BBC History The Story of Science and Technology 2017

FROM THE MAKERS OF BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE
THE STORY OF
SCIENCE
& TECHNOLOGY
The rail revolution Ancient Greek technology Brunel

Milestones in global science Astronomy The Royal Society
Galileo Women of the space race Heroes of invention
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The Story of Science & Technology 3

CONTENTS 31
Sciences
global
milestones
82
Ada Lovelace,
a pioneering
computer
programmer
25
10 objects
that have
revolutionised
science
6 Timeline 31 Global milestones 54 HEAVEN & EARTH

Key moments in the history Looking beyond the west, James
of science and technology Poskett reveals ten of the worlds 56 Ptolemys maps
greatest scientific advances Jerry Brotton introduces
14 IDEAS & 37 Science through the ages
geography pioneer Ptolemy
INVENTIONS Nobel Prize winner Steven 62 A brief history
16 Ancient Greek technology Weinberg discusses his book of astronomy
Laurence Totelin on the Greek exploring thousands of years Heather Coupers guide to 5,000
love of gadgets of scientific discovery years of space study
20 What the Romans really 40 The Royal Society 64 A rail revolution

SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/ALAMY/GETTY
A look at the founding of the Dan Snow on how rail transport

did for us
350-year-old experimental brought unimaginable changes
Jem Duducu asks which Roman
society, with Patricia Fara to Britain and the world
innovations were really new
47 12 giant leaps for mankind 68 Galileo and the Moon
25 A history of science Historians nominate their picks for Christopher Lewis considers how
in 10 objects humanitys greatest leaps forward Galileo changed our view
Patricia Fara introduces the in science and technology of the heavens
objects that have transformed
our scientific understanding
4 The Story of Science & Technology

40
The experimental science
of the Royal Society
94
Brilliant bridge-builder
Thomas Telford
64
How the rise of rail
transformed Britain
and beyond
62 84
The 5,000-year quest Brunel the genius
to know the universe and despot
72 Heroes of invention 94 Thomas Telford

Christine MacLeod explores how
the great industrialists of the
Julian Glover hails an engineer
who transformed Britain
Science stories
Patricia Fara looks at five key
19th century were celebrated
GETTY/WELLCOME LIBRARY/SCIENCE & SOCIETY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
100 The Scottish individuals associated with

Enlightenment the Royal Society
80 PEOPLE & Alexander Broadie explains how
PERSONALITIES Glasgow became the intellectual 24 Gowin Knight
82 Ada Lovelace hotbed of the 18th century 46 Francis Hauksbee
James Essinger explores the life 104 Women of the space race 61 William Herschel
of one of the most important Margot Lee Shetterly shares the 99 Humphry Davy
figures in computing history untold story of the African- 108 Isaac Newton
84 Brunel: A hard taskmaster American women who worked
Steven Brindle reveals the for Nasa in the 1960s
despotic side of the great 109 Science Q&A 114 Opinion
engineering genius Knowing more about the history
Unlikely links and surprising facts
of maths helps us to teach it, says
92 Waking up with Plato from BBC Focus Magazine
Marcus du Sautoy
Greg Jenner describes how our
ancestors started their day

Timeline
History of science
From early humans to the 21st century,
Patricia Fara traces historys major
milestones in science and technology
A 15th-century
woodcut of
Pythagoras
formulating
2,100 BC a mathematical
Sumerian calendars are theory of music
in use, the rst ones
divided into 12 lunar
months. Each begins
Stone tools unearthed
in Kenya in 2015 predate
when the new crescent
modern humans moon appears at sunset.
By using astronomical 6th century BC
calculations, occasionally The most famous theorem in geometry is crucial
3.3 million a 13th month is introduced for astronomy, building and mathematics. But
years ago to keep the calendar although it is named after the Greek philosopher
The oldest surviving aligned with the sea- Pythagoras, there is no rm evidence that he proved
stone tools are made in sons. Every seventh day it. In another apocryphal story, Pythagoras is said
Kenya by predecessors is reserved for rest. to have mathematised the musical scale after
of modern humans. hearing different notes from a blacksmiths anvils.
2,000 BC 500 BC
5th century BC
According to modern science,
matter is composed of tiny
particles moving through
empty space. Democritus
is one of the earliest
Greeks to propose an
atomic model, but it is
largely rejected at the time.
He envisages several types
of atoms including hooked,
slippery and pointed corre- A Greek drachma
sponding to the characteristics honouring the great
of different substances. thinker Democritus
The discovery of cave paintings in South Sulawesi, Indonesia

5th century BC
suggests that art may have been universal among early people
A Greek philosopher from Sicily, Empedocles
(pictured below) suggests that the world is
composed of four fundamental princi-
c35,000 BC ples or elements air, earth, re and
Like later examples in Europe, Indonesian cave water. Although they never change, they
MPK-WTAP/ALAMY/GETTY
paintings prove that prehistoric people observed combine in different proportions to make
animals closely and knew how to make coloured up ordinary matter. This view dominated
materials. Their carefully chosen locations may scientic theories for 2,000 years.
indicate religious rituals and beliefs.

An illustration
2nd century BC of Roman engineer-
Dramatically retrieved in ing feats from
a 16th-century
the early 20th century from edition of Vitruviuss
an ancient shipwreck, De Architectura
the Greek Antikythera
mechanism is a complex
geared computer used for
astronomical predictions.
Although its operation is not
fully understood, this unique
discovery demonstrates
technological expertise 2nd
previously unknown before century AD
the 14th century. Writing in Greek,
The worlds oldest computer, Claudius Ptolemy
discovered by sponge divers of Alexandria produces
in the Aegean in 1900 his Almagest, a
mathematical and
astronomical treatise
describing an Earth-
centred universe. It is
extremely inuential
1st century BC throughout the Islamic
In his celebrated books on architecture, empire and Renaissance
ancient Romes most famous engineer, Europe. By introducing
Vitruvius, describes many different convoluted orbits called
technological installations, including epicycles, Ptolemy tries
cranes, aqueducts, catapults, water to explain why some
clocks and central heating systems. He planets appear to travel
also discusses Archimedes giant screws, backwards intermittently.
used in farming and mining to raise water
from one level to another.
400 BC 1 AD
4th century BC 1st century AD
In his History of Animals, Aristotle Pliny writes his Natural History, a compre-
one of ancient Greeces most hensive encyclopedia of Roman knowledge.
inuential philosophers Divided into 37 books, it encompasses an
describes in detail the enormous range of subjects. One of the rst
anatomy and behaviour of ancient books to be printed in the Renaissance,
several hundred crea- its wide range made it the standard work of
tures. Two thousand years reference for many centuries.
later, naturalists still followed
a Christianised version of
his chain of nature,
a xed hierarchical
ladder stretching up
from the lowliest
organisms through
birds, animals
and humans
towards angels
and God.
Aristotles
plan of over
500 living beings Plinys work aimed to collect together all ancient
was based on knowledge of geology, zoology, astronomy and art
detailed zoological
GETTY/BRIDGEMAN
research

Timeline
1439
When Johannes
Gutenberg
introduces his
printing press with
reusable letters,
he revolutionises
European scholar-
ship by enabling
new ideas to be
reproduced
accurately and
disseminated
quickly. Once
books had become
affordable, scientic
knowledge could
c800 spread all over
The House of Wisdom ourishes in Baghdad from the The Book of the world.
9th to the 13th centuries. Financially supported by the Ingenious Devices,
compiled by three
caliphate, scholars translate Greek texts into Arabic
Iranian brothers in
and also carry out further research. These improved Islamic the House of
versions of Greek knowledge provided crucial foundations Wisdom, AD 850
for the European Renaissance.
800 1100
c850 1150s
Gunpowder, made by mixing Central Europes
three chemicals together, most signicant
is the earliest known manu- natural historian during
factured explosive. Like many the 12th century is an
other technological inventions, abbess, Hildegard
it is rst referred to in China of Bingen who learns
centuries before appearing from her personal
in Europe. Gunpowder is used practical experience
in mining and reworks as as a herbalist. She is
well as in weapons. now more famous for
her music and her
visionary theology,
Diagram showing a mathematical analysis of vision but her two books
by Ibn al-Haytham, pioneer in the study of optics
on medicines
and diseases
101121 are important for
ALAMY/GETTY
The Muslim scholar Ibn al-Haytham (Latinised revealing the

as Alhazen) introduces the theory that vision concealed world
depends on light being reected from of female healing.
objects. He synthesises three older
approaches Greek geometry, classical
anatomy and Aristotles suggestion that
objects transmit messages into the eye
Tang dynasty but rejects Ptolemys idea that the
emperors used
gunpowder to put on eye emits rays of light.
reworks displays

Illustration of
male musculature
from Vesaliuss
De Humani
Corporis Fabrica
19th-century painting of Galileo

explaining his new astronomical
theories at Padua University
1633
1543 Galileo is sentenced to
In Padua Andreas house arrest after his
Vesalius overturns 1619 sensational book, Dialogue
centuries of medical By 1619, the German astrono- Concerning the Two Chief
beliefs with his revolution- mer Johannes Kepler has World Systems (1632)
ary book, On the Fabric formulated all three of his challenges Christianity by
of the Human Body. Its famous laws. Employed in supporting a heliocentric
stunning illustrations reveal the imperial court at Prague, system. His telescope has
details of human anatomy Kepler describes mathemati- enabled him to collect
that for the rst time have cally how the planets rotate incontrovertible evidence
been drawn directly from in elliptical orbits. He also such as the movement of
dissections of corpses. believes that the universe is Jupiters moons, and that the
bound together magnetically. Earth moves around the Sun.
1600
1543 1572 1628
In his Latin On the Revolutions of After a bright star suddenly For centuries, doctors
the Heavenly Spheres, the Polish appears in 1572, the Danish believed that the liver
priest Nicolaus Copernicus astronomer Tycho Brahe constantly generates
(pictured below) suggests that carefully measures its blood. Through
the planets rotate in circles location. By proving that it carrying out quantita-
around a central Sun. This idea is lies beyond the Moons orbit, tive experiments, the
not immediately accepted: many he challenges the Aristotelian
GETTY/BRIDGEMAN
royal physician
mathematicians regard it as a belief that the heavens are William Harvey
geometric model rather than unchanging. The observa- shows that the heart 1644
physical reality, and it cannot be tions from his Uraniborg repeatedly pumps a In his Latin Principles
proved experimentally. observatory would go on to xed amount of of Philosophy, the
prove crucial for establish- blood around the French philosopher
ing Copernicanism. body. He also studies Ren Descartes
reproduction, arguing (pictured above)
against the possibility eliminates mysterious
of spontaneous powers from the
generation. universe by describing
a mechanical
universe packed with
tiny moving particles
that repeatedly collide
with each other. He
formulates Newtons
Illustration (1660
rst law of motion:
61) by Cellarius of without intervention,
Tycho Brahes plan of objects move uniformly
the planets orbits in straight lines.
9
Timeline
A Montgoler
brothers poster for
1735 one of their wildly
popular balloon
The Swedish Carl
demonstrations,
Linnaeus (pictured where visitors
below) introduces could witness
a two-part classica- untethered ight
tion scheme for
1705 plants based on
counting the female
Beneting from a
pistils and male
1660 Dutch grant to study
stamens in owers.
Londons Royal Society the owers and
Although easy to use,
is among the rst insects of Suriname,
its focus on sexual
organisations being Maria Sibylla Merian
organs make it
established to (pictured above) is
controversial. 1783
exchange scientic one of the earliest Hot air balloons invented
He later extends
information through explorers to by the French Montgoler
his binary system to
an international travel with a solely brothers enable human
animals, inventing
network. In contrast scientic mission. beings to y for the very
labels such as
with university scholars, Her beautiful rst time and cause an
Homo sapiens.
their members empha- illustrations and international sensation.
sise the importance of meticulous investi- Symbolically signifying the
instruments and gations make her a progress of science in an
experiments, and founding gure in era of revolutionary
demonstrate how the science of politics, they are later used
scientic research can entomology (the for research into the
be practically and study of insects). atmosphere.
commercially valuable.
1700
1706 1765
The worlds rst Steam engines had long been used to
electrical machine is pump water out of Cornish mines, but by
invented by Francis inventing a separate condenser, James
Hauksbee, a former Watt makes them far more efcient: they
draper, to entertain the use less coal to produce the same power.
fellows of Londons Royal Watts steam engines drive the factories
Society. Hauksbee and trains of the industrial revolution that
pumps the air out of a makes Britain wealthy.
glass globe, then
produces an eerie glow
ALAMY/BRIDGEMAN/GETTY
Newtons own annotated copy inside by rotating it
of the Principia Mathematica against the friction of an
assistants hands.
1687
Building on the innovations of
his predecessors, in his Mathe-
matical Principles of Natural
Philosophy Isaac Newton makes
mathematics central to science.
He sets out his three laws of
motion, and introduces gravity to A replica of
James Watts
integrate the Earth within the 1765 steam
heavens by a single principle of engine, the
attraction varying with distance. invention that
helped propel
the industrial
revolution
10
1800
Machines have been
generating static
electricity for almost
a century, but
Alessandro Voltas
pile or battery
produces continuous
current electricity for
the rst time. It 1831
stimulates experiment- The possibility of transforming
ers to isolate new motion into electricity is
elements, such as discovered by Michael Faraday
sodium and potassium, (pictured above), the son of a black-
and to split water into smith, who made many other import-
its two component ant discoveries. Electromagnetic
elements: hydrogen induction came to lie at the heart of the
and oxygen. modern electrical industry. Having
initially studied science in his spare
time, he later becomes director
of the laboratory at the Royal
Institution.
1800
1811
Uneducated and from
a poor family, Mary Anning
is 12 when she discovers
the nearly complete
skeleton of what came
to be called an Ichthyo- A scorpion sh, one of the
saurus at Lyme Regis. species Darwin studied on
Soon wealthy collectors his voyages on HMS Beagle
from London take
advantage of her
paleontological 1859
expertise to Charles Darwin publish-
examine dinosaur es On the Origin of
skeletons that Species, having spent
dramatically many years collecting
A 1788 portrait of chemistry pioneers change ideas evidence for his theory
Marie and Antoine Lavoisier of evolution by natural
about the
past. selection, later sum-
1789 marised as the survival of
The French tax collector Antoine Lavoisier the ttest. By this time,
publishes the rst textbook on chemistry. many people have already
Mary Anning
GETTY/ALAMY/BRIDGEMAN
He is celebrated for insisting on precise accepted that the Earth

found fame by
measurement and systematising the way discovering
is extremely old.
chemicals are named. The books Jurassic
accurate technical diagrams, drawn by his fossils
wife, Marie, are essential for transmitting
the new chemistry internationally. Lavoisier
is guillotined during the French Revolution.

Timeline
Radio pioneer Marconi with
apparatus similar to that he
used to send the worlds rst
ever wireless communica-
tion over open sea
Reproduction of Mende-
leevs 1869 Periodic
Table, including gaps
1869
The Russian chemist
Dmitri Mendeleev
organises the
elements into the
Periodic Table and 1897
predicts ones that While physicists are
have not yet been investigating the scientic
discovered. Reading properties of radio waves,
across the rows, the Guglielmo Marconi becomes 1910
atomic number the rst to realise their Pure metallic radium is rst isolated by Marie
increases one at a commercial potential for Skodowska Curie, a Polish woman living in Paris.
time; in the vertical long-distance communication The rst winner of two Nobel Prizes, she investi-
columns, elements using Morse code. Unable to gates pitchblende ore, which is rich in uranium
with similar proper- get Italian funding, his earliest salts, to make the novel suggestion that radioactivi-
ties are grouped successful messages are ty comes from inside atoms. The discovery of
together. sent in Britain. radium revolutionised cancer treatment.
1900
1905
Albert Einstein (pictured
below) is working in
the Swiss patent ofce
when he formulates his
theory of special relativity,
including the notion that
time appears to stretch at
high speeds. His famous
formula E=mc2 underpins
the atomic bomb and
shows that a small change
in mass can release vast Depiction of Wegeners theory
amounts of energy. of Pangea fragmenting into
the continental landmasses
1912
When the German meteorolo-
gist Alfred Wegener suggests
SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY/BRIDGEMAN
Edison photographed in c1910 with

an early light bulb, one of 1,000 that a single original landmass
inventions he patented called Pangea had slowly split
apart, few scientists believe
1879 him. He is only vindicated in the
Prolic inventor Thomas Edison 1950s, when magnetic mea-
devises a commercially viable surements made beneath the
electric light bulb that can be Atlantic Ocean conrm
cheaply produced, lasts a long time Wegeners theory of
and uses relatively little power. continental drift.

1953
Determined to get
Reading up to 5000 characters per there rst, James
second, the Colossus computer broke Watson and Francis
codes used by the German high command Crick rely on an X-ray
diffraction photograph
1944 taken by Rosalind
The worlds rst programmable, Franklin to work out
electronic digital computers become the double helix US astronaut Buzz Aldrin is photographed by Neil
operational at Bletchley Park, where structure of DNA. Armstrong during the rst manned lunar mission
they are used to decode German Unique to every
military intelligence messages. Built individual, these 1969
in secret, their signicance goes twisted molecular After an intense Cold War space race against
unrecognised for decades. strands carry the Soviet Russia, the American Neil Armstrong
genetic information becomes the rst human being to walk on
essential for life, the Moon. Claiming to have come in peace
growth and for all the world, he collects soil samples
reproduction. and plants the Stars and Stripes.
1950 2000
1945 1967 2012
Led by military As a postgraduate student at Cambridge, at After a 40-year search,
ofcials, teams of rst Jocelyn Bell nds it hard to convince her scientists searching for
scientists scattered supervisors that the small blips she observes the elusive Higgs boson
across the US on computer print-outs are signicant. She had particle, nally track it
work secretly discovered pulsars, rotating neutron stars down with the Large
to develop the that regularly emit beams of radiation and Hadron Collider at CERN
worlds rst provide valuable celestial clocks. in Switzerland. This was
atomic bombs a major triumph for particle
before the physicists, because the
Germans. Two are bosons existence
dropped over demonstrates the validity
Japan, ending the of other theories known
Second World War collectively as the
but leaving Standard Model.
a lasting radio-
active legacy.
Patricia Fara is
Postgraduate
president of the British
astronomy
student Jocelyn Society for the History
Bell detected of Science and the
the pulse of author of Science: A
rapidly rotating Four Thousand Year
neutron stars
ALAMY/GETTY
History (Oxford
University Press, 2009)

IDEAS & IN
1 Ancient Greek technology
Ingenious inventions from antiquity
1 What the Romans really did for us

How many Roman innovations were really new?
1 Science stories: Gowin Knights compass

The steel-needled compass adopted by Britains navy
1 A history of science in 10 objects

Artefacts that mark the big shifts in the science story
1 10 global milestones in science

World-changing breakthroughs from beyond the west
1 Science through the ages

An interview with Nobel Prize winner Stephen Weinberg
NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM/BRIDGEMAN/ALAMY
1 The Royal Society

The story of Britains venerable experimental society
1 Science stories: Hauksbee & electric light

The man who turned static electricity into a showstopper
1 12 giant leaps for mankind

What were humanitys biggest strides forward?
The Story of Science & Technology
VENTIONS

Ideas & Inventions / Greece
TECHNOLOGY
ANCIENT
GETTY

IN THE
WORLD From crop harvesters to automated statues
and even proto-computers, the Greeks and Romans
loved a gadget. Laurence Totelin traces the
technological advances, from the practical to the
pointless, made two millennia ago
The 2,000-year-old three-level

Pont du Gard aqueduct, part of a
50km aqueduct that supplied the
city of Nmes, formerly known as
Nemausus, with water

Ideas & Inventions / Greece
A modern recreation of the 2,100-year-old Antikythera mechanism, the clockwork

computer recovered from the Mediterranean as a single encrusted piece (right) in
1901. Featuring around 35 gear wheels, it is thought to have been a highly sophisti-
cated device to predict celestial movements, such as solar and lunar eclipses
I
n 1901, a large lump of corroded
bronze was recovered from a
It was the the goddess Nysa that could rise and sit
automatically, as well as pour libations of
shipwreck off the coast of the Greek
island of Antikythera. The ship had
ultimate gadget: milk. When studying ancient technology, it is
important to consider these gadgets, as they
sunk in the rst century BC and had an instrument of show the crucial role wealthy patrons played
been carrying a varied cargo which in technological innovation. These patrons
included precious jewellery, glassware extreme precision enjoyed showing off to their guests with their
and statues. The metal lump, perhaps entertaining devices, but showed relatively
unsurprisingly, did not spark interest at rst. but of limited little interest in developing what we would
However, it came to light that it contained consider to be more useful machines.
gear wheels and deserved further research. practical utility
Over a century after its discovery, what is Technology for the many
now known as the Antikythera mechanism Mediterranean had the skill and knowledge Of course, many important technologies were
is considered the nest example of ancient to devise such a wonderful machine. developed in the ancient Graeco-Roman
Greek technology. This proto-computer The Antikythera mechanism could be world. Kings, tyrants and emperors invested
contains over 35 gear wheels; it predicted compared to a very expensive modern clock into warfare technologies, leading to the
eclipses, tracked various ancient calendars, or watch, with its numerous dials that the development of powerful and precise catapults,
traced the positions of celestial bodies on the owner may rarely use. It was the ultimate such as the carroballistas depicted on Trajans
ecliptic, and much more beside. gadget: an instrument of extreme precision Column in Rome. Archimedes is credited
Who could have created such a device? but of limited practical utility. Ancient Greek with the invention of the eponymous screw, a
Recently, scholars have suggested that texts describe several such gadgets. The device that carries a substance from a lower to
Archimedes, one of the most famous mathematician and engineer Hero of higher point. The Romans are renowned for
scientists of antiquity, might have been Alexandria (rst century AD) describes a their extensive water transporting systems,
responsible. Indeed, the mathematician had miniature temple with automated doors, with their majestic aqueducts. These systems,
created celestial globes, one of which had been activated by steam, as well as a self-trimming described in detail by the author Frontinus
deposited by the Roman general Marcellus at oil lamp. On a grander scale, automated (rst century AD), alimented fountains and
the Temple of Virtue. While it is tempting to statues were created in the Hellenistic period baths, the latter also benetting from
associate the Antikythera mechanism with a (323 BC31 BC). An account of the Ptolemaia, underoor heating systems (hypocausts). The
GETTY
prominent scientist, it is probably wisest to a lavish festival in honour of King Ptolemy II Romans also harnessed the power of water in
suggest that several people in the ancient and his wife Arsinoe II, mentions a statue of mining. At Dolaucothi gold mines in west

Technology in Greek
Wales, for instance, they built vast tanks to
hold water, which would sweep away soil and and Roman agriculture
reveal gold veins in the bedrock when
There were relatively few major innova- classical antiquity. In particular, the
released. In addition, the Romans created tions in agriculture during classical Romans perfected the art of tree grafting,
concrete that resisted the test of time, the antiquity. The watermill, rst invented in the joining of a scion to a rootstalk, which
recipes for which are preserved by the author the Hellenistic period, became increas- is essential in propagating fruit trees that
Vitruvius (rst century AD). ingly common in late antiquity, and are not productive when growing from
Focusing on epoch-making innovations archaeological remains have been found seed. Grafting methods allowed the
and inventions, however, is not always throughout the western Roman empire. Romans to transplant fruit trees from
productive in the history of technology, for it Two Roman authors, Pliny the Elder central Asia to the Mediterranean basin,
distracts from everyday technologies which (rst century AD) and Palladius (fourth or and hence to northern regions. For
played a crucial role in the lives of the many fth century AD) describe a harvesting instance, the Romans propagated the
machine, called a vallus, sometimes sweet cherry that grew in Pontus (modern
rather than the few. It is worthwhile to take a
dubbed the ancestor of the combine Turkey) to Italy, and then to Roman
step back and reect on the meaning of the harvester, employed on large estates in Britain. They also perfected techniques
word technology, which is Greek in origin. Gaul. It was mounted on wheels, pulled to graft together trees that are not
Technology is a discourse (Greek: logos) by an ox, and was equipped with metal compatible to be compatible, trees
about a techn (plural technai) a word that teeth to cut off the ears of corn. An must be of the same genus, preferably
can be very difcult to translate into English, exceptional representation of the of the same species. Thus, the agronomi-
although art or craft are often appropriate. harvester was discovered in Buzenol in cal writer Columella (rst century AD)
Greek philosophers, especially those who had Belgium in 1958. Sixty years later, describes at length how he developed a
studied with Socrates, reected at length on scholars still debate about the exact method to graft an olive onto a g. From
the notion of techn and its relationship with appearance and function of the vallus. the point of view of modern botany, this
While mechanical inventions were few, was not truly a graft (where scion and
epistm, knowledge. Thus, Plato often used
if we accept a broader denition of rootstalk end up sharing vascular tissue),
examples from technai to illustrate philo- technology, one that includes various but rather a method in which the olive
sophical points: from farming, sculpting, crafts and skills, there were some took root in the g. Still, it was a great feat
weaving, pottery, horsemanship, music important agricultural advances in of horticultural skill.
playing, generalship, cookery, medicine, and
many more. The philosopher also questioned
whether certain arts, such as rhetoric, should nor the Romans invented writing, but the The Ptolemaic kings based at Alexandria
count as techn or not. Many of the technai Greeks were the rst to write down vowels, refused to export the precious plant, which
listed by Plato changed relatively little over adapting the Phoenician alphabet (or to be led the kings of Pergamum to develop an
the course of antiquity, but nevertheless were more accurate abjad), which only contained alternative: prepared skins of animals. That
essential to the good functioning of society. consonants, to the needs of their language story, however, is unlikely to be true, as
Ancient technai were usually transmitted in the late ninth or early eighth century BC. parchment is attested in Anatolia several
along family lines, generally from father to Greeks and Romans used a variety of media centuries earlier.
son or from mother to daughter. They were for writing, including wax tablets and While the scroll (whether of papyrus or
a source of pride to those who possessed papyrus scrolls, both represented on Douriss parchment) remained in common use
them. The Hippocratic Oath (a text that is School Cup. The papyrus scroll, made from throughout antiquity, it gradually lost its
very difcult to date, but may go back to the the plant of the same name, was the material prominence to the codex, which resembles
fth century BC) illustrates this feeling of on which the books of the famous Library at the books with which we are familiar. First
pride: the new doctor who swore the oath (by Alexandria were preserved. mentioned in the rst century AD, the codex
no means all doctors swore it in antiquity) Legend has it that parchment was invented started to rival the scroll in the second
promised to guard my life and my techn. If in the second century BC at Pergamum. The century AD. Initially it was favoured by mar-
he did so, he would benet from good returns kings of Pergamum, the Hellenistic Attalids, ginal groups, such as the early Christians
and excellent reputation. wanted to create a library that would rival who used it for their devotional works, but it
that of Alexandria. To do so, however, they slowly gained popularity, and became the
Written in wax needed papyrus, which grew only in Egypt. dominant format by AD 500.
Ancient potters active at Athens at the Technology, then, should not be confused
beginning of the fth century BC enjoyed with engineering, which is only one branch
representing other artisans technai. For among many. Some technologies, such as
instance, the so-called Foundry Painter precision gear tools, remained in the hands
depicted a bronze workshop in great detail on of the wealthy. Others, such as water
the Foundry Cup: the smelting oven, statues transportation technologies, benetted a
at various stages of build, and separate bronze larger section of the ancient population,
hands and feet, ready to be attached to although by no means everyone. But perhaps
statues. The Clinic Painter, for his part, most important in shaping our perception of
represented a doctors surgery on an aryballos the ancient world is writing, even though
(a small ask): a physician bleeding a patient, levels of literacy remained relatively low
while others queued outside. Finally, Douris, throughout antiquity.
on his School Cup, painted a school, where
both music and reading were taught. Laurence Totelin is a senior lecturer in ancient
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Writing itself is a technology, one that history at Cardiff University and the author, with
involves tools and skills. Neither the Greeks Flask, c6 BC, depicting Gavin Hardy, of Ancient Botany (Routledge, 2015)
a doctor bleeding
The Story of Science & Technology a patient 19
Ideas & Inventions / Romans
INVENTION OR
ADAPTATION?
WHAT THE ROMANS
REALLY DID FOR US
The Romans get the credit for a lot of inventions,
but do they deserve it? Jem Duducu investigates how
Roman innovation was often a case of adaptation,
rather than originality
A rst-century AD relief
at Romes Museo della
Civilta Romana that
shows road-making.
By enhancing earlier
techniques, Rome
built a vast
network of
highways
BRIDGEMAN

Giulio Romanos fresco, 152635, depicting the Roman gods Mars (Ares to the
Greeks) and Venus (Aphrodite) the Romans liberally adopted Greek mythology
W
IMITATING THE GREEKS
The Romans copied the Greeks a lot. As their powerful
predecessors fell, Rome freely incorporated Greek culture
Roman civilisation only really got into the columns and triangular pediments
its stride in the third century BC. By that had been all the rage in Greece
then, the Greeks had been cultivating for centuries began to emerge.
their culture for centuries. In the Another example of the Greek
second century BC, Macedonia was inuence on Rome is the pantheon
the main military power in the Greek of gods, renamed by the Romans
ROMANS ROADS
W
world, but Rome was a greedy neigh- but, in terms of myths and imagery,
bour and fought four separate wars completely interchangeable with the
Straight, paved, well-drained against it. By 146 BC, Macedonia and Greek gods. Zeus was Jupiter and
the rest of the Greek world had fallen Ares was Mars, while soothsayers
Romes superhighways werent under Roman rule. and oracles both also appeared in
the first, but they made the Roman architecture is an interest- Greek culture.
worlds most extensive network ing example of Greek inuence. The The Greek Olympic Games our-
very rst structures in Rome were cir- ished under Roman rule and even
In the fth century BC, King Darius of Persia
cular, implying a Celtic inuence, but chariot racing seems to have origi-
ordered the construction of the Royal Road,
over time that all changed. Instead, nated in Greece.
which stretches over 1,600 miles but not all
of it was paved, nor was all of it straight. The
oldest paved road in history is in an Egyptian
quarry and is around 4,600 years old. CONCRETE FEAT
The Romans could see potential in these
early roads, so they borrowed the idea and The Romans (sort of) invented concrete, the quick and
enhanced it. At the peak of the Roman cheap material that helped build the empire
empire there were 29 military highways
radiating from the capital, with 113 provinces There is a form of concrete that is The Romans recognised that
interconnected by 372 roads nearly a naturally occurring, so technically it building arches and domes using a
quarter of a million miles in total. At the time, predates humans. Yet in around 1200 quick-drying, liquid material was far
and for years to come, this was the best- BC, the Mycenaeans made oors in easier than trying to build the same
connected empire the world had ever seen. concrete. Independently, Bedouins in features in brick or stone. It was far
Straight, paved roads improved communi- north Africa also created their own cheaper and quicker than building a
cation, trade and the movement of armies. concrete before the Roman era. large structure from solid marble too.
However, they were also expensive to build However, it was the Romans who It was also the Romans who devel-
and maintain. Only 20 per cent of Roman were to use concrete made from oped the idea of making a framework
roads were paved in stone, meaning that 80 a mixture of water, quicklime, sand in concrete, before cladding it with
per cent were either dirt tracks or covered and volcanic ash extensively and stone. The Colosseum in Rome is an
only in gravel, which degraded over the consistently from around 300 BC example of a large, mainly concrete,
winter months. Even the stone roads werent right up to the fall of Rome in the fth Roman structure.
always all that great. In the Vindolanda century AD. Indeed our word Emperor Augustus famously said:
Tablets a series of postcards written on concrete comes from the Latin I found Rome a city of bricks and left
slivers of wood and discarded at a Roman concretus, meaning compact. it a city of marble. While this may be
fort on Hadrians Wall it is interesting to Somewhat confusingly, the Romans a great line that underscores his
AKG IMAGES
read complaints about the state of the roads themselves didnt use the Latin word achievements as emperor, he missed
that the soldiers travelled on, demonstrating concretus; they called it opus out the most important Roman
that maintenance wasnt always a priority. caementicium. building material of all concrete.

