(Incidentally, NIST researchers are once again in the process of measuring Big G. Around that same time, NIST researcher Irving Gardner was visiting NPL as part of his effort to more accurately measure the gravitational constant, affectionately known as “Big G.” NPL had acquired a Newton apple tree from Kew Gardens in the 1940s, and Gardner became enthralled with the idea of having one on the NIST campus as well. Reed took another of the imported Newton trees and planted it in Takoma Park, Maryland, around 1947.Įight years later, Louis Essen of the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) built the first atomic clock accurate enough to be used as a time interval standard. One tree was planted at William Penn’s Pennsylvania estate, Pennsbury Manor. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland, was likely the person who arranged to have these trees brought to him through hostile, submarine-infested waters. during the height of World War II in 1943-44. Shockingly, two or more of the trees from the East Malling stock were exported to the U.S. Those cuttings were nurtured in the kitchen garden of the earl’s manor in nearby Belton, where they flourished until cuttings were taken to the East Malling Research Station and Kew Gardens just before the outbreak of World War II in 1939. What seems mostly certain is that either the Turnor family, who took over the house after the Newtons, or the first Earl of Brownlow, John Cust, or one of his underlings, took cuttings from the only apple tree in the vicinity of Newton’s home, Woolsthorpe Manor, around when the tree blew down the second time. It was from there that he began to untangle the problem of gravity, resulting finally in his famous Principia, the first edition of which was published in 1687.Īnd like history often is, the story of how NIST came into possession of a clone of this famous tree is as tangled as its searching roots. Seeing how the apple was drawn toward the center of the Earth, Newton began to wonder if the same force that drew upon the apple also drew upon the moon and the planets. Newton himself said that he simply saw one of its apples fall to the ground while on furlough from Cambridge University, which was closed due to the Great Plague of London in 1665-66. Legend has it that the idea of gravity came to young Isaac when he was struck on the head by a falling apple while reclining under the tree. The tree, a variety variously called the “Flower” or “Pride” or “Beauty” of Kent, fell over around 1814, but it was propped up by locals until it was again knocked down during a severe thunderstorm around 1820 … and still the tenacious tree managed to re-root itself and continues to stand, guarded by a short wicker fence, today. Retired West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, himself the scion of a long and storied family tree, is among those to whom the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has bestowed a scion of a different sort: a clone of an apple tree that was growing next to the house in Lincolnshire, England, where Isaac Newton was born in 1643.
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