1,000 Inventions and Discoveries

1401 – 1750 University. There was so much to read. univeRsal law The official teaching was old-fashioned, but Newton taught himself the new science The mass of the Moon is unimaginably greater than that of an apple. Yet both obey the same law of gravity. of Galileo, Descartes, and others. “Plato is Reflecting telescope my friend, Aristotle is my friend,” he wrote Newton believed that lenses in his notebook, “but my best friend is truth.” would never make a good telescope, so he designed one No sooner had he received his degree, in that used a mirror instead. 1665, than the Plague came, which forced everyone to leave Cambridge. It is still a popular design. Newton returned to Woolsthorpe. The orchard was still there, and Newton still went to sit there, his mind now full of scientific questions. One of them was “What keeps the planets in their orbits?” A famous story tells us that as Newton pondered this among the old trees, with heavenly bodies like the Moon uppermost in his thoughts, an apple fell. It took a genius like Newton to see the connection. The Moon kept circling Earth Replica of because, like the apple, it was falling. Gravity made the Moon curve Newton’s toward Earth instead of continuing in a straight line. And what worked for reflecting the Moon could work for the planets circling the Sun. telescope Newton was able to show that the force of gravity got weaker in proportion to the square of distance. In other words, a planet twice as far from the Sun as another will experience only one quarter of the force; if it is three times as far away, the force will be one ninth, and so on. Other people had suggested this, but Newton went further. Using powerful new math he’d invented, together with his laws of motion, he proved that gravity could account for the orbits of all the planets. It was the glue that held the universe together. In 1687, Newton published his book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, usually known as the Principia, a shortened form of its Latin title. In it he explained his three basic laws, which govern solaR system the way objects move, and his theory of gravity and the universe. But This clockwork model of the solar system was built in about his personal universe was not so well ordered. Just before publication, 1712. Newton thought of the another scientist, Robert Hooke, accused him of copying his ideas. Newton never forgave him. Just as he hated the man who stole his solar system as a giant mother, he now despised the rival who was trying to steal his glory. machine. He was never sure that God would not have to intervene to keep it running. 99

New worlds, New ideas Newton showed that light is Steam engine actually made up of many Two separate colors by using a second prism c 1710 plant groups to recombine light back into white. Although he made this Thomas Newcomen, 1703 discovery in 1670, he waited John Calley until 1704 to publish his John Ray findings in his book Opticks. English engineer Thomas Newcomen Plants come in two kinds: Piano designed his steam the ones that look like engine in about 1710 grasses or palms, and the 1709 and built the first one rest. Scientists call them in 1712. It was based monocotyledons and Bartolomeo Cristofori on an earlier pump dicotyledons – monocots and invented by Thomas dicots for short. The baby Today, most keyboard Savery, which used the seedlings in the first group instruments play louder vacuum created by have only one leaf, while the when the keys are struck condensing steam to suck others have two. These harder. The best keyboard of water out of mines. important plant groups were 300 years ago, the harpsichord, Working at first with first recognized by English did not do this because it another inventor, John naturalist John Ray, in 1703, plucked its strings with a Calley, Newcomen after a lifetime of study. mechanism that was unaffected made the vacuum by the force applied. Italian move a piston, which Composition of harpsichord builder Bartolomeo then drove a separate white light Cristofori invented touch- pump to remove the sensitivity in 1709 with his water. Although 1704 gravicembalo col piano e forte incredibly inefficient, (harpsichord with soft and the Newcomen engine Isaac Newton loud), which eventually became remained the best the piano. Cristofori’s keyboard available for 50 years. Long before Newton’s time, it instrument hit its strings with was generally known that small hammers, giving more Laws of white light passing through a control over the sound. chance prism is broken into colors. However, most people believed Steam engine The piston of a 1713 that it was due to some change Newcomen engine was connected to the prism made on light – like the rods of a water pump by a Jakob Bernoulli, clay being pressed through a rocking beam. Abraham de Moivre mold. To disprove this notion, Guessing and gambling might not mercury thermometer suggest the precision of This early English thermometer has mathematics, but top its tube attached to a scale marked mathematicians like on a separate piece of wood. Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal were studying the laws of chance as early as the 17th century. The first important book on the subject came from Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli, and was published in 1713. Then, in 1718, came another by French mathematician Abraham de Moivre, which revealed most of today’s basic probability theory. 1703 Peter the Great, the Europe”. Thousands of Russian 1707 England and Scotland agrees to be governed tsar of Russia, serfs die in the building of the Scotland become the by parliament in England, but founds the city of St. Petersburg, city which, in 1712, will become Kingdom of Great Britain with keeps it own legal system and which he calls his “window on Russia’s capital for two centuries. the passing of the Act of Union. Presbyterian Church. 100

