Misreadings    The last posting covered my second favorite subject in high school, print shop, plus much more. We are now up to my favorite HS subject, German, and the study of language. And that story will start with mentioning some composers.
The name of the composer Chopin, when seen in writing by a naïve speaker, say of English, might be read as tho someone is "choppin' wood". We smile and the person's naïveté. But there is good reason for him to have said that. He was taught how to read English, and has every reason to think the name follows English spelling parameters. But the Polish composer has a French name, and it has to be read following French spelling parameters as something like sho.PA[N].

And then there's Mozart. Some English speakers pronounce his name by rhyming the first part with "doze". They're using their English spelling parameters, not realizing that the name is written within German spelling parameters, so that it's pronounced MO.tsart. Which reminds me of an elderly gentleman I once heard at a pizza stand ordering a slice of "pizza", rhyming the first part with "fizz". He, too, didn't realize the word is pronounced according to Italian spelling parameters (which, oddly, are like German), where the first part rhymes with "beets".
One last example I heard only a few weeks ago on a YouTube video about Johann Strauss. To her credit, the narrator knew that the first name was YO.han. But I was nonplussed when she rhymed Strauss with "sauce". I've never heard such a thing before, but she kept on saying Yohan Strawss throughout the whole video. It was so odd, that she knew the first part of it was based on German spelling parameters, but so blatantly neglected the second part.

Second Language Learning    We learn our native language from our surroundings without realizing it, and speak it freely without thinking about the fact that it actually had to be acquired. Later a children's book is put in front of us with writing, and we are formally taught how to read it. This leads us to think that writing is taught, but we forget that speaking is also taught, but informally—and also first. We've learned how to speak (and hear) and read (and write), but our perception seems to be that only reading was actually "learned".
When it comes to learning a second language, too many people make the mistake of considering the written form of the language first, then trying to pronounce it. They will apply the parameters of their native language to what they see, and disaster could ensue, unless they have a very good "ear".
In college, I decided to learn French on my own. I got a book that came with records, then followed the lessons, first on the record, then in the book. Years later, Beverly and I both studied three years of Russian from school text books with tapes, with success. It's the way to go.
Fortunately, by the 1960s change finally blossomed forth in language teaching with what is called the "audio-lingual" method. As you can see, the word means "ear-tongue" or "hear-speak", and we were able to start using materials to do it that way. I taught both German and Spanish that way, and the students picked it up easily.
I remember the chapters in the German I textbook started with a dialog, and the very first one started with the greeting Guten Tag, Luise, wie geht's? We'd repeat the whole dialog orally in class, then would look at the written form to be studied overnight. I never had a single student the next day ever say "we" for "wie" (W=V).
In German II & III, each chapter started with lengthy sentences to be learned orally, followed by a reading piece on the same topic. Recently, a former student, the cellist Carter Brey, at a social gathering at my place, decided to quote me a line he remembered, which I also happen to remember quite well. It was about Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria: König Ludwig der Zweite von Bayern hat das berühmte Schloß im neunzehnten Jahrhundert bauen lassen. (King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria had the famous castle built in the nineteenth century.) If you think that's a long sentence to learn quickly, one of several to be learned at once, think again. It works very well. Of course, there are tricks to every trade.
When you're trying to remember something of length, you tend to fade out towards the end. So a sentence like this, after being introduced in its entirety, is presented to students in pieces, from the end. First we all repeat bauen lassen. Then im neunzehnten Jahrhundert bauen lassen. It goes on like that, moving in pieces to the front, and finally the whole class has no trouble repeating that lengthy sentence up to the end in their second language with no trouble, even on the first day of trying.

Language at Brooklyn Tech    To start discussing language in high school I have to refer back again to the outdated 1920s thinking that still prevailed in the 1950s at Tech: boys only (it went coed later); a self-sufficient engineering program, with no need for college for those not in the College Prep program—but the majority went anyway; a huge reliance on hands-on shop courses—but I loved them.
When it comes to language, there's more outdated thinking. First, that most courses of study were not offered a second language, only those of us in College Prep. I'm not sure I realized that until recently. Second, that the only languages an engineer might need to consult would be German and French, and nothing else. Today there are a lot more languages, and for everyone. And third, engineers should learn Scientific German and Scientific French—an important point I've never made a big issue of publicly before. We were offered three years this way, and not the standard lang-lit syllabus that led to the New York State Regents Exam after the third year. We just had a regular final exam, and I never saw the German Regents exam until I had to give it myself when I was teaching. The Tech handbook says the goal was "the achievement of a reasonable competence in the comprehension of [the language's] technical and scientific literature."
Well, OK. But as I said earlier, the College Prep course was my salvation. It gave me just what I wanted, enjoyed, and needed. But by chance, studying "scientific" German was my other salvation. It was great fun, and got me well started on what became my career.

German    After the fiasco of my introduction to a dead language like Latin in Junior High (tho now, Latin and I are frenemies), I was very wary of my first day in German class. You'll recall that our junior high group was at Tech for 3 ½ years, or 7 semesters. The first semester at Tech was in the fall of 1953, just days after I turned 14, but the three years (6 semesters) of language study started in spring 1954. I walked into German class a nascent engineer, and after the first few days, turned into a language major. How did that happen? Two reasons.
That it was language study backed up by science readings was part of it. But mostly it was how the language was introduced to us the very first day, by Dr Walter Bernard, who I now list as my very first of a series of language mentors.
I know I've told this before, because Carter has referred back to it. This was well before audio-lingual teaching got popular, but Dr Bernard knew exactly what he was doing. On the first day, he said we're not going to get our textbooks and readers yet, which was the norm. Instead, he said, we're going to learn how to identify in German some objects around the classroom, and we spent the whole period learning about 12-15 sentences, totally orally, with absolutely nothing written. I'll quote the first four:
      Dort ist die Decke.
      Dort ist die Lampe.
      Dort ist die Wand.
      Dort ist die Uhr.
And several more. He could have said Das ist die Decke, which would have worked as well, but instead of saying "That's the ceiling", he chose to say "(Over) there is the ceiling." The other three are "light fixture, wall, clock." We all practiced the 12-15 sentences, and went home on the subway happily repeating them to ourselves. The next day, we learned how to write the sentences.
The word Wand (W=V) rhymes with "font". And that's just the way we all pronounced it, because we heard it before seeing it written. Even after seeing the spelling, no one even thought of a (magic) wand, like with "choppin' wood".
I do not remember all the details of class. We got our textbooks and readers, and I don't remember what the science readers were like. But I do remember we read about German scientists, and also about the Periodic Table.
SCIENTISTS I'm sure the short biographical chapters in the reader must have covered names like Kepler, Leibnitz, Fahrenheit, Einstein, Ohm, Hertz, Humboldt, and more. But one lesser-known name remains with me, along with his story and with the word Kindbettfieber. Imagine that that's one of the first words I learned in German. But it's really three easy words, Kind + Bett + Fieber, and means "childbed fever". It can affect women after giving birth, and we teenage boys felt very grown-up dealing with the topic.
Ignaz Semmelweis was an ethnic German born in Hungary. He's known for introducing hand disinfection standards, particularly in obstetrical clinics, as of 1847. It was an era when doctors and staff often worked in street clothes and paid little to no attention to what today are normal medical standards of cleanliness.
Childbed fever (or postpartum infection) consists of any bacterial infection of the reproductive tract following birth. In the 19C, it was common and often fatal. Semmelweis first showed that childbed fever was caused by an infection introduced into the birth canal from outside, which could be prevented by disinfection of the hands of the obstetricians and midwives before proceeding. This is his major work on the subject, "The Cause, Concept, and Prevention of Childbed Fever". But his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they were infecting their patients and should wash their hands, and they mocked him for it. How dare this upstart tell us physicians we're causing our patients to get sick? In 1865, Semmelweis had a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum, where he suffered a beating that led to his death two weeks later. His findings earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory, giving Semmelweis's observations a theoretical explanation. This is a statue in Berlin of Semmelweis. The dedication on the three other sides is in German, Hungarian, and English. This is the English text on the back for the "Savior of Mothers" (Photos by OTFW, Berlin). Think of Semmelweis the next time you wash up.

