Reading in English-speaking-country Series: Famous
People
Editted by Liu Xiaoling
Unit 1 Engineers
Part I Guided Reading
5. Engineers
http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm
Engineers apply the theories and principles of science and mathematics
to research and develop economical solutions to technical problems. Their
work is the link between perceived social needs and commercial
applications. Engineers design products, machinery to build those
products, plants in which those products are made, and the systems that
ensure the quality of the products and the efficiency of the workforce
and manufacturing process. Engineers design, plan, and supervise the
construction of buildings, highways, and transit systems. They develop
and implement improved ways to extract, process, and use raw materials,
such as petroleum and natural gas. They develop new materials that both
improve the performance of products and take advantage of advances in
technology. They harness the power of the sun, the Earth, atoms, and
electricity for use in supplying the Nation 抯 power needs, and create
millions of products using power. They analyze the impact of the products
they develop or the systems they design on the environment and on people
using them. Engineering knowledge is applied to improving many things,
including the quality of healthcare, the safety of food products, and the
operation of financial systems.
Engineers consider many factors when developing a new product. For example,
in developing an industrial robot, engineers determine precisely what
function the robot needs to perform; design and test the robot 抯
components; fit the components together in an integrated plan; and
evaluate the design 抯 overall effectiveness, cost, reliability, and
safety. This process applies to many different products, such as chemicals,
computers, gas turbines, helicopters, and toys.
In addition to design and development, many engineers work in testing,
production, or maintenance. These engineers supervise production in
factories, determine the causes of breakdowns, and test manufactured
products to maintain quality. They also estimate the time and cost to
complete projects. Some move into engineering management or into sales.
In sales, an engineering background enables them to discuss technical
aspects and assist in product planning, installation, and use.
Most engineers specialize. More than 25 major specialties are recognized
by professional societies, and the major branches have numerous
subdivisions. Some examples include structural and transportation
engineering, which are subdivisions of civil engineering; and ceramic,
metallurgical, and polymer engineering, which are subdivisions of
materials engineering. Engineers also may specialize in one industry,
such as motor vehicles, or in one field of technology, such as turbines
or semiconductor materials.
Engineers in each branch have a base of knowledge and training that can
be applied in many fields. Electronics engineers, for example, work in
the medical, computer, communications, and missile guidance fields.
Because there are many separate problems to solve in a large engineering
project, engineers in one field often work closely with specialists in
other scientific, engineering, and business occupations.
Engineers use computers to produce and analyze designs; to simulate and
test how a machine, structure, or system operates; and to generate
specifications for parts. Using the Internet or related communications
systems, engineers can collaborate on designs with other engineers around
the country or even abroad. Many engineers also use computers to monitor
product quality and control process efficiency. They spend a great deal
of time writing reports and consulting with other engineers, as complex
projects often require an interdisciplinary team of engineers.
Supervisory engineers are responsible for major components or entire
projects.
Part II Famous Engineers
1. Isambard Kingdom Brunel: A Description
By Glyn Cryer
http://www.civl.port.ac.uk/comp_prog/brunel/
THE MAN HIMSELF
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born on 9th April 1806 in a terrace house in
Britain Street, Portsmouth. His father was Marc Brunel, a musician, artist,
inventor and practical engineer.
Brunel's first engagement as a civil engineer was as a Resident Engineer
for his father on the Thames Tunnel from which he narrowly escaped with
his life, when the Thames broke and flooded the workings. His first
personal commission was for the Clifton Suspension Bridge which he won
the right to build in a competition.
As well as having one of the most unusual middle names of all time, Brunel
is famous for his technological achievements in the field of engineering.
However, as well as having very broad interests, his most outstanding
feature was his all round ability within each of the endeavours he
undertook. If we consider his Great Western Railway, he designed the track
layout, the track itself, the rolling stock, the tunnels, the bridges,
and the ship to take passengers to the United States from Bristol at the
end of the line (the Great Western). He even designed the lamp-posts for
the stations, was a director of the station hotel at Paddington, and when
the going got tough, was not above getting down to doing some actual
digging on the line himself. He was truly a great all-round engineer.
CLIFTON SUSPENSION BRIDGE
Designed by Isambaard Kingdom Brunel, the Clifton Suspension bridge was
opened on Thursday 8th December 1864 . The building of the bridge cost
a staggering ?5,000, a great deal of money for its day.
Although this was the first of Brunel's designs to have been accepted
(designed when he was 24 years old) it was not completed until after his
death.
For the record, the bridge has a total length of 1,352 feet, a span between
piers of 703 feet, stands 245 feet above high water and weighs 1,500 tons.
A curious statistic is that the main support chains may vary in length,
expanding in the summer sunshine by up to 3 inches.
Although the bridge was built for horse drawn and foot traffic, it now
carried millions of cars a year back and forth between Clifton and Leigh
Woods.
The bridge has a rather unfortunate reputation in that it has always been
a popular place for suicide victims. A well documented case was of a young
woman who threw herself off the bridge in the latter years of the last
century. The dress style of the day being many layers of petticoats, saved
the young woman from certain death as during her fall they acted as a sort
of parachute, leaving her stranded in the mud of the river bed until rescue
arrived. Lately, a new higher fencing has been put along the bridge to
stop people from being able to climb out onto the railings.
THE THREE GREAT SHIPS
Brunel built three great ships. The Great Western, The Great Britain and
The Great Eastern
The ss Great Britain was the largest and most powerful ship built (launched
in July 1843). She was the first propeller driven iron ship to cross the
Atlantic, (which may be why only 50 passengers dared to travel on her 15
day maiden voyage to New York.) She was the fore-runner of all the great
liners and the Mother of all modern ships.
Disaster struck when the Great Britain was on her way to breaking the
record for the number of passengers taken on a transatlantic crossing.
She ran aground on the sands of Dundrum Bay, Ireland in 1846. The Great
Western Steam Ship Company could not afford to repair her and she was sold
to Gibbs, Bright and Company of Liverpool.
Emigrant Clipper
The new owners used her as a fast and luxurious emigrant ship, taking
people to Australia. Over 32 voyages the Great Britain averaged 60 days
out and 60 days home - a very fast time for the nineteenth century. The
Great Britain plied the Australian route for over 20 years and carried
the forebears of 1/4 of a million present day Australians!
Troop Ship
Between 1855 and 1857 she was enlisted to carry troops to the Crimean War
and the Indian Mutiny, and in 1861 she carried the first ever English
cricket team to tour Australia. She took the second team in 1863, which
included Dr. W.G. Grace's brother, E.M. Grace.
Windjammer
She was converted to a sailing ship, a windjammer, and took Welsh coal
to San Francisco around Cape Horn. On her third trip, she ran into trouble
around the Cape, and was forced to run for shelter in Port Stanley,
Falkland Islands.
Cargo Store
It was again too expensive for her owners to repair her and she was sold
to the Falkland Islands Company, who used her as a storage vessel for wool.
In 1937, her working life came to a temporary end when she was beached
in Sparrow Cove. There she stayed for 33 years. She was miraculously
rescued and brought back to Britain by the ss Great Britain Project in
1970. Her new life began, and she works today as an educational resource
and National Monument for current and future generations
RAILWAYS
Brunel was to prove his versatility in his association with railways. He
entered into a new field of engineering on a grand scale when he was
appointed on 7th March 1833, to make the first surveys of the proposed
line from Bristol to London. It was the longest railway that had then been
contemplated, exceeding the London and Birmingham line by six miles.
Brunel designed the track layout, the track itself, the rolling stock,
the tunnels, the bridges, and the ship to take passengers to the United
States from Bristol at the end of the line (the Great Western). He even
designed the lamp-posts for the stations
2. VLADIMIR KOSMA ZWORYKIN
http://www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=v_zworykin
by Jerrilyn Jacobs
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin has been called "The Father of Television," though
there were hundreds, if not thousands of individuals involved in the slow,
methodical process of putting together the pieces until they worked. Zworykin's
younger contemporary, Philo Farnsworth, also shared major credit in
television’s birth, as did Zworykin's beloved Russian physics teacher, Boris
Rozing, a Scotsman Alan Archibald Campbell Swinton, and many other
inventors and scientists of the time. David Sarnoff, head of RCA, had a vision
of bringing television into the home, and he chose and supported Zworykin as
the man who would create the technology for electronic television. What
matters most is not that Zworykin was given the credit, but that he was the kind
of scientist who followed his passion over a lifetime and made the best of his
good luck.
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin was born in Murom, Russia, (about 200 miles east of
Moscow) on July 30, 1889, the youngest of 7 children. Murom was a
successful center of commerce, and Vladimir’s father, Kosma, was an
educated well-to-do merchant who owned and operated a fleet of riverboats on
the Oka River. He was frequently away on business, leaving the running of the
big family to mother Elana. Vladimir grew up in a big mansion and had a
carefree childhood, full of orchestrating practical jokes, doing well in school,
and hiking and playing in the nearby woods. Because his older brothers
showed no interest, Vladimir's father took him on trips to learn the family
business.
In the early 1900's life was changing in Russia. There was general
dissatisfaction with the tsarist government, with rampant corruption and no
freedom, and the ruling class had all the wealth and power, leaving the
average Russian to live in terrible conditions.
In 1911, while revolution was brewing, Zworykin studied at the St. Petersburg
Institute of Technology. He worked in the private lab of Professor Boris Rozing,
who introduced him to the cathode ray tube and the theoretical dream of
“electrical telescop.” Rozing had already built his first television device and
Zworykin spent most of his free time helping with the experiments. German,
French and American scientists also were busy at work experimenting and
obtaining patents for various parts of the television puzzle. When he graduated
with an engineering diploma in 1912, the equipment needed for a working
television still had not been developed. Zworykin wanted to continue helping
Rozing, but Zworykin’s father wanted him to help run the family business.
Vladimir convinced his father to let him continue his studies in France at the
College de France in Paris, where he studied X rays under Professor Paul
Langevin, a prominent French theoretical physicist who eventually won a
Nobel Prize. In 1914 the threat of war put an end to Zworykin’s studies and he
returned to Russia.
During World War I, Zworykin's expertise in wireless transmission got him
assigned to work with the Marconi Company, and gave him access to the
latest in radio equipment, including improved high-vacuum amplifying tubes.
He also met and married his wife, Tatiana Vasilieff. He wanted to join
Marconi's Russian branch after the war, but world events ruined his plans.
In early 1917, after great civil unrest, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and power
shifted to the Russian parliament. In October, the Bolsheviks overthrew the
provisional government. Zworykin wanted to stay out of the civil war he saw
coming, so he avoided signing up for the Red Army. An order for his arrest was
announced, and Zworykin's friends helped him escape. After a year and a half
of hard work, on January 1, 1919, Vladimir Zworykin arrived in America.
Eventually he found work at the Westinghouse unit of the Radio Corporation of
America (RCA) He was able to buy a house, and his wife joined him.
Zworykin received a patent for the kinescope, the first television picture tube,
in 1923. The next year he became a United States citizen, and enrolled at the
University of Pittsburgh, where he received a Ph.D. His efforts to build and
operate a cathode-ray television system started sometime in June 1924. The
Westinghouse Electric laboratory made Zworykin's project a high priority, and
he was able to purchase equipment and hire staff to move the work along
more quickly. However, the project was taken away from him, and he learned
an important lesson: commercial research required profitability.
In 1929 he was transferred to RCA by David Sarnoff, the company's president,
and given his own lab in California. Zworykin filed his patent for color television
that year, and Sarnoff gave him as much money as he said he needed, even
during the Depression, when other departments were being closed. During the
1930s and 1940s, RCA spent more than U.S. $50 million on the development
of television.
Zworykin's television system used a high-voltage cathode-ray tube and
presented a 5-inch image that was bright enough to be viewed in a well-lit
room. At this time, Philo Farnsworth's system was also well developed, but his
image was limited to a blurry 2 inches. Zworykin visited Farnsworth's lab and
was given a complete tour and description of Farnsworth's work. Farnsworth
hoped that Zworykin, representing RCA, would provide critical funding. The
two men reportedly got along very well, both appreciating the inventions of the
other. However, Zworykin’s supervisors at RCA decided they didn't need to
buy Farnsworth's patents, or system. Farnsworth's work, especially the higher
quality dissector tube, gave Zworykin ideas to improve his own 2-sided picture
tube.
As more and more scientists around the world approached a working model of
a television system, patent wars raged, and business managers, attorneys and
legislative officials fought it out in courts, the Patent office and boardrooms.
Sarnoff made sure Zworykin had everything he needed, including buying up
television patents internationally so Zworykin would have the greatest chance
of success. RCA kept its work on television as secret as possible
In 1931, Sarnoff tried to buy Farnsworth's company, especially for its alternate
camera tube, the only other one in existence. He lost out to another company,
Philco, and from that time on there was intense rivalry between Farnsworth
and RCA, with battles in the U.S. Patent Office, where RCA tried to get control
of the dissector tube.
Zworykin was always open to suggestions from his co-workers. As a result, he
was able to produce his other great invention, a practical camera tube that
vastly improved his television system. He called it the iconoscope from the
Greek icon meaning image and scope meaning observing.
RCA began publicizing its progress with television when the world was in the
depths of the Depression, but it did so slowly, wanting to keep from competing
with radio, which was the only still profitable part of its organization. Finally, in
June 1933 Zworykin presented a complete description of his television system
during the Chicago World’s Fair before the Institute of Radio Engineers. The
New York Times put the story on its front page, and people thought television
was just around the corner. Zworykin stated, "The fate of television now rests
in the laps of the financial and merchandising experts." David Sarnoff was on
his way to realize his dream of putting a television in every home, but people
were still going to have to wait for awhile.
Zworykin returned to Russian several times, where he was well received,
lecturing throughout the country on television and helping them purchase a
complete working system from RCA.
Zworykin turned his attention to new inventions, including work on the electron
microscope. During World War II, Zworykin developed a camera a hundred
times more powerful than the iconoscope, which was the first night-vision
camera, called the sniperscope or snooperscope, and he worked on
radio-controlled missiles. Technology from the night vision camera led to a
new tool for measuring radioactivity, the scintillation counter. Zworykin also
worked with the mathematician John Von Neumann on the early development
of the computer, using vacuum-tube technology.
Retiring from RCA in 1954, Zworykin continued work in his own laboratory. He
created the endoradiosonde, a tiny transmitter that was swallowed to let
doctors monitor processes inside the body. The ultraviolet microscope was
another of his inventions. He was given many awards, including the National
Medal of Science in 1967. This is the highest scientific honor given in the
United States. In 1977 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of
Fame.
Zworykin was very ambivalent about how his invention developed into modern
day television. He had envisioned a way of bringing culture and education to all
people, and was distressed at the violence and crime. He didn't think television
was good for children and once quipped that the best thing about television
was "the off switch." Nevertheless, he was proud of television's positive effects
in areas ranging from politics to news to transportation.
Vladimir Zworykin died of old age July 29, 1982.
On the 100th anniversary of Zworykin's birthday in 1989, Voyager 2 sent back
television pictures of the Planet Neptune and its moon Triton using vidicon
cameras which grew out of the work of Zworykin and RCA.
3. Sir Geoffrey de Havilland CBE and de Havilland Aircraft
Company Ltd
Personnel Today, 12.00 am 14 Jan 03
http://www.personneltoday.com/pt_print/pt_print.asp?liArticleID=17465
Sir Geoffrey de Havilland CBE
By Linda Holbeche, director of research at leading management school
Roffey Park
For me, the words greatest, British and manager do not sit comfortably
together. Perhaps it is not in our national character for the most
effective managers to blow their own trumpets and achieve national status.
But there is one daring pioneer, who showed great commercial and
managerial acumen, and succeeded against the odds - Sir Geoffrey de
Havilland.
De Havilland was one of the world's pioneers of powered flight; a man
considered to be as important to the development of British aviation as
the Wright Brothers were in America. He was born in 1882, the son of a
clergyman, and soon developed an enthusiasm for mechanics that led to many
explosive childhood experiments.
He built and flew his first powered plane in 1910, without plans or
instructions. De Havilland's love of natural history was also apparent
in these early tests - he would search the field (runway) for larks' nests
to ensure their protection.
De Havilland tested all his early planes himself, becoming a
highly-skilled pilot. He maintained his love of flying throughout his
life, regularly going for long flights over Europe and Africa, and mixing
with the aviation pioneers such as Amy Johnson and Alan Cobham. But he
was more than more than just a pioneer and test pilot. Supported by a loyal
team, but with only a few hundred pounds for capital, he was responsible
for the first and many of the finest planes to be used in the First World
War.
De Havilland created his eponymous company in 1920 and designed and built
a wide range of civil and military aircraft such as the Rapide, the
Mosquito fighter-bomber and the Comet, which was the first jet-powered
airliner.
Not only did he have to overcome the typical commercial and management
pressures facing any company today - working hard to develop a supportive
board and adequate finance - but he had to convince sceptical customers
of the value of his planes.
For example, the Air Ministry needed a lightweight fighter-bomber with
a reasonable range for the Second World War. De Havilland's answer was
the Mosquito, which was built with a wooden frame because of the shortages
of metal during the war effort.
With Air Ministry officials questioning the robustness of the frame, de
Havilland decided to finance the early prototypes himself to prove its
worth. Once in action, the wooden-framed Mosquito substantially advanced
Britain's airborne capabilities, providing strength, speed and
manoeuvrability in engagement.
My late mother-in-law, who worked as a tracer (who copied the original
design drawings of aircraft for use by component manufacturers) on the
Mosquito during the war, spoke of the amazing efficiency with which these
machines were produced, as well as the good working conditions in the
company's factories.
An even greater challenge for de Havilland was the development of the Comet,
the first commercial jet airliner in the world. He saw the potential of
this new high-speed form of air travel, especially for long-haul flights.
The DH-106 monoplane Comet was initially a fantastic success, carrying
passengers at more than 500mph at an altitude of 33,000 feet.
However, some of the earliest Comets crashed due to problems with metal
fatigue. Among the first casualties was one of de Havilland's three sons
- also called Geoffrey - who was killed test piloting the aircraft in 1946.
In the wake of the tragedy, de Havilland took the courageous decision to
make all details of the design available to investigators and competitors
alike to avoid a reoccurrence.
Public confidence in the new technology waned, and this gave US
manufacturers, such as Boeing, the edge they needed to take the lead in
developing aircraft. The rest, as they say, is history. Though confidence
in the Comet took years to recover, the military version still flies today
in the form of the Nimrod surveillance aeroplane.
De Havilland's company was later merged into the Hawker-Siddeley Group,
and de Havilland himself maintained an active and visionary interest in
the development of air and space travel.
So what can HR learn from Geoffrey de Havilland? Partly, it is the priority
he placed on achieving good conditions and working relations in all his
factories. He gathered great managers around him, including Frank Hearle,
who de Havilland said: "would always listen to complaints and try to see
the other man's point of view and take steps to remedy problems".
The company, which by 1961 employed 37,000 people, was a pioneer of
sponsored apprenticeships, which gave young people opportunities and
provided a conveyor belt of talent. He also recognised that giving staff
complex tasks that required high degrees of skill could be highly
motivating.
But the greatest lesson for our risk-averse era is that the chance of
failure is inseparable from progressive advance. Risks have to be taken
if you are to achieve anything worthwhile.
De Havilland believed that air travel was governed by "one of the few
invariable rules of human behaviour": people will always want to go faster
and that creates problems.
De Havilland had the courage to tackle those 'problems' and it paid off.
He dared, and he won, making him the Greatest Briton in Management and
Leadership.
de Havilland Aircraft Company Ltd.
http://www.airventuremuseum.org/default.asp
Arguably the most prolific of British aircraft manufacturers, the de Havilland Aircraft Company
Ltd is also recognised as one of the most innovative. From one of the most successful families
of light aircraft in the inter-war years through to research into guided weapons systems in the
1960s, there are few nations in the world that haven't been influenced by de Havilland in the
field of aeronautics.
The company's founder, Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, knighted for his services to British Aviation
in 1944, was mechanically minded and a keen engineer in his youth. In 1910, Geoffrey
constructed and flew his first successful airplane. Due to its merits, this machine was
purchased by the War Office for £400 a year later. The money earned was used by de
Havilland to obtain Royal Aero Club Certificate No.53.
Employment by the government run H.M. Balloon Factory at Farnborough, Hampshire, as
designer/pilot soon followed, along with a number of innovative aircraft built for the military.
After three years of inspiring work, the young engineer became Chief Designer with the Aircraft
Manufacturing Company Ltd, or Airco in 1914, where he designed some of the most significant
warplanes used by the Allies over the next four years. Successful designs included the
outstanding D.H.4 light bomber and derivative, the D.H.9, both of which saw widespread use
post-war as civilian transports. It was a converted D.H.4 that flew the world's first scheduled
international passenger flight, between Hounslow, England and Le Bourget, France in 1919.
After the end of the war, de Havilland established his own manufacturing firm at Stag Lane,
Edgware; by 1921 the de Havilland Aircraft Company Ltd operated its own airplane hire
service and flying school. 1921 also saw employment of designer R. E. Bishop, a talented
engineer responsible for several generations of fine de Havilland products.
By far the best-known de Havilland machines of the period were the `Moth' family; the first to
appear was the D.H.60 in 1925. With the founder of the firm being a keen lepidopterist, a
generation of light planes was named after species of moths; by far the most recognized was
the D.H.82A Tiger Moth primary trainer. By the end of the 1930s there were few places in the
world that had not been overflown by a de Havilland Moth of one type or another.
The DH.60 and its siblings were mostly powered by derivatives of the Gipsy in-line motor,
renowned the world over for its reliability. Built by gifted engineer Frank Halford, formerly of the
Aircraft Disposal Company (Airdisco), Halford's work for de Havilland saw him produce one of
Britain's first gas turbine engines, the Halford H.1, renamed the de Havilland Goblin. This
engine was the powerplant of Britain's second jet fighter, the D.H.100 Vampire, and the
prototype of the first American jet to see service, the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star.
However, when the rest of the world was turning to all metal aircraft structures in the early
1930s, de Havilland's innovative use of wood gained them respect. The 1934 MacRobertson
England-to-Australia air race won acclaim for the American aircraft industry with the entry of
two all-metal airliners; Col. Roscoe Turner's Boeing 247 and the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
DC-2 `Uiver'. The winner was a purpose built racing plane of wooden construction, the sleek
de Havilland D.H.88 Comet 'Grosvenor House'. These impressive machines failed to sell in the
commercial sector, but their wooden monocoque construction went into the controversial, but
successful, D.H.98 Mosquito fighter-bomber.
Built in complete secrecy in 1940, the Mosquito was a maverick in concept, and the
establishment was initially adamant about the machine's abilities. The `high speed unarmed
bomber' concept eventually won supporters and the Mosquito was in demand by all the air
commands of the British armed forces. R. E. Bishop's `Wooden Wonder' was eventually
pressed into service carrying out virtually every task expected of aircraft in wartime.
By mid 1943, the high-pitched whine of gas turbine spools winding up was echoing through de
Havilland test centers, as by the end of September that year, the Spider Crab jet fighter had
flown for the first time. Renamed `Vampire', the introduction of the little machine into service in
1946 meant de Havilland became a major supplier of military equipment to the world. The
construction of the Vampire and Venom relied on de Havilland's continuing use of wooden
manufacturing techniques, the forward fuselage ahead of the engine was made of the same
materials as those used in the Mosquito.
It was in the airline industry that de Havilland was generating publicity, however. In 1949, the
D.H.106 Comet heralded in the jet age as the first jet powered passenger aircraft, thus
securing the British industry as world leaders. But disaster struck with a series of crashes of
British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) Comet 1s, from which the Comet and the
British civil aircraft industry never recovered. The effects of metal fatigue from high
pressurization rates in the fuselages of these pioneering airliners were literally blowing them
apart. In spite of the negative effect on the company and the industry, the Comet crashes
brought new levels of crash investigation and flight safety testing into the aircraft industry.
Behind closed doors, the de Havilland Propellers division was carrying out research into
rocketry and guided missiles, which included building the first effective British infra-red, heat
seeking, air-to-air missile the Fire Streak. Based on the Convair Atlas ICBM, de Havilland
propellers were also responsible for the Blue Streak rocket, Britain's own nuclear missile.
Although cancelled in 1960 as a weapon, the technology went into providing Europe with an
unsuccessful indigenous satellite launcher. The Blue Streak, first stage of the Europa rocket,
performed flawlessly with every flight and bears the distinction of being the only rocket to have
a 100% success rate in test firing.
With a realization that the British airspace industry fielded too many independent companies
for its needs, the government instigated a merger of these firms and formed the British Aircraft
Corporation and Hawker Siddeley in 1960, the latter incorporating de Havilland. Current de
Havilland products came under the Hawker Siddeley banner and the famous `DH' disappeared
from the British aircraft manufacturing industry forever.
Due to a worldwide interest in vintage and classic aircraft, the de Havilland name still flies
proudly in many countries today. Hosts of better-than-new D.H. Fox, Gipsy, Hornet, Leopard
and Tiger Moths are pampered by their owners and can be seen at fly-ins and air events
across the globe, evoking nostalgia from when `DH' ruled over the world of aviation.
4. History of Henry Ford (1863-1947)
http://www.indiacar.com/index2.asp?pagename=http://www.indiacar.com/
infobank/ford.htm
childhood
Henry Ford, born July 30, 1863, was the first of William and Mary Ford's six
children. He grew up on a prosperous family farm in what is today Dearborn,
Michigan. Henry enjoyed a childhood typical of the rural nineteenth century,
spending days in a one-room school and doing farm chores. At an early age,
he showed an interest in mechanical things and a dislike for farm work.
In 1879, sixteen-year-old Ford left home for the nearby city of Detroit to work
as an apprentice machinist, although he did occasionally return to help on the
farm. He remained an apprentice for three years and then returned to
Dearborn. During the next few years, Henry divided his time between
operating or repairing steam engines, finding occasional work in a Detroit
factory, and over-hauling his father's farm implements, as well as lending a
reluctant hand with other farm work. Upon his marriage to Clara Bryant in 1888,
Henry supported himself and his wife by running a sawmill.
the engineer
In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company in
Detroit. This event signified a conscious decision on Ford's part to dedicate his
life to industrial pursuits. His promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893 gave him
enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on
internal combustion engines.
These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of his own
self-propelled vehicle-the Quadricycle. The Quadricycle had four wire wheels
that looked like heavy bicycle wheels, was steered with a tiller like a boat, and
had only two forward speeds with no reverse. Although Ford was not the first to
build a self-propelled vehicle with a gasoline engine, he was, however, one of
several automotive pioneers who helped this country become a nation of
motorists.
ford motor company
After two unsuccessful attempts to establish a company to manufacture
automobiles, the Ford Motor Company was incorporated in 1903 with Henry
Ford as vice-president and chief engineer. The infant company produced only
a few cars a day at the Ford factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit. Groups of two
or three men worked on each car from components made to order by other
companies.
Henry Ford realized his dream of producing an automobile that was
reasonably priced, reliable, and efficient with the introduction of the Model T in
1908. This vehicle initiated a new era in personal transportation. It was easy to
operate, maintain, and handle on rough roads, immediately becoming a huge
success.
By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. To meet the growing
demand for the Model T, the company opened a large factory at Highland Park,
Michigan, in 1910. Here, Henry Ford combined precision manufacturing,
standardized and interchangeable parts, a division of labor, and, in 1913, a
continuous moving assembly line. Workers remained in place, adding one
component to each automobile as it moved past them on the line. Delivery of
parts by conveyor belt to the workers was carefully timed to keep the assembly
line moving smoothly and efficiently. The introduction of the moving assembly
line revolutionized automobile production by significantly reducing assembly
time per vehicle, thus lowering costs. Ford's production of Model Ts made his
company the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.
The company began construction of the world's largest industrial complex
along the banks of the Rouge River in Dearborn, Michigan, during the late
1910s and early 1920s. The massive Rouge Plant included all the elements
needed for automobile production: a steel mill, glass factory, and automobile
assembly line. Iron ore and coal were brought in on Great Lakes steamers and
by railroad, and were used to produce both iron and steel. Rolling mills, forges,
and assembly shops transformed the steel into springs, axles, and car bodies.
Foundries converted iron into engine blocks and cylinder heads that were
assembled with other components into engines. By September 1927, all steps
in the manufacturing process from refining raw materials to final assembly of
the automobile took place at the vast Rouge Plant, characterizing Henry Ford's
idea of mass production.
The History of the Automobile: Henry Ford and his Model T
The Model T -A car that changed America. Henry Ford had planned a
revolution, but the end result even exceeded his expectations. The first Model
T was introduced in showrooms in late 1908. At that time automobiles were
considered play toys for the rich. After all, the Oldsmobile cost $2,750.00 and
the average worker only earned around $500.00 per year.
Henry being a farm boy and wanting less affluent people to own cars had
introduced the Model N in 1906 for a cost of only $600.00. He sold 8243 in a
year. Despite the great sales, Ford felt the Model N was too conventional. Thus,
in 1907, Ford set up shop in a small factory in Detroit. He told Charles
Sorenson and Joseph Galamb to design a new car. The car that eventually
rolled out was the first Model T. The T's compact body was tall, narrow, and sat
high off the road. The Model T's road clearance, light weight, and tenacious
engine made it virtually unstoppable on rural roads. However, things weren't
perfect on the Model T. Too little choke or throttle and the engine wouldn't start.
Too much choke, and it would flood.
The Model T wasn't the least expensive car on the market, but it was the most
famous even before its official debut. By mid 1909, Ford had to tell dealers to
send no more orders. It would be all the company could do to build the 18,257
cars that year. Six colors were offered, red, black, green, blue, and light and
dark gray.
Due to heavy demand for the Model T, production had to be increased. Ford
unhappy with the traditional assembly line, created a faster and more
economical line. The new method allowed one unskilled worker to replace four
or five skilled assemblers. By 1913, it took just 93 minutes for a Model T to be
assembled.
The Model T was changed many times over the next few years, and the price
continually lowered to keep up with competition. During the Great War, sales of
the Model T had fallen and war material production too its place. But at wars
end, it quickly became a seller's market with more than three quarters of a
million Model T's sold in 1919. Throughout the early 20's production continued
to increase. But by 1926, competition with other car makers reduced the Model
T's popularity and in 1927 Ford announced the end of the Model T.
Ford records show a total of 15,007,033 Model T's had been built. Henry Ford
and his Model T singlehandedly changed the automobile era. Some call the
Model T - The Car that Changed A Nation
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/faraday_michael.shtml
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday was born on the 22nd September 1791, in Newington Butts, near London. His
father, James, a blacksmith originated from Clapham, Yorkshire but moved to the city after
marrying Faraday's mother, Margaret Hastwell, in 1786.
Faraday apparently received no formal education. Instead, he worked as
an errand boy for a bookbinder called Riebau. In 1804, aged 13, he was
promoted to apprentice where he remained for 8 years. He found new work
with another bookbinder called De La Roche. Throughout this time the books
he worked with inspired an interest in science. An interest that was to
initiate a life changing series of events.
In 1812, after being given tickets by a satisfied customer, Faraday
attended the last 4 lectures given by the chemist, Humphry Davy, at the
Royal Institution. At each lecture Faraday took copious amounts of notes,
which he later wrote up, bound and presented to Davy. At the same time,
he also applied for a job - asking Davy to help him quit a trade that he
thought “vicious and selfish”. On the 24th December 1812, Davy’s
carriage rolled up outside Faraday's home in Weymouth Street, London. A
surprised Faraday was given a note asking him to appear at the Royal
Institution, which he did. Later, he was taken on as Davy's assistant for
25 s/week.
After a year of hard graft, Faraday was invited to accompany Davy and his
wife on a European tour. Since the Napoleonic Wars were still in progress
this required seeking a special dispensation from Napoleon. Pro-science,
Napoleon agreed. In the autumn of 1813, travelling as Davy's amanuensis,
Faraday set off on a trip that was to last 18 months.
Though Davy's wife frequently treated Faraday like a servant, the trip
proved to be an invaluable experience for the rising physicist. Travelling
through France, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium, he met a large number of
influential scientists, many of whom were to provide an important
educational role in his life. It was also in Paris that Davy, with
Faraday's help, discovered iodine from burnt seaweed.
On their return in 1815, Faraday was re-engaged as 'Assistant and
Superintendent of the Apparatus of the Laboratory and Mineral
Collection.' He spent years assisting lecturers and lecturing himself.
In addition, he regularly helped Davy, working with him on inventions such
as the safe mining lamp. In 1821 he became 'Superintendent of the house
and laboratory.' The same year he published his work on electromagnetic
rotations (electric motors). Unfortunately, however, Faraday was accused
of failing to acknowledge Davy, though some say he deserved no recognition.
He was also accused of stealing the idea from the chemist, William Hyde
Wollaston. Again, many would argue that although Wollaston may have
conceived ideas about motors he certainly did nothing with them. The
overall effect was to sour Faraday’s relationship with Davy.
In 1823 Faraday, with instruction from Davy, liquefied chlorine - thus
proving that a gas was transformable to the liquid state. Despite this
achievement, however, Faraday’s 1824 application for fellow of Royal
Institution caused a fuss due to the Wollaston story resurfacing.
At this stage there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been
trying to slow down Faraday’s rise as a scientist. In 1825, for instance,
Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for 6 years
with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday
stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to more worthwhile endeavours
In the 1830s he produced the most amazing quantity of work - mostly of
an electric nature. He discovered electromagnetic induction, the battery
(electropotentials), the electric arc (plasmas) and the Faraday cage
(electrostatics). Faraday also instituted the Christmas lectures (1827)
and the Friday Evening Discourses (1826). By 1841, however, his health
began to deteriorate. He did less research, choosing to spend more time
being an expert witness for trials, helping government bodies and
lecturing.
In 1858 he moved to Hampton Court and a grace-and-favour cottage. Six years
later, in 1864, he was offered the presidency of the Royal Institution.
Faraday declined, much shocked that his contemporaries should have
considered him. He was a humble man, who took no delight in taking centre
stage. He died on the 25th August 1867, and is buried in Highgate cemetery.
In his day, Faraday was deeply religious. He belonged to a small sect
called the Sandemanians. They were strict literalists and believed in the
fellowship of man. Faraday donated a portion of his income to the
congregation. He also spent time visiting and tending to the sick. Though
Faraday served as an Elder, he was temporarily kicked out of the Church
in 1844 because he failed to go to a Sabbath meeting. Instead, he visited
Queen Victoria.
Faraday also had strong views regarding spiritualism. He was not an active
crusader against the subject, however, prompted by many letters he did
write to the Times and make comments in one lecture. In 1848 the Fox girls
in Hydesville, New York started off the spiritualist movement with
rappings and tappings on tables. By 1853 Faraday was being bombarded by
enquiries and requests on spiritualist phenomenon. On 30th June, 1853,
his letter to the editor of the Times said that it was all hokum. On 25th
July, 1853 he wrote to another scientist complaining of the gullibility
of the population. Then on 6th May, 1854 he attacked spiritualism in a
lecture to the Royal Institution entitled Mental Education. Prince Albert
also attended the lecture and, as another non-believer, embraced Faraday
warmly after.
Two classic quotes are attributed to Faraday Whilst attempting to explain a discovery to either Gladstone (Chancellor)
or Peel (Prime Minister) he was asked, 'But, after all, what use is it?'
Faraday replied, 'Why sir, there is the probability that you will soon
be able to tax it.'
When the Prime Minister asked of a new discovery, 'What good is it?',
Faraday replied, 'What good is a new-born baby?'
http://www.ba-education.demon.co.uk/for/science/fltmain.html
The Father of Flight
The world’s first aeroplane was designed and built at Brompton,
England, a village ten miles west of Scarborough. The name of the
man who undertook this task was Sir George Cayley (1773 - 1857)
who lived at Brompton Hall.
George Cayley was born in Scarborough in 1773 and was always
inquisitive. As a teenager he had measured how fast his thumb nail
grew and discovered that it took one hundred days to grow half an
inch (13 mm). He inherited the title of baronet on the death of his
father, together with Brompton Hall and its land. Being a Member of
Parliament and a very busy man did not prevent him from applying his
mind to other problems. He witness the first railway accident and set
about designing a cowcatcher, for locomotives and seat belts for the
passengers. He invented the caterpillar tracks a hundred years before
David Roberts reinvented them, which were eventually used on tanks
and land moving equipment. A gunpowder engine was another of his
experiments.
It was the theory of flight where he really excelled. He observed how
fast crows flapped their wings in an endeavour to discover how to get
lift off the ground and move forward. The consensus of opinion was
that a machine would have to flap its wings to get lift and propulsion.
George Cayley had observed the seagulls and realised they could get
lift by gliding without flapping their wings and that the forward
propulsion was a different problem.
Cayley set about investigating lift scientifically. As controlled
conditions are required to carry out such experiments, due to wind
variance, he chose to carry out these experiments on the staircase at
Brompton Hall. His wife did not altogether approve of his experiments
in the stairwell of the hall so he waited until she went to stay at her
mother’s for the birth of their first baby before starting the tests. So
having these controlled conditions he set about building a machine
that had a whirling arm to simulated the wing of a bird and also
allowed the angle of attack to be varied. He took as his model a
crow’s wing and built a wing one foot square (350mm) and found that
the best angle of attack was an incline of six degrees. So, using the
knowledge that he had gained, he built his first model aircraft which
took the form of a glider. The next step was to make a full size version
that was able to carry a man.