Ideas & Inventions / Romans
W
SIEGE WARFARE
Engineering savvy and superior
weaponry meant the Romans
W COUNTING THE DAYS were masters of siege warfare
Julius Caesar brought time into line with a 12-month calendar The Romans didnt invent siege warfare,
that would provide stability for centuries but they certainly mastered it. It is fair
to say that if Roman legions made it as
The Julian calendar was not the rst needed adjustments. Once again, far as an enemy city or fort, the defenders
calendar, but has been the most what had been in use previously were at a disadvantage, no matter how
inuential in European history. Julius was rened and recalibrated in 1582 high or how thick their walls. Alongside
Caesar didnt put his name to the to become our modern-day Grego- brutal tactics, the Romans had a number
months, however; this was done later rian calendar. of weapons to bring a siege to a
in his honour. The old Quintilis was successful conclusion.
changed to Iulius (July) and the One of these deadly tools was a ballista
eighth month became known as (what the modern world would call a
Augustus (August). catapult), which hurled stones or some-
The Julian calendar, brought into times pots of Greek re, the ancient
effect by Caesar in 45 BC, has a equivalent of napalm. Depending on
regular year of 365 days, divided into circumstances, ballistas could also be
12 months, with a leap day added mounted on warships. The Romans were
to February every four years. exceptional engineers who could usually
This system worked well for determine the weak spots in defenders
over a millennium. walls and would keep pounding them until
However, the year isnt exactly they came down. A later version of the
365 days long. Although this ballista was called an onager, which did
was only a tiny discrepancy, over pretty much the same job but was cheaper
the centuries it began to cause and easier to build.
problems the calendar year gained November depicted in a third-century
The scorpio, meanwhile, was like a large
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about three days every four centuries. mosaic of the months in El Djem version of a crossbow. It could re bolts
So over long periods of time, it archaeological museum, Tunisia over long distances (well out of the range

W GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMICS
Diocletian reinvented government and invented economics
in a bold overhaul of Roman taxes, trade and leadership
Not all Roman experiments were the coins. While this may sound like a
successful. In AD 284, Diocletian, a good idea, costs continued to rise even
man of low birth who had risen through faster, creating a huge spike in prices.
the ranks in the army, became emperor. Diocletian responded by setting price
He solidied the idea of the tetrarchy: caps on most resources. The penalty
a system of sub-emperors, each one for disobeying these imposed price
ruling over a number of provinces, all caps? Death.
reporting to him. This meant that local The system of xed prices was
issues could be dealt with locally and widely despised, and almost as soon
that power was shared (to a certain as it was introduced, it was generally
extent). Obviously a sub-emperor ignored. The law of supply and
could go rogue, but after decades of demand dictates that if someone
war and strife, the tetrarchy was a needs something badly enough, they
welcome idea that brought peace. will pay over the odds. Under the
By AD 300, however, Diocletians circumstances, the black market
empire was facing economic problems: boomed. Fortunately, the situation in
free trade had broken down in some AD 301 didnt last long once the new
areas and prices were rising. The coinage had a chance to embed itself
emperor didnt help the situation when in the Roman economy, prices began
he embarked on a costly public to normalise.
building programme on a scale not Diocletian was also a highly unusual
seen for generations. Roman emperor in that, in AD 305,
Diocletian attempted to confront he voluntarily abdicated in favour of
these issues head on. First, he a two-emperor system. He retired
overhauled the tax to the Dalmatian coast
system, which (modern-day Croatia),
eliminated ingrained where he lived out his
inefciencies. He also days in splendour
recognised that the and spent his time
coinage had been cultivating cabbages.
debased to an extent
that condence in
A statue of the
the Roman Tetrarchs,
currency had Diocletians
diminished, so multi-leader
A 14th-century Italian miniature showing a he reminted and solution to
Roman siege of a fortress. Few cities could revalued all of years of unrest
resist Roman siege warfare
of enemy archers) and was designed to kill

careless defenders on the city walls.
THE BOOK
Another complex and fearsome weapon As the first to bind written pages inside a cover, there is one
was the siege tower. This was a moveable
wooden tower, designed to be rolled up
thing the Romans definitely did invent: the book
to enemy walls, allowing the troops inside After all these examples of the rst time, sheets of a uniform size
to descend onto the enemy defenders. Romans enhancing existing ideas were bound together along one edge,
Siege towers took time to build and needed rather than inventing new ones, heres in between two larger, stronger
ramps, which allowed the defenders to see one that was genuinely original. protective covers. Now, for the rst
what was coming and gave them time The rst recognisable alphabet, time, large amounts of written
to prepare a counter-attack. Nevertheless, and therefore writing, was developed information could be concentrated in
when siege towers were deployed, more in ancient Babylon around 3100 BC. one highly transportable volume. This
often than not they got the Romans over This writing was done on clay tablets would become the standard way to
the walls. not the most portable of formats for write and store information until the
If all of these failed, a battering ram written literature. The Egyptians made digital age 1,900 years later.
could be used against the defenders a leap forwards with papyrus, thin Across the empire (both during and
gates. These rams were protected by a sheets made from the pith of the after the Roman era), the book
wooden gallery covered in wet cowhides to papyrus plant. became the standard format for
stop them being burnt by the defenders. Now knowledge could be pre- writing. Most famously, the word
Once enemy walls were breached, served on scrolls, which were easier bible is a variation of the Greek word
the Roman soldiers would advance in a to transport, but still bulky. Paper for the books (ta biblia). The
testudo (tortoise) formation. This involved itself was invented in China around invention of the book enabled much
covering their heads with their rectangular the end of the rst century AD, but easier sharing of complex ideas,
shields, with other shields protecting didnt reach Europe until after the fall including everything from Christianity
their front and sides. Such a formation of the western Roman empire. to annals about emperors.
absorbed arrows and small rocks, giving Around the same time that paper
GETTY
the men valuable time to get to the breach was being invented in China, the Jem Duducu is the author of The Romans
relatively unharmed. Romans invented the codex. For the in 100 Facts (Amberley Publishing, 2015)

Science Stories
NAVIGATION
1750
Gowin Knight
revolutionises
the navigational
compass
Gowin Knight
pioneered accurate
compasses with slender steel
needles, like this one from c1776
eing a great inventor does not always Four years later, Knight was asked to losopher researching in his London study,
B mean having a generous nature.
Gowin Knight (171372) won huge
examine a compass that had been damaged
during a lightning storm at sea. Horried to
Knight had focused on extreme precision,
and his readings were accurate to under a
acclaim at the Royal Society for his discover that its cracked casing was fastened degree. In contrast, mariners at sea were
magnets and compasses, but as the rst with iron nails, and that the needle was a soft more concerned to verify their general
director of the British Museum, he iron wire bent into a crude lozenge and taped direction, and they complained that
antagonised all his curators by walling up beneath a heavy cardboard circle, Knight Knights sensitive needle spun round and
the corridor to the toilet. determined to revolutionise compass design. round in stormy weather. When James
Short-tempered, reclusive and mean, After extensive tests, he produced a model Cook lost his favourite but old-fashioned
Knight was notoriously secretive, which made of ne brass, with a slender steel needle compass overboard, he demanded an
contradicted the scientic ideology that balanced on a sharp point. identical replacement, rejecting newer
research should benet the world, not the Thanks to some nifty social network- versions because, Doctor Knights
individual. Yet reliable navigation was ing through contacts at the Royal Society, Stearing Compass from their quick mo-
vital for British shipping, and the Royal Knight managed to convince key naval tion are found to be of very little use on
Society awarded Knight its prestigious ofcials that his expensive compasses were Board small Vessels at sea.
Copley Medal for his contributions to a worthwhile investment. Soon they were In retrospect, Knights most signicant
national trade and empire. standard issue for all ships embarking on achievement was to build a scientic
The excitement had started in 1745. international voyages, and naval historians career. An adept social climber, he started
Hither to I have wrote only to blot now celebrate him as the founder of low and nished high, succeeding be-
paper, gushed an American merchant scientic navigation. cause he knew how to market himself and
based in London, but now I tell you some However, technical sophistication can the instruments he produced.
thing new Docr night a Physition has have drawbacks, and the initial enthusiasm Knight is an outstanding example
found the Art of Giveing Such a magnetic soon turned to despair. As a natural phi- of those Enlightenment experimental
power to Steel that the poor old Loadstone entrepreneurs who, red by hardship as
is putt quite out of Countenance. well as enthusiasm, supported themselves
Knight was a medical student at Oxford
when he rst started experimenting with
Soon Knights through teaching, writing, inventing and
lecturing. Collectively, they made science
loadstone, a naturally occurring magnetic compasses were respectable. At the beginning of the 18th
NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM
iron ore that varies greatly in quality century, natural philosophers and inven-
and tends to lose its strength over time. standard issue for all tors were gures of fun, mocked as bum-
Although he never revealed his precise bling virtuosi and impractical projectors.
techniques, Knight took advantage of ships embarking on A hundred years later, no young man or
improvements in steel manufacture woman could call themselves educated
to produce powerful, permanent international voyages unless they knew some science.
magnetic bars. Words: Patricia Fara

Joseph Wrights 1768 painting,
An Experiment on a Bird in the
Air Pump, shows a travelling
lecturer demonstrating Robert
Boyles famous vacuum-creating
instrument to a (mostly)
captivated audience
From the early calculator that helped merchants

do complex sums in seconds to the x-ray that unlocked
the secrets of DNA, Patricia Fara introduces objects
that have transformed our understanding of the
ALAMY
world (and universe) over the past 500 years

Ideas & Inventions / Objects
2 JOHANNES
KEPLERS MODEL
OF THE UNIVERSE
The harmonious musical
cosmos imagined by the
astronomer famous for
showing that planets move
in ellipses
In 1600, an impoverished astrologer and
former university teacher called Johannes
Kepler (15711630) found refuge in the
imperial court at Prague. While his three
laws describing how the planets move still
lie at the heart of Newtonian astronomy,
Kepler himself believed in a magnetic
musical universe structured to mirror Gods
perfect geometrical forms.
In Keplers harmonious vision, which he
illustrated by drawing an imaginary cosmic
model, God had spaced out the planetary
spheres so that symmetrical shapes could
be nested between them. The outermost
orbit of Saturn is separated from its
neighbour Jupiter by a cube. Moving
inwards, a pyramid lies between Jupiter
and Mars. Similarly, other solids frame the
paths of Earth, Venus and Mercury around
the Sun.
Kepler decided that the Sun must affect
the motion of the planets, and he started
by tackling the astrological God of War,
Mars. This planets orbit clearly deviated
from circular perfection, and after many
tortuous calculations and blind alleys,
Kepler showed that the orbit of Mars is
Tycho Brahe surveys the heavens in his mural quadrant, as depicted
in the frontispiece to Astronomiae Instauratiae Mechanica (1598) an ellipse.
Yet what might now seem like a great
scientic leap forward was ignored for
decades. It was only in 1631, after Kepler
1 TYCHO BRAHES MURAL QUADRANT had died, that his elliptical model was
The brass quarter-arc that helped an unorthodox vindicated, when Mercury passed in front
of the Sun exactly as he had predicted.
Danish astronomer compile the worlds most
accurate set of star data
Tycho Brahe (15461601) was no wall and used to measure the precise
ordinary 16th-century astronomer. position of a star as it passes by the
Following an unfortunate duel he wore small sight on the top left. Behind the
an articial nose, and he supposedly virtual Tychos outstretched arm lie
died from a burst bladder at a feast. illustrations of his observatorys three
More importantly, Tycho rejected oors: the roof top for making
conventional academic career routes, night-time observations, the library
eventually acquiring royal funding for with its immense celestial globe, and
a massive observatory on the island the basement devoted to carrying out
of Hven, which is now a Danish experiments. An observer is just
heritage site on Swedish territory. visible on the right, calling out to his
He was particularly proud of his giant assistants who coordinate their
quadrant, the brass quarter-arc measurements of a moving stars time
astronomical device around two and position.
metres in height that can be seen in Tycho compiled the worlds most
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the frontispiece illustration above. accurate and comprehensive set of

Most of this picture is itself of a star data. And, although Tycho
picture Tycho and his snoozing dog believed the Sun revolves about us, Keplers imaginary cosmic
belong to a mural painted within the Galileo used his observations to model shown in Mysterium
quadrant device, which is xed to the conrm that the Earth indeed moves. Cosmographicum (1596)

3 JOHN NAPIERS BONES We can never know
The early calculator that made sums quick and easy whether Newtons
Have you ever wondered how the
Romans did multiplication? Even the
1617) decided it was time to make
routine arithmetical tasks easier. He
apple really did fall,
two-times table expands into
nightmarish proportions if you try to
invented a special type of abacus, a
set of rotating rods each inscribed
but its impact has
work it out in Latin numerals. Hardly
surprising, then, that when Hindu-
many times over with the ten basic
digits. Soon known as Napiers bones
been enormous
Arabic numbers were imported into (expensive ones were made of bone
Europe at the beginning of the or ivory), this device made it possible
13th century, merchants and to carry out long calculations quickly
mathematicians enthusiastically and accurately. You just line up the
adopted the new system of nine digits rods and read off the answer.
plus zero that we still use. 5 ISAAC NEWTONS
Even so, when dealing APPLE
with large numbers,
it was easy to make
mistakes. Division
The fruit that may or may
posed still more of a not have fallen from a tree
problem, to say nothing and inspired Newtons
of square roots. theory of gravitation
Four centuries later,
the Laird of Merchistoun Most people know only one thing about
better known as Isaac Newton (16421727): that he
Scottish mathematician watched an apple fall from a tree. Rather
John Napier (1550 like St Catherines wheel or St Jeromes
lion, Newtons apple has become an
iconic attribute of scientic genius.
The story originated with Newton
A set of John himself, who as an elderly man reminisced
Napiers bones, about a day nearly 60 years earlier when
which made he sat in a contemplative mood. Why
arithmetic a little should that apple always descend
less nightmarish perpendicularly to the ground, thought he
in the 17th century to him self. Why should it not go sideways
or upwards, but constantly to the earths
centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the
earth draws it
For Newton and his contemporaries,
this episode resonated symbolically with
the Fall in the Garden of Eden, when Eve
persuaded Adam to bite into the forbidden
fruit from the tree of knowledge.
ROBERT BOYLES AIR PUMP After a long absence,
4 the apple reappeared in
The device that produced a completely the 19th century and soon
artificial state: a vacuum acquired mythological
signicance. When
Oxford University built its
Britains most famous scientic anything valid could be learnt about
Gothic-style museum for
picture (see page 25), by Joseph reality from a situation that was
teaching science, stone
Wright of Derby, shows a red-robed non-existent in nature, but the
statues were installed to
philosopher lecturing about an air experiments were convincing.
inspire students. Newton
pump to a small family group, his Moving bells inside the evacuated
was among the rst six,
hand poised on the stop-cock that sphere could be seen but not heard,
gazing down at his apple
will determine the life or death of a ames were extinguished and
as though it had fallen
white bird inside the glass globe. rabbits died.
from heaven. We can
Developed a hundred years By the time that Wright was
never know whether
earlier by Robert Boyle (162791) painting, the air pump had become
that apple really did fall,
and Robert Hooke (16351703), the an emblem of modern technology.
but its impact has
air pump was a completely new type His group portrait displays the mixed
been enormous.
of instrument because it produced reactions still evoked by scientic
an articial state a vacuum. By research wonder, absorption,
turning the crank at the bottom, an terror and also the complete lack Isaac Newton
experimenter could mechanically of interest manifested by the couple contemplates
a fallen apple in this
suck most of the air out of a glass on the left, who have eyes for statue at Oxford
GETTY
globe. Critics may have denied that nobody but each other. University Museum

7 CROOKES TUBE
The mysterious glowing
apparatus in which
electrons were discovered
Its the 1870s. Imagine the bewilderment
of scientists gazing at this glowing electric
tube. Inside, it contains only gas at a very
low pressure, so what could be producing
that eerie green luminosity? The strong
shadow of a Maltese cross suggests that
this is an optical phenomenon, but
another experiment shows that something
but what? is strong enough to push
a little cart along some miniature rails.
Could it be a stream of particles, or
perhaps some mysterious rays?
This apparatus was developed by
William Crookes (18321919), an ingenious
British physicist who created movement
and shadows to back up his claims that
a strange substance is being emitted by
one of the electric plates in his tube.
Crookes suggested that spiritualism may
be behind the effect, and after several
prominent mediums survived his rigorous
tests without being caught cheating, some
eminent scientists believed that it really
was possible to contact the dead.
Sceptics accused them of being duped
by charlatans, but Crookes suggested
that radio might have a human analogy,
so that people with especially sensitive
organs can tune in to vibrations carried
through space. Crookess evidence was
persuasive, and he was partially vindi-
Alessandro Voltas drawing of the worlds rst electric battery (1800) cated when his rays were shown to be
electrons. His sance experiences have
never been fully explained.
6 VOLTAS PILE
The prototype battery that its inventor
Crookes tube led some
scientists to believe that its
perfected by giving himself electric shocks possible to contact the dead
Alessandro Volta (17451827) was frogs legs was identical to articial

a sharp operator. Based in Italy, he electricity produced in a laboratory.
consolidated his international Volta was as interested in
reputation by cultivating scientic defeating his rivals especially his
friendships all over Europe and fellow Italian Luigi Galvani as in
pledging his allegiance to Napoleon. providing solid evidence. His article
In 1800, he chose British journals for was a rhetorical masterpiece,
launching his revolutionary instru- convincing his readers by describing
ment that provided a new source of his results at length yet managing to
power current electricity. avoid the awkward questions.
To make this prototype battery,
Volta piled up discs on vertical glass
rods, alternating two different metals
and separating them with cardboard Volta was as
soaked in salty water. Incorporating
ALAMY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
himself as an experimental subject, interested in

Volta placed one hand in the basin of
water at the bottom, and the other on defeating his
the metal plate at the top. Sometimes
he even used his tongue as a rivals as in
detector. The shocks he received
were, he claimed, proof that animal providing solid
electricity the kind already
observed in electric eels or twitching evidence
The 100-inch Hooker telescope at
the Mount Wilson Observatory 9 EDWIN HUBBLES
used by Hubble to calculate
galaxy distances and prove the
TELESCOPE
expansion of the universe
The instrument that helped
a First World War veteran establish
that the universe is expanding
8 MRS RNTGENS RING Not many people could make Albert Einstein
admit he had made a mistake, but Edwin
The jewel in the crown of the worlds first X-ray image Hubble (18891953) was one of them. After
serving as a soldier in the First World War his
Academic articles rarely mention labelled X to indicate his bafement. lab nickname was The Major Hubble went
scientists families, but this photo- I have seen my death, she ex- to the Mount Wilson Observatory in California,
graph suggests that 19th-century claimed prophetically when she was where he used the worlds largest telescope
wives may often have been involved shown her bones with their ghostly to discover nebulae lying far beyond our
in research projects. coating of esh. She was right this own galaxy.
When Wilhelm Rntgen (1845 weightless, electrically neutral To measure the cosmos, Hubble needed
1923) stumbled across a mysterious radiation would often prove fatal. Yet an astronomical ruler, and he borrowed one
type of radiation, he was a conscien- within a few years, X-rays had entered invented by Henrietta Leavitt, a mathematical
tious German professor methodically the repertoire of fairground perform- drudge or human computer based at Harvard.
repeating some earlier experiments. ers. As one magazine wrote: Im full Like countless other intelligent women in this
While checking his apparatus of daze; Shock and amaze; For pre-electronic era, she was sufciently
to make sure it was now-a-days; I hear desperate for work to tolerate long hours and
light-proof, he noticed theyll gaze; Thru low wages, and through tedious calculations
a strange shimmering cloak and gown and she showed how ashing stars can be used to
some distance away. even stays; These estimate stellar distances.
Rntgen then set naughty, naughty Thanks to Leavitt, Hubble produced
about a systematic Rntgen Rays. his own graph proving that the further away
investigation, eating a galaxy is, the faster it is racing away from
GETTY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
and sleeping in his Anna Bertha the Earth. This diagram conrmed a conse-
laboratory for several Rntgens ringed quence of relativity theory that Einstein had
weeks. hand captured in previously refused to accept that the
the worlds rst
A fortnight after his universe started out as a small dense cluster
X-ray photograph,
initial discovery, he in 1895. Berthas and has been expanding ever since. Although
asked his wife, Anna husband, Wilhelm, Einstein was converted, other scientists
Bertha, to hold her won a Nobel Prize disagreed; ironically, the expression big bang
hand in the path of in 1901 for his was coined by one of the theorys most
the rays that he research outspoken opponents.

It wasnt until the invention of the laser

in 1960 that 3D holography could develop
10 THE HOLOGRAM
The 3D image that
made a 15-year journey
from half-realised
10 ROSALIND FRANKLINS
theory to practice
X-RAY PHOTOGRAPH
Impossible to pin down with a photograph,
This image, taken in a London laboratory in the early holograms icker from one half-state
1950s, was crucial in unlocking the secrets of DNA of existence to another. Unlike almost
every other scientic invention, the theory
When the crystallographer Rosalind like Franklin, Watson knew that the underpinning holograms was thoroughly
Franklin (192058) produced the x-ray prominent X shape revealed a spiral, worked out long before the rst one
photograph above in London in the and he realised later that two was created.
early 1950s, she carefully led it away molecular strands must be inter- Dennis Gabor (19001971), a Hungarian
for future analysis. A rm believer in twined. Fully analysing the photo- Jew who had ed to Britain, developed the
following scientic protocol, she had graph involved careful measurements idea in 1947. Using standard laws of
been trained to carry out her research and long calculations. Both Watson optical physics, he suggested that the
methodically, and she was deter- and Crick soon rushed into print, 3D-appearance of an object might be
mined to complete her current set of claiming that by unravelling the recorded permanently, to be made visible
experiments before exploring any structure of complex molecules inside once again by shining the same type of
further possibilities, however genes, they had discovered the light as before. For years, holograms
tantalising they might seem. secrets of inheritance. Franklin died existed in a limbo state, envisaged
James Watson (1928) was a very young, in 1958, but her contribution intellectually but unrealised in practice. It
different character. A young American to the understanding of DNA is now was only after lasers were invented in 1960
PhD student at Cambridge, he was fully recognised. that holography became feasible.
impulsive, ambitious and rmly
focused on his goal: to decipher the Patricia Faraa is president of the British Society
structure of DNA. Watson deed his
bosss instructions to get on with his
Watson engaged for the History of Science
own work, and instead engaged in
clandestine meetings with Francis
in clandestine DISCOVER MORE
Crick (19162004) as they struggled

to solve sciences biggest puzzle.
meetings with BOOK
Science: A Four Thousand Year History
Crick as they
ALAMY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
When Watson was shown by Patricia Fara (OUP, 2009)

Franklins picture without her WEBSITE
knowledge, he immediately recog-
nised its signicance my mouth fell
struggled to For more information on key objects
in the history of science, log on to the
open and my pulse began to race, he
reported in his bestselling book, The
solve sciences website of the Whipple Museum of
the History of Science: hps.cam.ac.uk/
Double Helix. Although not an expert biggest puzzle whipple/explore

10
GLOBAL
MILESTONES
IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY
From Babylonian mathematics

to Inuit climate science,
James Poskett picks ten
of the most remarkable
stories from the global Statue in Uzbekistan
of the ninth-century
mathematician
history of science Muhammad
ALAMY
al-Khwarizmi, the
and technology inventor of algorithms

Ideas & Inventions / Global milestones
W ABORIGINAL
ASTRONOMY
Australias indigenous people
can lay claim to being the
worlds oldest astronomers
Aboriginal Australians were among the
worlds rst astronomers. For at least
10,000 years, astronomy has been a
fundamental part of Aboriginal culture.
By identifying different stars and
constellations, Aboriginal people have
linked the heavens to major life events.
The Kamilaroi people hold male
initiation ceremonies with the setting of
Djulpan a constellation representing a
hunter in a canoe. What makes this all
the more intriguing is that Djulpan
actually corresponds to the European
constellation known as Orion, also a
hunter. (Although in the southern
hemisphere Orion is upside down!)
Astronomy also serves a range of
more practical functions for Aboriginal
Australians. The seafaring Yolngu
people track the position and phase of
the moon in order to predict the height
of the tide. Similarly, the Wardaman
people of northern Australia are able to
navigate across the desert at night,
simply by following the stars. Today, this
ancient astronomical knowledge can
still be found in rock engravings across
Australia. Just to the north of Sydney, in
the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park,
you can nd a series of incredible
engravings made by the Kuringgai
people. Perhaps over 4,000 years old,
one of these represents the Emu Cuneiform script and illustrations on a Babylonian tablet show a set of
constellation. And on a clear autumn problems relating to calculating volume, together with the solutions
night, the engraving aligns perfectly
with the stars in the sky, W
an archaeological testament BABYLONIAN MATHEMATICS
to Aboriginal Australian
astronomy. An advanced Mesopotamian numbers system
that we still use 4,000 years later
Ever wondered why there are should then have 60 hours
60 seconds in a minute? Or 360 in a day and 60 days in a month!).
degrees in a circle? The answer Historians and archaeologists
lies in ancient Babylon (modern have deciphered clay tablets,
The Emu day Iraq). Today, the majority of some dating to 1800 BC, which
BARNABY NORRIS - WWW.EMUDREAMING.COM/ALAMY
constellation mathematics is done in what is show that ancient Babylonian

that aligns with known as base ten. You learn at people did really complex
ancient Aborigi-
nal engravings
school that there are units, tens, mathematics in base 60. Many
of an emu on hundreds and thousands. This of these tablets relate to the
the ground makes things pretty easy for administration of the Babylo-
counting on your ngers. But nian empire, calculating interest
nearly 4,000 years ago, the on loans or the size of land
people of ancient Babylon used plots. But there is also
base 60, which divides each evidence that Babylonian
unit into 60 parts. The easiest mathematicians developed
way to understand this is to geometrical theorems well
think of time: we have 60 before the Greeks. The ancient
seconds in a minute and then people of Iraq knew
60 minutes in an hour. (To be Pythagorass theorem before
really consistent in base 60, we Pythagoras himself.

Stages of the paper-
making process rst
standardised in China
W ARABIC
ALGORITHMS
Medieval Persia was the cradle
of the computer revolution
How does Google search the entire internet
in less than a second? To nd out, we need
to travel back to medieval Persia. Born c780
AD, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was
an incredibly gifted mathematician. He
invented many of the principles fundamental
to computer science today. Google relies on
complex searching strategies to compare
your search terms against millions of
websites. These searching strategies are
known as algorithms, and are named after
al-Khwarizmi. (Algorithm is from the
medieval Latin algorismus, a mangled
W transliteration of al-Khwarizmis name.)
CHINESE PAPER This wasnt al-Khwarizmis only contribu-
A eunuch brought the benefits of paper to China, tion to science and mathematics. He also
but it took centuries for the world to catch up invented a system of notation for balancing
mathematical equations. Today we call this
This special edition youre reading animal skins. And the clay tablets algebra, from the Arabic word meaning the
relies on an ancient Chinese used in ancient Babylon were both reunion of broken parts. In fact, you might
technology: paper. It might sound a difcult to store and easy to break. have noticed that lots of scientic terms start
bit mundane, but the invention of Paper solved all of these problems. with al. As well as algorithm and algebra
paper really did change the world. It was strong and durable, easy to weve got alkali and alchemy. Well, al is the
Before that, human societies had store in a library and, most impor- Arabic denite article the equivalent of the
been writing on papyrus, parchment tantly, it could be printed on. English word the. The Middle East was
and clay tablets. These all had their The oldest surviving fragments of really at the heart of science in the medieval
drawbacks. The papyrus used in paper date to the second century period. It was through translations of
ancient Egypt was relatively cheap BC. But Chinese papermaking really scholars working in Arabic that Europeans
but tended to rot. The parchment took off in the second century AD, learned new ways of doing mathematics,
used in Rome was strong but when the Chinese eunuch Cai Lun chemistry and astronomy.
expensive as it was made from presented a sample of paper to the
Han emperor. The emperor was so
impressed that he made Cai Lun
The emperor was swear to keep paper a secret. For
centuries, Europeans tried to learn
so impressed that
AKG IMAGES/DREAMSTIME
how to make paper. Some even

resorted to kidnapping and
he made Cai Lun interrogating paper manufacturers.
And so, while it might seem
swear to keep unremarkable today, paper was a
Chinese invention that people
paper a secret fought over and even died for.
Algorithm comes from ninth-century
mathematical genius al-Khwarizmi

Jai Singh IIs vast Jantar

Mantar buildings, used
to accurately predict
astronomical events
W
INDIAN
ENLIGHTENMENT
The 18th-century search for
enlightenment spreads east
thanks to a far-sighted king
One of the most accurate scientic
instruments of the 18th century was
built in India. The Maharajah Jai Singh II
W PACIFIC NAVIGATORS was a keen astronomer. And in Jaipur
he built the Jantar Mantar, a series of
With basic materials and centuries-old techniques, Pacific enormous stone astronomical instru-
islanders successfully mapped their vast ocean world ments, completed in 1734. The largest
of these, the Vrihat Samrat Yantra, can
When Captain Cook travelled to the navigators a picture of the wind and measure local time to the nearest two
Pacic in the 1760s, he took with him currents, with individual islands seconds. At 27m tall, it is still the worlds
the most advanced navigational marked by shells. This proved much largest sundial. The other instruments
instruments the Royal Navy could more effective for navigating such a which make up the Jantar Mantar
supply. Carefully plotting each stage vast ocean. When Cook arrived in allowed Jai Singh to calculate and
of their journey, Cook and his crew Tahiti in 1769, he was amazed to nd a publish detailed astronomical tables,
used clocks and telescopes to nd local man named Tupaia who was able predicting the movement of planets and
their way to Tahiti and on to New to draw an incredibly accurate map of stars. Another instrument, the Chakra
Zealand. The Pacic Ocean is so vast, the surrounding islands. By following Yantra, gave Jai Singh the local time at
with little land to guide navigation, that Tupaias map of the wind and currents, different observatories around the world.
few Europeans had contemplated Cooks voyages relied on both Pacic This, after all, was an age in which
crossing it until the Enlightenment age and European navigational tools. mathematical and astronomical
of scientic exploration. But for knowledge was exchanged across
hundreds of years before Cooks cultures. Jai Singh wanted to know
arrival, the indigenous people of the about astronomy in London, and to
Pacic had been navigating this compare his own tables of measure-
enormous ocean. They did so using ments with those published in Paris.
their own sophisticated navigational In Jaipur, Jai Singh read the latest
technologies. Among these were French astronomical books brought
sea charts made from shells and over by Jesuit missionaries. Later in the
sticks collected on the beach. century, in Calcutta, the astronomer
Rather than a map of the land Tafazzul Husain Khan translated Isaac
and water, these charts gave Newtons masterpiece, Principia
Mathematica, into Arabic. The laws of
GETTY/ALAMY
motion, like Enlightenment science

Sticks and shells denote
wave patterns and islands more generally, reached far beyond
in this chart made by Newtons study in Cambridge.
Marshall Islanders