PERIODIC TABLE While I did very well in math and physics, chemistry class for me was more of a mystery. We took a year of physics and chemistry back to back in the spring and fall of 1955, starting right after Dr Bernard's class. I did OK in chemistry, but I must admit it was never easy, nor a favorite. Nevertheless, the introduction to the periodic table in German class helped me in chemistry class. What appears below is a combination of what I learned at Tech, first in German class, then in chemistry, together with a lot of current research.
The periodic table of elements was formulated by Dmitri Mendeleyev in 1869. While that spelling shows better how to pronounce it, it's also spelled Mendeleev because the original is Менделе́ев.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/W7CKA2/mendeleyevs-first-periodic-table-of-elements-1869-artist-dmitri-mendeleev-W7CKA2.jpg

Above is Mendeleev's original table, before the pre-revolutionary spelling reform (click). Today, the second word would be simply B with the following "hard sign" abolished, and the fourth word would be MHE, with that odd E-like letter also abolished and replaced by E. But it's interesting that he named the elements using the Latin alphabet, surely on the basis that it would be more easily internationally accepted. As of 1863, there were 56 known elements, with a new element being discovered at a rate of approximately one per year.
We can mention Mendeleev's recognition at this point, before we really get started. This is the Mendeleev monument at the School of Chemistry of Moscow State University--click to read his name in Cyrillic (Photo by Feud50). And this is the Mendeleev Wall (Photo by Aljuh) on St Petersburg's Moskovsky Prospekt (Moscow Avenue). The statue dates from 1932, the mosaic from 1934. Above his name in gold it says in red: ПЕРИОДИЧЕСКАЯ СИСТЕМА ЭЛЕМЕНТОВ / PERIODICHESKAYA SISTEMA ELEMENTOV. The Cyrillic is quite easy to follow, so try saying it, stressing ICH in the first word, TEM in the second, and MEN in the third. The –OV is the genitive plural case, and corresponds to "of".
In the table, the elements are arranged in similar groups in order of their atomic numbers, which is the number of protons found in the nucleus of one of its atoms. In the modern formulation of the table they appear first in rows (read left to right), then in columns, finally in four blocks which run to 32 columns (Table by DePiep). It looks like a barbell, with two large ends on a narrow bar. This is too wide for normal displays, and is therefore usually displayed with the "bar", the f-block, shown down below which reduces the number of columns from 32 to 18 (Table by Sandbh). (The chart here is shown slightly simplified.)

https://sciencenotes.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ShinyPeriodicTable.png

We give now here the periodic table IN ENGLISH, which is purely for reference when needed. (The link calls it a "Shiny" Periodic Table.) We will be using the same thing, but in German, since our goal is to review the language aspect of the names. The below chart will appear oversized for good legibility, so be prepared to scroll in all directions. Since the elements are listed by atomic number, I will mention them with each name, for easier location in the charts.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Periodensystem_Einfach.svg

I do not remember how the reader we read from presented the subject, nor how Dr Bernard did, so I'll present it my own way, emphasizing the recognizability of the elements' names—or lack thereof. But first some comments on the chart. Names in black are solids, blue are liquids, red are gases. Underlined elements are radioactive. Solid squares show elements actually found in nature, while striped squares show artificially man-made elements.
International Names I use this heading to describe the most obvious names that are the same, or very similar, in multiple languages, including German and English. Many have the Latin ending–IUM, such as 12 Magnesium, 2 Helium, 92 Plutonium, 88 Radium, 20 Calcium. There are many and this is just a few. Go find more. (This suffix will be shortened to –iu in Romanian, altered to –io in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian [but not in French].) Note 13 Aluminium, which is the same as British a.lu.MIN.i.um, while the US & Canada drop a syllable and move the stress to a.LU.min.um. Note also 27 Cobalt (usually Kobalt), 28 Nickel, 10 Neon, and more.
Dropped Ending German tends to lop off the endings of other international words. We already had an example when we talked about Ignaz Semmelweis. Did you realize that IG.nats is a shortened version of Ignatius? Now get ready for some more, again just a selection—go find more in the chart. We'll start with 22 Titan (ti.TAN) and 92 Uran (u.RAN). They could have belonged to the above –IUM category, but have lost that ending.

Now look at 25 Mangan, 15 Phosphor, 78 Platin, 51 Antimon, and 33 Arsen. For the English version of each, add -ese, -us, -um, -y, -ic, in that order. 24 Chrom is a bit odd since English does say chromium for the element, but also has a short form spelled "chrome" for decorative objects plated in the element, such as a chrome faucet or chrome hubcaps.
I remember for some reason learning four related elements in German class as a group: 9 Fluor, 17 Chlor, 35 Brom, 53 Jod (the common spelling, tho listed here technically as Iod). We said earlier that the letter Iota can be pronounced YO.ta, like Yoda in Star Wars. So can Jod reflect on Yod[a]. It struck me odd at the time that all four needed –INE added for the English version.
Old Germanic Names Then there are those Germanic names that scientists didn't have to discover and name, since they were commonly known and already named. Most obvious are 79 Gold and 47 Silber, also 30 Zink (English spelling: Zinc); 50 Zinn (Z=TS, say TSIN, so it's tin). 29 Kupfer isn't hard to recognize as copper. Then there are the ancient ones that the learner needs a slight trick to learn. 26 Eisen is iron recognizable from Eisenbahn ("iron road") being a railroad; 82 Blei is lead based on a Bleistift ("lead holder") being a pencil.
There is a subcategory of old Germanic naming that appears in most Germanic languages. In German, it's based on the word Stoff (say SHTOFF) which means "material", or, obviously, "stuff". Easiest is 6 Kohlenstoff; the material in coal, or "coal stuff" is, of course, carbon. A revelation to me at the time was 1 Wasserstoff. What could "water stuff" be? This was an early example of learning a second language helping me with my first language. After considering water, it became obvious that the "hydro-" in hydrogen was just that. Harder for a language learner, but obvious to a native, was 7 Stickstoff (SHTIK-). Dr Bernard had to explain that ersticken was to choke or smother, and nitrogen is a gas in which no life can exist.
But most problematic, and therefore most interesting, was 8 Sauerstoff. We never got a decent explanation why "sour stuff" (think sauerkraut, sauerbraten) should be oxygen, so I looked it up now as current research. It's based on faulty science.
"Oxygen" entered English in 1790 from French oxygène, a word coined in 1777 by French chemist Lavoisier. He took the Greek word ὀξῠ́ς / oxys (sharp, acid) and added the suffix -gène ("producer", also from Greek—see "genealogy, genetics"; it's also the suffix in "hydrogen, nitrogen"). Thus "oxygen" originally meant "acid producer", since oxygen was then mistakenly considered to be essential in the formation of all acids (not just some—think vinegar's acetic acid). The German word sauer is also the basis of the word for acid, Säure (say ZOI.rə)—add 16 Schwefel (sulfur) and you get Schwefelsäure, or sulfuric acid. So it was purposely formed parallel to the original French version. Calling it "sour stuff" is equivalent to calling it "acid stuff". This is all an indication of mistaken science still affecting the names of elements.
But I said this was a Germanic phenomenon. Of the three West Germanic languages, German, Dutch, English, both the first two do it. Dutch for "sour" is zuur (ZÜR), and oxygen is zuurstof. Hydrogen is waterstof, looking even closer to English.
It's a little different in the north Germanic languages. Swedish "sour" is sur and oxygen is sure. The Danish story is interesting. The word was originally surstof, borrowed from German, but in the early 19C, a scientist instead coined the word ilt, based on the word for fire, since fire requires oxygen. He also coined brint for hydrogen, stemming from a Danish word for "burning", as hydrogen can also burn. Norwegian originally called it surstoff, but did change it to oksygen, also illustrating Norwegian's sensible avoidance of the useless, duplicative letter X (cf: ekstra, eksport).
Different Symbols Then there are those elements with entirely different symbols from English, reflecting different names. The symbol for sodium is Na, but the German name is 11 Natrium, since German uses the original Late Latin name. (The English name is believed to come from Arabic suda (headache), since sodium carbonate relieves headaches.)
Potassium is K, but the German name is 19 Kalium, also right from Late Latin. ("Potassium" derives from "potash", the ash resulting from burning wood or plants, then leaching the ash with water to extract potassium salts.)
When we come to 74 Wolfram, we open Pandora's box. It's symbol is W, but in English it's called tungsten. That's also used in French (tungstène), Portuguese (tungsténio) and other languages. Many others (not English) recognize both names. Let's start with tungsten.
I was delighted to find out the name is Swedish! I know Swedish sten is "stone"--Beverly's father's ancestral farmhouse in Sweden, where we got engaged, is named Stenslund ("Stony Grove")--and now learn that tung is "heavy", so that settles that.
Wolfram (perhaps also volfram[io]) is used in most European languages. The name is derived from the ore wolframite. That name, in turn was given to tungsten in 1747 and is derived from the German words "wolf+rahm", which in turn stem from the name used in 1546 "lupi spuma". Both terms mean "wolf's cream" or "wolf's froth", which seems to be a reference to the large amounts of tin consumed by the mineral during its extraction, as tho a wolf devoured it, like a wolf would attack its prey.