The glider was built in a small stone building attached to the hall that
served as George Cayley’s workshop. The aircraft was a flimsy affair
as the weight had to be kept to a minimum. The wing was made in the
shape of a diamond from linen sheet shaped by cane and held
together with string with a tailplane at the back. Below the wing was
seat with a three wheel undercarriage. The wheels, to be strong but
light, consisted of rims tied to the axle with string and so Cayley had
invented the bicycle wheel.
Now a site was required to fly the glider and Cayley chose Brompton
Dale as it had a slope at its east end, near some trees. It was now
1853 and Cayley was 79 so he volunteered his coachman John
Appleby to be the world’s first test pilot. The pilot sat in the glider and
was pulled with ropes by farm workers down the slope until it flew into
the air. It flew across the dale some two hundred yards (183 m) before
it crashed landed, whereupon the coachman got out and is reputed to
have said, “Sir George I wish to give notice. I was hired to drive, not to
fly.”. John Appleby and Sir George Cayley had made history as the
first men to fly and design a heavier than air machine — the
aeroplane. This was fifty years before the Wright brothers fixed a
propeller to an engine, put it in a glider and flew. © BA Education
http://www.3fsquadronassociation.co.uk
CELEBRATION OF SIR GEORGE CAYLEY (1773-1857)
It is 150 years since Sir George Cayley achieved the first manned-flight
in a fixed wing aircraft. To commemorate this pioneering event a new
replica, of Cayley’s monoplane glider, has been sponsored by Virgin
Atlantic. The Brough Branch of Royal Aeronautical Society has managed
construction of the aircraft with prime reference to Sir George’s
notebooks and papers, preserved in the Royal Aeronautical Society library
at Hamilton Place. As in Sir George’s methodology a model was
successfully flown first. This 1/12 scale model may be seen in the
picture below.
Professor Jim Matthew and Ian Wormald
after the annual RAeS Brough, Cayley lecture
with the 1/12 scale working model for the new Cayley replica.
The 2003 Cayley Flier has taken into account the lessons learnt from
the replica flown in 1974 for Anglia TV. This 1974 replica was faithful
to the perceived original design in layout, material use and construction
methods. However there were a number of issues with respect to the design
and its inherent stability and control characteristics. The 2003 replica
is to be inherently stable and exhibit superior flying characteristics
to both the original perceived design and the 1974 replica. This will
be achieved by the use of modern materials, construction and controls.
The pilot’s seat is to be moved from the original location between forward and aft upright
gondola struts, and repositioned ahead of the forward strut, facing forwards. This will minimise
the ballast required to achieve the correct centre of gravity. (a noticeable problem with the 1974
replica) A conventional 4 point harness is to be provided, and will be anchored directly to the
major structure immediately behind and below the seat.
Controls will be via a conventional two axis control stick: lateral motion will drive the rudder
through a closed loop cable circuit, longitudinal motion will drive the elevators in a similar
manner. Control runs will be routed close to the main structure to minimise tension changes due to
airframe deflections. No rudder pedals will be provided, instead the structure will include static
lateral footrests.
The structure and layout of the wing/sail is considered the heart of the original design as
documented by Sir George Cayley and will be retained as behaviour is perceived to be similar to
an early basic “Rogallo” hang glider. A keel pocket and battens are to be added to control
camber .
All compressive load-bearing structure will be from aluminium alloy tubing, sized to react the
combination of direct compression and bending loads determined by Finite Element analysis.
The sail will be made from aircraft standard “Dacron” material,
utilising
processes and procedures developed in microlight design and manufacture.
The tail will be made in a braced cruxiform arrangement as depicted on the original documentation,
with separate rudder and elevator controlsutilising the vertical and horizontal tail spars as hinge
axes, as seen below.
The under-slung gondola will be constructed largely from 1 inch diameter aluminium alloy tubing,
internally braced with tension wires where needed and will be connected to the wing by an “A”
frame at the front spar and a single post at the aft spar. It will be of a streamline form to reflect Sir
George’s sketch of 1809 showing the planform of a trout as the basis for a “solid of least
resistance” This will be covered with non-structural panels of Dacron material for purely aesthetic
reasons. The low mass of this major element of the design is expected to allow a favourably low
wing loading , approaching the 1lb per sq. ft aimed at by Cayley.
The configuration can be seen in the image below.
As can been seen safety is the driving factor in the design, which will
be tested using the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association’s
Pitch moment test rig. The full size machine will then undergo a series
of towed flight tests, unmanned at first, followed by low speed, low level
manned towed runs. This will lead to the accelerated and controlled
manned gliding descent.
Subject to suitable weather the new replica will fly for the historic
re-enactment, on Saturday 5th July, over the original site of the first
manned-flight at Brompton-by-Sawdon in 1853, this is planned for 12 noon.
Brompton Dale 2003 taken by RPV
The re-enactment, at Brompton-by-Sawdon, eight miles west of Scarborough,
is by kind permission of the farmer, Mr Roger Makin, who now owns the gentle
dale from which man first flew the machine that defined fixed wing
aircraft.
A supporting programme of celebrations, on 5th July, includes a children’s model glider
competition, over the dale itself, sponsored by BAE SYSTEMS Brough. Please bring your own
picnic to enjoy in the Dale or Brompton Hall grounds. During the morning a thousand First Day
Covers (FDC), also sponsored by BAE SYSTEMS Brough, will be delivered from York Elvington
Aerodrome by micro-light, or helicopter if the weather dictates. A limited number of these FDC
will be signed by the Cayley family and appropriate representatives of the great and good. These
historic FDC will be available to buy in the village post office on the day and at Yorkshire Air
Museum and hopefully through other outlets later.
It is planned that the Red Arrows will flypast at a time to be confirmed between 11.00 and 11.20
hrs.
In the Village Hall there will be souvenirs and an exhibition of Cayley memorabilia. Brompton
Hall where Sir George lived and worked will be open. His workshop, where he pioneered
aeronautics, may be viewed from outside.
Recognition of Sir George’s contribution to aeronautics has been
withheld over long. Thus this 150th anniversary is the chance to put matters
right. Proceeds from the 2003 events and promotions will therefore go
towards funding an appropriate monument, in the lovely Georgian village
of Brompton-by-Sawdon. As it is a site of universal significance where
Sir George started his work on aerial navigation and where he designed,
built and tested the first manned aircraft in 1853.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A2265437
The Wright Brothers – Aviators
The Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, were great technological innovators and were the
first to perform a controlled flight with a heavier-than-air plane. They are also the most
famous residents of the very proud city of Dayton, Ohio.
Orville Wright was the younger brother and the youngest boy in the family. He was the
inventor. Orville invented a bread slicer and a crank just for his own use among other things.
He was genuinely interested in invention as well as aviation.
Wilbur was the older, more pessimistic brother. He did not share Orville's enthusiasm
towards invention, but was just as interested and determined in flight. Wilbur still worked
hard and was very capable and inventive.
Early Life
Both brothers travelled a lot in their early years, as their father, Milton Wright was a minister.
They only really settled down in Dayton, Ohio when their father decided to edit a church
newspaper from Dayton. When he was elected Bishop, Milton Wright would take the family to
Idaho, but eventually return them to Dayton.
When they became old enough, the brothers started two businesses. They were printers who
published their own newspaper and they started a bicycle shop to build and repair bicycles.
An Interest in Flight
As children, Orville and Wilbur were very well-educated. Their father supplied them with
plenty of books with a large library. Their mother taught them about invention and machines.
The most significant event on their development, though, was the purchase of a toy. One day,
Milton Wright came home from a Church-related journey and brought the brothers a gift. It
was a helicopter toy.
The toy was designed so that a person could make it fly with only a little palm motion. This
had a profound effect on the brothers and they began to think about flight. They studied
birds and noticed their motion. Leonardo Di Vinci's idea of an ornithopter, which would flap
like a bird in order to attain flight, exposed itself as a very bad idea to them. They realised
that they could achieve flight with a thrusted glide.
They searched their local library and read everything to do with flight. On 30 May 1899,
Wilbur wrote to request information on flight from the American National Museum 1. His
letter read:
Dear Sirs,
I have been interested in the problem of mechanical and human flight ever
since as a boy I constructed a number of bats of various sizes after the style
of Cayley's and Penaud's machines. My observations since have only
convinced me more firmly that human flight is possible and practicable. It is
only a question of knowledge and skill just as in all acrobatic feats. Birds are
the most perfectly trained gymnasts in the world and are specially well
fitted for their work, and it may be that man will never equal them, but no
one who has watched a bird chasing an insect or another bird can doubt that
feats are performed which require three or four times the effort required in
ordinary flight. I believe that simple flight at least is possible to man and
that the experiments and investigations of a large number of independent
workers will result in the accumulation of information and knowledge and
skill which will finally lead to accomplished flight.
The works on the subject to which I have access are Marey's and Jamieson's
books published by Appleton's and various magazines and cyclopaedic
articles. I am about to begin a systematic study of the subject in
preparation for practical work to which I expect to devote what time I can
spare from my regular business. I wish to obtain such papers as the
Smithsonian Institution has published on this subject, and if possible a list
of other works in print in the English language. I am an enthusiast, but not a
crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper
construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already
known and then if possible add my mite to help on the future workers who
will attain final success. I do not know the terms on which you send out your
publications but if you will inform me of the cost I will remit the price.
Yours truly,
Wilbur Wright
As this was a growing interest of the time and dozens were working to invent the aeroplane,
the museum didn't take the request seriously, but sent Wilbur publications and information
anyway. Interestingly, Samuel Langley, who was the Secretary of the museum was doing a
great deal of research before the brothers became interested. He wanted to make a
successful aeroplane himself (but was beaten to it).
The remarkable thing about this research was the brothers' ability to do it accurately and
relatively quickly. They read everything they could and distinguished between what was
factual and what were myths. They did a very thorough job of understanding the theories and
ideas of the past.
Development
The Wrights began developing advanced theories of aeronautics. They started out flying kites
and studying them. The kites worked pretty well, and they kept thinking that If this kite
works, then why wouldn't a kite on a larger scale work? and then built larger-scale kites.
After the brothers had carefully prepared, they designed a glider in 1900. They started with a
glider so that they could tackle the problems in gliding before dealing with the problems of
powered flight. After some frustration, they designed a biplane glider with a wingspan of 20
feet. They began to build it in the back of their bicycle shop. Their sister Katharine assisted
by sewing the canvas required.
Their design called for 18-feet-long spars for the wings. On their travel to Kitty Hawk, they
expected to pick up the spars along the way. Unfortunately, they could only find 16-feet-long
spars and had to add them.
When the Wrights decided to test the gliders, they wanted a secluded, sandy area so that
they wouldn't attract attention and wouldn't be injured if they fell because of the sandy
ground. They consulted the National Weather Service and found Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
to be their ideal place.
So they tested it and ran into a couple of problems. Their first problem was controlling
lateral axis of the aeroplane - the problem of one tip of the wing dipping down while the
other went up. The plane simply wasn't flexible enough to do this.
Wing-Warping
Their contribution to the control of an aeroplane is a very significant invention. They had a
hard time working at attaining control, and were annoyed that they couldn't solve the
problem. One day back in their bicycle shop in Dayton, Orville was speaking with someone
and was absent-mindedly twisting a box for a bicycle tube. This box was flexible and could be
in a position where opposite vertices were one was dipped down and one was sticking up.
Orville stared at this and continued twisting it2. He realised that he could apply this to the
aeroplane. If the wings were flexible enough, they could dip and rise at the control of the
pilot. This was called wing-warping. They tested it with a five-feet-high kite that proved it
was an effective way to control flight.
They secured a patent for it on 22 May, 1906 - this patent is still in effect.
Lift Problem
On their first test, their glider didn't produce as much lift as they expected. One small hope
was that their results were inconclusive because their predictions for the lift were based on a
plane with a longer wingspan.
They were devastated and nearly gave up entirely. With some encouragement, they went
back to their processes and clearly demonstrated that the equations they had to calculate
lift were wrong. Later on in 1901, the brothers realised that they couldn't keep building
machines in Dayton and testing them in Kitty Hawk. So they devised the popular idea of
testing parts in a wind-tunnel.
Their wind-tunnels were much more advanced than others of the time. They were able to
simulate lift and drag conditions with over 80 wings.
Through these experiments, they discovered an error in their calculations. They had still
been using the tables of Otto Lilienthal, and under some examination, they realised that the
'Smeaton Coefficient' (a variable in the formula for lift) was wrong. Also, they developed an
advanced wing shape from their experiments that would be applied in tests later on.
The 1902 Glider
With control problems and lift problems solved, the Wrights decided to test their new
information with a heavier-than-air glider known as the 1902 Glider in Kitty Hawk. It was a
great accomplishment, although the best distance it ever covered was 662 feet. It should
also be noted that the Wrights didn't bother to include the wing-warping system in this design.
They knew it would work, so they didn't bother adding it.
Although it was only a glider, it was a milestone for the brothers and flight in general. Since
it was already a heavier-than-air craft, the only thing that needed to be added was a system
of thrust.
The 1903 Wright Flyer
The 1903 Flyer was the biggest milestone for aviation at the time, and perhaps of all time.
The brothers built their own four-cylinder gasoline engine to the essential design of 1902
Glider and a tester propeller.
By the time the Wrights tested it in Kitty Hawk, they knew that they were making history.
They also knew that their flying machine would work. Nothing had been left to chance. The
parts had been individually tested in the wind tunnels and had proven to be effective.
On the morning of 17 December, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, the brothers were ready. The conditions
were ideal with heavy winds and a clear sky. They flipped a coin to see who would be the
first to fly. Orville won and prepared. About five men were present here, including their
friend and fellow aviation enthusiast Octave Chanute.
At around 10.35am, Wilbur made the first flight. It was a success, lasting about 12 seconds
and measuring 120 feet. It flew forward without losing speed and landed at a spot as high as
where it started from. That day, Orville and Wilbur took turns and flew three times more.
Wilbur made an incredible flight lasting about 59 seconds and measuring 852 feet.
The flyer was damaged in a bad wind gust and the Wrights returned to Dayton, Ohio for most
of 1904.
The 1904 Wright Flyer
The Wrights remained in Dayton to create the Wright Flyer II. It was different in a few minor
ways from its predecessor - the brothers just moved parts around and put in a better motor.
The 1904 Flyer was arguably worse than the first. They had more trouble starting it, turning
it and stopping the turning of it.
Since they weren't returning to Kitty Hawk for a while, they decided to fly in Dayton. After
some search, they decided on a 100-acre plot of land called Huffman Prarie. They set up a
hangar and cut the tall grass. This prarie has been called the world's first airport. There they
conducted some important experiments.
The Wrights wanted to dispel bad rumours in the press about their work. So on 23 May, 1905
the Wrights invited members of the press to see the flight, without bringing cameras. They
couldn't get it started and tried again on 26 May when the members of the press witnessed a
rather short flight, probably because of the light wind in Dayton.
This aeroplane doesn't exist anymore. Most of its parts were used to create the next model.
1905 Wright Flyer
The Wrights couldn't use the 1904 Flyer practically, so they built a new model, which at first
wasn't much more advanced. It had a slightly updated frame but the same engine. Orville
first flew the plane on June 23 1905 and had a terrible crash on 14 July. When they were
rebuilding the craft, they decided to make great changes, including a 40.5 foot wingspan,
and effectively built a new aeroplane.
The changes made a huge difference and would be used as a model for many future designs.
On 5 October, 1905 Orville flew it a remarkable 24 miles in only 34 minutes. This was the
longest flight to date and was longer than all of their previous flights combined. This was the
world's first practical aeroplane. On 9 October, they wrote to the Secretary of War (the
equivalent of modern day Secretary of Defence) offering to sell it.
The Unpleasantness
Not everyone was happy with the Wrights succeeding in these fields. The flight industry in
America tried to minimise the contributions of the Wrights to build their aeroplanes, in the
hopr they could build their own without paying a licence fee. Germany and France didn't
acknowledge the brothers as the inventors and they were able to build the Wright's designs
without paying royalties. The Wrights would never receive any patent money from those
countries.
The reputation of the brothers was tarnished greatly with several others claiming to be the
creators of the real aeroplane. Notably, Samuel Langley rebuilt an aeroplane that had been
accidentally destroyed in launch years before the Wrights. It worked, but the public were
largely unaware that Langley had reconstructed the aeroplane with many design
modifications. The Smithsonian Institute was also involved with this, as Langley used a great
deal of their money to construct his aeroplane when he was the museum's director. They
used their influence to try to trivialise their achievement.
Then a long patent battle with an aviator and aeroplane distributor called Glen Curtiss
ensued. He had made and sold aeroplanes without giving them any royalties. He also set the
air-speed record, making the Wrights look rather unimportant.
When the Wrights were granted a patent for a flying machine in 1906, they finally felt
comfortable displaying their flyers publicly. The Wrights were normally very secretive, even
painting parts of their plane to match the sky so that photographs couldn't be taken to steal
their designs.
Showing the World
In 1908, Wilbur went to France and Orville went to Virginia for a while.
In France, Wilbur flew the 1905 Flyer at Le Mans, France on 8 August. There, he did so
fantastically well that European aviators were belittled. He became a hero in France. That
month, they received medals from the French Aéro-Club.
Orville went to Virginia in order to convince the government of the need for aeroplanes. He
made his first public flight over Fort Meyer on 3 September. He began making great long
flights and took passengers. Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, a person sent to review the
aeroplane, would become his passenger on 17 September. It went well until a propeller split
and Orville crashed violently, nose first. The crash broke Orville's leg and several ribs and
injured his back. It killed Selfridge, making him the first fatality from an aeroplane crash.
Orville's sister Katharine helped him recouperate.
At the time, Orville also wrote several articles for scientific magazines. He sent a famous
article to Century Magazine explaining much of their history with aviation. It is a great
first-hand account of their work and their life leading up to then.
Meanwhile, Wilbur was still in France breaking many flight records. Orville and Katharine
joined him there and then came home to Dayton, Ohio to a celebration in their honour. The
Wrights would then build the 1909 Military Flyer. They sold it for $30,000 on 30 July, 1908.
Near the end of the battles with Curtiss, the Wrights made their first public flight in America.
Wilbur was able to finish a flight in New York Harbour (and around the Statue of Liberty) that
Curtiss wasn't able to even attempt. This signalled that they truly were the kings of flight.
The Aeroplane Business
In 1909, the Wrights started manufacturing and selling aeroplanes regularly. They formed the
Wright Aeroplane Company.
In 1911, a Wright Brothers plane called the Vin Fiz (named for a soft drink) made the first
transcontinental flight trip. It took 84 days (being in the air for 82 hours of the time),
stopping 70 times. It was repaired and reconstructed from so many crashes that the frame of
the aeroplane had barely any of the original materials when it reached California.
The Loose Ends
In 1912, Wilbur, who had undergone a great deal of stress from the patent suits and pilot
fatalities, died from typhoid fever. Katharine, who was very familiar with the business, took
his place in the company.
In 1914, the patent courts finally concluded the case against Curtiss, ruling for the Wright,
but only awarding a small sum of money.
In 1916, Orville sold the company for about $1.5 million. He retired as an inventor in
Oakwood, Ohio, at a house on Hawthorn Hill. He would help to invent several interesting
things, including a guided missile, spit flaps (which slowed an aeroplane in dives) and a
racing aeroplane. He sat on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (or NACA,
which was similar to NASA).
His last big project was fitting the 1905 Wright Flyer for display in Carrilon Park, Dayton. He
envisioned a pit that people could walk around and see all of the inner workings of the craft.
Today, it is still there and in a pit. It is the only aeroplane to have National Landmark Status.
Orville died of a heart attack in 1948 making a repair to his house.
Unit 2 Explorers
Part I Guided Reading
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/REFORM/BEGIN.HTM
The desire to explore the unknown has been a driving force in human history
since the dawn of time. From the earliest documented accounts, ancient
civilizations have explored the earth by sea. Early adventurers were
motivated by religious beliefs, the desire for conquest, the need to
establish trade routes, and hunger for gold. Modern history books begin
the age of exploration with the fourteenth century, but there is evidence
that exploration between Europe and Asia began much earlier. Travel
between Greece and India, for instance, was common in Alexander the
Great's time because his vast empire included territories of both
countries. The Han Dynasty of China and the Roman Empire, likewise, had
regular trade relations and even exchanged a few diplomats.
Early explorers did not sail into the unknown without some idea of their
final destination. Although they were searching for a specific land or
route, they oftentimes were surprised at what they discovered. Sometimes
the country they were seeking was only known in legend or rumor.
The captain of the ship needed funding and manpower and could not get
underway without support from a rich benefactor. Most voyages during the
fourteenth century were made in the name of the royal ruler of a particular
government. The crewmen who signed on to these long and dangerous voyages
were not the most experienced seamen, but large numbers of them were needed
to help man the sails and to allow for attrition due to illness and death.
The ships that the royal leaders provided were not always new, but the
captain took what he was given.
The captain himself was not always an experienced seaman. Desire for
wealth or political favor were often his only motivations for undertaking
dangerous voyages. He could be a merchant, adventurer, soldier, or
gentleman of the court. Of course not all the explorers are sailors. There
are many other kinds of explorers such as those who explored poles, space
etc.
Part II Famous Explorers
1. Admiral Alan Shepard, Jr.: First American in Space
Biography
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/she0bio-1
b. November 18, 1923
d. July 21, 1998
Alan B. Shepard, Jr. was born and raised in East Derry, New Hampshire.
His father was a retired Army officer. Alan grew up on the family farm
and attended East Derry's one-room schoolhouse. As a boy he did odd jobs
at the local airfield to learn about airplanes.
An excellent student, Shepard won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy
at Annapolis. After graduation, Ensign Shepard served on the destroyer
Cogswell during the closing months of World War II. At war's end, he
married Louise Brewer, whom he had met while attending the Naval Academy.
Shepard was so eager to receive his wings and pilot's license that he
studied at a civilian flying school in his spare time while attending naval
flight training at Corpus Christi, Texas and Pensacola, Florida. After
receiving his wings, he served with the 42nd Fighter Squadron for several
tours of duty aboard aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean.
In 1950, Shepard entered the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School in Patuxent,
Maryland. After qualifying as a test pilot, he tested high-altitude
aircraft and in-flight fueling systems, and made some of the first
landings on angled carrier decks. He served as operations officer of the
193rd Fighter Squadron on two tours of the Western Pacific, and as an
instructor at the Navy Test Pilot School. After graduation from the Naval
War College at Newport, Rhode Island in 1958, Alan Shepard became aircraft
readiness officer on the staff of the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic
fleet.
In 1959, the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) invited 110 top test pilots to volunteer for the manned space flight
program. Of the original 110, Shepard was among the seven chosen for
Project Mercury and presented to the public at a press conference on April
8, 1959. The other six were Malcolm (Scott) Carpenter, Leroy Cooper, John
Glenn, Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Walter (Wally) Schirra and Donald (Deke)
Slayton.
These seven were subjected to an unprecedented and grueling training in
the sciences and in physical endurance. Every conceivable situation the
men would encounter in space travel was studied and, when possible,
simulated with training devices.
Of the seven Mercury astronauts, Shepard was chosen for the first American
manned mission into space. On April 15, 1961, only a few weeks before
Shepard's flight, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human
to reach outer space. Gagarin's flight took him into orbit around the
earth.
Shepard's flight, on May 5, was still a history-making event. Whereas
Gagarin had been only a passenger in his vehicle, Shepard was able to
maneuver the Freedom 7 space capsule himself. While the Soviet mission
was veiled in secrecy, Shepard's flight, return from space, splashdown
at sea, and recovery by helicopter to a waiting aircraft carrier were seen
on live television by millions around the world. On his return, Shepard
was honored with parades in Washington, New York and Los Angeles.
In the subsequent Mercury missions of Virgil Grissom and John Glenn, the
U.S. space program would quickly meet and then surpass the achievements
of the Soviet one. Shepard himself moved on to the next stage of the space
program: Project Gemini.
Shepard was scheduled to command the first Gemini mission when he was
diagnosed with an inner ear disturbance affecting his equilibrium. This
disturbance kept him out of space for the next six years. He remained with
NASA as chief of the astronaut office, but could only sit and watch as
younger astronauts of Project Apollo prepared for travel to the moon.
Tragedy struck the space program when a launch pad fire destroyed Apollo
V, taking the lives of three astronauts, including Shepard's Project
Mercury comrade, Gus Grissom.
By 1968, an operation had restored Shepard's equilibrium and he
volunteered for a lunar mission, but Shepard remained earthbound, while
Apollo XI and XII successfully landed men on the moon. Apollo XIII, which
Shepard had hoped to lead himself, was forced to turn back in mid-course.
In 1971, 47 year-old Alan Shepard, the oldest astronaut in the program,
was finally tapped to lead the Apollo XIV mission to the moon.
Millions watched the live color broadcast of the mission, and few who saw
it will ever forget the sight of Shepard and Edgar Mitchell bouncing around
in the low-gravity environment, or of Shepard batting golf balls into the
lunar distance before boarding the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) to return
to the craft orbiting above. Once again, Shepard returned from space to
a hero's welcome. He was promoted to Admiral before finally retiring from
the Navy and from NASA.
The First American Astronaut
http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/shepard_anniversary_010504-2.h
tml
By Andrew Chaikin
Executive Editor, Space and Science
posted: 07:00 am ET
04 May 2001
May 5, 1961. In the predawn darkness, a 59-foot- (18-meter-) tall Redstone
missile stood in the glare of floodlights. Vapor spewed from the rocket's side as
its tanks were pressurized with fuel and supercold liquid oxygen. Not far away,
in a trailer that served as a suiting-up room, Alan Shepard prepared to ride that
rocket. When he emerged, clad in a silvery spacesuit and carrying a portable
ventilator, he paused to look up at the gleaming rocket. Minutes later, he was
squeezing into the tiny cabin of his Mercury spacecraft, which he had
christened Freedom 7. Lying on his back in a formfitting couch, Shepard
watched as technicians sealed the spacecraft's side hatch. "Okay, buster," he
told himself, "you volunteered for this thing."
"This thing" was America's first attempt to put a man in space. With the Cold
War raging, the effort held enormous importance for the United States. Just
weeks earlier, the Soviets had stunned the world by reporting that Yuri Gagarin
had orbited Earth to become the first human in space. The U.S. was behind in
the space race, and nothing mattered more for the nation's prestige than
catching up. But for Shepard himself, the stakes were far more personal.
Making this first flight was a coveted goal for the nation's seven Mercury
astronauts, and Shepard -- by virtue of his piloting skills, his technical abilities,
and his steely determination -- had been given that chance. And although he
would later confess to some nervousness as he waited for launch, he
displayed only remarkable calm. At one point, while technicians debated over
a malfunction that had halted the countdown, Shepard said over the radio, "I'm
cooler than you are. Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?"
Those words, the stuff of folklore, symbolize the courage that Alan Shepard
brought to this extraordinary test flight. In 1961 the idea of a human riding a
rocket into space still seemed like science fiction to some, and downright
foolhardy to others. After all, American rockets had a nasty habit of blowing up.
And even if the Redstone functioned perfectly, there were credible experts who
forecasted that Shepard's body might not withstand the rigors of the launch
and reentry into the atmosphere. Some psychologists claimed that when
Shepard was exposed to weightlessness he might experience a "breakoff
phenomenon," a kind of psychological dislocation from Earth. Shepard was
confident that these dire predictions would not come true; he only wanted a
chance to prove it. And if he had a reputation for self confidence that spilled
over into arrogance, Shepard also had the goods to back it up.
At 9:34 a.m. the Redstone's engine lit, propelling Shepard skyward with 75,000
pounds of thrust. For 142 seconds Shepard endured mounting acceleration
that built to more than six times the force of normal gravity. Ten seconds later,
Freedom 7 separated and continued coasting upward, until it peaked at an
altitude of more than 116 miles (187 kilometers). From that height, looking
through the craft's onboard periscope, Shepard could see the entire state of
Florida and the Bahamas, in one gulp. For five minutes he was weightless,
though he was so tightly strapped in that his only indication was a washer that
floated in front of his helmet. Later, he would describe the sensation as
"painless, just a pleasant ride."
But as Freedom 7 followed its ballistic arc back to Earth, slamming into the
atmosphere, the sensation of gravity returned with punishing force, building to
11 Gs before slacking off again. Shepard waited anxiously for his parachute to
deploy, and when it did -- perfectly -- he knew he was home free. Freedom 7
splashed down in the Atlantic just 15 minutes after rising from the pad at Cape
Canaveral. America's space traveler was home, safe and sound, and Alan
Shepard's name was written into the history books.
And for the U.S. space program, the success of his flight had enormous
implications. John Kennedy saw the enormous public outpouring of
enthusiasm for Shepard's flight and realized the time was right for a bold step
into space. Three weeks later, addressing a joint session of Congress, he
challenged the nation to "land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the
Earth" by the end of the decade.
Ultimately, that commitment pointed the way to Shepard's own future.
Grounded for an inner-ear disorder in 1963, Shepard underwent risky surgery
to correct the problem in 1968. The following year, blessed by the NASA
doctors as once again fit to fly, Shepard was assigned to command the Apollo
14 lunar landing mission. On February 5, 1971, nearly a decade after his
Mercury flight and now 47 years old, Shepard became the fifth human to walk
on the Moon. Known for his lunar golf shot, Shepard died in 1998 after battling
leukemia, at age 74.
2. Meriwether Lewis
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWmerwether.htm
Meriwether Lewis was born in Charlottesville, Virginia on 18th
August, 1774. Lewis received a good education from private
tutors. After the death of his father, his mother remarried, and the
family moved to Georgia. In 1792 Lewis returned home to
manage his mother's estate in Virginia. During this period he
became friends with a neighbouring land owner, Thomas
Jefferson.
In 1794 Lewis joined the militia and later that year helped put
down the Whisky Rebellion. The following year he joined the
army and served under William Clark. He took part in the Ohio
Indian campaign that ended with the Battle of Fallen Timbers on
20th August, 1794, in which 107 white people were killed or
wounded. Transferred to the 1st Infantry he was promoted to the
rank of lieutenant in March 1799.
When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801 he appointed
Lewis as his personal secretary. At this time Jefferson read
about the adventures of Alexander Mackenzie. In his book,
Voyages from Montreal, Mackenzie had described his two
expeditions where he had tried to find a navigable route to the
Pacific Ocean. For the next few months Jefferson and Lewis
discussed the possibility of exploring these unknown lands.
As part of his preparation, Lewis was sent to the University of
Pennsylvania to study botany, natural history, medicine,
mineralogy and celestial navigation. One of his tutors was
Benjamin Rush, who asked Lewis to find out from the Native
Americans about their burial customs, diet, medicines, breast
feeding, bathing, crime and religious practices.
On 18th January, 1803, President Jefferson requested
permission from Congress to explore the vast lands to the west
of the Mississippi. Jefferson claimed that there were "great
supplies of fur and peltry" to be obtained from the Native
Americans living in this area. He argued that the expedition
would provide opportunities for "extending the external
commerce of the United States".
The following month Congress approved the venture that
became known as the Corps of Discovery. Lewis selected
William Clark as his co-commander of the expedition. While the
two men prepared for their journey, Jefferson's emissaries in
Paris were involved in negotiating in Paris for the sale of the
French possessions in America. In April 1803 the two parties
agreed on the terms of the Louisiana Purchase. For the cost of
$15 million, the American government purchased 800,000
square miles between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains.
Lewis and Clark assembled a party of 30 men. The group
included animal hunters, boatmen, carpenters, soldiers and
blacksmiths. They took with them a Native American to serve as
an interpreter. The main source of transport was a 60-foot
keelboat (barge). Lewis and Clark also spent $669 for presents
for those people they met on their journey. This included colored
beads, calico shirts, handkerchiefs, mirrors, bells, needles,
thimbles, ribbons, kettles and brass curtain rings. They also took
dozens of peace medals for the Native Americans. On one side
was a picture of Jefferson and on the other side was two hands
clasped in friendship.
The expedition began when their keelboat left St. Louis on 14th
May 1803. Their main problem during the early weeks was the
attacks from gnats and mosquitoes. In his journal Lewis
complained that they "infest us in such a manner that we can
scarcely exist... they are so numerous that we frequently get
them in our throats as we breath".
It was eleven weeks before the party encountered its first Native
Americans. The Otos responded well to being given gifts but did
not understand the speech made by Lewis that included the
following: "The great chief of the seventeen great nations of
America, impelled by his parental regard for his newly adopted
children on the troubled waters, has sent us out to clear the road.
He has commanded his war chiefs to undertake this long journey.
You are to live in peace with all the white men, for they are his
children; neither wage war against the red men, your neighbours,
for they are equally his children and is bound to protect them. "
On 16th August, a member of the party, Moses Read, deserted.
He was captured and was punished by being forced "to run the
gauntlet four times through the party". A few days later Sergeant
Charles Floyd died after suffering from a severe stomach ache.
At the mouth of the Teton River in South Dakota the party made
contact with the Sioux. They were unimpressed with the gifts
they received and made attempts to stop the party progressing
by raising their bows. Lewis responded by ordering the cannons
to be aimed at the Sioux warriors. At this the Sioux withdrew and
the expedition was allowed to continue.
When the party reached the mouth of the Knife River they
decided to make winter camp among the friendly Mandans. The
men erected a wooden fort. It was well built and the men were
able to survive temperatures of 45 degrees below zero. During
the next five months Lewis had to amputate the frostbitten toes of
several men in his party. Clark and Lewis also spent time
interviewing Mandans about the local terrain. With this
information they were able to produce maps that they felt would
help them find their way to the Pacific Ocean.
Before they left on their next stage of their journey Clark and
Lewis recruited two people living in a neighbouring Minnetaree
village. Toussaint Charbonneau, was a French-Canadian, who
could speak English and various Native American languages.
The other one was Sacajawea, a Shoshoni who had been
captured by the Minnetarees when she was about 11 years old
and later sold Charbonneau as a slave. Sacajawea, although
only 16 years of age was pregnant with Charbonneau's child.
On 7th April, 1805, the Corps of Discovery headed West. A few
weeks later Lewis shot a buffalo. Before he had time to reload he
was attacked by a bear. Lewis later wrote: "It was an open level
plain, not a bush within miles nor a tree within less than three
hundred yards. He pitched at me, open mouthed, and full speed,
I ran about 80 yards and found he gained on me fast, I then ran
into the water the idea struck me to to get into the water to such a
depth that I could stand and he would be obliged to swim... he
declined to combat on such unequal grounds and retreated."
The Lewis and Clark party saw the Rocky Mountains for the first
time on 26th May, 1805. They proceeded up the Missouri they
eventually reached the Great Falls. Lewis recorded that the
torrent was "300 yards wide and at least 80 feet high". It took the
party 24 days to get around the falls. The party was now in
Shoshoni territory and Sacajawea began to recognise landmarks
and helped guide the party to the Columbia River. She was also
able to introduce Lewis and Clark to her brother, Chief
Cameahwait. Although reunited with her family, Sacajawea
decided to continue with her work as a guide to the Corps of
Discovery.
Over the next weeks the party encountered several different
tribes including the Nez Perce, Chinooks and Clatsops. On 7th
December, 1805, the expedition reached the Pacific Ocean. The
men built a fort and remained there until heading east on 23rd
March, 1806. The return journey was marred by an attempt by a
group of Blackfeet to steal rifles. In the fighting that took place
one warrior was killed and another was seriously wounded.
On 23rd September, 1806, the party arrived back at St. Louis.
The 28 month expedition produced a considerable body of data
concerning the topographical features of the county and its
natural resources. They also provided details of animals and
birds that lived in the territory they explored.
After visiting President Thomas Jefferson in Washington in 1806
Lewis was appointed Governor of the Louisiana Territory. Lewis
was unpopular with the people living in the area and in 1809 he
was asked to return to Washington to discuss these problems.
On the night of 11th October, 1809, Lewis stayed at a cabin in
Tennessee. The next morning he was found dead from gunshot
wounds. It was unclear whether he had been murdered or had
committed suicide.
3. Captain Cook: Explorer, Navigator and Maritime Pioneer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/discovery/exploration/captaincook_01.shtml
By Professor Glyn Williams
Captain James Cook is widely renowned as an explorer, pioneering navigator
and preventer of scurvy. Glyn Williams investigates the standards he set
in maritime exploration.
The early years
The three major voyages of discovery of Captain James Cook provided his
European masters with unprecedented information about the Pacific Ocean,
and about those who lived on its islands and shores. His achievements were
the more remarkable because of his humble origins in an agricultural
labouring family, from Marton, North Yorkshire.
'... he intended to go not only 'farther than any man has been before me,
but as far as I think it possible for man to go'.'
Cook first went to sea at the age of 18. He spent ten years working in
the coal trade of the east coast of England - with its shoreline of
treacherous, shifting shoals, uncharted shallows, and difficult harbours.
In 1755 he joined the Royal Navy, and within two years passed his master's
examination to qualify for the navigation and handling of a royal ship.
He gained surveying experience in North American waters during the Seven
Years War - as Britain and France fought for supremacy in North America
- and spent the first years of peace between 1763 and 1767 charting the
fog-shrouded coastline of Newfoundland.
During those years he gained a practical training in mathematics and
astronomy, and steadily accumulated the technical skills needed to make
an effective explorer. The following years were to show that in addition
he possessed those less tangible qualities, of leadership, determination
and ambition, which made him the outstanding explorer of the 18th century.
As he wrote, he intended to go not only 'farther than any man has been
before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go'.
