To MadeliQe
Design by Robert Updegraff . Picture research by Juliet Brightmore Artwork research by Dr Jack Silver Artw...
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To MadeliQe
Design by Robert Updegraff . Picture research by Juliet Brightmore Artwork research by Dr Jack Silver Artwork by Nigel Osborne, Jim Marks, Berry/Fallon Design, David Penny, Angus McBride Copyright © James Burke 1978 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published 1978 by MACMILLAN LONDON LIMITED London and Basingstoke Associated companies in Delhi, Dubhn, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Lagos, Melbourne, New York, Singapore and Tokyo Printed by Sackville Press Billericay Ltd British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Burke, James, b.1936 Connections. I. Technology - History I. Title 609 T15 ISBN 0-333-24827-9
Contents Author's Acknowledgements Introduction
I 2 3 4 S 6 7 8 9 10
VI .. VB
The Trigger Effect The Road from Alexandria Distant Voices Faith in Numbers The Wheel of Fortune Fuel to the Flame The Long Chain Eat, Drink and Be Merry Lighting the Way Inventing the Future
I IS 4S 81 lIS IS3 18S 21S 249 287
Further Reading Index
296 299
Author's Acknowledgements There are so many people without whose invaluable assistance this book could not have been written - in particular members of university faculties - that it is impossible for me to express my gratitude to each one individually. I hope they will forgive me if I mention only two of their colleagues whose guidance was particularly generous. Professor Lynn White,Jr, of UCLA brought his immense knowledge and wisdom to bear on keeping me on the right track, and Dr Alex Keller of Leicester University was at hand more times than I can remember in moments of panic. I should also like to thank John Lynch for his meticulous and rewarding assistance in research, Mick Jackson and David Kennard for their frequent and sympathetic aid in giving the structure what imaginative expression it has, and the rest of the BBC production team who worked so hard to make possible the television series with which this book is associated: John Dollar, Hilary Henson, Robyn Mendelsohn, Shelagh Sinclair, Diana Stacey, and in particular my assistant, Maralyn Lister. I should like to compliment Michael Alcock of Macmillan on his unusual ability to make writing a book virtually painless, and to thank Angela Dyer for making order out of shambles, and Robert Updegraff and Juliet Brightmore for investing the text with the kind of illustration worthy of a better work. Last, but far from least, I thank my long-suffering wife, who has put up with many difficulties during the two years of preparation. JAMES BURKE
London, 1978
Introduction Man has lived in close contact with change since he first appeared on Earth. During everyone of the thirty-six million minutes of his life, his own body alters imperceptibly as it moves from birth to maturity to death. Around him, the physical world too is in constant change, as the seasons pass: each day brings visible evidence of the annual cycle of growth, fertility and decay. These fundamental changes have a rhythm with which mankind has become familiar over the ages. Each generation the population is replenished, each year nature is renewed, each day the sun rises and sets, and although the new plants and animals and children differ frol11 their predecessors, they are recognizably of the same family. When a new species appears, or the constellations shift in the heavens, the change occurs over immeasurably long periods during which man can gradualJy adapt to it. But the moment lllan first picked up a stone or a branch to use as a tool, he altered irrevocably the balance between him and his environment. From this point on, the way in which the world around hil11 changed was different. It was no longer regular or predictable. New objects appeared that were not recognizable as a mutation of something that had existed before, and as each one emerged it altered the environment not for a season, but for ever. While the number of these tools remained small, their effect took a long time to spread and to cause change. But as they increased, so did their effects: the more the tools, the faster the rate of change. It is with that aspect of change that this book is concerned. Toda y the rate of change has reached a point where it is questionable whether the environment can sllstain it. My purpose is to acquaint the reader with some of the forces that have caused change in the past, looking in particular at eight recent innovations which may be most influential in structuring our own futures and in causing a further increase in the rate of change to which we may have to adapt. These are the atomic bom b, the telephone, the com puter, the production-line system of manufacture, the aircraft, plastics, the guided rocket and television. Each one of these is part of a family of similar devices, and is the result of a sequence of closely connected events extending from the ancient world until the present day. Each has enormous potential for man's benefit - or his destruction.
1The Trigger Effect
Manhattan - an island totally dependent on technology. This is magic hour', the mometlt rvhen the skyscraper lightsgo onjust btjore dusk and the city's energy consumption soars. I
In the gathering darkness of a cold winter evening on 9 November 1965,just before sixteen minutes and eleven seconds past five o'clock, a small metal cup inside a black rectangular box began slowly to revolve. As it turned, a spindle set in its centre and carrying a tiny arm also rotated, gradually moving the arm closer and closer to a metal contact. Only a handful of people knew of the exact location of the cup, and none of them knew that it had been triggered. At precisely eleven seconds past the minute the two tiny metal projections made contact, and in doing so set in motion a sequence of events that would lead, within twelve minutes, to chaos. During that time life within 80,000 square miles of one of the richest, most highly industrialized, most densely populated areas in the Western world would come to a virtual standstill. Over thirty million people would be affected for periods of from three minutes to thirteen hours. As a result some of them would die. For all of them, life would never be quite the same agaIn. The moving cup that was to cause havoc unparalleled in the history of North American city life was mounted inside a single back-up electric power relay in the Sir Adam Beck power station at Niagara Falls. It had been set to react to a critical rise in the power flowing out of the station towards the north; the level at which it would trip had been set two years before, and although power levels had risen in the meantime, the relay had not been altered accordingly. So it was that when power on one of the transmission lines leading from Beck to Toronto fluctuated momentarily above 375 megawatts, the magnets inside the rectangular box reacted, causing the cup to begin to rotate. As the spindle arm made contact, a signal was sent to take the overloaded power line out of the system. Immediately, the power it
had been carrying was rerouted on to the other four northward lines, seriously overloading them .. In response to the overload these lines also tripped out, and all power to the north stopped flowing. Only 2. 7 seconds after the relay had acted the entire northward output automatically reversed direction, pouring on to the lines going south and cast, into New York State and New York City, in a massive surge far exceeding the capacity of these lines to carry it. This event, as the Presidential Report said later, 'occurring at a time of day in which there is maximum need for power in this area of great population density, offered the greatest potential for havoc'. The first effect was to immobilize the power network throughout almost the entire north-east of America and Canada. Power to heat and light, to communicate and control movement, to run elevators, to operate pumps that move sewage, water and gasoline, to activate electronic machinery is the lifeblood of modern society. Because we demand clean air and unspoiled countryside, the sources of that power are usually sited at some distance from the cities and industries that need it, connected to them by long transmission lines. Due to the complex nature of the way our industrial communities operate, different areas demand power at different times; for this reason the transmission lines operate as a giant network fed by many generating stations, each one either providing spare power or drawing on extra, according to the needs of the particular area. As a result of this network, failure in one area can mean failure in all areas. The generators producing power for the transmission lines can be run at various speeds, which determine the frequency of the current; in order that all the inputs to a network may work together they must all be set to produce the same frequency, so the generators must run at whatever speed their design demands to produce that frequency. This maintains what is called a 'stable' system. When something goes wrong, such as the massive overload of 9 November, the system becomes wildly unstable. Protective devices automatically cut in, to protect individual generating stations from the overload by isolating them froIll the network. This means that they will then be producing either too much power for the local area, or too little. The sudden change in speed on the part of the generators to match output to the new conditions can cause serious damage, and for this reason the generators must be shut down. This is what happened throughout most of north-east America in the twelve minutes following the rclay operation at Beck. Over almost all of New York City the lights flickered and went out. Power stopped flowing to the city's services. An estimated 800,000 people were trapped in the subways. Of the ISO hospitals affected, only half had auxiliary power available. The 250 flights coming into John F.
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Kennedy airport had to be diverted; one of them was on Its final approach to landing when the lights on the runway went out, and all communication with the control tower ceased. Elevators stopped, water supplies dried up, and massive traffic jams choked the streets as the traffIC lights stopped working. All street lighting went out in a city of over eight million inhabitants. To those involved the event proved beyond shadow of doubt the extent to which our advanced society is dependent on techno logy. The power transmission network that failed that night is a perfect example of the interdependent nature of such technology: one small malfunction can cripple the entire system.
In this satellite photograph of the eastern scaboard oJthe United States, taken at night, the cities blaze with light,from Boston (top right) to Miami (boltom right). The area a./Jected in the J 965 blackout raY! northfrom New Jerscy, and included the most highly illuminated concentration of population in the photograph, Nell' York and Boston.
3
This interdependence is typical of almost every aspect of life in the modern world. We live surrounded by objects and systems that we take for granted, but which profoundly affect the way we behave, think. work, play, and in general conduct our lives and those of our children. Look, for example, at the place in which you are reading this book now, and see how much of what surrounds you is understandable, how much of it you could either build yourself or repair should it cease to function. When we start the car, or press the button in an elevator, or buy food in a supermarket, we give no thought to the complex devices and systems that make the car move, or the elevator rise, or the food appear on the shelves. During this century we have become increasingl y dependent on the products of technology. They have already changed our lives: at the simplest level, the availability of transport has made us physically less fit than our ancestors. Many people are alive only because they have been given immunity to disease through drugs. The vast majority of the world's population relics on the ability of technology to provide and transport food. There
4
The prime example of man's lope-hate relatiollship with techrlOlogy: the motor car, which makes mobility possible, and the rraffic jam which makes it impossible. Will super hIghways remain, long after the motor car has become obsolele, as monuments 10 the ability of technology to aller fhe shape of the world around us") I
is enough food only because of the use offertilizers. The working day is structured by the demands of the mass-production system. Roads are built to take peak hour traffic and remain half-empty outside those hours. We can neither feed, nor clothe, nor keep ourselves warm without technology. The objects and systems produced by technology to perform these services operate interdependently and impersonally. A mechanical failure or industrial unrest in a factory that makes only one component of an automobile will affect the working life of thousands of other people working in different factories on other com ponents of the same car. Step across the road into the path of an oncoming vehicle and your life may depend on the accuracy with which the brakes were fitted by someone you do not know and will never meet. A frost in Brazil may change your coffee-drinking habits by making the price prohibitive. A change of policy in a country you have never visited and with which you have no personal connections may radically alter your life - as was the case when the oil-producing states raised the price of oil in 1973 and thus set off rampant inflation throughout the Western world. Where once we lived isolated and secure, leading our' own limited lives whose forms were shaped and controlled by elements with which we were intimately acquainted, we are now vulnerable to change which is beyond our own experience and control. Thanks to technology no man is an island. Paradoxically this drawing-together of the community results in the increasing isolation of the individual. As the technological support systems which underpin-our existence become more complex and less understandable, each of us feels less involved in their operation, less comprehending of their function, less confident of being able to operate without them. And although international airlines criss-cross the sky carrying more than a million passengers every day, only a tiny fraction of the world's population has ever flown, let alone visited a foreign country or learned a foreign language. We gain our experience of the world from television. The majority of the people in the advanced industrialized nations spend more time watching television than doing anything else besides work. We plug in to the outside world, enjoying it vicariously. We live with the modern myth that telecommunications have made the world smaller, when in reality they have made it immeasurably bigger. Television destroys our comfortable preconceptions by showing us just enough to prove them wrong, but not enough to replace them with the certainty of first-hand experience. Weare afforded glimpses of people and places and customs as and when they become newsworthy - after which they disappear, leaving us with an uncomfortable awareness that we know too little about them.
