again, there were certainly men in the AAAS who considered women more like companions and ornaments for the male membership than participants, like active participants with knowledge and interests of their own.

• 26:54Holly Frey?

  Eunice was not a member of the AAAS, but non-members also presented papers at every AAAS meeting between 1848 and 1860.

• 27:04Holly Frey?

  Strangely, AAAS records of non-member activity don't record any non-members presenting in 1856. That may be because Joseph Henry read Eunice'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.

• 27:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  So it also wasn't unheard of for people's papers to be read by someone other than the author themselves. At that 1856 meeting, Arthur Schott's paper on the geology of the Lower Rio Bravo was read by topographical engineer W. H. Emory, who was a major in the US Army. Emory also read Marine T. W. Chandler's On the Meteorological Phenomena, observed at various points on the Boundary Survey. And the reasons for Emory reading these two papers in proxy for someone else, that's not really noted anywhere.

• 27:58Holly Frey?

  So it's possible that the organizers of the AAAS meeting in 1856 prevented Eunice 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 women in the AAAS at this point suggests that there may have been some other explanation. Foote is the only woman known to have presented a paper that year, even though it was presented by proxy.

• 28:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  And as a note on that proxy, Joseph Henry was extremely prominent and well-respected in the scientific community. So it's also possible 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 in an 1857 volume that was edited by David A. Wells. And this 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 1857, exhibiting the most important discoveries and improvements in mechanics, useful arts,

• 29:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geology, geography, antiquities, et cetera. 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 1856, et cetera.

• 29:34Holly Frey?

  That's a zippy one, just rolls off the tongue.

• 29:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  I got almost to the end of the list of subjects before I had to take a breath.

• 29:43Holly Frey?

  Before summarizing the content of Foot's paper, Wells characterized Henry's comments this way, quote, "Professor Henry then read a paper by Mrs. Eunice 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."

• 30:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  If Eunice Newton Foot was indeed prohibited from reading her own paper in the 1856 AAAS meeting, that prohibition seems to have been lifted the next year, 1857. 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 14th, 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.

• 30:39Holly Frey?

  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 concluded, quote, "The compression or expansion of atmospheric air produces an electrical excitation."

• 30:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  There are only two physics papers known to have been written by women and published in American journals prior to 1889, and they are these two papers by Eunice Newton Foot.

• 31:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  She also wrote two of the only 16 physics papers known to have been published by American women in the entire 19th century.

• 31:18Holly Frey?

  Also, in 1859, after ongoing discussion with the AAAS about women's roles in the organization, this statement was printed in the proceedings of its 13th meeting. Quote, "No action is necessary in regard to the motion to 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 Elmyra Lincoln Phelps became a member, which happened at that meeting. Elmyra Lincoln Phelps, Mariah Mitchell, and Margareta Morris are the only three women known to have officially been AAAS members before 1860. Although since, many people on the member list included only their initials, there might have been others.

• 32:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  We'll talk about how Eunice Newton-Foot's papers were received and their impact after another quick sponsor break.

• 32:13Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 32:58Holly Frey?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:09Speaker 06

  This stress check, AKA friendly reminder that your hobbies matter, is brought to you by State Farm because you deserve to lose yourself in the stuff that brings you joy. Here's mine: painting my tabletop battle miniatures. Yeah, seriously. After a long day, I grab a brush, pop in some music, and just get into it. And there's no wrong way to do it. It helps me clear my head, slow down, and just breathe. But it works. Big stress, mini warriors, total reset. No pressure, just paint, creativity, and a little reminder of what makes me happy. Some people bake, some people garden. Me? I paint warriors with interesting tech. And guess what? It works. You don't have to be

• 33:51Speaker 06

  good at your hobby, you just have to enjoy it. So carve out that time, tune out the noise, and do something that's just for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 34:01Speaker 07

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 34:29Speaker 08

  Hey, this is Mario Lopez from All Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops, while Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at trade-in. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 35:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  After Joseph Henry read Eunice Newton Foot's paper at the 1856 meeting of the AAAS, 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' Annual of Scientific Discovery paraphrased both of their papers, as well as Henry's introductory remarks of Eunice's paper. Even though Eunice's paper is much shorter than her husband's, his synopsis of Eunice's is a little longer than the one of her husband's is.

• 35:51Holly Frey?

  Perhaps she was so succinct, he felt he needed to like, really make sure people understood. The September 1856 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 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."

• 36:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  This article then described Foot's experiments and her conclusions, before dipping a toe into a debate that was going on at 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, neither of these two ideas was totally right, and neither one was totally wrong.

• 37:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 Foot's experiments provided, quote, "a more rational cause for, quote, 'ancient great atmospheric heat,' than the idea of the Earth having previously been a fiery ball."

• 37:23Holly Frey?

  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. Foot afford abundant evidence of the ability of women to investigate any subject with originality and precision."

• 37:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  The October 1856 edition of United States Magazine was overall not as flattering as that was. Its article, "Science and Savans in America," which was written under the pen name Anthropos, covered the 1856 AAAS 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 Mariah Mitchell and Margarete Morris. This article, though, claims that Foot and Mitchell were both considered to be members, while not mentioning Morris at all.