The first Pacific voyage
Cook's first voyage (1768-71) was a collaborative venture under the
auspices of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. The original intention
was to organise a scientific voyage to observe the transit of the planet
Venus from Tahiti, and this was supplemented by instructions to search
for the great southern continent, Terra Australis Incognita, whose
location had intrigued and baffled European navigators and projectors
since the 16th century.
Captain Cook's voyage around New Zealand and the east coast of Australia.
With Lieutenant Cook (as he was at that time) sailed the botanist Joseph
Banks, the astronomer Charles Green, and a small retinue of scientific
assistants and artists. Cook's ship, the Endeavour, was a bluff-bowed Whitby
collier chosen for her strength, shallow draught, and storage capacity.
Although the ship was to change, the type did not; the Resolution of the second
and third voyages was of the same build, and even came from the same
shipyard as the Endeavour, to whose qualities, wrote Cook, 'those on board
owe their Preservation. Hence I was enabled to prosecute Discoveries in those
Seas so much longer than any other Man ever did or could do.'
'... Cook had put more than 5,000 miles of previously unknown coastline
on the map.'
Cook sailed first to Tahiti to carry out those astronomical observations
that were the initial reason for the voyage, before turning south where,
his instructions told him, 'there is reason to imagine that a Continent
or Land of great extent, may be found.' After reaching latitude 40°S,
without sight of land, he sailed west to New Zealand, whose coasts he
charted in a little over six months to show that they were not part of
a southern continent.
From there Cook pointed the Endeavour towards the unexplored eastern parts
of New Holland (the name given by the Dutch to Australia in the 17th
century). Cook sailed north along the shores of present-day New South
Wales and Queensland, charting as he went. After a hair-raising escape
from the dangers of the Great Barrier Reef he reached the northern tip
of Australia at Cape York, where he annexed the east coast on the grounds
that it was terra nullius, no person's land.
He then sailed through the Torres Strait, so settling the dispute as to
whether New Holland and New Guinea were joined. With only one ship Cook
had put more than 5,000 miles of previously unknown coastline on the map.
The twin islands of New Zealand, the east coast of Australia and the Torres
Strait had at last emerged from the mists of uncertainty.
The second Pacific voyage
Cook's second voyage (1772-75) was the logical complement to what had been
explored, and left unexplored, on his first. Again there were scientists
and artists on board, and for the first time chronometers, one of which
was Kendall's copy of John Harrison's famous no. 4 marine chronometer.
This superb instrument kept accurate time throughout the buffeting it
endured on the long voyage, showing that a practical solution to the
problem of determining longitude at sea had been found.
In his three years away, the newly-promoted Captain Cook disposed of the
imagined southern continent, reached closer to the South Pole than any
previous navigator, and touched on many lands - Tahiti and New Zealand
again, and for the first time Easter Island, the Marquesas Islands, Tonga
and the New Hebrides.
'... on his two voyages he had laid down the essentials of the modern map
of the South Pacific.'
Most of these places had been sighted by explorers on earlier expeditions,
so that even by conventional definitions Cook did not 'discover' them for
Europe. His contribution was to bring order to confusion, to replace
vagueness and uncertainty with a scrupulous accuracy. He had, he explained,
put an end to the search for the great southern continent, 'which has at
time ingrossed the attention of some of the Maritime Powers for near two
Centuries past and the Geographers of all ages.' But his achievement was
more than this, for on his two voyages he had laid down the essentials
of the modern map of the South Pacific.
The third Pacific voyage
On his return from his second voyage, Cook found that his fame had spread
beyond naval circles. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and
awarded its Copley Gold Medal, was painted by Nathaniel Dance, dined with
James Boswell, and was described in the House of Lords as 'the first
navigator in Europe'. Brief thoughts of retirement were replaced by a
determination to return to the Pacific. Cook's third and final voyage
(1776-80) had its own logic in that it took him to the North Pacific in
an effort to solve a geographical mystery as old as the southern continent
- the question of the existence of a navigable north west passage.
'... in a single season Cook put the main outline of the coast of north
west America on the maps ...'
As he approached the north west coast of America in 1778, Cook made the
major discovery of the Hawaiian Islands, the northernmost outliers of
Polynesia. He spent that summer in hazardous exploration along the
American coast from Vancouver Island to the Bering Strait, searching in
vain for the wide strait leading to an ice-free Arctic Ocean, as indicated
on the speculative maps of the period.
Although he found no north west passage, in a single season Cook put the
main outline of the coast of north west America on the maps, determined
the shape of Alaska well beyond the Bering Strait, and closed the gap
between the Spanish coastal probes from the south and those of the Russians
from Kamchatka.
Did one of Cook's temper tantrums seal his fate?
It was to be his last achievement, for the following winter he was killed on his
return to the Hawaiian Islands. His death at Kealakekua Bay on 14 February
1779 has remained a source of scholarly controversy. During the weeks after
his arrival Cook seems to have been regarded by the Hawaiians as the god
Lono, bringer of light, peace and plenty, for he had arrived at the time of
makahiki, Lono's festival.
Cook continued to conform to the sacred calendar of the islanders by
sailing away from Hawaii as makahiki came to an end. However, the
Resolution got damaged at sea, so that Cook was forced to return to the
bay to repair his ship out of the correct season, thus making himself a
violator of sacred customs.
It was noted that there was an eerie atmosphere among the islanders
following his return, and Cook's death after an argument on the beach was
predictable if not preordained. Not all accept this interpretation. Some
scholars see Cook's 'deification' as the product of a Western, imperialist
tradition, and they explain his death as being the result of a row caused
by one of his uncontrollable outbursts of temper, which had become
increasingly noticeable during the voyage.
and is supposed to have given a more useful lesson to maritime nations, than all the
discoveries he ever made'.
Consequences
The circumstances of Cook's death were a reminder that one of his tasks
was 'to observe the Genius, Temper, Disposition and Number of the Natives'.
This was easier said than done, for successive migrations across the
Pacific had left societies organised in overlapping layers and groups,
and the strained nature of the contact between Europeans and non-Europeans
made understanding between them all the more difficult.
'... the coming of venereal disease, alcohol and firearms brought a
depressing train of consequences to the islands.'
Cook and his fellow navigators of the period were for the most part humane
and moderate commanders. Even so, the Europeans were intruders, emerging
by the score from their towering vessels, appearing and disappearing
without warning, violating sacred sites. An inescapable tension hung over
the encounters, sometimes dissipated by individual contacts or trade, but
often erupting into violence and death. Although the relationship between
Polynesians and Europeans was not the one-sided affair of some portrayals,
in the longer term the coming of venereal disease, alcohol and firearms
brought a depressing train of consequences to the islands.
Cook set new standards in the extent and accuracy of his surveys, but to
see his voyages simply in terms of geographical knowledge would be to miss
their broader significance. The observations of Cook and his colleagues
played an important role in natural history, astronomy, oceanography,
philology and much else. Above all, the voyages helped to give birth in
the next century to the new disciplines of ethnology and anthropology.
In practical ways, too, Cook set new standards, especially in terms of
health. There were no recorded deaths from scurvy on any of his voyages,
and few from natural causes generally - except during the Endeavour's
disastrous stay at Batavia in 1770, when 30 members of the crew, who had
been remarkably healthy until then, died of fever and dysentery.
Specialists have corrected the popular view that Cook discovered the cure
for scurvy - rather he applied with unusual thoroughness all suggested
remedies. He ensured cleanliness and ventilation in the crew's quarters,
and insisted on an appropriate diet that included cress, sauerkraut, and
a kind of orange extract. Even so, his epitaph in a medical journal claimed
that Cook's success in keeping his crews alive 'added more to his fame,
and is supposed to have given a more useful lesson to maritime nations,
than all the discoveries he ever made'.
4. Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912)
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/Robert%20Falcon%20Scott.ht
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"Scott of the Antarctic" is the most famous of all the Polar explorers. He is best
known for his legendary and fatal attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. His
team succeeded in reaching the pole, though did so a month after the Norwegian
Amundsen and his party. It is less well known that Scott's expeditions were far
ranging and achieved much in the fields of science and exploration beyond the
polar trek that he is best known for.
Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912)
Robert Falcon Scott was born into a reasonably well to do family in Devon, England in
1868. There was a tradition of seafaring on both his mothers and fathers sides of the family
and he first went to sea at the age of 13 years old. He learnt his trade well and progressed
through the ranks of the Royal Navy.
He met by chance a geographer called Clements Markham, while on Naval duty in the West
Indies. Markham was impressed by Scott's intelligence, enthusiasm and charm and wrote "My
final conclusion was that Scott was the destined man to command the Antarctic Expedition".
Scott later met Clements Markham once again. While home on leave in June,
1899; "Chancing one day to be walking down the Buckingham Palace Road, I espied Sir
Clements Markham and accompanied him to his house. That afternoon I learned for the first
time that there was such a thing as a prospective Antarctic Expedition; two days later I wrote
applying to command it". - Scott wrote, in The Voyage of the Discovery,
"I may as well confess that I had no predilection for polar exploration".
After 18 years in the Navy Scott was beginning to feel rather restless and wanted to expand
his horizons. He was chosen as leader of a joint Royal Society and Royal Geographical
Society Antarctic expedition, receiving news of this appointment in 1900. This was to become
the "Discovery Expedition" of 1901 - 1904
The British National Antarctic or Discovery Expedition 1901 - 1904
The ship "Discovery" was built especially for this expedition, a wooden sailing ship
with auxiliary engines. She was 172 feet long, 34 feet wide and was 485 tons unladed. She
left Dundee where she had been built on July 31st 1901 sailing south to Antarctica.
Amongst the crew on this expedition was Ernest Shackleton engaged as third lieutenant in
charge of holds, stores, provisions and deep sea water analysis.
On reaching Antarctica and after some initial explorations along the coast, the Discovery made
its way to McMurdo sound where winter quarters were to be established. Many trips were
made by manhaul and dog sledge parties in the remaining months before winter darkness fell.
Scott and his men engaged on a very steep and uncomfortable learning curve in an
unforgiving environment, a "school of hard knocks" and cold knocks too.
The expedition was made of many "projects" both scientific and exploratory performed by
various combinations of the personnel. The centerpiece of the expedition was an attempt to
reach the South Pole or at least to explore further South than anyone had managed to do
previously. The core party was of Scott, Wilson and Shackleton supported by others who
were to lay food and supply depots for the team to use particularly on the return journey. In this
way the men would only need to carry enough supplies as to last them as long as the next
depot rather than for the whole outward and return journeys.
Though the party had dogs, they were not experienced in using them, the food brought for the
dogs was incorrect and had gone bad. When the dogs began to get lame, and weak through
the rigours of the environment and lack of food, instead of killing them and depoting the meat,
the party pressed on with the dogs running behind as they became too weak to pull the sledge.
In addition to this, Shackleton began to suffer from the effects of scurvy and all of the
men were suffering from a lack of food. Wilson, the doctor suffered from snow
blindness and at one point hauled his sledge blindfolded. They turned back on December
31st 1902 having reached 82°17'S. They had traveled 300 miles farther south than anyone
before them and were only 480 statute miles from the Pole. It took them just over another
month before they reached their base, as Scott put it "We are as near spent as three persons
can be". They had been gone for ninety-three days and had covered 960 statute miles.
The expedition however continued. A support ship the "Morning" had arrived from New
Zealand to bring extra supplies and exchange some of the personnel including Shackleton
who was still recovering from the effects of scurvy. The Morning left again on March 1st 1903
leaving the party to another Antarctic winter and to carry on their scientific and exploratory
work.
The "Morning" returned in 1904 this time accompanied by another ship the "Terra Nova". The
government in England had decided that the Antarctic party might be having too good a time of
it! relieved once a year by a hugely expensive relief ship and wanted them all brought back
whether or not the Discovery had to be abandoned in the process.
For a while it looked like the Discovery might well be abandoned as there was 20 miles of ice
between it and open water. With much hard work, explosives, the wind eventually in the right
direction and finally the two relief ships breaking their way through the remaining ice, the
Discovery was released and all three ships were under way heading back north.
By early 1907 , Scott had made up his mind to lead a second expedition to the Antarctic.
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/Robert%20Falcon%20Scott2.ht
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The Terra Nova Expedition 1910-13
Scott wanted to use the Discovery again for this second expedition, but the admiralty had sold
it to the Hudson's Bay Company some years before, and they refused to sell her back. After
considering several others, Scott purchased the Terra Nova, which had been used for whaling
and sealing since her return from the Discovery expedition.
Raising money for the expedition was a slow and difficult task, volunteer crew by contrast
were applying from all over the world. More than 8,000 men volunteered to join the expedition.
One man who didn't go, though Scott wanted him to was a young lecturer from the University
of Adelaide, Douglas Mawson. Mawson was making his own plans, like many others, he
intended to explore an unmapped stretch of coast and country west of Victoria Land.
The choices for transportation made by Scott were to have profound effects on the final
results of the expedition. He didn't take dogs, perhaps influenced by his experiences on the
Discovery expedition. Instead he had motor sledges which were experimental, since none had
ever been used before, (and motor transport technology was still in its infancy), and ponies.
Ponies had been used before by Shackleton, but not successfully.
Scott planned to use the motor sledges as far as possible, establishing depots along the way.
The ponies would then take over and haul the sledges to the foot of a glacier, the next major
obstacle, when the south pole party would begin to manhaul their sledges.
The journey to Antarctica on the Terra Nova was eventful and losses of ponies, a dog, coal
and other stores occurred during a storm. On December 8th 1910 the first iceberg was spotted
and on the following day, in latitude 65°8'S, the Terra Nova entered the pack ice. The ship
continued to encounter heavy pack ice for the next three weeks, consuming a great deal of
precious coal in the process.
On December 30th Scott wrote, "We are out of the pack at length and at last one breathes
again". On New Year's Day, 1911, Mount Erebus came into view. They attempted to land at
Cape Crozier, where they had planned on setting up winter quarters, but the seas were too
rough. So, McMurdo Sound was their next option. On January 4th 1911, the Terra Nova
anchored to the ice and the unloading began. The ponies were especially happy to finally be
on firm ground as they rolled and kicked in the snow.
The motor sledges began well, they were unloaded and immediately put to work hauling stores
to the new camp. The third and largest sledge however broke through the ice to the sea and
sank in sixty fathoms of water as it was being hauled by twenty men towards the shore.
The hut was erected quickly, it measured fifty feet by twenty-five and was nine feet to the
eaves. It was insulated with quilted seaweed, lined with matchboard, lit by acetylene gas,
provided with a stove and cooking range and divided into two by a partition made of crates
(including the wine) to separate the men's from the officers' quarters. Within two weeks the hut
was built and occupied.
Like the Discovery expedition, again the centerpiece of the expedition was to be to
reach the South Pole, and again this was but one of several projects and exploratory
trips from the base camp. Depot laying parties set out shortly after arrival to leave stores and
provisions. Doubts set in early on about the usefulness of the ponies, as they had problems
with sinking into soft snow.
It was only after arriving at their winter camp and erecting the hut that Scott found out
that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had arrived at the bay of Whales and he too was
planning to reach the South Pole the following summer. Amundsen had more dogs and
better trained dogs, what was more, he and his men were experienced in using them efficiently.
Many of Scott's party were unhappy at the arrival of Amundsen, his arrival was thought to be
an unsporting and previously unannounced attempt at beating Scott and his team to the pole.
The ponies continued to fare badly, two were lost in the sea when they broke through ice.
When they were unable to be retrieved, they fell victim to killer whales. Before the sun went
down for the winter, only 10 ponies were left out of an original 19.
The one sledging journey was undertaken in the winter by a small team of men led by Wilson,
the biologist and including the young Apsley Cherry-Garrard, famously this gave rise to the
acknowledged greatest of all Antarctic adventure and travel books "The Worst Journey
in the World". This was a trip to Cape Crozier in search of eggs from Emperor penguins that
were known to lay and incubate their eggs in the Antarctic winter though none had ever been
returned intact to science. Indeed they had only first been discovered a few years beforehand.
The winter was a very active time for the expedition and a large quantity of scientific data
never before collected was able to be gathered. Though Scott spent much time engaged in
science his thoughts were inevitably also always on the attempt to reach the pole to be carried
out when the weather allowed after the sun had returned.
He decided during the winter on who his companions were to be for the polar journey. The
chosen team was:
Dr. E. A. Wilson known as "Uncle Bill", chief scientist and doctor of the
expedition.
The Journey to the Pole
A party set out first with supplies with the motor sledges while the others with ponies and dogs
followed behind. One machine soon gave out while the other was abandoned shortly
afterwards.
On November 1st 1911, twelve men, each with a pony and sledge, left Cape Evans in
detachments. This included the final party of five that would push on towards the pole.
The other men were not to reach the pole, their role was supportive in helping transport
supplies for the polar party and establishing depots for the polar party to use on the
way back. They would then return to the winter quarters at Hut point.
The distance from the winter quarters at Hut Point to the Pole and back was 1766 statute miles
(further than from New York city to Wyoming, Chicago or Denver). Every step of the way had
to be marched on foot, with or without skis.
They traveled by night for the benefit of the ponies. Temperatures never rose above zero
Fahrenheit (-18°C). Fighting constant snowfalls, the team reached One Ton Camp on the
fifteenth day. There was a constant worry that the ponies would not be able to keep going and
upon reaching Camp 20 on November 24th, the first pony was killed. Four camps later, on
December 1st, the second pony was shot. Depots were made at regular intervals of roughly
seventy miles, each containing food and fuel for a week for the returning parties.
The weather that season was particularly bad, extreme cold interspersed with warmer
than usual blizzards that melted the snow and made everything wet and traveling
impossible. The ponies continued to have a difficult time of it sinking to the level of their
bellies in the soft snow and becoming totally exhausted, they were shot and left behind as a
depot, leaving the remainder of the traveling to manhauling.
Each of the party then began by pulling around 200 pounds through soft snow into which they
sank into nearly up to their knees. They were affected by snow-blindness and sometimes
stumbled into crevasses, sledges and all. On December 13th, the day before Amundsen
reached the Pole, in nine hours the party had advanced less than four miles. On December
20th Scott named the first returning party of four. Scott had dreaded this moment as all had
pulled to the limit of their strength, but were now to be deprived of their reward, attainment of
the South Pole. They reached "home" at Hut point 35 days later on January 26th.
The remaining men made good progress and soon the time came for Scott to make his second
difficult announcement that a further three men were to return to Hut point leaving the final
party of five to continue to the pole. The two parties separated on January 3rd at 87°32'S, at an
altitude of 10,280 feet and 169 miles from the Pole.
Scott and the others followed Shackleton's route, on January 6th they crossed the line of
latitude where Shackleton turned back and were farther south, 88°23'S, as they believed, than
any man had been before. They were now 97 miles from the pole, but this took them ten
days to cover this due to the weather conditions and state of the snow and ice that they
were pulling across.
The men were growing very tired by this point, progress was often made of only five, six
or seven miles a day. Each day was a hard grind and was taking a dreadful toll on the men.
On January 16th they made good progress and thought that they would reach the Pole the
following day. In the afternoon of that day, Bowers spotted something ahead which looked like
a cairn. Half and hour later they realized the black speck was a flag tied to a sledge bearer.
Nearby was the remains of a camp along with tracks made by sledges and dogs.
January the 17th was "....a horrible day..." , a strong headwind and temperatures of -30°C
giving three of them frostbite. Scott's journal records "Great God! This is an awful place and
terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority".
They reached the pole on January 18th to find a small tent supported by a single bamboo
flying a Norwegian flag. Inside was a record of the five who had been the first to reach the
pole;
Roald Amundsen
Hilmer Hanssen
Olav Olavson Bjaaland
Sverre H. Hassel
Oscar Wisting
The return trip started out fairly well but the weather would inevitably become more severe and
there was no incentive of being the first to reach the pole to cheer them and spur them
onwards. Scott wrote on the 21st of January "Oates is feeling the cold and fatigue more than
most of us" and on the 23rd of January "Wilson suddenly discovered Evans nose was
frostbitten - it was white and hard. There is no doubt that Evans is a good deal run down".
The men were becoming tired now and injuries were increasing, Wilson suffered
snow-blindness, Oates had frostbitten feet. Frostbite also affected Evans' fingers and nose.
They had many falls, Scott damaging his shoulder in one. Evans had a bad fall on the 4th of
February suffering concussion - he was never to really recover.
They became lost at one point while descending the Beardmore glacier and had a
nightmarish two days in badly crevassed and broken ice not knowing in which direction
to head and becoming more despondent. They were down to their last meal and unable to
find the food depot until at the last they did so. "It was an immense relief and we were soon in
possession of our three and a half days food. The relief to all is inexpressible.......... Yesterday
was the worst experience of the trip and gave a horrid feeling of insecurity".
February 16th - "Evans has nearly broken down in brain, we think". The next day he
started reasonably well but soon left his sledge traces to walk alongside. He fell further and
further back and was soon out of sight. By lunchtime the others went back to find him. He was
on his knees, clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten and with a "wild look in his
eyes". He was placed onto a sledge and taken to the camp they had set up, he was comatose
by the time he was placed in the tent. He died quietly at 12.30 a.m.
The weather continued to be against them, particularly intense cold down to -40°C and
the surface bad beyond their worst fears. On March 5th Scott records "Oates' feet are in a
wretched condition... The poor soldier is very nearly done." Despite the cold and awful
surfaces Oates kept going attended to by Wilson the doctor, but on March the 16th he
proposed that his companions leave him in his sleeping bag and continue themselves. A
request they could not grant and induced him to join the afternoon march when they made a
few extra miles. He was worse that night and went to sleep hoping not to wake, he did wake
however to find a blizzard blowing. His last words were "I am just going outside and may be
some time." He walked out to his death so that he would no longer be a burden to his friends
who themselves were in worsening physical condition. His feet had been so bad and the
process of putting his boots on so painful that he didn't go through this torture and walked out
to his death in his socks.
The last camp was made on March 19th only 11 miles from the next depot. They woke
on the 20th to another raging blizzard. Scott was suffering badly from a frostbitten foot and
Wilson and Bowers were to go to the depot for fuel. By the 22nd they still had not been able to
set off, the blizzard was as bad as ever. They never left this final camp having run out of food
and fuel, eventually being too weak, cold and hungry to attempt the march.
The tent and the three frozen bodies were not discovered until nearly 8 months later on
November 12th that year. A great cairn of ice was raised over their bodies surmounted by a
cross made from skis, a sledge was stood on one end in a smaller cairn nearby.
A search was made for Captain Oates' body, but it was never found, only his discarded
sleeping bag, cut open for much of the length to enable him to enter it with badly frostbitten
feet.
A cairn was placed at the scene of the search with a note that began "Hereabouts died a very
gallant gentleman...."
Later at hut point a cross was erected to the memory of :
Lieutenant H. R. Bowers
Petty officer Edgar "Taff" Evans
Captain L. E. G. Oates
Captain R. F. Scott
Dr. E. A. Wilson
5. Sir Francis Drake & His Famous Voyage
Biography
http://www.mcn.org/2/oseeler/drake.htm
Typically, Francis Drake's life begins with a mystery - the date of his
birth. 1540 is often mentioned, 1542 has been heard as has been 1538,
and other years pop up here and there. Often the given date is based on
a portrait which itself is dated and which includes the comment that it
shows Drake at a particular age. The only safe conclusion is that he was
born around 1540.
His place of birth was Tavistock, in Devonshire, along the river Tavy
(which eventually empties into the sea near Plymouth). Here his
grandparents held a lease on about 180 acres of farmland and made what
was probably a reasonably secure living as farmers.
Here also Edmund Drake, who became Francis Drake's father, had been born.
Some reports state that he was a sailor, but there are records that
contradict this, and it seems likely that he too made his living from
the land.
Edmund Drake's wife, the mother of Francis, was of the Mylwaye family
but her first name is unknown. The couple had twelve sons; Francis was
the eldest.
Papa Edmund had some difficulties, in part because he, not being an eldest
son himself, did not inherit the bulk of the Tavistock lease. He also
seems to have gotten into some legal trouble, perhaps involving petty
crimes. Additionally, there have long been rumors that protestant Edmund
was the victim of some sort of religious persecution. In any event, when
Francis Drake was still a young boy the family left Tavistock and moved
to Kent, nearer the sea, where they lived in the hulk of an old ship and
where Edmund made a bare living as a preacher to the sailors of the navy.
So, young Francis now was living (and learning) among the ships and seamen
that would become the focus of his life.
Francis Drake first went to sea sometime in the 1550's, as a young boy
apprenticed to the elderly master of a small coastal freighter. He
apparently did well both nautically and personally, because the old
captain, having no family of his own, willed the little ship to Drake.
This marks the beginning of Drake's nautical career, about which this
brief sketch will say no more.
Drake married Mary Newman, about whom little is known, in 1569 when he
was still a young unknown sailor; they had no children and she died twelve
years later, leaving the then-newly knighted Sir Francis Drake a widower.
In 1585 the now-famous and wealthy Drake married Elizabeth Sydenham, some
twenty years his junior, who unlike Mary Newman came from a wealthy and
well-connected family. The couple moved into Drake's recently purchased
estate, Buckland Abbey (which today is still a major monument to his
memory). Again, there were no children.
In 1596 Sir Francis Drake was stricken by a tropical disease - "the bloody
flux" (perhaps yellow fever) - during a less-than-sucessful expedition
against the Spanish in the Caribbean. On January 28, on board his flagship
Defiance, in the pre-dawn hours and after rising from his sickbed
intending to don his armor so that he would die as a soldier, Sir Francis
Drake passed quietly from this world. He was buried at sea off Puerto
Bello, Panama, in a lead coffin.
His Voyage: the Circumnavigation
http://www.mcn.org/2/oseeler/voy.htm
Late in 1577, Francis Drake left England with five ships, ostensibly on
a trading expedition to the Nile. On reaching Africa, the true destination
was revealed to be the Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Magellan, to the
dismay of some of the accompanying gentlemen and sailors. Still in the
eastern Atlantic, a Portuguese merchant ship and its pilot - who was to
stay with Drake for 15 months - was captured, and the fleet crossed the
Atlantic, via the Cape Verde Islands, to a Brazilian landfall.
Running down the Atlantic South American coast, storms, separations,
dissension, and a fatal skirmish with natives marred the journey. Before
leaving the Atlantic, Drake lightened the expedition by disposing of two
unfit ships and one English gentleman, who was tried and executed for
mutiny. After rallying his men and unifying his command with a remarkable
speech, Drake renamed his flagship, previously the Pelican, the Golden
Hind.
In September of 1578, the fleet, now three ships, sailed through the deadly
Strait of Magellan with speed and ease, only to emerge into terrific
Pacific storms. For two months the ships were in mortal danger, unable
to sail clear of the weather or to stay clear of the coast. The ships were
scattered, and the smallest, the Marigold, went down with all hands. The
Elizabeth found herself back in the strait and turned tail for England,
where she arrived safely but in disgrace. Meanwhile, the Golden Hind had
been blown far to the south, where Drake discovered - perhaps - that there
was open water below the South American continent.
The storms abated, and the Golden Hind was finally able to sail north along
the Pacific South American coast, into the previously undisturbed private
waters of King Philip of Spain. The first stop, for food and water, was
at the (now) Chilean Island of Mocha, where the rebellious residents laid
a nearly disastrous ambush, having mistaken the English for their Spanish
oppressors.
After this bad beginning in the Pacific the tide turned, and for the next
five and a half months Drake raided Spanish settlements at will, among
them Valpariso, Lima and Arica, and easily took Spanish ships, including
the rich treasure ship "Cacafuego," leaving panic, chaos, and a confused
pursuit in his wake. During this time, he captured and released a number
of Europeans, whose subsequent testimony survives. The plundering was
remarkable for its restraint; neither the Spanish nor the natives were
intentionally harmed, there was very little violence, and there were very
few casualties. Drake's crew in the Pacific was of unknown number, with
estimates ranging from around sixty to one hundred men.
After stopping to make repairs at an island, Cano, off the coast of
Southern Mexico and after a final raid, on the nearby (now vanished) town
of Guatulco, the Golden Hind, awash with booty, including perhaps
twenty-six tons of silver, sailed out of Spanish waters in April of 1579.
As she left the sight of all Spanish observers, and of the captured
Portuguese pilot who had been set ashore, she was accompanied by a small
captured ship, crewed by Drake's men, which was kept for an unknown time.
Sailing first westerly and then northerly, well off the shore of North
America, the leaking Golden Hind reached a northernmost position
variously reported as between 48 degrees and 42 degrees north latitude,
a range which includes most of Washington, all of Oregon, and a sliver
of California. There, somewhere in the region he named Nova Albion, in
the strangely cold and windy June of 1579, Drake found a harbor reportedly at 48, 44, 38 1/2, or 38 degrees. He stayed in this now lost
harbor for over five weeks, repairing the Golden Hind and enjoying
extensive and peaceful contact with the Indians. Before he left he set
up a monument, in the form of an engraved metal plate, which has never
been found.
After stopping briefly at some nearby islands to fill out his larder, Drake
turned his back to America and sailed into the vast Pacific. The crossing
was uneventful, and landfall was made in sixty eight days, at a location
which, like the Lost Harbor, remains elusive.
The next months were spent puttering about in the Indonesian archipelago,
making promising commercial contacts, local political alliances and
trading for spices - and again entering the sight of witnesses. Difficulty
in finding a route through the thousands of islands nearly ended the
journey in January of 1580, when the Golden Hind ran hard onto a reef in
apparent open water; but after several desperate days a change of wind
brought salvation.
Continuing westward, the Golden Hind crossed the Indian Ocean without
incident, rounded the Cape of Good Hope into the Atlantic, sailed up the
coast of Africa, and arrived triumphantly in England in the fall of 1580,
nearly three years and some 36,000 miles having passed beneath her keel.
Part III Discussion Questions
1. Who discovered America?
2. Make a list of ten attributes that you believe are needed to be an explorer.
3. Select a favorite explorer and create a poster illustrating their discovery,
mode of transportation and costume/dress.
4. Why did Europeans explore the world during the early years?
Unit 3 Inventors
Part I Guided Reading
Consider a modest kitchen. Look at the various appliances, from the huge
self-defrosting refrigerator to the microwave oven that makes frozen burritos
edible. Notice how much easier it is to read the newspaper by electric light.
The television is on in the corner, or the radio on the counter, each expanding
our sense of the world we inhabit.
Now, notice the telephone, which offers personal contact with Bangkok or
Paris or a friend who's "not home right now." Ponder the level, easy-to-clean
Formica counter tops, the disposal, the dishwasher, the toaster, and the
exhaust fan that carries greasy smoke out of the house. Imagine the lines that
carry the hot and cold running water in and the waste water out, and the
network of electrical connections that keeps it all running.
These are among the most basic tools of the 20th century, when the
unprecedented synergy of new scientific and technological discoveries merged
with the profit motive to create a world that would hardly be recognizable to
someone living 100 years ago. It's a world in which we enjoy greater creature
comforts, live longer and healthier lives, and have greater opportunities for
exploration.
The combination of science and technology is a potent one, the essence of
20th century progress. It could be argued that those two forces created the
modern world.
"Look around you, and you'll see that very few of the things that have changed
your material well-being existed before 1900," says Alan Olmstead, a
professor of economics and director of the Institute of Governmental Affairs at
the University of California, Davis.
"It's not just more of the same," he cautions. "There are fundamental
improvements, the result of scientific research and inventions, and they have
very real effects on us."
The list of discoveries or inventions is virtually endless, as is the list of men and
women who followed their hunches and intellects.
Part II Famous Inventors
1. Benjamin and his Inventions
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfranklin_inventions.htm
Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. His
accomplishments as scientist, publisher and statesman are particularly remarkable
when considered in the context of colonial North America, which lacked the cultural
and commercial institutions to nourish original ideas. A spirit of pragmatic
innovation imbued all of Benjamin Franklin's intellectual, social and scientific
pursuits. He dedicated himself to the improvement of everyday life for the widest
number of people and, in so doing, made an indelible mark on the emerging nation.
Ben Franklin initially gained acclaim through his organization of and participation in
the Junto (or the Leather Apron Club), a small group of young men who engaged in
business and debated morality, politics, and philosophy. Through his work with the
club, Ben Franklin is credited with initiating a paid city watch, volunteer fire
department, subscription library (Library Company of Philadelphia), and the
American Philosophical Society, which promoted scientific and intellectual dialogue
and, to this day, is one of the nation's premiere scholarly associations.
Benjamin Franklin's innovations include bifocal glasses and the iron furnace stove,
a small contraption with a sliding door which burns wood on a grate, thus allowing
people to cook food and heat their homes at the same time. Mid-eighteenth century
scientists and inventors considered electricity to be Franklin's most remarkable area
of investigation and discovery. In his famous experiment using a key and a kite
during a thunderstorm, Franklin (working with his son) tested his hypothesis that
lightning bolts are actually powerful electrical currents. This work led to the
invention of the lightning rod which had the dramatic effect of preventing structures
from igniting and burning as the result of being struck by lightning.
Although Ben Franklin had little formal education, he was an avid reader and writer.
At twelve he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer, who published a
weekly magazine called The Spectator. At seventeen Franklin moved to Philadelphia
and quickly opened his own print shop and started publishing.
Recognizing the tyranny and corruption of rule by few, Benjamin Franklin and his
contemporaries George Washington and Thomas Jefferson rejected the European
model of aristocratic rule and crafted a system based on representational
democracy. Franklin was a member of the Continental Congress which crafted the
Articles of Confederation and he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and
the Constitution. These documents elevated the importance of the individual in the
political process, promising the state's protection of citizens' natural, inalienable
rights.
Ben Franklin also played a vital diplomatic role during the American Revolution and
the early national period. In 1776, the Continental Congress sent Franklin and
several others to secure a formal alliance with France, which deeply resented the
loss of territory to the British during the French and Indian War. American victory
over the British in the Battle of Saratoga convinced the French that the Americans
were committed to independence and would be worthy partners in a formal alliance.
During the war, France contributed an estimated twelve thousand soldiers and
thirty-two thousand sailors to the American war effort.
In the last decade of his life, Benjamin Franklin served as a member of the
Constitutional Convention and was elected president of the Pennsylvania Society for
Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Historians have called him the quintessential
American because of his creative pragmatism, scientific innovation, and democratic
spirit.
List of His Inventions
Swim fins, bifocals, a glass armonica, watertight bulkheads for ships, the lightning
rod, an odometer, and the wood stove (called the Franklin stove).
"Of all my inventions, the glass armonica has given me the greatest personal
satisfaction." Benjamin Franklin was inspired to create his own version of the
armonica after listening to a concert of Handel's Water Music which was played on
tuned wine glasses. Benjamin Franklin's armonica, created in 1761, was smaller
than the originals and did not require water tuning. Benjamin Franklin's design used
glasses that were blown in the proper size and thickness which created the proper
pitch without having to be filled with water. The glasses were nested in each other
which made the instrument more compact and playable. The glasses were mounted
on a spindle which was turned by a foot treadle. His armonica won popularity in
England and on the Continent. Beethoven and Mozart composed music for it.
Benjamin Franklin, an avid musician, kept the armonica in the blue room on the
third floor of his house. He enjoyed playing armonica/ harpsicord duets with his
daughter Sally and bringing the armonica to get togethers at his friends' homes.
Franklin Stove
Fireplaces were the main source of heat for homes in the 18th century. Most
fireplaces of the day were very inefficient. They produced a lot of smoke and most
of the heat that was generated went right out the chimney. Sparks in the home were
of great concern because they could cause a fire that would quickly destroy the
homes, which were constructed mainly with wood. Benjamin Franklin developed a
new style of stove with a hoodlike enclosure in the front and an airbox in the rear.
The new stove and reconfiguration of the flues allowed for a more efficient fire, one
that used one quarter as much wood and generated twice as much heat. When
offered a patent for the fireplace's design, Benjamin Franklin turned it down. He did
not want to make a profit. He wanted all people to benefit from his invention.
Lightning Rod
In 1752, Benjamin Franklin conducted his famous kite flying experiments and
proved that lightning is electricity. During the 1700s lightning was a major cause of
fires. Many buildings caught on fire when struck by lightning and kept burning
because they were built mainly of wood.
Benjamin Franklin wanted his experiment to be practical, so he developed the
lightning rod. A tall rod is attached to the outside wall of the house. One end of the
rod points up into the sky; the other end is connected to a cable, which stretches
down the side of the house to the ground. The end of the cable is then buried at least
ten feet underground. The rod attracts the lightning and sends the charge into the
ground, which helps to decrease the amount of fires.
Bifocals
In 1784, Ben Franklin developed bifocal glasses. He was getting old and was having
trouble seeing both up-close and at a distance. Getting tired of switching
between two types of glasses, he devised a way to have both types of lenses fit into
the frame. The distance lens was placed at the top and the the up-close lens was
placed at the bottom.
Gulf Stream
Ben Franklin always wondered why sailing from America to Europe took less time
than going the other way. Finding the answer to this would help to speed travel,
shipments and mail deliveries across the ocean. Franklin was the first scientist to
study and map the Gulf Stream. He measured wind speeds and current depth,
speed and temperature. Ben Franklin described the Gulf Stream as a river of warm
water and mapped it as flowing north from the West Indies, along the East Coast of
North America and east across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.
Daylight Savings
Ben Franklin believed that people should should use daylight productively. He was
one of the greatest supporters of daylight savings time in summer.