W AFRICAS BOTANICAL
LEGACY
A rare credit given to a botanist
slave attests to the part Africans
played in sciences expansion
Quassia amara is a beautiful pink owering
shrub native to South America. Most plants
are named after the famous European men
who discovered them. But this one is named
after an enslaved African Graman Quassi.
Its a reminder of the important role that
African people played in the development of
botany. At the beginning of the 18th century,
Quassi was captured in Ghana and forcibly
transported to Surinam, a Dutch colony in
South America. Working on the plantations,
he got to know the local plant life well. Soon
enough, he was using extracts from this
incredible pink shrub, also known as bitter-
wood, to cure fevers and gut parasites.
When the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus
heard about all this, he was so impressed
that he named the plant Quassia amara after
the Ghanaian. Quassis story is inspiring, but
most Africans did not receive this kind
of recognition. Yet they too helped European
botanists understand the plant life of the
New World. From maize and yams to peas
and chocolate, European botanists relied Renaissance man Jagadish Bose made major
on African knowledge to cultivate and study discoveries in biophysics as well as his world-
tropical plant life in the 18th century. changing work in radio and microwave sciences
W
INDIAN AIRWAVES
Quassia amara,
named in honour A polymath and pioneer in microwave optics technology,
of Graman Quassis the Indian who heralded an age of mass communication
knowledge of the
bitter woods
medicinal properties At midnight on 15 August 1947, the polymath. Born in 1858 in the
rst prime minister of independent Bengal Presidency of British India,
India addressed the new nation. Bose studied mathematics, plant
Jawaharlal Nehru famously physiology, biophysics and
declared: At the stroke of the archaeology. He even wrote
midnight hour, when the world Bengali science ction at the same
sleeps, India will awake to life and time as HG Wells was pioneering
freedom. Nehrus Tryst with the genre in English. But Bose is
Destiny speech is considered one most celebrated for his contribution
of the greatest of the 20th century. to the study of radio and micro-
Millions of people listened as the waves. Through a series of
new prime ministers words were experiments made in Calcutta,
transmitted across the airwaves to Bose proved that electromagnetic
radios in India and beyond. In using waves existed at lengths of just ve
the radio, Nehru was relying on the millimetres. He was also the rst
work of one of his countrymen born to use a semi-conductor to detect
nearly 100 years earlier. electromagnetic waves, now a
Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858 standard part of any radio or
1937) was the denition of a computer circuit.
Millions of people listened as the

new prime ministers words were
GETTY/TOPFOTO
transmitted across the airwaves

to radios in India and beyond
W INUIT CLIMATE
SCIENCE
Insights passed on through
the generations provide
ancient perspectives on
modern climate change
Few understand the impact of climate
change better than the Inuit people of
the Arctic. For generations, the Inuit have
closely studied their environment. Many
tribes migrate to new hunting grounds
with the change of the seasons,
following long-established routes
through the snow. The ice is part of their
life. As a consequence, Inuit oral
histories provide some of the most
detailed documentary evidence we have
of climate change, often stretching back
hundreds of years. Many Inuit recall how
their parents and grandparents used to
cross rivers that are now dried up.
Today, the Inuit continue to play an
important role in the development of
climate science. The Nunavut Climate
Change Centre in Canada hosts
research projects to which local people
contribute. Inuit elders were recently
asked to tell the history of the changing
landscape in Nunavut. These historical
Wrangling 2,500 characters, typewriters eventually transformed ofce accounts were then compared to the
work, as well as the mass production of pamphlets, in Communist China permafrost samples collected by
W scientists, helping to conrm the pattern
THE CHINESE TYPEWRITER of environmental change. In Inuit
traditions, changes in the environment
Pioneering predictive text long before mobile phones, are often attributed to human actions.
Chinese engineers solved a wordy problem Fittingly, scientists today are using
Inuit evidence to convince the rest of
How do you make a typewriter for a a button. This unfortunately proved the world that climate change is exactly
language with over 50,000 characters? incredibly slow. Chinese typists could that: man-made.
This was the problem facing Chinese only manage about 20 words per
engineers in the early 20th century. At minute, whereas a professional Climate scientists are tapping
rst, the solution seemed to lie in being secretary could reach 60 words per into knowledge developed
selective. Although there are over minute in English. This problem was by the Inuit inhabitants of
50,000 characters in Modern Standard ultimately solved by the invention of a Nunavut over millennia
Chinese, you can read a newspaper kind of predictive text. In the 1950s,
with knowledge of about 3,000. With Chinese engineers realised they could
this in mind, the rst Chinese typewriter, massively increase the rate of typing by
developed in Shanghai in the 1910s, reorganising the characters on the tray.
featured just 2,500 characters. Better, Instead of arranging the characters
but still a lot more than could t on a like a dictionary, Chinese engineers
keyboard. And so the Chinese grouped characters together which
typewriter featured a at tray in which usually followed one another. With
all 2,500 metal characters sat. Communism on the rise, the character
The typist then moved a lever over for socialism (shehui zhuyi) was
the tray, placing it above the exact placed next to politics (zhengzhi) and
character they wanted before pressing revolution (geming).
Instead of arranging the characters

AKG IMAGES/ALAMY
like a dictionary, Chinese engineers

grouped characters together which James Poskett is assistant professor
in the history of science and technology
usually followed one another at the University of Warwick

BOOKS / HISTORY OF SCIENCE
INTERVIEW
Steven Weinberg at the University
of Texas. We build on the past, and
that, I think, is one of the reasons why
the writing of science is legitimately
different from art history or even
political history, he says
Photography by
Matt Valentine
INTERVIEW / STEVEN WEINBERG
The history of science can prevent us

from making the mistakes of the past
MATT VALENTINE
Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg talks to Matt Elton about his book exploring
thousands of years of scientic discovery

Ideas & Inventions / Interview
PROFILE STEVEN WEINBERG
LISTEN
Born in New York City in 1933, Weinberg began his career at the University TO MORE
of California, Berkeley before teaching at institutions including Harvard and FROM THIS
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work in the field of theoretical INTERVIEW
historyextra.com
physics has won numerous awards, perhaps most notably the Nobel Prize in /podcasts
Physics in 1979. He is currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
IN CONTEXT a moving platform the Earth. But How far did the Middle Ages set the
The development
of scientic thought broadly, the Copernicus made no signicant observa- ground for the scientific revolution?
attempt to make sense of the physical tions of his own: he was relying on what The Middle Ages certainly provided an
universe is generally understood Ptolemy had already done. There are many institutional framework in the form of the
to have undergone particularly rapid similar examples, too. great universities. Copernicus was educated
progress in two periods. The ancient However, while we refer to Isaac at universities in Italy; Galileo taught at
Greek world saw contributions from Newtons work to explain the mechanics of Padua and was then a professor at Pisa,
gures including polymath Ptolemy, motion and gravity in physics courses although he didnt teach; Newton was
while the developments of the 16th today, we dont go back to the Greeks. They always associated with the University of
and 17th-century scientic revolution are part of our heritage, but their value was Cambridge. These universities were
were generated by thinkers including
mostly in making the scientic revolution offshoots of the cathedral schools that had
physicists and mathematicians Isaac
Newton and Galileo Galilei, astronomer of the 16th and 17th centuries possible. begun a kind of intellectual revolution in
Nicolaus Copernicus and philosopher the 11th century in Europe. They kept alive
and scientist Ren Descartes. Why were the ancient Greeks able to the idea of a rational universe governed by
produce so much important work? law, and in particular when the teachings of
Well, not all of them were. The period that Aristotle became rmly xed in the
What inspired you to write this book? many people think of as the golden age of academic curriculum, the idea of a rational,
I had been teaching an undergraduate ancient Greece the Hellenic period (the understandable world became dominant in
course in the history of physics and fth and fourth centuries BC), when European thought.
astronomy for students who didnt already Athens was at the centre of intellectual life But it wasnt a scientic world. No one
know a lot about it. As I taught, I became was not very productive, scientically. in the Middle Ages really had anything
aware that things in the past were quite They made some qualitative advances (for approaching our modern conception of
different from what I had thought. Its not example, the philosopher and scientist Aris- science, and they made very little progress
true to say that scientists were reaching for totle gave a nice argument for why the towards actual scientic knowledge. There
the same goals as us and that they were Earth is a sphere), but the detailed math- were arguments about the possible move-
simply not getting as close as weve come. ematical confrontation of theory and ment of the Earth, but in the end they
In fact, they really had no idea of the kind observation we associate with modern didnt lead to anything like the Copernican
of things that can be learned about the physics and astronomy didnt exist. That theory. The Middle Ages was not an
world and the way to learn it. And began in the Hellenistic period, when the intellectual desert, but it wasnt a period
I began to see the history of science not as centre of Greek thought moved to Alexan- that resembles either the Hellenistic age
the accumulation of facts and theories, but dria, and the Greek city-states were that went before or the scientic revolution
as the learning of a way of interacting with absorbed into empires, rst the Hellenistic that came afterwards.
nature that leads to reliable knowledge. kingdoms and then the Roman empire.
Its surprised me how far the great natural I dont know precisely why the change What was the contribution of Islamic
scientists of the past were from anything happened at that point. Greek thought in thinkers in this period?
like our modern conception of science. general took a less aristocratic tone, and After the decline of the Roman empire in
people who did science also began to be the west, science became, I would say,
Heading to the start of this story, how concerned with its practical application. ineffective and largely absent in the Greek
much do we owe the ancient Greeks? They also became much less religious: the half of the Roman empire. You nd no
I think the people of the scientic revolu- religiosity you nd in the work of Plato, scientic work at least, Im not aware of
tion owed them a tremendous amount, which is largely gone with Aristotle, seems any during about 1,000 years of the
particularly the Greeks of the Hellenistic to be completely absent by the time you Byzantine empire. During that period,
(roughly the third, second and rst get to the great Hellenistics leading up science was kept alive in the world of Islam,
centuries BC) and Roman periods. For to Ptolemy. rst in the form of translations of the great
example, Copernicus did not base his accomplishments of the Greeks and in
theory of the Earth going around the Sun original work that built on and improved
on his own observations or those of his on what the Hellenistic and Roman Greeks
contemporaries in Europe, but on the
earlier work of the Greeks, particularly
The study of the had done.
Some of it was very impressive: I think of
Ptolemy. He saw that Ptolemys theory
could be rectied and made understandable
history of science the work of al-Haytham in optics, who for
the rst time understood why light is bent
by just changing the point of view from a
stationary Earth to a stationary Sun with
is the best antidote when it goes, for example, from air into
water. However, although Islamic science
the Earth orbiting it. The peculiarities of to the philosophy in one form or another continued for a few
Ptolemys theory were simply due to the centuries, its golden age was really pretty
fact that we observe the solar system from of science much over by 1100. If you list the great

Its surprised me how far the
great natural scientists of the
past were from anything like our
modern conception of science
names of Islamic science, theyre all before between science and mathematics in a way though you can marvel at the importance
that date. that had always been muddled. Before him, of every great change in physics, you see the
Why thats the case is an endlessly and perhaps a few other people around at roots of that change in what went before
interesting issue. It may have something to the same sort of time, there had been a and you dont forget about it. Indeed, you
do with the appearance of a ercer version large body of thought that felt that science see the new theory as an improvement on
of Islam: for example, Spain was taken over was a branch of mathematics and that its the old theory, not an abandonment of it.
by people from north Africa who formed truths could be determined by purely We build on the past, and that, I think, is
the Almohad caliphate, which was mathematical reasoning. This goes all the one of the reasons why the writing of
extremely repressive. There were episodes way back to Plato, who thought that it science is different from art history or even
in which books of scientic or medical wasnt necessary to look at the sky in order political history. We cant say that the
technique were burned by Islamic authori- to do astronomy that pure reason was all Impressionists were right to abandon the
ties, and the 11th-century philosopher and you needed. photographic realism of the Romantic
theologian Al-Ghazali argued explicitly Huygens specically said we can only period, or that the Norman conquest was a
against science because he saw it as a make our assumptions because we intend good thing. That kind of judgment is silly.
distraction from Islam. to work on their consequences and see if On the other hand, we can certainly say
So, had Islamic science run out of steam they agree with observation and if they that Newton was right and Descartes was
or was it suppressed by changes in Islam? dont, we will abandon them. This attitude wrong about what keeps the planets going
I dont know the answer, but its a similar is one you just dont nd very much before. around the Sun there is a denite sense of
question to that about Greek science. Did I also think Id have liked Ptolemy: he discovering right and wrong.
that simply run out of steam around 400 expressed his joy of astronomy in a way Thats another important point: science
or 500 AD, or was it suppressed by the that was lovely. In just a few lines he wrote is not just an expression of a cultural
adoption of Christianity? I think that that, when he studied the wheeling milieu, as some historians and sociologists
there are good arguments on both sides motions of the planets, he felt his feet leave of science have argued. Its the discovery of
of both questions. the ground and stood with the gods truths that are out there to be discovered,
drinking nectar. and it can help prevent us from making the
Are there any characters in this story same mistakes as the past. As I was once
that particularly stand out for you? Are there any misconceptions about crass enough to say, the study of the history
If I understand that in the sense of who Id science and its history that youd like of science is the best antidote to the
like to have a beer with, Christiaan this book to change? philosophy of science.
Huygens is a strong contender. He was a One misconception thats been foisted on
17th-century Dutch polymath who did a us by a generation of philosophers of
huge variety of things: he discovered the science is the idea of the 20th-century
rings of Saturn and the formula for physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn To Explain the World:
MATT VALENTINE
centrifugal force, he invented the pendu- that science undergoes discontinuous The Discovery of Modern
lum clock I could go on! changes after which its impossible to Science by Steven Weinberg
But what stands out for me is that he very understand the science of a former age. (Allen Lane, 2015)
explicitly understood the relationship I think thats wrong. I think that, even

Ideas & Inventions / Royal Society
The frontispiece to Thomas Sprats

History of the Royal Society (1667)
shows its patron, Charles II, being
crowned with a laurel wreath
40
AN
EXPERIMENTAL
SOCIETY
Over 350 years on from the Royal Societys birth,
Patricia Fara reveals how its founder members
conviction that experiments should take priority over
theories transformed the study of science for good
H
ow long does it take for Newton claimed that I feign no
an organisation to Hypotheses, he was reiterating Bacons
acquire a past? prescription that data should take priority
The Royal Societys rst over theory, a principle that underpins
history was published in modern science. At the time, university
1667, only ve years after scholarship was dominated by Aristotelian
it received its Royal logic, which reached conclusions by arguing
Charter. Since there had not been much time systematically from unchallengeable
for progress, Thomas Sprats History of the premises. In contrast, Sprat boasted that the
Royal Society was more of a manifesto for the Fellows never afrmd any thing, concern-
future than an account of earlier achieve- ing the cause, till the trial was past for
ments. Its frontispiece (shown left) optimis- whoever has xd on his Cause, before he has
tically shows King Charles II being crowned A 1657 portrait of Francis Bacon, experimented; can hardly avoid tting his
who did so much to shape the agenda
with a laurel wreath by the Goddess of Fame, of the early Royal Society
Experiment, and his Observations, to his
while his name is emphasised by the own Cause, which he had before imagind.
Societys rst president, William Brouncker. As shown in the coat of arms above
However, these diplomatic hints for further Charless head, the Societys ofcial motto
nancial support went unheeded and the The Fellows hoped was Nullius in Verba (take nothing on
Societys most inuential gurehead sits on authority), although its policy was closer to
the right Francis Bacon (15611626), here that through Bacons pithy edict that knowledge is
portrayed in his ofcial robes as King
Jamess lord chancellor.
measurement and power. In his extraordinary novel, The New
Atlantis (published in 1627, after his death),
Trained as a lawyer rather than a natural
philosopher, Bacon posthumously set the
observation, they Bacon had envisaged an ideal research
community divided into independent
agenda of the Royal Society by insisting that would learn how to project teams that aimed not only to increase
GETTY
progress comes not from studying ancient knowledge of Gods physical world, but also
texts, but from experiments. When Isaac control nature to improve society. Similarly, the Fellows

Experimental pioneer William Harvey, physician to Charles I and James I, uses a stag to demonstrate the circulation of the blood
hoped that through measurement and thus demonstrating the necessity of air for and improve their techniques. Oxfords guru
observation they would learn how to control transmitting sound, supporting of the new experimental approach was
nature and that through their commer- combustion and maintaining life. William Harvey, the kings physician who
cially viable inventions, they would had challenged centuries of anatomy by
strengthen the states rule. An exchange of ideas demonstrating that blood circulates around
Instruments festoon the elegant arches of Like the Society itself, the air pump the body. Inspired by Harveys work, one
this imaginary scientic temple in Sprats originated in Oxford. From the 1640s, small researcher tried injecting beer into dogs
frontispiece. Mostly they are recent adapta- groups of scholars met informally, often veins. This forerunner of transfusion was
tions of traditional devices that measure and in their college studies, to exchange ideas none other than Christopher Wren. The
record the world, but featured prominently future architect belonged to an extraordi-
to Charless right is one of the Societys most nary community of men, many of them
treasured innovations the globe of an air One researcher young and unknown, who played a crucial
(vacuum) pump (shown in greater detail on role in the development of British science.
the next page). Symbolically, as well as tried injecting beer Several members of this Oxford group,
practically, the air pump was hugely including Wren, were involved in the
important. Followers of Aristotle believed into dogs veins. foundation of Londons Royal Society.
that a vacuum is impossible, whereas Looking back, the two most signicant were
Baconians declared that this articially
This forerunner the chemist Robert Boyle and the inventor
WELLCOME LIBRARY
created state would reveal the hidden truths

of normality. As the glass sphere was
of transfusion was Robert Hooke, who worked together on the
air pump and later devoted their lives to
evacuated, ringing bells inside could no none other than scientic research. However, the collective
longer be heard, ames were enthusiasm at Oxford was more important
extinguished and small animals died, Christopher Wren than any one individuals contribution, and

Robert Boyles diagrams
of his apparatus, including
his rst air pump (1660).
Boyles experiments with
the pump helped debunk
the Aristotelian theory that
a vacuum is impossible
such as ship design and terrestrial magne-

tism, vital for improving navigational
compasses. Gradually, the ethos of the
school changed as experimental philoso-
phers were appointed to the staff and the
latest scientic discoveries were discussed
at informal sessions.
Historians have failed to reconcile various
versions of exactly what did happen during
the late 1650s, but the outcome is clear:
Gresham College became the Royal Societys
rst home. The rst meeting took place there
on 28 November 1660, soon after Charles II
had been restored to the throne, when a
group of 12 gentlemen including several
royalists clubbed together after a lecture
given by Wren, the schools professor of
astronomy. This was no impromptu
gathering, but a pre-planned event at which
some important rules and regulations were
laid down before impressing on the king
what benets he might reap from a Society
for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall
Experimental Learning. Over the next
couple of years, the founders recruited
additional members and further formalised
the structure before consolidating their
status as The Royal Society of London.
Rather than being a scholarly assembly of
dedicated scientists, the Royal Society
resembled a club for leisured gentlemen.
According to Sprat, it was a democratic
institution that welcomed contributions
not onely by the hands of Learned and
professd Philosophers; but from the Shops
of Mechanicks; from the Voyages of
Merchants; from the Ploughs of
Husbandmen. However, the high subscrip-
tion charge and metropolitan location
effectively restricted the active membership
to wealthy Londoners. This supposedly open
institution faced another challenge when
Margaret Cavendish, a wealthy aristocrat
and prolic author, decided to visit the
Society in 1667. Boyle reluctantly agreed to
together these experimenters embarked were the products of a collaborative research perform some experiments for her, but she
on an ambitious and wide-ranging set of community. was the last woman allowed to enter the
projects: building beehives with glass Although Sprat set himself up as the Royal meeting rooms before the 20th century.
observation walls, designing accurate Societys historian, his account of its To satisfy the Fellows demand for
micrometer scales for optical instruments, beginnings glosses over a second important entertainment as well as education, Robert
testing new farming methods, explaining centre of activity Gresham College, Hooke was appointed curator of experi-
the phases of Saturn, developing new drugs, just across the Thames from the naval ments, the rst salaried scientic post in
producing articial rainbows, inventing dockyard at Deptford. Since its opening in Britain. His research was geared towards
BRIDGEMAN
automata. Not all of their trials were 1597, the university-educated mathemati- devising novel demonstrations that would
successful, and not all of them were what cians who taught there had worked closely reinforce the Baconian ethic of gaining
would nowadays be called scientic, but they with local artisans on practical problems knowledge through systematic investigation

Five founder members of the Royal Society

Remarkable thinkers dedicated to promoting Physico-Mathematicall Experimental Learning
Robert Boyle (162791) William Brouncker (162084)

Until recently, only one of the Societys
Brouncker, the Societys rst president, is now virtually
founding Fellows was celebrated as
unknown. An Irish aristocrat, his two intellectual
a scientic hero: Robert Boyle. Boyle was
passions were mathematics and music, and he
a wealthy Irish aristocrat who is famous
devised some elegant methods of alge-
for inventing the air pump, formulating a
braic manipulation. However, the
law about gases and outlining a corpus-
Fellows elected him for his royalist
cular model of chemistry. Boyle explored
afliations rather than his scholarly
the natural world in order to demonstrate
eminence, and after some bitter
the glory of God. A pious yet troubled
disputes with Hooke and others,
scholar, his only
Brouncker was squeezed out of
intimate
ofce 15 years later.
relationship
was with
his older
sister.
Christopher Wren Thomas Willis (162175)

(16321723) Willis studied and practised medicine
A gifted draughtsman, Wrens modern at Oxford, where he became a
fame as an architect has overshadowed professor. A skilled neuro-anatomist
his closely related passion for scientic and an early convert to William Harveys
experiment and astronomy. He designed circulatory model, Willis established
the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and the dominant role of the brain and
was professor of astronomy at Gresham nervous system in human behaviour.
College, London at just 25. One of the He is now increasingly seen as an
youngest and keenest original Fellows, he important scientic innovator.
served as president from 1680 to 1682. Robert Hooke (16351703)
Hooke was the Royal Societys rst
experimental curator. Formerly margin-
GETTY/ BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY/GETTY/AKG IMAGES
alised, this talented yet cantankerous

man is now recognised as a key contribu-
tor to both theoretical and practical
science. Especially renowned for his law
of elasticity and his stunning images of
microscopic insects and plants, Hooke
built the rst vacuum pumps and
developed many other ne instruments,
as well as playing a key role in rebuilding
London after the Great Fire.
No portraits of Hooke exist so weve
shown an illustration of a mite, a
crab-like insect and a bookworm from
his book, Micrographia

Knowledge was
based not on what
people claimed,
but on what they
did and what
they observed
and observation. Hooke advertised this
experimental approach in Micrographia,
whose drawings of eas and lice (see
opposite) those constant invisible compan-
ions of lords and labourers alike so
enthralled the diarist Samuel Pepys that he
stayed awake all night marvelling at this
unfamiliar microscopic world. Hooke was
also responsible for looking after the
Societys repository, a mixed collection of
curiosities that fascinated the public but
deed orderly classication.
Membership was restricted, but the
Society was effectively international.
Reports owed in from all over the world,
while the latest London-based discussions
were transmitted outwards by the Societys
journal, Philosophical Transactions. The rst
secretary was Henry Oldenburg, a German
diplomat accused of trading government
secrets, but who made the Royal Society the
hub of an extended intellectual community
linked together by letters.
Through publishing diagrams, instruc-
tions and results, the Baconian Fellows
enabled their experiments to be replicated,
so that knowledge could (in principle,
anyway) be based not on what people
claimed, but on what they did and on what The frontispiece of LHistoire Naturelle des Animaux (1671) shows Louis XIV
they observed. Reecting the diversity of the in the palace of Versailles surrounded by instruments of scientic research.
members interests, the early articles covered The Royal Observatory can be seen through the right-hand window
an impressive range of topics, including
ancient coins, oceanic tides, unusual births, Louis XIV was an expert in self-promo-
geometrical theorems, spectacular load- tion and he used his investment in science to Patricia Fara is president of the British Society
stones (magnets), mining technology and advertise his magnicence. In the splendid for the History of Science
freak weather events. propaganda picture Louis commissioned
Despite their initial enthusiasm, many (shown above), the large mirror reects his
Fellows were not punctilious about paying glory as the Sun King, and the Royal DISCOVER MORE
their fees. Starved of nancial patronage, the Observatory seen through the window BOOKS
Society could afford neither to fund research proclaims his generosity. This visit was Science: A Four Thousand Year
projects nor to obtain permanent premises, imaginary, but the differences between the History by Patricia Fara (Oxford University
and although symbolically it remained the Societies in London and Paris were real. Press, 2009)
agship of European science, its member- Throughout the 18th century, French New Atlantis and the Great
ship declined sharply during the 17th research tended to be speculative, math- Instauration by Francis Bacon
(Harlan Davidson, 1989)
century. The situation was different in ematical and directed towards state interest,
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the
France, where the king took a close interest whereas English natural philosophers
Strange and Inventive Life of Robert
in Pariss Acadmie Royale, founded in 1666. focused on experiments and commercially Hooke 16351703 by Stephen Inwood
His pet society had a restricted number of viable inventions. Nevertheless, the unfurled (Macmillan, 2002)
members, but they were appointed by the map at Louis feet illustrates how, on both On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding
ALAMY
state and paid to carry out research of sides of the Channel, Bacons dictum ruled: Career of Sir Christopher Wren
national benet. Knowledge is power. by Lisa Jardine (HarperCollins, 2002)

Science Stories In pursuit of an
impressive light
show, Hauksbee
ELECTRICITY generated static
electricity
1706
Francis
Hauksbee
produces
electric light
few years ago, a PhD student invited heard that shaking a barometer could cause introduced still more dramatic electri-
A me to travel back with him into the
early 18th century. Sitting in a dark
a mysterious glimmer to appear in the tube
above the mercury, Hauksbee decided to
cal displays. In his efforts to explore how
charge could be transmitted from one
unheated room, we huddled around investigate further. place to another, Gray became increas-
an experimental apparatus that he had Hauksbee soon devised a stunning ingly ambitious, outgrowing his room
made himself using only tools that were display for impressing the Fellows. By to drape long wires around the country
available in that era. My task was to turn adapting the rotating wheel of a knife- estates of accommodating Fellows. Keen
a handle as fast as I could, but it was not grinder, he made an empty globe spin round to nd out what sort of objects might be
until I slowed down from exhaustion but not too fast, as I once discovered for affected at a distance, he tried out soap
that we saw what the original experi- myself. The students inherited instructions bubbles, a red-hot poker, a sirloin of beef,
menter had promised: purple and green had also neglected to point out that the a map, an umbrella and eventually, a
lights ickering eerily inside a glass wheel-turner is an assistant scarcely worth small boy from a charity school.
sphere. Thrilled, we imagined how mentioning, often a servant or a Like Hauksbee, Gray converted his
amazing this effect must have been in a wife. Instead, the experimenter who gains exploratory experiments into theatrical
pre-electrical age, when articial lighting the glory is the man (inevitably at the time) performances. Using two strong clothes
meant candles and oil lamps. who places his hands against the glass so lines, he suspended a child from the ceil-
The rst person to demonstrate this that the gas inside lights up. Although he ing to hang horizontally in a room that
gaseous glow was Francis Hauksbee did not realise it immediately, Hauksbee was darkened to heighten the mystique.
(c16661713), a former draper who had invented the rst machine to generate After the victim had been charged up
had somehow gained favour with static electricity. with an electried glass tube, sparks ew
Isaac Newton to be put in charge of the A second refugee from the cloth trade, and crackled whenever he was touched,
experimental programme at Londons a Canterbury dyer called Stephen Gray, and small feathers or brass lings leapt
Royal Society. Far from being active up through the air towards his out-
scientists, most Fellows were wealthy stretched hand.
gentlemen who demanded spectacular
displays to justify their subscription
Francis Hauksbee Within a few years, performers all over
Europe were entertaining lecture audi-
and it was Hauksbees responsibility to was put in charge of ences and dinner party guests with this
provide weekly entertainment. apparently magical trick. Wielding his
His own research focused on air pumps, the experimental tube like a conjurers wand, an electrical
machines that sucked out gas to create a experimenter could claim to control the
near vacuum, and for one meeting he re- programme powers of nature. It was, enthused one
vealed how a small piece of luminescent commentator, an entertainment for
phosphorus would continue to glow even at the Royal Society angels, rather than for men.
ALAMY
in an apparently empty space. When he Words: Patricia Fara

12
GIANT
LEAPS
FOR MANKIND
ASTRONAUT BOOTPRINT ON THE LUNAR SURFACE, 20 JULY 1969; APOLLOARCHIVE.COMNASA
In a feature first published in BBC History

Magazine in 2009, 12 historians nominate the
moments that they consider to be among
humanitys greatest leaps forward

Ideas & Inventions / Giant leaps
1 Meat sets us apart

Carnivorism
Probably Africa, c2.5 million years ago
Chosen by Professor Felipe Fernndez-Armesto,
University of Notre Dame
I dont believe in human progress but traceable to our imagination, which

if you held a pistol to my head and is traceable to anticipation and in an
said I had to come up with something indirect way you can trace it all back Getting involved: Greeks in conversation
of evolutionary advantage to humans, to carnivorism. during the fth century BC
I would say that among other Nowadays there is a very broad
primates the relatively early car-
nivorism of our hominid ancestors
was of enormous importance. If you
consensus that carnivorism began
about 2.5 million years ago. We dont
know why it happened but Id
2 The people
are carnivorous it gives you access to
fats and proteins that are not
available in such concentrated form
postulate that it was an evolutionary
consequence of our lack of other
advantages compared with rival
take control
in non-meat food sources. Not only
that but although the rst hominid
species.
Actually we are pretty poorly
The advent
carnivores were almost certainly
scavengers, in the very long run
designed animals because were
slow, lack agility, have only one
of politics
meat-eating launched them on the stomach, weak fangs and dont Greece, seventh century BC
trajectory that led to hunting. have tails. Were behind in almost
Hunting stimulates the faculties of everything and thats why we need Chosen by Professor
anticipation because you need to more plentiful abundance of Paul Cartledge,
have the ability to see what isnt anticipation than other creatures
there, to see whats behind the next similar to ourselves. University of Cambridge
tree or over the next hill. I believe that
an accidental by-product of this I understand politics in the very strict
faculty of anticipation is humanitys sense, thats to say taking it from the
super endowment of the imagination. Greek word polis meaning city, city-
It is our imagination that has given state or (best of all) citizen-state.
humans the capacity to change The ancient Greeks invented the idea
with greater rapidity than other of the citizen and also the idea of citizens
species and the ability to coming together on the basis of some
form a really astonishing sort of political equality to take decisions
range of cultures. The about matters of communal concern.
features of the human We dont know much about who the early
past which are different politicians were, but we do know that, for
from those of the past of example, in the little city of Dreros on
other animals are Crete there was a public assembly
passing communally binding decisions in
600 BC, so politics must have been
ourishing already.
Without the invention of this citizen
A hominid state and the politics and procedure it
skull from
entailed, democracy would be unthink-
around two
million years able. We do our politics very differently
ago, when our today, more in a Roman way, but
JOHN READERSCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/ALAMY
ancestors were nevertheless the very idea of the

probably political people coming together and
carnivores taking decisions, not by divine right but
because they are citizens goes back to
the ancient Greeks.
Felipe Fernndez-
Armesto is the Paul Cartledge is the
author of The author of Ancient Greek
World: A History Political Thought in Practice
(Pearson, 2010) (CUP, 2009)

3 Every man
has a voice
Democracy
Greece, 507 BC
Chosen by Dr Peter Jones, formerly
of Newcastle University
Democracy was invented in 507 BC by an