The element English calls mercury turns out to be in German 80 Quecksilber, but many English speakers will be aware of the alternate English name quicksilver and see the connection. But why?
The original meaning of "quick" in English, now archaic, was "alive"—in Old English it was cwic. This explains the biblical reference to judgment awaiting both "the quick and the dead", also the phrase to "cut to the quick", and the concept of quicksand. Later, because it referred to the presence of life, it evolved to mean "speedy", its meaning today. In Old High German it was quec "lively," which today became keck "pert, saucy". Because mercury is silvery and shiny, and is a flowing liquid at room temperature, the name quicksilver / Quecksilber developed to describe it (Photo by Bionerd).
The element mercury is not named after the Roman god directly, but after the planet. In medieval alchemy, known metals were associated with the planets; Mercury is the fastest planet, named after the god Mercury who was associated with speed and mobility. But note this variety: Latinate French is mercure, and Spanish & Italian are mercurio; but Germanic Swedish is kvicksilver and Dutch is kwikzilver, or even just kwik. Once again, Germanic English goes along with French because in 1066, the Normans invaded England and Norman French became an overlay on Anglo-Saxon.
But we've left something important out: the symbol for mercury/Quecksilber is Hg. It's short for Latin hydrargyrum, a Romanized form of the ancient Greek name for the element, ὑδράργυρος/ hydrargyros, where hydr- means "water" and argyros is "silver", so we're back to the same flowing imagery. And we reflect back to hydrogen/Wasserstoff, showing that these two elements hark back to a water image.
A Prolific Swedish Village We went to a mountain range, and now we go to a village. Way back in German class it first intrigued me that there were two elements starting in Y, ytterbium and yttrium. I didn't know then the two names were related. It wasn't a glide Y, but a full vowel, the equivalent of I. It's possible in English to start a word with I (Italy), but not Y as an I-vowel, so the names always looked and sounded weird. But now I know what's going on.
There's a town in Sweden called Ytterby. But that's spelled according to Swedish spelling parameters—it's pronounced Ütterbü. In Swedish, yttre is "outer", but as a prefix, it appears as ytter- (say ÜT.ter), and by (say BÜ) is village. Ytterby is one of the words that can mean "suburb."

Ytterby is a village on the island of Resarö in the Stockholm archipelago, 39 km (24 mi) from Stockholm.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7FDLIIQpOtY/WQ2YBRYF91I/AAAAAAAAHv4/XODQ20wEmdEEvN0BAQ0X2gfeygkbf9SwwCLcB/s1600/Ytterby-2.8.gif

(On this map alone we also see Värby, Täby, and an Upland Väsby.) Today Ytterby's residential area is dominated by suburban homes, but Ytterby has the distinction of being is the single richest source of discoveries of elements in the world. There's a mine at the edge of town which accounts for the discovery of no fewer than NINE elements in the periodic table:
39 yttrium (1787), 65 terbium, 67 erbium (both 1843), and 70 ytterbium (1878) are all named after Ytterby and its mine directly. It's amusing to see how the name was altered over time to get as many possible element names out of it. Then they ran out of possibilities, but continued to use northern imagery.
So also in 1878, 67 holmium was named, based on Holmia being the Latin name for Stockholm. In 1879, 21 scandium was named, based on Scandia being an early Latin name for Scandinavia, and the same year 69 thulium was named, Thule being the most northerly location mentioned in ancient Greek and Latin cartography, equated with Scandinavia.
The last two of the nine elements discovered in the mine came early on, 64 gadolinium (1794) and 73 tantalum (1802) but were not named after the town.
This is a panorama of the entrance to the Ytterby mine (Photo by Sinikka Halme) and this is a detail of the dedication plaque placed by a professional organization mentioning the four elements named after the mine (Photo by Uwezi).
People and Places We also see elements named after people, all of which are quite obvious. They're concentrated among the newer elements at the very bottom, such as 99 Einsteinium, 101 Mendelevium, and 96 Curium. Some place names are very obvious such as 98 Californium, but others are harder to spot. We see 32 germanium and 87 francium, but there are two others representing France, 31 gallium (Gaul, Latin Gallia) and 71 lutecium (Latin Lutetium, French Lutèce, today's Paris). 84 polonium represents Poland (Latin Polonia, Polish Polska); 115 moscovium is for Moscow (Latin Moscovia, Russian Москва / Moskva). I had to look up, since it's in no way obvious, that 72 hafnium is based on Latin Hafnia, the name for Copenhagen, where it was discovered. 75 rhenium represents the Rhine (Latin Rhenus), and 113 nihonium is for Japan (日本 is read as Nihon or Nippon).
Many are obvious, and some needed looking up, but finally, I found online this clever version of the periodic table giving name origins. I've listed a few of the most interesting "new" ones I came across:

https://periodictable.me/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/The-Periodic-Table-Element-Name-Origins-L.png

3 lithium was hiding in plain sight. But when reading about lithium batteries, I never made the connection to lithography or the paleolithic era, the Old Stone Age. It all comes from Greek λίθος / lithos, "stone". That also goes for 37 rubidium. It wouldn't have stood out years ago, but we recently talked about the red writing on manuscripts called rubrication (also ruby, rubella, Rubicon). Apparently the spectrum for rubidium shows bright red lines and the Latin form rubidus "deep red" was the form chosen for the element.
Now that we know that mercury was named, not for mythology but for the planet, it stands to reason that that's also true for 93 neptunium, 94 plutonium, and 92 uranium. Given how well-known the last two are, I'm quite surprised to learn that.
The explanation on the chart "hard to obtain" for 66 dysprosium (which I'd never heard of) was intriguing, so I looked it up. The scientist working with dysprosium oxide in 1886 tried to separate pure dysprosium from it, but was successful only after no fewer than 30 attempts. Thus he named the element after the Greek word δυσπρόσιτος / dysprositos, meaning "hard to get".
Also intriguing is "not alone" for 52 antimony. Online I see a reference to it as a "popular" etymology, making the truth unclear. It refers to a hypothetical Greek word ἀντίμόνος antimonos, "against aloneness", based on anti- plus mono, "against being just one". The explanation would be that it's not found unalloyed. The etymology has been disputed on the basis that ancient Greek would have expressed such negativity by the prefix a- (as in amoral). So the answer remains unclear.
We'll finish in the right-most column, in red on the German chart, the noble gases. The term noble gas is a 1900 translation of German Edelgas, coined since they have a very low level of reaction with other elements. At the top is 2 helium. I was only vaguely aware that it was named after the sun, and now see that it was discovered in the sun's chromosphere during a solar eclipse in 1868 (Photo by Luc Viatour). However, it was not discovered on earth until 1895. The Greek word for "sun" is ἥλιος / helios.
In 1894, 18 argon was the first of the noble gases to be discovered (on earth—helium wasn't discovered on earth until the following year). It being the first, its lack of reaction with other elements is the source of its name, which comes from Greek ἀργός / argos, meaning "lazy, inactive", referring to its chemical inactivity, which impressed the scientists making the discovery.
In 1898, scientists discovered 36 krypton; a few weeks later they discovered 10 neon, and shortly after that, 54 xenon. Krypton was named after the Greek word κρυπτός / kryptós "hidden" (as in "cryptic") because it was difficult to isolate. Neon comes from Greek νέος / néos, "new", and xenon is from ξένος / ksénos "stranger" (as in xenophobia).
86 radon was first identified by another scientist, also in 1898. It was noted that radium compounds emanate a radioactive gas which was called "RADium emanatiON", eventually shortened to radon in 1920. As for naming, all the other noble gases have classical suffixes, Latin -ium for helium and Greek –on for the others, except for radon, which is instead a contraction. It also seems it's uniquely the only element named after another element. Which leads us to check out 88 radium. Marie and Pierre Curie noted radium emitting energy in the form of rays. The Latin word for "ray" is radius (think about that), hence, radium. And radon.