1401 – 1750 Aberration of light 1728 James Bradley There was no direct evidence that Earth is speeding through space until English astronomer James Bradley discovered the aberration of light in 1728. Imagine a car standing in the rain. Streaks of rain run vertically down the windows. When the car moves, the streaks slope backwards. This is what Bradley saw, only the car was Earth, the rain was light from a star, and the slope was an extra tilt of his telescope. Achromatic lens 1729 Mercury Diving bell Stereotype This is a clay Chester Hall thermometer stereotype mold. The metal 1717 stereotype made from it is reversed. Isaac Newton said that lenses 1714 would always produce images Edmond Halley Stereotype with color fringes. In 1729, Daniel Fahrenheit English judge Chester Hall Adiving bell is a chamber in 1727 proved him wrong. By combining German physicist Daniel which people can stay a convex lens of ordinary glass Fahrenheit invented two under water without diving William Ged with a concave lens of heavy things at once: a more useful equipment. In 1687, William flint glass, he cancelled out the thermometer and a temperature Phips, the future governor of Once a book was printed, fringes, creating a color-free, or scale which was later named the state of Massachusetts, USA, early printers broke up the achromatic, lens. English after him. Early thermometers made one to recover sunken type and reused it. If a reprint optician John Dollond later did either relied on the expansion treasure in the West Indies, but was needed they had to set up the same. The lenses led to the of air or allowed alcohol to his divers wouldn’t use it. The the pages again. Scottish first really good microscopes expand from a small bulb into first long periods spent under goldsmith William Ged saved and telescopes. a fine tube. Fahrenheit’s water were in a bell invented labor in 1727 by inventing the thermometer, which he by English astronomer Edmond stereotype, a copy of a page of Cobalt produced in 1714, used the Halley. In 1717, he described type made by pouring metal second of these methods, but how people had survived at a into a plaster mold. French 1730 with mercury instead of depth of 55 ft (17 m) for an printer Gabriel Valleyre had a alcohol. This allowed him to hour and a half. He supplied similar idea, but used clay. With Georg Brandt measure higher temperatures. air to the bell by sending it stereotypes, printers did not down in weighted barrels. have to lock up tons of type. In the early 18th century, chemistry was shaking off the last of alchemy. Georg Brandt, a metallurgist from Sweden, used the more scientific approach. He was rewarded in 1730 with the discovery of cobalt. He later exposed alchemists claiming to make gold as frauds. Cobalt is now essential to advanced magnets and radiotherapy. 1726 Anglo-Irish writer as Gulliver’s Travels. His satire 1729At Oxford Church. Preaching personal Jonathan Swift about countries called Lilliput, University, England, salvation through faith, Wesley’s writes Travels into Several Remote John Wesley, with his brother new, less formal Church appeals Nations of the World, later known Brobdingnag, Houyhnhnms, and Charles, founds the Methodist strongly to working people. Laputa will become a classic. 101

New worlds, New ideas Sextant Using a system of mirrors, Measurement of the sextant can measure latitude to blood pressure Sextant an accuracy of 0.01 of a degree. When used with a chronometer, 1733 c 1730 for calculating longitude, it enabled sailors to work out Stephen Hales John Hadley, their exact position at sea. Thomas Godfrey Stephen Hales was an Navigator sees English clergyman and Sailors can navigate by the horizon also an expert scientist. measuring the height of and the Sun He specialized in taking the Sun. Simple ways of through the measurements of living things doing this are inaccurate, and telescope and was the first person to looking straight at the Sun measure blood pressure. His can damage the eyes. In By reading the angle technique, revealed in 1733, about 1730, from the index arm, was brutally straightforward: he John Hadley the Sun’s altitude, and simply stuck a tube into a in Britain hence its latitude, can horse’s artery and measured the and Thomas be calculated height to which the blood rose. Godfrey in North America Rubber both found a better method: 1736 looking at a reflection of the Charles-Marie Sun in a movable de la Condamine mirror. The instruments that Rubber got its name in they invented 1770 when British chemist were called Joseph Priestley found octants, it would rub out pencil. Rubber Mirrors reflect trees, with their the Sun sticky sap, had been discovered Index arm is earlier by the French moved until the scientist Charles-Marie de la mirrors appear to Condamine, while he was on line up the Sun an expedition in South with the horizon America. Rubber wasn’t really new to Europeans – even because the Flying Shuttle Shown here are Christopher Columbus knew mirror swung over two 18th-century Kay shuttles. about it – but it was one-eighth of a circle. A later version, the sextant, gave even Rollers underneath greater accuracy. reduce friction Flying shuttle 1733 John Kay economical to have two weavers. In weaving, thread on a reel in Kay added rollers to the a holder called a shuttle is shuttle so that it ran on a track. shot back and forth. John Kay, It was operated by one weaver, the son of an English woollen halving the labor needed manufacturer, invented the for broad cloth. It was flying shuttle in 1733. Before a key to the Industrial then, for wide cloth, a solitary Revolution in Britain (✷ see weaver had to walk from one page 111), but brought Kay side of the loom to the other to neither fame nor fortune. pick up the shuttle and throw it back, so it was more 1731 The first magazine “storehouse”, and The Gentleman’s 1732 American writer and country dweller who becomes to be called a Magazine is a sort of storehouse printer Benjamin magazine is published in Britain. of articles collected every month Franklin begins publishing Poor known for his practical proverbs At this time, magazine means Richard’s Almanac, about a simple from other publications. and witty aphorisms. Franklin 102 continues the Almanac until 1758.

