Recently scientifically 2.0 so topical Schrödinger's cat jumped into being in the 1935 three-part article (in German) in Die Naturwissenschaften, just at the end of part one:
Man kann auch ganz burleske Fälle konstruieren. Eine Katze wird in eine Stahlkammer gesperrt, zusammen mit folgender Höllenmaschine …
This is known in the translation(Translator: John D. Trimmer) which is found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/986572 or more conveniently at http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.htm
One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device …
And let us state it straight away: this was not a good translation of this little story. Even the artificial Google Translate http://translate.google.com/ gets it better (note construct)
One can also construct quite burlesque cases. A cat is locked in a steel chamber, together with the following bomb ....
Google gets the burlesque, but not the device. Hell machine does not work, so let us ask German Wikipedia - And indeed, the 19th century military or terroristic bomb appears (in German) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6llenmaschine and it points those who seek knowledge to English Wikipedia's infernal machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infernal_machine. So Schrödinger's quote should read:
One can also construct quite burlesque cases. A cat is locked in a steel chamber, together with the following infernal machine …
An essential feature is that this imaginary infernal machine contained a Geiger-counter-like detonator bringing in the quantum world. Schrödinger's burlesque story appears between a serious discussion of particle track in Wilson cloud chamber en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber and a summary of what the reader should learn from that section:
There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.