GUEST ESSAYISTS Over the years, I've had friends contributing to this website when I knew their expertise would be useful. Two postings ago I asked Simi Horwitz here in Manhattan to talk about auditioning for her specialized high school, Performing Arts. Last posting I asked Bruce Tuffli in the Saint Louis area to talk about his printing experiences. (He'd written earlier about Miami Beach's Art Deco district in its sorry years.) For this posting, the person whose opinions I wanted was clear.

I met Terry Johnston when he and I started teaching at John Jay High School on the very same day in September 1964. I retired in 1992 after 28 years of teaching German, Spanish, and at the end, basic computer science. Terry, two years younger, retired after 33 years in 1997 and now lives in the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. His field of study was chemistry, and his other passion was astronomy. He ran an astronomy club for quite a time, just as I had a Russian club for a while. In 2017/17, I asked him to write about seeing the total solar eclipse when visiting Wyoming on August 21, and now I asked him his thoughts on the periodic table:
If you know the ins and outs of the table, you can predict all kinds of things about "missing elements" which made it much easier for other unknown elements to be discovered. Also, if you know the properties of a few elements, you can predict the properties of many others, properties both chemical and physical. Believe it or not, I always thought it was fun. The Periodic Table makes chemistry possible.
I threw out a number of Periodic Tables from many different countries when I left John Jay, thinking I would never need them again. I made slides of many, and my students were happy that they didn't need to use the Japanese or Chinese element names. But, if you knew the English table, you could still manage to understand what the Asian symbols represented by their position in the table and, referring to an English table, translate the symbols.
It comes as a pleasant surprise to me that Terry had tables in other languages. In recent email discussions with him, he gave me a few ideas I included here. Then he also asked if I knew about Tom Lehrer and his "Elements" song, which Terry said he played to his classes each year. Of course I did, and it was a great reminder to include that song here.
TOM LEHRER'S "ELEMENTS" I hope most people have heard of Tom Lehrer, but will proceed with some background, just in case. He was, believe it or not, a Harvard math professor who, for a period in the 1950s and 1960s, wrote and performed on the piano some 37 original satirical songs, often political, that were full of black humor. I would love to talk extensively about them now, but will try to contain myself. You can find most of these on YouTube, and I do suggest you try.
One title that tells it all is "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". It's hilarious, but is actually a satire on a US government attempt to control pigeon populations in Boston. Then there's "The Old Dope Peddler" who's "selling powdered happiness." Total black humor is "I Hold Your Hand in Mine, dear" followed by "my joy would be complete, dear, if you were only here." But my all-time favorite is "Be Prepared", after the boy scout motto:
"Be Prepared! That's the boy scout marching song, Be Prepared!
. . . Don't solicit for your sister, that's not nice
Unless you get a good percentage of her price."
And innuendo doesn't get better than when he closes by saying that if you're looking for adventure and a girl scout is similarly inclined—Be Prepared!
But back on topic. The most unusual of his songs is "The Elements" from 1959. It's surely the only one to which he didn't write the music, Sir Arthur Sullivan did, since he uses the music of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance". To this music he set the words of all the elements in the periodic table known at that time (up to 102 nobelium), so he didn't exactly write it—he fit the words to the music. It's a patter-song following Gilbert & Sullivan's patter-song.
This is Tom Lehrer performing at a well-known concert he did in Copenhagen in 1967 and this is his Copenhagen performance of The Elements (1:26). The order of the elements has nothing to do with their order in the periodic table, but fits the meter of the music, and the words are often alliterated.
As a curious twist: I'd read in the Times that Tom Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 26, 2025, at the age of 97, and by chance, it was just two weekends later when Terry brought up his name in an email. I also find it a typical gesture that, in October 2020, Lehrer transferred the music and lyrics for all songs he had ever written into the public domain, and in November 2022, he formally relinquished the copyright and performing and recording rights on his songs, making all music and lyrics composed by him free for anyone to use. Which I just did, above.
But we're not done. I am a great fan of Daniel Radcliffe. I never got involved with the Harry Potter books or films (tho I've seen numerous clips). I saw him perform twice, once on Broadway in a revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. What an amazing performer, not only singing, but also dancing (check out Brotherhood of Man on YouTube). He also did a triple somersault across the full width of the stage. How versatile! I'd seen Equus on Broadway, but in London, I saw it again with Radcliffe in the lead. The play includes nudity, and Radcliffe presented some nu[de] aspects of himself. Bravo, Daniel!
I also regularly watch the Graham Norton talk show on BBC America, and was delighted when Radcliffe appeared once and said he admired Tom Lehrer and wanted to perform his Elements song, which he did. I'm glad I found that segment (1:39) of Radcliffe doing Lehrer's "Elements".