1401 – 1750 Condamine’s samples, sent burning stoves of today. Made Celsius went decimal with a the process in about 1745. He back to France in 1736, that of cast-iron, it had a hinged scale that ran from 0 to 100, started with iron molds, but put this unique natural product door to enclose the fire and but made freezing point 100 soon discovered that plaster on the scientific map. metal baffles to heat the air and and boiling point 0. Eventually, molds worked better because circulate it into the room. his scale was turned upside- they sucked out water from the Bernoulli effect down to produce the Celsius slip and speeded up drying. High-quality scale used today. 1738 steel Leyden jar Silver-plated Daniel Bernoulli c 1740 tableware 1745 Swiss scientist Daniel Benjamin Huntsman 1743 Ewald von Kleist, Bernoulli figured out that Pieter van Musschenbroek if a stream of fluid (a gas or Mass-produced steel is Thomas Boulsover liquid) speeds up, its pressure good enough for most In the 18th century, electricity drops. This “Bernoulli effect” things, but sometimes a more There has always been a was often regarded as a fluid can be seen in a popular personal touch is needed. demand for anything that – something that has no science exhibit – a ball English clockmaker Benjamin looks like solid silver but costs definite shape, but takes on the suspended on a stream of air Huntsman, finding that less. In 1743, English cutlery shape of its container. This may from a blower. The air coming ordinary steel made poor watch maker Thomas Boulsover have been the thinking behind out of the blower is moving springs, began to make his own discovered that he could make German physicist Ewald von faster than the air that went in, steel in Sheffield in about 1740. copper look and behave like Kleist’s invention of the Leyden so its pressure is lower than the He was the first to make steel silver. Working in Sheffield, jar in 1745. The surrounding air. If the ball hot enough to melt, allowing it Boulsover heated copper jar’s inside and moves from the air stream, the to form a perfectly even alloy. between thin sheets of silver, outside were higher pressure pushes it back. Huntsman’s work helped make then rolled the hot sandwich to covered with metal Sheffield famous for fine steel. produce Sheffield plate. It foil. With the Franklin stove quickly pushed solid silver off outside grounded, Celsius scale of all but the wealthiest tables. a charge 1740 temperature given to the Slip casting inside would Benjamin Franklin 1742 be stored c 1745 Benjamin Franklin was a Anders Celsius Leyden jar writer, scientist, and Ralph Daniel This jar is diplomat, who played a leading Inventors of temperature charged by part in creating the US. He still scales hate doing the obvious. Some earthenware items are bringing a found time to create a simple Daniel Fahrenheit set the made by slip casting. A source of invention that would warm freezing and boiling points of suspension of clay in water, electricity thousands of homes in the water at a seemingly strange called slip, is poured into a into contact republic: the Franklin stove. It 32 and 212 degrees. In 1742, mold. When dry, the shape is with the was marketed as the Swedish astronomer Anders removed and fired. English central rod. “Pennsylvania Fireplace” and potter Ralph Daniel invented was the ancestor of the wood- With two pins, but with both connected, a this shuttle weaves spark was produced. The two-ply thread following year, physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek Pointed end of the University of Leiden helps the shuttle in the Netherlands invented to pass through the jar independently. He named it and told other people the threads about it. A charged jar could give a mighty shock. One demonstration involved 1,000 hand-holding monks. When the jar was connected to the first and last monk, all of them jumped. 1742 On April 13, in work Messiah is performed for 1745 Charles Edward Scotland, on July 25. He will lead Dublin, Ireland, the first time. An instant success, Stuart, known as an unsuccessful attempt to put German composer George Frideric Bonnie Prince Charlie, lands on him on the British throne in Handel’s choral and orchestral it will be a hugely popular work the isle of Eriskay, off western place of the German George II. for centuries to come. 103

crehvoaluntiognaersy Political revolution in France and independence for the US had enormous effects on the world between 1750 and 1850. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution moved Western workers from farms to factories, and sciences such as chemistry shook off their last links with the ancient past. 104