Athenian called Cleisthenes. Over the
course of the next 100 years in Athens and
elsewhere in the Greek world it developed
into a full-blown radical system where all
A 15th-century map of the world illustrating a Latin
male citizens over 18 took all decisions
edition of Ptolemys Geography
about the running of their own state. The
consequence was that there was no such
thing as politicians. Even a great Athenian
political gure like Pericles had no authority
over the peoples assembly. All he could do
was try to persuade them that his view of
4 Seeing the world as it is
things was right, but if they didnt like it
then they could reject it.
Ptolemys Geography
Athenian democracy has been heavily
debated, but I think that it was remarkably Roman empire, c150 AD
successful. It ran for 180 years until it was
destroyed by the Macedonians in 323 BC, Chosen by Professor Jerry Brotton, Queen Mary
and while the charge has been made that it University of London
was like mob rule, the Athenians strike me
as having been admirably governed. In around AD 150, Ptolemy was the likes of Christopher Columbus
I believe the people were perfectly capable working in the library of Alexandria, and some of the Portuguese
of taking sensible decisions. To give one then one of the greatest repositories explorers who were sailing east,
example, they could, being the people who of Greek learning. He wrote his such as Vasco da Gama.
made all the decisions, have voted Geography, which dened the Ptolemy is known as the father of
themselves bags of gold and pensions for discipline of geography and laid down geography and for 1,500 years
life but they never did. the principles of global mapping. everything pivoted around him. Even
Modern democracy can be traced back There were no maps in the book but the modern map is based on the kind
to Athens, yet what we in the UK live in what the Geography offered was a of projections that Ptolemy offered.
today is actually an elective oligarchy, geographical description In a way, Ptolemy was a kind of
where we choose 650 MPs to make of the world and an explanation of classical Google. Google gives you
decisions on our behalf. There is nothing how maps could be drawn. It allowed the tools to map as you want wheth-
wrong with elective oligarchy per se, but scholars to map the world for the rst er to see your own home, or Washing-
I wish that it were not called democracy time in history. ton DC, or Korea. Well, in a sense,
because it seems to me that the Athenian Interestingly, the text wasnt really that is what Ptolemy did. He didnt
experiment was so remarkable, powerful taken up initially. This was in the late proscribe what geography is, but said
and appealing compared to the feeble Hellenistic, early Christian moment here are the tools to understand your
version we have today. Evidence: the and Christianity had no interest in the place in the world, and that for me is
handling of the MPs expenses scandal. rather abstract geometrical math- why he is so enduring.
ematical notion of how you plot the
world on a map. It was the Arabs who
kept Ptolemy going, in places like
Baghdad until it reappeared in Italy in
Peter Jones is the author of the 14th century. Renaissance
Vote for Caesar: How the geographers produced new editions Jerry Brotton is the
GETTY/REX
Ancient Greeks and Romans of the Geography and employed author of A History of
Solved the Problems of Today Ptolemys principles to try to map the the World in Twelve
(Orion, 2009) expanding world. It was also used by Maps (Penguin, 2013)

6 The triumph
of the law
Magna Carta
England, 1215
Chosen by Professor David
Carpenter, Kings College, London
Magna Carta was a turning point in British

and world history because it was the rst
time a ruler was subject formally to the law.
It became a great barrier against arbitrary
rule and arbitrary kingship and it is that
fundamental principle that resonates down
the ages. Magna Carta seemed very
important in the 17th-century struggle of
the parliament against Charles; it seemed
equally important to the founders of the
American constitution, and of course it still
reverberates today.
The background to the charter was
Early learners: Italian students reading in the 14th or 15th century a society that was becoming more
cohesive, with a greater sense of commu-
5 Teaching the nity. There were political ideas about rulers

who should be subject to law and govern
for the benet of their society not just
masses to read themselves. These came up against a very

intrusive form of kingship, which extracted
huge amounts of money from England on
Alexander of Villedieus the one hand but gave little in the way of
peace and justice on the other.
Doctrinale King John was the nal straw. He spent
many years and large sums trying to regain
France, 1199 Normandy after it was lost in 1204 and
once he failed to do so in 1214, with his
Chosen by Professor Robert D Black, University of Leeds treasure spent, he was a sitting duck.
He was also a murderer and a lecherous
womaniser who evoked fear and loathing
Throughout the Middle Ages and well That book was Doctrinale, which on a very personal level. There was a huge
into the early modern period, literacy became one of the great medieval degree of animosity against him, which
was inextricably associated with Latin. bestsellers. Its inuence and use doesnt explain the broader grievances but
However, until the end of the 12th spread throughout Europe and, helps to explain why it all came to a head
century, the methods of teaching Latin on the basis of such simplied with the rebellion in 1215.
were extremely long and drawn out, methods for teaching Latin, You can see how important Magna Carta
based on a system whereby pupils a great movement of mass literacy was by the fact that when John tried to
read and memorised Latin texts for began. This new type of education renege on the deal there was a great civil
years. It was a scheme that was was much more rapid and better war. The only way the minority government
largely suitable to the clerical elite. suited to the aspirations, intentions of Johns son felt they could win this war
Then along came Alexander of and professional needs of the laity. and secure the peace after he died in 1216
Villedieu, a French grammarian and Doctrinale therefore marked the rst was by reissuing the charter. Throughout
teacher who was private tutor to the major step in the move towards a the 13th century the charter was constantly
nephews of a bishop in northern wide-ranging and extended secular cited and referred to. It became then what
France. He devised a fast-track lay education. it has always remained: a touchstone of
method to teach Latin using simple just and lawful rule.
rules and written in verse so that his
pupils could memorise it more easily.
PHOTO SCALA, FLORENCE
When the bishop asked his nephews

how they were doing in their learning Robert D Black
of Latin, they quoted back a few is the author of
verses given to them by their teacher. Humanism and David Carpenter is the
The bishop thought it was such a Education in Medieval author of The Struggle for
good idea that he encouraged and Renaissance Italy Mastery: Britain 10661284
Alexander to write a whole grammar. (CUP, 2008) (Penguin, 2004)

7 Overturning the 8 Explaining how
old astronomers the body works
Galileo explores the heavens William Harvey
with his telescope reveals the circulation
Italy, 1609 of the blood
Chosen by Professor Colin Russell, The Open University England, 1628
Chosen by Dr Allan Chapman,
When Galileo became the rst picture of the universe. It tted
person to turn a telescope to nicely with biblical data, so for
University of Oxford
the skies, it changed our view hundreds of years it remained the
of the universe. He discovered accepted view. However, scripture The circulation of the blood might sound like
new facts about the Sun, Moon (unless interpreted woodenly) can something we all accept but, in fact, it wasnt
and planets, which were totally also be compatible with Coperni- discovered until 1628. Before that it was believed that
incompatible with the old theory canism. Galileo recognised this in blood came from food in your liver, then entered the
that the sky above Earth was a letter he wrote in 1615. But a heart, where it was heated before it shot out into the
unchanging and perfect. Instead scientic proof of Copernicanism veins, not the arteries. This is why Shakespeare and
they strongly supported the rival had to wait until 1838! At the trial, people like that talk about the blood coursing
and newer heliocentric theory Galileo was found guilty and it through their veins instead of their arteries.
of Copernicus. wasnt until the 20th century that William Harvey was the physician to James I.
Galileos telescope stimulated the Vatican nally came to agree Through a meticulous study of what you might call
him to write his contentious book with him. the plumbing of the chest he came to the conclusion
Dialogue Concerning the Two that the heart didnt heat the blood, it pumped it into
Chief World Systems (1632), the arteries. He knew from Fabricius that the veins
which more than anything else had stepladder valves in them, which Harvey realised
helped to establish Copernican- Colin Russell was helped the blood get back to the heart, completing
ism. It also led to his trial and co-author of The the circuit. Harvey was working before the micro-
impeachment before the Roman Rise of Scientic scope and didnt know how the blood got from the
Catholic church. The old system Europe 15001800 arteries to the veins, but he made a very bold guess
Galileo discredited had been (Hodder, 1991). that this was done by tiny vessels so small he
almost unthinkingly adopted by He died in 2013 couldnt see them. He was perfectly right, of course,
the church and built into their and we call them capillaries.
It was a discovery of colossal importance.
Galileos scientic There have been numerous advances since, but Id
instruments, suggest that circulation was so crucial because
including his without it the others wouldnt have emerged. You
telescope, couldnt undertake modern surgery or give an
in Florences injection without circulation and can you imagine any
Galileo museum modern medical discovery without the knowledge of
the blood pumping from the heart?
Harveys theory was published in 1628 in a book
called On the Motion of the Heart and Blood and you
might think that he would have been inundated with
patients afterwards. Yet it almost ruined his career as
a doctor. In those days, doctors were very conserva-
tive and wouldnt make innovations this was
associated with quacks. Good doctors, it was
thought, dispensed medicine and diagnosed purely
in accordance with the way the ancients had taught.
So, curiously enough, the greatest medical discovery
of all time caused a considerable amount of nancial
distress to its discoverer!
Allan Chapman is the author of

AKG IMAGES
Englands Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the

Seventeenth-Century Scientic Revolution
(Taylor & Francis, 2004)

10 A micro-revolution in
our understanding
The discovery of the very small
Europe, 17th century
Chosen by Professor Jim Bennett, former director
of the Museum of the History of Science
Gresham College, the original meeting It is such a fundamental, taken-for- its principal exponents was Robert
place of the experimental society in 1660 granted notion of modern science Hooke, author of Micrographia
that we explain the properties of (1665). He articulated very clearly that
things by going beneath the super- the micro-world is a bit like a clock
9 Launching the cial appearance to the micro-world.

But like anything we take for granted,
it was made in history.
with lots of springs and wheels. Just
like we can open up a clock, Hooke
said we could open up the actual
scientific age The microscope was known from

the earliest decades of the 17th
century. At rst it was just a toy that
world to see how it works, and the
tool for doing so was going to be
increasingly powerful microscopes.
The founding of you could go and buy at a fair. It
didnt tell you anything about the
A lot more had to happen before we
got to where we are now in our beliefs
the Royal Society natural world because although you
could look at little things, nobody
about explaining the macro with the
micro, but I think it all started in the
GETTY/WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON

who was interested in explaining the 17th century.
England, 1660 world was yet saying that everything
depended on them. Still, the micro-
Chosen by Dr Patricia Fara,
scope was the technology that made
University of Cambridge people believe there was a route to
the very small. It was no longer just a Jim Bennett
When King Charles II was restored to power, matter of speculation. You could is co-author of
a group of men who had been working in engage with it empirically. Londons Leonardo: The
Oxford came back to London and decided A new mode of explanation that Life and Work of Robert
to set up a society for carrying out experi- assumed an underlying micro-reality Hooke (OUP, 2003)
mental research. It was the rst national began later in the century and one of
scientic society to be created anywhere
in Europe. Although it was rather like a A very small ea looks rather large in
gentlemens club, it did allow people to Robert Hookes Micrographia
come together specically to carry out
experiments, do research, disseminate new
theories and collect data. Within a few years
there was a similar society in Paris and soon
they started proliferating all over Europe.
Organisations dedicated to scientic
research are very important and I think
historians should write more about how
science is enabled, not just the great
achievements. Too much history of
science has been about heroes such as
Newton and Darwin, and not enough
about institutions. For me, the big
overriding question is how science has
become so integral to todays society: I
believe the Royal Society was the
institutional foundation that made
modern science possible.
Patricia Fara is the author

of Science: A Four Thousand
Year History (OUP, 2009)

Stephensons famous
Rocket locomotive in
an early photograph
11 Powering the
modern world
The development Indians in Calcutta
celebrate their
of the steam engine independence in 1947
Britain, 18th century

Chosen by Professor Jeremy Black,
12 Ending the empires
University of Exeter
The Montagu-Chelmsford Report
Unlike the atom bomb, for example, there
was no single invention with the steam British empire, 1918
engine. First you had the stationary
steam engine where the most important
Chosen by Professor Peter Robb,
person was Thomas Newcomen. Then School of Oriental and African Studies
James Watt improved its efciency and
its capacity to generate power. Later on, After the First World War there was a them up. You might give them some
the stationary steam engine was feeling in Britain that something rights, but no one in authority was
transformed into the locomotive with should be done to recompense India saying you should set them up as
George Stephenson. for its war effort. At the same time, separate self-governing nations.
What the steam engine enabled people there was growing political organisa- But that is what the Montagu-
to do was transform themselves beyond tion and agitation in India and the Chelmsford report said they were
the existing constraints of energy use, business of government had grown so going to do in India. It was a profound
meaning that human society could develop much that the colonial authorities psychological shift. In a sense, all
in all sorts of ways. Now we know needed to involve more Indians in it. British decolonisation owed from
that the environmental consequences of These were the origins of a report that moment and from its idea that
industrialisation were detrimental, but on written by Lord Chelmsford, viceroy of a new nation-state could be made by
the other hand life would have been totally India and Edwin Montagu, secretary of non-Europeans, who some people
different if we had remained shackled by state for India. The report said the had thought were incapable of
the manufacturing, energy and communi- British should take denite steps self-rule. (Indians had, however,
cation systems before the steam engine. towards giving Indians self-govern- shown themselves to be adept at law
The long-term implications of steam ment. This was the rst formal and politics.)
power were everything we understand by admission, at least by the British, that India was the biggest country
modernity. It gave us the ability to speed non-European people could rule them- under European domination by far,
up existence and overcome the constraints selves under a modern system of so when it appeared that it was
under which all other animal species government. All subsequent discus- getting self-government everybody
operated. We were not radically different in sions were not about whether India else started talking about decolonisa-
organisational terms from other animals, should have self-government but when tion. The report gave strength to the
which have language, the capacity for India should have self-government. view that empire was illegitimate and
acting as a group and systems of hierar- Most British thought it would be that it was possible to transfer power
chy. For much of human history that was some time in the next 100 years. They into new nations. The example was
how we were, but we moved to a very didnt imagine it could happen in 1947, eventually taken up by other countries
AKG IMAGES/HULTON ARCHIVEGETTY IMAGES
different tune when we had everything that but once on that particular bandwag- and India itself was a major force on
is understood by modernity. It was the on it was hard to get off. Indians did the United Nations decolonisation
steam engine that set that in motion. not think enough was being offered, or committee.
that the offer was sincere; and so they
were organising, especially under
Gandhi, setting an example for future
political movements.
Peter Robb is the
Nothing like this had been done
Jeremy Black is the author anywhere else in 1918 and no one had author of A History of
of The Power of Knowledge: really conceded that it could be done. India (Palgrave
How Information and The whole trend of European Macmillan, 2011)
Technology Made the Modern countries then was to get more
World (Yale, 2015) colonies. You certainly didnt give Interviews were conducted by Rob Attar

HEAVEN &
1 Ptolemys maps
The world-shaping second-century geographer
1 Science stories: Herschels new planet

The 1781 discovery of Uranus
1 A brief history of astronomy

The 5,000-year quest to understand our universe
1 A rail revolution
How rail travel transformed Britain and the world
1 Galileo and the telescope

His extraordinary celestial discoveries
GETTY/DREAMSTIME
1 The industrial revolution

How industrys great innovators were celebrated
EARTH
55
Heaven & Earth / Ptolemy
Joos van Gents

c1475 portrait of
Ptolemy, who
offered subse-
quent generations
a mapping tool kit
THE
FATHER
OF MODERN
GEOGRAPHY
From Columbuss
expeditions to the
Google Earth app,
our understanding
of the Earth owes
a huge debt to one
extraordinary scholar.
Jerry Brotton introduces
the second-century
geographer Ptolemy
GETTY
57
A
sk any geographer
to name one individual
responsible for founding
their discipline and they
are likely to answer:
Ptolemy. Claudius
Ptolemaeus (c100
c170 AD) lived in second-century
Alexandria, where he wrote the Geographike
Hyphegesis (c150 AD), known today simply
as the Geography. It dened geography,
explained how to draw a world map and
offered a gazetteer of over 8,000 locations
in the known world.
For the next 1,500 years, virtually every
map-maker accepted Ptolemys Geography
as the authority on the shape and size of the
world. Columbus and Magellan both used
Ptolemy to embark on their voyages of
discovery, and even 16th-century map-
makers like Gerard Mercator and Abraham
Ortelius, who knew that Ptolemys geographi-
cal knowledge was limited, drew maps in
homage to the man they regarded as the
father of modern geography.
The basic principles of Ptolemys map
projections remain in use to this day even
Googles Earth application uses a projection
rst invented by him and yet his life, as well
as his methods, remain a mystery. What little
we know is based on later Byzantine sources.
He was a native of Ptolemaic Egypt, which,
during his lifetime, was already under the
control of the Roman empire. Taking the
name Ptolemaeus suggests he had Greek
ancestors and Claudius indicates he
possessed Roman citizenship.
Circuits of the Earth

What is known is that Ptolemy worked at the
Alexandria Library, founded in c300 BC, the A 15th-century
map of the world
repository of all written knowledge, which based on Ptolemys treatise
held thousands of manuscripts from across on cartography, The Geography
the Greco-Roman world. Some of the (c150 AD). The pioneering
greatest classical scholars worked there, map-maker was regarded as the
authority on the shape and size
including the mathematicians Euclid of the Earth for 1,500 years
(c325265 BC) and Archimedes (c287212
BC), the poet Callimachus (c310240 BC)
and the astronomer and one of the earliest a physical medium, such as wood, stone or Earth encircled by water in his Odyssey, but
librarians at Alexandria Eratosthenes bronze, called pinax for centuries, and by the fth century BC Pythagoras and
(c275194 BC). By Ptolemys time, the writing about them in works usually entitled Parmenides concluded that if the universe
library, like the Hellenic culture it repre- Periodos Ges (literally a circuit of the was spherical, then so was the Earth.
sented, was in decline, ravaged by warfare, Earth). Homer describes a circular, at In Phaedo (c380 BC), Plato described the
neglect and looting. For Ptolemy this decline Earth as round and in the centre of the
represented a unique opportunity to heavens, marvellous for its beauty and
summarise nearly a millennia of Greek Ptolemy drew circular perfection. Aristotle agreed, adding
geography. By drawing on what remained climatic zones, which led his disciples to
of the librarys resources, Ptolemy compiled a geometrical net introduce rudimentary lines of latitude and
his Geography, to show the known world
as a single and continuous entity and to
of latitude and longitude. Using astronomy and geometry,
they pieced together a map of the known
investigate the Earths shape, size, and longitude over world which they called the ecumene an
GETTY
position with respect to its surroundings. inhabited dwelling space. Although none
The Greeks had been drawing maps onto the world of these maps survive, a reconstruction of

A reconstruction of a
world map by fourth-century BC
geographer Dicaearchus, pupil of
Aristotle and predecessor of Ptolemy
drawing of the entire known part of the

world. He then divided the globes circum-
ference into 360 (based on the Babylonian
sexagesimal system), with the known world
stretching from west to east through an arc of
177, from the Canary Islands to Cattigara in
modern-day Vietnam. The known worlds
breadth was estimated at just over half its
length, from Thule (Iceland), 63 north of the
equator, to the region of Agisymba (mod-
ern-day Chad), 16 south of the equator, a
latitudinal range of just over 79.
Yet expanding the world in this way made
it difcult to project the globe onto
a at surface. Ptolemy knew that no map
projection could ever represent the globe
without distortions, so he used Euclidean
geometry to offer two different methods of
making a world map. On the rst cone-like
projection the meridians were drawn as
straight lines converging at an imaginary
point beyond the north pole, with the
parallels shown as curved arcs of different
lengths, centred on the same point. Ptolemy
explained that anyone could draw such a
map by using a swinging ruler and referring
to his tables of latitude and longitude in the
later books of the Geography.
He conceded that this projection had
the world map (see top right) of Aristotles circle. This led him to conclude that the its drawbacks: on a globe, parallel lines
pupil Dicaearchus of Messina, who worked globe had a circumference of 250,000 stades diminish south of the equator, but on
between c326 and 296 BC, shows how the (37,00046,000km). Considering the Earths Ptolemys projection they actually increase
Greeks began to understand the size and circumference at the equator is 40,075km, in length. His compromise was to propose
shape of a world centred on Rhodes. his calculations were extraordinarily accurate. meridians forming acute angles at the
Ptolemy was also able to draw on some equator. This was ne for the Greeks, who
remarkably accurate calculations of the size From Vietnam to the Canaries regarded the habitable world as ending
of the Earth, including those of Eratosthenes. When Ptolemy came to write his Geography, somewhere in the Sahara, but it would prove
Using a sundial, Eratosthenes measured the he synthesised this mass of Greek learning a problem for 15th-century pilots when they
angle cast at midday on the summer solstice and drew a geometrical net of latitude and tried to sail down the African coast.
at both Aswan and Alexandria, which he longitude over the world, preferring the He therefore offered a second projection
believed were on the same meridian, 5,000 consistency of mathematics over the that was similarly proportioned to the
stades apart (a Greek stadion was between unreliable gossip of travellers tales (what the globe by drawing curved parallels and
148 and 185 metres). He calculated the angle Greeks called akoe, or hearsay). He began by meridians. The trigonometry was more
between the two places as one-ftieth of a dening geography as an imitation through complex, and Ptolemy confessed that it was

This engraved allegory of

astronomy, taken from Margarita
Philosophica (1508), shows a
crowned Ptolemy being guided
by the muse Astronomy
harder to construct a map on this projection, and diagrams that allowed later map-makers Looking at a world map based on
as the curved meridians could not be drawn to adapt it. Perhaps we should therefore regard Ptolemys calculations, it is no wonder
with the aid of a swinging ruler. Ptolemy as the rst digital geographer. that Columbus and Magellan believed it
However, Ptolemy cheerfully advised When Columbus and Magellan planned was possible to sail west to get to the east.
readers to hold on to descriptions of both their epic voyages to the east by sailing west, Without Ptolemys mistaken calculations,
methods, for the sake of those who will be they both turned to Ptolemy to support they would probably have never set off on
attracted to the handier one of them because their expeditions, and for good reason. such daunting voyages, and the shape of
it is easy. He was, in effect, offering Ignoring Eratostheness calculations, the age of discovery might have looked
subsequent generations a mapping tool kit Ptolemy had estimated the length of very different.
and a gazetteer of places to which they could a degree as 500 stades, underestimating
expand almost indenitely, building up an the global circumference by as much as Jerry Brotton is professor of Renaissance studies
ever-changing map of the world as new data 10,000km, or more than 18 per cent of the at Queen Mary University of London. He is the
became available. Earths actual circumference. author of This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England
and the Islamic World (Penguin, 2016)
Mapping the future
But there was also another astonishing He preferred the
reason for the success of Ptolemys projec-
tions. The earliest surviving manuscripts
consistency of DISCOVER MORE
BOOKS
of the Geography with maps come from late
12th-century Byzantium. There is no concrete
mathematics over The History of Cartography, vol. 1
eds JB Harley and David Woodward
evidence that Ptolemy ever drew his own the unreliable gossip (Chicago, 1987)
GETTY
maps. Instead, he transmitted geographical A History of the World in Twelve Maps

data in digital form, using a series of numbers of travellers tales by Jerry Brotton (Penguin, 2013)

Science Stories
ASTRONOMY
1781
William
Herschel sees
a new planet A 19th-century
illustration shows
William Herschel
and his sister
Caroline at their
40-foot telescope
espite CP Snows contention in 1959 An immigrant from Hanover, when his death. Whereas he is credited with
D that there is a gulf between scientists
and literary intellectuals, two centuries
Herschel observed Uranus he was earning
his living as a musician in Bath. Displaying
discovering Uranus, she is celebrated for
being the rst woman to report a new
ago poets were fully aware of the latest the passion of a late convert, he started dedi- comet, which she had found by patiently
scientic discoveries. After a drink- cating his entire life to astronomy. He also trawling the skies with a small telescope
fuelled night discussing Homer, the forced his younger sister, Caroline (1750 very different from the gigantic instru-
medical student John Keats wrote his 1848), to abandon her musical career and ment they used together. Acting as a
famous lines comparing his own act as his assistant. Their success depended tourist guide, she had conducted eminent
wonderment with that of some watcher on hard work and unusually large telescopes visitors through its tube. Come, she
of the skies/When a new planet swims that collected enough light to make small, heard George III say to the Archbishop of
into his ken. Keats was referring to distant objects visible. Canterbury, I will show you the way to
William Herschel (17381822), the Craftsmen often recruited daughters or Heaven!
astronomer who had enlarged the solar wives to help run family businesses, but Looking back, it seems that William
system with a seventh planet, now the Herschels developed an exceptionally treated her appallingly, but like many
known as Uranus. close relationship. By day, Caroline polished women of the period, Caroline colluded
Historians like pinning discoveries mirrors, calculated data and compiled cata- in this downtrodden state. I am noth-
down to an exact time and place, but in logues, while at night she brought coffee ing, I have done nothing, she wrote; a
this case its simply not possible. Uranus to keep them awake as they worked together well-trained puppy-dog would have done
had already been spotted many times, in the dark and cold. as much a self-abnegating remark that
but was always assumed to be a star. In Awards for William poured in, but cannot simply be dismissed.
1781, after noticing that 34 Tauri moved recognition for Caroline came only after In 1835, the Royal Astronomical Society
across the skies, Herschel suggested it was made Caroline an honorary member,
a comet. He clung to that belief for two formulating this early statement of equal
years, long after other experts had decided
it was a planet. In 1783 he was rewarded
Herschel suggested opportunities: While the tests of astro-
nomical merit should in no case be applied
for his discovery by the king with an an- that Uranus was to the works of a woman less severely than
nual salary and an invitation to Windsor. to those of a man, the sex of the former
Diplomatically (or ingratiatingly?) a comet and should no longer be an obstacle to her
Herschel named his planet Georges Star, receiving any acknowledgement which
but European astronomers objected to clung to that belief might be held due to the latter.
such chauvinism, and it was only in 1850 The language may be outdated, but the
that British authorities nally adopted for two years sentiments are modern.
ALAMY
the German proposal of Uranus. Words: Patricia Fara

Heaven & Earth / Astronomy
A BRIEF HISTORY Heather Couper explains how our understanding
1 Time and place

Midsummer sunrise at Stonehenge
is so iconic that the place swarms
Even more impressive is the
300 BC monument at Chankillo,
with New Agers and latter-day Peru, where a line of 13 towers
Druids watching the Sun climb marks points at which the Sun
Druids above the Heel Stone. However, rises throughout the year. Yet
celebrate the latest research suggests the preliterate civilisations didnt just
the
Druids ancient predecessors keep time by the heavens: the
summer
solstice at watched the Sun set from the Polynesians used the stars to
Stone- Heel Stone on midwinters day. navigate from Hawaii to
henge, Either way, Stonehenge marks the New Zealand a distance of over
1983 extremes of the calendar. 7,000km out of sight of land!
An engraving
showing French
astronomer
Cassini III observing
5 A matter of some gravity
While Cambridge University was closed due to
the plague in 1665, Isaac Newton returned home
Andreas
Cellariuss
c17th-
century
Halleys Comet in to Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire, where he illustration
Paris in 1759 formulated the law of gravity which stipulates of the
how every body in the universe attracts every Copernican
other. But he didnt publish it until persuaded to by system,
Edmond Halley, who used Newtons law to calculate placing the
that comets seen in 1531, 1607 and 1682 were the Sun at the
same visitor. And it was this law that led Halley centre of
to predict the return in 1758 of the comet that the universe
bears his name.
6 New worlds
On 13 March 1781, a German amateur
astronomer living in Bath doubled
King George III, but the name Uranus
was internationally accepted. Over the
the size of the solar system. decades, astronomers found that
William Herschel (pictured) Uranus was being pulled by the
discovered a curious gravity of a more distant planet,
either nebulous star or leading to the discovery of
comet which turned out Neptune in 1846. Pluto,
to be a planet twice as far discovered in 1930, was at rst
from the Sun as Saturn. called a planet but, uniquely in
Herschel wanted to name history, its status as a planet
it Georgium Sidus, after was revoked in 2006.
REX FEATURES/BRIDGEMAN/GETTY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
10 The quest for life

Theres only one place in the universe where we
know life certainly exists, and that is, of course,
exist include the ice-covered oceans on Jupiters
moon, Europa, and Saturns satellites Enceladus
Earth. However, the next shattering discovery in and cloud-wreathed Titan.
astronomy is likely to be life on another world. Theres plenty of scope for life out there
Mars is probably home to after all, as of today, there are more than 4,000
micro-organisms, according to planets circling other stars. And in 2007,
Heather Couper is a
the Labelled Release experiment scientists of the SETI programme (the Search for
broadcaster and the author, on the Viking landers that Nasa Extraterrestrial Intelligence) began operating a vast
with Nigel Henbest, of sent to the Red Planet in 1976. new receiver in California, the Allen Telescope Array,
Philips Stargazing 2018 Other possible habitats in the that may detect radio broadcasts from aliens that
(Philips, 2017) solar system where life could have evolved from bacteria to intelligence.

OF ASTRONOMY
of space has developed over the past 5,000 years
A Chinese star chart of
the sky seen from the
northern hemisphere,
c700 AD
2 Mirror of the Earth
Chinese astronomers were the rst to make
accurate records of the sky. They regarded the
3 Ordering
the heavens
heavens as a mirror of the Earth, with the stars The Greek philosopher Pythagoras
representing different regions of China. So an was among the rst to question
exploding star in a star pattern would indicate a the widely held view that the world
rebellion in a corresponding province. was at when, in the sixth century
We have Chinese astronomers to thank for BC, he taught that the Earth must be
the earliest known records of Halleys Comet a sphere, because of the shape of its
in 240 BC and an account of a supernova, shadow on the Moon during a lunar
from AD 1054, whose remains today form a eclipse. Over 200 years later
tangled mass of gas called the Crab Nebula. Aristarchus suggested the Earth
moves round the Sun yet his idea
didnt take off. Instead, it was left to
Ptolemy (pictured below) to leave the
Ancient Greeks most lasting imprint
4 The Earth moves

Our perception of mankinds importance
in the universe changed forever in 1543,
Galileo saw that Jupiter was
accompanied by four moons
on astronomy when (around AD 150)
he concluded that the planets
moved in small circles carried by
larger circles, centred on the
when Polish canon Nicolaus Copernicus (overturning the argument that the Earth Earth. His theory
published a book arguing that the Earth couldnt be in motion as it would leave was unchallenged
did not sit at its centre. Instead, the Moon behind) and observed the for 1,400 years.
it was merely a planet orbiting the Sun. changing phases of Venus, which showed
Copernicus had come to this conclusion this planet must be orbiting the Sun.
over 30 years earlier, but he largely kept it The church banned Galileos books
to himself. His case was proven in 1610, but, from then on, no one seriously
when Galileo Galilei in Padua, Italy doubted that the Earth had been
turned his telescope to the skies. dethroned from the centre of the universe.
Digital artwork
Powerhouse of the stars
7 On the subject of stars we shall never be
able by any means to study their chemical
Payne (pictured left) worked out the relative
proportions of the elements, and proved
of what the Big
Bang may have
looked like
composition. So wrote the French positivist that most of the universe is made of
philosopher Auguste Comte in 1835. But hydrogen. It led to an understanding that
only two decades later, German chemists the powerhouse of the stars was basically
Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen proved a hydrogen bomb running in slow motion.
him wrong. They identied elements in the And astrophysicist Fred Hoyle squared the
Sun by comparing the dark lines in its circle by showing how elements are built up
spectrum of colours with laboratory spectra in stars. So the gold in your wedding ring
of elements, such as hydrogen and iron. is nothing less than the product of an
In the 1920s, British astronomer Cecilia exploding star.
8 The Big Bang
In the 1920s, American astronomer
Edwin Hubble, along with former
9 Black and brilliant

British army scientist Stanley Hey was
perplexed in February 1942. He was
the mass of the Sun. And they have
found giant black holes. These
mule-driver Milton Humason, found
that galaxies are racing apart from
each other. The universe is
expanding, suggested Belgian priest
investigating what seemed to be an cosmic monsters weigh as much as
Georges Lemaitre, because it was
outburst of German radar jamming a billion suns, and their gravity is so
born in an exploding primeval atom
but it moved around the sky during the powerful that light cant escape. As
what we now call the Big Bang.
day. Hey realised that the emission the gas from the stars swirls round the
This was proved in 1965, when
came from the Sun, and instigated black hole, it shines as brilliantly as
American scientists Arno Penzias
the science of radio astronomy. hundreds of galaxies in an
and Robert Wilson discovered a faint
Since then, radio astronomers have incandescent ickering maelstrom
background of radio waves the
discovered pulsars dense balls of that astronomers call a quasar
afterglow of the Big Bang.
matter only the size of a city, but with (illustrated on the left).