2. Life of Thomas Edison
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledisonbiographyPart%202.htm
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio; the seventh and
last child of Samuel and Nancy Edison. When Edison was seven his family moved to
Port Huron, Michigan. Edison lived here until he struck out on his own at the age of
sixteen. Edison had very little formal education as a child, attending school only for
a few months. He was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic by his mother, but was
always a very curious child and taught himself much by reading on his own. This
belief in self-improvement remained throughout his life.
Edison began working at an early age, as most boys did at the time. At thirteen he
took a job as a newsboy, selling newspapers and candy on the local railroad that ran
through Port Huron to Detroit. He seems to have spent much of his free time reading
scientific, and technical books, and also had the opportunity at this time to learn
how to operate a telegraph. By the time he was sixteen, Edison was proficient
enough to work as a telegrapher full time.
The development of the telegraph was the first step in the communication
revolution, and the telegraph industry expanded rapidly in the second half of the
19th century. This rapid growth gave Edison and others like him a chance to travel,
see the country, and gain experience. Edison worked in a number of cities
throughout the United States before arriving in Boston in 1868. Here Edison began
to change his profession from telegrapher to inventor. He received his first patent
on an electric vote recorder, a device intended for use by elected bodies such as
Congress to speed the voting process. This invention was a commercial failure.
Edison resolved that in the future he would only invent things that he was certain
the public would want.
Edison moved to New York City in 1869. He continued to work on inventions related
to the telegraph, and developed his first successful invention, an improved stock
ticker called the "Universal Stock Printer". For this and some related inventions
Edison was paid $40,000. This gave Edison the money he needed to set up his first
small laboratory and manufacturing facility in Newark, New Jersey in 1871. During
the next five years, Edison worked in Newark inventing and manufacturing devices
that greatly improved the speed and efficiency of the telegraph. He also found to
time to get married to Mary Stilwell and start a family.
In 1876 Edison sold all his Newark manufacturing concerns and moved his family
and staff of assistants to the small village of Menlo Park, twenty-five miles
southwest of New York City. Edison established a new facility containing all the
equipment necessary to work on any invention. This research and development
laboratory was the first of its kind anywhere; the model for later, modern facilities
such as Bell Laboratories, this is sometimes considered to be Edison's greatest
invention. Here Edison began to change the world.
The first great invention developed by Edison in Menlo Park was the tin foil
phonograph. The first machine that could record and reproduce sound created a
sensation and brought Edison international fame. Edison toured the country with
the tin foil phonograph, and was invited to the White House to demonstrate it to
President Rutherford B. Hayes in April 1878.
Edison next undertook his greatest challenge, the development of a practical
incandescent, electric light. The idea of electric lighting was not new, and a number
of people had worked on, and even developed forms of electric lighting. But up to
that time, nothing had been developed that was remotely practical for home use.
Edison's eventual achievement was inventing not just an incandescent electric light,
but also an electric lighting system that contained all the elements necessary to
make the incandescent light practical, safe, and economical. After one and a half
years of work, success was achieved when an incandescent lamp with a filament of
carbonized sewing thread burned for thirteen and a half hours. The first public
demonstration of the Edison's incandescent lighting system was in December 1879,
when the Menlo Park laboratory complex was electrically lighted. Edison spent the
next several years creating the electric industry. In September 1882, the first
commercial power station, located on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan, went into
operation providing light and power to customers in a one square mile area; the
electric age had begun.
The success of his electric light brought Edison to new heights of fame and wealth,
as electricity spread around the world. Edison's various electric companies
continued to grow until in 1889 they were brought together to form Edison General
Electric. Despite the use of Edison in the company title however, Edison never
controlled this company. The tremendous amount of capital needed to develop the
incandescent lighting industry had necessitated the involvement of investment
bankers such as J.P. Morgan. When Edison General Electric merged with its leading
competitor Thompson-Houston in 1892, Edison was dropped from the name, and
the company became simply General Electric.
This period of success was marred by the death of Edison's wife Mary in 1884.
Edison's involvement in the business end of the electric industry had caused Edison
to spend less time in Menlo Park. After Mary's death, Edison was there even less,
living instead in New York City with his three children. A year later, while vacationing
at a friends house in New England, Edison met Mina Miller and fell in love. The
couple was married in February 1886 and moved to West Orange, New Jersey where
Edison had purchased an estate, Glenmont, for his bride. Thomas Edison lived here
with Mina until his death.
When Edison moved to West Orange, he was doing experimental work in makeshift
facilities in his electric lamp factory in nearby Harrison, New Jersey. A few months
after his marriage, however, Edison decided to build a new laboratory in West
Orange itself, less than a mile from his home. Edison possessed the both the
resources and experience by this time to build, "the best equipped and largest
laboratory extant and the facilities superior to any other for rapid and cheap
development of an invention ". The new laboratory complex consisting of five
buildings opened in November 1887. A three story main laboratory building
contained a power plant, machine shops, stock rooms, experimental rooms and a
large library. Four smaller one story buildings built perpendicular to the main
building contained a physics lab, chemistry lab, metallurgy lab, pattern shop, and
chemical storage. The large size of the laboratory not only allowed Edison to work
on any sort of project, but also allowed him to work on as many as ten or twenty
projects at once. Facilities were added to the laboratory or modified to meet
Edison's changing needs as he continued to work in this complex until his death in
1931. Over the years, factories to manufacture Edison inventions were built around
the laboratory. The entire laboratory and factory complex eventually covered more
than twenty acres and employed 10,000 people at its peak during World War One
(1914-1918).
After opening the new laboratory, Edison began to work on the phonograph again,
having set the project aside to develop the electric light in the late 1870s. By the
1890s, Edison began to manufacture phonographs for both home, and business use.
Like the electric light, Edison developed everything needed to have a phonograph
work, including records to play, equipment to record the records, and equipment to
manufacture the records and the machines. In the process of making the
phonograph practical, Edison created the recording industry. The development and
improvement of the phonograph was an ongoing project, continuing almost until
Edison's death.
While working on the phonograph, Edison began working on a device that, "does for
the eye what the phonograph does for the ear", this was to become motion pictures.
Edison first demonstrated motion pictures in 1891, and began commercial
production of "movies" two years later in a peculiar looking structure, built on the
laboratory grounds, known as the Black Maria. Like the electric light and
phonograph before it, Edison developed a complete system, developing everything
needed to both film and show motion pictures. Edison's initial work in motion
pictures was pioneering and original. However, many people became interested in
this third new industry Edison created, and worked to further improve on Edison's
early motion picture work. There were therefore many contributors to the swift
development of motion pictures beyond the early work of Edison. By the late 1890s,
a thriving new industry was firmly established, and by 1918 the industry had
become so competitive that Edison got out of the movie business all together.
The success of the phonograph and motion pictures in the 1890s helped offset the
greatest failure of Edison's career. Throughout the decade Edison worked in his
laboratory and in the old iron mines of northwestern New Jersey to develop methods
of mining iron ore to feed the insatiable demand of the Pennsylvania steel mills. To
finance this work, Edison sold all his stock in General Electric. Despite ten years of
work and millions of dollars spent on research and development, Edison was never
able to make the process commercially practical, and lost all the money he had
invested. This would have meant financial ruin had not Edison continued to develop
the phonograph and motion pictures at the same time. As it was, Edison entered the
new century still financially secure and ready to take on another challenge.
Edison's new challenge was to develop a better storage battery for use in electric
vehicles. Edison very much enjoyed automobiles and owned a number of different
types during his life, powered by gasoline, electricity, and steam. Edison thought
that electric propulsion was clearly the best method of powering cars, but realized
that conventional lead-acid storage batteries were inadequate for the job. Edison
began to develop an alkaline battery in 1899. It proved to be Edison's most difficult
project, taking ten years to develop a practical alkaline battery. By the time Edison
introduced his new alkaline battery, the gasoline powered car had so improved that
electric vehicles were becoming increasingly less common, being used mainly as
delivery vehicles in cities. However, the Edison alkaline battery proved useful for
lighting railway cars and signals, maritime buoys, and miners lamps. Unlike iron ore
mining, the heavy investment Edison made over ten years was repaid handsomely,
and the storage battery eventually became Edison's most profitable product.
Further, Edison's work paved the way for the modern alkaline battery.
By 1911, Thomas Edison had built a vast industrial operation in West Orange.
Numerous factories had been built through the years around the original laboratory,
and the staff of the entire complex had grown into the thousands. To better manage
operations, Edison brought all the companies he had started to make his inventions
together into one corporation, Thomas A. Edison Incorporated, with Edison as
president and chairman. Edison was sixty-four by this time and his role with his
company and in life began to change. Edison left more of the daily operations of
both the laboratory and the factories to others. The laboratory itself did less original
experimental work and instead worked more on refining existing Edison products
such as the phonograph. Although Edison continued to file for and receive patents
for new inventions, the days of developing new products that changed lives and
created industries were behind him.
In the 1915, Edison was asked to head the Naval Consulting Board. With the United
States inching closer towards the involvement in World War One, the Naval
Consulting Board was an attempt to organize the talents of the leading scientists
and inventors in the United States for the benefit of the American armed forces.
Edison favored preparedness, and accepted the appointment. The Board did not
make a notable contribution to the final allied victory, but did serve as a precedent
for future successful cooperation between scientists, inventors and the United
States military. During the war, at age seventy, Edison spent several months on
Long Island Sound in a borrowed navy vessel experimenting on techniques for
detecting submarines.
Edison's role in life began to change from inventor and industrialist to cultural icon,
a symbol of American ingenuity, and a real life Horatio Alger story. In 1928, in
recognition of a lifetime of achievement, the United States Congress voted Edison a
special Medal of Honor. In 1929 the nation celebrated the golden jubilee of the
incandescent light. The celebration culminated at a banquet honoring Edison given
by Henry Ford at Greenfield Village, Ford's new American history museum, which
included a complete restoration of the Menlo Park Laboratory. Attendees included
President Herbert Hoover and many of the leading American scientists and
inventors.
The last experimental work of Edison's life was done at the request of Edison's good
friends Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone in the late 1920s. They asked Edison to
find an alternative source of rubber for use in automobile tires. The natural rubber
used for tires up to that time came from the rubber tree, which does not grow in the
United States. Crude rubber had to be imported and was becoming increasingly
expensive. With his customary energy and thoroughness, Edison tested thousands
of different plants to find a suitable substitute, eventually finding a type of
Goldenrod weed that could produce enough rubber to be feasible. Edison was still
working on this at the time of his death.
During the last two years of his life Edison was in increasingly poor health. Edison
spent more time away from the laboratory, working instead at Glenmont. Trips to
the family vacation home in Fort Myers, Florida became longer. Edison was past
eighty and suffering from a number of ailments. In August 1931 Edison collapsed at
Glenmont. Essentially house bound from that point, Edison steadily declined until at
3:21 am on October 18, 1931 the great man died.
3. Alexander Graham Bell (1847 - 1922)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/index.shtml
Bell was born into a family specialising in elocution: both his father and his grandfather were
authorities on the subject, and before long he himself was teaching people how to speak. Largely
family trained and self-taught, in 1863, at the age of 16, he and his brother Melville began
researching the mechanics of speech. Starting with the anatomy of the mouth and throat, they
sacrificed the family cat in order to study the vocal chords in more detail.
In 1864 Bell became a resident master in Elgin's Weston House Academy in
Scotland, where he conducted his first studies in sound and first
conceived the idea of transmitting speech with electricity. His idea was
to make a device that could mimic the human voice and reproduce vowels
and consonants. His father had already spent years classifying vocal
sounds and had developed a shorthand system called Visible Speech, in
which every sound was represented by a symbol, with the intention of
teaching the deaf to speak by putting these sounds together.
The onset of tuberculosis, which killed his two brothers, prompted a
family move to Canada in 1870 so that he could recuperate. After spending
some time in Boston, lecturing and demonstrating the Visible Speech system,
he chose to settle there in 1872. He opened his own school to train teachers
for the deaf, edited his pamphlet Visible Speech Pioneer, and continued
to study and teach, becoming professor of vocal physiology at Boston
University in 1873. The idea of transmitting speech along a wire never
left him, and after considerable research and many false dawns, by 1875
he had come up with a simple receiver that could turn electricity into
sound.
Others were also working to invent such a device, among them an Italian
immigrant to America, Antonio Meucci. He was ready to patent his
'teletrofono' in 1871, but could not raise the sum necessary. The dispute
continues as to who should be credited with the invention of the telephone,
although in 2002 the US Congress made a statement recognising
retrospectively that it was Meucci who was first with the idea - a
statement that continues to provoke argument.
On 6 April 1875, however, it was Bell who was granted the patent for his
multiple telegraph, and he also continued work on his telephone. The final
breakthrough was an accident that occurred while testing a circuit with
one transmitter and two receivers on 2 June 1875. The transmitter was
switched off and Watson was adjusting one of the receivers when Bell heard
a note coming from the receiver in his room. With the transmitter turned
off, the note had to be coming from the other receiver. He had discovered
that the receiver could also work in reverse: instead of making sound when
electricity was sent through it, it also made electricity when supplied
with sound because the sound moved the magnet in the coil and generates
electricity. More importantly, the electricity varied with the voice.
Bell developed his system and submitted his patent on 14 February 1876,
just two hours before Elisha Gray, seemingly his strongest rival. The
patent was granted on 7 March, and was possibly the most valuable patent
ever issued: over 600 law suits followed before a Supreme Court decision
ruled in Bell's favour in 1893. Developments were swift. Within a year
the first telephone exchange was built in Connecticut and within the
decade more than 150,000 people in the US alone owned telephones. The Bell
Telephone Company was created in 1877, with Bell the owner of a third of
the 5,000 shares. Stock in the company soared from $50 to over $1,000 a
share within three years.
Bell was not yet 30 years old. Now a resident of Washington, DC, he
continued his experiments in communication, in medical research, and in
techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. In 1880 France awarded him
with the Volta Prize, worth approximately 50,000 francs (around $10,000),
and he used the money to finance the Volta Laboratory where, in association
with Charles Sumner Tainter, he invented the Graphophone. His share of
the royalties from this invention financed the Volta Bureau and the
Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf.
His soaring stock in the Bell Telephone Company had made him a man of
independent means. In 1885 he acquired land on Cape Breton Island in Nova
Scotia. In surroundings reminiscent of his early years in Scotland, he
established a summer home there, complete with research laboratories.
Here he continued his work with deaf people - including a young Helen
Keller - and continued to invent, although lightning would not strike
again. He made peculiar aircraft with wings based on triangles, he built
the forerunner to the iron lung, and he experimented with sheep. He was
convinced that sheep with extra nipples would give birth to more lambs,
and built a huge village of sheep pens, spending years counting sheep
nipples, before the US State Department announced that extra nipples were
not linked with extra lambs.
In 1898 Bell succeeded his father-in-law as president of the National
Geographic Society. He believed that geography could be taught through
pictures, and so sought to promote a more common understanding of life
in distant lands for the vast majority of people who could not afford to
travel. Gilbert Grosvenor, his future son-in-law, eventually transformed
a modest pamphlet into the groundbreaking National Geographic Magazine
- an educational journal that today reaches millions worldwide.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/bellinvent.html
Alexander Graham Bell as Inventor and Scientist
In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
In 1877, he formed the Bell Telephone Company, and in the same year married
Mabel Hubbard and embarked on a yearlong honeymoon in Europe.
Bell might easily have been content with the success of his invention.
His many laboratory notebooks demonstrate, however, that he was driven
by a genuine and rare intellectual curiosity that kept him regularly
searching, striving, and wanting always to learn and to create. He would
continue to test out new ideas through a long and productive life. He would
explore the realm of communications as well as engage in a great variety
of scientific activities involving kites, airplanes, tetrahedral
structures, sheep-breeding, artificial respiration, desalinization and
water distillation, and hydrofoils.
With the enormous technical and later financial success of his telephone
invention, Bell's future was secure, and he was able to arrange his life
so that he could devote himself to his scientific interests. Toward this
end, in 1881, he used the $10,000 award for winning France's Volta Prize
to set up the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. A believer in scientific
teamwork, Bell worked with two associates, his cousin Chichester Bell and
Charles Sumner Tainter, at the Volta Laboratory. Their experiments soon
produced such major improvements in Thomas Edison's phonograph that it
became commercially viable. After 1885, when he first visited Nova Scotia,
Bell set up another laboratory there at his estate, Beinn Bhreagh
(pronounced Ben Vreeah), near Baddeck, where he would assemble other teams
of bright young engineers to pursue new and exciting ideas.
Among one of his first innovations after the telephone was the
"photophone," a device that enabled sound to be transmitted on a beam of
light. Bell and his assistant, Charles Sumner Tainter, developed the
photophone using a sensitive selenium crystal and a mirror that would
vibrate in response to a sound. In 1881, they successfully sent a
photophone message over 200 yards from one building to another. Bell
regarded the photophone as "the greatest invention I have ever made;
greater than the telephone." Bell's invention reveals the principle upon
which today's laser and fiber optic communication systems are founded,
though it would take the development of several modern technologies to
realize it fully.
Over the years, Bell's curiosity would lead him to speculate on the nature
of heredity, first among the deaf and later with sheep born with genetic
irregularities. His sheep-breeding experiments at Beinn Bhreagh sought
to increase the numbers of twin and triplet births. Bell was also willing
to attempt inventing under the pressure of daily events, and in 1881 he
hastily constructed an electromagnetic device called an induction balance
to try and locate a bullet lodged in President Garfield after an assassin
had shot him. He later improved this and produced a device called a
telephone probe, which would make a telephone receiver click when it
touched metal. That same year, Bell's newborn son, Edward, died from
respiratory problems, and Bell responded to that tragedy by designing a
metal vacuum jacket that would facilitate breathing. This apparatus was
a forerunner of the iron lung used in the 1950s to aid polio victims. In
addition to inventing the audiometer to detect minor hearing problems and
conducting experiments with what today are called energy recycling and
alternative fuels, Bell also worked on methods of removing salt from
seawater.
However, these interests may be considered minor activities compared to
the time and effort he put into the challenge of flight. By the 1890s,
Bell had begun experimenting with propellers and kites. His work led him
to apply the concept of the tetrahedron (a solid figure with four
triangular faces) to kite design as well as to create a new form of
architecture. In 1907, four years after the Wright Brothers first flew
at Kitty Hawk, Bell formed the Aerial Experiment Association with Glenn
Curtiss, William "Casey" Baldwin, Thomas Selfridge, and J.A.D. McCurdy,
four young engineers whose common goal was to create airborne vehicles.
By 1909, the group had produced four powered aircraft, the best of which,
the Silver Dart, made the first successful powered flight in Canada on
February 23, 1909. Bell spent the last decade of his life improving
hydrofoil designs, and in 1919 he and Casey Baldwin built a hydrofoil that
set a world water-speed record that was not broken until 1963. Months
before he died, Bell told a reporter, "There cannot be mental atrophy in
any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and
to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things."
4. Nikola Tesla's Rise To Fame in the 19th Century
http://physics.about.com/cs/physicists/a/tesla1.htm
Tesla, Nikola (b 1856, Austro-Hungary, d. 1943, New York)
1856: Birth of Tesla during the night between the 9th and 10th of July in Croatia. His
father Milutin (?-1879) was an Orthodox priest. His mother Djouka (?-1892),
although illiterate, reportedly invented many small devices for household chores.
Perhaps she is the source of Tesla’s future inventing skill. He also had an older
brother, Dane (1849-1861).
1861: At the age of five, Tesla built a “toothless” waterwheel. Much later in his life,
Tesla would develop a similar design into a bladeless turbine.
1861: Death of Dane. In his early life, Nikola was often overshadowed by Dane, first
by the family’s belief that Dane was the smarter child, and then by his early death.
1862-1866: Tesla attended elementary school in Gospic, Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1866-1877: Tesla attended Real Gymnasium in Gospic
1870-1873: Tesla attended Gimnazija Karlovac, Rakovac, Croatia
1874: Recovering from sickness, Tesla spent a great deal of time reading. He later
recounted this in “My Inventions”
1875-1878: Tesla attended Graz Polytechnic Institute, studying electrical
engineering. To impress his parents and to dispel the shadow of his brother, Tesla
worked at his studies constantly, usually putting in twenty hour days at his books.
It was around this time that he started to think about power generation and
transmission. Tesla saw that alternating current (AC) had many features that make
it far more desirable than direct current (DC).
Why AC is better than DC
DC systems suffered badly from rapid power loss in the wires that carry it, due to
their resistance, which dissipates energy as heat. DC power stations had useful
ranges of about two kilometers – meaning every neighborhood would have to
posses its own noisy, dirty expensive power station!
In order to be efficient, it is necessary to modify the electricity several times once it
is generated.
Firstly, in order to generate it with out the risk of sparks and short circuits in the
generator itself (which would waste the power generated) it needs to be generated
with low voltages. Then, in order to avoid the serious heating effects, present at
high current, it needs to be transmitted at the lowest current practical, finally for the
safety of the user, the voltage needed to be low in the home. However, once DC
power was generated, it could not be modified in any useful way.
Power distribution systems based on AC did not suffer from these flaws of DC due to
the fact that AC could be transformed. In 1831, Faraday invented the electrical
transformer, a device consisting essentially of two (noncontacting) coils of wire. An
alternating current input to one loop (known as the primary coil) would generate a
current in the secondary loop. The oscillating charges in the primary create an
oscillating magnetic field that causes the electrons in the secondary to oscillate too
– leading to the secondary current.
The ratio of the voltages in the primary and the secondary was equal to the ratio of
the number of loops in the coils. This allows AC voltages to be “stepped” up or down
at will, allowing you to generate any voltage you like. DC with its constant flow of
electrons does not set up an oscillating magnetic field, so it generates no voltage in
the secondary. Of course, being able to generate high voltages is limited by
conservation of energy – as the power carried by the current is equal to the voltage
times the current, the current in the secondary is related to the primary by the
inverse ratio.
Far from being a drawback, the drop in current upon transformation upwards of the
voltage allowed the heating effects to be circumvented. With AC, you can generate
power at low, safe voltages (and high current) with in the plant, then use
transformers to step the voltage up by factors of 100 or 1000, reducing the current
by similar factors. As the power loss rate is proportional to the square of the current,
this can reduce the power loss by a factor of up to one million! Then, using the
mirror image of our first transformer, we can bring the voltage back down (and the
current back up) to the generator values (less the small losses) – or what ever
values are considered appropriate for the market, usually 100-200 V in most parts
of the world.
Despite all these advantages, Tesla’s professors were unenthusiastic about
implementing an AC system – among many technical challenges that had prevented
any success in the past were the violent vibrations the constantly reversing current
caused. Tesla, undaunted continued to pursue a solution.
1878: Tesla returned home after his father suffered a stroke. His father died not
long afterwards. With his degree little more than half completed, Tesla was left
without support and forced to abandon his studies.
1880: Tesla audited classes at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague. He
reportedly supports himself playing pool, regularly winning despite giving his
opponents an almost insurmountable head start.
1881: Tesla, hearing rumors of a planned telephone system in Budapest, traveled to
the capital only to discover that the planned system is still only a plan. In order to
support himself until the system came to fruition, he took on a series of underpaid
jobs.
Budapest and Tesla's AC Epiphany
The stresses of his situation, on top of his earlier difficulties lead to a complete
mental collapse. Tesla became hypersensitive, sensitive to the slightest noise or
light to the point of pain. Only his “powerful desire to live and continue the work”
(Tesla) on AC permitted his recovery.
Tesla recovered from his collapse, but he was forever stricken with various
obsessive compulsions. He required that any time he had to repeat his actions the
number of repetitions had to be an exact multiple of three. He also felt compelled to
measure his food and calculate its exact volume before he ate any of it.
It was on a walk with his assistant Antal Szigety in Budapest’s Varosliget city park
that he was inspired with the solution to the AC vibration problem.
Old designs for motors consisted of a single current loop. As the AC voltage swapped
back and forth, this would generate a magnetic field that would switch direction
back and forth each cycle. As the direction changed, a magnet attached to the drive
shaft of the engine within the coils would flip over, aligning itself with the field.
However, if it was stationary originally, the flipping would happen at irregular times
and not always in the same direction. You could overcome this for a while by
supplying some energy to start the magnet rotating in the correct sense, with the
correct frequency at first, but as this energy was dissipated, the irregularity would
resurface.
Tesla’s AC motor design consisted of two coils of wire, positioned at right angles to
each other. If the AC current was supplied to the two coils such that the current in
one was one quarter of a cycle ahead of the other, the current would create a
magnetic field that, instead of flipping, would rotate around. This field exerts a
constant torque on a permanent magnet, spinning the driveshaft smoothly. By
having the two loops, the engine would rotate smoothly rather than vibrating.
By reversing the system, and driving the permanent magnet with the force
generated by, for example, steam, a current would flow in the coils - for AC, the
generator and Motor are the reverse of one another.
1882: Realizing there was no-one in Budapest able to help him develop his new
power system, Tesla took a job with the Continental Edison Company in Paris.
Quickly recognized as an excellent engineer, he was designated the corporations
“fix-it guy”. Tesla rapidly solved many of the company’s most difficult challenges.
While working on the lighting system at the Strasbourg Rail Station, he constructed
his prototype AC motor and generator. In typical Tesla style, at no point did he use
any detailed engineering drawings in the design or construction, yet the model
worked first time!
Once his work on the railway station was finished, Tesla was denied the bonus he
had earned for the task. He had also failed to raise the interest of Parisian investors
in his AC power models, so he packed his bags and spent his entire savings on a
ticket for New York
1884: Tesla landed in New York with a grand total of 4 cents and a book of poetry to
his name.
Edison "Westinghouses" an Axe Murderer!
Tesla immediately went to work for Thomas Edison. Edison, not very interested in
Tesla’s AC plans, recognized his troubleshooting skills and put him to work on
improving the DC generators that Edison’s DC power distribution network required.
Much like his college days, Tesla launched himself into his work, typically in the lab
from 10:30 in the morning to 5:30 the following morning!
Soon Edison, who Tesla idolized, presented him with a challenge – if he could
improve the efficiency of his DC dynamos by 25%, Edison would pay him a bonus of
$50000. Before the two month deadline was past, Tesla had more than succeeded
– the dynamos were now 50% more efficient! Sadly, Edison’s tightfisted nature won
out and he refused to pay Tesla his promised bonus. In disgust Tesla quit, his hero
worship vanishing.
1885: Tesla formed the Electric Light & Manufacturing Company with a group of
investors to capitalize on an arc light design of his. Unfortunately, in his business
naiveté Tesla allowed himself to be quickly swindled out of the company by his
former partners and over the winter of 1886-1887 he supported himself by digging
ditches for only a few dollars a day.
1887: Finding more trustworthy partners in the form of April, Peck and Brown, Tesla
founded the Tesla Electric Co. Once more in the laboratory, Tesla returns to the
problem of AC motors and generators, and soon files the first of many patents.
1888: He demonstrated his working electric dynamo in a lecture given to the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Westinghouse heard about this lecture
and met with Tesla, buying the rights to all of his patents. Although Tesla made over
$100000 over the course of this deal, he made another serious error in allowing
Westinghouse to back out of a lucrative clause in the contract that would have
guaranteed him $2.50 for every horsepower of generator Westinghouse built.
1890’s: Edison, seeking to discredit AC power, to the benefit of his DC power system,
employed an engineer, named Harold Brown to tour the country. In the guise of
“Professor Brown”, Brown set up his traveling show at fairs markets and in town
commons. His show consisted of the electrocution of animals with both AC and DC.
At certain frequencies, even low power AC confuses the electrical impulses in the
heart, killing the subject quickly, whereas low power DC simply gives mild burns and
stuns. Brown went so far as to conduct the first execution by electrocution – Axe
Murderer William Kemmler of New York was “Westinghoused” – with a
Westinghouse generator secretly acquired by Edison – in a particularly inhumane
manner. The electrocution was not instantaneous, and Kemmler was slowly cooked
by the current. In actuality, the 60Hz frequency Tesla implemented in the United
States is does not affect the heart as strongly as other frequencies, such as the 50Hz
standard inexplicably adopted by Australia.
Tesla's Greatest Triumph and His Descent Begins
At the same time, Tesla and Westinghouse were making their own PR strides that
nullified the efforts of Edison. Westinghouse won the contract to light the Chicago
Exposition. President Cleveland himself threw the switch that lit the 100000 lamps
in the “City of Light”
During this time, Tesla also worked on frequency conversion, a necessary
technology to mesh the Westinghouse transformers with his own 60Hz Technology.
To conduct this, he created the Tesla Coil, which could generate meter long sparks.
Tesla dispelled many of the fears of danger from AC, reportedly by demonstrating
how he could run his power through his body, or shoot bolts into the crowd at
demonstrations, with no harm.
1896: Tesla and Westinghouse built the first hydroelectric power station at Niagara
Falls, powering the city of Buffalo with AC power, sealing the future of electricity. AC
power rapidly became the world standard.
1890’s Tesla began to research high frequency current, leading him to experiments
with what were then referred to as “Hertzian Waves” – radio waves. Using the Tesla
coil, Tesla generated large fields at high frequencies. Using the Hertzian waves
generated by this, Tesla lit light bulbs held in his hands and controlled a radio
powered boat with an apparatus he patented. It is not generally believed that Tesla
at this point was considering using radio waves to communicate in the style Marconi
was only a few years away from demonstrating.
Sadly for Tesla, in 1895, his lab burnt to the ground, setting him back several years.
Later that year, Marconi demonstrated in London his radio, using technology that
identical to that developed by Tesla. Even though Tesla’s papers had been published
in many places and languages, Marconi maintained that he had never seen them
and his work was original. For the next few years, both Tesla and Marconi worked on
improving their respective systems, but Marconi pulled ahead due to his superior
effort at attracting investment.
Tesla had achieved his greatest successes, but now a combination of bad luck, poor
planning and mistaken ideas would lead to a fall as spectacular and almost as
meteoric as his rise.
5. James Watt
http://jquarter.members.beeb.net/morejwatt.htm
James Watt was born in Greenock on the Clyde in 1736, the son of a ship's chandler.
A delicate child, he was taught for some years by his mother, but later learnt Latin,
Greek and maths at grammar school. His father set him up in his workshop with his
own bench and tools, and there the young James made models and became familiar
with ships' instruments.
Deciding he wanted to be a maker of scientific instruments, in 1755 he took up an
apprenticeship in London. Within a year ill-health forced him to return to Glasgow,
but already he had learnt enough to get a job making instruments at Glasgow
University. He didn't confine himself to scientific instruments either, making violas,
guitars, fiddles, flutes and organs as well. He appears to have been a very good maker
of instruments, both scientific and musical.
In 1763 he was asked by one John Anderson to repair a steam engine. This engine
was of an early type known as a Newcomen engine and it struck James Watt that it
was very inefficient. At each cycle of the engine steam was admitted to the cylinder.
The pressure of the steam pushed the piston along the cylinder. Then, to allow the
piston to return, the cylinder was cooled by admitting water, thus causing the steam to
condense. A vast amount of heat was consequently wasted in repeatedly heating and
then cooling the cylinder at each cycle, and Watt realised that the efficiency of the
machine could be greatly improved by having a separate, but linked, condenser. That
way the cylinder could stay hot, whilst the condenser would remain cool. This
invention of Watt's saved between two-thirds and three-quarters of the coal consumed
by the older type of engine.
It was at this point that James Watt's connections with Birmingham began. He had
met with Dr James Roebuck, a friend of Matthew Boulton and a Birmingham doctor,
who had founded the Carron Ironworks near Stirling. Roebuck also owned a coalmine
at Bo'ness which needed dewatering. James Watt needed finance to develop his
invention. Roebuck needed Watt's engine to pump water from his mine, and agreed to
provide the finance.
It was while working on the development of his engine that James Watt first visited
Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory, in March 1767. Boulton being away, Watt was
shown round by William Small. He first met Matthew Boulton on his second visit to
Soho in 1768, when he called in on the way back from London, where he had sworn
his famous patent, which was for 14 years, on 9th August. The two men took an
immediate liking for one another, Boulton recognising that Watt's diffidence
concealed a keen intelligence in need of encouragement, whilst Watt marvelled at the
organisation, skill and ingenuity displayed at Soho and the beautiful work done there.
In the end he stayed a fortnight, meeting several people besides Matthew Boulton who
were destined to become lifelong friends. Fully realising the significance of Watt's
invention, Boulton expressed a wish to be involved in manufacturing it, but since he
had a two-thirds share in the patent Roebuck had to be consulted, and when he offered
Matthew Boulton a licence covering only the Midland counties it was firmly declined,
on the grounds that the investment needed to establish proper manufacturing facilities
with the equipment needed to produce engines accurately and efficiently, could not be
recouped from so small a market.
This was to prove a severe setback to James Watt, who learnt the hard way that it was
one thing to make a brilliant invention, and an altogether different thing to make a
practical reality of it. He had no engineering expertise himself, and Roebuck's men
lacked the skills needed to produce a steam-tight, efficient engine. One by one, his
fourteen precious years slipped away and he became increasingly disillusioned and
frustrated. He was forced to take work as a canal surveyor in order to support his
family. Then, in 1773, James Watt suffered a double blow. His wife died in childbirth
and Roebuck went bankrupt. These reverses brought him to his lowest ebb (see
right-hand panel).
At this point Matthew Boulton was able to use his position as a major creditor of
Roebuck's to secure for himself Roebuck's share of Watt's patent. As we have seen,
Boulton and Watt had been friends for some time and, seeing no future for himself in
his native land, on 17th May 1774, aged 38, James Watt left Scotland for Birmingham,
where he would spend the remaining 45 years of his life. The most famous
partnership of the Industrial Revolution, that of Boulton & Watt, was about to begin.
It is a testament to the strength of the mutual trust that existed between the two men
that they seem never to have bothered to execute a deed of partnership, finding it
adequate - and rightly so, as things turned out - to run this large and historic business
purely on the basis of a gentleman's agreement.
He may have left Scotland a disheartened man, but what a difference three weeks can
make! His engine had been dismantled and sent on before him, and when he arrived in
Birmingham he found that Matthew Boulton and his men, having achieved more in
weeks than had been done in years in Scotland, had solved the problems that had
dogged him for so long, and already had the machine working very successfully. By
1776 the first two of the new engines were sold and at work, and very importantly,
with Matthew Boulton's advice Watt had obtained a private Act of Parliament
extending his patent to the end of the century.
The next years were a time of prolific invention and research. At Matthew Boulton's
urging, in 1781 he patented five methods of converting the reciprocating motion of a
steam engine's piston into continuous rotary motion, which was ideal for powering all
manner of industrial processes. The most widely applied of these methods was the
so-called sun and planet gear. In 1782 he patented the double-acting steam engine, in
which steam is admitted alternately at either end of the cylinder. In 1784 he patented
the parallel motion, an arrangement of connected rods which he described as 'one of
the most ingenious, simple pieces of mechanism I have contrived'. Then, in 1788,
again at Matthew Boulton's urging, he designed the centrifugal governor for
controlling the speed of an engine. Putting his expertise in instrument making to
good use, he also invented a gauge for measuring steam pressure and a rev counter.
But the steam engine did not absorb all his energies by any means. As a member of
the Lunar Society his skills were invaluable to his fellow members. He helped Joseph
Priestley with his investigations into gases; he experimented on the strength of
materials, a subject of acute interest to his manufacturer friends. He further developed
accurate means of measuring dimensions, furnace temperatures and the like, again
vital to the advancement of manufacturing processes. In 1780 he had patented what
was probably the earliest form of copier, a press-copier which he marketed through
his own company, James Watt & Co. The process involved writing with ink mixed
with gum arabic. When a sheet of damp tissue paper was pressed against the
manuscript, some of the ink stuck to it, creating a mirror image of the original on the
tissue paper. By turning the copy over it could then be read through the tissue paper.
Upon the expiry of his steam engine patent in 1800, Watt retired from the Boulton &
Watt business, by then a wealthy man. He had remarried in 1776 and settled into a life
of tranquil domesticity. He bought a second home at Doldowlod in Radnorshire, and
got Samuel Wyatt, who had rebuilt Matthew Boulton's Soho House, to build him a
'handsome mansion' called Heathfield in Handsworth, Birmingham, to which he
moved from his home at Harper's Hill in the Jewellery Quarter. At Heathfield he
installed a workshop in a garret and added a forge where he continued to research and
invent. In his 80th year he embarked on what was to be his last invention, a machine
for making copies of sculptures. He was still working on this machine in his garret at
the time of his death in 1819, aged 83. Scandalously, Heathfield was knocked down
in 1927 (how could they have allowed that to happen?).
In 1785 James Watt was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also honoured
by Glasgow University and the French Academy of Sciences, but declined a
baronetcy which was offered to him. He is buried alongside his associates, Matthew
Boulton and William Murdock, in St Mary's Church, Handsworth, Birmingham.
6. The Chip that Jack Kilby Built Changed the World
http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/kilbyctr/jackbuilt.shtml
It was a relatively simple device that Jack Kilby showed to a handful of co-workers
gathered in TI's semiconductor lab more than 40 years ago -- only a transistor and
other components on a slice of germanium. Little did this group of onlookers know,
but Kilby's invention, 7/16-by-1/16-inches in size and called an integrated circuit, was
about to revolutionize the electronics industry.
The Answer to a Problem
It was in a relatively deserted laboratory at TI's brand new Semiconductor Building
where Jack Kilby first hit on the idea of the integrated circuit. In July 1958, when
most employees left for the traditional two-week vacation period, Kilby -- as a new
employee with no vacation -- stayed to man the shop.