1751 – 1850 Electrical nature ElEctrical naturE of helped chemists to gain a new by sailors for centuries. The of lightning lightning Thunderclouds understanding of air and also weather had destroyed two threaten as Franklin flies his kite. of combustion. lighthouses there before British 1752 engineer John Smeaton Plants) in 1753, botanists Prevention of discovered how to defy nature. Benjamin Franklin described plants using very scurvy He cemented together long-winded names. Linné, interlocking blocks of stone US scientist Benjamin known as Linnaeus, classified 1757 with concrete that would set Franklin could have killed plants into closely related under water. His lighthouse himself when he flew a kite in groups, or genuses, then gave James Lind lasted more than 100 years. a thunderstorm. He did it to Even then it was the rock that prove that lightning is caused each one the genus name Scurvy is caused by lack of crumbled, not the lighthouse. by electricity. Electric charge plus its own species name. vitamin C. The gums swell, from the thunderclouds passed For example, Taraxacum joints get stiff, and there may Improved blast down the string and Franklin officinale is the dandelion. be bleeding beneath the skin. furnace collected it in a Leyden jar Linnaeus’ system is still In 1757, British naval surgeon (✷ see page 103). Amazingly, in use today. James Lind published a book 1760 he lived to show that the recommending that sailors charge behaved just like Carbon should receive rations of citrus John Smeaton electricity from other sources. dioxide fruits, which contain vitamin C. At that time more British sailors When Abraham Darby Scientific names 1756 died from scurvy than in battle. started using coke to for plants The navy thought about Lind’s smelt iron (✷ see page 89), Joseph Black idea for 40 years, then tried it. he needed a better blast 1753 Scurvy disappeared like magic. furnace. British engineer John Carbon dioxide was Smeaton, one of the first to recognized by the Indestructible apply science to engineering, alchemist Jan Baptist van lighthouse made the furnace larger and Helmont in 1648, but the blew air through it with a fan first person to investigate it 1759 powered by an efficient new systematically and relate it waterwheel. Water rushed over to other chemical substances John Smeaton the top of the new “overshot” was the British chemist Joseph wheel instead of underneath it. Black. In 1756, he announced Lashed by storms off the his discovery that carbonates coast of England, the PrEvEntion of scurvy James release what he called “fixed Eddystone rock has been feared Lind tells sick sailors that limes air” (carbon dioxide) when are the answer to their problems. heated. Black’s work eventually Carolus Linnaeus Until Swedish botanist Carl von Linné published his Species Plantarum (Kinds of 1752 In August, the bell where it was made. It will be 1759 French writer novel Candide. Its central that will be known rung on July 8, 1776 to celebrate Voltaire, a critic of character, Candide, fights against as the Liberty Bell arrives in the first public reading of the those who try to restrict others’ the stupidity of the world but is Philadelphia,from England, Declaration of Independence. freedom of thought, writes his forced in the end to give up. 105

RevolutionaRy changes Faller wire Pulleys Spinning jenny guided the thread rotated the spindles 1764 Clove James Hargreaves helped to twist the Until the middle of the 18th century, people spun fibers thread with a spinning wheel, together which could spin only one Creels held the fibers to thread at a time. James be spun Hargreaves’ spinning jenny Driving wheel was (said to be named after his turned to make the daughter) could spin several threads at spindles rotate once. Traditional spinners were Latent latitude (position Spinning alarmed about heat north or south), but jenny This the machine, measuring longitude because it could 1761 replica of put them out of Hargreaves’ work, but it Joseph Black (position east or machine shows that it helped to start west) was was basically the older the Industrial When water is heated, it difficult. One spinning wheel rearranged Revolution in Britain keeps getting hotter until way was for to drive several spindles. and brought greater it turns into steam. Some of the them to heat doesn’t actually raise the prosperity in the end. temperature, but is used to change the “state” of water into Finding longitude at steam. Likewise, when water Sea The fourth version of changes into ice, heat is also Harrison’s chronometer released. This hidden heat was looks very much like a discovered by British chemist modern watch, only bigger. Joseph Black. Three years later It is shown here at about he explained the effect to James two-thirds its actual size. Watt, who had noticed it while working on a steam engine. compare the time Finding at home, longitude at sea shown by a clock, with the time where they 1761 were at sea, shown by the Sun. But no clock existed that John Harrison would work at sea and keep accurate enough Early sailors navigated by the time. The government Sun and the stars. This was offered £20,000 to all right for determining their anyone who solved the longitude problem. Between 1735 and 1761, British clockmaker John Harrison built four chronometers. The fourth model was tested on a trip to Jamaica and proved accurate to within five seconds. Although Harrison had solved the problem, the government was reluctant to give him his full reward, and he was an old man before it finally paid up. 1762 Ideas about Rousseau. His argument that true 1763 The Treaty of Paris Britain all of its North American education change education can be built only on ends the Seven Years’ lands east of the Mississippi with the publication of Émile by children’s natural impulses will War, also known as the French River, and Canada. Spain gives the French thinker Jean-Jacques greatly influence later educators. and Indian War. France gives up Florida to Britain for Cuba. 106