5
In the face of all this most of us take the only available course: we ignore the vulnerability of our position, since we have no choice but to do so. We seek security in the routines im posed by the technological systems which structure our lives into periods of work and rest. In spite of the fact that any breakdown in our interdependent world will spread like ripples in a pool, we do not believe that the breakdown will occur. Even when it does, as in New York in 1965, our first reaction is to presume that the fault will be rectified, and that technology will, as it always has, come to the rescue. The reaction of most of the New Yorkers trapped in subways, elevators, or unlit apartment blocks was to reach out to the people immediately around them - not to organize their own escape from the trap, but to share what little warmth or food they had so as to pass toe time until danger was over. To have considered the possibility that the failure was more than a momentary one would have been unthinkable. As one of the sociologists who studied the event wrote: 'We can only conclude that it is too much to ask of us poor twentieth-century humans to think, to believe, to grasp the possibility that the system might fail ... we cannot grasp the simple and elementary fact that this technology can blow a fuse.' The modern city-dweller cannot permit himself to think that his ability to cope in such a situation is in doubt. If he did so he would be forced to accept the uncertainty of his position, because once the meagre re~crves offood and light and warmth have been exhausted, what then? At this point another myth arises: that of the escape to a simpler life. This alternative was seriously considered by many people in the developed countries immediately after the rise in oil prices in 1973, and is reflected in the attitudes of the writers of doomsday fiction. The theory is that when sabotage or massive system failure one da y ensures the more or less permanent disruption of the power supply, we should return to individual self-sufficiency and the agrarian way oflife. But consider the realities of such a proposal. When does the city peasant decide that his garden (should he possess one) can no longer produce enough vegetables (should he know how to grow them and have obtained the necessary seeds and fertilizer) and animal protein and fats (should he know where to buy an animal and rear it) to support him and his family? At this stage, does hejoin (or worse, follow) the miJlions who have left the city because their supplies have run out? Since the alternative is to starve, he has no choice. He decides to leave the city. Supposing he has the means of transport, is there any fuel available? Docs he possess the equipment necessary for survival on the journey? Does he even know what that equipment is? Once the decision to leave has been taken, the modern city-dweller is alone as he has never been in his life. His survival is, for the first time, in his own hands. On the point of departure, does he
6
know in which direction to go? Few people have more than a hazy notion of the agriculturally productive areas of their own country. He decides, on the basis of schoolbook knowledge, to head for one of these valleys of plenty. Can he continue to top up his fuel tanks for as long as it takes to get there? As hejoins the millions driving or riding or walking down the same roads, does he possess things those other refugees might need? If so, and they decide to relieve him of them, can he protect himself? Assuming that by some miracle the refugee finds himself ahead of the mob, with the countryside stretching empty and inviting before him, who owns it? How does he decide where to settle? What does a fertile, life-sustaining piece ofland look like? Are there animals, and if not, where are they? How does he find protection for himself and his family from the wind and rain? If shelter is to be a farmstead - has it been abandoned? If it has not, will the occupier be persuaded to make room for the newcomers, or leave? Ifhe cannot be so persuaded, will the refugee use force, and if necessary, kill? Supposing that all these difficulties have been successfully overcome - how does he run a farm which will have been heavily dependent on fuel or electricity? Of the multitude of problems lying in wait at this farm, one is paramount: can the refugee plough? Plants will grow sufficiently regularly only if they are sown in ploughed ground. Without this talent - and how many city-dwellers have it? - the refugee is lost: unless he has a store of preserved food he and his family will not survive the winter. It is the p~ough, the basic tool which most of us can no longer use, which ironically may be said to have landed us in our present situation. If, as this book will attempt to show, every innovation acts as a trigger of change, the plough is the first major man-made trigger in history, ultimately responsible for almost every innovation that followed. And the plough itself came as a result of a change in the weather. At the end of the last ice age, in about 10,000 B.C., the glaciers began to retreat and the summer temperature began to rise. With the increase in temperature came a diminution of rainfall. This climatic change was disastrous for the hunting nomads living in the high grasslands: vegetation began to dry up and disappear, taking with it the herds on whose survival the nomads depended. Water became scarcer, and eventually, some time between 6000 and 5000 B.C., the hunters came down from the plateaux in search of regular food and water. They came down in northern India, central America, Syria and Egypt; they may also have come down in Peru. They came initially looking for animals which had themselves gone in search of water, and found it in river valleys. One of these valleys was uniquely suited to the development of a unified community: the Nile.
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The nomads who, for example, descended to the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in Syria spread out and eventually formed themselves into individual city states. But in Egypt the new settlers found a fertile ribbon of land 750 miles long, limited on either side by inhospitable scrubland and desert; they were united by the continuity of the great river common to all. There was nowhere else to go. 'Egypt', said the Greek historian Herodotus, 'is the gift of the Nile'. [nitially the gift was of animals, sheltering in and living off the reeds and marshland along the edge of the river, and including birds, fish, sheep, antelope, wild oxen and game animals. As the settlers erected their primitive shelters against wind and rain and attempted to domesticate the animals there are even records in their tombs of attempts to tame hyenas and cranes - someone may have noticed the accidental scattering by the wind of seeds on newly watered ground at the river's edge, and the growth of new plants that followed. This action must have been imitated successfully, because at some time around 5000 B.C. the nomads decided not to move on as before, but to remain permanently. This decision can only have been made because of sufficient food reserves. The gift of the Nile was now something different frol1l animals: it was fertility of soil. The Nile itself is formed of two rivers, the White Nile, rising in the African lakes far to the south, and the Blue Nile, which falls from the Abyssinian plateau. One brings with it decaying vegetable matter fr0111 the lakes, and the other carries soil rich in potash from the plateau. This is a perfect mixture for fertilizing the ground. The land on the edge of the Nile had no need of manure. It would, with the lllinllllUI11 of tillage, produce full crops of emmer wheat and barley.
The earliest agricultural/ool, the digging stick, illustrated on the wall oj/he tomb o/Nakht, in Thebes. The stick made holes .for the seeds, which ",ere later trodden in by asses. This /001 ,vas also used in early (OtL~truc tion ~firrigation ditches, "i/al to the Egyptian economy, and became one oJthe symbols of Pharaonic power.
8
Initially tillage W.IS probably done by hand, the farmer merely bre;lkll1g open the groulld and laying the seeds ill separate holes. Dut as thiS produced 111 ore grain to feed 111Ure lllouths, the poplllatinnllll1st have increased to till' point where such haphJZ:Hd nlcthllds were ill,>ufliciellt, and the next step was takell. Pointed diggillg sticks pulled by lund would open the ground faster. The decisive event occurred
'I'he 11I~~.~l'I' 0( (i I' iii;:: ill i"11 . 1111' -,rrald, ploll.'!I,. TI,is ."1/hape; it beCJllle a simple scratch f-llough, with J forw:1rdcurving woodell bLlLic for Cllttlllg the suil, and a backward-curvlll g p:lir of hanJks with which the t;Irt11('r could direct the oxe11 which 110W replaccd lllen as :J source of tractloll pllwer. This simple inlplc111el1t 1l1,ly arguably be called the most flllldJlllcl1tal ll1Vcntio11 III the history of nI311, and the 1l111ovatioll that brought civilizatlo11 intll bei11g, bccause it WJS the instrUI11C11t of surplus.
9
A community may continue to exist as long as it has adequate food, and it may expand as long as food production can keep up with the increase in numbers, but it is not until it can produce food which is surplus to requirements, and is therefore capable of supporting those who are not food producers, that it will flourish. This development was made possible by the plough, and it caused a radical transformation of Egyptian society. The earliest evidence of the political structuring of the country that followed is shown in remains dating from before 3000 B.C. which show the division of the land into 'water provinces', rectangular sha pes criss-crossed by lines indicating canals. The governors of these areas were called ad) mer ('diggers of canals'), and it was their duty to ensure a regular supply of water to the fields. One of the earliest relics of the kings of the time is a mace head; carved with pictures showing the king carrying a hoe with which to build or open canal walls and water basins. Within a brief period of these early beginnings, Egypt had developed a sophisticated centralized civilization. Initially the surplus produced by irrigation and ploughing permitted non-food producers to operate within a community, and in the beginning these may have been the men who dug and maintained the irrigation systems, and those who organized them. These administrators would have derived their authority from the knowledge of astronomy which gave them alone the magic a bility to sa y when th e flood would come, when to sow on the land wet from the receding waters, and when to harvest. The grain needed storage room out of the weather, and dried clay daubed on woven reed baskets gradually gave way to more permanent containers as the demand for them increased with the crop. Firehardened cia y pots, made from spiralling loops of wet earth, came to be used, and the first evidence of solid building is of piles of these pots heaped together to form a central granary. The need to identify the ownership and amount of grain contained in a pot or a granary led to the development of writing. The first picture-words come from before 3000 B.C. and comprise lists of objects and totals of figures contained in pots and chests. The surplus grain paid for craftsmen: carpenters, potters, weavers, bakers, musicians, leather-workers, metal-workers, and those whose task it was to record everything - the scribes. The need to ensure regularity of harvest in order to support these members of the community demanded a taxation system, and so that it should be operated fairl y skills were developed to assess each man's due. Initially this may have started with the measurement of field boundaries destroyed each year by the flood, but as time passed and the irrigation systems grew more complex, the process demanded greater sophistication, calling for mathematics to handle the measurement of distance, area and cubic amount.
10
This I11llglliti(l'NllPilll pairllil1~ is ill Ihl' lOin!) o(lhc 1'1 zicr Rckhmirc, irl Thebes. II shows shoemakers allPork (lap rOil') alld (arpCllters (middle rOll l ) using Vall' drills, salliS, adz('s alld chisels. Note hall', ill the absence ora plane, Ihree men arc smoolhing a bealll IIlilh mhbing stones. Boltom r(ghl, 11 trletalworker ~IS(,S 11 !JIolFpipc 10 raise the lemperalure n{ hiS .tiri'.
These early forms of arithmetic and geometry grew frolll the demJnds of canal building: how long, how wide and how deep; It may have been the need for tools to do the Job which spurred interest in the copper deposlts across the Red Sea in Sinal, and this in turn would have stimulated the use of metal for weapons. Weapons were needed by those whose task it was to protect the land and crops from invasion, as the surplus food and the goods financed by its production began to be used as barter with neighbouring communities, some of which looked with envy on the riches of Egypt. Metal tools gave the Egyptians the ability to work stone, initially, perhaps, in blocks for strengthening the trrigatiol1 ditches. The Nile is bordered for 500 miles south from Cairo by limestone cliffs, and it is from thiS stone that the first pyramid was constructed. A mere hundred and ftfty years after the first use of stone for the construction of buildings, the massive step pyramid of King Djoser was erected. It rises out of the desert at Saqqara, south of Cairo. Built by the king's chief minister, Imhotep, it is the oldest extant stone structure 111 the world, dating from around 2800 s.c. It was constructed USll1g the tools and the theoretical knowledge developed by the canal builders, and it shows a high degree of precision in the use of botb. By the time Djoser was being laid in his pyramid, Egyptian society had developed a form that is little changed today. At the top callle the Head of State, served by his cabinet of advisers; these were
II
aided by a civil service which organized every aspect of life in the state, gathering taxes from craftsmen and farmers to suppcrt themselves and the arm y. The regulation of the state's business was effected through the application of laws, which rested for their observance on the availability of an annual calendar, by now divided into twelve months of thirty days each. By 2500 B.C. the Egyptians (and their neighbours the Mesopotamians) had a developed and sophisticated society operating with a handful of essential tools: civil engineering, astronomical measurement, water-lifting machinery, writing and mathematics, primitive metallurgy, and the wheel. With these tools the Egyptians administered an empire whose power and influence was unparalleled in the ancient world, based on an agricultural output made possible by the plough. Its use had ensured the continued survival and expansion of the community and set in motion the changes that resulted from that expansion The first man-made harvest freed mankind from total and passive dependence on the vagaries of nature, and at the same time tied him tor ever to the very tools that set hi;n free. The modern world in which we live is the product of that original achievement, because just as the plough served to trigger change in the community in which it appeared, each change that followed led to further change in a continuing sequence of connected events.
Part ~f a bas-relie/from the 14ooB.C.) shows the early defJelopml'rlt of geometry and mathematics, used in the measuring offieidsIor taxation arid in (alwlating amonnts oJgrain at harpest time. The scribes (Io,,'er right) are holding illk palettes and ">ritillg on papyrus with reed pens. tomb~rMellna(c.
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The author at the step pyramid o(Kin,\! Djoscr. The hasic stYJ/({ure /lNZ.' o(mbble and -,fone, faccd Il'ilh limestone slabs. Since the an(ient S\!Yjitians did //ot haFI' pulleys the standard method o((onsfrl/oioll was to han/the stonf lip s/opilJ,\! ramps orearth IFiJi(h lJ'fYl' remolled II'/zm thc pyramid IIIas (omp/I'tc.
The story of the direction taken by that sequence of events is the subject of this book. The reason why each event took place where and when it did is a fascinating Illixture of accident, climatic change, genius, craftsmanship, c;Jreful observJtion, ambition, greed, war, religious belief, deceit, and a hundred other factors. Following the trail of events that IcJds from some point in the past to the elllergence of;) modern invention that affects our lives is like being involved in a detective story, in which the reader will know at any particular stage in the story's development only as much JS did the people of the time. As eJch story unfolds it will become clear thJt history is not, a, we are so often led to believe, a matter of great men and loncly geniuses pointing the way to the future fWIll their ivory towers. At some point every member of society is involved in the process by which innovation and change comes about, and this book I1lJY help to show that given average intelligence and the information aVJiI,lble to the innovators of the past, any reader could have matched their achievements. The clue to the trigger which sets off the first of these detective stones is this: how did a modern invention whose existence threatens the life of every hUlllan being on Earth start 2000 years ago with ;I discovery made ill a river in Turkey;
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2 The Road
from Alexandria
Thejirst radiograph oj a human body, produced by X-rays. These were discollered by accident on 8 NOIJember 1895 when Wilhelm Rontgennoliced thaI a cathode ray tuhe caused fluorescent material to glow at a distance, and that a metal object placed between the two cast a shadow on the glowing material.