What caused Kilby to think along the lines that eventually resulted in the integrated
circuit? Like many inventors, he set out to solve a problem. In this case, the problem
was called "the tyranny of numbers."
For almost 50 years after the turn of the 20th century, the electronics industry had
been dominated by vacuum tube technology. But vacuum tubes had inherent
limitations. They were fragile, bulky, unreliable, power hungry, and produced
considerable heat.
It wasn't until 1947, with the invention of the transistor by Bell Telephone
Laboratories, that the vacuum tube problem was solved. Transistors were miniscule in
comparison, more reliable, longer lasting, produced less heat, and consumed less
power. The transistor stimulated engineers to design ever more complex electronic
circuits and equipment containing hundreds or thousands of discrete components such
as transistors, diodes, rectifiers and capacitors. But the problem was that these
components still had to be interconnected to form electronic circuits, and
hand-soldering thousands of components to thousands of bits of wire was expensive
and time-consuming. It was also unreliable; every soldered joint was a potential
source of trouble. The challenge was to find cost-effective, reliable ways of producing
these components and interconnecting them.
One stab at a solution was the Micro-Module program, sponsored by the U.S. Army
Signal Corps. The idea was to make all the components a uniform size and shape,
with the wiring built into the components. The modules then could be snapped
together to make circuits, eliminating the need for wiring the connections.
Enter Kilby
TI was working on the Micro-Module program when Kilby joined the company in
1958. Because of his work with Centralab in Milwaukee, Kilby was familiar with the
"tyranny of numbers" problem facing the industry. But he didn't think the
Micro-Module was the answer — it didn't address the basic problem of large
quantities of components in elaborate circuits.
So Kilby began searching for an alternative, and in the process decided the only thing
a semiconductor house could make cost effectively was a semiconductor. "Further
thought led me to the conclusion that semiconductors were all that were really
required — that resistors and capacitors [passive devices], in particular, could be
made from the same material as the active devices [transistors]. I also realized that,
since all of the components could be made of a single material, they could also be
made in situ interconnected to form a complete circuit," Kilby wrote in a 1976 article
titled "Invention of the IC."
Kilby began to write down and sketch out his ideas in July of 1958. By September, he
was ready to demonstrate a working integrated circuit built on a piece of
semiconductor material. Several executives, including former TI Chairman Mark
Shepherd, gathered for the event on September 12, 1958. What they saw was a sliver
of germanium, with protruding wires, glued to a glass slide. It was a rough device, but
when Kilby pressed the switch, an unending sine curve undulated across the
oscilloscope screen. His invention worked — he had solved the problem.
Early Successes
Kilby had made a big breakthrough. But while the U.S. Air Force showed some
interest in TI's integrated circuit, industry reacted skeptically. Indeed the IC and its
relative merits "provided much of the entertainment at major technical meetings over
the next few years," Kilby wrote.
The integrated circuit first won a place in the military market through programs such
as the first computer using silicon chips for the Air Force in 1961 and the Minuteman
Missile in 1962. Recognizing the need for a "demonstration product" to speed
widespread use of the IC, Patrick E. Haggerty, former TI chairman, challenged Kilby
to design a calculator as powerful as the large, electro-mechanical desktop models of
the day, but small enough to fit in a coat pocket. The resulting electronic hand-held
calculator, of which Kilby is a co-inventor, successfully commercialized the
integrated circuit.
Impact
The impact of Kilby's tiny chip has been far-reaching. Many of the electronics
products of today could not have been developed without it. The chip virtually created
the modern computer industry, transforming yesterday's room-size machines into
today's array of mainframes, minicomputers and personal computers.
The chip restructured communications, fostering a host of new ways for instant
exchanges of information between people, businesses and nations.
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Without the chip, man could not explore space or fly to the moon.
The chip helps the deaf to hear and is the heartbeat of a myriad of medical
diagnostic machines.
The chip has also touched education, transportation, manufacturing and
entertainment.
For Texas Instruments, the integrated circuit has played a pivotal role. Over the years,
the company has produced billions of chips. But the integrated circuit has done more
than help grow TI. It has enabled an entire industry to grow. Since 1961, the
worldwide electronics market has grown from $29 billion to nearly $1,150 billion.
Projections indicate that it will become the world's single largest industry.
This growth will depend on the continued development of newer and better
technologies -- like those being developed at TI's new research and development
center in Dallas. The $150 million Kilby Center, named in the IC inventor's honor, is
the world's most advanced research center for silicon manufacturing.
Toward the Future
With continuing advances in semiconductors, you can look forward to more new
amazing encounters with electronic equipment. Imagine calling your day care center
to check on your child, and seeing her smiling face in the screen on your cell phone.
Imaging turning on the oven from your car phone as you pull out of the parking lot at
the end of the day. When you get home, dinner will be nearly done. Imagine setting
your car on autopilot, and looking over notes for your next day's meeting on your
commute home. Imagine you want to see a movie. You order it from the web, and
within a matter of seconds it's ready to view on your television at home.
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but new breakthroughs are only a short
stride away, with the help of technologies being developed at the Kilby Center at
Texas Instruments.
Part III Discussion Questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
What’s the impact of inventions on economic and sociologic history?
What are some common traits of inventors? List as many as you can.
Find examples of inventions that were not accepted at the time. And why not?
Two topics for debates: 1) Necessity is the mother of invention. 2) The computer
is the most significant invention of the 20th century. 3) Do the times make
inventions, or do inventions make the times?
Unit 4 Humanitarians
Part I Guided Reading
If ever a century needed heroes, it was this one. A century this tormented
by villains has got to have its superheroes, but our greatest heroes did
not appear dressed in capes and leotards. Instead, they came dressed in the
dark suit of a preacher facing down hatred and discrimination; they came in the
humble white habit of a nun giving everything she had to those who had
nothing; and they came in the worn, dusty shoes of a migrant farm worker
asking for rights and respect for his fellow man.
They didn't set out to be heroes. Many were too modest, or of too modest
circumstances, to imagine such a thing. They came because they were called
to serve humanity.
"You don't get trained to be a humanitarian," Tom Carothers says. "You are
called by your own conscience."
Carothers, vice president for global affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, who has spent his career working with humanitarians of
all stripes, says “what distinguishes the humanitarians of the 20th century is
first, a vision that transcends the immediate interests of any nation or group of
people; second, a focus on and need to pursue that vision; and third, a
willingness to sacrifice one's life, or a big part of it, to achieve one's goals."
Such a willingness is, he says, "a rare thing." From Albert Schweitzer's
willingness to walk into a malarial jungle to cure disease to Raoul Wallenberg's
willingness to risk his comfortable life to help some 100,000 Hungarian Jews
escape Nazi death camps, people who put their own lives in danger for others
have frequently brightened the dark, smoldering landscape of the 20th century.
Clearly, humanitarianism is not a risk-free endeavor, and that is what elevates
it to genuine heroism.
The best of humanitarians, Carothers says, "are those who started out working
for something particular, or for a particular group, but came to be symbols for
everyone. In a way, the real heroes are those people who put their highest
values -- nonviolence, equality -- ahead of a national or even religious agenda.
Humanitarians come from everywhere, and not just from the ranks of the
disenfranchised. Some of our greatest humanitarians were among the
most powerful and successful members of society, who didn't forget
those less fortunate: the Vanderbilt family, the Carnegies, the
Rockefellers and Fords, Diana princess of Wales, who turned some of
their vast fortunes to helping others through the foundations that bear
their names. And most of them will remain unsung. Real heroes don't do
it for the acclaim. They do it because it must be done.
Part II Famous Humanitarians
1. Florence Nightingale: the Lady with the Lamp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/discovery/medicine/nightingale_02.shtml
By Mark Bostridge
The romantic image of the Lady with the Lamp endures to this day. Florence
Nightingale's pioneering work in nursing is well-documented, but were her
own achievements, tending the ill and dying in the Crimea, quite what they
seemed?
Historical figure
The common soldier's saviour, the ideological leader of nursing reform,
and a pioneering social reformer besides, Florence Nightingale (1820 1910) is arguably the most famous Victorian after Queen Victoria herself.
She belongs to that select band of historical characters who are instantly
recognisable: the Lady with the Lamp, ministering to the wounded and dying
- albeit by the light of a Grecian lamp rather than the historically
accurate, but less romantic, folding Turkish version - is an image
permanently imprinted on the British national consciousness. As a woman,
too, she is almost unique in that her fame and legend elude the normal
categorisations in which women up to her time had achieved immortality:
she is neither queen, nor courtesan, beauty nor artist.
She is a nationally sanctioned heroine. She is the only woman alongside
the male personalities of Newton, Wellington and Dickens, whose image has
been chosen to adorn our paper currency: for nearly 20 years (between 1975
and 1993) her portrait, adapted from Barrett's painting of Nightingale
at Scutari, The Mission of Mercy (now in the National Portrait Gallery,
London), could be found on the £10 note. In short, as the historian Raphael
Samuel once wrote, she is one of the 'stock images' of our island story.
Why then does her true significance continue to elude us? Generations have
been raised on the sentimentalised story of her time as a nurse during
the Crimean War, fighting the obstructive army and medical officials to
ensure that the sick and wounded were nursed in civilised conditions, and
with proper care. But comparatively few of us are aware of the importance
of that story's sequel: of how, from her sickbed, Nightingale attempted
to supervise the modernisation of nursing, together with advising
governments on army reform, sanitation in Britain and India, and hospital
design.
Romantic myth
A large part of the problem, of course, is the persistence of the romantic
myth about the ministering angel of Scutari. Few individuals in their own
lifetime - and in such a comparatively short period of it, too - have
achieved the level of adulation, fame and stature that Nightingale did.
By the age of 35 she had already been the object of the most extraordinary
outpouring of adoration. She returned from the Crimea in 1856 and chose
to live and work for the next half-century in almost complete seclusion,
a decision which only further cemented her legendary status.
The myth has to a very large extent obscured the fact that Nightingale's
Crimea experience was only the prelude to her more important postwar
career. It has prevented us from assessing accurately her achievement at
Scutari; when examined closely, the accepted doctrine that she saved
soldiers' lives in her hospital suddenly dissolves before our eyes. And
it has also allowed us to forget that Nightingale's priority on returning
from the Crimea was not the reform of civilian nursing in Britain, but
rather a thorough overhaul of the health of the army in peacetime.
It is arguable that the British Army owes far more to Nightingale than
nursing in this country does. True, as the standard-bearer of nursing,
she played a decisive role in transforming nursing into a profession for
single women of impeccable moral standards; but her actual strictures on
hospital care were part of a much broader attempt to formulate a policy
on public health through the adoption of better sanitation.
Personal archive
Another part of the problem in coming to lasting conclusions about
Florence Nightingale is the sheer scale of the materials involved. The
enormous collection at the British Library - the second largest personal
archive after Gladstone's - is just the tip of the iceberg. At least 14,000
letters are known to survive, along with 147 printed publications, and
hundreds of private notes and memoranda.
The scale of the material is one reason why, up to now, there has been
no authoritative, fully documented biography. Dr Lynn McDonald's
projected 16-volume abridged edition of Nightingale's works will help to
clarify the reformer's thoughts on such diverse subjects as religion, the
army, the use of statistics (of which she was a pioneer), hospitals, women,
nursing education and so on.
The weight of material combines with Nightingale's long life - in 60 years
of active life she understandably changed her mind many times - making
her a difficult person to pin down on a definitive point of view. And she
remains, above all, a creature of paradox: a woman whose work and standing
signified much for the idea of women's rights, but who heartily disliked
the women's suffrage movement, and found it almost impossible to work in
co-operation with other women; a woman who spent much of the decade and
beyond, after her return from the Crimea, confined to her bed as a chronic
invalid (she is now thought to have suffered from a bacterial infection,
brucellosis, picked up in the Crimea), but who nevertheless worked with
an almost demonic energy in the areas of reform she was interested in;
a woman who claimed to dislike the 'fuzz-buzz' about her name, but who
manipulated her fame to masterly effect for her own ends.
Early life
Florence Nightingale inherited a liberal-humanitarian outlook from both
sides of her family. Her mother's father had sat in the House of Commons
for almost half a century as an abolitionist, while Florence's father,
William Edward Nightingale, who had inherited an enormous fortune from
his uncle, fought hard for the reform of Parliament before settling down
to the life of a country gentleman on his estates at Lea Hurst in Derbyshire,
and Embley Park in Hampshire.
Florence, born in the city of that name in 1820, and her older sister,
benefited from their father's advanced ideas about women's education.
They studied history, mathematics, Italian, classical literature and
philosophy, and from an early age Florence, who was the more academic of
the two girls, displayed an extraordinary ability for collecting and
analysing data which she would use to great effect in later life.
Although, by early-19th-century standards, Nightingale had been given a
man's education, she was confined by the conventions of the day, which
decreed that, as an upper-middle-class woman, she should spend most of
her time in frivolous pursuits and domestic routines. Florence struggled
hard to find fulfilment, against the opposition of her family. She felt
frustrated by the suffocating existence which denied her the use of her
intelligence and energy and which, on several occasions, drove her to the
edge of breakdown. 'My present life is suicide', she wrote in 1850. 'I
have no desire but to die.' Believing that she heard the voice of God,
calling her to his service, she rejected marriage and decided that her
destiny lay in nursing.
Florence's family, who shared the prevalent view that nursing was a
disreputable occupation for someone from their background, were appalled
at her decision, and bitterly opposed her. In 1845 her parents refused
to allow her to nurse at Salisbury Infirmary, but Florence did manage to
spend two periods at the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses at
Kaiserwerth in Germany, and later visited hospitals in London, Edinburgh,
Dublin and Paris, amassing details of hospital conditions and nursing
methods. Finally, in 1853, she won her independence - and a small income
from her father - by being appointed Superintendant of the Hospital for
Invalid Gentlewomen in Harley Street.
Crimean mission
The torture of Nightingale's early years was undoubtedly responsible for
the streak of steely ruthlessness that had entered her character. She was
graceful, slender, appealing to look at, and she could be charming when
the occasion required; but underneath she had an unbreakable resolve, and
also happened to possess one of the great administrative minds of the 19th
century.
Nightingale seized the moment when it came. In 1854, a unique opportunity
presented itself when Sidney Herbert, the Minister at War, appointed her
to superintend the introduction of female nurses in the Crimea and to lead
an expedition of 38 women to take over the management of the barrack
hospital at Scutari, a large village on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.
Herbert had been responding to public outrage at reports in The Times of
the suffering of the common soldier caused by the incompetence of the
British Army commanders. It was vital, both for the future of the
government and for the cause of nursing in Britain, that Nightingale
succeed.
Ostensibly she did, and in so doing scored an enormous propaganda victory.
In the midst of 'appalling horror...steeped up to our necks in blood',
she created order out of chaos. She and her nurses cleaned and equipped
the hospital, introducing vital supplies that had been withheld from the
sick and wounded, fighting the obstructive army medical corps, and earning
the everlasting respect and affection of the common soldier.
Hard lessons
But if one looks at the historical record more carefully, one begins to
realise that, despite Nightingale's work at Scutari, the death-rate among
the soldiers did not begin to fall; on the contrary, it began to rise.
Historians are now waking up to the shocking truth that the death toll
at Nightingale's hospital was higher than at any other hospital in the
East, and that her lack of knowledge of the disastrous sanitary conditions
at Scutari was responsible. During her first winter at Scutari, 4,077
soldiers died there, ten times more from illnesses such as typhus, typhoid,
cholera and dysentery, than from battle wounds. Conditions at the hospital
were fatal to the men that Nightingale was trying to nurse: they were
packed like sardines into an unventilated building on top of defective
sewers.
A sanitary commission, sent out by Palmerston's government in March 1855,
almost six months after Nightingale's arrival at Scutari, flushed out the
sewers and improved the ventilation, thereby dramatically reducing the
mortality rate. However, Nightingale herself continued to attribute
responsibility for the high number of deaths to inadequate nutrition and
supplies, and to the army's sending of men across the Black Sea to Scutari
when they were already half-dead from exposure.
It was only on her return to Britain, when she began collecting evidence
to present before the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army, that
Nightingale changed her mind, reaching the painful conclusion that most
of the soldiers at her hospital had been killed by bad sanitation, due
to her ignorance. She had helped them to die in cleaner surroundings and
greater comfort, but she had not saved their lives.
Final years
This is a shattering blow to the myth of the Lady with the Lamp, but it
was a discovery which drove Nightingale to preach a gospel of fresh air,
cleansed drains and public health, for the rest of her campaigning life.
She succeeded in reducing unnecessary deaths in the Army during peacetime,
before turning her attention to nursing and introducing sanitary concepts
into hospitals.
Myths are often obscure, but they can also help spread important change.
Such is the case with Miss Nightingale. However, history has an important
duty to recover the reality from behind the legend. Benjamin Jowett,
Master of Balliol College, Oxford, was perhaps saying something similar
when, in a letter to Nightingale in 1879, he observed:
'There was a great deal of romantic feeling about you... when you came
home from the Crimea. And now you work on in silence, and nobody knows
how many lives are saved by your nurses in hospitals... how many thousands
of soldiers... are now alive owing to your forethought and diligence; how
many natives of India... have been preserved from famine... by the energy
of a sick lady who can scarcely rise from her bed.'
2. King, Martin Luther, Jr.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speechesFrame.htm
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929--April 4, 1968), minister and
civil rights leader. Born Michael King, Jr., in Atlanta on January 15,
1929, the first son of a Baptist minister and the grandson of a Baptist
minister, King and his forebears exemplified the African-American social
gospel tradition that would shape his career as a reformer. King's
maternal grandfather, the Rev. A. D. Williams, had transformed Ebenezer
Baptist Church, a block down the street from his grandson's childhood home,
into one of Atlanta's most prominent black churches. In 1906, Williams
had joined such figures as Atlanta University scholar W. E. B. Du BOIS
and African Methodist Episcopal (AME) bishop Henry McNeal Turner to form
the Georgia Equal Rights League, an organization that condemned lynching,
segregation in public transportation, and the exclusion of black men from
juries and state militia. In 1917, Williams helped found the Atlanta
branch of the NAACP, later serving as the chapter's president. Williams's
subsequent campaign to register and mobilize black voters prodded white
leaders to agree to construct new public schools for black children.
After Williams's death in 1931, his son-in-law, Michael King, Sr., also
combined religious and political leadership. He became president of
Atlanta's NAACP, led voter-registration marches during the 1930s, and
spearheaded a movement to equalize the salaries of black public school
teachers with those of their white counterparts. In 1934, King,
Sr.--perhaps inspired by a visit to the birthplace of Protestantism in
Germany--changed his name and that of his son to Martin Luther King.
Despite the younger King's admiration for his father's politically active
ministry, he was initially reluctant to accept his inherited calling.
Experiencing religious doubts during his early teenage years, he decided
to become a minister only after he came into contact with religious leaders
who combined theological sophistication with social gospel advocacy. At
Morehouse College, which King attended from 1944 to 1948, the college's
president, Benjamin E. MAYS, encouraged him to believe that Christianity
should become a force for progressive social change. A course on the Bible
taught by Morehouse professor George Kelsey exposed King to theological
scholarship. After deciding to become a minister, King increased his
understanding of liberal Christian thought while attending Crozer
Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. Compiling an outstanding academic
record at Crozer, he deepened his understanding of modem religious
scholarship and eventually identified himself with theological
personalism. King later wrote that this philosophical position
strengthened his belief in a personal God and provided him with a
"metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality."
At Boston University, where King began doctoral studies in systematic
theology in 1951, his exploration of theological scholarship was combined
with extensive interactions with the Boston African-American community.
He met regularly with other black students in an informal group called
the Dialectical Society. Often invited to give sermons in Boston-area
churches, he acquired a reputation as a powerful preacher, drawing ideas
from African-American Baptist traditions as well as theological and
philosophical writings. The academic papers he wrote at Boston displayed
little originality, but King's scholarly training provided him with a
talent that would prove useful in his future leadership activities: an
exceptional ability to draw upon a wide range of theological and
philosophical texts to express his views with force and precision. During
his stay in Boston, King also met and began dating Coretta Scott, then
a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. On June 18, 1953, the
two students were married in Marion, Ala., where Scott's family lived.
During the following academic year, King began work on his dissertation,
which was completed during, the spring of 1955.
Soon after King accepted his first pastorate at Dexter. Avenue Baptist
Church in Montgomery, Ala., he had an unexpected opportunity to utilize
the insights he had gained from his childhood experiences and academic
training. After NAACP official Rosa PARKS was jailed for refusing to give
up her bus seat to a white passenger, King accepted the post of president
of the MONTGOMERY IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION, which was formed to coordinate
a boycott of Montgomery's buses. In his role as the primary spokesman of
the boycott, King gradually forged a distinctive protest strategy that
involved the mobilization of black churches, utilization of Gandhian
methods of nonviolent protest, and skillful appeals for white support.
After the U. S. Supreme Court outlawed Alabama bus segregation 1aws in
late 1956, King quickly rose to national prominence as a result of his
leadership role in a successful boycott movement. In 1957, he became the
founding president of the SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE (SCLC),
formed to coordinate civil rights activities throughout the South.
Publication of King's Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)
further contributed to his rapid emergence as a nationally known civil
rights leader. Seeking to forestall the fears of NAACP leaders that his
organization might draw away followers and financial support, King acted
cautiously during the late 1950s. Instead of immediately seeking to
stimulate mass desegregation protests in the South, he stressed the goal
of achieving black voting rights when he addressed an audience at the 1957
Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. During 1959, he increased his
understanding of Gandhian ideas during a month-long visit to India as a
guest of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Early in 1960, King moved his
family--which now included two children, Yolanda Denise (born 1955) and
Martin Luther III (born 1957)--to Atlanta in order to be nearer SCLC's
headquarters in that city and to become co-pastor, with his father, of
Ebenezer Baptist Church. The Kings' third child, Dexter Scott, was born
it 1961; their fourth, Bernice Albertine, was born in 1963.
Soon after King's arrival in Atlanta, the lunch counter sit-in movement,
led by students, spread throughout the South and brought into existence
a new organization, the STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE (SNCC).
SNCC activists admired King but also pushed him toward greater militancy.
In October 1960, his arrest during a student-initiated protest in Atlanta
became an issue in the national presidential campaign when Democratic
candidate John F. Kennedy intervened to secure his release from jail.
Kennedy's action contributed to his narrow victory in the November
election. During 1961 and 1962, King's differences with SNCC activists
widened during a sustained protest movement in Albany, Georgia. King was
arrested twice during demonstrations organized by the Albany Movement,
but when he left jail and ultimately left Albany without achieving a
victory, his standing among activists declined
King reasserted his preeminence within the African-American freedom
struggle through his leadership of the BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA campaign of
1963. Initiated by the SCLC in January, the Birmingham demonstrations were
the most massive civil rights protests that had occurred up to that time.
With the assistance of Fred SHUTTLESWORTH and other local black leaders,
and without much competition from SNCC or other civil rights groups, SCLC
officials were able to orchestrate the Birmingham protests to achieve
maximum national impact. During May, televised pictures of police using
dogs and fire hoses against demonstrators aroused a national outcry. The
vivid evidence of the obstinacy of Birmingham officials, combined with
Alabama Governor George C. Wallace's attempt to block the entrv of black
students at the University of Alabama, prompted President John F. Kennedy
to introduce major new civil rights legislation. King's unique ability
to appropriate ideas from the Bible, the Constitution, and other canonical
texts manifested itself when he defended the black protests in a widely
quoted letter, written while he was jailed in Birmingham.
King's speech at the August 28, 1963, March on Washington, attended by
over 200,000 people, provides another powerful demonstration of his
singular ability to draw on widely accepted American ideals in order to
promote black objectives. At the end of his prepared remarks, which
announced that African Americans wished to cash the "promissory note"
signified in the words of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence, King began his most quoted oration: "So I say to you, my
friends, that even though we must face the difficulties of today and
tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American
dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning
of its creed-we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal." He appropriated the familiar words of the song "My Country
'Tis of Thee" before Concluding: "And when we allow freedom to ring, when
we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city,
we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children--black
men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants--will be
able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
'Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last,'
"
After the march on Washington, King's fame and popularity were at their
height. Named Time magazine's Man of the Year at the end of 1963, he was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964. The acclaim he received
prompted FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to step up his effort to damage
King's reputation by leaking information gained through surreptitious
means about King's ties with former communists and his extramarital
affairs.
King's last successful civil rights campaign was a series of
demonstrations in Alabama that were intended to dramatize the denial of
black voting rights in the deep South. Demonstrations began in Selma, Ala.,
early in 1965 and reached a turning point on March 7, when a group of
demonstrators began a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery.
King was in Atlanta when state policemen, carrying out Governor Wallace's
order to stop the march, attacked with tear gas and clubs soon after the
procession crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on
the outskirts of Selma. The police assault on the marchers quickly
increased national support for the voting rights campaign. King arrived
in Selma to join several thousand movement sympathizers, black and white.
President Lyndon B. Johnson reacted to the Alabama protests by introducing
new voting rights legislation, which would become the VOTING RIGHTS ACT
of 1965. Demonstrators were finally able to obtain a court order allowing
the march to take place, and on March 25 King addressed the arriving
protestors from the steps of the capitol in Montgomery.
After the successful voting rights campaign, King was unable to garner
similar support for his effort to confront the problems of northern urban
blacks. Early in 1966 he launched a major campaign in Chicago, moving into
an apartment in the black ghetto. As he shifted the focus of his activities
north, however, he discovered that the tactics used in the South were not
as effective elsewhere. He encountered formidable opposition from Mayor
Richard Daley, and was unable to mobilize Chicago's economically and
ideologically diverse black populace. He was stoned by angry whites in
the suburb of Cicero when he led a march against racial discrimination
in housing. Despite numerous well-publicized protests, the Chicago
campaign resulted in no significant gains and undermined King's
reputation as an effective leader.
His status was further damaged when his strategy of nonviolence came under
renewed attack from blacks following a major outbreak of urban racial
violence in Los Angeles during August 1965. When civil rights activists
reacted to the shooting of James MEREDITH by organizing a March against
Fear through Mississippi, King was forced on the defensive as Stokely
CARMICHAEL and other militants put forward the Black Power slogan.
Although King refused to condemn the militants who opposed him, he
criticized the new slogan as vague and divisive. As his influence among
blacks lessened, he also alienated many white moderate supporters by
publicly opposing United States intervention in the Vietnam War. After
he delivered a major antiwar speech at New York's Riverside Church on April
4, 1967, many of the northern newspapers that had once supported his civil
rights efforts condemned his attempt to link civil rights to the war issue.
In November 1967, King announced the formation of a POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN
designed to prod the nation's leaders to deal with the problem of poverty.
Early in 1968, he and other SCLC workers began to recruit poor people and
antipoverty activists to come to Washington, D.C., to lobby on behalf of
improved antipoverty prop-.ms. This effort was in its early stages when
King became involved in a sanitation workers' strike in Memphis. On March
28, as he led thousands of sanitation workers and sympathizers on a march
through downtown Memphis, violence broke out and black youngsters looted
stores. The violent outbreak led to more criticisms of King's entire
antipoverty strategy. He returned to Memphis for the last time early in
April. Addressing an audience at Bishop Charles H. Mason Temple on April
3, he sought to revive his flagging movement by acknowledging: "We've got
some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've
been to the mountaintop... And I've seen the promised land. I may not get
there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will
get to the promised land."
The following evening, King was assassinated as he stood on a balcony of
the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. A white segregationist, James Earl Ray,
is later convicted of the crime. The Poor People's Campaign continued for
a few months but did not achieve its objectives. King became an
increasingly revered figure after his death, however, and many of his
critics ultimately acknowledged his considerable accomplishments. In
1969 his widow, Coretta Scott King, established the Martin Luther King,
Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, in Atlanta, to carry on his work.
In 1986, a national holiday was established to honor his birth.
by Clayborne Carson
"Martin Luther King, Jr." In Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and
History, edited by Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West. New
York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1996.
3. Billy Graham
http://www.billygraham.org/aboutUs/biographies.asp?b=1
Evangelist Billy Graham took Christ at His word when He said in Mark
16:15, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every
creature," (KJV).
Mr. Graham has preached the Gospel to more people in live audiences
than anyone else in history -- over 210 million people in more than
185 countries and territories -- through various meetings, including
Mission World and Global Mission. Hundreds of millions more have
been reached through television, video, film and webcasts.
Since the 1949 Los Angeles Crusade vaulted Mr. Graham into the
public eye, he has led hundreds of thousands of individuals to make
personal decisions to live for Christ, which is the main thrust of his
ministry.
Humble Beginnings
Born November 7, 1918, four days before the Armistice ended World
War I, Mr. Graham was reared on a dairy farm in Charlotte, N.C.
Growing up during the Depression, he learned the value of hard work
on the family farm, but he also found time to spend many hours in the
hayloft reading books on a wide variety of subjects.
In the fall of 1934, at age 16, Mr. Graham made a personal
commitment to Christ through the ministry of Mordecai Ham, a
traveling evangelist, who visited Charlotte for a series of revival
meetings.
Ordained in 1939 by a church in the Southern Baptist Convention, Mr.
Graham received a solid foundation in the Scriptures at Florida Bible
Institute (now Trinity College in Florida). In 1943 he graduated from
Wheaton College in Illinois and married fellow student Ruth McCue
Bell, daughter of a missionary surgeon, who spent the first 17 years of
her life in China.
The Early Years
After graduating from college, Mr. Graham joined Youth for Christ, an
organization founded for ministry to youth and servicemen during
World War II. He preached throughout the United States and in
Europe in the immediate post-war era, emerging as a rising young
evangelist.
The Los Angeles Crusade in 1949 launched Mr. Graham into
international prominence. Scheduled for three weeks, the meetings
were extended to more than eight weeks, with overflow crowds filling
a tent erected downtown each night.
Many of his subsequent early Crusades were similarly extended,
including one in London which lasted 12 weeks, and a New York City
Crusade in Madison Square Garden in 1957 which ran nightly for 16
weeks.
The Current Ministry
Today, at age 83, Billy Graham and his ministry are known around the
globe. He has preached in remote African villages and in the heart of
New York City, and those to whom he has ministered have ranged
from heads of state to the simple-living bushmen of Australia and the
wandering tribes of Africa and the Middle East. Since 1977, Mr.
Graham has been accorded the opportunity to conduct preaching
Crusades in virtually every country of the former Eastern bloc,
including the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Graham founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in 1950,
which headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He conducts his
ministry through BGEA, including:

the weekly "Hour of Decision" radio program broadcast around the




world on Sundays for over 50 years
Crusade television specials which are regularly broadcast in prime
time in almost every market in the U.S. and Canada approximately
six times annually
a newspaper column, "My Answer," which is carried by
newspapers across the country with a combined circulation of more
than five million readers
"Decision" magazine, the official publication of the Association, has
a circulation of 1.4 million and is available in English and German
versions, with special editions available in Braille and on cassette
tape for the visually impaired.
World Wide Pictures has produced and distributed over 130
productions, making it one of the foremost producers of evangelistic
films in the world. Films have been translated into 40 languages and
viewed by more than 250 million people worldwide and, for a
minimum charge, are provided for showing in prisons and
correctional facilities nationwide.
Publications
Mr. Graham has written 25 books, many of which have become top
sellers. His autobiography, "Just As I Am," published in 1997,
achieved a "triple crown," appearing simultaneously on the three top
best-seller lists in one week. In it Mr. Graham reflects on his life,
including nearly 60 years of ministry around the world. From humble
beginnings as the son of a dairy farmer in North Carolina, he shares
how his unwavering faith in Christ formed and shaped his career.
Of his other books, "Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse" (1983) was listed for several weeks on The New York
Times best-seller list; "How to Be Born Again" (1977) had the largest
first printing in publishing history with 800,000 copies; "Angels: God’s
Secret Agents" (1975) sold one million copies within 90 days; and
"The Jesus Generation" (1971) sold 200,000 copies in the first two
weeks.
Awards and Honors
Mr. Graham's counsel has been sought by presidents, and his appeal
in both the secular and religious arenas is evidenced by the wide
range of groups that have honored him, including numerous honorary
doctorates from many institutions in the United States and abroad.
Recognitions include the Congressional Gold Medal; the Speaker of
the Year Award; the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in
Religion; and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Freedom
Award for contributions to the cause of freedom. He has received the
Big Brother Award for his work on behalf of the welfare of children and
been cited by the George Washington Carver Memorial Institute for
his contributions to race relations. He has also been recognized by the
Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith and the National
Conference of Christians and Jews for his efforts to foster a better
understanding among all faiths. In December 2001 he was presented
with an honorary knighthood, Honorary Knight Commander of the
order of the British Empire (KBE), for his international contribution to
civic and religious life over 60 years.
Mr. Graham is regularly listed by the Gallup organization as one of the
"Ten Most Admired Men in the World," whom it described as the
dominant figure in that poll since 1948 -- making an unparalleled 44th
appearance and 37th consecutive appearance. He has also appeared
on the covers of "Time," "Newsweek," "Life," "U.S. News and World
Report," "Parade," and numerous other magazines and has been the
subject of many newspaper and magazine feature articles and books.
He and his wife, Ruth, have three daughters, two sons, 19
grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren. The Grahams
make their home in the mountains of North Carolina.
4. Jane Addams ((September 6, 1860 to May 21, 1935)
http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/1931/addams-bio.html
Jane Adam’s influence on twentieth century America was incredible.
She wrote 11 books. She helped to found the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties
Union, institutions that influence our culture today. In 1931, she was
the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact she
won worldwide recognition in the first third of the twentieth century as
a pioneer social worker in America, as a feminist, and as an
internationalist.
She was born in Cedarville, Illinois, the eighth of nine children. She
was blessed with a father whom she adored and who impressed her
with the virtues of tolerance, philanthropy and a strong work ethic. He
was a man of influence himself, a prosperous owner of grain mills, and
local political leader who served for sixteen years as a state senator
and fought as an officer in the Civil War; he was a friend of Abraham
Lincoln whose letters to him began «My Dear Double D-'ed Addams».
Because of a congenital spinal defect, Jane was not physically
vigorous when young nor truly robust even later in life, but she
became a graceful attractive woman after her spinal difficulty was
remedied by surgery.
In 1881 Jane Addams was graduated from the Rockford Female
Seminary, the valedictorian of a class of seventeen, but was granted
the bachelor's degree only after the school became accredited the
next year as Rockford College for Women and then she went to the
Rockford Seminary. Her schooling emphasized social responsibility
and a passion for culture and good works. For a while, she set her
sights on becoming a doctor and stayed at the school for another six
years. In the course of these six years she began the study of
medicine but left it because of poor health, was hospitalized
intermittently, traveled and studied in Europe for twenty-one months,
and then spent almost two years in reading and writing and in
considering what her future objectives should be. At the age of
twenty-seven, during a second tour to Europe with her friend Ellen G.
Starr, she visited a settlement house, Toynbee Hall, in London's East
End. This visit helped to finalize the idea then current in her mind, that
of opening a similar house in an underprivileged area of Chicago. In
1889 she and Miss Starr leased a large home built by Charles Hull at
the corner of Halsted and Polk Streets. The two friends moved in, their
purpose, as expressed later, being «to provide a center for a higher
civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and
philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve the
conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago».
Miss Addams and Miss Starr made speeches about the needs of the
neighborhood, raised money, convinced young women of well-to-do
families to help, took care of children, nursed the sick, listened to
outpourings from troubled people. By its second year of existence,
Hull-House was host to two thousand people every week. There were
kindergarten classes in the morning, club meetings for older children
in the afternoon, and for adults in the evening more clubs or courses
in what became virtually a night school. The first facility added to
Hull-House was an art gallery, the second a public kitchen; then came
a coffee house, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, a cooperative
boarding club for girls, a book bindery, an art studio, a music school,
a drama group, a circulating library, an employment bureau, a labor
museum.
As her reputation grew, Miss Addams was drawn into larger fields of
civic responsibility. In 1905 she was appointed to Chicago's Board of
Education and subsequently made chairman of the School
Management Committee; in 1908 she participated in the founding of
the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and in the next year
became the first woman president of the National Conference of
Charities and Corrections. In her own area of Chicago she led
investigations on midwifery, narcotics consumption, milk supplies,
and sanitary conditions, even going so far as to accept the official post
of garbage inspector of the Nineteenth Ward, at an annual salary of a
thousand dollars. In 1910 she received the first honorary degree ever
awarded to a woman by Yale University.
Charmingly feminine by nature, Jane Addams was an ardent feminist
by philosophy. In those days before women's suffrage she believed
that women should make their voices heard in legislation and
therefore should have the right to vote, but more comprehensively,
she thought that women should generate aspirations and search out
opportunities to realize them.
For her own aspiration to rid the world of war, Jane Addams created
opportunities or seized those offered to her to advance the cause. In
1906 she gave a course of lectures at the University of Wisconsin
summer session which she published the next year as a book, Newer
Ideals of Peace. She spoke for peace in 1913 at a ceremony
commemorating the building of the Peace Palace at The Hague and in
the next two years, as a lecturer sponsored by the Carnegie
Foundation, spoke against America's entry into the First World War.