Dividing engine reduce the waste, allowing Nicolas Cugnot, a French 1751 – 1850 steam engines to compete with army engineer, to build a three- 1766 waterwheels in powering the wheeled steam tractor. The Water frame new factories. He also invented following year, he built a Jesse Ramsden better ways of controlling steam bigger one to pull heavy guns. 1769 engines and connecting them Its single front wheel, which Accurate measurements to other machines. (✷ See also was used for steering, was Richard Arkwright require accurately made The story of steam.) driven by a two-cylinder measuring tools. Before British high-pressure steam engine. Before fibres can be woven instrument maker Jesse Steam tractor Although the later machine into cloth they have to be Ramsden perfected his dividing successfully pulled a three-ton spun into threads. To keep up engine in 1766, angles on 1769 cannon at walking speed, with the demands of new theodolites and other Cugnot never got the money weaving machinery, such as the instruments were made by Nicolas Cugnot he needed to solve its flying shuttle (✷ see page 102), hand by craftsmen and could problems, such as how it spinning had to speed up. In be somewhat hit-or-miss. The Early steam engines were could carry enough water to 1769, Richard Arkwright dividing engine produced huge, heavy, and keep the engine going, and invented a high-speed spinning scales for scientific instruments underpowered, but by 1769 how to stop the high-pressure machine that made really mechanically. It was faster and they were good enough for steam from leaking out. strong thread. He called it a more accurate than craftsmen, water frame because it was and meant that maps, as well driven by water power. as astronomical and navigational measurements, THE STORY OF STEAM were more reliable. Thomas savery’s sTeam engine, which he patented in 1698, simply Hydrogen sucked up water with the vacuum created when steam condenses. Thomas Newcomen’s engine, built in 1712, had a piston and could operate a 1766 mechanical pump, but wasted fuel because its cylinder had to be Henry Cavendish warmed up from cold after every stroke. James Watt added a British scientist Henry separate cooling chamber, Cavendish was the first allowing the main cylinder to stay person to show that hydrogen hot all the time. was a distinct gas, not just a sort of air. He released Savery’S engine hydrogen from sulfuric acid by Steam entered a chamber, forcing water out dissolving metal in it, then through a valve. The steam was then measured its density. He found cooled, creating a vacuum that sucked that it was lighter than any water in through another valve, ready to be other gas. Later, he confirmed forced out during the next cycle. that hydrogen forms water neWcomen’S engine when it burns. This led French Steam entered a cylinder, causing a piston chemist Lavoisier to call it to move upwards. The steam was then hydrogen, from the Greek for cooled, creating a vacuum that allowed the “water maker”. atmosphere to push the piston down. This operated a pump through a rocking beam. Improved Watt’S engineS steam engine Having added a separate cooling chamber, Watt further improved Newcomen’s engine 1769 by letting steam push the piston down as well as up, and adding gears that allowed James Watt the engine to drive rotating machinery. The first steam engines were Drawing of a Newcomen engine of about 1826 built to pump water out of coal mines. It was lucky there was plenty of coal, because the engines wasted a lot of fuel. James Watt discovered how to 1765 England enacts the two acts are widely resented 1769 San Francisco Bay, foot. Led by Spanish explorer Stamp Act and the by colonists and spark the one of the world’s Gaspar de Portolá, they were sent Quartering Act to raise revenues independence movement in best natural harbors, is to look for Monterey Bay but in the English colonies. These the American colonies. discovered by people arriving on missed it and went too far north. 107

RevolutionaRy changes Oxygen phlogiston out. Lavoisier’s new by fellow astronomer Johann name for it, oxygen, means Bode in 1772. At that time, Factory 1772 “acid maker”, which it isn’t. there were gaps where the formula predicted there should c 1770 Bode’s Law be planets. When later astronomers found that the Richard Arkwright Carl Scheele, 1772 asteroids and Uranus filled the Joseph Priestley gaps, it seemed to prove Bode’s Richard Arkwright realized Johann Titius, Johann Bode law. Then Neptune and Pluto that his water-powered Oxygen has a complicated were discovered, and these spinning machine (✷ see page history. Swedish chemist There’s something odd about planets don’t obey the law, so 107) meant that spinners Carl Scheele discovered it in the planets from Mercury the relationship is probably just would have to gather where 1772, but waited five years to Uranus. There seems to be a an amazing coincidence. there was a waterwheel. In before publishing the fact. relation between their distances about 1770, in partnership Meanwhile, British chemist Carbonated with two local stocking makers, Joseph Priestley discovered a from the Sun. drinks Samuel Need and Jedediah gas in which things burned This was Strutt, he opened a water- fast. Believing that burning first noticed 1772 powered mill at Cromford in things gave out “phlogiston” by German Derbyshire, England. This was (✷ see page 97), he called it astronomer Joseph Priestley the first real factory, and marked “dephlogisticated air”. But the Johann Titius, the start of the industrial age. French chemist Antoine The first carbonated drinks Lavoisier proved that the gas and his flowed out of the ground – combined with burning formula was natural carbonated water from substances rather than sucking published Factory Collycroft Water flows woolen mill was built under the in Bedworth, England, in about 1790. It was mill, turning a typical water- the wheel powered factory. This model of it is cut away to show the inside. 1770 London’s Bethlem shuts its doors to admission- 1772 John Fielding, chief Pursuit, an information sheet Royal Hospital, an paying spectators. The behavior magistrate of the detailing current stolen property asylum for mentally ill people of its inmates is no longer that is better known as Bedlam, regarded as entertainment. Bow Street Police Court, London, and wanted persons. It will starts issuing the Quarterly become the daily Police Gazette. 108