In north-western Turkey, not far inland from the Aegean Sea, stands a mountain known in ancient times as Mount Tmolus, from which two rivers fall, one the Pactolus, the other the Hermus. Several factors combine to make these two rivers important in history. The gradient they follow is shallow, so they flow slowly; as they cross the coasta l plain they fan wide and smooth, carrying loads of deposit brought down from Tmolus in the form offine grains of soil mixed with gold, which are winnowed from the slopes of the mountain by the action of wind and temperature change, and washed away by the waters. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fourth century B.C., these two rivers had for centuries been known as the richest source of panned gold in the world. Two thousand seven hundred years ago they lay within the boundaries of the kingdom of Lydia, and in one of them some unknown prospector, probably in the employ of the king, made one of the most fundamental discoveries in the history of mankind. At the time, the standard method for retrieving and smelting the gold dust was through the use of sheepskins. The grease in the skins would trap the tiny particles of gold, and when the skin was fully laden it would be hung on a branch to dry, then thrown into a furnace where the heat would incinerate the animal material, leaving the gold lying in blobs among the fine ashes. It may have been this use of the sheepskin that gav e rise to the myth of the Golden Fleece sought by Jason and his Argonauts. Be that as it may, the gold blobs were melted into blocks, or ingots; in this form they were used as a replacement for goods and as payment for services - a practice which goes back as far as the third millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the
15
value of the ingot of gold (or copper, or silver) wa s determined by weight. The limitations of such a ystel1l arc ob vious. The ingots were bulky and difficult to transport. The y could only be used for paymellt on a large scale such as took place between one state and another, or for settling accounts with mercenaries at the end of their period of service. The discovery made b y the man panning for gold in the Pactolus changed things at a stroke. Apart from fine grains of gold, the river also contains small, flat pieces of a flinty stone, black in colour, whost' proper geologic:d nallle is schist. The first reference to the usc of schist is by Herodotus, who says that the Lydial1s cut the top surface of the stone flat, leaving it matt . If gold were rubbed on this matt surface it would make scratch marks. Pure g o.ld would leave yellow marks, gold mixed with silv er , white ones, and gold mixed with copper, red marks . The stone could thus be used to assay the quality of the gold, and its common nallle has passed into our language as a metaphor fo r evaluation : the touchstone . The effect of this accidental d iscovery, made some time in the eighth century B.C., was to be immense. It gave the rulers of Lydia, probably starting with King Gyges (6S5 B.C.) , the abili ty to ensure a standard quality to their precious metal, for the touchstone shows to even the Illost inexperienced eye a difference in quality o f the sllIallest percentage. It had bem the cu stom fo r centuries in the Babylonian and Egyptian empires to stamp ingots with sOl1le mark giving auth ority to
16
A .r/ih-(mtllry B. c. bOIl'1 drpiaillg JasO/I alld thl' dragoll ,'I//(/rdillg rhe Goldl'lI Fitter. The 1/1 yrh lIlay II l cll.iprillgji'o/ll e!'l'lIrs relatillg to a raid Oil a ((lllll/lIl1lir)' ill orda to "I, taill rhl'ir IIIMC rld!'allad kllolflled(!(' ofllier ,,11111:1;)'.
A sixth-century B.C. Lydian
stater, made o(aJ?old-siJ,Jer alloy railed elerlmm arid pUrlchmarked by the iisuirlJ? mint.
Portrai/stirst appeared reJ?lIlarly on coins ajier Alexander's dealh. This si Iller tetradrarhm, dated about 290 B.C., shows A lexarlder as a J?od with the Zeus Ammon ram's horn grolllingJrom his head. [tlilas minted il1 PerJ?amumfor Lysimarhus, KinJ? of Thracc.
the value of the metal, although such marks did not necessarily make the ingots more freely exchangeable, since they probably meant no more than that the man who issued the ingot would accept it back at the same value for which he had offered it in the first place. However, with standard quality metal made possible by the touchstone, and forgery easil y detected by the same stone, the mark of the king's mint was now evidence of purity, weight and acceptability. The need for smaller units of exchange took matters a step forward with the production of the Western world's first coin, the Lydian slaler. Within a hundred years a set of coins, each one a fraction of the staler, had been issued. When Croesus of Lydia introduced the first standard imperial coinage in 550 B.C. Lydian money was already known for its high and unchanging standard. Other cities and states followed: Miletus, Phocaea, Cyzicus, Mitylene and Ephesus each founded offIcial mints, and gradually their money began to be used and accepted outside the bounds of their own market-places, as monetary unions, like that between Lydia and Mitylene, were established. By the time of the Athenian Empire, in the fifth century B.C., money from Athens was accepted in most parts of the eastern Mediterranean. As the use of coinage spread, it had two fundamental effects. The first was political: money issued by a central mint had a unifying effect on the users. The mark of the government on the coin was present in every transaction. Its presence defined the boundaries of governmental authority, and its value mi rrored the health of the econom y and the political stability of the country. The second effect of coinage was a consequence of the first. As the states developed and prospered, trade between them increased, and the use of coinage permitted more selective buying and selling of more diverse cargoes. Markets became more varied, and more widely scattered. It could be said that the introduction of the Lydian slater triggered the growth of trade in the Mediterranean because coinage made possible much more flexible trading methods. From earliest times the world's great trading route had run from the eastern Mediterranean down the Red Sea, and across towards India and China. There is evidence of the Egyptians and Babylonians going as far south as Somalia in the second millennium B.C., and east towards India. Throughout the life of Alexander the Great this trade route was developed and held open as much as anything by his use of coinage. Alexander's mark was accepted from India to the Lebanon, from south Russia to the upper reaches of the Nile. In 331 B.C. he decided to found a city at the most convenient point to handle the flood of commodities criss-crossing his em pire. The city was to be built in stone at a place where two natural harbours, facing east and west, would permit landfall whichever way the wind was blowing at the time.
17
Ll~/i: Nohody kno/lls what ancient Alexandra looked like, since little archaeological (,Ilidence remains. This drawing (c. 1460) is a mediellal artist's impression of the city. Note the
Pharos lighthouse built on the tongue ()f landjutfil1g out at hottom right, in antiquity an island. The Pharos UJas so impre.isille that its /lame passed into Meditenancar/ larlguages as the /FordIor 1(r;llIhol/Sl'.
Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile, became the greatest trading capital of the world. From the south, from Somalia, came spices. From the Sudan came elephants, iron and gold. From France, Germany and Russia came furs and amber; from England, tin. Alexandria took goods from all over the world and redirected them to their destinations. Dio Chrysostom said of it, in the first century A.D., 'The city has a monopoly of the shipping of the entire Mediterranean ... situated as it is at the crossroads of the whole world.' After Alexander's death the city was rul ed in turn by Persians, Greeks, Carthaginians and finally Romans. For six hundred years Alexandria prospered, both a' .1 trading commu nit)" and as the intellectual centre of the MediterranL'.111 - thanks to the great Library and Museion, founded not long after rhl' city was built. Here, the greatest teachers of the time gathered to Wrltl' a nd to gi ve lectures, su pported by public funds, in one of the ten In I"each devoted to one of the subjects taught on the curriculum. There were rooms for research and study, and quarters for teachers 111 residence. The Library was a treasure-house of virtually all that was thcll known. In 235 S.c. there were almost haifa million manuscrIpts therL', and by the time of Julius Caesar the number had risen to 700,000. The collection was a ugmented through the im plernentation of a la \\' which required all visitors arriving in the city to lend any manus(rI]'r in their possession to the Library for copying. Officials searched sh l}" for books as they arrived. During the fourth century a quarrel developed with Athens when it was discovered that they were
18
Belo/Il: Ptolemy's /lie/v o{the uni verse, consisting of conc(,11tri( crystal spheres each carrying ol/e ofthe SfllerI kno/lm planets (including the sun and moon), and the outermost, the stars. In this scheme the Earth is placcd at thc Cl'rItrc o(c/'l'r)'tiliIlS.
A mosaiej"rom Ostia, Ihe porI or Rome, showing its lighthouse, perhaps the best known in antiquity after the Pharos. Although smaller, itll)as oJ similar (omtmetion, built in sel'cral storeys dimirli5hin,~ in size tOll!ards the top, where the fire If!as housed
borrowing originals of the Greek tragedians, and returnIng the copIeo Illade by the Library staff. The subjects tJught at the Museion encOllIpassed every field of contemporary learning, including J1lathelIla tics, geo/lletry, astronoIll)', philmoph y, medicllle, astrology, theology and geogra ph y. Not surpnsll1gl y, S1l1ce Alcxand ria was a seaport, special support was gIven to war studies, Jnd to geography and assoclated fields of study slIch as astronomy. At some point between A. D. 127 Jnd 151 one of the greatest schola rs who ever ta ugh t lJ1 Alexandria, Claudius Pto!cmy, wrote a thirteen-part work called M,ltliel//Cllikf Synlaxis (The System of Mathematics), whIch brought together everything that was known at the OnIe about astronomy. Since early 1Il the second millennium astronomy had been a field for study, under the Babylonians and to a Jesser extent the Egyptians. At the begilll11ng interest 111 the behaviour of the stars and the SlIn and Illoon had been purely practIcal, since Jt was believed that a calendar based 011 observations of the sky would record the seasons WIth greater accuracy, and this in turn would C'nablc adl1lll1istrators to foretell times ofAood for irrigation. Gradually the dIscipline took Oil the l1lyth and Il1dgic of the astrologers, and prC'dieting eclIpses or the behavIOur of disappearIng constellatIons at different times of the year gave power to the priest-kings. By the time the Persian King Cyrus was called IIlto the BabyloIuan heartland ill 539 fl.C. to save the country from civil war, astronomns had divided the sky into twelve constellations, 30 degrees apart, 111 a circle of 360 degrees, and laid the basis of the zodiac. The Persians, pragmatic realists, turned mLlch of the Ba b ylonian Illll III bo-jul1l bo to more sClenti fie observa tion, and froIll 300 13.C. the ChaJdeall Tables were developed
I9
20
~ - 1
r ..
Above: A reprodu(tioll oFthe Iype C!Fsaoll-liook kepi at the Alexandrine Lihrary, sho'J'in
..• ",,,,-,_ • .r
AboFf : This rewllslmeted porll/lan {hart sholl's 170111 lIIedil'l'{//I/!II'(~(/ ("rs
[(/1{JIla(e dirc((i oll hy
(O l/Id (/Il'
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lowl willds.
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Th e iIlIlOJ1I1(iOIl oFlhe s(el'll) (l lId S(('I'IIPOSI rl/dder a/lol/lcd shil' s like Iltis.!1.!ic('lIlh - {('I/IIIYY lall'l'lI ri,~ (al Ihl'
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Irallsocealli c Iloya5!fS ill IIlealiters.
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World.
2rot(:ssor of Mathematics at Wurzburg Ulliversity_ Schott published two books Oll the experiments, the first of which appeared in r()q ami brought Cuericke's efforts to the attention of scientifiC scholars allover Europe, A few years later Guertcke turned his halld to the other lIIaJor area of Gilbert's work: IllaglletislII_ At sOllie point before 1003 he lwg,lll experilllenting with the idea that certain substances would becollle attractive whell rubbed_ Sulphur was one, alld Cuencke built hlillscifa sulphur globe by pouring crushed sulphur into a gl;lSS sphere allli heJting it umil it melted_ Whl'll it hardened again the gla ss W,15 shJ ttcred. lea vlllg the sui phur globe rcad y for work, Cucricke l110unted it on a rod, and set It horizontally in a t-rame, attaching the rod to ,I gcning sy s tell~ and a crallk handle so that the globe could be spun Jt high speed_ As it turncd, he rubbed it with his hand and found that after a while it w()uld indeed attract feathers, linen thrcads, water alH.i so OIL CUlTickc thcrd()re cOllcludcd that it was this attractive t(lrCe which pulled objects back to Earth after they had bet'll thrown into the Thm he did Olle more test. He rubbed the spinni n g sulphur g lo LlL' III the dark ;lIld , ,1\\' it glow. and watched the g-Iow exteIJd fro lll the g lobe to hi s hand, placed a few inches away_ To Cuericke this ligh t was just ;lllothcr strange a'pcct of magnetislll, as was the cracklehe heard when he rubbed the globe and placed it close to his e,tL In 1072 he published the resu lts of his w o rk ; Il1 th e b oo k. E\pcri1111'11111 NOI'1l Nl l1gdclJlII:l.!ic,1 (T he New Magdeburg Experi m e nts), o nly ont' paragra ph wa s dedicated to the sulphur globe. It wa s enough to set off:1 century of d iscovery_ ,111'.
In the history of the process of change there are certain crucia I moments when the number of paths down which subsequent events can lead suddenly multiplies. Guericke's publication was one such moment. His work on the vacuum pump led to research into the composition of gas and in particular air. This led to the discovery of oxygen, which in turn led to work on combustion, respiratory diseases and the analysis of the elements. [t also helped to solve the problems of mine drainage, and produced advances in metallurgy, notably steel production. The examltlation of gases would one day lead to the investigation of light passing through the gases, and that in turn to the discovery of cathode rays and the television set. His experiments with the sulphur ball did more. The force Guericke had seen at work, glowing and crackling, was electricity, and there is no need to detai I the inventions and discoveries whIch resul ted from that. Perhaps the least obvious result of Guericke's work on the sui phur ball was to quicken interest in the weather. Men had for centuries speculated on the nature of thunder and lightning. [n Saxon England the ecclesiastic Bede had speculated that lightning was due to the rubbing together of clouds, and thunder to the sound of the impact. In the Middle Ages it had been the custom to ring peals of bells in the church steeples to disperse the thunder, as a result of which a high number of bell-ringers had been electrocuted. Indeed as late as qH(> the Parlement of Paris enforced an edict forbidding the practice, because over the previous thirty-three years and 386 recorded lightning strikes no fewer than r03 unfortLlnates had been killed on the ends of their wet bell-ropes. Within thirty years ofGuericke's experiments, the connection had been made between static electricity and lightning. [n 1708 Dr Wall, in England, wrote that electricity 'seems in some degree to represent thunder and lightning', and in 1735 another Englishman, Stephen Gray, trying to find how far down a thread the mysterious force would go, came to the same conclusion. Concern soon focused on lightning strike and the danger it presented to gunpowder arsenals all over Europe. The row over exactly how to protect them began with the work of a hitherto obscure fifteenth child of a Bostonian soap-boiler, Benjamin Franklin. In 1750 he wrote to the British Royal Society expounding his electrical theory, which stated that there were two kinds of electricity, positive and negative. The reason that electricity flowed from one place to the other-a phenomenon everyone had observed-was the desire for a negative material to move to a positive one in order to achieve natural balance. He claimed that electricity would therefore be attracted to a positive iron rod, and away from more dangerous, fragile or expensive properties that might otherwise lie in its path. He suggested that a church steeple be used to prove his theory. The Royal Society was not
34
AiJo/lc: A !JC'II-rillger a/St Pol-de-Leon in Britanny is killed in J 7 J 8 by lightning. Be/oil': A lightning wllductor/i>r IISf il1 kite experiments, as illlistrated in E. Chamber's Cyclopaedia, LOl/dolJ J 779. (' () .NIJ IT (' T () R //1111/; fi',
/
/rl
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(
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Beloll': frl1llklill'S 1/~eht/1ill,~ ((nldi/r/ors cau,Rht the illlaginatilJ/1 Europe il1 tlze 1770.1. h/ Paris/ashionable ladies proll,crladcd IIJith collductors attar/wi to their
or
hats, and ,RetItle/llcll a/Jailed thclIIsc/Ilcs (:i" the II/Iimate CXlral'a,!?t1I1(f, a po/table 1i,(!/lIrlill,f? conductor.