Heaven & Earth / Railways
A RAIL
REVOLUTION The age of the railways brought
unimaginable changes to Britain, Dan Snow
tells Rob Attar, and helped to build but
ultimately undermined the empire
An 1831 illustration showing the Liverpool

and Manchester railway crossing a canal.
Dan Snow argues that rail ended the
dominance of waterborne transport

Why did the railway provided by this new form of
revolution come transport. The appetite for iron
to Britain first? increased enormously too because
Coal was a massive reason for this. you needed it to make trains
Because of the nascent industrial and tracks.
revolution in the 18th century There was also a huge, unex-
and because there were no big pected desire to ride on these
indigenous forests left in the trains. It was thought that early
country, Britain, and London railways would be largely for coal
in particular, needed energy and goods, but instead they proved
from coal. overwhelmingly popular with
London had a voracious appetite, people, passengers. This meant
so the coal trade was absolutely they were fantastically successful and
booming in a way that it wasnt An 1822 lithograph of Hetton colliery, which they made money.
elsewhere in the world. That coal was was home to an early private railway. It was Some later railways ended up losing a vast
arriving from Newcastle by ship, down the here that pioneering engineer George amount of money, but early on there was
Stephenson cut his teeth
east coast. In order to take the coal to simply a massive market for them. By 1840
Newcastle there was a huge network of there were 2,000 miles of tracks, but by 1900
trackways right across north-east England. By 1840 there were there were over 23,000 miles. It was extraor-
Trackways used initially by horses and dinary and it shows that there was a lot of
carts created much less friction than 2,000 miles of money in Britain at the time. There was
travelling over the rough ground. (without wishing to sound like a Marxist)
It was only a matter of time before people track, but by 1900 a kind of under-taxed elite looking for
started experimenting with steam engines
on these trackways. Britain had already done
there were over opportunities to invest the surplus value
that theyd earned from textile mills,
a lot of the early running in the development
of steam power, using it to pump out deep
23,000 miles. It was coalmines, iron foundries and things like
that. This money was being ploughed into
mineshafts in particular. By the late 18th extraordinary railways, which were very attractive invest-
century, people started thinking about using ment opportunities.
steam engines to pull these carts up and Britain was a country where this
down the tracks. added his little touch of genius as well, but it was all doable. You could join up
didnt burst fully formed out of Zeuss head Birmingham and London or Liverpool and
So the industrial revolution created like Athena. He was building on what had Manchester. These industrial hubs were
the railways, not vice versa? gone before. being gradually connected and it created
Yes, absolutely. Particularly, as I say, this need its own momentum.
to move large volumes of heavy coal. The How much impact did the
engineer George Stephenson began working British landscape have on the Did the growth of the railways
in the collieries and the British standard rail development of railways? attract any opposition?
gauge began as the gauge of a trackway in the Britain was the right country for railways There was hostility from romantic poets and
north-east of England. Of course the railways to come to rst. They were manageable lovers of the countryside although frankly
did themselves give an enormous boost to propositions because all you had to do was that was brushed aside. There was more
the industrial revolution. transport things to the nearest water and, as problematic opposition from a class of
an island nation, were never very far from landed aristocrat who did not want railways
Was the development of the railways that. It was different when they brought to infringe their property rights. The original
a collective process or more the result railways into Canada, for example, where plan for the Liverpool and Manchester
of geniuses such as the Stephensons? they had to build over vast distances with railway was actually defeated at the commit-
It was a collective process. If you look at titanic sums of venture capital being required. tee stage in the House of Commons because
George Stephenson, he spent his early The Stockton and Darlington railway was MPs thought it was a harebrained scheme
engineering career working in the coalmines about 26 miles long and the subsequent and landowners didnt want members of the
of County Durham, where people were Liverpool and Manchester line wasnt a huge public crossing their land.
experimenting enormously with transport. amount further. There werent bewilderingly In addition, there was the extreme
He was right in the middle of that and was large distances involved. Also, the landscape, hardship suffered by many of the navvies,
then able to enlarge on what hed seen to while being challenging, wasnt catastrophi- who could be paid well but also had high
build the Stockton and Darlington railway. cally difcult, which would be the case in mortality rates and extremely tough lives.
This was the rst serious railway in history. other parts of the world. These people were virtually enslaved to the
It was built primarily to transport coal to building of the railways because their salary
Stockton-on-Tees, doing exactly what Nineteenth-century Britain witnessed was often used up buying food and alcohol
trackways had been doing for years, but a railway fever. How was such rapid and they ended up permanently indebted to
nally with a moving steam engine. pace of growth achieved? the companies they were working for.
There was a massive hub of exciting It was partly because an incredible virtuous Then of course there were the slums that
developments going on in north-east circle was created. In the rst 20 years of the were cleared. People in north London were
GETTY
England at the time. George Stephenson railways existence, iron and coal produc- turfed out of their houses as the line from
learned from them, perfected them, and tion tripled thanks to the added efciencies Birmingham came into the city, with

Heaven & Earth / Railways
RAILWAY virtually no compensation. Charles Dickens

MILESTONES writes about this memorably. It was felt that This project was
1604
these people couldnt be allowed to get in the
way of modernity and so they were left with
more significant
The rst wagonway in Britain is
constructed in the east Midlands by
nowhere to go. than the Great
Huntington Beaumont to help transport
coal towards the river Trent
Aside from the industrial and Wall of China, the
transport revolutions, how else
did railways affect Britain? Roman road system
1769 They affected the country in virtually every
Scottish inventor James Watt way imaginable. What I nd fascinating is or the pyramids
patents a vastly improved steam simply the scale of it. This was one of the
engine. Together with partner Matthew biggest building projects in history, more
Boulton he goes on to make crucial signicant than the Great Wall of China, and hostile and the land became the bridge.
developments to steam power
the Roman road system or the pyramids. Entire countries and empires were carved out
One of the reasons it was so amazing was of this. Its not an exaggeration to say that
1804 that, unlike those previous projects, it was modern Russia, the USA and Germany were
The worlds rst steam locomotive built with private investors money. It was created by railways. Without them, they
railway journey takes place in Penydar-
the rst democratic infrastructure boom wouldnt have been able to bind these vast,
ren in Wales. The vehicle has been built
by Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick
and that is crucially important. sprawling places into one state.
Not a penny of the funding for the early In the end, the railways actually under-
railways came from the public purse. It all mined the legitimacy of the British empire.
1825 came from private individuals, from the very There was a new focus on land communica-
The Stockton and Darlington railway
rich right down to people giving a tiny part tion and so it became illegitimate for Britain
opens. Designed by George Stephenson,
it is the worlds rst public railway of their meagre paycheck because they to own these territorial possessions on the
wanted to become investors. other side of the world, linked by water.
There was virtually no part of public life America is just as much an empire as the
1829 that remained unaltered. Railways changed British empire was, but because its joined
George and Robert Stephensons
Rocket triumphs in the Rainhill Trials the way people lived and worked, what they and you can travel over it by land there are far
contest to nd the best locomotive for the ate and even what they read. Penguin Books fewer questions about its legitimacy. These
Liverpool and Manchester railway that famously originated on a railway platform huge continental-sized nation states were
will open the following year and WHSmith developed through railways. developed and Britain, in the end, simply
They give birth to the consumer revolution. could not compete.
1840s Thomas Cooks travel agency was born on
Railway mania takes hold the railways. His rst expedition was a Did the railways also create
in Britain. By 1854 the network temperance excursion and he went on to a new mentality in Britain?
stretches over 6,000 miles make vast amounts of money taking people They created a national mentality in many
to the seaside on trains. ways. Railways bind people together,
1853 However, the railways were also the enfant enabling them to organise themselves
The Crimean War begins. During terrible of the 19th century because no one nationally, quickly. Trade union activism
the conict, Britain creates the really knew where it would end. The railway and Chartism, for example, would have been
Grand Crimean Central Railway mania eventually brought about the impossible without the railways. Newspapers
to aid with logistics legendary nancial collapse of 1866. It could travel around the country almost
brought the British banking system to its instantaneously and there was a huge
knees. Not even Napoleon managed that. movement of goods and people, which
1914 As someone who has studied the navy and brought about a nation state where one
The First World War sees railways
maritime history, I am also conscious of the had not existed previously.
playing a crucial role for
the combatants in the transportation
way railways inverted our understanding of Railways also introduced a national time.
of food and other materials how the world works. Before the 19th Various towns around Britain once had their
century, human beings were largely a littoral own time zones, which was ne then, but
species. We lived along coastlines and rivers. when you have train timetables you need to
1938 The great cities of the world like London, have a national timetable. The time in
The British train Mallard sets Paris, Beijing and New York were dependent London became the time everywhere else.
a world record speed of 126mph. This on waterborne transport for their trade. The
remains a record for a steam locomotive sea was a bridge linking one place to another What did the railways mean for
and it was actually the land that was hostile. Britain as a military power?
The Pennines were virtually impassable, They had a huge impact, starting with the
1948 but if you were in Newcastle you could sail Crimean War. They were vital in the First
Britains railways are nationalised
by the Labour government at a time to London no problem. World War, where millions of tonnes of
when motor cars are beginning to Yet, within a generation, the railways supplies were carried to the battleeld on rail.
supersede train travel carved links to the landscape that forever The early tanks, for example, couldnt
changed the way we thought about our place possibly go over land all the way between
in the world. Suddenly we saw the sea as slow battleelds, so they were all carried on the

Tourists travelling by train around
Britain in 1876. Railways were
originally intended to move goods,
but passengers soon ocked
to this new form of transport
backs of trains. Most of the men who were railways. Britains naval blockade did bite in In many ways, of course, the railway age
taken to France arrived at ports like the end, but it took quite a long time for this hasnt ended. There are still a vast number
Folkestone and Southampton by railway. to happen. of journeys being made each year on Britains
However, in the longer term a situation railways and theres talk now of high-speed
developed that, because landed transport When did the railway age come rail, which could give it a new lease of life.
became so much easier, Britains naval to an end and why? Whats also interesting is the fact that the
domination mattered less. In the First World It was partly because of under-investment rst motor cars were just trackless steam
War. Germany was able to get material and during the Second World War and state engines, so in a way I always see a smooth
supplies from the whole of Europe by rail in a ownership afterwards, and partly because of transition from the train to the motor car.
way that Napoleon, for example, couldnt a fashionable obsession with the new motor
have done. Whereas France had been car. There wasnt the rapid electrication Dan Snow is a historian, author and broadcaster.
strangled by Britains blockade, Germany of trains that would have reduced journey He has presented numerous BBC TV series
GETTY
had access to lots of the natural resources of times and put up more of a ght against the including Locomotion: Dan Snows History
Eurasia that could be moved using the encroaching of the car. of Railways (2014), available on DVD

Heaven & Earth / Galileo
MOON
SHAKER Over 400 years on from the first lunar
observations by telescope, Christopher Lewis
considers how Galileo Galilei changed our view
of the Moon and the heavens
T
he rst giant leap towards only a small step further to imagine the likewise, the true cause of the Via Lactea
landing on the Moon Moon as another New World, ripe for [Milky Way], so long searched; and lastly, that
may have been taken exploration and colonisation. the Moon is not spherical, but endued with
over 400 years ago. It was on 13 March 1610 that the English many prominences And the author
From the summer of ambassador to the Republic of Venice, runneth a fortune to be either exceeding
1609 onwards, telescopic Sir Henry Wotton (15681639), dashed off famous or exceeding ridiculous.
studies by Galileo Galilei a letter to secretary of state Robert Cecil
and other astronomers helped to shatter (15631612), enclosing a slim booklet, Through the looking glass
the dominant medieval belief in the hot off the press: The optical instrument was a telescope.
intrinsic separateness and inaccessibility, I send herewith unto His Majesty The rst clear, public claim to a new
the literal other-worldliness, of the heavens [James I] the strangest piece of news (as I may invention, a certain device by means
and the Moon. justly call it) that he hath ever yet received of which all things at a very large distance
The surface of the Moon, claimed from any part of the world; which is the can be seen as if they were nearby, by
Galileo, is not smooth, uniform, and annexed book (come abroad this very day) of looking through glasses, was made in the
precisely spherical as a great number of the Mathematical Professor at Padua, who by Dutch Netherlands in September 1608.
philosophers believe it (and the other the help of an optical instrument (which both News of the invention spread rapidly
heavenly bodies) to be, but it is uneven, enlargeth and approximateth [brings closer] throughout Europe and actual working
rough, and full of cavities and prominenc- the object) invented rst in Flanders, and examples of the spyglass or optic tube
es, being not unlike the face of the Earth, bettered by himself, hath discovered four new followed not far behind, arriving in Italy
relieved by chains of mountains and planets rolling about the sphere of Jupiter, in the summer of 1609.
deep valleys. besides many other unknown xed stars; The Mathematical Professor at Padua
The telescope, an instrument that Galileo referred to by Wotton was the 45-year-old
did so much to rene, transformed our well-respected academic Galileo Galilei. He
understanding of the Moon (and of the
heavens in general) even more profoundly
Galileo wanted to had been improving the telescope design,
and by the end of August 1609 he had
than the Apollo astronauts rst view
of Earthrise from the Moon helped change
prove that the developed a telescope that magnied some
eight or nine times; by the end of the year he
modern awareness of our fragile Earth. Moon was basically had a good eyeglass of 20x power.
From the moment that Galileo began to The booklet Robert Cecil received was
point his telescope towards the skies, it was like the Earth Galileos The Sidereal Messenger (Sidereus

Portrait of Galileo by
Justus Sustermans
(1635) to which is
added an image of the
Moon showing the
apparent mountains
and valleys the great
astronomer discovered
PAINTING OF GALILEO AFTER JUSTUS SUSTERMANS, 1635: WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON/DREAMSTIME

Heaven & Earth / Galileo
Galileo: a man
of many parts
Galileo Galilei (15641642) was
born into a respected but impecunious
Florentine family. Quick-witted, sharp-
tongued, good with his hands,
fond of wine and women, he eventually
settled upon a career in mathematics.
He became professor of mathematics
rst at the university of Pisa and then,
from 1592, at the more prestigious
Venetian university of Padua. For the
next 18 years, the happiest years of my
life, he devoted himself to the study of
motion, magnets and many other topics,
but he published very little.
His telescopic discoveries, however,
earned him international celebrity and
enabled him to return to Florence as
philosopher and chief mathematician
to the Medici grand duke of Tuscany.
Cultured he played the lute and wrote
on Dante and Tasso and clubbable,
Galileo nevertheless made enemies
as easily as friends. Academic and
ecclesiastical opponents secured the
banning of his cherished Copernican
theory in 1616 and nally, after the
publication of his great pro-Copernican
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems, engineered Galileos
conviction by the Roman Inquisition in
1633 for vehement suspicion of
heresy. Condemned to house arrest in
Florence for the remainder of his life,
Galileo nally turned to the completion
and publication of perhaps his greatest
work, The Discourses on Two New
Sciences (1638), accurately describing Galileo was not the rst
the motions of falling bodies, projectiles to study the heavens with a
and pendulums. Some of Galileos 1609 watercolour telescope. The brilliant English math-
sketches of the moon. His observa- ematician Thomas Harriot (c15601621), for
tions led him to doubt that the Moons example, viewed the Moon through a
surface was precisely spherical
telescope in the summer of 1609. Galileo
observed the Moon systematically through
Nuncius), which contained an account of his at least one complete lunar cycle (from
telescopic observations of the Moon and of crescent new Moon, through full Moon, to
the stars over the previous three or four waning crescent) in the autumn of that same
months. Page for page, at least, this slim year. Yet, in January 1610, his study of the
volume of some 40 quarto sides had a more Earths satellite was interrupted by his
immediate, widespread and profound sighting of four moons of Jupiter. Galileos
inuence upon our understanding of the main objective now was to publish and
cosmos and of mans place in it than any claim priority for this utterly unprecedented
other work in the history of modern science. discovery in The Sidereal Messenger.
Galileos discovery of four moons (Wottons However, he also decided to include his
four new planets) orbiting the planet drawings, descriptions and speculations
Jupiter was certainly the most unexpected about the Moon in the booklet.
revelation and the reason he had to rush Galileo was not interested in just mapping
into print in order to establish his priority the Moon. He had a deeper scientic agenda:
ALAMY/GETTY
but it was probably his conclusions about he wanted to prove that the Moon was
the Earth-like nature of the Moon that had basically like the Earth, and thus that there
the greatest impact, at least upon the was no fundamental difference between the
Ottavio Mario Leonis portrait of Galileo
popular imagination. substance of the heavens and of the Earth.

So how did he know that there were of. Would Christ, for example, have had to
mountains and valleys on the Moon? It was Would Christ have undergo another Passion upon the Moon to
not possible simply to see that the surface save such human souls as lived there?
of the Moon was not smooth, even with had to undergo
Galileos excellent telescopes. His argument
had to be more complex.
another Passion Have we not lately in the moon,
Found a new world, to thold unknown?
Galileo studied very carefully the slowly
moving boundary (the terminator)
upon the Moon to Discovered seas and lands Columbus
And Magellan could never compass?
between the bright, sunlit parts of the Moon save souls there? Made mountains with our tubes appear,
and the dark part still in shadow. In the rst And cattle grazing on them there?
place, he reported, the boundaries of (Samuel Butler, Hudibras, 1664)
shadow and light in the Moon are seen to be accommodate Galileos conclusions,
uneven and wavy. Even more tellingly, arguing, for example, that although the For many people, theological technicalities
many bright points appear within the lunar mountains did exist, they were were less important than the exciting
darkened portion of the Moon, completely encased in a perfectly spherical outer layer parallels with the ongoing voyages of
divided and separated from the illuminated of celestial crystal. discovery on Earth: were there new worlds
part and at a considerable distance from it. By the early 17th century, the Aristotelian to explore in the solar system comparable
After a time these [points] gradually increase cosmology was already under attack. The to the New World on Earth? Galileo himself
in size and brightness, and an hour or two radical Sun-centred cosmology of Nicolaus was often compared, especially in poetry,
later they become joined with the rest of the Copernicus (14731543) was increasingly to a new and greater Columbus. A colonial
lighted part which has now increased in widely known and discussed. Galileos initiative was never far behind. Do but
size. This, said Galileo, is exactly what telescopic discoveries did not denitely consider the pleasure and prot of those
happens on the Earth: before the rising of prove the Copernican theory, but they later discoveries in America, Bishop John
the Sun, are not the highest peaks of the certainly undermined the established Wilkins urged his readers, and we must
mountains illuminated by the Suns rays Aristotelian hypothesis. needs conclude this [world in the Moon] to
while the plains remain in shadow? Does not Nevertheless, common-sense objection to be inconceivably beyond it. In coming
the light go on spreading while the larger the supposed motion of the Earth remained, years, the Moon was indeed claimed in turn
central parts of those mountains are understandably enough, very strong. Such by Spaniards, Italians, Dutch, and many
becoming illuminated? And when the Sun discoveries as the moons of Jupiter or, later others beside the British.
has nally risen, does not the illumination of the same year, the phases of Venus both Gradual technical improvement in
plains and hills nally become one? quite difcult to observe without a good telescope design produced a new generation
Galileos ideas about the Moon were and telescope were undeniably inuential of lunar map-makers. The Selenographia
were meant to be provocative. The among professional astronomers. In the (1647) of Johannes Hevelius (161187) set
understanding of nature, the natural popular imagination, however, it was the the cartographic standard for almost the
philosophy taught in European universities alleged Earth-like nature of the Moon that next 150 years. It was the Almagestum
at the time, was still largely dominated by probably had the profoundest impact in Novum (1651) of the Jesuit Giovanni
the system of the ancient Greek philosopher launching the Earth into space to join the Riccioli (15981671), however, that
Aristotle (384322 BC). Aristotle had other planets in orbit around the Sun. established the basic modern system for
argued, very elegantly to be sure, that there naming lunar features. Without Riccioli,
was a fundamental difference between the Mountains on the Moon the Apollo astronauts would have stepped
nature and very substance of the heavens Galileos suggestion that the Moon was rug- out not into the Sea of Tranquillity but,
and of the Earth. ged, mountainous, like the Earth, had instead, into the Black Sea or perhaps
The Earth was stationary at the centre of further signicant scientic and theologi- even the Belgian Sea.
the universe, surrounded in the elaborated cal implications. Even viewed with the The telescope helped to bring the Moon
version of the medieval scholastics by a naked eye, the Moon has brighter and (and the heavens) down to Earth, and
nesting set of concentric spheres, each darker areas hence the face in the Moon. demanded the same unied physics for the
containing one of the seven planets, starting As Galileo himself remarked, therefore, if celestial and earthly realms. Without that
with the Moon. Everything below the sphere anyone should wished to revive the old unity, Newtons universal mechanics and
of the Moon, everything earthly, was Pythagorean opinion that the moon is like gravitation would have been unthinkable.
subject to change, growth, decay. Everything another Earth, its brighter part might very Plotting a trajectory to the Moon would
in the sphere of the Moon or above was, on tly represent the surface of the land and its have been inconceivable outside the myths
the contrary, perfect and unchanging. All darker region that of the water. of Orpheus and the poetry of Dante. Such
celestial bodies had to move in perfectly Galileo himself was non-committal, but a journey would have crossed the boundary
circular orbits, and had to be perfectly in the minds of many readers this promptly between the mortal world of man and the
spherical. This included the Moon. suggested plants and animals, and maybe eternal world of spirit. Without Galileos
Galileos telescopic observations and rational, even human, inhabitants. But, as telescope to make the Moon into another
arguments for the ruggedness of the Moon Galileos ecclesiastical friend Giovanni Earth, the Apollo astronauts could never
directly challenged this key Aristotelian doc- Ciampoli (c1590 1643) reminded him, this have set off.
trine. Some academic philosophers such as was no idle speculation, for it raised the
Galileos own colleague (and drinking question how these [human inhabitants] Christopher Lewis is an afliated scholar in the
companion) at Padua, Cesare Cremonini can be descended from Adam, or how they department of history and philosophy of science
(15501631) simply declined to look can have come off Noahs ark, and many at Cambridge University, studying the life and
through the telescope. Others sought to other extravagances you never dreamed times of Galileo

Heaven & Earth / Industrial revolution
Heroes of
The industrial revolution brought
insecurity and squalor to many, but,
as Christine MacLeod explains, many
of the great inventors and industrialists
of the 19th century particularly those
in steam power were lionised and
honoured in their lifetimes

Invention
BACKGROUND Nantyglo iron-
works in south Wales, c1829.
Industrialisation would have an
immeasurable impact on Britains
physical and social landscape
FOREGROUND William Walkers
imaginary gathering of Distin-
guished Men of Science of Great
Britain 1807/8 (1862) celebrated
industrial trailblazers such
as James Watt
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY/

T
he prime minister, Lord mand high wages, belong to a trade union,
Liverpool, told parliament maintain a family and aspire to education
in 1820 that England was and the vote. They believed it was their skills
indebted for its present that were making Britain great and they
greatness to men such as admired the inventors who had set it on this
James Watt, Matthew industrial path to wealth and power,
Boulton and Richard especially the pioneers of steam.
Arkwright. It was an astonishing statement Watt was their rst hero. An instrument
from a prime minister whose cabinet maker by trade, he posthumously breached
included the hero of Waterloo and nations the national pantheon where military gures
darling Arthur Wellesley, rst Duke of jostled a few cultural lions Shakespeare,
Wellington. No less astounding, he made it Milton, Bacon and Newton. The second was
to a body still largely composed of landown- George Stephenson, another working man,
ers, which in 1815 enacted the Corn Law to whose engineering feats had transxed
protect Britains agriculture at the probable public attention ever since the rst train ran
expense of her industry. Yet, this was not the A statue of James Watt in on the Liverpool to Manchester railway in
rst time that Liverpool had identied the Glasgow. By 1834, Glasgow 1830. During the 1840s and 50s, his son
machinery and mechanical inventions of boasted three statues of Watt Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom
this country as the upcoming source of Brunel and Joseph Locke (the railway
national wealth and power, and in 1824 he industrialisation that still dominates school triumvirate) held centre stage, but in the
would chair a meeting to launch a subscrip- textbooks and popular histories, despite wake of their coincidental deaths in 185960,
tion for a monument in Westminster Abbey simultaneously evincing pride in its loyalty to the older generation was reasserted.
to James Watt, who had died in 1819. technical achievements. By then, Watt and George Stephenson were
Others rhetoric on that occasion hugely Familiarity with the poetry of celebrated nationally, locally, and by the
exaggerated the signicance of the steam Wordsworth, the ction of Dickens and the engineering trades and professions
engine and hymned Watt, its inventor, as illustrations of Gustave Dor deepens this (Stephenson was elected rst president of the
the true victor of the Napoleonic wars. If sense of gloom and regret. Postwar economic Institution of Mechanical Engineers,
their analysis of steam powers importance historians more positive assessments of 184748). Their biographies provoked
for British industry was premature, like industrialisation, with their emphasis on emulation and their achievements were
Liverpools it demonstrated their awareness long-term economic growth, higher entered into the history books, as monarchi-
of the tectonic change occurring in Britains standards of living and extended life cal politics began ceding several pages to the
economy and its role in funding Wellingtons expectancy, have done little to disturb our rise of manufactures.
victory. Their erection of a colossal statue of ingrained belief that the industrial revolution
Watt among the abbeys aristocratic tombs was almost universally deplored by those Whats Watt?
symbolised this change at the same time as who lived through it. In 1824, when liberal Tory members of
the Reform Act of 1832 recognised the Undoubtedly, many workers deskilled by Liverpools cabinet joined with moderate
challenge it presented to the aristocracys new technologies lost their livelihoods, many whigs, leading fellows of the Royal Society
hold on power. It also inaugurated a tradition were made homeless by railway construction, and well-heeled manufacturers to commem-
of commemorating inventors and engineers, and many lives were shortened by scandalous orate Watt, the radicals realised they had
such as the recent tercentenary of the death working conditions and jerry-built, unsani- missed a trick. William Cobbett, one of
of Abraham Darby, inventor of the coke- tary housing. Yet, numerous others benet- 19th-century Englands leading champions
smelting process for iron making at ed; they saw in the smoke from factory of political reform, bellowed: WHATS
Coalbrookdale or the bicentenary of the chimneys not air pollution but evidence of WATT? I, of late, hear a great deal about IT;
death of Matthew Boulton in Birmingham, prosperity. Industrialisation demanded new but, for the life of me, I cannot make out
where he and Watt established their steam- skills, especially in the engineering and what this Watt IS (Cobbetts Political
engine business. metal-working trades: to build and maintain Register, 24 August 1824). Cobbetts feigned
From William Blakes powerful image of machinery, operate boilers, drive locomo- ignorance belied his anxiety that Watts
dark satanic mills to Arnold Toynbees tives, mine coal and tend spinning-mules reputation was being hijacked by the cotton
coining of the Industrial Revolution only to and power-looms. Such men could com- lords to the detriment of the slaves of both
condemn it, the loud cries of industrialisa- plantation and factory. He proposed a
tions critics and victims have suppressed the cast-iron statue of the great mechanic with
acclamations with which many 19th-century The cries of panels on its plinth illustrating their distress,
Britons greeted it. The rst generation of the effects of the system which Mr Watts
professional economic historians, aghast at industrialisations inventions have established among us.
the persistence of poverty in the midst of By contrast, a subscription of 6,000
Victorian prosperity, took their cue from critics have bought a huge block of marble and the talents
investigators of social deprivation such as of sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey: Watts
Henry Mayhew and Friedrich Engels.
suppressed the seated gure in Westminster Abbey wore
Thus Toynbees Lectures on the Industrial
Revolution in England (1884) together with
acclamations academic robes, a philosopher rather than
an engineer. Lord Liverpool made subscrib-
BRIDGEMAN
the publications of JL and Barbara with which Britons ing fashionable when he persuaded George
Hammond and Sidney and Beatrice Webb IV to give 500. The Boulton family donated
established a catastrophist history of once greeted it 500 and other close friends 50 to 100

Slums of Victorian London, as
drawn by Gustave Dor. The
industrial revolution has long
been blamed for exacerbating
social deprivation
each, but most subscriptions were of ve to gave birth to those mighty efforts of his to shelter the marble statue. Edinburgh,
ten guineas, from people unknown to Watt. genius. It had, after all, been while repairing torn between its Scottish and its British
As Cobbett predicted, grateful cotton lords Glasgow Universitys model Newcomen identities, debated whether or not to cede the
sprang to the cause. engine that Watt conceived of the fuel-saving honour of Watt to Westminster Abbey, and
Manchester, despite having no direct separate condenser. decided not. It collected over 1,250 but that
connection to Watt, contributed 1,100. was insufcient to achieve its ambitious
Without fast-owing rivers, the citys A new Newton plans. Consequently, it was 1851 before the
expansion since the 1780s had depended However, popular admiration for Watt Watt Institution and School of Arts funded
entirely on Watts rotative steam engine. extended well beyond the cotton industry a statue by Peter Slater for its new building
By the 1820s, Cottonopolis (as Manchester and the professoriate. Not only did numer- in Adam Square.
was dubbed) was a bastion of free trade and ous artisans and tradesmen subscribe, but By then, Watts memory was regularly
provincial science, and saw in steam power substantial sums were collected in a dozen toasted both at trade unionists and profes-
both the opportunity for worldwide shipping (mainly engineering) workshops impressed sional engineers dinners, verses were written
services and proof of the utility of scientic perhaps by the tutor at Andersons in his honour and his image appeared on
investigations. In 1857, the city would Institution, Glasgow, who stated that Watt unions membership certicates. Thomas
inaugurate its own monument to Watt in had rescued the term Mechanic from Wright described how a new apprentice
Piccadilly Gardens, subscribing 1,000 for opprobrium, and [rendered] it as honourable would be interrogated by his peers, as to his
a copy of Chantreys statue by William Theed a title as any man could possess, or the designs about becoming the Stephenson or
the Younger. chemist Andrew Ure, who declared that Watt Watt of his day: in a word to taking his
Already in 1824, Glasgow, the other centre has done for the earth what Newton did for measure. In 1868, when Birmingham
of Britains cotton industry, preferred to go the Heavens (Glasgow Mechanics Magazine, commissioned a statue to stand in front of
its own way, raising 3,500 to commission 4 December 1824 and 1 January 1825). the town hall, The Times remarked that no
Chantrey to dignify George Square with a Down the Clyde, Greenock proclaimed its small share was contributed by the working
similar bronze statue (see above left). As status as Watts birthplace with yet another men of Birmingham. This time Watt was
ALAMY
the Lord Provost told a large public meeting, commission for Chantrey, prompting James dressed in everyday clothes, standing next to
Glasgow was proud to be the city which Watt Junior to donate a library to the town, a steam-engine cylinder. Newly enfranchised

Local heroes: celebrating six innovators

Statues and celebrations were de rigueur in the hometowns of the great industrial trailblazers
James Watt Glasgow Matthew Boulton

By 1834, Glasgow boasted three statues Birmingham
of Watt, two the product of public Boulton was at least as prominent in life as
subscriptions, one the gift of James Watt Watt, yet has posthumously been overshad-
Junior to the university. Between 1864 owed. His entrepreneurial and inventive
and 1906, ve more statues were talents (especially his coining machinery,
privately commissioned for the citys supplied to numerous European mints)
buildings. Glasgows engineering would not be so well remembered today
societies hold an annual James Watt without Watts steam engines. However, in
Anniversary Dinner; Glasgow University 1956 Birmingham commissioned William
named its engineering laboratories after Bloyes bronze Conversazione, in which the George Stephenson
him, and in 1919 marked the centenary life-size gures of Boulton, Watt and William Newcastle-upon-Tyne
of his death by establishing two James Murdoch discuss an engineering drawing. George and his son, Robert, were born
Watt chairs of engineering, funded Boultons home, Soho House, was opened on Tyneside and lived most of their lives
chiey by Scottish engineers. in 1995 as a museum to him and the city also there. The citys chief monument to
marked the bicentenary of his death in 2009. George, erected in 1862, stands in Neville
Street, appropriately close to the railway
station. Some 70,000 people attended
the inauguration festivities. In 1881,
The statue of Boulton, Newcastle celebrated the centenary of
Watt and Murdoch in
his birth even more grandly, with
Broad Street, Birmingham
exhibitions, lectures, reworks, a public
ALAMY/DREAMSTIME/NATIONAL TRUST-GEOFFREY FROSHT/PHIL HOSKEN/BRIDGEMAN

breakfast to launch a Stephenson
scholarship fund and a procession of
16 locomotives from the central station to
his birthplace at Wylam and back.
Stephensons birthplace (pictured above)
is now in the care of the National Trust.
Richard Trevithick
Camborne
Allegedly saved from a paupers funeral by
parts were cast in the Darby foundry, which
Abraham Darby by then had passed to his grandson,
his fellow workers in Dartford (Kent) in
1833, Trevithick was rediscovered when
Ironbridge Abraham Darby III (175089). Since 1967, the Institution of Civil Engineers launched
Born in Wrens Nest (Worcestershire) in the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust has a subscription for a memorial window in
1678, Darbys prime association is with preserved the remains of industry in the Westminster Abbey to mark the 50th
Coalbrookdale, where in 1709 he reput- gorge by establishing several highly anniversary of his death. That window
edly invented the smelting of iron with innovative museums. now features Cornish symbols and four
(coked) coal, and founded a major angels, each holding a drawing of a
iron-making dynasty. The greatest Samuel Crompton Trevithick invention, including Railway
monument to his achievements is the Bolton locomotive, 1808. On Christmas Eve
worlds rst iron bridge (pictured below), 1901, Camborne celebrated the centenary
The inventor of the (unpatented) spinning
which has spanned the Severn Gorge at of the steam road locomotive, the Pufng
mule, Crompton died poor and unre-
Coalbrookdale since 1779. Its inter-locking Devils journey through
marked in 1827. Posthumously he rose to
the town.
fame, thanks initially to Gilbert French, a
A Trevithick Day
local antiquarian who, in 1859, published
celebration still
his biography. Frenchs championing of
takes place
Crompton inspired Boltons workers to
annually. Since
fund the bronze statue by William Calder
1932, a statue of
Marshall, unveiled in the town in 1862.
Trevithick has
Boltons centenary celebrations in 1927
stood in front of
included a childrens pageant, which
the town hall.
culminated in a song, inviting Ye Men of
Cromptons Native Town [to] Sound his
Fame Across the Earth. Cromptons An 1816 portrait of
childhood home, Hall i th Wood is now Cornish engineer
open to the public. Richard Trevithick