In January, 1915, she accepted the chairmanship of the Women's
Peace Party, an American organization, and four months later the
presidency of the International Congress of Women convened at The
Hague largely upon the initiative of Dr. Aletta Jacobs, a Dutch
suffragist leader of many and varied talents. When this congress later
founded the organization called the Women's International League for
Peace and Freedom, Jane Addams served as president until 1929, as
presiding officer of its six international conferences in those years,
and as honorary president for the remainder of her life.
Publicly opposed to America's entry into the war, Miss Addams was
attacked in the press and expelled from the Daughters of the
American Revolution, but she found an outlet for her humanitarian
impulses as an assistant to Herbert Hoover in providing relief supplies
of food to the women and children of the enemy nations, the story of
which she told in her book Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922).
After sustaining a heart attack in 1926, Miss Addams never fully
regained her health. Indeed, she was being admitted to a Baltimore
hospital on the very day, December 10, 1931, that the Nobel Peace
Prize was being awarded to her in Oslo. She didn't make it to Oslo for
the Prize, though. When she passed away on May 21, 1935 three days
after an operation revealed unsuspected cancer. A train carried her
from the funeral services at Hull House to rest in Cedarville, the place
where she grew up and began her life's passion of service. So great
has been the lasting effect of her works that Jane Addams has been
described as one of our "founding foremothers."She died in 1935 The
funeral service was held in the courtyard of Hull-House.
5. Diana, Princess of Wales
http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page153.asp
The late Diana, Princess of Wales was born Lady Diana Frances
Spencer on 1 July 1961 in Norfolk. Lady Diana Spencer married The
Prince of Wales at St Paul's Cathedral in London on 29 July 1981.
During her marriage the Princess undertook a wide range of royal
duties. Family was very important to the Princess, who gave birth to
two sons - Prince William and Prince Henry (Harry). After her divorce
from The Prince of Wales, The Princess continued to be regarded as a
member of the Royal Family. Until the end of her life she was involved
with charities working to help children, homeless people and AIDS
sufferers, as well as with the campaign to ban land mines.
DEATH
The tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales occurred on Sunday, 31
August 1997 following a car accident in Paris, France. The vehicle in
which the Princess was travelling was involved in a high-speed
accident in the Place de l'Alma underpass in central Paris shortly
before midnight on Saturday, 30 August. The Princess was taken to
the La Pitie Salpetriere Hospital, where she underwent two hours of
emergency surgery before being declared dead at 0300 BST. The
Princess's companion, Mr Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the vehicle
died in the accident, whilst a bodyguard was seriously injured.
The Princess's body was subsequently repatriated to the United
Kingdom in the evening of Sunday, 31 August by a BAe 146 aircraft of
the Royal Squadron. The Prince of Wales and the Princess's elder
sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes,
accompanied the Princess's coffin on its return journey. Upon arrival
at RAF Northolt, the coffin, draped with a Royal Standard, was
removed from the aircraft and transferred to a waiting hearse by a
bearer party from The Queen's Colour Squadron of the RAF. The Prime
Minister was among those in the reception party.
Shortly after midnight, after necessary legal formalities were
completed the coffin was moved to the Chapel Royal in St James's
Palace, where it lay privately until the funeral on Saturday, 6
September, in Westminster Abbey. The Princess's family and friends
visited the Chapel to pay their respects. Following the funeral service,
the coffin then was taken by road to the family estate at Althorp for a
private interment. The Princess was buried in sanctified ground on an
island in the centre of an ornamental lake.
CHILDHOOD AND TEENAGE YEARS
Diana, Princess of Wales, formerly Lady Diana Frances Spencer, was
born on 1 July 1961 at Park House near Sandringham, Norfolk. She
was the youngest daughter of the then Viscount and Viscountess
Althorp, now the late (8th) Earl Spencer and the Hon. Mrs
Shand-Kydd, daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy. Earl Spencer was
Equerry to George VI from 1950 to 1952, and to The Queen from 1952
to 1954. Lady Diana's parents, who had married in 1954, separated in
1967 and the marriage was dissolved in 1969. Earl Spencer later
married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth in 1976.
Together with her two elder sisters Sarah (born 1955), Jane (born
1957) and her younger brother Charles (born 1964), Lady Diana
continued to live with her father at Park House, Sandringham, until
the death of her grandfather, the 7th Earl Spencer. In 1975, the
family moved to the Spencer family seat at Althorp (a stately house
dating from 1508) in Northamptonshire, in the English Midlands.
Lady Diana was educated first at a preparatory school, Riddlesworth
Hall at Diss, Norfolk, and then in 1974 went as a boarder to West
Heath, near Sevenoaks, Kent. At school she showed a particular
talent for music (as an accomplished pianist), dancing and domestic
science, and gained the school's award for the girl giving maximum
help to the school and her schoolfellows. She left West Heath in 1977
and went to finishing school at the Institut Alpin Videmanette in
Rougemont, Switzerland, which she left after the Easter term of 1978.
The following year she moved to a flat in Coleherne Court, London. For
a while she looked after the child of an American couple, and she
worked as a kindergarten teacher at the Young England School in
Pimlico.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
On 24 February 1981 it was officially announced that Lady Diana was
to marry The Prince of Wales. As neighbours at Sandringham until
1975, their families had known each other for many years, and Lady
Diana and the Prince had met again when he was invited to a weekend
at Althorp in November 1977.
They were married at St Paul's Cathedral in London on 29 July 1981,
in a ceremony which drew a global television and radio audience
estimated at around 1,000 million people, and hundreds of thousands
of people lining the route from Buckingham Palace to the Cathedral.
The wedding reception was at Buckingham Palace.
The marriage was solemnised by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr
Runcie, together with the Dean of St Paul's; clergy from other
denominations read prayers. Music included the hymns 'Christ is
made the sure foundation', 'I vow to thee my country', the anthem 'I
was glad' (by Sir Hubert Parry), a specially composed anthem 'Let the
people praise thee' by Professor Mathias, and Handel's 'Let the bright
seraphim' performed by Dame Kiri te Kanawa. The lesson was read by
the Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr George Thomas (the late
Lord Tonypandy).
The Princess was the first Englishwoman to marry an heir to the
throne for 300 years. The bride wore a silk taffeta dress with a 25-foot
train designed by the Emanuels, her veil was held in place by the
Spencer family diamond tiara, and she carried a bouquet of gardenias,
lilies-of-the-valley, white freesia, golden roses, white orchids and
stephanotis. She was attended by five bridesmaids including Princess
Margaret's daughter Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones; Prince Andrew
(now The Duke of York) and Prince Edward were The Prince of Wales's
supporters (a Royal custom instead of a best man).
The Prince and Princess of Wales spent part of their honeymoon at the
Mountbatten family home at Broadlands, Hampshire, before flying to
Gibraltar to join the Royal Yacht HMY BRITANNIA for a 12-day cruise
through the Mediterranean to Egypt. They finished their honeymoon
with a stay at Balmoral.
The Prince and Princess made their principal home at Highgrove
House near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, and shared an apartment in
Kensington Palace.
The Princess of Wales had two sons. Prince William Arthur Philip Louis
was born on 21 June 1982 and Prince Henry (Harry) Charles Albert
David on 15 September 1984, both at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington,
in London. The Princess had seventeen godchildren.
In December 1992 it was announced that The Prince and Princess of
Wales had agreed to separate. The Princess based her household and
her office at Kensington Palace, while The Prince was based at St
James's Palace and continued to live at Highgrove.
In November 1995, the Princess gave a television interview during
which she spoke of her unhappiness in her personal life and the
pressures of her public role. The Prince and Princess were divorced on
28 August 1996.
The Prince and Princess continued to share equal responsibility for the
upbringing of their children. The Princess, as the mother of Prince
William (second in line to the throne), continued to be regarded as a
member of the Royal family. The Queen, The Prince and The Princess
of Wales agreed that the Princess was to be known after the divorce as
Diana, Princess of Wales, without the style of 'Her Royal Highness' (as
the Princess was given the style 'HRH' on marriage she would
therefore be expected to give it up on divorce). The Princess
continued to live at Kensington Palace, with her office based there.
PUBLIC ROLE
After her marriage, The Princess of Wales quickly became involved in
the official duties of the Royal family. Her first tour with The Prince
was a three-day visit to Wales in October 1981. In 1983 she
accompanied The Prince on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, and
they took the infant Prince William with them. Prince William, with
Prince Harry, again joined The Prince and Princess at the end of their
tour to Italy in 1985. Other official overseas visits undertaken with
The Prince included Australia (for the bicentenary celebrations in
1988), Brazil, India, Canada, Nigeria, Cameroon, Indonesia, Spain,
Italy, France, Portugal and Japan (for the enthronement of Emperor
Akihito). Their last joint overseas visit was to South Korea in 1992.
The Princess's first official visit overseas on her own was in September
1982, when she represented The Queen at the state funeral of
Princess Grace of Monaco. The Princess's first solo overseas tour was
in February 1984 when she travelled to Norway to attend a
performance of Carmen by the London City Ballet, of which she was
patron. The Princess subsequently visited many countries including
Germany, the United States, Pakistan, Switzerland, Hungary, Egypt,
Belgium, France, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nepal.
Although the Princess was renowned for her style and was closely
associated with the fashion world, patronising and raising the profile
of younger British designers, she was best known for her charitable
work.
During her marriage, the Princess was president or patron of over 100
charities. The Princess did much to publicise work on behalf of
homeless and also disabled people, children and people with HIV/Aids.
In December 1993, the Princess announced that she would be
reducing the extent of her public life in order to combine 'a meaningful
public role with a more private life'.
After her separation from The Prince, the Princess continued to appear
with the Royal family on major national occasions, such as the
commemorations of the 50th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe)
and VJ (Victory over Japan) Days in 1995.
Following her divorce, the Princess resigned most of her charity and
other patronages, and relinquished all her Service appointments with
military units. The Princess remained as patron of Centrepoint
(homeless charity), English National Ballet, Leprosy Mission and
National Aids Trust, and as President of the Hospital for Sick Children,
Great Ormond Street and of the Royal Marsden Hospital. In June 1997,
the Princess attended receptions in London and New York as previews
of the sale of a number of dresses and suits worn by her on official
engagements, with the proceeds going to charity.
The Princess spent her 36th and last birthday on 1 July 1997
attending the Tate Gallery's 100th Anniversary celebrations. Her last
official engagement in Britain was on 21 July, when she visited
Northwick Park Hospital, London (children's accident and emergency
unit).
In the year before her death, the Princess was an active campaigner
for a ban on the manufacture and use of land mines. In January 1997,
she visited Angola as part of her campaign. in June, the Princess
spoke at the landmines conference at the Royal Geographical Society
in London, and this was followed by a visit to Washington DC in the
United States on 17/18 June to promote the American Red Cross
landmines campaign (separately, she also met Mother Teresa in The
Bronx). The Princess's last public engagements were during her visit
to Bosnia from 7 to 10 August, when she visited landmine projects in
Travnic, Sarajevo and Zenezica.
It was in recognition of her charity work that representatives of the
charities with which she worked during her life were invited to walk
behind her coffin with her family from St James's Palace to
Westminster Abbey on the day of her funeral.
The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales took place at Westminster
Abbey on 6 September 1997. It was watched by millions of people on
television world-wide, as well as by thousands of mourners along the
route.
The Princess's coffin was interred on the same day in a private
ceremony at Althorp in the afternoon of the same day as the funeral.
6. Helen Keller (1880-1968): American writer and lecturer
http://www.theglassceiling.com/biographies/bio20.htm
"I knew then that 'w-a-t-e-r' meant the wonderful cool something
that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my
soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!"
Introduction
Helen Keller was an inspiration to millions of people throughout the world
because of her courage and her ability to overcome both blindness and
deafness. The story of Helen Keller's life is familiar, having been immortalized
in her own books and in plays and movies. Equally well known is the role Anne
Sullivan played in teaching Keller how to communicate and to live a productive
life. Keller used her life as a means to tell others that physical handicaps can
be overcome and that people with physical differences can live full and
meaningful lives.
Invents her own signs
When Helen Keller was 19 months old she became ill with a high fever and lost
consciousness, becoming deaf and blind. In her autobiography The Story of
My Life, a book she first wrote in 1903 at the age of 23, she described her
illness: "They called it acute congestion of the stomach and the fever left me as
suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. There was great rejoicing in the
family that morning, but none, not even the doctor, knew that I should never
see or hear again."
Despite her loss of sight and hearing Keller learned to do small tasks such as
folding laundry and getting things for her mother. She invented a system of
signs to make her wishes known. Knowing she was different from other
children, she became frustrated and often reacted uncontrollably. She later
said, "Sometimes I stood between two persons who were conversing and
touched their lips. I could not understand, and was vexed. I moved my lips and
gesticulated frantically without result. This made me so angry at times that I
kicked and screamed until I was exhausted."
Keller needed specialized training but her parents were unable to provide it. As
the years passed she became more difficult and less willing to obey her
parents. "I was strong, active, indifferent to consequences. I knew my own
mind well enough and always had my own way, even if I had to fight tooth and
nail for it." When Keller was about six years old her father took her to
Washington, D.C., where she was examined by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell,
the inventor of the telephone, who had developed a system of visible speech
that helped the deaf to communicate. Bell urged Keller's father to write the
Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts, and request a
teacher. Anne Sullivan became the teacher who would for many years mentor
Keller and teach her to speak.
Discovers water
Keller eloquently described her discovery of water in her autobiography. "We
walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the
honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my
teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one
hand she spelled into the other the word 'water' first slowly, then rapidly. I
stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I
felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning
thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew
that 'w-a-t-e-r' meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my
hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept
away."
Learns to speak
This experience opened up a new world for Keller. Her curiosity about the
world could not be satisfied, and Sullivan proved to be a patient teacher. Little
by little, Keller learned to express herself through the manual alphabet; she
next learned to read Braille, a system of writing for the blind that uses
characters made up of raised dots. When Keller was 10 years old Sullivan
heard about Ragnhild Kaata, a deaf and blind Norwegian child who had
learned to speak. Sullivan then took Keller to the Horace Mann School for the
Deaf, where she made remarkable progress in learning to speak English and
even French and German. While attending the Wright-Humason School for the
Deaf and the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Keller studied history, mathematics, literature, astronomy, and
physics. She went on to Radcliff College, where she graduated with high
honors in 1904.
Social reformer
After conquering her own limitations, Keller's next battle was the public's
indifference to the welfare of the disabled. She devoted the rest of her life to
promoting social reforms aimed at bettering the education and treatment of the
blind, the deaf, the mute — in effect, many physically challenged people. Keller
won many awards and citations for her humanitarian work. Credited with
prompting the organization of state commission for the blind, she helped put a
stop to placing deaf and blind individuals in mental asylums. As a pioneer in
educating the public in the prevention of blindness of the newborn, she wrote
newspaper and magazine articles about the relationship between venereal
disease, a sexually transmitted disease, and blindness in newborn infants. She
traveled to Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa lecturing about
the need to improve the lives of disabled people. In 1929 Keller wrote the
second volume of her autobiography, Midstream: My Later Life.
Sullivan at Keller's side
Sharing Keller's achievements as one of the foremost humanitarians of the
century was her companion and teacher Anne Sullivan. Even Sullivan's
marriage to John Albert Macy, the editor of Keller's autobiography, did not
interrupt the friendship. Sullivan helped Keller throughout her school and
college days, manually spelling lectures and reading assignments into Keller's
palm. Later she accompanied Keller on her lecture tours, giving full support to
her pupil and their joint cause of aiding the physically challenged. The
partnership was ended only by Sullivan's death in 1936. Keller died over 30
years later at the age of 88.
PLAYS AND FILMS ABOUT KELLER'S LIFE
A play and several films have been made about Keller's life. The
Miracle Worker, by William Gibson, was originally produced as a
play and later made into a film starring Anne Bancroft as Anne
Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller. In 1962 they each won
an Academy Award, respectively, for Best Supporting Actress
and Best Actress.
Part III Discussion Questions
1. What are some of the characteristics of humanitarians?
2. What are some of the reasons leading humanitarians to do what they do?
3. Who is the humanitarian you admire most? And why?
Unit 5
Part I Guided Reading
Scientists refer to the group of people who are on a quest to improve the
welfare of the human beings. There are the greats, scientists whom we
regard as icons today: Albert Einstein,…etc.
They saw beyond the present, to greater possibilities: Orville and Wilbur
Wright, who imagined that they could make something heavier than air
fly; and Alexander Fleming, who created in a petri dish a penicillin
culture that eventually would save millions of lives. Add to the list Jonas
Salk, who discovered a vaccine for the terrible scourge of polio; and J.
Robert Oppenheimer, who worked to make a bomb that could end a
horrible world war and ended up unleashing hell.
And there were literally millions more people, people we may never have
heard of, whose work led to the watermarks of this century's rising tide
of scientific and material gains: a green revolution that raised crop yields
by many times; life-saving medical procedures that extended life; and
kid-friendly computers that are faster and smarter than ever before.
Of course, not all results of our progress were positive: War took place
on a massive scale, bombs leveled cities and killed hundreds of
thousands, pesticides and industrial pollutants devastated entire
species and ecosystems, and even drugs such as heroin and cocaine,
which began as cures, ended up as plagues themselves.
And one of the major changes in the course of the history has been the
shift in importance from the "pure science" world of the university to the
for-profit world of industrial research and development. But pure science,
undirected by the profit motive, continues to offer us insight into, and
perhaps ways out from, the sometimes destructive side effects of
"progress." In any case, the scientific work will go on, with the profit
motive and need for scientific "purity" falling behind a more basic,
timeless motivation: survival.
Part II Famous scientists
1. Issac Newton (1642-1727)
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Newton.html
English physicist and mathematician who was born into a poor farming
family. Luckily for humanity, Newton was not a good farmer, and was sent
to Cambridge to study to become a preacher. At Cambridge, Newton studied
mathematics, being especially strongly influenced by Euclid, although he
was also influenced by Baconian and Cartesian philosophies. Newton was
forced to leave Cambridge when it was closed because of the plague, and
it was during this period that he made some of his most significant
discoveries. With the reticence he was to show later in life, Newton did
not, however, publish his results.
Newton suffered a mental breakdown in 1675 and was still recovering
through 1679. In response to a letter from Hooke, he suggested that a
particle, if released, would spiral in to the center of the Earth. Hooke
wrote back, claiming that the path would not be a spiral, but an ellipse.
Newton, who hated being bested, then proceeded to work out the
mathematics of orbits. Again, he did not publish his calculations. Newton
then began devoting his efforts to theological speculation and put the
calculations on elliptical motion aside, telling Halley he had lost them
(Westfall 1993, p. 403). Halley, who had become interested in orbits,
finally convinced Newton to expand and publish his calculations. Newton
devoted the period from August 1684 to spring 1686 to this task, and the
result became one of the most important and influential works on physics
of all times, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy) (1687), often shortened to Principia
Mathematica or simply "the Principia."
In Book I of Principia, Newton opened with definitions and the three laws
of motion now known as Newton's laws (laws of inertia, action and
reaction, and acceleration proportional to force). Book II presented
Newton's new scientific philosophy which came to replace Cartesianism.
Finally, Book III consisted of applications of his dynamics, including
an explanation for tides and a theory of lunar motion. To test his
hypothesis of universal gravitation, Newton wrote Flamsteed to ask if
Saturn had been observed to slow down upon passing Jupiter. The
surprised Flamsteed replied that an effect had indeed been observed, and
it was closely predicted by the calculations Newton had provided. Newton's
equations were further confirmed by observing the shape of the Earth
to be oblate spheroidal, as Newton claimed it should be, rather than
prolate spheroidal, as claimed by the Cartesians. Newton's equations
also described the motion of Moon by successive approximations, and
correctly predicted the return of Halley's Comet. Newton also correctly
formulated and solved the first ever problem in the calculus of variations
which involved finding the surface of revolution which would give
minimum resistance to flow (assuming a specific drag law).
Newton invented a scientific method which was truly universal in its scope.
Newton presented his methodology as a set of four rules for scientific
reasoning. These rules were stated in the Principia and proposed that (1)
we are to admit no more causes of natural things such as are both true
and sufficient to explain their appearances, (2) the same natural effects
must be assigned to the same causes, (3) qualities of bodies are to be
esteemed as universal, and (4) propositions deduced from observation of
phenomena should be viewed as accurate until other phenomena contradict
them.
These four concise and universal rules for investigation were truly
revolutionary. By their application, Newton formulated the universal laws
of nature with which he was able to unravel virtually all the unsolved
problems of his day. Newton went much further than outlining his rules
for reasoning, however, actually describing how they might be applied to
the solution of a given problem. The analytic method he invented far
exceeded the more philosophical and less scientifically rigorous
approaches of Aristotle and Aquinas. Newton refined Galileo's
experimental method, creating the compositional method of
experimentation still practiced today. In fact, the following description
of the experimental method from Newton's Optics could easily be mistaken
for a modern statement of current methods of investigation, if not for
Newton's use of the words "natural philosophy" in place of the modern term
"the physical sciences." Newton wrote, "As in mathematics, so in natural
philosophy the investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis
ought ever to precede the method of composition. This analysis consists
of making experiments and observations, and in drawing general
conclusions from them by induction...by this way of analysis we may
proceed from compounds to ingredients, and from motions to the forces
producing them; and in general from effects to their causes, and from
particular causes to more general ones till the argument end in the most
general. This is the method of analysis: and the synthesis consists in
assuming the causes discovered and established as principles, and by them
explaining the phenomena preceding from them, and proving the
explanations."
Newton formulated the classical theories of mechanics and optics and
invented calculus years before Leibniz. However, he did not publish his
work on calculus until afterward Leibniz had published his. This led
to a bitter priority dispute between English and continental
mathematicians which persisted for decades, to the detriment of all
concerned. Newton discovered that the binomial theorem was valid for
fractional powers, but left it for Wallis to publish (which he did, with
appropriate credit to Newton). Newton formulated a theory of sound, but
derived a speed which did not agree with his experiments. The reason for
the discrepancy was that the concept of adiabatic propagation did not yet
exist, so Newton's answer was too low by a factor of
, where is the
ratio of heat capacities of air. Newton therefore fudged his theory
until agreement was achieved (Engineering and Science, pp. 15-16).
In Optics (1704), whose publication Newton delayed until Hooke's death,
Newton observed that white light could be separated by a prism into a
spectrum of different colors, each characterized by a unique refractivity,
and proposed the corpuscular theory of light. Newton's views on optics
were born out of the original prism experiments he performed at
Cambridge. In his "experimentum crucis" (crucial experiment), he found
that the image produced by a prism was oval-shaped and not circular,
as current theories of light would require. He observed a half-red,
half-blue string through a prism, and found the ends to be disjointed.
He also observed Newton's rings, which are actually a manifestation of
the wave nature of light which Newton did not believe in. Newton believed
that light must move faster in a medium when it is refracted towards
the normal, in opposition to the result predicted by Huygens's wave
theory.
Newton also formulated a system of chemistry in Query 31 at the end of
Optics. In this corpuscular theory, "elements" consisted of different
arrangements of atoms, and atoms consisted of small, hard, billiard
ball-like particles. He explained chemical reactions in terms of the
chemical affinities of the participating substances. Newton devoted a
majority of his free time later in life (after 1678) to fruitless
alchemical experiments.
Newton was extremely sensitive to criticism, and even ceased publishing
until the death of his arch-rival Hooke. It was only through the prodding
of Halley that Newton was persuaded at all to publish the Principia
Mathematica. In the latter portion of his life, he devoted much of his
time to alchemical researches and trying to date events in the Bible. After
Newton's death, his burial place was moved. During the exhumation, it was
discovered that Newton had massive amounts of mercury in his body,
probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. This would certainly
explain Newton's eccentricity in late life. Newton was appointed Warden
of the British Mint in 1695. Newton was knighted by Queen Anne. However,
the act was "an honor bestowed not for his contributions to science, nor
for his service at the Mint, but for the greater glory of party politics
in the election of 1705" (Westfall 1993, p. 625).
Newton singlehandedly contributed more to the development of science than
any other individual in history. He surpassed all the gains brought about
by the great scientific minds of antiquity, producing a scheme of the
universe which was more consistent, elegant, and intuitive than any
proposed before. Newton stated explicit principles of scientific methods
which applied universally to all branches of science. This was in sharp
contradistinction to the earlier methodologies of Aristotle and Aquinas,
which had outlined separate methods for different disciplines.
Although his methodology was strictly logical, Newton still believed
deeply in the necessity of a God. His theological views are characterized
by his belief that the beauty and regularity of the natural world could
only "proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful
Being." He felt that "the Supreme God exists necessarily, and by the same
necessity he exists always and everywhere." Newton believed that God
periodically intervened to keep the universe going on track. He therefore
denied the importance of Leibniz's vis viva as nothing more than an
interesting quantity which remained constant in elastic collisions and
therefore had no physical importance or meaning.
Although earlier philosophers such as Galileo and John Philoponus had used
experimental procedures, Newton was the first to explicitly define and
systematize their use. His methodology produced a neat balance between
theoretical and experimental inquiry and between the mathematical and
mechanical approaches. Newton mathematized all of the physical sciences,
reducing their study to a rigorous, universal, and rational procedure
which marked the ushering in of the Age of Reason. Thus, the basic
principles of investigation set down by Newton have persisted virtually
without alteration until modern times. In the years since Newton's death,
they have borne fruit far exceeding anything even Newton could have
imagined. They form the foundation on which the technological
civilization of today rests. The principles expounded by Newton were even
applied to the social sciences, influencing the economic theories of Adam
Smith and the decision to make the United States legislature bicameral.
These latter applications, however, pale in contrast to Newton's
scientific contributions.
It is therefore no exaggeration to identify Newton as the single most
important contributor to the development of modern science. The Latin
inscription on Newton's tomb, despite its bombastic language, is thus
fully justified in proclaiming, "Mortals! rejoice at so great an ornament
to the human race!" Alexander Pope's couplet is also apropos: "Nature and
Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."
Several interesting Newton quotes are given by Misner et al. (1973,
pp. 40-41).
2. Charles Darwin (1809-82)
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Science/Darwin.htm
Darwin is the first of the evolutionary biologists, the originator of the
concept of natural selection. His principal works, The Origin of the
Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871)
marked a new epoch. His works were violently attacked and energetically
defended, then; and, it seems, yet today.
Charles Robert Darwin was born at Shrewsbury. His father was a
doctor and his mother was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood. Darwin
first studied medicine at Edinburgh. Will as they might, it soon
became clear to the family, and particularly to young Charles, that
he was not cut out for a medical career; he was transferred to
Cambridge (Christ's Church, 1828), there to train for the ministry.
While at Cambridge, Darwin befriended a biology professor (John
Stevens Henslow, 1796-1861) and his interest in zoology and
geography grew. Eventually, Darwin came under the eye of a geology
professor, Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873). Just after a field trip to
Wales with Sedgwick -- during which Darwin was to learn much from
"Sedgewick's on-the-spot tutorials" and was to develop
"intellectual muscle as he burnt off the flab" -- he was to learn,
that, through the efforts of Professor Henslow, that he had secured
an invitation to go aboard the Beagle, which, apparently, was being
outfitted by the admiralty for an extended voyage to the south seas.
In a letter, Henslow was to advise that "you are the very man they
are in search of."
Needless to say, though there was some anxious moments, Darwin was
accepted by those responsible for the voyage. The plans for the cruise of
the Beagle were extended, in that it was to take place over the best part of
five years (1831-36) and was to take in the southern islands, the South
American coast and Australia. While aboard the vessel, Darwin served as
a geologist, botanist, zoologist, and general man of science. It was rare to
have aboard a sailing vessel of the early 19th century a person who could
read and write, let alone one, such as Darwin, who could appreciate the
necessity of applying scientific principles to the business of gathering data
and carrying out research on it. I am sure that the telling of Darwin's
travels and observations, while aboard the Beagle, would be an interesting
topic in itself, but for my purposes here, I need only say, that Darwin
gained an experience which would prove to be a substantial foundation
for his life's work; the almost immediate result was the publication of his
findings in 1840, Zoology of the Beagle.
"When on board H.M.S. Beagle as naturalist, I was much struck with
certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South
America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past
inhabitants of that continent. These facts, as will be seen in the latter
chapters of this volume, seemed to throw some light on the origin of
species- that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our
greatest philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837,
that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently
accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have
any bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed myself to speculate on
the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a
sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed to me probable: from that
period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope
that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give
them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision."
(Darwin's opening paragraph to The Origin of the Species, 1859.)
It was likely Darwin's reading of Adam Smith which led Darwin to his
decisive breakthrough. Darwin read not only about those "laws" that
govern the accumulation of wealth, but also those "laws" which lead to
being poor. In regards to these poor "laws," Darwin read Malthus' Essay
on Population:
"In October 1838, that is fifteen months after I had begun my systematic
enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus' Population, and
being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence [a phrase used
by Malthus] which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation
of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances
favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones
to be destroyed. The result of this would be a new species. Here then I had
at last got hold of a theory by which to work."
Personally speaking, Darwin, directly on account of his early adventures
could no longer subscribe to the teachings of Genesis, viz., that every
species had been created whole and have come through the ages
unchanged. All the evidence supports (and none exists that disproves) the
proposition that life on earth has evolved; life started out slow and small,
and our current state of existence is as a result of some process working
upon natural materials throughout a period that consists of millions and
millions of years. The question for Darwin is what is this process, a
question which, for twenty years, Darwin worked on. He considered his
own personal experiences which were considerable and the data that he
had gathered. He read and read widely; he abstracted the learned
journals; he talked to breeders of domesticated animals. And only after
years of work did Darwin feel himself ready to express himself. More
years were to pass, during which he gathered more and more evidence,
when, in 1859, Darwin came out with his scholarly presentation, The
Origin of the Species.
In 1859, Darwin's shattering work, The Origin of the Species, came
out ("a sell out in one day"); it is now recognized as a leading
work in natural philosophy and in the history of mankind. Simply
stated, Darwin's theory is that things, and, in particular, life,
evolves by a process which Darwin called "natural selection."
"Currently we accept the general idea that biological development can be
explained by mutations in combination with natural selection. In its
essential parts, therefore, Darwin's theory of development has been
accepted. In Darwin's time mutations were not known about; their
discovery has led to extensive modifications of his theory, but it has also
eliminated the most important objections to it. ...
We are beginning to see that the awesome wonder of the evolution from
amoeba to man was not the result of a mighty word from a creator, but of
a combination of small, apparently insignificant processes. The structural
change occurring in a molecule within a chromosome, the result of a
struggle over food between two animals, the reproduction and feeding of
young - such are the simple elements that together, in the course of
millions of years, created the great wonder. This is nothing separate from
ordinary life. The wonder is in our everyday world, if only we have the
ability to see it." (Alfvén's Atom, Man, and the Universe.)
Darwin's "evolutionary and comprehensive vision" is a monistic one, it
shows that our universe is a "unitary and continuous process," there does
not exist a "dualistic split," and that all phenomena are natural. Darwin's
idea, it is written,
"is the most powerful and the most comprehensive idea that has ever
arisen on earth. It helps us understand our origins ... We are part of a
total process, made of the same matter and operating by the same energy
as the rest of the cosmos, maintaining and reproducing by the same type
of mechanism as the rest of life ..." (Sir Julian Huxley.)
The theory of evolution is no longer just a theory; an overwhelming
amount evidence has accumulated since Darwin. Darwin's theory has
never been successfully refuted. Darwin discovered a law just as surely as
Copernicus, Galileo and Newton discovered laws: natural laws. Just as
the earth is in orbit and has come to be and is depended on the force of
gravity, a natural law; so life has come into being and exists and is
depended on the force of natural selection. One need not necessarily
understand the why or the how of it, but a natural law such as gravitation
or selection nonetheless exists, believe it or not.
The theory as presented in Darwin's The Origin of the Species, I
should say, was not new to the world and it cannot be attributed
to Darwin. The theory, contrary to popular belief has been around
since Aristotle and Lucretius. Darwin's contribution is that he
gathered indisputable evidence, and he set forth a theory on how
evolution works, the theory of natural selection.
We will let Julian Huxley sum up Darwin's place in the history of science:
"Darwin's work ... put the world of life into the domain of natural law. It
was no longer necessary or possible to imagine that every kind of animal
or plant had been specially created, nor that the beautiful and ingenious
devices by which they get their food or escape their enemies have been
thought out by some supernatural power, or that there is any conscious
purpose behind the evolutionary process. If the idea of natural selection
holds good, then animals and plants and man himself have become what
they are by natural causes, as blind and automatic as those which go to
mould the shape of a mountain, or make the earth and the other planets
move in ellipses round the sun. The blind struggle for existence, the blind
process of heredity, automatically result in the selection of the best
adapted types, and a steady evolution of the stock in the direction of
progress...
Darwin's work has enabled us to see the position of man and of our
present civilization in a truer light. Man is not a finished product
incapable of further progress. He has a long history behind him, and it is
a history not of a fall, but of an ascent. And he has the possibility of
further progressive evolution before him. Further, in the light of evolution
we learn to be more patient. The few thousand years of recorded history
are nothing compared to the million years during which man has been on
earth, and the thousand million years of life's progress. And we can afford
to be patient when the astronomers assure us of at least another thousand
million years ahead of us in which to carry evolution onwards to new
heights."
3. Alexander Fleming and His Discovery------Penicillin
His Life
http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://web.archive.org/web/20
020214203441/http://hillside.coled.umn.edu/tesseract/Max/report.html
Alexander Fleming
Alexander Fleming was Scottish. He moved from Scotland to London. He fought in a war that
took place in South Africa. He lived from 1881 to 1955. He was the inventor of penicillin. He
discovered penicillin in 1928. He was a bacteriologist. He came up with penicillin when he was
trying find a way to kill bacteria.
Before he discovered penicillin he came up with lysozyme, something that
kills the germs that aren't very serious and do not cause diseases.
Alexander Fleming found out about penicillin accidently. When Alexander
Fleming first saw penicillin it did not look like the medicine we have
these days, it looked like some blue mold. Fleming knew it could be a kind
of medicine because he noticed that around the mold the bacteria had
disappeared. The blue mold that Alexander Fleming saw in his dish
destroying bacteria was penicillin.
Penicillin was completed in 1940 by some other scientists in Britain.
After penicillin was completed, Alexander Fleming collected 25 honorary
degrees, 26 metals, 18 prizes, 13 decorations, a membership in 87
scientific academies and societies. He was knighted in 1944, then in 1945
he received the noble prize for physiology or medicine.
Penicillin was the first antibiotic drug and it was first used to cure
soldiers in World War II. Penicillin is almost completely harmless, even
in large doses.
Alexander Fleming Discovers Penicillin
A Chance Discovery Leads to the Miracle Drug of the 20th Century
http://www.history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa062801a.htm
by Jennifer Rosenberg
In 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming made a chance discovery
from an already discarded, contaminated Petri dish. The mold that
had contaminated the experiment turned out to contain a powerful
antibiotic, penicillin. However, though Fleming was credited with the
discovery, it was over a decade before someone else turned penicillin
into the miracle drug for the 20th century.
How did this Petri dish almost get cleaned before being noticed? How
did the mold get onto the dish? Who transformed penicillin into a
useful drug?
The Chance Discovery
On a September morning in 1928, Alexander Fleming sat at his work
bench at St. Mary's Hospital after having just returned from a
vacation at The Dhoon (his country house) with his family. Before he
had left on vacation, Fleming had piled a number of his Petri dishes to
the side of the bench so that Stuart R. Craddock could use his work
bench while he was away.
Back from vacation, Fleming was sorting through the long unattended
stacks to determine which ones could be salvaged. Many of the dishes
had been contaminated. Fleming placed each of these in an ever
growing pile in a tray of Lysol.
Much of Fleming's work focused on the search for a "wonder drug."
Though the concept of bacteria had been around since Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek first described it in 1683, it wasn't until the late
nineteenth century that Louis Pasteur confirmed that bacteria caused
diseases. However, though they had this knowledge, no one had yet
been able to find a chemical that would kill harmful bacteria but also
not harm the human body.
In 1922, Fleming made an important discovery, lysozyme. While
working with some bacteria, Fleming's nose leaked, dropping some
mucus onto the dish. The bacteria disappeared. Fleming had
discovered a natural substance found in tears and nasal mucus that
helps the body fight germs. Fleming now realized the possibility of
finding a substance that could kill bacteria but not adversely affect the
human body.
In 1928, while sorting through his pile of dishes, Fleming's former lab
assistant, D. Merlin Pryce stopped by to visit with Fleming. Fleming
took this opportunity to gripe about the amount of extra work he had
to do since Pryce had transferred from his lab. To demonstrate,
Fleming rummaged through the large pile of plates he had placed in
the Lysol tray and pulled out several that had remained safely above
the Lysol. Had there not been so many, each would have been
submerged in Lysol, killing the bacteria to make the plates safe to
clean and then reuse.
While picking up one particular dish to show Pryce, Fleming noticed
something strange about it. While he had been away, a mold had
grown on the dish. That in itself was not strange. However, this
particular mold seemed to have killed the Staphylococcus aureus that
had been growing in the dish. Fleming realized that this mold had
potential.
What Was That Mold?
Fleming spent several weeks growing more mold and trying to
determine the particular substance in the mold that killed the bacteria.
After discussing the mold with mycologist (mold expert) C. J. La
Touche who had his office below Fleming's, they determined the mold
to be a Penicillium mold. Fleming then called the active antibacterial
agent in the mold, penicillin.