German (cont'd)    We've spent a lot of time on the elements, following my first seeing the periodic table in German, but let's get back to German class at Brooklyn Tech with Dr Bernard. Since he's my first language mentor, I wish I'd gotten to know him more. I have to rely on the rumor I heard, that his doctorate wasn't in German at all, but in psychiatry, and that he'd had to flee Europe (from where?) and arrived in New York where he taught German instead. The only slightly more personal contact happened one day after class. He must have noticed my enthusiasm, and he took me aside and gifted me a booklet of German vocabulary, including lists of foods, shops, professions, parts of the body, and so on, wanting to enrich my vocabulary. It was a nice gesture, but the only specific thing I remember is learning from it that a Sumpf is a swamp, so I always think of it as my Sumpf-booklet.
But Eden doesn't last. The department had three German teachers, and after the semester of German 1, the group moved into both German 2 and 3 with MM. Mr M was a rotund, somewhat effeminate gentleman. I liked him, but there were some guys in class who'd misbehave and tease him, sometimes to the point where he got very red in the face. I remember once Mr M walking out into the hall to cool off. I felt sorry for him. But then for German 4 we had Dr Bernard again, for a pleasant return to sanity.
German 5 was the first half of Third-Year German, and disaster struck. The teacher was AB, who turned out to have all the charisma and style of a used-car salesman. This semester was the nadir of my language studies at Tech. It became clear when, on the first day, Mr B announced to the class that, as long as they behaved in class, they'd get good grades. I was incensed! I'd be working hard, and as long as some idler behaved in class, he'd also get good grades? It was going to be a long semester.
I'm not good at judging people, but maybe I should have gotten an inkling of the feeling of others when, on 2-3 occasions during the semester, a couple of guys would "mistakenly" address Mr B as Dr B. It got no reaction, but everyone in class knew it was a put-down. Few teachers at Tech had doctorates, and the only one that taught German was Dr Bernard.
But the worst came toward the end of the semester, when Mr B made the mistake of announcing to the class that he'd be teaching German 6 the next semester. I was infuriated. It was to be our last semester at Tech and, not only wouldn't we have Dr Bernard again, we'd end up again with the disaster of Mr B. Was anyone else upset with that news?
What happened next I always remembered, but just as a simple incident. It's a story I never told before now. In retrospect, I now see it as a turning point, where quiet little me assumed a position of leadership for the first time. I went home furious that night, took out a sheet of lined paper, and across the top wrote words something like: "We the students in German 5 would like to have Dr Bernard teach German 6." It was a straightforward, positive statement and didn’t say anything negative whatsoever. I also do not recall that it ever used the word "petition", tho that's what it was. I put my signature on the first line, and felt somewhat like John Hancock when his was the first signature on the Declaration of Independence, which became so famous in the US that today it's synonymous with the word "signature".
The next day, I realized I could only get signatures in class, since I'd never find everyone from the class among Tech's 6,000 boys. So I quietly passed the petition behind me without saying a word and hoped for the best. Maybe a few other guys were as upset as I was and might sign it.
After a while the paper came back to me, not that I'd made an issue of being its author, but just because mine was the first signature. To my amazement, almost everyone had signed it! I'm going to guess that perhaps there were some 28 guys in the class, and we were lacking only about three signatures. Apparently I'd "read" the class better than I had thought. After class, I spoke to VS, one guy who hadn't signed. His reasoning was that he "didn't want to get in trouble". But that's nonsense. It could be true if there were only a few signatures, but when it was close to unanimity, he stood out all the more by his lack of signing.
I didn't have any time to turn the paper in until after school, when I went downstairs to the school office on the main floor, found the cubbyhole mailbox of David Weiss, chairman of the language department, and dropped off the petition. We'd see what would be happening.
Just moments later, walking down the corridor on the main floor, I couldn't believe what then happened. Mr B stopped me and asked where the petition was. On the basis that I didn't know if it was still in the mailbox or if Weiss had picked up his mail, I told him I didn't know, and nothing more was said. But this is a perfect illustration of Mr B's character. If he'd discovered the paper quietly circulating in class during the lesson, he'd have had every right to have confiscated it. But he had no right to go running down the hall trying to undo a democratic student vote. I've wondered who'd alerted him—VS, one of the other non-signers?--certainly not anyone who'd signed it. But who knows?
Over the years, I recalled German 5 and 6 as being back-to-back, but now realize that wasn't the case, because of the unusual schedule of those of us having come from junior high. 5 would have been in the spring of 1956 meaning there was a summer vacation before 6 took place that fall, our last high school semester. So there was a wait until we found out what was to happen.
But when in September, we filed into the German 6 class, we were excited to see Dr Walter Bernard walk in right behind us to teach the class. We'd won! Thus, we ended up with Dr Bernard in German 1, 4, and 6, three semesters out of six, half of our Tech language time. Again, I've always felt it was just another event, but now I see I made myself the (silent) leader of the class that altered the teaching schedule that year at Brooklyn Tech.
Let me say again that this is the only time I've ever told this story. At it evolved, I never said a word to family, or friends outside of class. I never said a word to anyone in class, other than VS, and no teacher ever said anything, not Dr Bernard, Mr Weiss, or Mr B, other than that question in the hallway.
That would seem to be the end of the tale, but there's a "silent" epilog. When Beverly and I were teaching, we'd often be invited to attend events at Goethe House, which at the time was in a former mansion on 5th Avenue, opposite the Met. Only one time, maybe 15 years later, an event included a luncheon, and I remember sitting down at a long table. When I looked across to the other side, about three people to my right was none other than Mr B. He looked 15 years older, but I still recognized him. On the other hand, 15 years doubled the age he knew me at, and I saw no indication that he recognized me, or that our glances even met, and that was fine with me.

Brooklyn Tech (cont'd)    While size is not an indicator of quality, Brooklyn Tech is the largest high school in the US by enrollment. When I was there, it was just about 6,000 boys, and even the school song we sang said we were "six thousand strong". There was a decline in later years, but it is now up again: in 2025 there were 5900 students at Tech, so about 6,000 is a good benchmark. It made me wonder what the second largest school is, and it turns out that it's Granada Hills Charter High School in Los Angeles with about 4,300, making it about ¾ the size of Tech.
In doing this review, I took down my yearbook, the Blueprint, for my graduating class of January 1957. Captions for grads said they were headed for college, but also for industry or the armed forces. I would have been 17 at the time, and went right into Queens College within days—no summer vacation involved. The January '57 class had 238 guys (female students were to come only over a decade later, in 1970), while June '57 had 968, for a total of 1206. This makes us January grads 20% of the combined class; as alumni we are now all grouped together as the Class of 1957. At our 50th Anniversary in 2007 we still met on our own, including for dinner. But at Tech now, all those older classes are small, so everyone who graduated 51 years earlier or more is now a member of the Diamond Club (don't call it the Geezer Group), meeting and having dinner together. That was the case for our 60th in 2017 and our 65th in 2022, which coincided with Tech's Centennial, 1922-2022.
Tho one might casually say that Tech is in Downtown Brooklyn, that isn't quite accurate.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/05/20/realestate/20liv-map/20liv-map-popup-v2.jpg

This is Downtown Brooklyn, with Borough Hall, formerly the Brooklyn City Hall, and historic Fulton Street. We've talked a lot about historic Brooklyn Heights to the west, and you'll note the iconic Brooklyn Bridge as well as the Manhattan Bridge. To the south you'll see Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn's main artery, which leads via Prospect Park to Jamaica Bay and the Rockaway Peninsula.
Flatbush Avenue north of Fulton has the peculiar name Flatbush Avenue Extension, which was laid out around 1906, specifically to connect to the new Manhattan Bridge, which opened in 1909. When Brooklyn Tech opened in 1922 with over 2,400 students, it was located in a converted warehouse at 49 Flatbush Avenue Extension, which on our map, is two blocks south of Sands Street, very close to the bridge. (The building is now a neighborhood science school for Vinegar Hill and Dumbo.) Because of this proximity, the BTHS logo shows the Manhattan Bridge rather than the more obvious symbol for the borough, the nearby Brooklyn Bridge. After 11 years, Tech moved to its newly-built current location in 1933.
So Tech did start out in Downtown Brooklyn, but then moved to nearby Fort Greene. On our map, go down DeKalb Avenue up to the southwest corner of Fort Greene Park; opposite this is where Tech is today.

https://hdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Fort-Greene-Extension.jpg

Tech is that unnamed white area southwest of the park between (the illegible) Fort Greene Place (address #29) and South Elliott Place. Most of what you see around the school is the Fort Greene Historic District (in gray), which was expanded (in blue) in 2016 by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The expansion included the commercial section along the diagonal Fulton Street (illegible), connecting it to the Brooklyn Academy of Music historic district (in black). The Fort Greene Historic District is listed on the New York State Registry and on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a New York City designated historic district. (Altho it's about a six-minute walk from the school down Fort Greene Place to the LIRR terminal, I never used the LIRR to get to school. More later.)

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/33/71/3c/33713ccc84faa8857f5b57366efe3270.jpg

The neighborhood is named after an American Revolutionary War era fort built in 1776 under the supervision of General Nathanael Greene, who aided General George Washington during the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. Fort Greene Park, originally called Washington Park, was Brooklyn's first park ever in 1847. In 1867, the park was redesigned by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, architects of Central Park, Prospect Park, and Eastern Parkway. It contains the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, which includes a crypt designed by Olmsted and Vaux, holding the remains of 11,500 Patriot prisoners of war who died while being held on British prison ships in Wallabout Bay during the American Revolutionary War.
Note on this map, which does show Tech, that, while South Elliott Place is named after a local merchant, the names of the five streets to the east in the historic district, South Portland Ave, South Oxford St, Cumberland St, Carlton Ave, and Adelphi St, were all named after early 19C terraces and streets in the Westminster area of London. In addition, note that the two blocks of what would be Cumberland Street adjacent to the park are still called Washington Park, after the park's original name.
In the 1850s, Fort Greene's growth spread out from stagecoach lines on Myrtle Avenue north of the park and Fulton Street to the south, both of which ran to the Fulton Ferry to Manhattan. It became known as the home of prosperous professionals, second only to Brooklyn Heights in prestige. During the 1850s and 1860s, blocks of Italianate brick and brownstone row houses were built to house the expanding upper and middle class population. The neighborhood is one of the best-preserved 19C residential districts in NYC and still maintains hundreds of Italianate, Anglo-Italian, French Second Empire, Greek Revival, Neo-Grec, Romanesque Revival, and Renaissance Revival row houses of virtually original appearance.
I would arrive at Tech by subway at the southern end of that long white block, and mention the neighborhood to illustrate the views I had on South Elliott Place as I hustled up the street to be on time for school (Photo by Beyond My Ken). This pair of buildings were built c1882 in the neo-Grec style and are mirror images of each other.