health-giving springs. The first John Wilkinson improved Iron bridge 1751 – 1850 to imitate them was Joseph matters greatly with the astronomers generously insisted Priestley. In 1772, he started precision boring machine he 1779 it should be called Herschel. In producing “soda water” in built in 1775 at his father’s the end it was decided to stick quantity. He had found out factory in Wales. It could bore Abraham Darby, to naming planets after gods, how to make it several years deep, wide holes in large pieces Thomas Pritchard and it became Uranus. earlier, and in the process had of iron to form much more made important discoveries accurate cylinders than before. Ametal bridge seemed Paper about the gas carbon dioxide. James Watt used the machine revolutionary at a time balloon when building his later engines when stone, bricks, and wood Precision (✷ see page 107). were the only materials used Hot-air balloon The first boring machine for large structures. Abraham demonstration of a Montgolfier Division of Darby built the world’s first balloon took place in June 1783. 1775 labor iron bridge in 1779 to the design of Thomas Pritchard. Hot-air John Wilkinson 1776 Its 100 ft (30.5 m) arch balloon spans the Severn River at Early steam engine builders Adam Smith Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, 1783 were hampered by the in England. Having survived difficulty of To make a sandwich, bread disastrous floods in 1795, Joseph Montgolfier, making the huge has to be filled and Darby’s bridge is still used Étienne Montgolfier cylinders the condiments added. If two today. engines required. people have to make a pile of The first hot-air balloons British ironmaster sandwiches, is it quicker if Mule spinning were made by two French both people make complete machine papermakers, Joseph and 1776 On Thursday July 4, sandwiches, or if one fills and Étienne Montgolfier. In the Declaration of the other adds condiments? 1779 September 1783, they sent three Independence is approved in the The second way is quicker animals on a successful 2 mile US. It notes why 13 British because doing just one job is Samuel Crompton (3 km) trip in a balloon. Then, simpler. This principle, called in November, they organized division of labor, was identified Samuel Crompton’s “mule” the first human escape from in 1776 by Scottish economist could draw, twist, and wind Earth’s surface. Two volunteers Adam Smith. He saw its extra fibres into a fine thread. remained aloft for 25 minutes, productivity as the true source Unlike a hand spinner, climbing to 1,500 ft (450 m) of prosperity. though, it could work on a above Paris and traveling thousand reels at the same 5.3 miles (8.5 km). Strangely, Photosynthesis time. Like the animal of the the brothers never risked a same name, the mule was a flight themselves. 1779 hybrid, using ideas from Towards the South Pole and Round Hargreaves’ spinning jenny and the World. Cook spent a year Jan Ingenhousz Arkwright’s water frame charting its islands and getting (✷ see pages 106 and 107). to know its Maori people. In sunlight, green plants It soon replaced both of them. take in more carbon dioxide than they give Uranus off, and give off more oxygen than they take in. 1781 In darkness, the reverse is true. Dutch doctor Jan William Herschel Ingenhousz published this discovery in 1779 The planet Uranus is just under the delightful title visible to the naked eye, Experiments Upon but British astronomer William Vegetables, Discovering Herschel discovered it with a Their Great Power of telescope. On March 13, 1781, Purifying the Common Air he spotted what he thought in Sunshine, and of Injuring might be a comet, but the way It in the Shade and at it moved convinced him it was Night. This was the first a planet. He wanted to name it description of the basics after the king, while French of photosynthesis. 1777 Europeans learn of colonies “ought to be Free the existence of New and Independent States.” Zealand when British explorer Independence Day will later be James Cook publishes A Voyage celebrated as a national holiday. 109

RevolutionaRy changes melting point of any metal as well as far away. Reading Pick-proof lock that can be made into wire, is glasses make nearby objects Hydrogen extremely dense – making it clearer, but make distant ones 1784 balloon good for fishing weights – less clear. In his old age, and is an important ingredient Benjamin Franklin solved the Joseph Bramah 1783 of cutting tools. It was first problem with the bifocal lens. isolated by the Spanish This has a section for distant Picking a lock means Jacques Charles D’Elhuyar brothers, Juan and vision mounted above one for opening it without the key. Fausto, in 1783, although it near vision. When wearers of Some locks are harder to pick While the Montgolfiers was already known to the bifocal spectacles look down than others, but one of the were experimenting with Swedish chemist Carl Scheele. to read, they automatically see hardest was invented as long hot air over Paris (✷ see page through the near vision part ago as 1784. British engineer 109), the French scientist Bifocal of the lens; when they look up, Joseph Bramah offered £210 Jacques Charles was working spectacles the distant vision section to anyone who could pick his with the lightest of all gases, comes into play. lock, but it was 67 years before hydrogen, to get a balloon 1784 anyone claimed the reward. airborne. In 1783, he ascended Even then it took US locksmith in a hydrogen balloon to Benjamin Franklin nearly 10,000 ft (3 km). A. C. Hobbs 51 hours Charles is also known for a Older people can – hardly feasible law describing how gases find it hard to for a burglar. expand when heated. see things close up Heddle Parachute raised and lowered the 1783 warp threads Louis Lenormand Frenchman Louis Lenormand invented his parachute as a means of escape from a burning building. After testing it by jumping from trees, he made his first serious trial in December 1783. He leaped from the top of the Montpelier observatory in France with a 14 ft (4.3 m) chute and landed safely on the ground. The first person to jump from the air was another Frenchman, André Garnerin, who took the plunge in 1797 after his hot- air balloon burst over Paris. Tungsten 1783 Juan D’Elhuyar, Gear wheels Finished Power loom By the Fausto D’Elhuyar drove cams to cloth wound mid 19th century, the power loom onto a roller had been developed into a highly Tungsten is the metal that move the effective, reliable machine. British looms glows white-hot inside a different parts like this one by Harrison and Sons light bulb. It has the highest produced cloth for sale worldwide. 1784 Jedidiah Morse, geography textbook, 1786 On May 1, an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus father of the Geography Made Easy. It is a great audience in Vienna, Mozart. Its comic scenes disguise inventor of Morse code, success, and Morse writes several an attack on the foolishness and publishes the US’s first Austria, gives a warm reception corruption of the nobility. more books on US geography. to The Marriage of Figaro, a new 110