intL're')ted, so Fr:ll1klin tried it for hllnsclf, and since the PhiladelphIa church spIre he had inlllllld was not ready in time Franklm attached all iron wIre to hlS now famous kite and was hit by the shock frol11 J ,torll1 cloud. The followlllg year, 1753, he published hIS dat;] In PO(l,Riej,ord's AIIi/al/(/rk. In 17(,0 the first lightning rod was ll1stalled III England. The explosion of aD arsenal In Brescia, llorthern ltaly, in 17(,() lll:lck the mel J political issue. An estil11Jted175,ooO pounds of powder o:.ploded, destroYll1g l()O hOllses withlll ;) radllls of (,39 feet frolll the t'XpIOSlO11. The Brescia authoritIes asked the Roy;]1 SOCIety for help ill preventing;) further disJster, Jnd a cOt1ltllittee was set up, of which Fr:.1tlklill W,IS ,1 Illeillber. AI1 isslle developed over whether the rods should be pOinted at the top, as FrJnklm sald, or rOllnd. The 13rtti,h setried for the rOLlnd v:lriety, on the grouuds that Franklin WJS ,1 revolutiollJry. Conductors sprang up all over Europe. There W,lS L'ven a rj,I1/JI' &c. II'.
37
Towards the end of the nineteenth century weather stations wcrc scr LIp 011 the tops of IYlountaIl1s allover E urope 811d the eastern side of the United States for the purpose of gathermg Il1formatlOl1 for the ncw weather forecasts. The highest l110UIHain 111 Bntain IS Den NevIs, In Scotland, and there, on 18 October 1883, The TilNCS reported: It was arranged that a processioTl of ladles and gentlemen should muster at the Alexandria Hotel [in Fort William, at the foot of Den Nevisl dnd walk or ride the bridle path leadII1g to the SLlJ1)nllt . Mrs Cameron Campbell Illounted a pony and led the way, hcadcd by;) piper playing 'LochJCi's awa' to France' long beforc the party rClched the top they found thenl!>clves U1 an Arctic regionthc snow being two feet deep on the SLlllllllit, and ~trong WII1d sweepJl1g round ill fitful gusts, whIle the temperature WJS Intensely culd. HLTC .. thc ,lrchitccr recclved Mrs Call1pbell, gave her the key of the outer door of the obscrvdtury ... and the party found ~l welcOllle wlthlfl, With a comfortable fire Jnd tCJ. Lurd Ablllgcr, of till" Scottish MctcoruloglCJI SOCIety, stated durIng thc cerelllOny that with a high statIon in Britall1 to work in cOIlJunction with those III AmcrIca JIld FrJIlce, regular forecasts could !lOW be IIlJde Oll a Wide ba,is. The Bell N evIs ObservJtory was declared opell.
flljllly 1803 Pro/r,.(sOl [;Ii('lll/('
(1wl MOIISiclI1' Llonl sOllred ill their "alloOlilo Ihl' R(J/lcrlsoll
IIlIlililll 189-1
C T R.
VV,ISON o !>sCI flCa lilt' glory thaI lea hil/I to the clolla cilmliller.
It was in this 0 bservatory, so 111 e yea rs ]a teL tha ta ll eve n twas to OCCU r th at wo uld lead to the development of a mod ern invention whose existence has the most profound effect on every liVin g organIsm on the planet toda y , It happened became the observJtory ,vas short of funds, :lnd rccrLLlted te iliporar y obser v ns frol1l the univ e rsi tie s during tlllle'> when the regular staff were 011 holIday . So It was th at a young phy)]cs graduate called C, T R. Wilson callle to the rnountaJl1 111 September 1i\ 94 on vacation fro m Ca mbrid g e, to work for two weeks. O ne day , just after 5 J .111. a t the begll111lllg of hiS session of hou rl y wea the r ob se rv ati o ns, he witnessed th is phenomenon. As he later described It : 'The shadow of the Ben 011 the sur face o f the sea o f cloud [bel o\-v the >ummit] at ftrst reached to the w es te rn horizon. Its upper edge cam e r:l cing ea stw ards as the sun rose. O n the cloud surface beyond the ,had ow w ould th en appear a gl o r y, th e co loured rIngs incomplete and r 01 ther fa Il1 t and diffus e .... this g rea tI y eXCI ted 111 y Interest and made me Wish to 1111 ita te the III III the]a borator y,' T he glor y W IlsOll had observed is caused by the beh aviour of li ght wh en the observ e r's shad ow 1
In the dia,r;ram (Ieji, abol'c) a slol.l'-molJing neutron excites and mtns a nllcleus oljissionable, IIl1stabie lIIalerial, say U 235; and as a re5111t the IIlIelfIIs Ira,iilllmls, alld splits into tll'O slIIaller IIlIrlci, relfasill,~ nfutrons to excite other nl/rlei and cause a chaill rC(/OiOIl. Each )issioll releases heatjrolll the kinetic ('IIrT,(!Y oFthe ./ra,,(IIIOlIs prodllccd. A rapid build-lip ojfissions (Ieli, below) to an explosil'c release oImergy is used to makc a nuclear bomb. A steady, cOlllrol/ed lIumber prod/./cc., the (ollstanl energy o/a power station. Nllc/carjilsioll (right)
the knowledge of how to build and operate atomic power statiollS spreads, the means to produce atomic weapons is becoming available to smaller, less politically stable countries. The secure monopoly once exercised by the Big Five no longer exists. In particular, the complex and costly defence systems of both sides which hitherto have acted as deterrents against aggression can now be breached with case by any physics graduate with access to the necessary radioactive material. Anti-missile batteries arc illlpotent against attack by a suitcase bomb, and, as the technology of miniaturization improves. there is no reason why a nuclear device should not be contained in sOlllething the size of a handbag. Such a weapon delivery systelll is virtually undetectable, and its use would radically alter the future. Few breakthroughs in military technology have had similar potential for altering the society that first uses them. One such breakthrough occurred in Europe just over a thousand years ago. On that occasion the device was also small, both sides possessed it, one side used it first, and the results of its Lise were radical and far-reaching. Indeed, had the deVICe not been Llsed this book might well have been written ill J differellt language.
0((11'-' Il'hen the I'ery I('(ht nllclei orccrltlin iSNopes or hydrogCII ((Jlltaininy,)i'II' particles arc heated to high temperatllTo and h('((JlllcjilScd. The tll'(JIorllls orhydrogen IIsed jor this IheT/llollllciear reactloll are deuterltll/l and trilillm. In Ihe diagrarn helolll the tlVO IIlIclei oIdelllerill1ll and tritilllll are slIbjected to intense heat; Ihey Illse Io.[orlll a helilllll r//.lcleus, releasin,r; a l~ji-olJer neiliron and thereby energy.
47
The ftrst effect of the device was to change the government of England. At dawn on a bitterly cold day - Friday 13 October T06OHarold, Saxon King of England, and his exhausted arm y finally pLlshed their way through the last few miles of dense forest that covered most of south-east England. They came out on to the open chalk hills th:n stretch to the English Channel and found themselves three miles from a place called Caldbec Hill, a rise overlooking the village of Hastings Harold and his men had marched virtually straight from their battle with the Danes at Stamford Bridge in Lincolnshire, 270 miles to the north, in the quite extraordinary time of ten days. To make LIp for their losses at the battle they had gathered levies of men frol1l the counties they passed through 011 their way south. Even so, when Harold pitched camp on the ridge above the sand lake (Senlac) that stretched along the foot of the hill inland [rom Hastings, he had only a remnant of the host o[men he had taken against the Danes two weeks before. He may have had at most five thousand trained fighting men. Many of these would have carried the iron-tipped ash spear, or a throwing axe, and a sword; some were bowmen, most wore leather ClpS and very few bad mail shirts. Ranged alongside these professionals wen~ the levies: farmers and peasants, for the t110st part, who had been straggling in from all over the southern counties during the previoLis few days.
.~
The ninth-cel1tury Saxoll man-at-arms merely ~/sed his horsc to ride fO tht' scene of actioYl, in this casc to lllrrollYid a/<Jrtress. His hl,lnlct lI'as //lade o(hardened leather Inll ol1ly protccted the ('rall'l1 orltis head Ior!i~htinJ: OH/back had become still further enclosed in metal, to the point where he Ileeded some form of identification ill battle to rally his men, ~1l1d indeed ill the thick of action to protect himself fro III his own side. At first this Identification took the form of painted designs Oil the shield, for the most part geometrIc, USillg the Ilails ill the frallle of the shield as In outline. Later, as more and Illore men took to identifying thelllseives silllilarly, the designs becallle increaslI1gly cOl1lplex and decorative.
53
As each improvement in equipment was made, the business of being a mounted man-at-arms became more and more expensive. The rearing of horses for the early shock-troop formations demanded so much land that the kings are thought to have exprop riated land from the church, and these 'ranches' were set up on the scale necessary to provide the number of horses and trained men required when the king went to war. Such a ranch would train a number of mounted lI1en and be responsible for equipping them, under the command of the leader appointed by the king; this man wou ld receive the necessary land in grant. If the parcelling out of land did in fact take place primarily for the raising of horses, these ninth- century ranches laid the foundation for later, feudal society . Be that as it 111 a y, by the fourteenth century the cost of equipping and Illaintaining a knight was considerable. Only those who cou ld afford the land and the servants and the raw materials could become knights. The alllount of lIloney Jnd possessions necessary to equip a mounted man-at-arms put the aristocratic rider literally and metaphorically above the rest of society. He was separated by his armour. He now also took on a new kind of identification: an unchanging surname . By 1300 the upper classes had dropped the patronymic, and had stopped calling themselves nalJ1es sllch as John son of Ralph SOil of GeoffreY" of Farnhalll. He
'HoI/! a man sdwll be Ilrlll)'d at his esc ll'hcn he schal.fighte 0/1 foote.'
54
BelolI) /rji,' The hligh t of the tll)eifth cer1/ury. The carli le of the saddle h-as bel'lI dC/Jc/opl'd with (/ higher back andfro1lt.fln greater slIpport at the 1II0lllCl1t 4 illlpactwith the enellly. T his extra stress MId the added I/Je;,~ht of the knight's lIIetal amlOllr has made necessary IIIl1ch strollger girth straps sccllrin
71
13y 15}0 the town had a population of over 15,000, and in 1527 a Illa!l named Georg Bauer was appointed tOWIl physiCIalJ at the age of thIrty-three. Bauer IS known to posterity by the pen-name he chose: Agricola. As well as being J qualified doctor, Bauer had d degree in cl;mics and had travclled alJd studied in Italy, where he had becollle' interested in scientific lllatters in general. After threc years he quit his job in joachilllsthal to devote himself to the problems of I1llllilJg, and in 1533 he began to work on an analysis of mining in general. It took hinl seventeen years to finisil, dnd when It was published in 1:550 it becJlllc the miner's Bible for allllost two hundred ycars. It "vas called Dc Rc Melal/iea (On the Subject of Metals) and encompassed every f:lCct of lllinIrlg frolll geology, to assaying, to smelting, to shJft constructIon, to drainage. In the section relating to draillJge, Baller put his olIger 011 a problem that was being encoLlntered incrcasingly al lo ver Europe, ill silvcr llllnes as well;)'i those sunk to fl!ld iron, srllt or
72
T,I'o orlhe rIIclhods ~/sedJo"
drainillj( lIIines, as illuslralcd ill Aj(ricola's De Rc Metallica. Far leli, Ih.e rax al1d (hain SyS/flll, SU((cssjW Dilly a.r;aillsl m;1I0r j1ood;n,i?' Left, Ihe S/./(/ iOIl pUl/lp I lI'orkin.r; ift 32-jiwl sla/!es. Noll' Ihe usc C?(IValer/l1hcelslo dr;II(' Ihe pl~l11pS: Ihe rule C?(lhc lil1l(, was' /llater 1/lIIsI /Ie dril'ell /ly /lialcr'.
Torriee"i's cxpcrimenlll'hi{h proved the eXiSlen(e both of air pressure arid the vaw~lm. /lllhis early stage lahoralary lesls in 1'0 I IJl'd Ihe usc vIII'aler, and irl e!'cry wbr orsimUn!" diameler the ,!'aler (oilimn slood allhe .'amr hc(ehl.