One of a number of
under the 1867 act, artisans reclaimed Watt; steam locomotives
he was as much their gurehead then as he designed by George
had been their employers in 1832. Stephenson for use in
collieries, c1814
As the engineer William Fairbairn
remarked in 1836, Watt had given a freedom
and impetus to the inventive genius of his
country. From the mid-1820s the status of
inventors improved. Demands for a more
efcient patent system prompted the rst
parliamentary inquiry into its operation in
1829, although it was another 23 years before
its statutory reform. The balance of litigation
also swung in patentees favour, as the courts
began to sympathise less often with
those who infringed a patent. Promoters
of steam transport also took heart. The
Morning Chronicle (18 August 1824) crowed
that canal proprietors attempts to block
railway schemes had been doomed from the Steams transformative powers would
moment the prime minister and his
coadjutors met to celebrate Watt.
speed commerce, Christianity and
Publishers rushed out books to explain the
technology of steam to a lay audience, often
civilisation to all corners of the globe
prefaced by a history of its development and
an encomium on its wealth-creating and trade and mutual understanding, and, in the 1868 dubbing him Lord Bomb.
civilising powers. In the 1830s, boosted words of Lord Macaulay, bind together all The choice of subjects for biographies,
further by excitement over railways, steam the branches of the great human family. group portraits or decorative busts for new
power began to star in less specialised works, This would maintain Britains near monopo- buildings now often reected these opposing
as both critics and celebrants of industrialisa- ly over global trade in manufactures, stances. In William Walkers imaginary
tion focused on its role. especially since, should there be a family gathering of Distinguished Men of Science
Again there was a tendency to exaggerate argument, steam ships and railways would of Great Britain Living in AD 1807/8 (1862),
its importance: water power remained hasten the deployment of troops worldwide. with Watt at its centre, there were some
Britains chief source of mechanical energy The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 33 inventors and 7 civil engineers, and only
until the mid-19th century. Yet this didnt laid bare this unresolved tension in liberal 11 scientists unconnected to any invention.
stop the Board of Trade statistician George values. While refuting the easy assumption In this engraving, begun during the Crimean
Porter declaring that the steam engine and that free trade necessarily entailed global War, military and commercial advances were
cotton machinery had produced almost peace, the war offered inventors and inextricably linked. The inventions and
magical effects upon the productive energies engineers an opportunity to serve the discoveries of these gifted men, declared
of this kingdom (The Progress of the Nation, military state. For some, the contribution of Walker, are the grand Main-Springs of
183643). John Wade, a radical journalist, engineers such as William Armstrong and our National Wealth and Enterprise.
considered Watts engine to be the founda- Joseph Whitworth to the development of The Victorians composed the rst grand
tion for the prodigious advance in wealth more powerful weapons demonstrated narrative of the industrial revolution,
and population which marked the reign of modern societys dependence on inventors, identifying it with the rise of manufactures
George III, a development of greater who consequently merited greater reward during the reign of George III (17601820).
signicance than any war or other political and recognition. The author of an article in Whether they saw it as triumph or tragedy, it
event (History of the Middle and Working The Builder, in December 1860, was explicit: was indubitably a quick and dramatic event
Classes, 1833). Whig historians, such as James When we reect how powerless the efforts (a revolution), an exclusively British
McCulloch and Lord Macaulay, whose of the wisest general, or the bravest soldier, phenomenon and the product of new
explanation of Britains commercial would be against those modern cannon and technologies (principally steam power and
superiority was grounded in the 1689 Bill of ried muskets and other means which cotton machinery) invented by a few dozen
Rights, now saw in steam power the principal science has brought into use it would seem inspired men.
agent through which this constitutional the time has arrived when equal honour Constantly battling this stereotype,
freedom was transmuted into wealth and should be shown to peaceful benefactors of modern historians contend that industriali-
international dominance. the state, with that which has been shown to sation was a more complex and gradual
While Engels warned German readers in the mighty men of the sword. development, with long roots stretching back
1844 that the steam-powered cotton industry into medieval institutions and out through
had produced a horric industrial revolu- Distinguished men of science Europe and beyond, to Asia and European
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
tion which was threatening political By contrast, the Mechanics Magazine urged settlements in the New World. While new
upheaval, most liberal commentators that our engineers may, ere long, be technology undoubtedly played an impor-
enjoyed equally high expectations of steams permitted to return to their legitimate tant role, it too is better understood in a
peaceful transformative powers. It would occupations, and learn the arts of war no broader context, as the product of societys
speed commerce, Christianity and civilisa- more (27 September 1861), while Punch changing needs and wants, rather than as an
tion to all corners of the globe, promote free regularly sniped at William Armstrong, in independent force for change.

Will we celebrate the

industrial revolution
in the future?
While the reputation of the industrial peaking at 397ppm,
revolution has gone from triumph to tragedy as measured at the
and back again, the positive postwar assess- Zeppelin research
ment may be on the verge of crumbling in the station in the Norwe-
face of current anxieties about climate change. gian Arctic (The Trafc in London: the advent of the
The long-running standard of living Guardian, 28 April car stimulated the search for oil
debate has centred on the experience of those 2009), and now rising at
who bore the brunt of mechanisation and an unprecedented 23ppm per year, we Second, they crossed the oceans to settle on
urbanisation between 1760 and 1830. Scarcely appear to have little time to prevent levels other, much less densely populated conti-
anyone has doubted the long-term benets reaching the 450ppm maximum advised by nents. Here they introduced new species,
for industrialised countries: life expectancy climate scientists. It is time to reinterpret the crops and techniques into farming, often
has doubled since the 18th century, thanks industrial revolution in the light of this employed slave labour, and tended to grow in
not least to massively reduced infant serious threat to our way of life, even to our numbers and wealth even faster than before.
mortality; ordinary people enjoy material survival as a species. International trade ourished under the
comforts previously available only to the very What marks industrialisation out from all stimulus of specialisation: Europeans began
rich, as well as free education, extensive previous periods of economic growth is that it importing vast quantities of food and
leisure and a safety net of health services and has allowed two previously incompatible industrial raw materials in exchange for
social welfare benets. Few have hitherto phenomena to co-exist: increasing popula- manufactured goods.
explored the costs to the environment. tion and continuous improvements in the By 1900, humanitys impact on the
The gure of 280ppm is regularly quoted as standard of living. Without such sustained atmosphere was still relatively slight: global
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the economic growth, human populations had population was only 1.6 billion, industrialisa-
atmosphere prior to the industrial revolution. grown at their peril falling foul of the tion was conned to western Europe, the
That is, for every million molecules in the so-called Malthusian trap, in which United States and Japan, and even there levels
atmosphere before 1760 approximately 280 numbers were cut back by famine, war or of consumption remained modest. It was the
were carbon dioxide. With 2009s gure disease (induced by food shortages). long, post-1950 economic boom that
From the mid-18th century, Europeans triggered a steep and accelerating rise in
escaped the Malthusian trap by two greenhouse gas emissions.
principal routes. First, they mined fossil fuels
Few have hitherto in huge quantities. With timber stocks
Soon industrialisation and urbanisation
became global phenomena, and growing
explored the costs rapidly depleting, they turned to burning
coal in industrial processes and in the steam
wealth entailed much higher levels of
personal consumption, mobility and interna-
of the industrial engines that replaced water power and tional trade. This accelerated the demand for
horse-driven transport. By 1890, the cars energy, and dietary changes that have led to
revolution on the introduction was stimulating the search for more intensive rearing of (methane-emit-
oil, and electricity generation was stoking the ting) livestock and extensive deforestation
environment demand for coal. consequent on growing their feedstuffs.
A global population of over seven billion
multiplies humanitys impact and none are
having a greater effect on the climate than the
one billion of us who are the industrial
Icebergs that have revolutions chief beneciaries.
broken off the
Qooroq glacier in
Greenland. Climate Christine MacLeod is emeritus professor
change is forcing us of history at the University of Bristol, and the
to reassess the author of Heroes of Invention: Technology,
industrial revolution Liberalism and British Identity, 17501914
(Cambridge University Press, 2010)
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BOOK
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PEOPLE &
PERSON
1 A visionary of computing
The pioneering work of Ada Lovelace
1 Brunel: a hard taskmaster

The tyrannical side of the genius engineer
1 Platos morning routine

Stone Age beds to 19th-century cereal how our ancestors started the day
1 Thomas Telford
The man who shaped Britain before Brunel
1 Science stories: Davys lifesaving lamp

How a simple innovation saved hundreds of lives
1 The Scottish Enlightenment

Glasgow, home of the 18th-century intellectual boom
1 Hidden figures
The African-American women who shone at Nasa
GETTY/HANDMADEMAPS.COM
1 Science stories: Newtons prisms

The discovery of the colour spectrum
1 Science curiosities
Fascinating facts from the history of science
ALITIES
81
People & Personalities / Ada Lovelace
ADA LOVELACE
A VISIONARY
OF COMPUTING
Born in 1815, Lovelaces fascination with science
and maths defied the expectations of her gender
and she is now considered to be one of the most
important figures in the early history of the
computer. James Essinger explores her
life and legacy
O
ne of many gures in While living in Canterbury in
the history of science 1828, she conceived the idea of
whose work was only building a steam-powered ying
properly appreciated machine and spent hours trying to work
posthumously, Ada out how it might operate.
Lovelace (181552) is Despite Adas yearning for a life of the
regarded as one of the mind, she was directed by her mother to
most important gures in the early history of follow a conventional upper middle class
the computer. Not only was she a woman upbringing. By this point Lady
working at a time when men dominated Byron was one of the wealthiest
science and maths, she also had a farsighted women in Britain, and had the
insight into the potential of computers. inuence and power to ensure
Nowadays usually known as Ada Lovelace, Ada did exactly as she pleased. In
Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace,
was born Ada Byron on 10 December 1815, Shown as a society lady
the only child of poet Lord Byron and his wife in this 1840 painting,
Adas real passion
Anne Isabella Milbanke, usually known as
was for science
Annabella. Byron and Annabella were and maths
married on 2 January 1815 but by early 1816
Annabella had grown sick of her husbands
indelities and the appalling nancial
pressures of their married life. She left Byron,
taking Ada with her to her parents. Ada never
saw her father again.
From her childhood, Ada had a fascination
with mathematics. This was encouraged by
her mother, terried Ada might grow up as
feckless and purposeless as Byron had been,
or be destroyed by an over-active imagina-
tion. The young Ada became close to obsessed
not only by mathematics but also by science.
82
1835 Ada married a pleasant but not espe- the fundamental relations of pitched sounds
cially intellectual aristocrat, Lord William in the science of harmony and of musical
King, who in due course inherited the title of composition could be expressed and adapted
Earl of Lovelace. He was devoted to Ada and within the Analytical Engine, it might
admired her greatly. He once reportedly compose elaborate and scientic pieces of
remarked: What a general you would make. music of any degree of complexity or extent.
A pioneering friendship Ada Lovelaces legacy

By this time Ada had also encountered On 27 November 1852, Ada died from cancer,
another man who made a huge impression on Lovelace saw this portion of Difference most likely of the uterus. She was only 36, the
her, on both a personal and intellectual level. Engine No. 1 an early design from the same age at which her father had died. She
This was Charles Babbage, who she met on 5 1820s at Babbages home in London now lies next to him in the sealed Byron
June 1833 at a party. Ada was fascinated by family tomb in St Mary Magdalene Church,
Babbage and his plans to build a cogwheel Hucknall, in Nottinghamshire.
calculating machine, which he called the Ada clearly had Her reputation as a pioneer in the thinking
Difference Engine. Babbage was surely
attered by the attention from a famous
insights into the of the early history of the computer is
unquestionably deserved. Some even claim
young lady Adas fame stemmed from her
father, and she was something of a celebrity.
Analytical Engine Lovelace was the worlds rst computer
programmer, though as Babbage biographer
Babbage invited Lady Byron and Ada to visit that Babbage and computer science historian Doron Swade
his home on Dorset Street, near Manchester MBE points out, Babbages programs predate
Square in London, to see a completed model seemingly lacked Lovelaces by seven years.
he had made of his Difference Engine Lovelace became fascinated by the
(a working model one-seventh of the full-size algorithms that the Analytical Engine might
machine, the whole of which Babbage never Yet modern research has made it clear that calculate, and one of the great tragedies in the
managed to complete). Ada was deeply Lovelaces contribution to the thinking at the history of computing is that she was not
impressed. She and Babbage became friends, heart of the prehistory of the computer was involved in Babbages work more. In August
though due to the fact that Ada was only 17 enormous. In 1843 she translated a paper on 1843, Ada wrote a long letter to Babbage
when they met, in the early days they usually the Analytical Engine from French, written suggesting that he let her help manage all the
met only when Lady Byron was present. by an Italian scientist and future prime aspects of the Analytical Engine build project
In 1834, Babbage began working on an minister of Italy, Luigi Federico Menabrea. that required the inuencing of important
even more ambitious machine, which he Lovelace went far beyond merely translating people. But he rejected her offer. It is not clear
called the Analytical Engine. This was this paper she wrote around 20,000 words of why; the best guess is that while he greatly
essentially a general-purpose programmable her own Notes that discussed the engines approved of her work in publicising his
digital computer that used cogwheels potential. Her translation and Notes were engines, and the Analytical Engine in
operating in base 10 (our everyday math- published under her initials, AAL. particular, he felt uncomfortable about letting
ematical numbering system that uses decimal While it is clear Babbage helped Lovelace Ada be involved in the project itself. What is
numbers), rather than electronic components with some of the technical material in her fascinating is that even after Babbages curt
operating in binary. Otherwise, it featured Notes, theories that Babbage wrote most of rejection of Adas offer of help, she and
most of the logical components of a modern the Notes himself have now been discredited. Babbage remained lifelong friends.
electronic computer. These included memory, This is partly because linguistic analysis While Babbage never completed a
storage and programming, for which Babbage shows that the voice the Notes were written in Difference Engine or an Analytical Engine
borrowed the idea of using punched cards was very much Adas, but also because Ada himself, in 1991 a team at the London Science
from the programmable Jacquard Loom (a clearly had insights into the Analytical Engine Museum working under Swades leadership
programmable loom rst demonstrated in that Babbage seemingly lacked. Babbage saw completed the fully working full-size
1801, which could weave any pattern). It even it as a brilliant machine for doing mathematics, calculation element of the Difference Engine.
featured security measures to warn the which it certainly was, but, there is no clear In 2002, they successfully completed a
operator when they made a mistake. evidence that he ever saw it as anything more. full-scale working Difference Engine. The
Lovelace was even more fascinated by the Lovelaces Notes, on the other hand, reveal project took 17 years to complete and is a
Analytical Engine than by the Difference that she regarded the machine as something most impressive sight: a magnicent piece of
Engine. Yet while Babbages plans for the that could not only enact calculations, but pioneering 19th-century engineering realised
Analytical Engine never got beyond the also carry out all kinds of processes that could in the 20th century.
GETTY
design stage, they include 2,200 notations and govern all kinds of applications. She famously Today, Ada is quite rightly seen as an icon
about 300 design drawings. For a long time, remarked that the Analytical Engine weaves of feminist scientic achievement, a heroine
many modern commentators, typically male algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard Loom of the mind, and one of the earliest visionaries
computer scientists, were scathing about weaves owers and leaves. This brilliant in the early history of the computer.
Lovelaces contribution to Babbages work, insight is an important part of Lovelaces
regarding her at best as merely someone contribution towards the early history of the James Essinger is the author of Adas Algorithm, a
who was helpful in publicising his computer. She called her own particular brand biography of Ada Lovelace, and of the
efforts. Babbage called her his of thinking about science poetical science, forthcoming biography of Charles Babbage,
interpretess clearly that was and also recognised that the Analytical Machines of the Mind. (James Essinger warmly
how he regarded her Engine could even compose music if properly acknowledges the kind assistance given him with
contribution. set up to do so. As she wrote: Supposing that this article by Doron Swade MBE)

People & Personalities / Brunel
BRUNEL
A HARD
TASKMASTER
Brunel (right)
with engineers
including John
Scott Russell
(far left) who
worked on the
design with him,
at the launch of
the ss Great
Eastern, 1857

IK Brunel built the most ambitious bridges, ships
and railways of the 19th century. He may have been one
of our greatest Britons but, as Steven Brindle reveals,
this engineering genius was far from being
the easiest man to work for
I
sambard Kingdom Brunel was one of crucial to the success of this remarkable
the great creators of the 19th century. operation. But why this extraordinary
From his ofce at 18, Duke Street, treatment of an evidently capable and valued
London, he controlled an engineering employee (Pall Mall was no more than
empire: a professional staff that was in a 15-minute walk from Brunels ofce)?
the order of 30 engineers, clerks and The answer is that Brunel, in all his working
draughtsmen, usually working on relationships, was a dictator. As we shall see,
several different railway lines, and other a need to be in complete control emerges
projects, at one time. time and time again, as a theme in his
What was it like to be part of Brunels correspondence.
team? Here is the testimony of John Brunton,
then a humble assistant engineer working on Tough schooling
a branch railway line in Dorset. On day in Brunel had been trained in a hard school:
February 1855, he received an abrupt it was a unique education, provided by his
telegram from Duke Street ordering him, brilliant engineer father, Sir Marc Brunel.
without explanation, to present himself there Sir Marc provided him with the best
at 6am the following morning. Brunton mathematical education available at the
packed a case, said goodbye to his wife, and His father Marc, above, Lyce Henri IV in Paris, then with engineer-
left for town immediately. gave Brunel a rigorous ing apprenticeships in the best workshops of
At six the next morning: a footman in engineering education the day, those of Louis Breguet in Paris and
livery opened the door, and told me in reply Henry Maudslay in London. But Isambard
to my enquiry that Mr Brunel was in his was learning much more than just engineer-
ofce room expecting me. I was ushered into ISAMBARD ing: he was learning how precarious life
the room blazing with light, and saw Mr KINGDOM BRUNEL could be, in the turbulent market economy
Brunel sitting writing at his desk. He never of late-Georgian Britain. His father, the
raised his eyes from the paper at my entrance.
(180659) most brilliant inventor of the age, was alas
I knew his peculiarities, so walked up to his Brunel was one of Britains greatest no businessman: several of his ventures
desk and said shortly Mr Brunel, I received 19th-century civil engineers. He spent failed, and in 1821 both Marc and his wife
your telegram and here I am. Ah, was his 15 years on the GWR line from London Sophia were imprisoned for three months
reply, heres a letter to Mr Hawes at the War to Bristol and his superb engineering and in the notorious Marshalsea for debt.
design skills can be seen in the bridges,
Ofce in Pall Mall, be there with it at ten Isambard, then 16, was at school in Paris.
stations, viaducts and tunnels that he
oclock. He resumed his writing and without built for it. From 1838, his pioneering
Returning to England, Isambard became
a further word I left his ofce. steamships ss Great Western, ss Great his fathers apprentice. In 1827, aged 20, he
The upshot, in fact, was that Brunton was Britain and ss Great Eastern changed the became the resident engineer on Marcs
sent out to Turkey, to supervise the con- face of transoceanic navigation. His Thames Tunnel, the most daring feat of civil
struction of a prefabricated hospital for works of civil engineering, many of which engineering that had ever been attempted.
British troops, invalids from the Crimean are still in use, included dock improve- A year and a half of backbreaking effort
war, which Brunel was then in the process of ments at Bristol and Sunderland, followed, but Isambard somehow had time
designing. The whole hospital, housing 1,100 innovative iron bridges at Chepstow and to keep a remarkably revealing personal
beds, was designed, built, shipped and Saltash, and the Hungerford Suspension diary. This entry is from October 1827:
Bridge across the Thames. His design for
assembled in less than 10 months. Brunel As to my character. My self-conceit and love
the Clifton Suspension Bridge was
GETTY
must have realised that Brunton had great completed after his death, aged just 53.
of glory or rather approbation vie with each
organisational abilities, which would be other which shall govern me I often do the

Building the Great Western Railway

The 118-mile railway line from London to Bristol
was the longest ever undertaken, and to conquer
its difficult terrain required many bridges, viaducts
and tunnels, as well as stations and Brunel was
personally responsible for most of the design work
Wootton Bassett,
December 1840
The railway opened to this small
market town and stopped, as
from here to Bath was the most
difcult terrain of the whole route:
of 13 miles of line, less than one
mile is within 10 feet of the
natural ground level the rest
had to be sunk in cuttings, raised
on embankments, or tunnelled.
Bristol Temple Meads, June 1841
With the Box Tunnel complete, the whole
line opened to trafc from London to
Bristol. Indeed, trains could already run
further over the allied Bristol & Exeter
Railway, as far as Bridgwater in
Somerset. Bristol Temple Meads
Station, with its 72-foot span timber
roof, was still not quite complete.
Swindon, 18413
Brunel and Gooch picked
the small market town of
Swindon as the site for
their principal locomotive
establishment, as it was
the highest point on the
line. In 1841 work began
on the workshops and in
Box Tunnel, March 1841 1842 Brunel designed
New Swindon, a settle-
Taking the line beneath Box Hill was the
ment of cottages for GWR
most difcult part of the line, and work
employees. The works
began on access shafts in 1836. The
closed in the 1960s, but
work proved slower and more traumatic
the railway village and
than anyone had expected, involving the
some workshop buildings
loss of over a hundred lives. In 1841,
still stand.
Brunel urged the contractor to raise the
workforce to 4,000 men and 1,000 horses
to allow the whole line to open in June.
HANDMADEMAPS.COM
Brunel wrote
It is an understood
thing that all under
me are subject
to immediate
dismissal at
Maidenhead Bridge
and Station, 31 May 1838 my pleasure
The GWR ran its rst train from
Paddington to Maidenhead and most silly, useless things to appear to
back, carrying its directors, with advantage before, or attract the attention of,
Brunel and Gooch on the engine
those I shall never see again or who I care
footplate. The bridge over the
Thames at Maidenhead, with its nothing about. My self-conceit renders me
great 128-foot arches, the widest domineering, intolerant, nay, even quarrel-
brick arches that had ever been some, with those who do not atter.
built, was still under construction. The Brunels efforts were rewarded with
calamity, when the tunnel ooded for the
second time, in January 1828. Isambard was
almost killed, the project went into abey-
ance, and at the age of 22 he was effectively
unemployed (as was his father). Five years of
intermittent employment on minor projects
followed: ve years in which the railway
revolution was beginning. The Brunels, their
efforts apparently wasted down the unn-
Paddington Station, ished black hole of the tunnel, seemed
Spring 1836 doomed to remain on the sidelines.
Paddington was chosen as Isambards diaries vividly convey his
Wharncliffe Viaduct, frustration: Its a gloomy perspective yet
the London terminus after
Brent Valley, Hanwell, negotiations to share bad as it is I cannot bring myself to be
November 1835 Euston with the London & downhearted After all, let the worst
Work on the GWR began Birmingham Railway broke happen unemployed, untalked of penny-
when ground was broken for down. The rst temporary less (thats damned awkward) My poor
this great brick viaduct with station was replaced with
father would hardly survive the [failure of
its eight 72-foot arches over the present magnicent
the valley of the little river iron and glass roof in
the] tunnel. My mother would follow him
Brent in West London. It is 185155. For 110 years it here my invention fails. A war now and
still carrying trains, but it was also the GWRs I would go and get my throat cut and that
was doubled in width when headquarters, until would be foolish enough. I suppose a sort of
the GWR added two more nationalisation in 1948. middle path will be the most likely one
tracks to the line in 1878. a mediocre success an engineer sometimes
employed and sometime not 200/300
a year and that uncertain.
It seems clear that these early struggles,
and the memory of his fathers difculties,
were fundamental in the formation of
Brunels remarkable, driven personality. The
barren years ended in the greatest turning-
point of his life, when in March 1833,
approaching the age of 27, he was appointed
engineer to the newly-formed Bristol
Railway, soon renamed the Great Western
Railway. He completed his survey for them
in nine weeks and presented his plans. In
July his appointment was conrmed, and
Master plan the great work of designing the 118-mile line
The route took Brunel nine
weeks of 20-hour days to could begin. Up to now, he had never really
survey in 1833. Construction employed staff at all. Now he had to set up
took from 1836 to 1841 an ofce and a team. Among the rst to be
87
appointed was his chief clerk, Joseph

Brunels ofce at his home in Duke
Bennett, who remained with him for the rest Street, London was the busy centre of his
of his life. Draughtsmen, clerks, engineers, web of engineering projects
all had to be taken on.
After 1833, Brunel was too busy ever to
keep a regular personal diary again: instead
we have the ofce diaries, covering much of
the 1840s and 1850s. They reveal a barely
believable timetable. During the planning of
the GWR in 1834, Brunel had conded to his
rst senior assistant, John Hammond:
between ourselves it is harder work than
I like. I am rarely much under 20 hours a day
at it. The ofce diaries suggest that, even so,
Brunel worked at least 16 hours a day,
six days a week, for the rest of his life. From
early in the morning until well into the
evening, he was engaged in meetings, or
visiting his works in progress, or appearing
before parliamentary committees. Where,
then, did he nd time for the vast quantities
of writing and design work, for which we
have clear evidence in the shape of his
immense personal archive? they turned the designs into reality. necessity of informing you that I do not
Another assistant, GT Clark, left this His need for control, which emerges in his consider you to discharge efciently the
account: I never met his equal for sustained correspondence, was fundamental. Here he duties of assistant engineer and consequent-
power of work. After a hard day spent in is, in 1851, on his conception of his own role: ly, as I informed you yesterday, your
preparing and delivering evidence, and a I never connect myself with an engineering appointment is rescinded from this day.
hasty dinner, he would attend consultations work except as the Directing Engineer who, A great want of industry is that of which
till a late hour; and then, secure against under the Directors, has the sole responsibil- I principally complain, and thus it is entirely
interruption, sit down to his papers, and ity and control of the engineering, and is within your power to redeem the situation.
draw specications, write letters or reports, therefore The Engineer. And here he is, Brunel offered Harrison a further period of
or make calculations all through the night. in June 1836, writing to William Glennie, employment on trial, but on the same day,
If at all pressed for time he slept in his on the latters application for a post as Harrison had forwarded the bill for a
armchair for two or three hours, and at early assistant engineer with responsibility for circumferentor (a kind of theodolite),
dawn he was ready for the work of the day. the Box Tunnel: what I offer now must not which Brunel had ordered him to buy.
When he travelled he usually started about be a certain or permanent position. My Harrison had misunderstood Brunels
four or ve in the morning, so as to reach his responsibility is too great to allow of my instruction, thinking that he wanted the
ground by daylight This power of work retaining anyone who may appear to instrument to be bought for the company.
was no doubt aided by the abstemiousness of me to be inefcient it is an understood Brunel re-opened the above letter, and added
habits, and by his light and joyous tempera- thing that all under me are subject to the following note: You have acted with
ment. One luxury, tobacco, he indulged in to immediate dismissal at my pleasure. It is reference to this in a manner I do not choose
excess, and probably to his injury. for you to decide if you are likely to proceed to pass over. It indicates a temper of mind
satisfactorily, and whether the chance is which excludes all hope of your proting
In total control sufcient inducement. from the new trial I had proposed. You will
Did Brunel really need to work so hard ? Brunel, evidently, was not a man to please consider yourself dismissed from the
The reason he did was that he was not at all tolerate slackness in his employees, and Companys service on receipt of this letter.
good at delegating, or even at collaborating. where he detected it, he was merciless.
His friend and rival, Robert Stephenson, the In 1836, he wrote to a young engineer called Praise where its due
only one of his contemporaries whose Harrison, working on the Wharncliffe Yet Brunel, for all his apparent harshness,
achievements could really be said to match Viaduct at the London end of the line: was capable of appreciating loyal service.
his, found it natural to collaborate with My Dear Sir, I am very sorry to be under the His trusted assistant, Robert Pearson
others over design issues, or delegate Brereton, was sent in 1844 to be Brunels
important pieces of work to members of his man on the spot in designing the new
team: Brunel could not, or at any rate did
not, do this.
Brunel became Piedmont Railway. Italian ofcialdom
proved impossible to work with, and Brunel
The 50-odd volumes of his sketchbooks,
now in Bristol University Library, prove
notorious for wrote to the minister responsible: My
assistant, a peculiarly energetic, persevering
beyond doubt that he was ultimately his insistence young man, writes to me declining to
responsible for most of the real design work remain as feeling entirely disheartened at the
on his railways: his staff were there to take on exceptionally constant interference with every detail and
measurements, provide data, work his at the entire absence of condence. Brunel
sketches up, and oversee the contractors as high standards was also perfectly capable of appreciating

BRISTOL CITY MUSEUM AND ART GALLERYBRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY/JULIA ELTON
Brunel painted at his

desk by John Horsley,
1857. He often worked
through the night,
perhaps catching
a few hours sleep
in an armchair