But where did the mold come from? Most likely, the mold came from
La Touche's room downstairs. La Touche had been collecting a large
sampling of molds for John Freeman, who was researching asthma,
and it is likely that some floated up to Fleming's lab.
Fleming continued to run numerous experiments to determine the
affect of the mold on other harmful bacteria. Surprisingly, the mold
killed a large number of them. Fleming then ran further tests and
found the mold to be non-toxic.
Could this be the "wonder drug"? To Fleming, it was not. Though he
saw its potential, Fleming was not a chemist and thus was unable to
isolate the active antibacterial element, penicillin, and could not keep
the element active long enough to be used in humans. In 1929,
Fleming wrote a paper on his findings, which did not garner any
scientific interest.
Twelve Years Later
In 1940, the second year of World War II, two scientists at Oxford
University were researching promising projects in bacteriology that
could possibly be enhanced or continued with chemistry. Australian
Howard Florey and German refugee Ernst Chain began working with
penicillin. Using new chemical techniques, they were able to produce
a brown powder that kept its antibacterial power for longer than a few
days. They experimented with the powder and found it to be safe.
Needing the new drug immediately for the war front, mass production
started quickly. The availability of penicillin during World War II saved
many lives that otherwise would have been lost due to bacterial
infections in even minor wounds. Penicillin also treated diphtheria,
gangrene, pneumonia, syphilis and tuberculosis.
Recognition
Though Fleming discovered penicillin, it took Florey and Chain to
make it a usable product. Though both Fleming and Florey were
knighted in 1944 and all three of them (Fleming, Florey and Chain)
were awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Fleming
is still credited for discovering penicillin.
4. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/MatheIs
aticians/Einstein.html
Global
Warming
Junk
Around 1886 Albert Einstein began his school career in Munich. As well
as his violin lessons, which he had from age six to age thirteen, he also
had religious education at home where he was taught Judaism. Two years
later he entered the Luitpold Gymnasium and after this his religious
education was given at school. He studied mathematics, in particular the
calculus, beginning around 1891.
In 1894 Einstein's family moved to Milan but Einstein remained in Munich.
In 1895 Einstein failed an examination that would have allowed him to study
for a diploma as an electrical engineer at the Eidgenössische Technische
Hochschule in Zurich. Einstein renounced German citizenship in 1896 and
was to be stateless for a number of years. He did not even apply for Swiss
citizenship until 1899, citizenship being granted in 1901.
Following the failing of the entrance exam to the ETH, Einstein attended
secondary school at Aarau planning to use this route to enter the ETH in
Zurich. While at Aarau he wrote an essay (for which was only given a little
above half marks!) in which he wrote of his plans for the future:
If I were to have the good fortune to pass my examinations,
I would go to Zurich. I would stay there for four years in
order to study mathematics and physics. I imagine myself
becoming a teacher in those branches of the natural sciences,
choosing the theoretical part of them. Here are the reasons
which lead me to this plan. Above all, it is my disposition
for abstract and mathematical thought, and my lack of
imagination and practical ability.
Indeed Einstein succeeded with his plan graduating in 1900 as a teacher
of mathematics and physics. Einstein tried to obtain a post, writing to
Hurwitz who held out some hope of a position but nothing came of it. Three
of Einstein's fellow students were appointed assistants at ETH in Zurich
but clearly Einstein had not impressed enough and still in 1901 he was
writing round universities in order to obtain a job, but without success.
He did manage to avoid Swiss military service on the grounds that he had
flat feet and varicose veins. By mid 1901 he had a temporary job as a
teacher, teaching mathematics at the Technical High School in Winterthur.
Around this time he wrote:-
I have given up the ambition to get to a university ...
Another temporary position teaching in a private school in Schaffhausen
followed. Then the father of Grossmann, a friend of his, tried to help
Einstein get a job by recommending him to the director of the patent office
in Bern. Einstein was appointed as a technical expert third class.
Einstein worked in this patent office from 1902 to 1909, holding a
temporary post when he was first appointed, but by 1904 the position was
made permanent and in 1906 he was promoted to technical expert second class.
While in the Bern patent office he completed an astonishing range of
theoretical physics publications, written in his spare time without the
benefit of close contact with scientific literature or colleagues.
Einstein earned a doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905 for a
thesis On a new determination of molecular dimensions. He dedicated the
thesis to Grossmann.
In the first of three papers, all written in 1905, Einstein examined the
phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which electromagnetic
energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in discrete quantities.
The energy of these quanta was directly proportional to the frequency of
the radiation. This seemed to contradict classical electromagnetic theory,
based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics which assumed
that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves which could contain any
small amount of energy. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to
describe the electromagnetic radiation of light.
Einstein's second 1905 paper proposed what is today called the special
theory of relativity. He based his new theory on a reinterpretation of
the classical principle of relativity, namely that the laws of physics
had to have the same form in any frame of reference. As a second fundamental
hypothesis, Einstein assumed that the speed of light remained constant
in all frames of reference, as required by Maxwell's theory.
Later in 1905 Einstein showed how mass and energy were equivalent.
Einstein was not the first to propose all the components of special theory
of relativity. His contribution is unifying important parts of classical
mechanics and Maxwell's electrodynamics.
The third of Einstein's papers of 1905 concerned statistical mechanics,
a field of that had been studied by Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Gibbs.
After 1905 Einstein continued working in the areas described above. He
made important contributions to quantum theory, but he sought to extend
the special theory of relativity to phenomena involving acceleration. The
key appeared in 1907 with the principle of equivalence, in which
gravitational acceleration was held to be indistinguishable from
acceleration caused by mechanical forces. Gravitational mass was
therefore identical with inertial mass.
In 1908 Einstein became a lecturer at the University of Bern after
submitting his Habilitation thesis Consequences for the constitution of
radiation following from the energy distribution law of black bodies. The
following year he become professor of physics at the University of Zurich,
having resigned his lectureship at Bern and his job in the patent office
in Bern.
By 1909 Einstein was recognised as a leading scientific thinker and in
that year he resigned from the patent office. He was appointed a full
professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1911. In fact 1911
was a very significant year for Einstein since he was able to make
preliminary predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star,
passing near the Sun, would appear to be bent slightly, in the direction
of the Sun. This would be highly significant as it would lead to the first
experimental evidence in favour of Einstein's theory.
About 1912, Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research, with
the help of his mathematician friend Marcel Grossmann, by expressing his
work in terms of the tensor calculus of Tullio Levi-Civita and Gregorio
Ricci-Curbastro. Einstein called his new work the general theory of
relativity. He moved from Prague to Zurich in 1912 to take up a chair at
the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich.
Einstein returned to Germany in 1914 but did not reapply for German
citizenship. What he accepted was an impressive offer. It was a research
position in the Prussian Academy of Sciences together with a chair (but
no teaching duties) at the University of Berlin. He was also offered the
directorship of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin which
was about to be established.
After a number of false starts Einstein published, late in 1915, the
definitive version of general theory. Just before publishing this work
he lectured on general relativity at Göttingen and he wrote:-
To my great joy, I completely succeeded in convincing Hilbert
and Klein.
In fact Hilbert submitted for publication, a week before Einstein
completed his work, a paper which contains the correct field equations
of general relativity.
When British eclipse expeditions in 1919 confirmed his predictions,
Einstein was idolised by the popular press. The London Times ran the
headline on 7 November 1919:-
Revolution in science - New theory of the Universe - Newtonian
ideas overthrown.
In 1920 Einstein's lectures in Berlin were disrupted by demonstrations
which, although officially denied, were almost certainly anti-Jewish.
Certainly there were strong feelings expressed against his works during
this period which Einstein replied to in the press quoting Lorentz, Planck
and Eddington as supporting his theories and stating that certain Germans
would have attacked them if he had been:-
... a German national with or without swastika instead of a
Jew with liberal international convictions...
During 1921 Einstein made his first visit to the United States. His main
reason was to raise funds for the planned Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
However he received the Barnard Medal during his visit and lectured
several times on relativity. He is reported to have commented to the
chairman at the lecture he gave in a large hall at Princeton which was
overflowing with people:-
I never realised that so many Americans were interested in
tensor analysis.
Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 but not for relativity rather
for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. Among further honours which
Einstein received were the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1925 and
the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1926.
Niels Bohr and Einstein were to carry on a debate on quantum theory which
began at the Solvay Conference in 1927. Planck, Niels Bohr, de Broglie,
Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac were at this conference, in addition
to Einstein. Einstein had declined to give a paper at the conference and:-
... said hardly anything beyond presenting a very simple
objection to the probability interpretation .... Then he fell
back into silence ...
Indeed Einstein's life had been hectic and he was to pay the price in 1928
with a physical collapse brought on through overwork. However he made a
full recovery despite having to take things easy throughout 1928.
A third visit back to the United States in 1932 was followed by the offer
of a post at Princeton. The idea was that Einstein would spend seven months
a year in Berlin, five months at Princeton. Einstein accepted and left
Germany in December 1932 for the United States. The following month the
Nazis came to power in Germany and Einstein was never to return there.
During 1933 Einstein travelled in Europe visiting Oxford, Glasgow,
Brussels and Zurich. Offers of academic posts which he had found so hard
to get in 1901, were plentiful. He received offers from Jerusalem, Leiden,
Oxford, Madrid and Paris.
What was intended only as a visit became a permanent arrangement by 1935
when he applied and was granted permanent residency in the United States.
At Princeton his work attempted to unify the laws of physics. However he
was attempting problems of great depth and he wrote:-
I have locked myself into quite hopeless scientific problems
- the more so since, as an elderly man, I have remained
estranged from the society here...
In 1940 Einstein became a citizen of the United States, but chose to retain
his Swiss citizenship. He made many contributions to peace during his life.
In 1944 he made a contribution to the war effort by hand writing his 1905
paper on special relativity and putting it up for auction. It raised six
million dollars, the manuscript today being in the Library of Congress.
By 1949 Einstein was unwell. A spell in hospital helped him recover but
he began to prepare for death by drawing up his will in 1950. He left his
scientific papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a university
which he had raised funds for on his first visit to the USA, served as
a governor of the university from 1925 to 1928 but he had turned down the
offer of a post in 1933 as he was very critical of its administration.
One week before his death Einstein signed his last letter. It was a letter
to Bertrand Russell in which he agreed that his name should go on a
manifesto urging all nations to give up nuclear weapons. It is fitting
that one of his last acts was to argue, as he had done all his life, for
international peace.
Einstein was cremated at Trenton, New Jersey at 4 pm on 18 April 1955 (the
day of his death). His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed place.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
5. Jonas Salk, M.D.------Developer of Polio Vaccine
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/sal0bio
b. October 28, 1914
d. June 23, 1995
BIOGRAPHY
In America in the 1950s, summertime was a time of fear and anxiety for
many parents; this was the season when children by the thousands became
infected with the crippling disease poliomyelitis, or polio. This burden
of fear was lifted forever when it was announced that Dr. Jonas Salk had
developed a vaccine against the disease. Salk became world-famous
overnight, but his discovery was the result of many years of painstaking
research.
Jonas Salk was born in New York City. His parents were Russian-Jewish
immigrants who, although they themselves lacked formal education, were
determined to see their children succeed, and encouraged them to study
hard. Jonas Salk was the first member of his family to go to college. He
entered the City College of New York intending to study law, but soon
became intrigued by medical science.
While attending medical school at New York University, Salk was invited
to spend a year researching influenza. The virus that causes flu had only
recently been discovered and the young Salk was eager to learn if the virus
could be deprived of its ability to infect, while still giving immunity
to the illness. Salk succeeded in this attempt, which became the basis
of his later work on polio.
After completing medical school and his internship, Salk returned to the
study of influenza, the flu virus. World War II had begun, and public
health experts feared a replay of the flu epidemic that had killed millions
in the wake of the First World War. The development of vaccines controlled
the spread of flu after the war and the epidemic of 1919 did not recur.
In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh
Medical School. While working there, with the National Foundation for
Infantile Paralysis, Salk saw an opportunity to develop a vaccine against
polio, and devoted himself to this work for the next eight years.
In 1955 Salk's years of research paid off. Human trials of the polio
vaccine effectively protected the subject from the polio virus. When news
of the discovery was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as
a miracle worker. He further endeared himself to the public by refusing
to patent the vaccine. He had no desire to profit personally from the
discovery, but merely wished to see the vaccine disseminated as widely
as possible.
Salk's vaccine was composed of "killed" polio virus, which retained the
ability to immunize without running the risk of infecting the patient.
A few years later, a vaccine made from live polio virus was developed,
which could be administered orally, while Salk's vaccine required
injection. Further, there was some evidence that the "killed" vaccine
failed to completely immunize the patient. In the U.S., public health
authorities elected to distribute the "live" oral vaccine instead of
Salk's. Tragically, the preparation of live virus infected some patients
with the disease, rather than immunizing them. Since the introduction of
the original vaccine, the few new cases of polio reported in the United
States were probably caused by the "live" vaccine which was intended to
prevent them.
In countries where Salk's vaccine has remained in use, the disease has
been virtually eradicated.
In 1963, Salk founded the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies,an
innovative center for medical and scientific research. Jonas Salk
continued to conduct research and publish books, some written in
collaboration with one or more of his sons, who are also medical
scientists.
Salk's published books include Man Unfolding (1972), The Survival of the
Wisest (1973), World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981),
and Anatomy of Reality (1983).
Dr. Salk's last years were spent searching for a vaccine against AIDS.
Jonas Salk died on June 23, 1995. He was 80 years old.
Salk produces polio vaccine 1952
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm52sa.html
Poliomyelitis has been around since ancient times. There is still no cure
for the disease. But at the peak of its devastation in the United States,
Jonas Salk introduced a way to prevent it.
This infectious viral disease attacks the nerve cells and sometimes the
central nervous system, often causing muscle wasting and paralysis and
even death. Since 1900 there had been cycles of epidemics, each seeming
to get stronger and more disastrous. The disease, whose early symptoms
are like the flu, struck mostly children, although adults, including
Franklin Roosevelt, caught it too.
As a medical student and later a researcher at the University of Michigan,
Salk studied viruses, such as influenza, and ways to vaccinate against
them. Successful vaccines already existed for diseases such as smallpox.
For each virus, a vaccine must be custom-made, but the principles are the
same: if your body is exposed to a very weak or small amount of the disease
virus, it will produce antibodies, chemicals to resist and kill the virus.
Then when a full-strength version of the disease virus comes along, your
body is prepared to fight it.
In 1947 Salk became head of the Virus Research Lab at the University of
Pittsburgh. He began investigating the poliovirus. To start with, he had
to sort the 125 strains of the virus. He found that they fell into three
basic types and knew that a vaccine would have to include these three types
to protect against all polio. One of the hardest things about working with
poliovirus was manufacturing enough to experiment with 媋 nd to make
vaccine production practical.
In 1948 researchers at Harvard (J.F. Enders, T.H. Weller, and F.C. Robbins)
made a breakthrough with this. They found that the virus could grow on
scraps of tissue, without needing an intact organism like a chick embryo.
Bacteria usually contaminated the tissue, but Enders' team was now able
to get penicillin -- discovered 20 years earlier by Alexander Fleming and
developed in the 1940s by Ernst Chain and Howard Florey -- and prevent
the bacterial growth. Now viruses like mumps or polio could be created
in large quantities for study. This team won the 1954 Nobel Prize in
physiology/medicine.
Now Salk could speed up his research. Using formaldehyde, he killed the
polio virus but kept it intact enough to trigger the body's response. On
July 2, 1952, Salk tried a refined vaccine on children who'd already had
polio and recovered. After the vaccination, their antibodies increased.
He then tried it on volunteers who had not had polio, including himself,
his wife, and their children. The volunteers all produced antibodies, and
none got sick.
In 1953 Salk reported his findings in The Journal of the American Medical
Association. A nationwide testing of the vaccine was launched in April
1954 with the mass inoculation of school children. The results were
amazing -- 60-70 percent prevention -- and Salk was praised to the skies.
But suddenly, some 200 cases of the disease were caused by the vaccine
and 11 people died. All testing was halted. It seemed that people's hopes
were dashed until investigators found that the disease-causing vaccine
all came from one poorly made batch at one drug company. Higher production
standards were adopted and vaccinations resumed, with over 4 million given
by August 1955. The impact was dramatic: In 1955 there were 28,985 cases
of polio; in 1956, 14,647; in 1957, 5,894. By 1959, 90 other countries
used Salk's vaccine.
Another researcher, Albert Sabin, didn't think Salk's killed-virus
vaccine was strong enough. He wanted to mimic the real-life infection as
much as possible; that meant using a weakened form of the live virus. He
experimented with more than 9,000 monkeys and 100 chimpanzees before
isolating a rare form of poliovirus that would reproduce in the intestinal
tract but not in the central nervous system. In 1957 he was ready for human
trials of an vaccine people could swallow, not get in a shot. It was tested
in other countries, including the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In 1958
other researchers tested a strain in the U.S. and they tried to cast doubts
on Sabin's "communist vaccine." In spite of this, his vaccine was licensed
in 1962 and quickly became the vaccine of choice. It was cheaper to make
and easier to take than Salk's injectable vaccine.
In the U.S., cases of polio are now extremely rare, and ironically, are
almost always caused by the Sabin vaccine itself -- being live, the virus
can mutate to a stronger form. Elsewhere there are still about 250,000
cases per year, mostly in developing nations where vaccination has not
become widespread. The World Health Organization has goals to eradicate
polio completely in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
6.Robert Oppenheimer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 - February 18, 1967) was a
Jewish-American physicist and the scientific director of the Manhattan
Project, the World War II effort to develop nuclear weapons, at the Los
Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Oppenheimer was born in New York in 1904 to Julius (a wealthy
textile-importer who had immigrated to the USA from Germany in 1888)
and Ella Friedman Oppenheimer (an artist). He studied at the Ethical
Culture Society school where, in addition to mathematics and science,
he was exposed to a variety of subjects ranging from Greek to French
literature. He entered Harvard one year late due to an attack of colitis.
During the interim period he went with a former English teacher to New
Mexico to recuperate, where he fell in love with horseback riding and
the mountains and plateaus of the American southwest. He returned
reinvigorated and made up for the delay by graduating in just three years
with a major in chemistry. One of the most brilliant men of the twentieth
century, he studied science and the humanities with equal ease and
insight.
While at Harvard he was introduced to experimental physics during a
course on thermodynamics taught by Percy Bridgman. However, while
undertaking postgraduate work at Ernest Rutherford's famed Cavendish
Laboratory in Cambridge, he came to realize that his forte was
theoretical, not experimental physics, as he was quite clumsy in the
laboratory working under J.J. Thomson. In 1926 he pursued this interest
by studying under Max Born at the University of Göttingen, one of the
top centers for theoretical physics in Europe, and obtained his PhD at
the age of 22.
He had a true feel for languages and could study a new one in a period
of just one or two months. He was deeply interested in Sanskrit and
Indian philosophies. During the period spent at Göttingen, Oppenheimer
published many important contributions to the then newly-developed
quantum theory. In September 1927, he returned to Harvard as a National
Research Council Fellow and in early 1928 he studied at the California
Institute of Technology. Here he received numerous invitations for
teaching positions, and eventually opted to accept an assistant
professorship in physics at the University of California, Berkeley as,
in his words, "it was a desert", and yet paradoxically also a fertile
place of opportunity. He maintained a joint appointment with Cal Tech,
where he spent every spring term, in order to avoid potential isolation.
Before his Berkeley professorship began, however, he was diagnosed with
a mild case of tuberculosis, and with his brother Frank, spent some weeks
at a ranch, "Perro Caliente," in New Mexico, which he leased and
eventually purchased outright. Recovered, he returned to Berkeley to
inspire a whole generation of physicists who idolized him for his
intellectual virtuosity and amazingly versatile interests. While at
Berkeley he also worked closely with (and became good friends with)
Ernest O. Lawrence and his cyclotron pioneers. He is credited with
creating the American school of theoretical physics.
Oppenheimer did important research in astrophysics, nuclear physics,
and spectroscopy. In 1936 he became involved with Jean Tatlock, who
sparked his interest in politics. Like many young intellectuals in the
1930s he became a supporter of Communist ideas, and having much more
money than most professors (he inherited over $300,000 after his
father's death in 1937, a massive sum at the time) was able to bankroll
many left-wing efforts. In November 1940 he married Katherine Puening
Harrison, a radical Berkeley student, and by May 1941 they had produced
their first child, Peter.
When World War II started, Oppenheimer eagerly became involved in the
on-going war effort to develop an atomic bomb which was already taking
up much of the activities of Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley.
He threw himself into the task with full vigor. Much to Lawrence's
frustration and the surprise of many, the Manhattan Project head General
Leslie Groves appointed Oppenheimer as the scientific director, despite
knowing of his past security complications.
Scouting for a site to create a new secret laboratory to be in charge
of the scientific work behind the bomb, Oppenheimer was again drawn to
New Mexico, not far from his ranch. On a flat mesa near the city of Santa
Fe, Los Alamos was formed as a rag-tag collection of barracks and mud.
There Oppenheimer collected a group of the most brilliant physicists
of his day, which included Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman,
Edward Teller, and Victor Weiskopf. He succeeded superbly as director
and kept all the details of the project, from chemistry to engineering,
in his mind. His wife gave birth to their second child, Katherine (called
Toni), in 1944 while at the lab. The joint work of the scientists at
Los Alamos resulted in the first nuclear explosion at Alamogordo on July
16, 1945. Witnessing the explosion, he later said, recalled to
Oppenheimer a verse in Sanskrit from the Bhagavad Gita: Kalosmi
lokaksaya krt pravrddho - "I am Death, destroyer of worlds."
After the Nazis surrendered and the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in Japan, Oppenheimer objected to these weapons being used to
defend the United States from the Soviet Union. He became Chairman of
the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, and
rallied vigorously for international arms control and against the
development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1947, he took Albert Einstein's
old position as the director of the Institute for Advanced Study at
Princeton.
His previous ties to Communists and his leftist politics led to tensions
between him and politicians, and he was accused of being a security risk
and had his security clearance suspended by President Eisenhower in 1953.
This led to a much publicized hearing, and despite support from dozens
of fellow scientists and colleagues, his security clearance was
withdrawn. Edward Teller, with whom Oppenheimer disagreed on whether
the more powerful hydrogen bomb should be developed, did not support
Oppenheimer in his hearing, an act which led to much outrage by the
scientific community.
Stripped of his political power, Oppenheimer continued to lecture,
write, and work on physics. He toured Europe, and even Japan, giving
talks about the history of science, the role of science in society, and
the nature of the universe. At the Institute for Advanced Study he worked
to bring together intellectuals from a variety of disciplines at the
height of their powers to solve the most pertinent questions of the
current age, but largely felt that he had failed to make any serious
progress. In 1963 he was reinstated by President Lyndon Johnson and was
awarded the Enrico Fermi Award as a sign of gratitude for his services
to the nation. It was, however, only symbolic in its effects, as he still
lacked security clearance and had not been consulted on official policy
since it was stripped.
He died of throat cancer in 1967. His ashes were spread over the Virgin
Islands, a summer retreat of his family.
Part III Discussion Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
What do you think of the relationship between pure science and applied science?
Is there any side effect of science and technology? If yes, list some of them.
Is global warming junk science?
Science and Religion: Are they compatible?
Unit 6 Writers
Part I Guided Reading
What is Art? Until the 20th century, everyone knew the answer. Art was
painting, and sculpture and literature, created at the behest of the church, the
state or an important (i.e. rich) individual.
However, as we approach 2000, the key phrase is, "I don't know much about
art, but I know what I like."
This change has had a profound impact on society: including the art of
literature, existing as it does in a world in which the air is full of words,
broadcast to us via radio, television and modem.
In many ways, technology has been a driving force that has superseded
aesthetic notions. Thus, the artists' static paintings have had to compete for
the popular eye with the dazzling images of movies and television; the writers'
written words have to compete with a culture that is increasingly verbal and
decreasingly literate.
According to Peter Hays, a professor of English at UC Davis. "Serious writing
doesn't sell," he says. Ask him about the state of literature, and Hays minces
no words. "It's dying," he says. "It's being replaced by entertainment, by
television and movies and video games.
Then what is Art and where it will go to. Art, says Hays, is what lasts.
"It's what continues to speak to us, what continues to unfold for us," he says.
"You can find something new in it each time. Certainly, when Shakespeare
wrote "Hamlet,' he didn't have Freud's Oedipus complex in mind. But we see it
that way now, because if it's sufficiently true to life, each generation can
interpret it in its own ways."
Part II Famous Writers
1. William Shakespeare
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/author/shakespeareshtml
Born: Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, 1564
Died: 1616
Important works:
Shakespeare is England's greatest dramatist and one of our greatest poets.
He is celebrated for the immense range of his subject matter and style; his
extraordinary ability to get inside his characters without judgement or bias; his
way of bringing together a whole range of ideas and issues without imposing
himself upon them, and his sheer creativity with language. His influence on
English literature and culture goes beyond that of any other single creative
artist.
In his early plays Shakespeare wrote in the popular genres of his time:
histories, comedies and revenge tragedies. It is easy to think of him now
eclipsing his contemporaries, but he wrote alongside other famous names first of all Marlowe, Kyd and Jonson, then the younger generation of Webster,
Beaumont and Fletcher.
Shakespeare's plays were highly popular at the public theatres and at court.
When the first folio of his plays appeared, Jonson placed him above Chaucer
and Spenser, and above all the Greek and Roman dramatists. Each age finds
their own Shakespeare: the Victorians stressed the "immortality" of his work,
while the 1960s saw productions which had the plays apply to a whole range of
political situations, with Shakespeare as our contemporary. In the late
eighteenth century, alongside the vogue for Gothic fiction it was the dark
tragedies that were most performed, whilst Olivier's Henry V in the 1944 film
version found resonances in war-time Britain.
Shakespeare's plays are performed more widely around the world, and more
frequently, than those of any other dramatist. A veritable Shakespeare industry
has made him a national and literary icon and our National Curriculum has him
as the one absolutely indispensable author. Kenneth Branagh's films and the
recent movie version of Romeo and Juliet have helped to define our late
twentieth century favourites, whilst the witty, irreverent film Shakespeare in
Love is our own modern love affair with the bard.
Shakespeare's contribution was not only to the stage. He used one of the
largest vocabularies of any English writer, some 30,000 words; he coined
some 2,000 words and many well-used phrases are attributable to him
including: flesh and blood, foul play, cruel to be kind, play fast and loose,
vanish into thin air, the game is up, tower of strength, truth will out, one fell
swoop, stood on ceremony, and so on, and so on.
Shakespeare's sonnets - mainly addressed to a beautiful young man who
steals away his mistress, a dark married woman, and then switches his
favours to another poet - have a mysterious dedication to a "WH". All this has
led to much speculation about various sexual interests in Shakespeare's life.
However, the story was probably a standard one and there's no solid
autobiographical evidence that the poems refer to real people.
Henry VIII, Cardenio and The Two Noble Kinsmen are the last three plays
associated with Shakespeare. They seem to have been written in collaboration
with the playwright John Fletcher. The manuscript of another play, Sir Thomas
More, is held in the British Museum and is thought to contain pages in
Shakespeare's writing. If so, this is the only surviving play script in
Shakespeare's hand.
Education and background:
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and
baptised in Holy Trinity Church on 6 April 1564. The date traditionally given for
his birth is 23 April, perhaps because it is St. George's Day, and because he
died on that date.
Records tell us that he was the eldest son and eldest surviving child of John
Shakespeare, a glove maker and wool dealer, and Mary Arden. Then we hear
nothing of him until 1582, when at eighteen years old he had to apply to the
Bishop of Worcester for a special licence to marry Anne Hathaway, eight years
his senior and expecting his child, so that they could be wed after only one
asking of the banns. An incompetent clerk muddled the entry and recorded the
licence for "Willelmum Shaxpere et Annam Whateley de Temple Grafton" - so
sending off scholars in all kinds of directions looking for an "other" woman.
Their daughter, Susanna, was born on 23 May 1582. In January 1585, Anne
gave birth to twins. They were named in honour of two family friends, the baker
Hamnet Sadler and his wife Judith. Tragically, Hamnet died in 1596, aged only
eleven. The play King John, which Shakespeare is believed to have been
writing at the time, has Constance, bereft of her son Arthur, refusing to be
comforted: "Grief fills the room up of my absent child: Lies in his bed, walks up
and down with me". Shakespeare's last surviving descendant, his only
granddaughter Elizabeth Hall, died in 1670.
Although Shakespeare often lodged in London, he remained very much
attached to Stratford. In 1597 he bought New Place for £60. It was a large
house with two barns, two gardens and two orchards, only a few minutes away
from his parents' house, and it was to here that he retired.
He was probably educated at the grammar school in Stratford, where his
father's civic status would have entitled his son to a free place. The school
records are lost but Shakespeare's works suggest his familiarity with a
Latin-based curriculum, even though academics of his time considered he had
"small Latin and less Greek". Perhaps the character Sir Hugh Evans in The
Merry Wives of Windsor is a caricature of his old headmaster, Thomas
Jenkins.
Legend tells us that he was a poacher; some think that he trained in Law,
travelled in Europe, or enlisted as a soldier. In the best-authenticated tradition
Shakespeare was for a short while a country schoolmaster, possibly with a
family, since he had no degree.
Nothing is known for certain about how he became an actor and a writer. He
may have joined one of the London acting companies that had been on tour in
Stratford. However, by the time he was in his mid-twenties his plays were being
performed, and by thirty he was a member of the highly successful Lord
Chamberlain's company of actors.
When Shakepeare arrived in London it was an exciting time for a young
dramatist. The first public theatre had been opened in Shoreditch in 1577. The
old religious drama was dying out, but two new plays written shortly before
Shakespeare's birth - Ralph Roister Doister, the first regular comedy in English,
and Gorboduc, the first regular tragedy - were helping to shape a new
Elizabethan drama.
Shakespeare died at home in Stratford on 23 April 1616, his fifty-second
birthday, and was buried two days later in Holy Trinity Church. On his
gravestone is the inscription which expresses his wish to be left undisturbed;
possibly, according to biographer, Peter Levi, the last lines of verse he wrote,
and his "conversation with the gravediggers":
Good friend for Jesus sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
But for the efforts of two of Shakespeare's actor friends, John Hemming and
Henry Condell, sixteen of his plays might have been lost to us completely. After
his death they collected his plays together, drawing on printers' manuscripts,
actors' prompt books and even the actors' memories, so that thirty-six plays
could be published in faithful versions. This is the famous First Folio.
2. Francis Bacon: “The Secretary pf Nature” (1561-1626)
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Bacon.htm
Introduction:Bacon's real claim to fame is: not that he, as the lord chancellor,
in 1621, was removed from office for accepting a litigant's bribe;
nor, that he was the real writer of the Shakespearean plays (one
of the controversies in English literature, the "Baconian
controversy"); but rather Francis Bacon is known as a philosopher,
one of the first order. Bacon delineated the principles of the
inductive method, which constituted a breakthrough in the approach
to science, even though philosophers and scientists of the day,
- and seemingly today, yet - repudiated both his theories and
methodology, alike. Bacon argued that the only knowledge of
importance to man was empirically rooted in the natural world; and
that a clear system of scientific inquiry would assure man's
mastery over the world. He was the originator of the expression,
"Knowledge is power." He was quite taken up by the "materialist"
theories and the resultant discoveries of both Copernicus and
Galileo. Bacon, along with Galileo are known in the literature as
"the great anti-Aristotelians who created the 'modern scientific'
view of Nature."
Francis Bacon was born at London. He entered Trinity College,
Cambridge, at the age of twelve. He studied law and became a
barrister in 1582; two years later he took a seat in the House of
Commons. His opposition, in 1584, to Queen Elizabeth's tax program
retarded his political advancement. While in the earlier days he
supported the earl of Essex, Bacon, in 1601, was involved in his
prosecution. With the accession of James I (1566-1625) and
thereafter, a number of honours were bestowed on Bacon: he was
knighted in 1603, made Solicitor General in 1604, Attorney General
in 1613, and Lord Chancellor in 1618.
He had powerful enemies, foremost among them was Sir Edward Coke.
"Bacon and Coke were bitter political rivals, in Parliament and
the law courts." They even contended for the hand of the same woman,
a widow, Lady Elizabeth Hatton, - "beautiful, widowed, and rich."
Bacon, not having come from a rich family, and always pressed for
money: accepted, and this is one of the great surprises of history,
a litigant's bribe. This was in 1621; so, just four months after
he was raised to the peerage, Bacon was evicted from office. ("I
do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption,
and do renounce all defense.") Francis Bacon went into retirement
and died in 1626; he was buried at Saint Michael's Church in St.
Albans, just north of London, Hertfordshire.
The Elizabethan Times:If one is to get to know about another person's life and their work
it will be necessary to take an historical look at the times during
which that person lived; this is particularly so of Francis Bacon.
Let us first start by looking to the principal actors of the age.
Our leading lady is Elizabeth the First, the Queen of England.
Elizabeth I, lived between the years 1533 and 1603. She was the
daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She was, after her mother's
execution, declared illegitimate, but in 1544 Parliament
reestablished her in the succession. On her accession in 1558 (she
reigned until 1603) England's low fortunes, included: religious
strife, a huge government debt, and failure in wars with France.
Her reign took England through one of its greatest periods, a period
that saw the country united to become a first-rate European power
with a great navy; a period in which commerce and industry prospered
and colonization began. Elizabeth followed in her father's
footsteps and asserted the Tudor concept of strong rule. She
reestablished Anglicanism, and measures against Catholics grew
harsher. Although she had many favorites, Elizabeth never married,
but she used the possibility of marriage as a diplomatic tool. Vain,
fickle in bestowing favors, prejudiced, vacillating, and
parsimonious, she was nonetheless considered to be a great monarch,
highly aware of the responsibility of rule and immensely
courageous.
I have yet to undertake an exhaustive examination of Bacon's life;
it has been done many times before. The standard biography is that
of James Spedding.
Before passing on to saying a few words about Bacon's philosophy
it is worthwhile to make the comparison between Sir Thomas More
and Francis Bacon, as Frederic R. White did:
"In many external respects, the life of Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
was similar to that of Sir Thomas More [1478-1535], a century
before. Both came from distinguished families, and both received
excellent educations. Both studied law and both practised that
profession. Both entered public life at a comparatively early age,
and both finally arrived, at the end of their political careers, at the
Lord Chancellorship. Moreover, each fell into disfavour with his
sovereign; each was accused of taking bribes; each was condemned
and imprisoned in the Tower. Finally, each was the most
distinguished writer and thinker of his time, and each was in a sense,
a martyr to his faith. More died because of his steadfast devotion to
his religion. Bacon, so the story goes, met his death through devotion
to experimental science. While testing the preservation powers of
snow, he contracted a chill and perished. This external similarity
does not extend, however, to the characters of the two men. More
was a man of the utmost integrity, sweetness, and generosity; Bacon
was by no means admirable." (p. 207.)
Bacon's Philosophy:Francis Bacon's major contribution to philosophy was his
application of induction, the approach used by modern science,
rather than the a priori method of medieval scholasticism.
Up to and during Bacon's time there existed philosophies rooted
not so much in reason but in pure faith; philosophies promoted by
the church. [See Saint Anselm (1033-1109) and Thomas Aquinas'
(1225-1274) and, more generally, the Scholastic School.] Bacon was
"violently opposed to speculative philosophies and the syllogistic
quibbling of the Schoolman ..., Bacon argued that the only
knowledge of importance to man was empirically rooted in the
natural world."
"There are and can be only two ways of searching into and
discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to
the most general axioms: this way is now in fashion. The other
derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual
and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms
last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried."
Thus, Bacon delineated the principles of the inductive thinking method, which, while
as a method goes back to the times of Aristotle, constituted a breakthrough in the
approach to science. It was just these kind of materialist theories that brought about
the great discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. Bacon could see that the only
knowledge of importance to man was empirically rooted in the natural world; and
that a clear system of scientific inquiry would assure man's mastery over the world.
Bacon's Writings:"The style of Bacon has an idiosyncracy which we might expect
from his genius."
Earlier, we referred to the comparison which Frederic R. White made between Sir
Thomas More and Francis Bacon. Their lives were remarkably paralleled, but as
White points out there was little similarity between their writings. "More was a
classicist and a humanist; his Utopia is well-planned ... Bacon ... [was a] scientist; his
New Atlantis is incomplete, ill-proportioned, somewhat heavy in style, and
dogmatically devoted to the glorification of natural science."
Bacon's first work was The Advancement of Learning (1605). His
second came along in 1620, Novum Organum; it was part of his larger
philosophical work known as Instauratio Magna, of which he only
completed two parts: this, Novum Organum, and De Augmentis
Scientarum. De Augmentis Scientarum, which came out in 1623, was
an expansion of his 1605 work. Apothegms came out in 1624. His
aphoristic Essays were continually worked on between 1597 and 1625.
Bacon's utopian fable about the island of "Bensalem," the New
Atlantis, came out in 1627, appended to Sylva Sylvarum. And his
final work, The World, came out three years after his death.
Bacon the Man:Carlyle thought Bacon was one of the few who could "converse with
this universe, first hand." And Lord Macaulay thought that Bacon
"had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering
it portable ... brilliant, expedient"; but, nonetheless, Bacon was
to Macaulay a "thoroughly dishonest man." One who so dazzled others
by his brilliant mind that he made them forget "the standards of
ordinary decency and morality." Bacon acknowledged his weakness:
"I will not question whether you ... pass for a disinterested man
or no; I freely confess myself that I am not, and so, I leave it
there."