,dulll . He SJld: 'One of man's reasons for abandonmg 1I111l CS IS the quantity of water whIch Rows 111. . they cannot draw it out with Illachines because the shafts are too deep.' Bauer descrIbed the three methods, sOllletil1les used sep,1rately, SOllletillles in conjunction, that were failing to dram the deepest mines. A II three were powered either by a waterwheel or d horse ca pstan. One Illethod was to attach porow, cloth balls at Illtcrvals along a circular ch;lin, reaching down Into the Aoode d area. As the balls passed through the water they would absorb sOllie of it, and as they returned to the top of the Rooded shaft they would be squeezed dry, to return to the water bter in the cycle. The second l1lethod U)ed a gIant wooden screw, vvith one cnd dipping into the water. As the screw rotated the water ran up the threads to the top of the shaft. The third method attached a crank to the rotating waterwheel shaft. The crank operated a ~"~tnn IIlsid e a cylinder whose open bottol1l end was in the water. The piston would SLIck the water up the cylinder, a valve at the bottol11 would close, one at the top would open, and the descelJding piston would force the water out of the open valve. Th,s last was by far the Illost effectlvc dr:Iinage method, but it suffered from a lIlystcrioU5 lImitatio n: the pIston would not Slick water hIgher than about 32 feet above the surface of the Rood level. Although the discovery of the silver nl ines of South A merica in th e 1 HOS knocked the bottom out of the European silvernlllllng business, thc Iron rnine, werejust as vital to the economy 111 Europe, and the problem of how to drain thcm continucd to be a matter for urgent discussion throughout the remainder of the sixteen th century. The matter was still unresolved in 1630, when a Genoese called Giovanni Batista Baliani wrote to Galileo a~king him to explain the nlystenous 32-foot maximulll. Galdeo did little about the qucstion lIntil a few years latcr, whcn, three months before his death 111 l(i4J, he wasJoined in Florence by a young assist311t frol11 Faenza, in northern Italy, called Evangelista Torncelii. Torricelli wasa mathcmatician who h;)d studied in ROllle, whcre he had bccome lIlterested in the subJcct of the vacuutll. Although Galileo had saId such a thing could tlot exist, a few of T orncelll 's friends in Rome had becn secretl y experi mcntlllg to see ifi n fact it could, and when Torricelli heard of Bali ani's II1quiry he deCIded to prcss the matter further. He bccame convlllced that the reason the water would not rise higher than 32 feet had something to do with the weight of the air pressing on the pool of water at the foot of the lllineshafts. As mercury was very Illuch denser than water, he realized that its LIse would sav e him the bother of having to construct equipment big enough to handle the problem using water, since with the mercury he could scale everything down by fourteen times - the amollnt by which mercury 15 denser than water.
73
In June 1044 Torncelli wrotc to a collcague and friend in Rome, Michelangelo RICci, to explain an experinlent carricd out by his own assistant VinceIlzo Viviani, to which hc added drawings in the l1largin. Viviani had filled a o-foot long tube with mercury and upended it III a dish full of the same nletal, with thl' open end of the tube bl'lle;lth the surface of the lIlercury in the dish. When he took his finger ,lway fr0111 the open end of the rube, the mcrcury 1Il it ran out into the dish, but stoppcd when the Illercury column left 111 the tube was still about 30 inchcs above the dish. Torricclli reasoned that the weIght of the air pressing on the Illercury in the dish had to be exactly equal to the wClght of the nlCrcury left ill thc tube. Ifthcre werc no weight of air, all thc mercury in the tube would have run out into the dish. If this were so, he wrote, 'we live submergcd at the bottonl of 3n ocean of ;ur'. What was more, in the space at the top of the tube left by the nlercury was the thing thought to be illlpossiblc: a vacuum. Torricelli wrotc that if he was right, thc prcssure of the air in our atnlospherJc occan Illust vary accord ing to how far up or down ill thc ocean we were. P... icci, realizing that currcnt Church opillion ill ROllle would not take killdly to these argunll'll(\ C.;ince if they Wl'rl' tnll' ,everal things followed, such as till' existencl' o( intnplancta ry vacuum, with SlIllorbitJng planets), Illade a copy of Torricelli' s letter and sent it to a priest ill Paris, Father Marin Mersenne. This mall was an cxtraordinary Milloritc friar who ran a kind of scientific saloll, to which came many of the more radical thin kers of the da y. Following his habi t of copying letters hc received and circulating them ;]nlOng his many scientifiC contacts throughout Europe, Mersenne became known as the postbox of Europe. It was precisely for this rcason that the copy ofTornCl'lh\ letter ended up in Mcrsenne's hands, and sure cnough the first thlllg Ill· did was send another copy of it to a fricnd who was interested in thl' SJllle problem, the son ofa Paris tax inspector, Blaisc Pascal. Two years after receiving thc lettcr (hc had been bu sy meanwhile in the Paris gambling hal" working on Iaws-of-chance mathe!11atic~) Pascal found himself III ROllell, It was here that he repeated TOrrlcelli's experiment, to check it; only hc did it full-scale, with water. Unfortu n:1 tc Iy he was 111 no posi ti OIl to check the second part of the a rgu men t - there were no mountains arollnd Rouen. Howcver, Pascal had a brother-in-law callcd Fran~ois Perier who lived in central Frmce, in Clermont Ferrand, wh ic h is surrounded by 1ll0ulltaillS. So />;lsral wrotc to Pericr, asking him to take things to thc ncxt stage. On H) Septeillber 1(4)\, one year after Torricelli's dcath, i>cner ~lIld a fcw trustworthy friends (clerics and town councillors) left one tube of mercury upcnded ill a dish at the bottolll of the Puy de DOllie, and slowly climbed thc mountain with a similar set of equipnlellt. At thc sUllll1lit, 4000 fcet LIp, the other tubc was upcnded and examined
74
The /lasi.' of the modem /larOllietN. A.,· the atlnosphcrir pressllre rhal1,(!cs II'ilh I'nryill,(? 1I1c/('()f%,(?i(a/ (lllditions, Ihl' Icp c/ orllll'rfllrY rises andfalls.
Good I!'calher IIIl'aw 11I~~h preSSllrl', bod 11'(,Ii/her, loll'.
various places and in various conditions: inside the ruins of thc Roman Temple of Mercury, oLltside it, in wind, sheltered frolll wind, in f'og, in sunlight, in rain. Nothing ;dtered the fact that, as Torricelli's letter bad predicted, the level of the column of mercury in the tube was lower than that of the ont' they had left at the foot of the mountain. They concluded that the air pressure, being less at the top of the ll1ountain, would support less mercury in the tube. Everyonc "':IS elated. The barometer had been inventcd. The experiment olnop of the mountain represents another of those III
HI1I1/..'s/Il'l''s 11if/1I1'1/((' MI1 (hilie. N"'f lilt' "11/1'(' olilhe /e/i o(th('
g/o/w I"itirh
I"I1S
opened to pmllit
(a/{If/atcd (1111"11111' to talk, III J il74 he saw J phollautograph at work for the first time ill the Massachusetts ImtitLIte ofTechllology, The device had been developed by a Frcnch11I.1I1 c.dlcd LeOIl Scott, who attached a thIl1 stick to a meIllbrane, 011 the other elld of the stick he placed a bristle, set to touch a pIece of sllIoked gbs~, When he spoke into the Il1eIlIbrane, itsclfplaced 011 the 11Jrrnw elld of a COIle to cOllcelltr:lte the sound, the membrane w()rld'~
ilifamiliar Jacquard pattern. These designs were inspired by those on cotton importedfrom India and, prior to (he Jacq/~ard loom, Ivere too intricate to mass-produce economical/yo
Belol,,: A 'hi zarr/,' paTtern ill silk. At the !JcjZilming o(the eightecnth century thCSf complex designs, inspired I,y silbfrom tile Far East, required i,ntnensl' carc ill "JealJing_ Dral"f,o)'-,' mistakes were minously expensi lie.
of the warp thrcads had to be lifted each time thc weft thrcad was passed between them. III this way, all thc warp threads to be lifted at the same time could be attached to a comTTlon cord. When the cord was pulled, aJl the threads attached to it would lift in unison. The job of pulling these cords was left to children, commonly called drawboys, who workcd long hours and often becamc tircd enough to pull thc wrong cords, with disastrous results. The weaver would only know of thc Illlstakc well after it had been made, when It was too late to correct it. By 1725, as the desire for new designs grew to proportions equalled only today, somc way had to be found to prevent sllch costly errors. Lyons had by this time a reputation to livc up to: that of mistress of fashion. It was a reputation that the Frcnch made a monster. A contemporary painter who was commissioncd to do a series of oils of pcople of different nationalities in their country's costume painted the Frenchman naked, with a pair of scissors in his hand, waiting to sce what tOlllorrow's fashIon wOlud dictate before conl111itting hil1Jsclfro wearing anything. While thc master weavers of Lyons mIght Just have been able to keep up with the changmg fashion in dress design, they could not do this and produce all the other materials required, such as hangings, tablecloths, bed covers and so on. The answer to the problem came from the son of an organ maker, Basile Bouchon.
10 9
1
11 0
Right: A 3-/00t high model oj" Falcon's loom, sholPing hOlv his dipision ~Fdifferent stages oFthe pattern 011 to separate cards madc it easierIor the IFea"l'r not to make a mistake in positioning the matrix ofholes.
Leji: The "arious stages in the de"elopment of/he automated loom. The main drawing shaw, Bouchon's s)'.l'/em. When the paper roll is pressed against the horizontal rods, a hole ill the paper admits the rod, leaFing it unmo/Jed. Where there is riO hole, the paper pushes the rod Ivhich carries the ll'ire threadd through illaterally tathe le/t, causing the IJaIl on the wire ta engage under the teeth o.fthe coml, at the bottom. When this comb is rotated downwards it pulls on the engaged I"ires, which in htrrl ptlll/he groups o.fthrl'ad to which they are attached. These threads I!ft, permillirlg the shullie to paJs underneath. I. Falcon's improlJcment on the paper roll. 2. Vaucanson's cylirlder. 3. Jacquard's' endless' chain of cards, and prism.
Bouchon 111 ust ha ve known of the carl y stages in the cOllStructioll of organs, which involved placing pegs on a cylinder according to a series of holes cut in a piece of squared paper which was fitted round the outside of the cylinder to act as a pattern. This was the concept that he applied to the silk loom. Bouchon's idea was improved upon in 1741 by one of the finest automata makers in France, Jacques de Vaucanson, who returned to the use of a cylinder. Into this cylinder he punched rows of holes, and then placed the paper with its holes in it round the cylinder, so that the wires to be left unpushed would slide into the holes in the cylinder. The point of this was that the cylinder was set in a frame with a ratchet, and each time it moved against the wires, it would click on one row to the next set of pattern holes in the paper. Naturally enough the silk weavers of Lyons saw in the new automated looms a threat to their livelihood, and there were riots. Vaucanson's loom lay unnoticed in the Paris Museum of Arts and Crafts for over fifty years, until, in 1800, a silk weaver called Joseph Ma rie Jacquard was asked to put it together again. In doing so he made a few minor adjustments. He went back to an earlier idea and replaced the paper with cards, each one carrying a separate section of pattern. The cards were mounted on a belt carrying each one to d point where it wound over a prism, shaped rather like a squared-off cylinder, which revolved, as Vaucanson's cylinder had done, with a ratchet system. All the weaver had to do to extend the pattern was add more cards. For this Jacquard got all the glory, and the loom to this day is known as the Jacquard 100111. All over Europe the workers' reaction was the sa me: they smashed it. Eventually the loom was taken up and used extensively, but it took many years to gain acceptance.
I I I
The idea of using paper with holes III it spread to engineer';, and 111 lil47 RIchard Roberts 111 E ngland ad apted th e idea to control ri\'c tti ng machines wo r king on the construction of t he Menai Straits IrOll br id g e III W ales. T he m achin es ll sed lllultiple nvetting spll1dJes, d selectioll of which would be b ro ught into anion at an y o ne tlIne, depending on the shape of the plate to be rivcttcd. Thc SJllie Illachlllc was u,>n.i 111 th l' bu ildi ng of the great Iron ships that sailed the Atlantic, taking huge nll mbe rs of II111111grants to A merica. T he ltlcrease in the populatioll of th e U nited States was SLlch that 111 I gilo it took offi cials carrymg out th e r 8ilo ccnsus eight years to complete the cOllntin g , dnd the flo o d of peopl e. still pouring ll1to the country nle;!nt that thi ngs cou ld only gcl \NOrSe tor the census-takcrs. The man in charge of the health statistics division of the census was a iIeutenaIH-colonel III the U.S. Army, attached to the Surgeon Gennal's office. He was a doctor called John Shaw Blilinp, '>, and whi Ie watching the Cd rl y returns being counted ill the cenSllS building 111 Da ltll llore in f 880, he 'iuggestcd to a yOUIlg Cllgllicer ,HtJch ed to hl~ dlVI'lOl1 that thcre ought to bc d 1l10rl' ,1lI[U1l1.lted "vay uf dOIng thc coullting. His Id ea was to usc Jacqu::trd'.; cards to lllcchJlldL (he filing of the ilnl11emc qua ntit ies uf data being C(lllected. HerIllal1 Hollenth, the cn gineer, went away and thou ght abollt It, and thell returned to ask Billings ifhe wished to bc involved ill workillg It out. BJllillg, replied that all hc cared abollt \\(,l\ ,olvll1g the problem, and (hat Hollerith could g(l ahl'ad alon e. HollerIth (ook cards the size of dollar bill,-because there were alre,ldy do llar-b ill ho lde rs 011 the mark ct, so th ere was no nccd to JC'lglJ onc- and punched holes It1 the cards In predetermined positiom relating to the type of data being recorded: sex, age, size of family , lu,·:ttlOn, date ofblrth, l1atI onahty, ete. The number ofscp arate bItS of data thus recorded 011 thc card was extrcmely large . When the I R90
Sl t'e ra~c p17.'·S(,II,~CIS
on h"ard 111/
ClI/(Qrafll ship 10 Alm'rica
III
18 72 . Tral'c/lcrs Ilroll,rzl11 their "1(11'1 (/.Itler)"
(l'O(kl'r), ami
IW1 I1rcssC's. COlldiliollS l'tllicd )i'(JlII
Iwl
10
appallillg.