Tension and Teamwork: Brunel never gave

his contractors
Daniel Gooch and Brunel any credit. Instead,
Overshadowed by the showier Brunel, Gooch was one he treated them
of the periods great engineers, who played a pivotal role
in fulfilling the more famous mans visions with unequalled
severity
Daniel Gooch (181689) started as an the GWRs board he was forced to resign
apprentice in Robert Stephensons in 1864. He was closely involved in the
locomotive works, Newcastle, where his Anglo-American Telegraph Company,
talent for engineering was developed. which laid the rst Transatlantic cable Gentlemen just returned from Hanwell
In 1837 Brunel selected the 20-year-old using Brunels Great Eastern. He returned observed that by far the largest propor-
as the GWRs rst locomotive superin- to the GWR as Chairman in 1865 (piloting tion of the bricks upon the ground and
tendent. Apart from a brief period, he the company through a period when it actually in use were of a quality quite
was to be associated with the company was close to bankruptcy) and remained inadmissible I examined the bricks on
for the rest of his life. Brunels initial ideas so until his death in 1889. Monday last and gave particular orders to
on locomotive design were unusual, and your foreman Lawrence respecting which I
he set difcult standards for the GWRs Gooch improved nd he has neglected I must request that
locomotive manufacturers to meet. It is upon Brunels
locomotive he be immediately dismissed.
not at all clear what he was thinking of,
but the resulting engines were under- designs Brunel and his staff, having produced the
powered and unreliable: Gooch, detailed designs for a railway line, would
responsible for running them, eventu- divide it into sections to be let as contracts.
ally had to make it clear where Contracts were advertised for tender, and
responsibility for their bad perfor- a master-set of drawings was made available
mance lay, causing considerable at Duke Street: contractors were invited to
tension between him and Brunel. take tracings. They visited the site, made
Allowed to design the GWRs locomo- their own calculations, and entered a tender,
tives himself, Gooch produced a typically to build ve or so miles of the line
superlative series of designs starting with
with cuttings, embankments and bridges.
the Firey class, taking advantage of Bru-
nels broad gauge to make them stable
The successful contractor would be
as well as fast, setting standards for expected to put up a 5,000 bond as surety
speed and safety not bettered in his for completion.
lifetime. He planned and laid out
the GWRs new locomotive Close to bankruptcy
works at Swindon, opened in Assembling the armies of men, and moving
1843, and managed the the vast quantities of earth, brick and stone
production of most of the needed to build a railway involved formi-
companys locomotives, dable logistical problems especially then,
rolling stock and rails.
in a rural landscape and a largely pre-indus-
After disagreements with
trial society. Yet Brunel never seems to have
appreciated this, or given his contractors any
credit for their organisational skills. Instead,
ability in his staff: (Bell) has been known to lazy, inattentive, apathetic vagabond and he treated them with unequalled severity. He
me for about ten years I have a high respect if you continue to neglect my instructions became notorious for his insistence on
for his integrity and zeal in the service of his I shall send you about your business. exceptionally high standards of workman-
employers. He is a very well informed young I have frequently told you, amongst other ship, frequently rejecting materials, as seen
man in his profession and particularly also absurd, untidy habits, that of making above. He would refuse coursed rubble
in those branches requiring mathematical drawings on the backs of others is inconve- masonry of a quality which any other
knowledge which are too often neglected. nient. By your cursed neglect of that you engineer would have accepted, and insist
He has been engaged on docks works as well have wasted more of my time than your that it be replaced with nely-cut ashlar
as railway construction and if I had an whole life is worth. (blocks of squared and nished stone)
opportunity I should employ him myself. If Brunel was a tyrant to his staff, he was instead. One consequence was that as the
But where an assistant called SC Fripp at least capable of being a benevolent one. GWR proceeded, it became harder to nd
was concerned, for some reason Brunel was Where the contractors who built his contractors to bid for his work.
unable to sack the man, and instead, red railways were concerned, Brunel treated Another consequence was that his
off the following missive: Fripp. Plain them with, at best, haughty distance. Here contractors got into difculties. James
gentlemanly language seems to have no he is writing to Messrs Grissell & Peto, one and Thomas Bedborough became insolvent
GETTY
effect on you. I must try stronger language of the most reputable rms of the age, during the construction of the Maidenhead
and stronger methods. You are a cursed, about the Wharncliffe Viaduct: Bridge and had to withdraw. Another

Brunels newly-built pedestrian
Hungerford Suspension Bridge
over the Thames, c1845
contractor, William Ranger, had taken withholding from them payments to a total the GWR to pay them the 100,000, with
on the digging of the huge cutting near of over 100,000. 20 years accrued interest and all legal costs.
Sonning in Berkshire, and a series of tunnels How could he get away with this? The It came at a point when the GWR was severely
between Bath and Bristol. The work was answer would seem to be that the McIntoshes nancially embarrassed, and the following
delayed by foul weather, as well as by had sunk so much of their money in the year the company came close to bankruptcy.
Brunels rejecting some of the work done, building of the GWR that they didnt want to Brunel prided himself on his standards of
and in 1837 Ranger ran into difculties. walk away from the job and risk a lawsuit: conduct, and always insisted on gentlemanly
He, too, became insolvent, and Brunel Brunel was effectively getting them to fund manners from his staff. The McIntosh case,
was left with a problem. He solved it by the building of the railway with their own which seems difcult to reconcile with this
transferring Rangers contracts to the credit. However, in 1840 old Hugh McIntosh view, was probably the most disreputable
well-run rm of Hugh and David McIntosh, died, and his son had had enough. The episode of his career. It is important to
father and son. One might have thought that executors of the estate sued the GWR, and on remember, in thinking about Brunels
Brunel would have been grateful to them, Brunels advice, instead of settling out of extraordinary achievements, that for all his
but he treated them even more badly. Brunel court, the company fought the case. genius as a designer and his insistence on
would reject work on grounds of quality, or Tactically, this may have seemed a shrewd being in control, without his staff and his
vary his design and expect them to cope move, as the Court of Chancery was notori- contractors he would have built nothing.
without increasing their price. ously slow and inefcient (as readers of There is a dark side to the Brunel legend, and
Where there was a disagreement about Charles Dickenss novel Bleak House will it is important to bear this in mind if we are
price, by standard practice the arbitrator know): at the time of Brunels premature to come close to understanding this great
between the GWR and the McIntoshes was death in 1859 at the age but difcult man.
Brunel himself, and perhaps not surpris- of 53, the case was still grinding on.
ingly, he always found in favour of the However, unlike Dickenss Jarndyce family, Architectural historian Steven Brindle is the
GETTY
former. If they were late with work, he the McIntoshes eventually received justice: author of Brunel: The Man Who Built the World
withheld money. By 1840, Brunel was on 20 June 1865, the lord chancellor ordered (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005)

People & Personalities / Daily life
WAKING UP WITH
1 2 3
Sleep like a Whistle as Spend a penny 4 Exercise your
log, on a stone you wake on a potty right to take
Since time immemorial, the We are certainly not the rst to Our plastic toilet seat is not too a shower
morning routine has begun in be startled from our slumber dissimilar to the stone models
bed. Sleep has always been by a timekeeping gadget. used by the ancient Egyptians, The modern shower was
a physiological necessity and Allegedly, the rst alarm clock though the ushing loo didnt invented by William Feetham
the oldest evidence for a bed was invented by Greek arrive until Queen Elizabeth Is in 1767. Curiously, some
comes from the Middle Stone philosopher Plato, who lived godson, Sir John Harrington, versions were mounted on
Age. Dating to 77,000 years about 2,400 years ago. We designed one in the 1590s. Yet wheels, meaning the user had
ago, the remains of a hand- dont know what this device he was too busy scribbling to be careful not to roll away
stitched mattress, woven out looked like, but it may have scandalous poetry to market on what was effectively a
of leaves and rushes, have been a water clock that used his invention. So it wasnt until moistened skateboard. The
been found by archaeologists a draining mechanism to force the arrival of Josiah George following century also
in South Africa. These cave air through a small gap, Jenningss washout toilets, witnessed the bizarre arrival of
dwellers presumably rolled thereby producing a whistling unveiled at the Great Exhibi- the velodouche a shower
out their mat on the oor, but sound to rouse Platos tion of 1851, before the middle that only sprinkled water if you
if we jump to Neolithic Orkney snoozing students. class could abandon the potty pedalled on an exercise bike.
(5,000 years ago), the Mechanical clockwork in favour of plumbing. But hygienic washing
inhabitants of Skara Brae was miniaturised in the We wouldnt dream of using almost certainly extends back
slept on elevated beds carved 17th century, thanks to the the toilet today without wiping to the Stone Age. And, by the
from stone. discovery of the pendulum, our bottoms, and it was no Bronze Age, the people of
At the same time, in ancient allowing Charles IIs subjects different for our Stone Age ancient Pakistan, the Harap-
Egypt, the nobility preferred to own pocket watches. But it ancestors, who probably used pans, were perfecting a public
beds that sloped downwards, wasnt until the 20th century moss and leaves on their sanitation infrastructure that
TOPFOTO/ALAMY/CORBIS/GETTY
or bowed in the middle. Oddly, that alarm clocks began backsides. Somewhat more was arguably unrivalled until
while the poor slept on piles of loitering on bedside tables. unnervingly, Roman public the 19th century. Though the
cushions, the wealthy rested Indeed, factory workers in toilets were equipped with a Romans and Greeks built
their heads on curved pillows Victorian Britain were awoken sponge, xed on the end of a huge public bathhouses,
carved from wood, ivory or by a knocker-upper who stick, which was used by heated by elaborate hypo-
alabaster. This was to protect tapped on their windows successive lavatory visitors. caust systems, the Harappans
their elaborate hair styles from with a long pole. The Chinese were wiping delivered running water to
morning bedhead. with hygienic paper in the most of their homes 2,500
ninth century, but the west years before ancient Athens
was a millennium off the pace. was at its peak.
It took until 1857 for Joseph
Gayetty to mass-produce
THIS PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT: modern toilet roll impregnated
The remains of an elevated bed with aloe plant extract for
at the Neolithic site of Skara
hygienic lubrication.
Brae in Orkney; a knocker-
upper prepares to wake
workers from their slumbers
in 1936; latrines in Roman
baths at Leptis Magna,
Libya; this shower washed
well-to-do Georgians in early
19th-century England

PLATO
From a Greek philosophers alarm clock to
bizarre Tudor toothbrushes, Greg Jenner
explores the history of our morning routine
5 6 7 8
Put your pants Dress to Spice on your Ask your
on (if youre impress the cornflakes? slave to brush
wearing any) fashion police Strangely, our humble bowl your teeth
of cornakes rst arrived in
When Howard Carter discov- Body lice thrive in the folds of the 1890s as a treatment for People have been treating
ered Tutankhamuns tomb in clothing, and are thought to patients with mental illness toothache for millennia, with
1922, among the glorious have branched off from their who masturbated too much. evidence of dental drilling in
golden treasures were also near relatives, head lice, Dr John Harvey Kellogg Pakistan dating back 9,000
145 pairs of underpants. The thousands of years ago as a believed that the lack of sugar years. But avoiding surgery
linen loincloth (shenti) was result of people adopting and spice would reduce a has always been preferable,
standard underwear of the fabric clothing. We often persons sex drive. It was his so tooth brushing with a frayed
time, regardless of class or depict Stone Age people in brother, Will, who sprinkled twig was part of the morning
wealth, but its origins seem animal furs, but they also wove the sugar back on top and routine for everyone from the
even older. The mummied ax on primitive looms and made a fortune out of the medieval residents of India
corpse of tzi the Iceman, used needle and thread to Kelloggs brand. to the Elizabethans.
who was murdered in the make clothes t more snugly. Of course, every bowl of Roman aristocrats had slaves
MARY EVANS/BRIDGEMAN/DREAMSTIME/WELLCOME IMAGES
Tyrolean Alps 5,300 years In the Ice Age, well-insulated cereal needs a splash of milk, to brush their teeth for them,
ago, revealed he sported clothes were key to survival. but this was only possible after applying powdered antler horn
a goatskin loincloth. Today, fashion is more about the Neolithic farming revolution to brighten the enamel. Oddly,
Most European men and looking good, but the fashion saw humans domesticate the best available mouthwash
women went pantless until police have been in operation animals. Indeed, the mutated at the time was human urine
the mid-19th century, with for longer than you might think. gene that allows most of us to imported from Portugal.
ladies wearing long smocks In the Middle Ages there were drink cows milk without The Chinese invented the
under their dresses and men laws proscribing certain suffering painful atulence is modern toothbrush, but it
merely tucking their long colours and designs, and only 6,000 years old, and the never reached Europe, so the
shirts between their legs. Edward IV demanded that majority of the worlds reinvention is credited to
However, the philosopher purple, gold and silver fabrics population dont have it. William Addis who, in 1780,
Jeremy Bentham (17481832) be limited to royalty. You had inserted horsehair into a pig
was surprisingly found to to be of knightly class to get THIS PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT: bone. But even Addis didnt
have been wearing boxer away with velvet. By the 20th century, most recommend brushing twice a
shorts when his preserved In 17th-century Japan, a rule people were sporting under- day that advice came from
corpse was examined by preventing merchants from wear, as this image from the US army hygiene experiments
1920 suggests; a man covered
modern conservators. wearing ornate robes led some in the Second World War.
in the traditional Japanese
to have the designs tattooed on irezumi tattoo in c1880; Dr
their skin. This art of irezumi is John Harvey Kellogg chose Greg Jenner has been the
still so highly regarded in Japan not to use sugar in his historical consultant for every
that people have been paid to cornakes recipe in a bid to
bequeath their ayed skin to reduce patients sex drive; an series of the BBCs multi-award-
museums upon their death. 1810 coloured engraving winning Horrible Histories series
shows men who probably
didnt own a toothbrush DISCOVER MORE
BOOK
A Million Years in a Day:
A Curious History of Every-
day Life by Greg Jenner
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016)

1
TELFORD
The man who built
modern Britain
From awe-inspiring aqueducts to fast, smooth roads,
no building project was, it seems, beyond the genius
of Thomas Telford. Julian Glover hails an engineer
whose achievements arguably outshine those of Brunel
4
2 3
Industrial
revolutionary
genius
Engineer Thomas Telford (left), painted
in the heyday of his career in 1822 by
Samuel Lane. His designs included:
1 The Menai Bridge (also shown in
box 5) wasnt the rst suspension bridge,
but is arguably the most impressive
2 The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, which
still carries vessels high above the river
Dee over two centuries after it was
completed in 1805
3 St Katharine Docks, London,
as depicted during ofcial opening
celebrations on 25 October 1828
GETTY IMAGES/MARY EVANS/ALAMY
4 The 60-mile Caledonian Canal,

completed in 1822, which connects the
east and west coasts of Scotland
5 The Menai Bridge in an 1830
illustration viewing it from Anglesey
6 Gta Canal in Sweden, opened in 1832
to provide a link between Gothenburg
and the Baltic Sea
5 6
95
People & Personalities / Telford
I
n 1829, two great engineers from of Anglesey, which carried the new fast road was halted in 1831 amid nancial trouble,
two contrasting centuries clashed (which he also engineered) from London to and it was not completed until 1864, after
over the building of one famous the port at Holyhead. When it opened in his death. The project rooted Brunel in the
bridge. The conict pitted 1826 his edice over the Menai strait was the city of Bristol, which he soon connected to
Thomas Telford (17571834) most elaborate and impressive suspension London with the Great Western Railway.
against Isambard Kingdom Brunel bridge ever built although not quite the The debacle was, though, almost the end
(180659) the builder of magni- rst. It boosted Telfords fame even more. for Telford. Though he continued to work
cent canals and roads against Yet his bridge-building career ended in until his death just over four years later
the creator of the revolutionary Great humiliation in Bristol shortly afterwards. after which he was buried in Westminster
Western Railway. Examining entries to the competition for the Abbey, the rst engineer to be given that
Though neither knew it at the time, this Avon Gorge bridge among them designs honour his time in the front rank of
battle also marked the moment that Telford, drawn up by the young Brunel Telford engineers was over.
celebrated in his lifetime as Britains greatest dismissed them all as inadequate, and was By then, Britain was changing. The
civil engineer, but by that time old, unwell asked, instead, to submit his own entry. Georgian age was giving way to the
and out of his depth, began to be pushed This could have resulted in the nest Victorian, just as horsepower was being
aside in reputation by the 23-year-old Brunel. Telford creation of all. But rather than the pushed aside by steam and canals, and roads
Today the latter is a national hero, the bold and light structure the city had hoped giving way to new railways. Brunel was
embodiment of the can-do Victorian age, for, he proposed three timid, shorter spans, the engineer of the future, Thomas Telford
his best-known photographs showing him held up by mock Gothic towers built from of the past.
standing proud in his tall stovepipe hat. the bottom of the gorge. It was the product Or so it seemed, for well over a century.
Telford, by contrast, is half-forgotten, of an engineering mind that had lost its Today, however, there is fresh recognition of
his name attached to a 1960s new town spark after more than six decades of Telfords importance to the industrial
in Shropshire but little else. His story relentless work. revolution and the creation of modern
deserves to be rediscovered and the The design was ridiculed. Brunel, in Britain. It is not to diminish Brunels air
Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol particular, was openly scornful. As the and success to say that Telford deserves to be
is a good place to start. distance between the opposite rocks was seen as his equal and, in some ways, as
Few of those who now cross this ne considerably less than what had always been more of a pioneer. Unlike Brunel, for
structure each day realise that it was here considered as within the limits to which instance, who was drilled to learn engineer-
that Brunel took on Telford and won. It is suspension bridges might be carried, he ing by his father almost from birth, Telfords
a spectacular sight, slicing above wooded wrote to the committee after his rejection, youth offered no clear path to greatness.
slopes that tumble down to the water below, the idea of going to the bottom of such a
and is celebrated as a monument to valley for the purposes of raising at great Evolution of an engineer
Isambard Kingdom Brunels brilliance. But expense two intermediate supporters hardly Thomas Telford was born in 1757 on a
the story of its creation is complex. Brunel occurred to me. remote farm in the hills of the Scottish
depended on others when he drew up his The younger man grabbed his chance. Borders, among a landscape little changed
plans. The bridge was not nished until after A second competition was run in which, today, the gentle beauty of which illuminates
his death, to an altered design. And its initially, Brunels design was placed second any exploration of his life. Telfords father,
engineer was almost Telford not Brunel. but with help from his father, the out- a farm labourer, died before his sons rst
standing engineer Marc Brunel, he persuad- birthday, and the young Tammy Telfer as
Building bridges ed the judges to award him rst prize. he was known was soon set to work guard-
To understand all that happened, you need Isambard is appointed engineer to the ing sheep on the fellsides.
to rewind beyond the birth of either Clifton Bridge, Marc wrote triumphantly in He might have remained a poor farm
engineer. In 1754, Bristol wine merchant his diary entry for 19 March 1830. The most worker all his life, but Telford was driven by
William Vick died, leaving 1,000 in his will gratifying thing, he noted, was that the a ery internal energy. He forced himself to
with instructions that it be invested until the defeated engineers included Mr Td the learn, to read books, and soon even to write
sum reached 10,000. He had believed that only name in the whole of the diary that he poetry. In that he had something in common
this amount would be enough to pay for a could not bring himself to spell out in full, with Scotlands greatest poet, Rabbie Burns,
much-needed stone bridge from one side of so strong were his feelings. who also started life in a farm in the Borders,
the 75-metre-deep Avon Gorge to the other. Victory was the making of Brunel, though and whom Telford came to venerate.
By 1829 Vicks legacy, now grown to not quite of the Clifton bridge; construction Most of all, however, Telford wanted to
8,000, was still unspent. It was clear that build. He trained as a stone mason; among
a stone structure, if it could be built at all, his early tasks, it is said, was carving his
would cost far more than that sum. So the fathers gravestone, which can still be found
city fathers decided to launch a competition Telford deserves in a quiet churchyard near his boyhood
inviting designs for a cheaper iron suspen- home; the inscription honours the older
sion bridge, using the latest technology to be seen as man as an unblamable shepherd.
of the day. From that point Telford drove himself
One man stood out as the obvious judge
Brunels equal forward and up, always looking for opportu-
for the prize: Thomas Telford, the leading
civil engineer in the land. Not long before,
and, in some ways, nities and useful connections. First he went
to Edinburgh, then to London, where he
he had overseen the construction of the as more of worked on the building of the grand new
pioneering Menai suspension bridge, Somerset House by the Thames. By the
between mainland north Wales and the isle a pioneer 1780s he was in Shropshire, the county

Old master
LEFT: Telfords 1829 design for a bridge
across the Avon gorge in Bristol, with
towers rising from the valley oor.
This was ridiculed as old-fashioned
by critics, including Brunel
BELOW: Telford depicted at the age of
around 40 years, as his professional star
was rising at the turn of the 19th century
Young pretender
LEFT: One iteration of Brunels winning
design for the bridge, dating from 1830
BELOW: Brunels bridge today. Financial
problems meant it was not completed until
after his death
INSET: Robert Howletts iconic 1857
photograph of Brunel in his trademark
stovepipe hat
GETTY

People & Personalities / Telford
In 1799 Telford proposed to replace old London Bridge with a single iron arch spanning 180 metres (600 feet). The design
was never used, and the bridge was eventually replaced by a structure of ve stone arches designed by John Rennie
where he made his name and found his But Telford never became grand or formal, Highlands, for instance, supported by
calling, rst as an architect and then as a and shunned outward signs of wealth and government commissions, he oversaw the
civil engineer. status. Money never seemed to interest him construction of almost 1,000 miles of roads
It was an extraordinary time to be in much. Thick set, with dark hair, a rugged and countless bridges, including elegant, light
Shropshire, in a region that is now very rural face and a Scottish accent, he was a man iron structures, one of which still survives,
but which at that time was at the forefront of born to hard work outdoors who prided leaping across the river Spey at Craigellachie.
the industrial revolution. The great iron- himself on his practical skills. He was also Telford managed the construction of the
works in Coalbrookdale were pioneering a exible political operator with a deep, wide Caledonian Canal, running from sea to
new techniques, and the worlds rst iron self-taught understanding of theory: his sea across the Great Glen between Inverness
bridge had been built across the river Severn pocket notebooks are full of demanding and Fort William. This relentless, difcult,
just before his arrival. It was here that mathematical calculations and architectural muddy task took two decades and could have
Telford came to know the revolutionary study. He read and wrote late into the night. been the focus of a lifetimes work. But
possibilities of metal. Telford worked hard and almost non-stop. Telford combined it with an extraordinary
First, in 1797, he built with help from There was no time and seemingly no desire range of other schemes: rebuilding ports,
others a short, radical iron aqueduct on for a marriage, family or partner. He had erecting churches, designing water works,
a new canal near what is now the town of no siblings and, after the death of his building bridges and constructing the fastest,
Telford. But this was only a precursor to the mother, no immediate relations, but he had best roads since the Roman era.
great Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, opened in 1805, a number of close lifelong friends. In the Telfords famous express route from
a ribbon of iron that still carries barges right company he was cheerful, telling London to Holyhead smoothed the journey
38 metres above the river Dee on what is stories and making jokes with a sparkle in to Dublin a route that grew in importance
now known as the Llangollen Canal, just his eye that made people like him as soon once the new United Kingdom was estab-
over the Welsh border from Shropshire. The as they met. lished in 1801. He upgraded the existing road
Pontcysyllte is Telfords monument just as from the capital to Birmingham and
the Clifton Suspension Bridge is Brunels. On the road on to Shrewsbury, and engineered an elegant
Both structures speak of individual genius Telford was almost always on the move, new section on through the hills of Snow-
and the ability to draw on the skills of others. keeping up a regular progress of inspection of donia, including the ne suspension bridge at
Some say that Telford should have shared his projects that, by the early years of the 19th Menai and another by Conwy Castle
the credit for his achievements more widely, century, reached into remote corners of the only one to retain its original chains.
though it was his skill in working with a England, Wales and Scotland. Roaming the And still there was more: a canal across
team and managing many projects simulta- country without a break, year in, year out, Sweden, advice to projects in India, Russia
neously that lifted him above the many other he must have travelled farther in Britain than and Canada, the new St Katharine Docks in
able engineers of the time. At Pontcysyllte, any person alive and even, perhaps, more London. All of it was impressive, but much
for instance, he was aided by a team than anyone ever had before. In the of it was made redundant by technological
including his nominal superior on the canal change: the coming of steam and railways.
project, William Jessop. Men such as Even as he died, in 1834, Telford was going
William Hazledine, the Shropshire ironmas- In the Highlands, he out of date and he knew it.
ter, went on to provide metalwork for most His creations are his memorial, built so
of Telfords greatest iron bridges, including oversaw construction well that the vast majority are still in use.
the Menai. You can drive on Telfords roads, walk across
Many of Telfords young pupils also went of almost 1,000 miles his bridges and ride boats along his canals.
on to great careers of their own, among them
Thomas Brassey, who built thousands of
of roads and countless They are worth searching out and with
them the story of a life that helped build
miles of railways all over the globe, making
himself rich in the process. In 1820 Telford
bridges including modern Britain.
became the rst president of the Institution elegant, light, iron Julian Glover is a journalist and the author of
GETTY
of Civil Engineers, a body that shaped and Man of Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building
still shapes the modern profession. structures of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2017)

Science Stories Davys safety
lamp was
designed to
MINING cool the
gases within,
making it
1815 less likely

to overheat
Humphry Davy
invents a
life-saving
lamp
umphry Davys (17781829) most demonstrations

H famous fan was Mary Shelley, who
studied his Royal Institution lectures on
and his powerful
stage presence,
electricity and chemistry while she was Davy established
writing Frankenstein. Davys amboyant himself as an
presentations attracted so many elegant authoritative in 1801, Davy turned towards more practi-
spectators that the street was made expert who could cal applications by attempting to improve
one-way Londons rst in order to manipulate the forces of nature to British industry and agriculture. For
cope with the trafc jams of horse-drawn pry out its innermost secrets. In particular, his rst major projects, Davy examined
carriages. he used current electricity only recently leather tanning and fertilisers, provid-
His air for self-promotion had en- made available for exploring chemical sub- ing scientic justication for techniques
abled Davy to climb rapidly through the stances. First he decomposed water, showing that had been built up over centuries. In
social strata and move far away from his that it comprises only two elements: oxygen contrast, for his investigations of mining,
origins as the son of a Cornish wood- and hydrogen. After applying the same tech- Davy started with an existing problem and
carver. This one-time apothecary was nique to alkaline solutions, Davy discovered solved it by developing a new device inside
made a baronet to mark his invention two new inammable metals: sodium and his London laboratory.
of a safety lamp for coal miners and in potassium. Patriotic Englishmen acclaimed From his Cornish childhood, Davy
1820, he attained the most prestigious Davy as a national hero who had redirected knew that pockets of gas could easily
position in British science by being the course of chemistry. ignite underground, causing many fatal
elected president of the Royal Society. Even so, Davys critics never let him forget accidents. Through chemical experi-
Like Victor Frankenstein, Davy epito- that during a two-year stint at the Pneumatic ments, he identied the composition
mised troubled genius. As a teenager, he Institution in Bristol, his research into ni- of the redamp found in mines, and
taught himself the revolutionary ideas trous oxide had concentrated not on the gass discovered that it would only explode at
about oxygen and acids that were being anaesthetic properties, but on its potential as high temperatures. For his safety gas lamp,
developed in France, and he resolved to a recreational drug inducing mind-enhanc- Davy introduced two important ways of
become the Isaac Newton of chemistry. ing experiences. But after he came to London preventing this dangerous overheating: he
A prolic poet and fanatical angler, Davy cooled the gases by passing them through
consciously aligned himself with the narrow tubes, and he surrounded the
Romantic writers and artists of his gen-
eration. In the early 19th century, there
In 1820, he attained ame with a protective sheath of metal
gauze. Davy won huge acclaim for this
was no consensus on how a man of science the most prestigious invention, which saved many lives.
should behave. Should he (denitely not On the other hand, by enabling miners
she!) be a methodical experimenter who position in science to penetrate deeper and more dangerous
systematically accumulates observations seams, his lamp helped to increase their
and tests theories? Or should he aim for president of employers prots. As so often happens,
ashes of instantaneous inspiration when technological progress did not necessarily
the Royal Society
BRIDGEMAN
watching an apple fall from a tree? represent social improvement.

Through his dramatic experimental Words: Patricia Fara

People & Personalities / Scottish Enlightenment
Professor Alexander
HISTORYEXPLORER
Broadie on the balcony
of Glasgows Hunterian
Museum. Broadie held the
same university position as
Scotlands giant of moral
philosophy, Adam Smith
Photography by
The Scottish Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert
Enlightenment
The 18th century saw an extraordinary intellectual
boom time in Scotland. Alexander Broadie explains
how Glasgow University inspired some of the
periods most brilliant thinkers
G
lasgow Universitys main and particularly in their universities,
building, a magnicent there were creative thinkers, some of them
neo-Gothic edice on geniuses, informing or even transforming
top of a hill overlooking the various academic disciplines.
the city, dates from In Aberdeen in the early days of the
the middle of the Enlightenment were men such as Colin
19th century. But parts Maclaurin, a brilliant mathematician who
of the building in particular sections of its won warm praise from Sir Isaac Newton,
ne gateway, now known as Pearce Lodge, and the liberal educational theorist George
and the Lion and Unicorn stairway, next to Turnbull. One of Turnbulls students at the
the Memorial Chapel can be traced back to citys Marischal College was Thomas Reid,
the 17th century; the statues of the lion and who would later replace Adam Smith as
unicorn (shown on page 108) that ank the professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow.
stairway were created in 1690. He was the most important gure in the
Both the stairway and the lodge form Scottish school of common sense philosophy,
a visual link with the universitys glorious which was dominant in North America and
past. During the Age of Enlightenment France during the following century.
in the 18th century, Glasgows was, in the Meantime, at Edinburgh University
fullest sense, an Enlightenment university, we nd the philosopher Dugald Stewart,
as indeed it still is. the sociologist Adam Ferguson and the
The Enlightenment movement historian William Robertson. And living
championed reason over tradition and in the capital city, but not having university
was characterised by great scientic and posts, were David Hume, one of the greatest
intellectual achievements. It was a truly philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment,
international phenomenon, yet shone and James Hutton, whose Theory of the
nowhere more brightly than in Scotland, Earth has earned him the title founder of
and in Scotland nowhere more brightly than modern geology.
in Glasgow University. At Glasgow University, along with Smith
For a country to have an Enlightenment, and Reid, was the philosopher Francis
two elements must be in place. The rst is Hutcheson, the physician William Cullen,
a large number of creative people who think the chemist Joseph Black and the engineer
for themselves instead of merely assenting to James Watt.
authority. The second is a level of toleration These formidable thinkers took advantage
JEREMY SUTTON-HIBBERT
that permits such people to express of the Scottish religious and political
themselves without risk of retribution. authorities relatively relaxed attitude to
On these two counts, by the standards new and challenging ideas to set the agenda
of the day, Scotland was one of the most for cutting-edge research across Europe.
enlightened countries in 18th-century Things were very different in France, whose
Europe. In many places, but especially in the many enlightened gures had to contend
cities of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh, with an absolutist monarchy and church

The Enlightenment
shone nowhere
more brightly than at
Glasgow University
PROFESSOR ALEXANDER BROADIE

People & Personalities / Scottish Enlightenment
Alexander Broadie pictured on Glasgow Universitys famous Lion and Unicorn staircase Adam Smith, the father of economics
and a powerful system of state censorship. trade, contending that trade barriers do
One lumire was Denis Diderot, a writer not benet the country that imposes them;
hostile to Christianity, whose book, Letter on the contrary, he showed that
on the Blind (1749), landed him in prison in protectionism causes a rise in prices and
the fortress of Vincennes for three months. a lowering of employment prospects.
By contrast, though David Hume was He also argued that schooling should be
widely (if wrongly) believed to be an made universally available and paid for by
atheist, he was never threatened with the government, even sketching out the
imprisonment. In fact, he was the life and syllabus that the schools should follow.
soul of the societies to which he belonged, The natural sciences are no less a feature
whose membership included ministers, of the Scottish Enlightenment than are
judges, professors, aristocrats and artists, philosophy and political economy.
such as the painters Allan Ramsay and During a period of 10 years at Glasgow,
Henry Raeburn, and architects William one of its professors (and a former student
Specimens from the Enlightenment
Adam and his sons John and Robert. of Glasgow), the aforementioned Joseph period are on display at the universitys
No one illustrates the role of Glasgow Black conducted research into heat. In magnicent Hunterian Museum
in Scotlands Enlightenment better than the course of this research, he probed
that giant of moral philosophy, Adam the science behind two major natural by Dr William Hunter (171883),
Smith a c1867 statue of whom stands phenomena, which he termed latent a groundbreaking obstetrician and teacher.
near Bute Hall in the universitys main heat and specic heat. This work makes The museum, showcasing Hunters
building. Smith had a long relationship him one of the founders of the science of remarkable collections of specimens,
with Glasgow University: as an under- thermodynamics. manuscripts and other Enlightenment
graduate, then a professor rst of logic Among Blacks closest collaborators material, opened to the public in 1807
and rhetoric and later of moral philosophy was James Watt, scientic instrument- and is hailed as one of the nest university
and, for two years at the end of his life, maker to Glasgow University. Watt collections in the world.
as lord rector. produced a brilliant solution to the
Smith is now widely hailed as the father problem of how to construct an efcient Alexander Broadie is an honorary professorial
of economics, and it was while lecturing steam engine and, in doing so, helped research fellow at Glasgow University. His
at Glasgow University that he formulated transform the productivity of Britains books include The Scottish Enlightenment
the theories that would lead to his writing manufacturing industries. (Birlinn, 2007)
The Wealth of Nations (1776), a work Some of the scientic instruments used
long recognised as one of the greatest by men such as James Watt, Joseph Lister DISCOVER MORE
contributions to economic theory ever. and Lord Kelvin are held at the universitys LISTEN ONLINE
JEREMY SUTTON-HIBBERT
Smith famously argued the case for free magnicent Hunterian Museum, founded For more on the
Enlightenment listen to In Our Time.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548ln
IT WAS WHILE LECTURING AT GLASGOW THAT ON THE PODCAST
ADAM SMITH FORMULATED THE THEORIES Hear more from Alexander Broadie at
THAT WOULD LEAD TO THE WEALTH OF NATIONS historyextra.com/podcasts

THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT:
FIVE MORE PLACES TO EXPLORE
2 Siccar Point, 4 Edinburgh New Town

VISIT
near Cockburnspath edinburgh.org
Glasgow University scottishgeology.com
Edinburgh New Town was begun in 1767
Siccar Point, on the North Sea coast, to a design by James Craig (173995) on
40 miles east of Edinburgh, is famous for land north of Edinburghs densely
displaying vertical strata of rock jutting populated Old Town. A classic gridiron
up through horizontal strata of less plan, it consists of three principal east-
resistant rock. The rocks remarkable west streets joining St Andrews Square in
formation helped James Hutton (172697), the east and Robert Adamss Charlotte
a genius of the Scottish Enlightenment, Square to the west. It was later expanded
formulate the idea of deep time the to the east and the north, forming a
concept that the Earth is far, far older magnicent area of continuous Georgian
than the few thousand years suggested layout and architecture. The nomenclature
by creationists. of the streets is Hanoverian and unionist, a
reminder that an early design for
Edinburgh New Town was in the form of
the Union Jack. The Old and New Towns
are now ofcially a World Heritage Site.
The University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
gla.ac.uk 5 New Lanark, South
Lanarkshire
newlanark.org
1 Arniston House, Glasgow Now a World Heritage Site, this purpose-
Gorebridge, Midlothian University built mill village was founded by
4 2
arniston-house.co.uk businessman and merchant David Dale
1 (17391806) in 1785. The welfare and
In 1726 Robert Dundas, Lord Arniston, 3 5
education of the workers, many of them
commissioned the Enlightenment
children, was important to Dale. After 1799,
architect William Adam (16891748) to
his son-in-law Robert Owen introduced
build a new country house on the site of
better safety rules, a contributory fund for
the existing tower house. Completed by
medical care, and an astonishingly
Williams son John, this truly magnicent
enlightened system of education for all.
Palladian building, incorporating two
This was a realisation of Adam Smiths
rooms of the original tower house and
doctrine that economic activity should be
with amazing baroque plaster-work by
within a moral framework.
Joseph Enzer in the hall, remains largely
unchanged. There have been Dundases
at Arniston since 1571.
3 Robert Burns Birthplace

Museum, Alloway, Ayr
burnsmuseum.org.uk
The cottage in which poet Robert Burns
ALAMY/THE ARNISTON ESTATE
(175996) was born was built in the

1730s; the south end, consisting of a living
room and byre (cowshed), was built by his
father, William, in 1757. It is now a ne
museum. Nearby are the ruins of the
Auld Kirk of Alloway, the scene of the New Lanark offered mill workers
Arniston House is a Palladian gem demon revelry in Burnss 1790 poem a very different way of life to their
that has barely changed in 250 years
Tam o Shanter. 19th-century counterparts

People & Personalities / Hidden Figures
Mathematician Katherine
Johnson was played by
actor Taraji Henson (left)
in the acclaimed lm Hidden
Figures, inspired by the story
of the women who provided
Nasa with important data
needed to launch the
programmes rst success-
ful space missions
HIDDEN
The 2016 film Hidden Figures revealed the stories
of female African-American mathematicians at
Nasa in the 1960s. Ellie Cawthorne spoke to the
author Margot Lee Shetterly, whose book
inspired the film, about the real-life women who
broke through the eras racial and gender prejudices
FIGURES
The real women at Nasa who
inspired the film Hidden Figures
People & Personalities / Hidden Figures
The trajectory of the rst American

in space in 1961 (above), was
calculated by Katherine Johnson.
Alan Shepard (right) was the man
on that historic ight, part of Nasas
Mercury project to put a man
into orbit around the Earth
The brilliant mathematician

Katherine Johnson, shown
here at work at Nasa in 1966
How did you first come across this Its amazing what these women were able to
remarkable true story? These women were do with just data sheets. Theres more
My dad worked at Nasa as an atmospheric computing power in a toaster than what they
scientist. So I spent my whole childhood unseen. They were in had to send people into space.
going over to Nasa; Christmas parties with
Nasa-themed Santas just seemed normal to
a segregated office While these were exceptional women I
want to make that clear they werent the
me. The wonderful thing was that the very
rst scientist I knew, my dad, was black. For
and their work was exception. The thing that was thrilling to me
was that this wasnt the story of a rst, or an
me, thats what science was. Many of the
other scientists around me were also black,
considered womens only, or even just a few. At this time, women
mathematicians were the rule, not the
or women, or both. So I had a truly privi-
leged position which normalised what
work, meaning it was exception. From 1935 to 1980, counting
women of all backgrounds and races, there
women and African-Americans could do.
A few years ago my husband and I visited
valued less were more than 1,000 women doing this
work for Nasa. Thats a huge amount. We
my parents, who were talking about some of have this idea that women arent good at
the African-American women who worked maths and dont exist in these elds, but that
at Nasa during the early years of the space corner. But I think the bigger reason is that simply isnt the case Hidden Figures is
race. I knew these women from the local these women were unseen. They were in a correcting that misconception.
community they were my parents friends. segregated ofce and their work was
But my husband was so surprised; he considered womens work, meaning it was What was it like to be an African-
couldnt believe hed never heard this story. valued less. At this time, even if a woman American woman during the 1960s?
While I knew these women, I didnt really was doing exactly the same thing as the What kind of obstacles did these
know their stories why they were at Nasa, engineers, who were predominantly men, women face in everyday life?
what they were doing and why there were so she could be paid less and be given a lower Segregation was still in place, and it was very
many women who worked there. job title. Now, with the distance of many important for me in the book to show the
Investigating these stories set off a whole decades and a different awareness, we are real banality of that, the daily humiliations
chain of dominoes, which eventually re-evaluating these women and their work. and slights. These women were creating
became Hidden Figures. Our eyes are now sharp enough to see them calculations to make something happen that
the way they need to be seen. had never happened in the history of
Why havent we heard this These women werent just doing some- humanity, and yet they still had to go to the
remarkable story before? thing that no African-American women had colored bathroom. That is how these
There are a lot of reasons. One is that very done before, but something that no-one of women experienced segregation in their
much like the British ladies at Bletchley Park any race or gender had done before. They everyday lives they may not have been
(the central site for British codebreakers were on the pioneering edge of science and barked down by dogs in the street, but they
during the Second World War), the work technology, which was thrilling for them. faced humiliation at every turn.
these women were doing was classied. And they were doing all of this without Most black women at the time were
During the space race and the Cold War calculators. They were called computers working as domestic servants, or in factories,
GETTY
there was a very real fear of espionage; this was a time when a computer was a really scraping just to get onto the rst rung
people were looking for Soviets round every job title rather than an object on your desk. of the social ladder. The African-American

Dorothy Vaughan
and Leslie Hunter
(seen in 1950), two
of the female
mathematicians
hired as human
computers on the
space programme
Mary Jackson began her

career in 1951, an era in
which female engineers
were rare. She contin-
ued to work at Nasa until Hidden Figures (above) dramatises the Nasa careers of (l-r)
retirement in 1985 Dorothy Vaughan (actor Octavia Spencer), Katherine
Johnson (Taraji Henson) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Mone)
women working at Nasa were largely middle What was the workplace at Nasa like interested? But although they loved the
class and educated, so even within the black for these African-American women? work, they did know that they didnt get the
community these college-educated women As well as an aeronautical laboratory, Nasa accolades they deserved. They recognise the
were outliers. They were generally expected really was a weird social laboratory at this power of their stories to inspire younger
to go into teaching, which was a prestigious time. On the one hand, they had a segregated women and feel proud about that.
job at the time, but it didnt pay very well. ofce with a colored bathroom and a
Working as professional mathematicians, colored cafeteria. But on the other hand, Can we see the legacy of these women
they could make two or three times more Nasa was more progressive than many other and their achievements today?
than as teachers. aircraft or commercial agencies at the time. Absolutely. All you have to do is look at
They employed more women and African- Nasas astronaut corps, which is very diverse.
Considering the social situation in Americans and these employees had access The head of Nasa is a black man, and the
the United States at the time, how to some very high-level work. second in command is a woman. Women
did these women manage to get jobs Many of the engineers at Nasa came from hold a lot of leading roles at Nasa. Were still
at Nasa? the north or west of the US [where racial having discussions about how to get more
During the Second World War, the demand divisions were less pronounced] or abroad women and African-Americans into STEM
for aircraft exploded, while at the same time, from Germany, Britain and Italy. This elds [science, technology, engineering and
a lot of male mathematicians and engineers meant that many of the employees werent mathematics], so we need to be aware of
went off to ght. There was a real need for used to living under Jim Crow segregation these stories theres a lot they can teach us.
people who could do the maths, so Uncle [the repressive laws and customs used to Im so glad that we are nally thanking
Sam put out the call. restrict black rights in the southern states these women for the work they did and the
At the same time, the civil rights leader from 1877 to the mid-1960s] and actively ways they transformed the American
A Philip Randolph (18891979) was opposed it. So Nasa was denitely a weird in- workplace. These jobs formed an amazing
pressuring the federal government to open between zone, a very unusual place. base for people in later years like my dad.
up war jobs to African-Americans, When he joined Nasa, he was able to stand
Mexicans, Poles and Jews a lot of people You interviewed many of these on their shoulders. The work that these
who were being discriminated against women, including Katherine women did was transformative, not just for
during this period. Once that door had been Johnson. What were they like? them but for their communities, and their
opened, these women just walked through, They loved talking about the details of their children and grandchil-
and after the Second World War ended they work, and had a real passion for Nasa, dren as well.
basically resolved: Ill be damned if Im despite all the difculties. The women I
leaving this job. spoke to really loved their jobs and the
This was a fascinating period in US people they worked with Katherine
history coming out of the Second World Johnson talked about her colleagues being Margot Lee Shetterly
War, there was a certain idealism that like brothers and sisters. (pictured) is the author of
pervaded the space race, the advance of They are also hugely humble and modest. Hidden Figures: The American
technology, the civil rights and womens When they rst heard that their story was Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women
rights movement a belief in a better going to be told, through my book and the Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race,
GETTY
America. Even as there was lot of conict, lm, their reactions were: whats the big which inspired the lm of the same name. Ellie
there was also a lot of optimism. deal, whats the hoopla, why is everyone Cawthorne is BBC History Magazine staff writer

Science Stories
OPTICS
1672
Isaac Newton
announces his
experiments
with prisms
ABOVE: Newtons sketch of a beam of light passing through prisms

from a hole in his window shutters. This was proof, he claimed, that
white light already contains the colours of the rainbow
ciences greatest legend was launched church window, or candles make diamonds found it a very pleasing divertissement,
S almost 300 years ago when, shortly
before he died, Isaac Newton (1642
vibrate with colour, we see light that has been
modied during its journey between the
to view the vivid and intense colours
produced thereby.
1727) told several friends that he had original source and our eyes. After a while at least, this is how his
conceived his theory of gravity beneath a In contrast, Newton maintained that the story runs he decided to investigate fur-
tree in his country orchard. Like the colours of the rainbow are already present ther, and placed a second prism in one of
attribute of a saint, Newtons apple has in what appears to be white light, and he set the coloured rays. When the light passed
become the iconic symbol of a scientic out to devise a way of conrming this ex- through the glass unchanged, Newton
genius forever voyaging through strange perimentally. In 1672, he claimed that two claimed that he had disproved the modi-
seas of thought alone. ordinary prisms were enough to provide cation theory of the French philosopher
Yet when he was elected a fellow incontrovertible proof that he was right. Ren Descartes.
of Londons Royal Society in his late Like the supposed ash of inspiration Newtons experiment was dramatic,
twenties, Newton was acclaimed not under the apple tree, Newton dated his key but was it crucial? Arguments raged for
for his theoretical daring, but for his experiment in optics back to 1666, a year years. His bitter enemy Robert Hooke ac-
practical expertise. in which he spent much of his time at his cused Newton not only of stealing his own
A skilled craftsman, Newton had cre- Lincolnshire home after plague forced him research, but also of failing to produce
ated an impressively small yet powerful to quit Cambridge. In a deceptively chatty denitive proof there were, he insisted,
telescope, painstakingly polishing lenses letter, Newton explained that he had placed alternative explanations. European
and mirrors designed to reduce distor- a prism in a beam of light shining through experimenters raised another serious
tion. Views of his own past were less clear a small hole in his window-shutters, and objection: Newtons results were impos-
cut. When he presented his rst paper on sible to replicate, because he had left out
prisms in 1672, Newton glossed over the vital details such as the type of glass and
sidetracks and false hopes that are inevi-
table in any protracted research project.
Newtons results the dimensions of the prisms.
Few in England dared contradict
Instead, he made it appear that one single were impossible to Newtons authority, yet as an Italian critic
demonstration a crucial experiment protested, it would be strange if in places
vindicated his ideas and showed beyond replicate, because where experiment is in favour of the law,
doubt that his rivals were wrong. the prisms for doing it work well, yet in
According to the theory prevailing he had left out places where it is not in favour, the prisms
TOPFOTO/ALAMY
then, light is altered in its passage through

a medium such as air or water: when the
vital details for doing it work badly. Perhaps Newton
is not as transparent a hero as he might
sun shines through the stained glass in a seem. Words: Patricia Fara

FROM BBC FOCUS MAGAZINE
INVENTIONS
DISCOVERIES &
CONNECTIONS
Disputed discoveries, weird connections and

debunked theories: BBC Focus Magazine
explores some of the most contentious
DREAMSTIME
controversies in the history of science

People & Personalities / Who invented...
Big Bertha the type of giant howitzer used by

Germany in the First World War, pictured here on
the western front in 1915 was among the
DNA double helix: were earliest applications of hard molybdenum steel
Crick and Watson 80 years
behind the curve?
Who really
discovered
DNA? Who really
Francis Crick and James invented
Watson are the scientists
most often associated with
the famous genetic molecule,
the computer?
but their work in the 1950s Computers are far more than ultra-fast
came over 80 years after the number-crunchers. Based on a set of
identication of DNA by a instructions, a computers processor
Swiss physician searching
for the building blocks of
and memory can in principle, at least
perform an almost innite range of What connects ...
life. Friedrich Miescher had tasks, from word-processing to ying
focused on proteins in cells, a plane. The rst person to consider bacteria with
but in 1869 he discovered building such a versatile device was
a strange substance also
lurking in the nuclei of the
British mathematician Charles Babbage
(pictured above), who in 1834 began
bombs?
cells. He named it nuclein, drawing up plans for what he called an All living things need nitrogen to make
and suspected that it would analytical engine. His vision was to protein but, before nitrogen in the air can
prove at least as vital to cells create a device the gears, rods and be metabolised, it must rst be converted
as proteins. wheels of which could be arranged into ammonia by certain bacteria.
Nor were Crick and Watson programmed to perform a myriad of
the rst to show that Miescher tasks, from solving equations to These bacteria are essential because
was right. Their celebrated composing music. Sadly, only a frag- they make the nitrogenase enzymes that
discovery of DNAs double- ment of this Victorian engineering catalyse the nitrogen conversion. Each
helix structure was prompted miracle was ever completed. nitrogenase molecule contains at its core
by key experiments by a team Just over 100 years later, another a single atom of the element molybdenum.
led by the American biochem- British mathematician, Alan Turing,
ist Oswald Avery, working at revived the idea of a universal machine Molybdenum can also be added to steel
the Rockefeller University in and investigated its theoretical powers. to make very hard alloys. Construction of
New York. In 1944 these During the Second World War, his the German howitzer known as Big
researchers published the code-breaking colleagues at Bletchley Bertha, deployed in the First World War,
results of painstaking studies Park exploited some of these powers. involved one of the earliest applications
using bacteria that revealed Their electronic device, called Colossus, of molybdenum steel.
that DNA passed genetic broke some of the most secret ciphers
information from one organ- of the German High Command. The shells red by Big Bertha, each of
ism to another. This went Historians still argue about who built which weighed nearly a tonne, contained
against the accepted wisdom the rst genuine computer, but its the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT), which
that proteins must be the generally agreed that by the late 1940s is made by reacting nitric acid with tolu-
carriers of genetic informa- engineers in both the US and Britain ene. Nitric acid is made from ammonia.
tion, as DNA was obviously had succeeded in creating electronic
too simple a molecule to machines embodying Babbages dream.
perform such a complex role.
DREAMSTIME/GETTY
Crick and Watson agreed with

Avery but the latters claim
to a Nobel Prize was blocked
by sceptics until the 1960s,
long after his death in 1955.

Frank Whittle
(right)
explains the
workings of
his jet engine
Who really Unless its really old, every

glass of wine is radioactive
discovered
Neptune? What connects ...
On the night of 23 September nuclear weapons
1846, German astronomer
Johann Galle noticed an
object in the constellation
with fine wine?
Aquarius that didnt appear In 1945, the US Army conducted the rst
on the latest star maps. nuclear weapons test as part of the Who really
Its disc-like appearance Manhattan Project. Since then, there
suggested that it was have been more than 2,000 nuclear invented
a planet a conclusion explosions around the world.
conrmed the following night
by its movement relative to Each nuclear explosion releases several
the jet engine?
the distant stars. hundred grams of the radioactive The basic idea of creating motion by
Galles discovery of the isotope caesium-137. This has a half-life directing a jet of uid in the opposite
planet now called Neptune of about 30 years, and is not normally direction to the desired direction of travel
was no coincidence. He had found in nature. dates back to ancient times. In the rst
been asked to examine that century AD, the Greek mathematician
patch of the night sky by Caesium-137 dust from nuclear explo- Hero of Alexandria described a device
Urbain Le Verrier, a brilliant sions gets dispersed in the atmosphere propelled by steam squirted out of two
French theoretician who had and reacts with rainwater to form soluble opposing nozzles. However, its unlikely
been studying strange effects salts that are absorbed in tiny quantities that it would have worked the jets were
in the orbit of Uranus, and by plants through their roots. probably too weak to overcome friction
concluded that it was being between its various components.
affected by an unseen planet. Any wine bottled after 1945 contains In 1922, French engineer Maxime
But while Galle and Le Ver- detectable amounts of caesium-137 Guillaume was granted a patent for a
rier were being hailed for their (though it is quite safe to drink). This fact simple jet engine. Though it was never
discovery, British astrono- has been used to test claims of extreme built, the idea was right. It consisted of
mers claimed that a young age in bottles of wine. a series of turbines that compressed air,
Cambridge mathematician, which was then mixed with fuel and
John Couch Adams (pictured ignited. The resulting rapidly expanding
above), had made similar gas produced thrust.
calculations, and that a British The rst to succeed in making this
astronomer had subsequently approach work was a young RAF
seen Neptune three times engineer named Frank Whittle. In the
but failed to recognise it. This 1920s he devised an arrangement of
attempt to grab some of the turbines and compressors that, he
glory sparked an international claimed, would produce enough thrust
row that intensied when for aircraft propulsion. The UK air
American scientists argued ministry disagreed, however, so Whittle
that the predictions of both Any wine bottled set up his own company, which pro-
were faulty and the discovery duced the rst working jet engine in
merely a happy accident. since 1945 contains 1937. By then, German physicist Hans
Recent research has led von Ohain had hit on a similar solution,
historians to dismiss the the radioactive and was ahead of Whittle in achieving
British claim. In any case, its the rst actual ight of a jet aircraft the
now known that Galle wasnt isotope caesium-137 Heinkel He 178 in August 1939.
the rst to see Neptune:
though thankfully it
GETTY/ALAMY
studies of Galileos note-

books show that he spotted
it as early as 1612. is quite safe to drink
People & Personalities / Who invented...
Sections of the Space

Shuttles boosters travel to
Kennedy Space Centre
The ame in
Welsbachs lamp
was surrounded
by a thorium
oxide mantle
What
connects
the Space Who really
Shuttle with discovered
radio? What connects
a pair of gas street lights
The discovery of radio waves ranks
horses? among the most astounding achieve-
with nuclear
ments of Victorian science, with
The Space Shuttles solid far-reaching consequences that are
rocket boosters were manu- still felt today. power?
factured in Promontory, Utah. The existence of radio waves was
Transport to the launch site in predicted in the 1860s by the brilliant In 1885, Austrian scientist Carl Auer von
Florida, 3,860km (2,400 miles) Scottish theoretical physicist James Welsbach invented a new form of gas
away, involved a seven-day Clerk Maxwell (pictured above). He was lighting that was much brighter than
train journey. developing a theory proposing that earlier ame lamps.
electricity and magnetism are differ-
In order to t through railway ent aspects of the same phenomenon. In the lamp introduced by von Welsbach,
tunnels along the route, each Maxwells prediction was conrmed in the ame was surrounded by a thorium
booster segment was 1887 by the German physicist Heinrich oxide mantle. Thorium oxide has a melting
designed to a maximum Hertz, who incredibly dismissed radio point of 3,300C. Von Welsbachs mantle
diameter of just 3.66m (12ft). waves as of no use whatsoever. could therefore glow white-hot without
Fortunately, other scientists saw melting away.
The width of railway tunnels potential in the mysterious waves that
is determined by the gauge of could travel through air, solid walls and However, thorium is radioactive; it decays
the railway track. The US the vacuum of space. Among them were to radon-220, which is also radioactive.
uses the standard track the British physicist Oliver Lodge and the Using a thorium gas lamp isnt danger-
gauge of 1.44m (4ft 8.5in). Italian electrical engineer Guglielmo ous, but old gas-mantle factory sites
Marconi, who independently invented suffer problems with contamination.
Early trains were drawn by ways of turning electrical discharges into
horses. The standard track detectable signals. The two men became Thorium is a safer alternative to uranium
gauge was based on the involved in several legal battles over or plutonium in nuclear reactors.
width of two horses pulling a patents, but Marconi is now usually Thorium cant be weaponised, and its
cart side by side a standard regarded as the inventor of radio high melting point makes it less prone
that was retained when steam communication. Thats partly because to catastrophic meltdown.
railways were developed, so he was the rst to send simple radio
that the same wagons could signals across the Atlantic Ocean
be reused. a PR coup that brought him international
recognition including a Nobel Prize.
Yet even Marconi failed to realise the
full communication potential of radio.
Overcoming the technical challenges of
Marconi won the
creating a high-delity speech-and-
music medium involved a host of far less
Nobel Prize, but even
KEN KREMER/GETTY
well-known inventors. he failed to realise the

full communication
potential of radio
US soldiers in the
Vietnam War were the
A Bell Curve can depict rst patients whose
cumulative random values wounds were sealed
with cyanoacrylates
Who really
described
the Bell
Curve? Who really
Named for its central peak invented
and gracefully sloping sides,
the Bell Curve is one of the the periodic
best-known, most-important
graph types in maths and table? What connects
science. In mathematical
terms, it depicts the normal On the wall of every school chemistry
gun sights with
distribution the spread of
values of anything affected
laboratory is a poster of the periodic table
of elements the go-to reference tool for wound sutures?
by the cumulative effects of chemical elements for almost 150 years.
randomness, where the mean The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev In 1942, during the Second World War,
(average) value is the peak, (pictured above) is often credited with American chemist Dr Harry Coover was
with other, less-common formulating the rules that dene the researching clear plastics that could be
values to either side. From block-like patterns of elements, even used in the manufacture of lightweight
stock market jitters to though others had established those gun sights. One of the chemical groups
human heights and IQ, many rules some years earlier, albeit without he tested was the cyanoacrylates.
phenomena follow at least recognition for their work.
a rough approximation of the One of those scientists was John Coover discarded cyanoacrylates as
Bell Curve. Newlands, an English chemist who in the a suitable material for gun sights
Many textbooks refer to mid-1860s pointed out that, when because they bond instantly to almost
normal distribution (the Bell arranged according to their atomic anything. But in 1958 the company
Curve) as the Gaussian mass, elements with similar properties where he worked, Eastman Kodak, took
Curve, honouring the brilliant lie close together. However, in describing advantage of this property to market a
19th-century German his ndings to fellow scientists he drew cyanoacrylate as an adhesive, selling it
mathematician Karl Friedrich parallels with musical octaves, prompt- as Eastman #910, later renamed
Gauss, who deduced its ing howls of derision. In fact, Newlands Super Glue.
shape while studying how discovery had been presaged by the
data are affected by random work of another English chemist, William Cyanoacrylates are liquids at room
errors. However, a French Odling though he, too, failed to garner temperature, but the presence of even
maths teacher named much interest. a tiny amount of moisture causes
Abraham de Moivre had Mendeleevs claim to fame lies in the cyanoacrylate molecules to link rapidly
arrived at the same shape fact that he realised that the patterns into a long, sticky chain.
decades earlier, while were more complex than others had
tackling a problem that had realised. Some columns in his table, rst In 1966, eld medics in the Vietnam War
bafed mathematicians for published in 1869, were longer than used a cyanoacrylate spray to temporarily
years: how to calculate the others. He also suspected that gaps seal wounds. Today, medical-grade
frequency of heads or tails within the resulting blocks implied the superglue is used to repair small cuts.
resulting from a large number existence of as-yet undiscovered
of coin-tosses. elements, and bravely attempted to
Historians often use the predict their properties. His condence
term Gaussian Curve as an was vindicated with the discovery of
example of Stiglers law of gallium, germanium and scandium,
eponymy, which states that securing his place among the great
no scientic discovery is names of 19th-century science. DISCOVER MORE
DREAMSTIME/GETTY
named after the person who MAGAZINE

actually discovered it. These answers originally appeared in
BBC Focus Magazine. Read more
fascinating Q&As in each issue or online:
sciencefocus.com

Comment
Marcus du Sautoy on the importance of the history of maths
History can be a powerful ally

in teaching difficult mathematical ideas
for the first time
W
hen I learnt my mathematics at gence during the Renaissance. But I discovered how
school it was taught in a very much exciting mathematics was being done in India
ahistorical manner. The people, the long before Fibonacci (c1175c1250) kickstarted the
cultures, the politics were all mathematical revolution in Europe, and that there
missing. It was the ideas that were inklings of the calculus bubbling away in India
counted. I learnt how negative numbers worked. in the 14th century, well before Newton and Leibniz
What to do with a sine and a cosine. How to calculate articulated their theory. But these historical vignettes
volumes of solids. I knew little of the history of these arent just interesting curiosities.
ideas. Personally, the abstract ideas were enough to Witnessing the way teachers have used excerpts
excite me, but the missing stories of where these ideas from the Story of Maths in the classroom, Ive seen
came from could have engaged so many more in the how history can be a powerful ally in teaching
wonders of mathematics. Marcus du difcult mathematical ideas to those encountering
For example, sines and cosines were our best tools Sautoy is the them for the rst time. A historical perspective
for navigating the night sky centuries before Galileo Simonyi professor has even helped me in my own journey to create
ever had a telescope in his hands. The ancient Greeks for the public new mathematical knowledge appreciating
could use triangles and angles to tell the relative sizes understanding how a completely new mathematics appeared
of the earth, moon and sun without ever leaving the of science, and from the old has given me the tools to make my
comfort of their observatories. I think that knowing professor of own breakthroughs.
this history gives life to concepts that might other- mathematics at A historical narrative is actually hiding beneath the
wise feel like theyre invented to torture students at the University educational trajectory we take students on as they
exam time. of Oxford, and learn their mathematics. Its not dissimilar to
Or take the formula for the volume of a pyramid. the author of building those pyramids in Giza. Each year at school
You could simply learn that its a third of the area of the What We Cannot we construct a new layer of the edice on top of the
base times the height. Or you could show students the Know (Fourth ideas we encountered before. And this is exactly how
Egyptian papyrus where this formula rst appears. Estate, 2017). mathematics evolved through history. What distin-
The scribe was motivated by the very practical guishes mathematics from the rest of science is that
challenge of wanting to know how many stones the the mathematics that was discovered 2,000 years ago
architects would need to build the pyramids in Giza. is as true today as it was when the likes of Euclid
The papyrus also contains the ideas of how to derive recorded the ideas in his Elements. The resilience of
the formula by approximating a pyramid by mathematics to the effects of time is due to the power
constructing a tower of rectangular boxes. of proof. Mathematical proof allows us to access
Suddenly, with context, a dry equation comes alive. truth in a manner that is almost impossible in any
I must admit that it was only when I started other subject.
exploring ways to bring mathematics to the masses The other important role that history can play for
through the books I have written and the TV my subject is to reveal that it is still a living,
programmes that I have made that I myself breathing subject. For most students,
became aware of where my subject came mathematics seems to live in some
from. In 2008 I made a series for the BBC timeless, never-changing textbook that
called The Story of Maths. It charted in has been handed down from generation
four one-hour episodes the origins of to generation. With such a picture, its
OXFORD UNIVERSITY IMAGES/JOBY SESSIONS
mathematics in ancient Egypt and no wonder that many dont realise

Babylon, through to the amazing break- that there are so many chapters of
throughs of the last century that are the the mathematical story still to be
ingredients for the technological revolution written. What gets me up in the
we all enjoy today. morning to run to my desk are all
It was while making that programme that the unsolved problems. Its the
I understood how Eurocentric our view of mathematical enigmas those
mathematics is. The story most people are fed is whose solutions will become the
that mathematics began with the ancient stories of tomorrow that are the
Greeks and then went quiet until its resur- lifeblood of mathematics.

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FROM THE MAKERS OF BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE

The rail revolution Ancient Greek technology Brunel

FROM THE MAKERS OF MAGAZINE

BBC History Magazine is Britains bestselling history magazine.

Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited, 2017

The Story of Science & Technology 3

6 Timeline 31 Global milestones 54 HEAVEN & EARTH

20 What the Romans really 40 The Royal Society 64 A rail revolution

A look at the founding of the Dan Snow on how rail transport

4 The Story of Science & Technology

72 Heroes of invention 94 Thomas Telford

100 The Scottish individuals associated with

The Story of Science & Technology 5

The discovery of cave paintings in South Sulawesi, Indonesia

6 The Story of Science & Technology

The Story of Science & Technology 7

The Muslim scholar Ibn al-Haytham (Latinised revealing the

8 The Story of Science & Technology

19th-century painting of Galileo

He is celebrated for insisting on precise accepted that the Earth

The Story of Science & Technology 11

Edison photographed in c1910 with

12 The Story of Science & Technology

The Story of Science & Technology 13

1 What the Romans really did for us

1 Science stories: Gowin Knights compass

1 A history of science in 10 objects

1 10 global milestones in science

1 Science through the ages

1 The Royal Society

1 Science stories: Hauksbee & electric light

1 12 giant leaps for mankind

The Story of Science & Technology 15

16 The Story of Science & Technology

The 2,000-year-old three-level

The Story of Science & Technology 17

A modern recreation of the 2,100-year-old Antikythera mechanism, the clockwork

18 The Story of Science & Technology

20 The Story of Science & Technology

The Story of Science & Technology 21

22 The Story of Science & Technology

of enemy archers) and was designed to kill

The Story of Science & Technology 23

24 The Story of Science & Technology

From the early calculator that helped merchants

world (and universe) over the past 500 years

the frontispiece illustration above. accurate and comprehensive set of

26 The Story of Science & Technology

The Story of Science & Technology 27

Alessandro Volta (17451827) was frogs legs was identical to articial

himself as an experimental subject, interested in

The Story of Science & Technology 29

It wasnt until the invention of the laser

Crick (19162004) as they struggled

When Watson was shown by Patricia Fara (OUP, 2009)

30 The Story of Science & Technology

From Babylonian mathematics

The Story of Science & Technology 31

constellation mathematics is done in what is show that ancient Babylonian

32 The Story of Science & Technology

how to make paper. Some even

The Story of Science & Technology 33

Jai Singh IIs vast Jantar