• 38:29Holly Frey?

  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 our countrywomen can be found who give any attention to science's amateurs, pardon the solicism, or investigators. It is this fact that needs either explanation or apology."

• 38:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 abstruse principles in mathematical and physical science."

• 39:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 ourself, why does it not occur to this portion of our race that they have 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 tappus before a scientific body the results of their investigations, discoveries, and deductions in the common

• 39:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  world of matter and mind, which with them we jointly inhabit."

• 40:02Holly Frey?

  It started so good and then it lands with, "Why are you so dingy, women?"

• 40:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  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, why there weren't women and people of color involved in this more. No, it just became a bunch of sexist insults.

• 40:22Holly Frey?

  Nice. A summary of the 1856 meetings of the British and American Associations of the Advancement of Science was published in the Canadian Journal of Industry, Science, and Art. It summarizes Eunice's paper but makes no mention of her husbands. The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for 1857 summarizes Eunice's paper as well. But since it also mentions Elisha's work, it's a little unclear which of them the journal is attributing the experiment to. The German journal, Jahresbericht, printed a summary of it as well, which was dated 1856, although that actually came out in 1857.

• 40:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Then on May 18th, 1859, Irish physicist John Tyndall 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 French physicist Claude Mathias Poulet for having done earlier-related work. And there's been some discussion about whether Tyndall knew about Eunice Newton Foote's work and disregarded it because of her sex. Roland Jackson, who was publishing in the Royal Society Journal of the History of

• 41:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Science in 2019, argues that he probably did not, that this omission is more about the state of scientific communication across the Atlantic in the mid 19th century. He speculates that Tyndall just wouldn't have been likely to have read any of the journals or other publications that referenced Foote's work prior to his own observations.

• 42:00Holly Frey?

  Tyndall's experimental setup was more sophisticated than Foote's was, but unlike her, he did not make the connection between these gases and the Earth's climate until later in his work. In 1861, 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 to speculate that different concentrations of these gases can affect the Earth's climate.

• 42:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  The first paper to really quantify the carbon dioxide concentrations involved in the greenhouse gas effect was published by Swedish scientist Svante August Ariehn in 1896. His later work also suggests that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to this process.

• 42:49Holly Frey?

  About 10 years after Tyndall published his work on this, he and Joseph Henry became acquainted, but there's no suggestion that the two of them ever talked about Foote's work and how it related to Tyndall's. However, there were other people who cited Eunice Newton Foote's work later on in the 19th century. For example, Ethan Samuel Chapin's 1888 book, "Gravitation: The Determining Force," references Henry's reading of Foote's paper at the AAAS in a section on "Conditions Likely to Effect 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.

• 43:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay, this is interesting to me because 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 Tindall, not Eunice Newton-Foot, is often known as the founder of climate science, but over the last decade, people have been trying to correct that attribution. This effort really started in 2011, when Raymond Sorensen published Eunice Foot's pioneering research on CO2 and climate warming that was published in the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Search and Discovery. Sorensen had stumbled across that summary of Foot's paper that was in the 1857 Annual

• 44:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  of Scientific Discovery and had realized its significance.

• 44:20Holly Frey?

  There was even less publicly available information about Eunice Newton-Foot in 2011 than there is today. Not even the text of her paper had been unearthed at that point. Sorensen updated his paper in 2018 to note that a copy of her paper had been found in 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.

• 44:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  This update also clarified that it was Foot 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 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.

• 45:11Holly Frey?

  However, we should note that claims that Eunice Newton-Foot was totally forgotten until Raymond Sorensen published his 2011 paper are not really accurate. Sorensen does seem to have been the first person to directly point out that Foot was the first person to observe something that Tindall got the credit for. But Sally Gregory Kolstedt's "The Formation of the American Scientific Community: The American Association for the Advancement of Science 1848-1860" was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1976, and it mentions Foot delivering her paper on electrical excitation in 1857.

• 45:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to that, information on Foote that's found at ancestry.com also includes a scan of a 1976 letter from Deborah Dean Warner, who was then curator of the History of Physical Sciences at the Smithsonian, to Dr. Judith Wellman at State University of New York. Warner and Wellman had talked about Foote at the National Archives Conference on Women's History, according to this letter, and the letter mentions both of Foote's papers and their titles. Warner's "Science Education for Women in Antebellum America," published in the journal Isis, a journal of the History of Science Society, in 1978, also cites both

• 46:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  of Foote's papers. Wellman's "The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Women's Rights Convention," which was published in 2004, also mentions both papers' existence, but not their subjects. And Lois Arnold's "Four Lives in Science: Women's Education in the 19th Century," which was published in 1984, mentions Foote's article on "The Heat from the Sun's Rays," using the 1856 Scientific American article as its source on that. So there were various folks who were definitely talking about Eunice Newton Foote in other contexts before that 2011 paper came out.

• 47:08Holly Frey?

  There is also a short film on Eunice Newton Foote called Eunice, and that was released in 2018, and it is available on YouTube.

• 47:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  How's Eunice Newton Foote?

• 47:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 47:44Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 48:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 48:50Speaker 09

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 49:20Speaker 10

  This is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla Sedan with the latest features and tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at trade-in, get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.