CellSlIS w as Lli--.Cil, the tllachJl1c, HollerIth had dest g ncd to go with 11l'; cnds were Ll,eo for the f'!'''L tIllle. Thl' cen,u, \Va , CO III pletcd at tWICL' the specd of the previous one, at all estllllated saving nfhalf a IllilliUll dollars. Hollerith's (or jacqu,ud's, or Vaucanson's, or Bouchol1's) punch-
1 :\l)O
card tlleJl10ry was, withtll;l few years ofthc begl11111l1g of thiS cel1tury, bClllg used in ta bu la tors and calcu la tors, and fi 113 11 y 111 electronic CIIU1l'lefating machines. Today the data goes Jr1 and comes out vid kcyboards and vtdeo display units, but the concept is eosentJally the samc'. [\ollcholl, al1d the automata makers befo re him, had htt 011 the billar), code, the 'yes or 110' language spoken by the immense COlllputers that run the ll10dern world, and wtthout which that world would grtnd to a hJlt. Til e ,~L'IIl'-,is o(!he lIIodcl'll (Mllpulcr, Hollerilil's ,a/JIIlalor RNording (/11' ill(Ol"lllallMI slarcd 0/1 (ards it/poillcd all ('XICII"' {l1I o(Bnu(holl" l(l(lill card idea. A Illalrix 0/ cl(>(/rified SpYlillg II lircs set ill Ihe puncil /iClt/g (Iscd on Ihe righl 1(I/iol ( 4) , //lhosl' /l/O/IICIIIIIIII ,f!al'c Ihe "!'Y}!/' biadl'sjllsl l'IIo/(gh illerlia 10 rcsi.'1 Ihc ",h('cl /nr a /1I(1/I/{'III . As 011(' "'adc ",as kirkI'd I/l/la)' b), Ihe ICClh, Ihe OII/{'/· l'lIga,\Zed. The /1I('(hallislII (Ililid be 1I.'('d 10 Ir~!Z.gcr all alanll
130
(5).
The/ali/oilS Horlogc dc sapicllce il11l.\Iralioll (c. 1450 ). all Ihe It:!; i5 c1l11ailalli(c11 dod! II l ilh a -,ill,~/e hcllld alld a 24-hollf dial. Olher lill/ekeeper.\ arc Oil Ihe lahie, righl: a sprill.~-d,.iJlell CIO(k, a qlladralll , a slIlIdial.
ThL' vLTge and folint systelll was to have the most profound eftl'rt on the society into 'vvhich it camt'o What had begun as a machinc for telling l)lonks whe11 to pray, rapidly became a regulator of every aspect of human life. The new clock was probably in action at sonll' time round 12Ho or 1290, and was used at the beginning merely for striking the hours. The early clocks placed in church towers had no dials or hands , and at this stage probably still served to tdl the time of day to the priests rather than to the cOllllllunity at large. Initially the new mechanism was used by ecclesiastical astronomers in the form of autlllllated calendars. The earliest of these appears to h:lVe taken the form of a large face on which a pointer showed the signs of thl' zodiJc, while windows showed other parts of the 11lechani~1l1 rotating the phases of the moon, the position of the sun, the lllajor consteIlatiollS as they rose and set, and certain dates, principally those of the feast days. This last was the most important function of the new clock, since the Church had a considerable num ber of feast da ys whose datL' depended on astronomical data. The only movable feast left today is Easter, whose date depends on the phases of the moon . The feast day was a matter of concern both to the priest, whose salvation depended OIl its observance, and to the populace at large, whose life revolved round these da ys . Sowing, harvesting, market da ys, hoi ida ys and major religious ritua ls were all held on particular feast days. It was this connection with work that was to take the clocks out of the hands of the Church an d into the town squares all over Europe.
13 J
There are various claims as to where the first clock was set up, since none of the documents give mechanical details, so there is no wa y of knowing whether or not a 'clock' referred to is mechanical. There was some form of clock in Westminster in 1288, and one in Canterbury cathedral in 1292. One is mentioned in Paris, in 1300. In 1321 Dante referred to a clock in the Paradiso in such a wa y as to suggest that his readers would have been familiar with its mechanism. The first clear reference to a mechanical clock is to one in the Visconti Palace in Milan, m 1335: 'A heavy hammer strikes 24 hours ... distinguished hour from hour, which is of great necessity to all conditions of men.' The writer was echoing the thoughts of those in civil power, because, as the clocks spread during the fourteenth century-to Wells, Salisbury, Strasbourg, Paris, Bologna, Padua, Pavia, Ferrara - so did the realization of their economic value. In 1370, in Paris, Charles V ordered all the bells in the city to be rung at the sound of his new clock in the tower of the Royal Palace, so that all men should know the king's hour. Clocks indicated the time for opening and closing the city gates, for the beginning and ending of curfew (the putting out of fires, a matter of public safety in towns built predominantly in wood), for the hours of the watchmen at night, and above all for the hours of starting and stopping work. The citizens, or at least those of them with a stake ill the town's prosperity, res ponded eagerly to the opportunities a clock offered. The town council of Lyons recei ved a petition for 'a great clock whose strokes could be heard by all citizens in all parts of the town. If such a clock were to be made, more merchants would come to the fairs, the citizens would be very consoled, cheerful and happy, and would lead a more orderly life, and the town would gain a decoration.' As clock-making techniques improved it became possible to build clocks small enough to be used inside the private rooms of their owners,
132
A German portable alarm clock (c. 1550) ingilt brass, with a steel and brass movement. The dial gives both the usual twelve hours and the Italian twenty-Jour hours. Watchmakers in Nuremberg were only admitted to the guild after making such a clock, as well as one which carried an automated calendar and showed the phases ofthe moon .
and these new chamber clocks rapidly became unparalleled status symbols. Such was the great clock made by Giovanni de' Dondi, a professor of medicine and astrology, for his patron the Visconti Duke of Pavia - where it stood in the castle library, the wonder of Europe. It \\ JS flllished in 1304, and consisted of 297 parts held together by 30:1 pins or wedges. (The idea of using the screw for holding things together, rather than mere! y for pressing things, was yet to come.) Dondi's clock recorded the hours, the minutes, the rising and setting of the sun, the length of the day, the Church feasts, the days of the month, the trajectories of five planets, the phases of the moon, an Easter calendar, star time, and an annual calendar. It did all this with extreme accuracy. The weighted balance - his equivalent of the foliot - swung back and forward 43,000 times ada y, giving the clock a two-second beat. Unfortunately Dondi's masterpiece was later destroyed in a fire, though detailed blueprints were left, copies of which may be seen today in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and in the London Science Museum. The problem with all these clocks was what time they should tell. Some places, England among them, decided carlyon that a mechanism for striking twenty-four separate strokes was too com plex and costl y, and settled for the repetition of a twelve-hour strike. Most of the rest of Europe gradually accepted this point of view, save Italy, which retained the twenty-four-hour system until the luneteenth century. One of the most complicated systems was adopted for a time in Nuremberg, where clocks were built to tell the time from sunrise to sunset, with inbuilt mechanisms to handle the varying length of the days throughout the year. The value of the clock was not lost on the merchant and businessman. By the middle of the fifteenth century, as Europe was recovering from the effects of the Black Death and the economy was beginning to boom once again, there was considerable demand for a clock that was portable. Time was becoming money, and around 1450 an offshoot of water power took the development of the clock one step further. At the time, the new water-powered bellows were operating in blast furnaces, and waterwheels were powering miUs to crush the ore to feed them. The amount of metal in circulation increased dramatically, and the more it increased, the greater was the demand for it. Metal-workmg skills spread, concentrating in those areas closest to the mines from which the ore was extracted. One of these centres was Nuremberg, in the mountains of southern Germany, and it was probably there that a craftsman in metal- perhaps a locksmith, or an armourer-realized that sprung metal could be used to replace the weight drive. One of the earliest examples of the new spring-driven clock IS shown in a portrait dated around 1450 of a Burgundian nobleman, with his new clock proudly displayed in the background.
133
Its works reveal the prcscnce of thc Illcchanislll dcveloped to )(llve the problclll which thc spring creatcd Jllllost as soon as it was first uscd: that, as rl sprillg unwlllds, its power wcakens. As a driving force the spring was uscless, sincc a, It began to llilwind the clock would go fast, and as it wcakcned the clock would go "lower and slower. The device invcnted to coullter this difficulty W;)S kllown as the fusce, Llkell frolll the Latin word for J spllldle. 13)' the Illiddle of the sixtccmh celltury the spring-drtvcn clock had decrc;)scd in size to the point where it had becoille J "vatch. These SIlull clocks ~lIld watches were adequate for the nceds of the vast IllJj()riry of their users. They were Ilot, however, adequate for the astronOlllcrs. As their astrolabcs, quadrants, plalletaria and other tools of· observ;ltlon becaille bigger andlllore precise the a,trollOlllcrs began tl1 cOlllplrlin that the spring-driven clock was not accurate enough. The q\,ality of the Illeta] varied, and the behaviour of the sprill!:!; depended 011 f;lctors sllch as telllperature, age and lub rication. SOllIe of these clocks wcre out by as llluch as four minutes a d~ly, and for close eX;llllinJtion of the regular Illovement of the planers, fOLir minutes was too lllllch. This need for greater accuracy was brought to a head ill a roundabout way by a Dutch spectacle- maker, Han, Lippershey. On 2 October t!508 he offered an invention to the Dutch Governillent for Lise on the bJttlefield. It was called a 'looker' - we shou Id CJ II it a telescope. The Dutch A rill y reforlller, Pn nce Ma mice of
134
The sprill,~-dri I'ell riork, IIsillg ali/s('c IF a (Olitro/mr'{hallislII. Tht" IIpper dia,\ZulIIl shol/'s the sprin,f; Il'olllld ill.(idc a harre/ to IPhirh it is attached. As the sprillg III1IPillds, it ttlrns the barrc/, pllllill)! 01/ 'li!l/t rord fa.(tcllcd to thc ollt.(ide o(/he harrel. The pro/I/nn o(the stTl'II,J;th o(the sprill,!! /c.\senill,~ as it 1111 lI'iII ds i.( solped by (1lI.,sill,~ the ,~lIt to tllm il rone-shaped .Ii/see (the main riock dril'c). The -'"prill)! docs the hardfSt Il'ork, turnillg the 11arrOll'Cst!'lld (~(tllclilsfc, Ivhell it is still tl.i?htly l/'olll1d. Its I/Jork I)('rolllc( easier as it lI'eakl'lls, and t"e.~ut IIIl1l'inds tOIPards the hrol1d elld o(the {OIlC.
Nassa u, w as keen to try any device that would help modern ize his m il ita ry tactics, and he took the new tel escope ou t for field trials ; as a result Lippersh ey was awardcd a prizc of 900 flOrIns, on cond ition that he make his in v ention binocu lar. It l1lay '>l'L'111 odd that a pe riod of over th ree hundred years sepa rates th e first usc of glass lenses in spectacles - attributed va ri ously to an unknown in ventor in Pisa an d an other in Venice, aro und J 3 00 - and the use of such lellses in the telescope. This is ano the r examp le o f the con nectIOn betwee n invention and so ci al need. As the European
Calilco's Il'llSit dral/linfZs orril l' phasl's orthe II/(JIJII IJb.'CI'l'ed rhroll,f!h hi.i tclc.i(opl' ill 16 10. Thl' irre,l!lI/drity o(r/zl' IlIrldr destroyed rill' tilCMy ril ar all plal/crs 1111'1"1' pcrji>({ spit eres .