STEM    There have been huge changes in Brooklyn Tech since I attended. Little did we suspect at the time that the 1950s was to be the last decade of the original structuring of the curriculum, with all the shops and the College Prep major chosen by the few. While the other specialized schools had a curriculum geared towards college from the beginning, as mentioned, Brooklyn Tech's curriculum was initially designed for students not planning on attending college. This led to complaints from students in 1966 about the outdated curriculum, when more than 30 graduating Seniors in the school, including many student leaders, complained that the curriculum was geared toward the small minority of students not planning on attending college.
In the early 1990s the acronym STEM was used by a variety of educators. It's an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Brooklyn Tech was restructured in this direction, and today is known for its rigorous STEM curriculum and is recognized as a national model for excellence in STEM education.
As I've said, on current visits to the school, it's been obvious how all the shops have been converted to other uses, how students in the computer lab build robots, and how demonstrations of new specialties have been given for visitors to see, from trying out a flight simulator to analyzing a crime scene presented by the CSI club. There is also a small courtroom for mock trials. Below are Tech's requirements today:
1) All students are required to take this core curriculum, measured in semesters: 2 of Design & Drafting for Production, 2 of AP Principles of Computer Science, 8 of English Language Arts, 8 of Social Studies (4 Global History, 2 US History, 1 US Government, 1 Economics), 6 of Mathematics (Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry), 6 of Science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics), 6 of World Languages (German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese), 8 of Physical Education, and 1 of Health Education. Note that all students are required to take and pass a minimum of three years of a second language.
2) A "Major" concentration is also required. Majors are a set of 10 electives given to students during their last 2 years at Tech on a specific topic or discipline, courses that are in addition to the above. There are currently 18 majors at Tech. Each student ranks the Majors in order 1 to 18. They are then sorted electronically by preference and, based on their academic average, students are sorted into the number of classes available. Once that major is full all students are put into their next major choice. Approximately 75%-80% of students receive their first choice and an additional 11%-15% their second choice.
The majors are: Aerospace, Advanced Health Professions (this pre-med course is being phased out), Architecture, Bio Science, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Environmental Science, Finance, Industrial Design, Law & Society, LIU PharmD (with nearby Long Island University), Mathematics, Mechatronics & Robotics, Media Neuroscience, Physics, Social Science, Software Engineering.
3) Students are required to complete a minimum of 50 hours of community service outside of the school. This community service can also be earned through participation in certain school clubs or designated school-related events.

I have to say that all this scares me. First of all, with all the emphasis on science, where does the student interested in the humanities fit in? What would I do if I were applying today? The core curriculum is fine, and has sufficient humanities courses. But are they enough for a history major, English major, or language major? Maybe so. I had three years of language at Tech and still became a language major in college.
But as I said, the College Prep course we took was my salvation, where we just sampled the engineering and science spheres. Now I'd definitely have to choose a STEM major. I suppose it could be math. To again go back to Gilbert and Sullivan's "Modern Major General", as Gilbert wrote, I might today have "many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse". Maybe physics; I always liked visualizing the difference between potential and kinetic energy and calculating acceleration in meters per second per second (m/s²). How about architecture? In later years, I enjoyed working on designing the house we built in Westchester, and in remodeling our Tampa condo and present New York condo. Would I dare try pharmacy? Agatha Christie famously learned a lot during WWI when she became a pharmacy assistant and developed her knowledge of poisons, which she used in the plots of her mysteries from then on.
I suppose I still could have done one of these majors and still majored in language in college, and with a STEM fall-back. But I'd have no real interest in any of the other fields. The majors are clearly set up to the advantage of the administration, who have classes to fill with students, and to the potential disadvantage of students who could end up being dumped in some major they really have no interest in. There's no way I could rank all 17 majors on one single list. I'd be quite nervous.
When I first read about the community service requirement I was furious, but then I calmed down when I realized I'd have been OK. We all admire people who volunteer in soup kitchens or are candy-stripers in hospitals. However, I'm afraid that's not me. Where would one find time with the above study requirements? Also, forced community service is usually considered a punishment alternative for those who are avoiding jail time. I do understand the administration's wanting student extracurricular involvement, but I don't like having my arm twisted.
Then I thought it over and took more note of the second part of the requirement, in-school involvement. I was happy to have been on the German Help Squad, which met for a period a week after school. I was also on the Math Help Squad. In addition, I volunteered for the Newspaper Delivery Squad, who would deliver the Times (and then, the Herald Tribune) to classrooms during homeroom. Horizons is the name of the school's literary and art magazine, as well as the name of the club dedicated to its creation. I was involved there, and had a short story published in Horizons. Those are the things I remember clearly. My yearbook also reminds me of some things I have no real memory of; that I was on the Attendance Office Squad, Library Squad, and was Prefect Class (= home room) Vice President. I now imagine that all that service work I happily did in school just for fun would easily fulfill the required 50 hours.
Tech today has a graduation rate of 97%, and virtually 100% of those go on to higher education. But the student population is different. Today, about 43% of the students are female, which surprises me, since I'd have thought it would be more equal.
ETHNICITY: Ethnically, in the 1950s, the students were mostly white, with an occasional Latino or Black student. I do not recall any Asian students, but there must have been some. The white students were heavily Irish, German, Jewish, and Italian, with me surely counting among the latter despite my Belarusian half.
But in modern times, the Asian revolution has arrived. Brooklyn Tech's student population is currently 60% Asian (!!!), 24% White, 7% Hispanic, and 6% Black. The exact same figures apply in each group to students enrolled in advanced courses. Compare that to the percentage of students in other high schools in Brooklyn: 34% Black, 30% Hispanic, 17% Asian, 15% White. The Tech faculty is 57% white, 18% Asian, 9% black, 9% Latino. Asian-Americans are a significant force in all of NYC's specialized schools. That contrasts with the general population of NYC, where 17.3% of the population identifies as Asian-American. This represents about 1.4 million Asian-Americans out of the city's total population of 8.8 million. The Asian population in NYC is a significant and growing demographic.
STUYVESANT: Since my other interest had been Stuyvesant High School, let me update that. It's definitely college-preparatory and is another strong STEM school. Stuy had been established in 1904 as an all-boys school, but a lawsuit was decided in the female applicant's favor, and Stuyvesant was required to accept female students, the first in September 1969, a year before Tech did. By 2015, girls were 43% of the student body, which today is 72% Asian and 18% white.
The Stuyvesant curriculum includes four years of English, history, and laboratory-based sciences, including biology, chemistry, and physics; four years of mathematics; three years of a second language; a semester each of introductory art, music, health, and technical drawing; one semester of computer science; and two lab-based technology courses. Stuyvesant's language offerings include German, French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. Also offered is Latin (Tech has thankfully not gone down that path), but as you may imagine, I would hope a student taking Latin at Stuy would also take a modern language for its benefits.