Puddling 1751 – 1850 process for wrought iron WEAVING A NEW WORLD 1784 Between aBout 1750 and 1850, in a process known as the Industrial Revolution, Britain transformed itself from a largely agricultural nation into the Henry Cort world’s leading industrial power. The industry that led the way was cloth making. Attracted by higher wages, workers moved from farms into the new Iron with too much carbon factories. These were made possible by water power, steam power, new in it is brittle. Before British machines, and more adventurous ways of raising money. ironmaster Henry Cort invented his “puddling” process in 1784, the only way to produce flexible, or wrought, iron was to hammer freshly smelted iron while it was still hot, squeezing out carbon. Cort melted iron with iron oxide to form a puddle, then stirred it while hot gases burned off the carbon. The purer metal gathered into a large ball that, with just a little hammering, became wrought iron. Power This 1834 drawing of a Lancashire cotton mill cannot convey the deafening noise of the many power looms. loom Speeding up Spinning Looming Larger From country to city 1785 Until about 1770, spinning Weaving, too, was done at Early factories were noisy was a cottage industry. home until looms in factories and dangerous, but offered Edmund Merchants delivered raw wool started to threaten cottage regular work at better wages Cartwright and picked up finished yarn weavers. Although the change than farm laboring. Even made at home. This changed was slower than in spinning, skilled craft workers, unable The designer when powered machines by 1825 half the cloth in to compete with factory of the first forced spinners to work in Britain was coming from prices, were forced into the power loom, a factory, or starve. power looms. fast-growing industrial cities. Edmund Cartwright, was a British country parson. Stability of the applied, does predict in windmills. He was, in his own solar system a stable solar system: Weights words, “totally ignorant of in the long run, any mounted on the subject, having never 1786 wobbles cancel out. a spindle flew at that time seen a person out sideways if weave”. He realized, Pierre-Simon Laplace Centrifugal the engine speeded though, that cheap yarn governor up, closing the steam from powered spinning Although gravity explains valve and slowing machines could the way the planets move, 1787 down the engine. Like transform cloth making. Newton (✷ see pages 98–99) Cornelis Drebbel’s His first loom, built in 1785, was not sure they would go on James Watt thermostat of 1600 was very crude, but by forever. He suggested that God (✷ see page 86), 1787 he had improved it intervened from time to time to The governor was one of it was an early enough to start a weaving keep them on track. A century James Watt’s more example of factory in Doncaster. The later, people did not believe so significant additions to the feedback control. government later awarded him readily in divine intervention. steam engine. It kept the centriFugaL £10,000 in recognition of his In 1786, French mathematician engine’s speed constant as governor Watt pioneering work. (✷ See also Pierre-Simon Laplace proved conditions varied. Watt based his governor on Weaving a new world.) that Newton’s theory, properly adapted it from a device used this windmill regulator. 1787 During the summer, in Philadelphia. It defines the 1787 Eleven ships sail Bay, but later divert to a new site, the Constitution of various parts of the US’s system from England, Port Jackson. Of the 1,030 people the United States of America is of government and the basic carrying the first white settlers to who land there on January 26, written by 55 delegates meeting rights of its citizens. Australia. They arrive at Botany 1788, 736 are convicts. 111

RevolutionaRy changes Threshing machine The Platinum machine represented by this model was built in 1860. It was driven 1789 by a separate steam engine. P. F. Chabaneau Threshing drum beat The valuable, silvery- grey metal platinum the grain was known as long ago out of as 700 bc, but only as the cereal an impurity in gold. Workable platinum was Elevator Grain received its final Chutes took the cleaning and grading here delivered first produced in 1789 grain up the grain by the French physicist for further In Britain, William into sacks P. F. Chabaneau. cleaning Symington built a steam Instead of using it for tugboat that pulled barges in Modern some sensible laboratory Iron-hulled ship 1802. Another US inventor, chemistry apparatus, he had it made Robert Fulton, having seen the into a decorative cup, 1787 tugboat, built the first really 1789 which he gave to the Pope. successful steamship, the John Wilkinson Clermont, in 1807. With its Antoine Lavoisier, Uranium sister ship Phoenix, it plied the John Dalton John Wilkinson had iron in Hudson River for many years. 1789 his soul. When he was 20 Before French chemist years old he built an iron Threshing Antoine Lavoisier cleaned it Martin Klaproth furnace. Later, as well as machine up, chemistry was full of old- making a machine to bore fashioned names and notions. Uranium, essential to holes in iron (✷ see page 109), 1788 As well as overturning nuclear power, was he was involved in building the mistaken theories, he and his discovered in first iron bridge. He used his Andrew Meikle followers renamed the known 1789 boring machine to make iron elements and compounds, and cannons, and in 1787 built an Corn was traditionally established the basic naming iron barge to carry them down beaten, or threshed, with system used today. After this, the Severn River in Britain – sticks to separate the grain Lavoisier’s 1789 Elementary the first ever iron ship. He was from its straw and outer Treatise of Chemistry, together even buried in an iron coffin. covering, known as chaff. The with British schoolmaster John wind was then used to blow Dalton’s 1808 New System of Steamship away the smaller chaff. In 1788, Chemical Philosophy, laid the Scottish millwright Andrew foundations of modern 1787 Meikle invented a machine to chemistry. Lavoisier’s brilliance do the threshing. The wheat did not save him from the John Fitch, was trapped between a rotating French Revolution though: he William Symington, drum and a close-fitting cover, was guillotined in 1794. to strip the chaff from the grain. Robert Fulton There was no wind inside the machine, so the mixture had to The first working steamboat, be separated afterward. built in France, shook to pieces in 15 minutes. In 1787, US clockmaker John Fitch built a more robust craft that made several 20 mile (30 km) trips. 1788 After years of odd bill to remove him from the 1789 The United States appeal. John Jay becomes the first behavior, King throne and replace him with his Supreme Court is Chief Justice. Congress adopts George III of England becomes so son. He will recover the next year established as the highest court the first 10 amendments to the deranged that parliament passes a before the law comes into effect. in the land and the final court of Constitution, the Bill of Rights. 112