S/.l~ra(('
eCOnOlllY pIcked up after the centuries of the invasiol1S (the ' Dark ' Ages) any deVIce that would prolong the wo rkin g lIfe of ageing scribes was to be welcomed. But there was no del11and for the tel escope during this period, which was p rio r to the inven tion of gunpo w der and th e use of cannon OIl the battlefield, w h en the view of the Ul1lverse precl uded the existe nce of pl aneta ry bodies as th ree-dimensioI1
BC/Olfl : )0/1/1 oj"Por!lI,fully tf,lIl\p1.1!1ted the ',lIllL' kind ()f \L'edling\ , The ,1limini,tr,1tion in Indi,1 deluged LOlldon with Ietter\ Ikl11,lIldlng tll,1t \onl"thing bc done, The ,en'icc \\',1\ being decimated b) nLILlricl, thl') argu,'d, ,lIld \vithout LluininL' India could not be
go\'erned .It ,Ill. Thc litl:-expect:1ncy of a llriti~h ,oldler, for L'~,IIIlPIc, \\ ,1'1i,tant\ in thL' pm,ibility of ,lltcring thi\ cllnlpound in ,uch ,I W,I\' a~ to 111.lh, quinine fro111 it. Thl' }oullg lIun \\ ,1\ Willi.1ll1 Pcrkil1, ,ll1d dunng thc LI\ter \',Ic.ltlon of I NS() hl' 111,](ie.1I1 ,1L'Ci(.1cntal di\co\'cr\', In hi, OW!1 \\ ord,: 'I \\',1\ endl'J\ Iock,/{Ied hy 1111' BI'>lI."11
IiiI'
aT The "TarT "rTlie FI/'sl World r¥llr,
till'COJ\tofChlicolll Novcmber
1()14,
WithoutJcccssto tht'sc )ul)plll'.'i
CCrt11.IJ1\' would havc to glVL' lip thc tight by c.H1)' in I') I (), Thcn sOl11ebody rCllll'l llbcred the H ;lber 13o\ch prOCl',\, which produced sodiulll nitr,ltc,
(111)'
olle lllUIT st,lge
W;1,
reqUired - tu add slilpl1urJc
:lcid to the sodiul11 l11tr3tc, ThiS produced llJtrtC dCld which, Ifpournj on to cottOII, IUdke') gUJ1 cottOJ1, which IS explOSIve, Thallks to I[s unglluilll'ed for fertilizer, Gert1IJl1Y
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ahle to fightO J1 fm four \'l'.II'\,
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21 I
One other major development came out of the acctyknc debacle . In [\)12, at the German firm of Greisheim Electron in Stuttgart, a chemist called Fritz Klatte was working on acetylene, trying to find ;J material which would dope aircraft wings with a protective coating impervious to the climate. One of the mixtures he tried was of acetylene with hydrogen chloride and mercury . When this mixture Wortinan exceeded this maximulll. Part of the reason he was allowed to do so lay in the frlct that Lorenzo had recently become the leading mem ber in a cartel controlling the new alum deposits discovered 011 papal bnds ncar Tolfa, in Italy. Aluill was J cOllllllodity vital to the clothing industry, being uscd as an astnngellt to rid wool of its natur al grease before it wa s woven. Lorenzo evidently hoped that his generosity in allowing Charles extra credit would be reciprocated by Charl.es ceasing to import alum frolll the Turk s. (He need cd the alulll because part of hi s duchy included the rich textile towns of Flanders.) Charles, how ever, took the extra credit and continued to deal with the Turks. Whatever the reasons for lendillg money to th e House of 13urgund y, the practice had beel) going on since the tillle of the first duke, Philip, who borrowed the Illoney to buy his first lIlajor northern territory, the Duchy of Brabant, dlld who as a consequcnce spcnt the rest of hiS reign in debt. His son owed rl quarter of all his incotne, and had to pawn his j ewels. Charles's lather, the third duke, was a little Illore thrifty. A ll four duk es, however, raised the credit they obtained by leasing the right to collect rents from their propcrty or revenues frolll their land, for a specified tinlC, in return for cash 111 hand or inllncdiate credit facilities. In this it Ill ay be said th at the Burg undian dukes invented a new way of financing state expenditure. Much of their llloney went on prestige display s. The Burgundian court was
21
9
22 0
the most extravagant in Europe, and under Charles the extravagance went to unparalleled heights. His court was the leader offashion, with its heavy velvets, sumptuous silks, furs covered in jewels, c1oth-ofgold, damasks and heavy brocades. The leader in this spending spree was Charles himself, who went to the lengths of having a steel and velvet 'war hat' made, hung aU over with diamonds, for wear on the battlefield. Charles saw himself as a second Julius Caesar, the saviour of Europe. He would rather spend a day in armour than write a letter. He would devise elaborate rules for conduct on the field, and then lose the battle. His continuous military fiascos reveal the ambition that drove him to lunacy in his desire to extend his territories at any cost. He saw himself as the natural heir to the imperial throne, and travelled with a crown in his saddlebags so that it would be at hand when the Emperor decided to name Charles his successor. The only time Charles managed to pin the Emperor down was in 1473, at Trier on the Rhine, when he was crowned Duke of Guelders. The Emperor's view of this upstart is amusingly reAected in the words of one of his councilJors who was at Trier. So the Emperor rose at daybreak on 25th November and hurriedly took ship. Peter von Hagenbach [one of Charles's men] followed after his Grace in a rowing boat and told the Emperor that the Duke was distressed that he got up so early. He had not expected this, and he asked him to go slowly, so that the Duke could come and take friendly leave ofhim, and talk further about all sorts of things. The Emperor agreed, if he was not too long. So the ships drifted without oars for half an hour. When the Duke did not come, Peter said he would hurry to the Duke so that he might come soon, but as soon as he had rowed away and was out of sight, the Emperor had his oars put out and rowed off.
Charles the Bold presiding olJer a meeting of the chillalrous society heformded, the Order of the Golden Fleece. 115 members were drawn from the counties and duchies Oller which Charles ruled: Burgundy, Bra/Jatlt, Limbulg, L~lxcmbourg, Flanders, Artois, Haman, Holland, Zeeland, Nannlr and Malines.
Charles's ambition and his access to credit were to be his downfall. Thanks to the ability of Portinari to provide cash on the battlefield Charles knew that he could always pay his men, and since this ability was crucial at the time because so many of the combatants were l1lercenaries who would leave the field if the cash was not forthcoming, Charles rushed into engagements recklessly, and lost thelll all. In 1470 he decided to strengthen his lines of cOllJmunication With Italy, the source of nlany of his m ercenaries, by annexlllg territory to the south of Burgundy. He moved into Savoy with his mercenaries, who included English, Italians and Germans as well as his own Burgundians. The army had with them 100 cannons of variou s sizes, but the main striking force was the body of heavily armoured Burgundian knights. Behind the army came wagons carrying almost all ofCharlcs's personal jewellery and an immense amount of gold and
221
sIlver plate, books, rehqu:lrIes, cJndlesticks, cups, cOlns-rlnd his throne. The only oppn
or
Ihe leli. Marcil}!" sils OIl till' T~illll(/ioll "ehilld Nllpoleoll'5 fro lltlillc. Till' alicrl/(loll phasc is sholl'lI
-==
Fr, Cavalry Fr.lnl an try Aust. Cavalry Au st. Infan tr y Al'llliery () T owns
IZI
...
"1'1011'. The Frcnrh hlll'e "1'/'11 dri l'cII b operation was a moderate success, the profits to be 11Iade from coo l beer were ove rshadowed by the imm ense potential of the frozen meat market. The new refrigerat ion techniques were to become a boon to Gerll1 ~lll brewers, but in 13rit gas alld cool It beca me generally know n, the presidellt of the German Brewer's Union, Gabnel Sedlmayr of the Munich Spatcilbrau Llrewery, asked J friend of his called Carl VOIl Linde if h e c ould develop a refngeratmg system to keep the beer cool enou g h to permit brewing all the year round, Von Linde, ail cllgllleer and ;'Ill acadellllc, solved Sed lll1ayr's problem, and gave the wo rld all invelltJ()l1 that today is foulld in almost every kitchen,
243
Von Linde used 3mnlonia instead of air as hIs coolant, because amll10nia behaved just as air did: it liquefied under pressure, :lIld whell the pressure was released it returned to gaseous form, and in so doing drew heat from its surroundings. In order to compress and reic,lse the JlnnlOnia, he used Gorrie's systelll of J pistoll in a cylinder. VllU Llllde did not Invent the amnlonl;! refrigeration system, but he wa, the first to make it work. In 1870 he left his university work ,llld set up laboratories In Wiesbaden to continue research, and to convert his industrial refrigeration unit into olle for the domestic marker. By 1891 he had put [2,000 domestic refngerators into German and American homes. The modern fridge uses esselltially the saine Systl'IIl as the Olle with which von Linde chilled the Sp;itCllbr:Ju cell :us. Interest in refrigeration spread to other industnes. The use of limelight, for illstance, demanded large amounts of oxygen, whIch could be more easily handled and transported in liquid fortl]. The new Bessemer steel-making process used oxygen. It may be 110 cOlllcldence that an iron master was involved in the first successful attelIlpt to liquefy the gas. His name was Louis Paul C ailletet, and together vvith a Swiss engineer, Raoul F)ictet, he produced a sl1lall aillount of the liquid in 1877. All over Europe scientists worked to produce a systel1l that would operate to l11ake liquid gas Oil all industrial scale. One such was extremely efficient. It worked because of what W;IS known as the joulc-Tholllson effect, alld liquefied gas by repeatedly rele:lslllg It through J very fille jet, so that its pressure fell rapidly at each stage. The Illajor problelIl ill all this was to fJrevent the IlIJtl'flal [rulll drawing heat frOiIl its surroundings. In J 882 a French physici st called jules Violle wrote to the French Academy to say that he had worked out a way of isolating the liquid gas from its surroundings through the usc of J vacuulll. It had been known for some time that vacua would not transmit heat, and Violle's arrangement was to use a double-walled glass vessel with J VJcuunl in the space between the walls. Vil~lIe has been forgotten, his place taken by a Scotsman who was to do the same thing, Inuch more efficiently, eight years later. His nal1le was SIr james Dewar, and he added to the vessel by silvering it both inside Jnd out (Vlolle had only silvered the exterior), in order to prevent radiation of heat either into or out of the vessel. This meant that it could equally well retain heat as cold. Dewar's vessel became known in scientific circles as the Dewar flask; with it, he was able to usc already liquid gases to enhance the chill during the liquefaction of gases whose liquefactIOn temperature was lower than that of the surrounding liqUid. In thiS way, in I 8~)I, he succeeded for the first time in liquefying hydrogen. By 1902 a German called Reinhold Burger, whol11 Dewar had met when ViSltll1g GerJ11JIlY to get Iw; vessels made, W3, marketIng them under the Ilame oftherlllos.
244
Avo"e: The cascade Ye/i-iReralioll syslclII. AI eMh OIlhcJollY slagcs Ihe I('rlmique ,,(roll/preSSioll and expallsioll is "sed 10 ye(Y1~~eyale a gas 10 Ihc liquid state. Illheli cxpallds, drall'ill,~ hcat/roll/ arlOlhey ,Qa.', chillilliZ il dOll'lI so Ihal il (all 1,1' liqllcfied al all 1'1'1'11 IOIl'CY tell/pcralure so as to help the 1I('.\'t j!(/.\, alld so 011, IIl1lillhe lasl sla() spiritlel'els mormted alongside. The instYilment ll'as acalYatc to lvithin 5 inches oller a distance of 70 lI1ib·.
to carry out the work, the duke set up a school at the Woo lwich Arsenal in London, where twenty cadets were to be trained for the job. One of those cadets was a young graduate of Edinburgh University ca lled Thomas Drummond. At the age of sixteen, having studied 1l1aths, natura l phi losophy and chemistry, he left the university to become a Woolwich cadet. Two years later, in I R15, he entered the Royal Engineers. In r819 he met a Colonel Thomas Colby, who interested him in the work of the Ordnance Survey. It was Colby who, In r825, encountered a particular problem on the top of Divis Mountain, olltside Belfast.
The Survey of Ireland had begun wIth a prcIiI11lnary reconnaisand Sll1CC the country wa, to be surveyed USll1g tnangulatIoII It was necessary that high terrall1 be used 111 order to achIeve longdi~tance pOll1t-to-pOll1t measurement. The lon gest sIde of the first tnJngle to be established ran between DIVIS, and Slieve Snaght ll1 Donegal. Once the triangle they formed wIth a POlllt trl Scotland was known exactly, it would be pOSSIble to take beann gs from both lllDuntams to other POll1ts m the country and work out the distances from them geometrically. The problem wa, that It wa, J utUllll1, and the weather was bad. Try as they nllght with Aam es and VarIOllS kll1ds of ltght, little could be seen ot- Slteve Snaght at dll through the murk and ram, let alone d pmpomt of lIght on Its summIt. Then Drullllllond prod uced sornethmg he had been workmg on for much of the prevIOus year. It was a new method of prod ucin g lt ght, and Drul1lmond was packed off to Slieve Snaght to try It. In a letter to his mother he described his arnval [here, on 27 October: ' . . for the first week our life was a struggle with the tCl1lpest- our te nts blO\vn down, our Instruments narrowly cscaping, and ourselves nearly ex hau sted. At length, by great exertIOns, we got two hut, erected, one for the ~ancc,
SUY/'fytng on the grand scale, 1906. An intrepId band of surl'eyors with therr theodolite 011 cop oflvIanle Leone, 011 the Swiss-Italial1 border, during the preparaliol1sjor the COl1slmeliOI1 ~rthc Simplan TUl1ncl under the Alps. This, Ihe highest poinl 111 the area, served as the CNlire oj" tnang/rlalion operatiorls.