Commuting    In the larger picture, some students walk to school and others take a school bus. That's true also in NYC, but given the distances involved, here students also take city buses and the subway, including the els. As for the specialized schools, which draw students from all five boroughs, even more rail travel is to be expected. Even today, when the specialized schools have been expanded to nine, with at least one per borough, a lot of commuting might be expected. But in the 1950s, there were only three, Tech, Stuy, and Bronx Sci, and I was curious about commuting back in the day. There was not much I could do to find out, but I took my yearbook and very unscientifically, checked the addresses of the guys who graduated in January 1957 to see what commutes I would find from that small sampling.

https://maps-nyc.com/img/0/mta-subway-map.jpg

This is a current map of the NYC subway (and el) system. Hold on to it for a while, as we'll be referring back to it. Some route changes have taken place since back in the day, particularly in Jamaica, but we'll get to that. For now, click on the huge mass of routes coming together in Downtown Brooklyn. Find the Lafayette Avenue stop on the blue line, the A & C trains. Then find the adjacent Fulton Street stop on the light green line, the G train (back in the day called the GG). These two small stations are in Fort Greene, and are the two I used, at different times. Oddly, they are back-to-back, but do not connect.
Now, to the west, find the larger DeKalb Avenue station on two yellow lines. It's physically in Downtown Brooklyn, but just five short blocks from Tech. At least today, it serves the Q and R lines, and I know a lot of guys used this station. I use it myself today, coming from Manhattan on the R to go to reunions. To the south, at the edge of the Fort Greene neighborhood, is Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center, the station that today includes the big entertainment complex that didn't exist then. It's above the Atlantic Terminal of the LIRR (then called Flatbush Avenue) and is a very complex subway station. Today it serves lines 2, 3 (both red), 4, 5 (both dark green), B, D, N, Q (a yellow-gold set of routes), R, W (another yellow route). I'm sure a lot of guys walked the two long blocks from this subway stop north to Tech. However, as mentioned, it was highly unlikely that any student used the LIRR station itself here—the railroad tracks are shown in light blue. I might have, but never even thought to do so, mostly because a train ride to go to school would have cost a lot more than a subway ride.
If you're not yet dizzy from all the complexities of commuting by subway to Tech, let's see what the yearbook shows. From reviewing addresses there, by far the largest number of students came from Brooklyn. Take a look at the subway connections they'd choose from and compare that to this map of Brooklyn neighborhoods. Coming from the north, Greenpoint and Williamsburg, was not that far. Further was from the east--I found four students coming from ENY. Southern neighborhoods, such as Coney Island and Bay Ridge, could be the furthest, but none are really all that far. Note Midwood for future reference, where my friend SD lived. When I on occasion visited him I'd go to the Avenue H station, so his commute to Tech would have involved the Q line to either Atlantic or DeKalb Avenues. Only now am I surprised at the commute he would have had to junior high in Cypress Hills.
Queens was also well represented by students. Here's a map of Queens neighborhoods (Both Maps by Peter Fitzgerald). But Queens has fewer subway lines (check it out), and coming in from Queens, especially from the far eastern border, could be formidable. I found at least one student each from Floral Park, Bellerose, Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Laurelton, Rosedale. And one from Hollis (where I eventually moved to—see below), which is almost as far east as Queens Village. Since subways didn't reach that far east, bus connections to the subways would always be necessary, most frequently into Jamaica, a major transportation hub.
I never suspected at the time that anyone came from other boroughs, but to my surprise. I found three students from Manhattan. There was one from Broome Street, and one from Orchard Street, but those are on the Lower East Side, and a surprisingly short hop on the subway, despite being in another borough. It looks like they each could have had a non-stop express connection to DeKalb Avenue. But one student lived way up on Riverside Drive, and he would have taken the 1, 2, or 3 from 157th St to the Q at Times Square to DeKalb.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57154d604d088e8318875db8/a013d86b-ddcf-4f4c-9fe3-2c94e7944369/Bronx+Neighborhoods+Titles.png?format=1500w

I was most surprised to find two guys who came in from the Bronx (above), both from its eastern edge. One was from Country Club, the other from Throg(g)s Neck. They would have needed a bus to the 6 to 14th St and then the Q to DeKalb. But where there's a will, there's a way.

To Queens    When asked today where I come from, I'll say New York, or Manhattan. But originally, as I said earlier, I'm a Brooklyn boy. Or I was in the beginning at least, because we later moved from East New York to Hollis, in Queens. We had been maybe four years in an apartment building on Pennsylvania Avenue, five on Jerome Street, and then about five on Arlington Avenue in the Cypress Hills section of ENY. Both the latter two were on the downstairs floor of a two-family house. But we'd always rented, and my parents wanted to buy their own home, so they found one in Hollis, on 195th Street, and that's the address listed under my picture in my Tech yearbook.
I started at Tech in September 1953, so I'd just had my birthday. Add 1 to the year to find I was a timid 14. And it was right that fall that we were going to do our big move. Therefore, I commuted to Tech from ENY for only two months before we moved sometime in early November to Hollis, and for most of my 3 ½ years at Tech—minus those first two months--I was a Queens boy. I also commuted to Queens College for four years from Hollis, meaning I lived in the family home until I moved out in 1961 at 21 to go to Mainz for a year, then get married. So I'm "from" both East New York & Hollis, but the family home I lived in for 7 ½ years was in Hollis.

My Several Commutes    I've been making an issue of student commuting in NYC in general, and particularly from all over the city to Brooklyn Tech. I've talked about junior high commuting, but now the picture expands.

http://subway.umka.org/stations/new-york/cypress-hills.gif

This is the map we used in the past regarding commuting to junior high. From home on Arlington Avenue I walked a little over a block to the Jamaica el on Fulton Street at the Van Siclen Avenue Station and went east four stops, past the two iconic curves, to the Cypress Hills station. When it was time to go to high school, oddly, I went to the very same station and took the el in the opposite direction! I went two stops on the el above Fulton Street to Broadway Junction, then changed to the subway, the Fulton Street line. Only now do I fully realize is that I was using historic Fulton Street all the way to school, which was again a block away from where I got off. First confirm on this map that the brown el and blue subway both use Fulton Street. Then confirm that a third line, the Canarsie Line el (in gray) also joins in at Broadway Junction. Finally note that the junction is where ENY meets Bushwick, and where a major street there is Broadway, hence the name of the junction, which is the third-busiest station in Brooklyn, tho the vast majority of passengers there are making transfers.

Now go back to our subway map to see that, after two stops on the brown Jamaica line, my route went for eight steps on the blue Fulton line to exit at the quiet Lafayette Avenue station a block south of Tech. Not a bad commute at all. But it was not to last.

https://edc.nyc/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_large/public/2023-07/NYCEDC-Broadway-Junction-Public-Improvements-Map.jpg?itok=frxEw5mx

On this map, disregard what's in orange; check out what's in gray. Note how the Jamaica el's J & Z trains come in from the southeast, then later on, go up Bushwick's Broadway. Note that the Canarsie Line's L train el (that's funny to say) crosses north-south, and how a pedestrian bridge connects to the Fulton line's A & C subway trains under the local park in green along Fulton Street. Two blocks further south, the LIRR's ENY station is in gray on Atlantic Avenue. This shows the pedestrian bridge with escalators (and stairs) I would take between the el and the subway (Photo by DanTD).

https://usaestaonline.com/system/attachments/pictures/000/000/724/original/Fort_Greene_Brooklyn_NY_Map.png?1612273359

The destination again was Fort Greene. Find Tech again (unnamed) on DeKalb between Fort Greene and South Elliott Places. Trace DeKalb east into Clinton Hill and the private Pratt Institute, with programs in architecture, design, and fine arts. Some Tech graduates who wanted to go to college in the same area as Tech went here. But then trace down South Elliott Place and South Portland Avenue to the two local subway stops I used at different times, the one at Fulton Street (shown) and Lafayette Avenue, the unnamed street running east.

https://www.nyc.gov/assets/ddc/images/content/pages/press-releases/2018/image_Fowler_1.png