"Francis Bacon's life, with its slow rise to political power and its
sudden awful fall, is a drama on the heroic scale of the old Greek
tragedies. The world knows the famous last will and testament,
where Bacon left his "soul to God above, his body to be buried
obscurely, his name to the next ages, and to foreign nations." The
world knows his writings, or the titles of them, at least. But there is a
composition of Bacon's which the world has lately forgotten or
overlooked. In the fullness of his power and reputation as Lord
Chancellor of England, Bacon was impeached by Parliament for
taking bribes in office, convicted, and banished from London and
the law courts. ...
We shrink from the evidence; it is painful to see genius stoop for a
mean prize. Perhaps the times were to blame. To live in the shadow
of a Queen's favor, to strive continually for a King's smile, is not
pretty work. It drove Sir Walter Raleigh to fantastic plots, to despair,
egregious lying and the executioner's block. Outside the circle of
royal patronage there was no way for an ambitious man to rise in
government, no way at all." (Bowen, pp. 3-18.)
_______________________________
3. Charles John Huffam Dickens
http://www.city-of-rochester.net/charles_dickens.htm
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7th February 1812 in Portsmouth, England. He
was one of the a greatest writers of all time, bringing us some of his well known books
which included Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and
The Pickwick Papers. He also created many character's, portrayed many events that have
brought enjoyment to many. Dickens understood how the poor lived and knew the terrible
conditions they worked in, which many of his novels are based on.
When he was 2 years old his family moved to London. Charles Dickens' father, John Dickens,
worked as a clerk in the navy. At the age of 5, John Dickens and his family moved to
Chatham, 2 Ordnance Terrace (now number 11). They then moved to 18 St. Mary's Place,
The Brook, but unfortunately demolished in 1941. Later on in life, Charles Dickens moved back
to Rochester, buying Gad's Hill Place at Higham. As John Dickens wages were very poor he
served time in prison for debt. These events were recorded in two of Dickens novels. His
father was portrayed as Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield and the time his father spent in
prison was mentioned in Little Dorrit.
Even when John was free, he lacked the money to support his family adequately. At the age of
12, Charles worked in a London factory pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish. He held the
job only a few months, but the misery of that experience remained with him all his life.
Dickens attended school off and on until he was 15, and then left for good. He enjoyed reading
and was especially fond of adventure stories, fairy tales, and novels. He was influenced by
such earlier English writers as William Shakespeare, Tobias Smollett, and Henry Fielding.
However, most of the knowledge he later used as an author came from his observation of life
around him.
Dickens became a newspaper reporter in the late 1820's. He specialized in covering debates
in Parliament and also wrote feature articles. His work as a reporter made him interested in
listening to conversations which helped him in developing many of his characters' ways of
speech. This also gave Dickens a skill to observe and to write quickly and skilfully. Sketches
by Boz (1836), Dickens' first book, was made up of pieces he wrote for the Monthly Magazine
and the London Evening Chronicle. These articles, short stories about every day life and the
characters was a true to life, and conditions of the time.
Dickens first novel of fame with The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was
published in monthly parts in 1836 and 1837. The book describes the humorous adventures
and misadventures of eccentric characters in London and the surrounding English countryside.
Many references to Rochester's land marks are mentioned in this novel. These include
Rochester Castle, The Royal Victoria and Bull Hotel, as "The Bull," Fort Pitt Fields as "Where
the dual took place between Dr Slammer and Mr. Winkle," the Great Lines in Gillingham as
"Where the army manoeuvres took place," and Eastgate House, as "Westgate House."
Gradually, The Pickwick Papers (as the book is usually known) gathered popularity. So at the
age of 24, Dickens suddenly found himself famous.
Dickens created and produced two successful weekly magazines. They were Household
Words from 1850 to 1859 and All the Year Round from 1859 until he died. Now a popular
writer, Dickens was always in the news, and was a popular figure wherever he went. In 1842,
1867 and again in 1868 he travelled to America where he became famous there as well.
In 1836, Dickens married Catherine Hogarth. Catherine also had a sister Mary, who died in
1837. Dickens' grieved at Mary's death and led to some people to think that he cared more for
his sister-in-law Mary, than his wife. Although Catherine was a good housewife, Catherine and
Charles separated in 1858. However, they did manage to raise 10 children.
Dickens was strong, healthy and was clever to. He wrote about his activities in letters, many of
them made interesting reading. He spent most of his social life with friends from the worlds of
art and literature. He often went to the theatre with his friends and watched most of the plays
around that time. He was now rich and famous, and enjoyed producing and acting in amateur
theatrical productions. He also enjoyed and was very successful in giving public readings of
his works. Dickens' knowledge of the theatre gave him many of his ideas for creating dramatic
scenes in his novels.
Although Dickens spent most of his time writing, editing, and touring as a dramatic reader, he
found himself being involved with various charities. These charities included schools for poor
children and a loan society to enable the poor to move to Australia. Dickens spent many a time
walking the streets of London. He became very knowledgeable of London and was often called
upon for his knowledge.
Unfortunately, though Dickens was a healthy man he started to fall ill around 1865 and five
years later died from a stroke on June 9, 1870 aged 58 at Gad's Hill Place, Higham,
Rochester.
Dickens' books
Dickens wrote 20 novels (including 5 short Christmas books), and other forms of work
including, sketches, travel books, and other non-fiction works. Most of his books broke all the
sales records of the time and published in sections. However, not all of his books were best
sellers, and didn't make the fame as his well known novel's.
After the success of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens wrote books about more serious themes
and plots. Although these books were more about the serious side of his work, he still
maintained to add a bit of humour to keep his books entertaining.
Oliver Twist (1837-1839) describes the adventures of a poor orphan boy and was a
representation on the way the poor were treated in England at the time.
Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), Dickens made comment to the greedy owners of private
schools, who bullied and treated the children brutally and taught them virtually nothing.
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841) is not as popular today than when it was first published,
this is mostly due to the death scene of Little Nell seems to reflect modern times.
Barnaby Rudge (1841) is an historical event that portrayed the number of unpleasant riots in
London around 1780.
Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844) is one of two books that Dickens based on his first trip to
America. Dickens wanted to show the many forms of selfishness, but it is best known for its
true reflection of the crudeness of American manners and for its comical characters. Two of
the characters are the hypocrite Pecksniff and the chattering, alcoholic midwife Sairey Gamp.
American Notes (1842) is basically a travel book on America.
Dickens wrote five "Christmas books" during the 1840's. The first, and most famous was, A
Christmas Carol (1843). In the book, three ghosts visit the the old miser Ebenezer Scrooge
and take him on a mythical journey to his past, present, and future. After the ghosts make him
realise that he has been a very selfish and greedy man, Scrooge becomes a warm and
unselfish man who shares his fortunes. The other Christmas books are The Chimes (1844),
The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848).
Dickens' view of Victorian society, and perhaps of the world, grew darker during the 1840's.
His humour and writing became more bitter, often taking a snap of the times. His characters
and plots seemed to portray the nasty side of human life.
However, at the same time, Dickens paid more attention to his works. The quality of his work
widened and he paid more attention to the structure and arrangements of his books. He turned
to figurative themes to help express and expand his observations on topical political and social
issues and on the morals and values of the Victorian era. The unhealthy London fog in Bleak
House, gave example of the ignorance of society, especially its blindness toward the poor and
the unfortunate.
Dombey and Son (1846-1848) is about the selfish bighead whose pride cuts himself away the
warmth of human love. The book dictates the evils of the Victorian respect for money. Dickens
believed that money had become the measure of all personal relations and the goal of all
ambition.
David Copperfield (1849-1850), Dickens provisionally narrowed the role of social criticism to
spend more time on his autobiography. The novel describes Copperfield's discovery of the
realities of adult life. Copperfield's youth is a reflection on Dickens' early days.
Bleak House (1852-1853) is in most people's eye's is Dickens' greatest novel. It has a
complicated story line and many levels of meaning, mixing melodrama with satire and social
commentary. The book deals with many social unpleasantries, chiefly careless and malicious
legal processes. The book also confronts the neglect of the poor, false human kindness and
clergymen, and poor sanitation.
Hard Times (1854) was much easier to read novel. Hard Times attacks philosopher Jeremy
Bentham's principle of utilitarianism. Bentham was convinced that all ideas, actions, and
institutions should be graded by their usefulness. Dickens believed that Bentham reduced
social relations to problems of cold and self-interest.
Little Dorrit (1855-1857), Dickens carried on his battle against greediness and snobbery of the
Victorian society. This was represented by the well-off Merdle family and their friends. He also
poked fun at the government's inefficiency in the form of bureaucracy and red tape The prison,
like the fog in Bleak House, is representational and stands for the awful conditions of life the
real world of Victorians, decaying society.
A Tale of Two Cities (1859) was the second of Dickens' two historical novels. It is set in
London and Paris and tells of the heroism of fictional Sidney Carton during the French
Revolution.
Great Expectations (1860-1861), is a novel of a child's discovery of life. An unknown person
gives the main character Pip money so that he can live life as a gentleman. Pip's
self-importance is crushed when he learns the origins of his "great expectations." Only by
going back through his past Pip rebuilds his life on a groundwork of sympathy, rather than on
vanity, possessions, and social position. Once again, Rochester starts to appear in Dickens
novels, The Vines featured as "The Priory garden," The Guildhall was where Pip served his
apprenticeship, The Royal Victoria and bull Hotel as "The Blue Boar," number 150-154 High
Street was "Uncle Pumblechook's shop," St. James Church Cooling "Where Pips brothers are
buried" and lastly, Restoration House, "Miss Havisham's Satis House."
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) was Dickens' final novel of having a 'dig' at the social
condemnation. Dickens again confronted the immorality of the rich. He commented greatly on
the greed, using the great rubbish heaps of the London dumps as the symbol of filthy money.
The novel is also notable for its suggestive use of London's River Thames.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood was only one third complete when Dickens died. Nobody knows
how Dickens intended the story to end. Authors and readers throughout the years have come
up with many suggestions and many possible solutions for the mystery. Dickens involved
Rochester many times in this unfinished work, "Rochester Castle," Chertsey's Gate, as "The
Gatehouse of Mr. Jasper," Mr. Topes restaurant, as "Mr. Datchery's lodgings," The Vines,
Eastgate House, as "The Nun's House," the Conservative Club, as "The Theatre,"
Dickens' place in the history of literature
Dickens is one of the most important authors in English literature, but his reputation declined
between 1880 and 1940. This was due to the psychological emphasis that became
fashionable in novels after Dickens' death. Critics valued Dickens chiefly as an entertainer and,
above all, as a creator of a huge gallery of comic, pleasant, and unscrupulous characters.
They honoured him as a master creator of plot and scene, and as a sharp-eyed observer of
London life. They considered his outlook simple and unrealistic. They believed he lacked
artistic taste and relied too much on broad comedy, dramatic effects, sentimentality, and
superficial psychology.
However, since 1940, numerous books and essays have described Dickens as a writer of
considerable depth and complexity. He has also been praised as a sensitive and philosophic
observer of human struggles within social institutions. In this sense, Dickens has been
associated with such authors as Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Recent criticism has demonstrated that Dickens can no longer be regarded only as an
entertainer, though his ability to entertain is probably the major reason for his popularity.
Whatever his other claims to greatness may be, Dickens ranks as a superbly inventive comic
artist. His characters have been compared to those of Shakespeare in their variety, colour,
energy, and life. Dickens was aware of human evil, but he never lost his perspective. His art
was sustained by an awareness and appreciation of the human comedy.
Rochester has played an important part in the rebuilding of Dickens reputation, and has been
at the forefront of bringing his work and the Characters' from his novels to life. Rochester holds
two festivals a year, celebrating the life and times of Dickens and his much loved novel's. The
summer festival is held at the beginning of June and the 'Christmas Dickensian
Festival' is held at the beginning of December and finishes with a candle lit parade through
Rochester High Street.
4. Ernest Hemingway
http://www.english-literature.org/essays/hemingway.html
Introducing Ernest Hemingway
by Prof. Ganesan Balakrishnan, Ph.D.
Though the `vague unknown' continues to lure him and frustrate
his hopes and purposes, he does not admit defeat. Death rather
than humiliation, stoical endurance rather than servile submission
are the cardinal virtues of the Hemingway hero.
Ernest Hemingway occupies a prominent place in the annals of American Literary history
by virtue of his revolutionary role in the arena of twentieth century American fiction. By
rendering a realistic portrayal of the inter-war period with its disillusionment and
disintegration of old values, Hemingway has presented the predicament of the modern
man in 'a world which increasingly seeks to reduce him to a mechanism, a mere thing'. [1]
Written in a simple but unconventional style, with the problems of war, violence and death
as their themes, his novels present a symbolic interpretation of life.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, in an orthodox higher
middle class family as the second of six children. His mother, Mrs. Grace Hale Hemingway,
an ex-opera singer, was an authoritarian woman who had reduced his father, Mr. Clarence
Edmunds Hemingway, a physician, to the level of a hen-pecked husband. Hemingway
had a rather unhappy childhood on account of his 'mother's, bullying relations with his
father'. [2] He grew up under the influence of his father who encouraged him to develop
outdoor interests such as swimming, fishing and hunting. His early boyhood was spent in
the northern woods of Michigan among the native Indians, where he learned the primitive
aspects of life such as fear, pain, danger and death. At school, he had a brilliant academic
career and graduated at the age of 17 from the Oak Park High School. In 1917 he joined
the Kansas City `Star' as a war correspondent. The following year he participated in the
World War by volunteering to work as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he
was badly wounded but twice decorated for his services. He returned to America in 1919
and married Hadley Richardson in 1921. This was the first of a series of unhappy
marriages and divorces. The next year, he reported on the Greco-Turkish War and two
years later, gave up journalism to devote himself to fiction. He settled in Paris, where he
came into contact with fellow American expatriates such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra
Pound. 'From her (Gertrude Stein) as well as from Ezra Pound and others, he learned the
discipline of his craft - the taut monosyllabic vocabulary, stark dialogue, and understated
emotion that are the hallmarks of the Hemingway style'. [3]
Hemingway's first two published works were In Our Time and Three Stories and Ten
Poems. These early stories foreshadow his mature technique and his concern for values
in a corrupt and indifferent world. But it was The Torrents of Spring, which appeared in
1926, that established him as a writer of repute. His international reputation was firmly
secured by his next three books, The Sun Also Rises, Men Without Women and A
Farewell to Arms. This was only the beginning of an illustrious career, with an impressive
output of several novels and short stories, a collection of poems and The Fifth Column, a
play.
Hemingway was passionately involved with bullfighting, big game hunting and deep sea
fishing, and his writing reflects this. He visited Spain during the Civil War and his
experiences on the war front form the theme of the best seller For Whom the Bell Tolls.
When the Second World War broke out, he took an active part and offered to lead a
suicide squadron against the Nazi U Boats. But in the course of the war, he fell ill and was
nursed by Mary Walsh, who eventually became his fourth wife and continued to be with
him until his death. In 1954, he survived two plane crashes in the African jungle. His
adventures and tryst with destiny made him a celebrity all over the English speaking world.
Hemingway began the final phase of his career as a resident of Cuba. There he continued
his life of well advertised hunting and adventure, being often in the forefront of literary
publicity and controversy. This phase is marked by a decline in his creative genius which,
however, attained its original stature with the publication of The Old Man and The Sea in
1952. It was an immense success and won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.
His fortunes took a turn for the worse, when Fidel Castro came to power and ordered the
Americans out of Cuba. It proved a great shock to Hemingway and added to his agony
over the decline of his creative talents. He fell victim to acute fits of depression and
attempted suicide twice. He was hospitalized and treated for his psychological problems.
But after a few months of doubts, anxieties and depression, he shot himself on the 2nd of
July 1961, bringing to an end one of the most eventful and colorful lives of our times.
Hemingway's literary genius was molded by cultural and literary influences. 'Mark Twain,
the War and The Bible were the major influences that shaped Hemingway's thought and
art'. [4] During his sojourn in Paris, Hemingway also came into contact with eminent
literary figures such as Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, D.H. Lawrence and even T.S.
Eliot. 'All or some of them might have left their imprint on him'. [5] Hemingway also
acknowledged that he had learnt a great deal from the writings of Joseph Conrad. Besides
these, his early experiences in Michigan colored his writing to some extent. The most
important influence that left a deep impact on his genius was the nightmarish experiences
which he himself had undergone in the two World Wars.
As a novelist, Hemingway is often assigned a place among the writers of `the lost
generation', along with Faulkner, Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos and Sinclair Lewis. 'These
writers, including Ernest Hemingway, tried to show the loss the First World War had
caused in the social, moral and psychological spheres of human life'. [6] They also reveal
the horror, the fear and the futility of human existence. True, Hemingway has echoed the
longings and frustrations that are typical of these writers, but his work is distinctly different
from theirs in its philosophy of life. In his novels 'a metaphysical interest in man and his
relation to nature' [7] can be discerned.
Hemingway has been immortalized by the individuality of his style. Short and solid
sentences, delightful dialogues, and a painstaking hunt for an apt word or phrase to
express the exact truth, are the distinguishing features of his style. He 'evokes an
emotional awareness in the reader by a highly selective use of suggestive pictorial detail,
and has done for prose what Eliot has done for poetry'. [8] In his accurate rendering of
sensuous experience, Hemingway is a realist. As he himself has stated in Death in the
Afternoon, his main concern was 'to put down what really happened in action; what the
actual things were that produced the emotion you experienced'. [9] This surface realism of
his works often tends to obscure the ultimate aim of his fiction. This has often resulted in
the charge that there is a lack of moral vision in his novels. Leon Edel has attacked
Hemingway for his `Lack of substance' as he called it. According to him, Hemingway's
fiction is deficient in serious subject matter. 'It is a world of superficial action and almost
wholly without reflection - such reflection as there is tends to be on a rather crude and
simplified level'. [10]
But such a casual dismissal as this, presenting Hemingway as a writer devoid of `high
seriousness', is not justified. Though Hemingway is apparently a realist who has a
predilection for physical action, he is essentially a philosophical writer. His works should
be read and interpreted in the light of his famous `Iceberg theory': 'The dignity of the
movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above the water'. [11] This
statement throws light on the symbolic implications of his art. He makes use of physical
action to provide a symbolical interpretation of the nature of man's existence. It can be
convincingly proved that, 'While representing human life through fictional forms, he has
consistently set man against the background of his world and universe to examine the
human situation from various points of view'. [12]
In this aspect, he belongs to the tradition of Hawthorne, Poe and Melville, in whose fiction
darkness has been used as a major theme to present the lot of man in this world.
Hemingway's concern for the predicament of the individual resembles the outlook of these
`nocturnal writers'. 'As with them, a moral awareness springs from his awareness of the
larger life of the universe. Compared with the larger life of the universe, the individual is a
puny thing, a tragic thing. But in this larger life of the universe, the individual has his place
of glory'. [13] This awareness of the futility of human existence led Hemingway to deal
with the themes of violence, darkness and death in his novels. By presenting the darker
side of life, he tries to explore the nature of the individual's predicament in this world.
What attitude should a man take toward a world in which, for reasons of the world's own
making and not of his own, he is fundamentally out of place? What personal happiness
can he expect to find in a world seething with violence ... what values could one respect
when ethical values as a whole seemed university disrespected? [14]
This metaphysical concern about the nature of the individual's existence in relation to the
world made Hemingway conceive his protagonists as alienated individuals fighting a
losing battle against the odds of life with courage, endurance and will as their only
weapons. The Hemingway hero is a lonely individual, wounded either physically or
emotionally. He exemplifies a code of courageous behavior in a world of irrational
destruction. 'He offers up and exemplifies certain principles of honor, courage and
endurance in a life of tension and pain which make a man a man'. [15] Violence, struggle,
suffering and hardships do not make him in any way pessimistic. Though the `vague
unknown' continues to lure him and frustrate his hopes and purposes, he does not admit
defeat. Death rather than humiliation, stoical endurance rather than servile submission are
the cardinal virtues of the Hemingway hero.
A close examination of Hemingway's fiction reveals that in his major novels he enacts `the
general drama of human pain', and that he has 'used the novel form in order to pose
symbolic questions about life'. [16] The trials and tribulations undergone by his
protagonists are symbolic of man's predicament in this world. He views life as a perpetual
struggle in which the individual has to assert the supremacy of his free will over forces
other than himself. In order to assert the dignity of his existence, the individual has to
wage a relentless battle against a world which refuses him any identity or fulfillment.
To sum up, Hemingway, in his novels and short stories, presents human life as a perpetual
struggle which ends only in death. It is of no avail to fight this battle, where man is reduced
to a pathetic figure by forces both within and without. However, what matters is the way
man faces the crisis and endures the pain inflicted upon him by the hostile powers that be,
be it his own physical limitation or the hostility of society or the indifference of unfeeling
nature. The ultimate victory depends on the way one faces the struggle. In a world of pain
and failure, the individual also has his own weapon to assert the dignity of his existence.
He has the freedom of will to create his own values and ideals. In order to achieve this end,
he has to carry on an incessant battle against three oppressive forces, namely, the
biological, the social and the environmental barriers of this world. According to
Hemingway, the struggle between the individual and the hostile deterministic forces takes
places at these three different levels. Commenting on this aspect of the existential
struggle found in Hemingway's fiction, Charles Child Walcutt has observed that, 'the
conflict between the individual needs and social demands is matched by the contest
between feeling man and unfeeling universe, and between the spirit of the individual and
his biological limitations'. [17] This observation is probably the right key to understand
Hemingway, the man and the novelist.
5. Mark Twain: A Biography
http://www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts/mmt/
(From Harper's Monthly, Jan. 1913)
The question of how long he will last as a humorist, or how long he will
dominate all other humorists in the affection of his fellow-men, is
something that must have concerned Mark Twain in his life on earth. If
he still lives in some other state, the question does not concern him so
much, except as he would be loath to see good work forgotten; but, as he
once lived here, it must have concerned him intensely because he loved
beyond almost any other man to make the world sit up and look and listen.
The question of his lasting primacy is something that now remains for us
survivors of him to answer, each according to his thinking; and it renews
itself in our case with unexpected force from the reading of Mr. Albert
Bigelow Paine's story of his personal and literary life.
Of course, if we are moderately honest and candid, we must all try
to shirk the question, for it would be a kind of arrogant hypocrisy to
pretend that we had any of us a firm conviction on the point. For our own
part, the Easy Chair's part, we prefer only to say that if the world ever
ceased to love and to value his humor it would do so to its peculiar loss,
for, as we have always held, the humor of no other is so mixed with
good-will to humanity, and especially to that part of humanity which most
needs kindness. Beyond this we should not care to go in prophecy, and in
trying to guess Mark Twain's future from the past of other humorists we
should not care to be comparative. There are only three or four whom he
may be likened with, and, not to begin with the ancients, we may speak
in the same breath of Cervantes, of Moliere, of Swift, of Dickens, among
the moderns. None of these may be compared with him in humanity except
Dickens alone, whose humanity slopped into sentimentality, and scarcely
counts more than the others'.
But Dickens even surpassed Mark Twain in characterizing and coloring
the speech of his time. We who read Dickens in his heyday not only read
him we talked him, and slavishly reverberated his phrase when we wished
to be funny. No one does that today, and no one ever did that with Mark
Twain. Such a far inferior humorist as Artemus Ward stamped the utterance
of his contemporaries measurably as much as Dickens and much more than
Mark Twain, but this did not establish him in the popular consciousness
of posterity; it was of no more lasting effect than the grotesqueries of
Petroleum V. Nasby, or than the felicities of baseball parlance which Mr.
George Ade has so satisfyingly reported. The remembrance of Mark Twain
does not depend upon the presence of a like property in his humor, and
its absence has little to do with the question which we have been inviting
the reader to evade with us.
After all, we are more concerned with a man's past than with his future;
and we can more usefully delight in what Cervantes and Moliere and Swift
and Dickens did and suffered than in vain conjecture of what men will say
of them hereafter. Possibly because he is more germane to the American
argument than any European or than any other American, we can have more
pleasure in the story of Mark Twain than in theirs, but we think we can
have a peculiar pleasure in it because it is among the most interesting
stories ever lived and one of the most interesting ever told. Mr. Paine's
manner of telling it is charming above all for its naive sincerity and
manly simplicity. It has its moments of being masterly, and as a whole
the book is a masterpiece of portraiture, if by that we mean a work which
involuntarily and voluntarily bodies forth the subject with a
lifelikeness beyond question. You may say it is not literature, in spite
of being sometimes over-literary; but it is better than literature: it
is life. Mr. Paine had to tell the story of a man whose experience ranged
from the nadir to the zenith of the American sky; from rude poverty to
a prosperity that startled the man himself; from the backwoods to a
metropolis which the backwoods could never have dreamed of; and he has
told it very tenderly, very admiringly, very self-respectfully, and never
flatteringly. It could be said that at times he has told it too intimately,
and we believe that something like this has been said; but we should be
at a loss to choose which detail of intimacy we would have had withheld.
We do not believe that there is one which Mark Twain himself would have
had withheld; rather he would have had more confided, for though he doubted
many things, he never doubted that humanity could be trusted with the
entire truth about man. Any one who knew him must believe that he would
have liked his story told very much as Mr. Paine has told it, and that
he would be lastingly satisfied with having chosen for his biographer a
man whose fitness he divined rather than argued.
It would not, indeed, have been easy to spoil the material at Mr.
Paine's command, but he has made of it a great biography; though it would
be idle to compare it with other great biographies, and it would especially
be a pity to talk of him and of Boswell together. The Life of Johnson was
the work of a long series of years, the sum of the closest and most constant
study recorded in notes of events and traits, and the scrupulous report
of conversations invited and led up to with an eye single to the use finally
made of them. There is something of this in Mr. Paine's work, but not enough
for the comparison, and he has not Boswell's supreme genius for
interviewing. Mostly, the story is got together from the words, spoken
as well as printed, of Mark Twain himself and from his letters and his
friends' letters. His books are instinctively treated as the prime events
of the author's life; but as his life was rich far beyond the lives of
other literary men in events which his books did not represent, Mr. Paine
sets these strongly before the reader, whose own fault it will be if he
does not learn to know Clemens as fully from them as his biographer knows
him.
It would not be easy for Mark Twain's surviving friends to find the
drama of his closing years misrepresented in any important scene or motive.
He was, like every one else, a complex nature but a very simple soul, and
something responsive to him in his biographer is what has most justified
Clemens in his choice of him for the work. The greatest of our humorists,
perhaps the greatest humorist who ever lived, is here wonderfully imagined
by a writer who is certainly not a great humorist. From first to last it
seems to us that Mr. Paine has read Mark Twain aright. He has understood
him as a boy in the primitive Southwestern circumstance of his romantic
childhood; he has brought a clairvoyant sympathy to the events of the wild
youth adventuring in every path inviting or forbidding him; he has truly
seen him as he found himself at the beginning of his long climb to an
eminence unequaled in the records of literary popularity; and he has
followed him filially, affectionately, through the sorrows that darkened
round him in his last years. Another biographer more gifted, or less gifted,
than this very single-hearted historian might have been tempted to
interpret a personality so always adventurous, so always romantic, so
always heroic, according to his own limitations; but Mr. Paine has not
done this folly. Whether knowingly or not, he has put himself aside, and
devotedly adhered to what we should like to call his job. But he has not
done this slavishly; he has ventured to have his own quiet opinion of Mark
Twain's preposterous advocacy of the Baconian myth, and if he calls his
fierce refusal of all the accepted theologies a philosophy, it is
apparently without his entire acceptance of the refusal as final and
convincing.
Mark Twain, indeed, arrived at the first stage of the scientific
denial of the religious hope of mankind; he did not reach that last stage
where Science whimsically declares that she denies nothing. He was at
times furiously intolerant of others' belief in a divine Fatherhood and
a life after death; he believed that he saw and heard all nature and human
nature denying it; but when once he had wreaked himself in his bigotry
of unbelief, he was ready to listen to such poor reasons as believers could
give for the faith that was in them. In his primary mood he might have
relaxed them to the secular arm for a death by fire, but in his secondary
mood he would have spared them quite unconditionally, and grieved ever
after for any harm he meant them. We think the chapters of Mr. Paine's
book dealing with this phase are of very marked interest, both as records
and as interpretations. He has known how to take it seriously, but not
too seriously, to respect it as the cast of a man who thought deeply and
felt intensely concerning the contradictions of the mortal scene, yet
through his individual conditioning might any moment burst into
self-mockery. This witness of his daily thinking, while reverently
dissenting from the conclusions which he could not escape, is able the
more closely to portray that strange being in whose most tempestuous
excess there was the potentiality of the tenderest, the humblest, the
sweetest patience.
Every part of his eventful life, every phase of his unique character
is fascinating, and as a contribution to the Human document which the book
embodies is of high importance; but the most important chapters of the
book, the most affecting, the most significant, are those which relate
to Clemens's life from the death of his eldest daughter and the break of
his wonderful prosperity to that ultimate moment in his earthly home when
he ceased from the earth with a dignity apparently always at his command.
It was as if he had chosen his way of dying, and it is justly to the praise
of his historian that he shows an unfailing sense of the greatness which
was not unfailing. It was part of Mark Twain's noble humanity that it was
perfect only at moments. It was a thing of climaxes, as his literature
was, with the faults and crudities marking it almost to the last, but often
with a final effect, an ultimate complexion which could not be overpraised
in the word sublime. He was essentially an actor -- that is, a child -that is, a poet -- with no taint of mere histrionism, but always suffering
the emotions he expressed. He suffered them rather than expressed them
in his later years, when his literature grew less and less and his life
more and more. This formed the supreme opportunity of his biographer, and
it was not wasted upon him. His record of the long close, with its fitful
arrests and its fierce bursts of rebellion against tragic fate is
portrayed with constant restraint as well as courageous veracity to an
effect of beauty which the critical reader must recognize at the cost of
any and every reservation. The death of his eldest daughter left this aging
child pitifully bewildered; the loss of his wife and the close of one of
the loveliest love-stories that was ever lived realized for him the
solitude which such a stroke makes the world for the survivor; and then
the sudden passing of his youngest daughter, whom he alone knew in the
singular force of her mind, were the events which left him only the hope
of dying.
Yet these closing years were irradiated by a splendor of mature success almost
unmatched in the history of literature. It seemed as if the world were newly roused to
a sense of his preeminence. Wealth flowed in upon him, and adversity was a dream of
evil days utterly past; honors crowded upon him; his country and his city thronged
him; the path which his old feet trod with yet something of their young vigor was
strewn with roses; the last desire of his fame-loving soul was satisfied when the
greatest university in the world did his claim to her supreme recognition justice. It
was for his biographer to show the gloom of these later years broken and illumined by
these glories, and, when their light could not pierce it, to show him, a gray shadow
amid the shadows, but walking their dark undauntedly, and sending from it his laugh
oftener than his moan. It is his biographer's praise that he has done this so as to make
us feel the qualities of the fact; as in the earlier records he makes us feel the
enchantment, the joy, the rapture of the man's experience. If we have not yet answered
our primary question, how long Mark Twain will last as a humorist, we must content
ourselves with the belief that while the stories of men's lives delight, this book will
keep him from being forgotten as a man.
6. J. K. Rowling
http://www.bloomsbury.com/harrypotter/wizard/section/rowling.asp
J. K. Rowling biography
J. K. (Jo) Rowling was born in Chipping Sodbury in the UK in 1965. Such a
funny-sounding name for a birthplace may have contributed to her talent for
collecting odd names.
Jo moved house twice when she was growing up. The first move was from Yate (just
outside Bristol in the south west of England) to Winterbourne (on the other side of
Bristol). Jo, her sister and friends used to play together in her street in
Winterbourne. Two of her friends were a brother and sister whose surname just
happened to be Potter! The second move was when Jo was nine and she moved to
Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean. Jo loved living in the countryside and
spent most of her time wandering across fields and along the river Wye with her
sister. For Jo, the worst thing about her new home was her new school.
Tutshill Primary School was a very small and very old-fashioned place. The roll-top
desks in the classrooms still had the old ink wells. Jo's teacher, Mrs Morgan, terrified
her. On the first day of school, she gave Jo an arithmetic test, which she failed,
scoring zero out of ten. It wasn't that Jo was stupid - she had never done fractions
before. So Jo was seated in the row of desks far to the right of Mrs Morgan. Jo soon
realised that Mrs Morgan seated her pupils according to how clever she thought they
were: the brightest sat to her left, and those she thought were dim were seated to
her right. Jo was in the 'stupid' row, 'as far right as you could possibly get without
sitting in the playground'.
From Tutshill Primary, Jo went to Wyedean Comprehensive. She was quiet, freckly,
short-sighted and not very good at sports. She even broke her arm playing netball.
Her favourite subject by far was English, but she also liked languages.
Jo always loved writing more than anything. 'The first story that I ever wrote down,
when I was five or six, was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was
visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee. And ever since Rabbit
and Miss Bee, I have wanted to be a writer, though I rarely told anyone so. I was
afraid they'd tell me I didn't have a hope.'
At school, Jo would entertain her friends at lunchtime with stories. I used to tell my
equally quiet and studious friends long serial stories at lunchtimes. In these stories,
Jo and her friends would be heroic and daring.
As she got older, Jo kept writing but she never showed what she had written to
anyone, except for some of her funny stories that featured her friends as heroines.
After school, Jo attended the University of Exeter in Devon where she studied
French. Her parents hoped that by studying languages, she would enjoy a great
career as a bilingual secretary. But as Jo recalls, 'I am one of the most disorganised
people in the world and, as I later proved, the worst secretary ever.' She claims that
she never paid much attention in meetings because she was too busy scribbling
down ideas. 'This is a problem when you are supposed to be taking the minutes of
the meeting,' she says.
When she was 25, Jo started writing a third novel ('I abandoned the first two when
I realised how bad they were'). A year later, she went to Portugal to teach English,
which she really enjoyed. Working afternoons and evenings, she had mornings free
to write. The new novel was about a boy who was a wizard.
When she returned to the UK, Jo had a suitcase full of stories about Harry Potter.
She moved to Edinburgh with her young daughter and worked as a French teacher.
She also set herself a target: she would finish the 'Harry' novel and get it published.
In 1996, one year after finishing the book, Bloomsbury bought Jo's first novel, Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
'The moment I found out that Harry would be published was one of the best of my
life,?says Jo. A few months after 'Harry' was accepted for publication in Britain, an
American publisher bought the rights for enough money to enable Jo to give up
teaching and write full time - her life's ambition!
Writing the Harry Potter books
The idea for the Harry books came to Jo while on a train. Jo has said that she didn’t
really focus on magic, rather that 'it chose her... The starting point for Harry’s world
is "what if it WAS real?" Jo has said that she doesn’t really think anyone or anything
directly influenced the Harry Potter books, except perhaps Elizabeth Goudge's The
Little White Horse, 'which was my favourite book when I was about eight, and which
is also a blend of magic with the workaday.'
Jo has a 'basic plot outline for every Harry Potter book, but I like to leave some
things to be decided while I write. It's more fun.' She writes nearly every day,
sometimes for 10 or 11 hours, sometimes for 3 hours. She says that it depends on
'how fast the ideas are coming.'
The Harry Potter novels must be read very carefully because what may be a small
event in the first book may become very important in a later adventure. Despite the
fact that she claims to be really disorganised, Jo plans the Harry Potter books in
detail. She knows the plot of every book and has them all written down and stored
in a secret diary somewhere very safe. She won't discuss these plots with anybody
so don't try asking her!
She doesn't have a floorplan of Hogwarts - because it would be very difficult to draw
as the staircases and rooms keep moving, but Jo knows exactly what the castle
looks like. She came up with the names of the Hogwarts' houses on the back of an
aeroplane sick bag, which she still has - empty of course! She keeps a record of
bizarre names in her notebook and chooses the name she thinks best fits a new
character. Some of the monsters in the Harry Potter books are imaginary and others
are from legend, so you will have to do some research to find out which is which!
Writers often use real people as inspiration for their work and Jo is no exception.
Some of the characters in Harry Potter are based on real people but most are made
up. Gilderoy Lockhart is an exaggeration of someone Jo once knew. Ron Weasley is
a lot like her oldest friend, Sean Harris, to whom she dedicated The Chamber of
Secrets and Hermione is a bit like Jo when she was at school. She has also said that
Harry is 'a bit like me in some ways and better than me in a lot of ways.'
Jo plans to write one novel for every year that Harry is at Hogwarts, so there will be
seven books in total. Since there isn't a University for Wizards, there won't be a
book about Harry going to university. There will, however, be lots of new creatures
and lots of exciting adventures in the whole series, including the reason why some
witches and wizards become ghosts when they die; what Harry's parents did before
they were killed by You-Know-Who; and a reappearance from Scabbers the rat!
Jo has been writing for most of her life. 'I couldn't think of a better way to make a
living and truthfully, I think it is the only thing I am good at.' Writing can be a lot of
fun, but it can also be a lot of hard work, but don't let that put you off! Jo’s advice
to aspiring young writers is 'to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an
understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary. Start
by writing about things you know about, your own experiences and feelings. That's
what I do.'
Part III Discussion
Questions
1. Hasn’t literature always been entertainment? Why or why not?
2. Explain for whom should literature provide beauty and truth.
3. Discuss the four idols of Francis Bacon. Which of them is the most difficult to
understand and which are still relevant in today’s world? And why?
4.