A /th(Jugh the DnllrllllOlld lil/H'light IIlaS llscd pri/leipally in lightho/lscs alld theatres it l/iaS a/50 tried bri£:/fy as -,trat /(r;htilliZ' The Illustrated London News of May 1860 .(hOII!S the /(((hts rrt(lrlntrd experimentally on WC5tmilHtfY Bndgc, a/(JIIRsidr' the much dmlfflerga5/(f(ilts oj'ti1c tiltle.
seven men who are with me, and the other for me.' As soon as they were ready Drummond lit the new light. In the first stage of operation J Jet of oxygen was produced through a nozzle, the tip of which was p laced in alcohol. When the alcohol was ignited it burned fiercely in the oxygen-rich atmosphere produced by the jet of gas. The flame was thell played on a small ball of hme, three-quarters of an inch ltl diameter. As the lime heated it began to give out a brilliant white light - Dru!1lIllond claimed it was eighty-three times as bnght as the best conventiona I la rn ps - and this light was reflected in a para bolic I1llrrOr placed behind the flame. The result was a narrow ray of ll1tense white light. The apparatus was knovvn as limelight, and It was an ll1stant success. On 9 November a messenger came struggling Lip the mountain to tell Drummond to put it out', the observers had seen it clearly from the Instant Drumlllond had lit LIp, and had taken the necessary
66t
readll1gs. Divis Mountain and Slieve Snaght were miles apart. Drummond got his reward not long afterwards, when he demonstrated hiS new limelight before the senior scientists of the day. The Joo-foot long Armoury in the Tower of London was chosen for the exhibition. First came the Argand gas burner, with Its paraboltc
271
A recollstrt/((ioll oj'tile Iil1lel(eht apparatus , silo/pi/lg the later I'ersio/l /l'ilich /Isedjets
reflector - the type in com1110n use at the time in British lighthouses . Then a light played through the new Fresnel lens, which made the Argand dim by comparison. And finally Drummond's light. In the words of Sir John Herschel, the astronomer : ' . . . the lime being brought now to its full ignition and the screen suddenly removed, ~1 glare shone forth, overpowering, and as it were annihilating both its predecessors .. .. A shout oftriull1ph and of admiration burst frolll all present.' The emotion displayed may have owed a little to patriotisl11, since, after all, the best lights available till then were both French. With mel1lories of the end of the Napoleonic \ovars still relatively fresh, it is perhaps not surprising that a nation so dependent on overseas trade and control of her sea routes should havejul11 ped at the possi bility of replacing the French Argand lights in British lighthouses with a hOl11e product. Be that as it may, the next demonstration was for the Masters of Trinity House, the authority responsible for lighthouses. The results of this, held on 5 March 1830, were encouraging, and the apparatus was moved to a temporary lighthouse at Purfleet in the Tha l11es estuary fortrials. On 10 Ma y the observers installed themselves on Trinity Wharf, Blackwall - ten miles away from Purfleet, but in direct line of sight of it. For this test, Drul1lmond had changed his ignition mixture to hydrogen and oxygen, which gave off an even brighter flal1le. On the evening of 25 May the light went on, and cast shadows of the observers! The event 'elicited a shout of admiration from the whole party .. . The light was not only 11l0re vivid and conspicuous, but was peculiarly remarkable frol11 its exquisite whiteness. Indeed there seel11s no great presul11ption in cOl11paring its
272
Casl(glzt il1 ~ISC at a pantolllimc rehearsal, J 881. The portable gaj' bUl'I1er ShOlIJ11 here IUMlld he remolledfor the pe~ronnan{e, Iuhen indillidual gasfootll~,?hts Illouid III' used. Until the del'clopment of the gas mantic ill J 893 the light produced by gas was' relalillely poor, and the use o( such extra b~lYners greatly increased the risk a/fire ill theatres.
splendour to the sun .. .' In an air of great anticipation further tests were conducted on established lighthouses, includmg that on South Foreland. But the gas pipes leaked, supplies were inadequate and bags of gas burst. The keepers wrote logs of the trials: 'Thursday t11ght, 27th. Limelight discontinued, in not getting suffiCIent gas. 2nd Septem beL Brickla yer fixing two more retorts. A great esca pe from the gasholder.' And so it went on. In the end Drummond's light We)) turned down on the grounds of expense. He had to look elsewl1ere. It was trouble with the new coal gas which gave him the opportunity he was waiting for. Since its introduction a few years before, gas had become very popular as an ilJuminant in theatres. Covent Garden had taken the lead in 1815. But the gas doubled the number of theatre fires in the decade that followed. The sheer complexity and unwieldiness of the supply systems made fires almost inevitable. In the Paris Opera, for example, there vvere no Ic" than 28 miles oftubmg attached to a control panel, referred to as 'the organ', on which were 88 taps used to direct gas flow to 960 gas-jets, switched on and off according to detailed lighting plots from the show's producer. WIth so many JOints and connections, leaks were plentifuL As the magazine The Bllilder remarked, in 1856: 'The fate of a theatre is to be burned. It 'l'Cl11S simply a question of tllne.' The attraction of the brilliance of
273
limelight was too much for the theatre proprietors. By 18 37 Clarksol1 Stanflcld was Llsing It to give extra effects on the DIOrama of Continental Views 111 his pantot1llll1e. The new light won extravagam praise when it was used to spectacu tar effect in the 1 R51 Drury Lane production of Azari. Henry IrVing was the only famous artist to be Criticized for hi, llse of the ligh t. The reviews of his I SR9 prod uctio n of l'vlac/Jr:111 sneered at 'a strong shaft of limelight obviously proceedin g frolll nowhere'. Nonetheless, It mclight beca me used extensi vel y for creating realistiC beams of moonlight or sunli~ht, as well as for isoLltlt1g actors lt1 a lime spotllght- for which effect it has passed Into our Jallguage as a synonYl1l for fame. Meanwhde others were trying to solve Drummond's ongll1;d problem of gas supply to the llmelight so that com would fall enough for it to be ofpractlcaluse 10 lighthouses. The British authOrities were ,till keen to Improve the lights round the coastllt1e, since as shipping increased so did losses. By mid-century these were averaging over 800 a year. In 1849 Flam Nollet, a Belgldn Professor of l)hysic\ at the Ecole Militaire in Brussels, hit on the idea of gener.ltlllg hydrogen Jnd oxygen by electrolysis. It was known that if a Cll[n:nt of clectnClty were passed from a pOSItive to a negative electrode Jl1 water, i( would cause the molecules of the water (u break apart mto theIr constituents, hydrogen and oxygen, and these would be glvell offin the forJ1l of gas bubbles wllJch could be collected. All that WJS
274
A Nollrl-l ypr ,f!f/'lrralnr in lise in Montmartre dllrill,r; 11ll' sicQc 0/ Paris (1870) 10 POlI'fr arl arc searcilliJZhl, which i.\ I'cln.~ dirfCted 011 a IOr,eel o"s('rtJcd I»,
Ihe saldia lookinJZ 01/1 orlhe IIlilldoll' Ihrou.gh hinocular.(. There arc IIVO tIIore arc lamps 011 Ihe rahle, 0/1 cilher Side oj'all oil lamp. In (I/{: llack,tehicola, 23H-40
Banking. liS, .219: 97. Barbara, St, 158
A po li o I I spacecraft. 249
Barometer, 75; 74
Appert, Nicholas, 234- 5, 2X9
BASF, 206,207; 2'.
Calfa, source of Black Death, 9~
A ppleton, Edward, 41
Bastions, 255 - 7; 256
Cailletet, Louis Paul, .244
Appleton layer, 4'
Battery, 77; 78
Calamine, 166-7, 169
207-H
.20S
218
Sultons. I()I Buxtehude altarpiece,
161)
299
Communications systems, 81. N2, 84-5 Compass. 259. 260; 28, 78; economic effects of. lX: erring needle. 29; evolution of, 2N Computl!r: binary code. IIJ, 110; cvoluti011
Calculators. I 13 Calendar. 12
Calley. John. 172 Campi, Bartolomeo. 100
Cams. H7. HI>, 9\ Canals. 10. I I Canning indusrry. 137-R; 2J7 Cannon. evolution and development of. 69.
of, 115; predictive function. 115-17 Constantine the African. 124, 115 Constandnople. siege of. 2()~ 253 Constellauom. 19,
I
19. 110; 22
Copper: depOSIts. in Sinai. 11. in Great Britain, 166; mining, 166: smelting. 169
Carillon, 9\. 106, 10H: 95 Caro. Heinrich. 206. 210 Carrack. 189 Cane, Ferdinand, 141 Carre-. Jean. 16J Cartridge, paper, 21~ Cassin;. Jean. 26H Cathode ray tube, 2SS Cecil, William (Lord Burghicy), 166, 26J Celluloid rllm, 2SJ Census taking, Ill-IJ: 81. 113 Ct'rIgnola, battle of, 215; 225 Chaldean Tabks. 19 Champagne Fairs, 95-7 Charlemagne. Emperor (Charles the Great). 127 Charles, Duke or Burgundy (the Bold), 219. 211-J: 22' Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince CharlIe). 2('7 Chateau Mervcilkux. Heilbrun, 106 Chimney, evolution of, 157, t59; '58 Chinese inventions. 6M Chrysostom, Dio, 18 Church, function and power of, 84 Cinchona. 204 Cistercian Order, ~9, 91, 92; 90, 9' Clerke, Clement, 169 Clocks: alarm. 129. '32; mechanical, 12R. IJO. IJ2; 131; pendulum. IJ6-7; 136; portable. 133: spring-driven, 133-7, 140; '3',1)4: striking, IJl, IJ3; water, 12M,
Cordoba. library. 12l Coronel. 11 I Corryarrick Pass, .200
Cloth production, 9J, 94 Clorhing, trends in, 156. 161; see also Fashion Coal gas, 179. I Ho, 209. 27 J; 196 Coal mining. 195-0 Coal tar. 104. 105. 207 Coal brookdale iron works. 170, 172; 170 Cloud chamber experimenrs, 40-1, 43; 40. Coates, Captain James, 236 Cochrane, Archibald. Earl or Dundonald, 196 Coffee houses. 193, 194 ; '94 Coinage, 17,70: , 7 Coke malUng. 196 Colby. Colonel Thomas, 269 Colonies: development of, 192; American, suppliers of tar and pitch. 195 Columbus. Chrisropher, 29: 30 Commenda, 96
Commerce. growrh of in medit'val Europe,
06.9\-7
300
Crecy. battle or, 60 Credit card, 110- t 7. 216-17 not~. 11 R Croesus of Lydia. 17 Crompton. Rookes, 277 Crossbow. 60 Cros!.-staff• .259; 259 Crucible steel, 145 Culloden, battle or, 267 Culross Abbey. 196 Cylinder-boring machine. , 75 Cyrus. King of Persia. 19
Credit
28)
34; in animals, 77: from storm clouds. 44: generation of, ;6; il1vestiga[iol1 of, 76; alld magnt·tism, 77-X I; 78: production of. static, 17N; 4.5; therapeutic, 76; 77
Electrolysis, 274 Electromagnet, 7S. 79.150, IN 1 Electron beam, 285 Electronic enumeration, 113 Ekctronic fund transfer. 117
Family crests, 55
Daimler, Gottlieb, JXI-3 Darby, Abraham, 140.169-70 Data banks, 117 Deaf and dumb. teaching to talk. 78-9 Decimal system, 119 Desaix. General Louis, 2J2~ 3; 2)2. 2JJ Destructive dislillation, 196 Dewar, Sir James, 244; 244 Dewar Aask, 244, 247 Dido( Sr Leger, 2J\ Die[, 156. 66 ~ see also Food Digges, Leonard. 161. 16), 266; 26,: A Geometrj(all Praai"c j "amed PattIOtlH'Jria, 101
12
Drainage pump. 170-1: 72, '70 Drake. Edwin, 179 Drake, Sir Franci'i.. 30 DTummond, Thomas, 269-73; 271, Dutch Ea st India Company. 192
Elatrlc lamp,
Electricity : application ... 77 ; early theones on.
Fairs. mt.·dicval. 95 - 7: 96. 97 Falcon. Monsieur. , I I
Dolland, John, '4 t; '4' Dondi, Giovanni de', 13l
41
Magneto- ek'ctric
Electrophore. 17~: 178 Energy resources. 154. lS9 Eternal Electricity Machine (Volta). 17X Eudiometer. 177-9: 179 Eudoxus of Cnidus. 21 Eugenic. Empress of France. l05: 205 Explosivt'S,lll,27X -00. 273; 199.
100.
273.
277
Gas mantle, 209; 209 Gas supplies, 199 Gases: bchaviour of, 176, 177: t:omposltinn of, 34; experimcnts on. 177; from coal. 196; Ijquid, 244, .246, .247; properties of, ()() Gearing systems. for mills, ~S' ~6 Geometry, early forms, 261; 12 Gerard of Cremona, 123 Gerber[, Pope, [22, 123 Germany : dyt'~ rLltf\ indmtry, :W(l; food \hnrtag\' in, l)O: ~unpowdt'r madt' in, 69: ind1lSiriaiintion, 1.07 Gerson, Levi ben, 251} Gheyn,Jacob dc, 22(); The' EXfHis(' of Arm.,', 2.26 ; 126 Gilbert, William, 30-.2: De Ma~,ul(" 30;)1 Gilbrerh, Frank and Lilian, 151 GlaiSindusITY, 163 Glass pistol, I 7N; 179 Glass-making, 140, 163 - 4. 16~; 164 Glory (anti-Lorona). 39; 4' Goddard. RobeT[. >46 Gold. maylng. I ~ Gold dust, reITieving and smelting, 15 Golden Flel.'ce. 15; 16; Ordt'r of rhe, 221 Gonsalvo de Cordoba, .2.25; 215 Goodwin, Hannibal, 21013 Gorrie, John, 23101 - 41.291; 240 Gower, John, 94; Spl'l../f/lml Mcdfta1l1is, 1}4 Graham,James,7 6 Grain mills, X2, 1