This is that crazy triangular intersection at Fulton and Lafayette, Fowler Square Park. At the top is the south end of the block Tech is on, so it's not far away. We'll start with the crazy naming. The Fulton Street station of the Crosstown Line is near the western point of the park, physically on Lafayette, but AT Fulton. The Lafayette Avenue station is on Fulton (at South Portland to the right) but AT Lafayette, with no actual entrances on Lafayette. Personally, I think the two stations should have had each other's names, but that's not up to me. Oddly, the two very close stations do not in any way connect, tho underground, light from each is visible from the other. Over time, I used both stations, starting with Lafayette.
But I had that short commute from ENY for only two months. Here's how it went down that November, with me going to a new school and, at the same time, having a traumatic move between homes. The move happened on a school day. The night before we packed up, and on moving day, I walked down to the el to go to school. I came back to Arlington Avenue to an empty house, tho some family friend had been assigned to meet me and drive me out to Hollis. This was my last day in Brooklyn and is the insidious way I left permanently.
I'd never been out to Hollis, or had seen the new house until I arrived, so everything was a shock. As friends were helping settling in, I found out I'd lost my piano. Back on Jerome Street I'd had piano lessons on a used upright player piano my father had bought. The lessons stopped by Arlington Avenue, but the piano had still been a fixture in my bedroom. But I was informed that the movers had not been able to maneuver it down to the new basement, so they had been given a few bucks to dispose of the piano. It was just one more loss.
The next morning was more traumatic for me, since I was to go off to school as tho things were perfectly normal. Everything ended up going perfectly well, but I always like to know exactly what I'm doing, and that was not the case. With everything going on at once, my mother told me to just walk to the bus a few steps away on the corner, my Q2 line, and ask the driver how to get to the last stop of the el—let's call it the "railhead"--in Jamaica, a place I'd never been. I was very wary and confused. I dropped my 15 cents into the fare box and asked the driver for directions. He gave me a paper transfer and said to change buses at 179th Street—see the subway map for this railhead—and get off at the 165th Street terminal in Jamaica, and walk a block to the el. That's when I nervously asked if I could get a transfer to the el as well, and the driver and nearby passengers laughed at such a nonsensical thought. I still remember how humiliated "shy little me" felt. And I remembered this incident when in 1994, Metrocards were introduced—now OMNY cards—with the goal of just that, allowing free transfers between all buses and all subways and els. Life can always bring the unexpected.
You have to take note on a major rail change to this story since my Tech days. Our Jamaica Line map is "too modern". Beyond Cypress Hills, it shows six stops to 121st Street. These still exist. Then it shows how today, the el line bends to the right (going underground as a subway) and hugs the LIRR tracks, stopping at Sutphin Boulevard and then (off the map) Jamaica Center at Jamaica's LIRR station. The blue E train also reaches over to join the J & Z. Now confirm this on our main subway map.
Now you have to mentally convert this back to how it used to be. The E went with the F to the railhead at 179th Street, and the Jamaica el went straight down Jamaica Avenue, a block north of the LIRR to its original railhead at 168th Street. You'll see this below.

https://images.cf.nycsubway.org/images/maps/bmt_1946.jpg

http://www.pefagan.com/gen/queens/images/jam_tran.gif

The first link shows a 1946 map of the original route of the Jamaica el. After 121st Street, it made five stops to the terminus at 168th Street, first reached in 1918, and was a block north of the Jamaica Station of the LIRR. All this was moved in 1977, roughly a quarter-century after I used it.
The second link shows downtown Jamaica today, where the E, and J & Z, stop underground at Sutphin Boulevard at the Jamaica LIRR station, then terminates at Jamaica Center at Parsons & Archer. Now picture the old el going down Jamaica Avenue to its railhead at 168th Street, with the back entrance to the station being at 165th Street. You can now picture the new route I discovered that first morning on my first ever visit to downtown Jamaica, hurrying so as not to be late for school.
The second bus reached the back of the old 165th Street bus terminal at Merrick Boulevard. I exited the terminal from the front, and walked down 165th for one block to that entrance to the el, paying my second fare. The route was new up to Cypress Hills, where déja vu took over. I was near my junior high, then went around the two iconic bends. At Van Siclen, I remembered both going east to junior high, then west—the previous morning!—to Tech. At Broadway Junction I changed to the subway. At the second stop at Ralph Avenue, I would have been several blocks due north of the Eastern Parkway hospital in Brownsville where I was born. I then arrived at Lafayette Avenue from Hollis, just as I'd arrived the day before from ENY. It all worked out, but it was still momentous for me, tho I managed to get used to it all, sticking to this four-seat route for maybe just over a year.
Thus, my teenage life did seem to run along a straight line connecting Fort Greene via East New York and Jamaica to Hollis. I never acted on the fact that the LIRR also connects those points, tho I have used this route of the LIRR as an adult.

https://newyork.singstrong.org/uploads/7/2/6/3/7263919/9087730_1_orig.png

This is a map of LIRR routes. Find the gray connection from Atlantic Terminal (the historic, original route), via ENY to Jamaica, where lines flare out, one stopping in Hollis. I do have pleasant memories sometimes slightly varying my subway/el route as follows.
I might have done this next variation 5-6 times. Coming home after a tiring day—never in the morning rushing to school—on arriving on the el and getting off at 165th Street, I would decide I wanted to skip the two bus rides. Instead, I'd find my way to the underused LIRR Union Hall Street station. (It's not on any map, since it disappeared with all the 1977 changes, but Union Hall Street itself is on the Jamaica map.) I'd ride the short, one-stop distance from Union Hall Street to Hollis. It cost 25 cents and you could pay cash, so I never took time to buy a ticket, but gave the conductor a quarter on the train. It was fun to get off in Hollis, just 3+ blocks from home after a three-seat ride (subway, el, LIRR), for a total rail (non-bus) experience coming home from school.
But that variation was just a fun aberration of the normal four-seat route. For most of my latter time at Tech, I discovered a second major route. The thinking was this. If the Q2 already got me to the railhead at 179th Street, why take a second bus to the el? At the time, not only the F, but also the E served this station. Why not try out a new route?
My first route involved the Jamaica & Fulton Street lines. Check the subway map to find my second route, leaving from the 179th Street railhead of the Queens Boulevard line. Until 1988, the blue E train went west from here. It still connects at the very last station in Queens before the East River, to the terminus of the quiet, backwater southbound Crosstown Line with its light-green G train, then called the GG. (Disregard the purple 7, which is an el.) The Crosstown Line is known for being quiet, since it's the only main line (other than two small shuttle lines) that doesn't serve Manhattan. Follow its route south and you'll see it serves the Fulton Street Station we talked about earlier. Thus the first route, with two buses, was a four-seat ride, while this was just three.
But I had a third route that was perhaps my favorite. It was very long (but worth it), and again, I never used it in the mornings for fear of being late to school. I only used it for going home a few times a week (or more) in the later Tech years. It was a three-borough (!) route, but had the great advantage of being a single subway ride, plus the bus, making it a two-seat route.
Look at the subway map again to find where the E ends today, as part of the Eighth Avenue Line at the World Trade Center in Manhattan. But until 1976, the E train ran further during rush hours, to Brooklyn (and beyond, to Queens) as the A train does today, via the Fulton Street Line. Once I discovered this, I was delighted, as it became my "nap-and-homework" route.
You'll recall that back at Van Siclen Avenue, at different times I traveled in each direction. It happened again at Lafayette Avenue. To Jamaica, I had gone eastbound, but on this new route, I went westbound instead, under Downtown Brooklyn, the East River, Downtown Manhattan, up the Eighth Avenue Line, then back under the East River to Queens and the Queens Boulevard Line. I have to guess that the trip home might now have been as long as an hour and a half. Why would I do this?

https://images.freeimages.com/images/large-previews/208/nyc-subway-interior-1459399.jpg

This is one style of a NYC subway car interior, usually used on former IND lines. In the late afternoon, there were few passengers. Look to the left, and you'll see my "nap-and-homework seat". On the long E train rides home, this cozy corner seat next to the window (click) was ideal. Note the arm rest. I'd start out with a quick snooze, elbow on the arm rest, face in my palm, book bag behind my legs. It was delightful after a busy day to rest like this, without having to change trains. Once into Manhattan, it became work time, and my lap became my homework workspace. I'd arrive at 179th Street and my Q2 bus rested, and with much if not all my homework done. As I've been saying, going to school in NYC can be different than elsewhere.