by the German chemist Martin century, the leather on the Titanium 1751 – 1850 Klaproth. He named it after the roller was replaced by a strange planet Uranus. Although he but effective mixture of glue 1791 for battlefield injuries. In 1792, believed that he had isolated a and molasses. Larrey organized the “flying new element from the mineral William Gregor, ambulance” – a mobile team of pitchblende, in reality he had Speech Martin Klaproth paramedics supporting only extracted uranium synthesizer Napoleon’s troops in battle. dioxide. The French chemist Titanium dioxide is what They carried medical supplies Eugène Péligot, realizing this in 1791 makes white paint white. with them and could get some 1841, was the first to produce Pure titanium and its alloys are of the wounded back to hospital uranium as pure metal. Wolfgang von Kempelen used inside jet engines because on a lightweight vehicle. Larrey they stand up well to the became chief surgeon of the Printing ink If your computer can talk, enormous heat. This versatile French army, and later devised roller it’s thanks to research that element was first discovered, as ambulances to get the wounded goes back to the 18th century. an ore called menachanite, by into field hospitals. 1790 By the 1770s, the basics were British clergyman William understood well enough for Gregor on a Cornish beach in Gas lighting William Nicholson Hungarian engineer Wolfgang 1791. Three years later, von Kempelen to start building German chemist Martin 1792 In the 18th century, printing the first speech synthesizer. Klaproth confirmed Gregor’s ink was dabbed onto the He published details of his discovery and chose the name William Murdock type with leather pads. This machine in 1791 in his book titanium for the new element. was a slow process and The Mechanism of Human Speech In the 19th and 20th centuries, required some skill to get the and a Description of a Speaking Ambulance coal gas was used for lighting. type inked evenly. In 1790, Machine. His machine could Early experiments were carried British engineer William produce sentences, but it 1792 out in Belgium and Scotland by Nicholson came up with an needed a lot of skill to “play”. chemist J. P. Minckelers and the improvement that was literally The original machine, with Dominique Larrey Earl of Dundonald, but the gas revolutionary: a leather roller. nostrils and a mouth, bellows industry owes more to Scottish When printing presses were for lungs, and a reed for the The ambulance was a engineer William Murdock. In mechanized in the 19th voice, is now in the Deutsches military invention. Before 1792, he lit his cottage in Museum, Munich, Germany. French surgeon Dominique Cornwall, England, by heating Larrey’s work, few armies had coal in a closed vessel and much more than a first-aid kit piping the gas to lights. Later, he developed a complete system for making and storing gas. AmbulAnce By 1915, during World War I, the military ambulance really could fly. But only the favored few went by air. 1789 The French the Bastille, a royal prison, and 1791The Ordnance Ireland. Its prime objective is to Revolution begins in organize a people’s militia. The Survey of Great provide better maps for military earnest on Tuesday, July 14, hated King Louis XVI is forced Britain is founded and begins to purposes. Its work sets new when the people of Paris storm to withdraw his troops. make new maps of Britain and standards for detail and accuracy. 113

RevolutionaRy changes Screw-cutting lathe Cast-iron tailstock Accurate lead Tool was Headstock gripped This is said to be Henry supported the free screw moved the clamped here and and rotated the Maudslay’s first screw-cutting end of the workpiece workpiece lathe. It originally had gears tool as the moved by hand to vary the thread it cut, but workpiece rotated or lead screw these are now missing. Triangular steel Tailstock was bars formed the adjusted by bed of the lathe turning this bar Cotton gin Semaphore sideways, it cuts a screw thread. German actor, Aloys Senefelder. telegraph This could be done with a hand- He was trying to make printing 1793 operated screw mechanism, but plates from limestone, by 1794 in 1797 Henry Maudslay in writing on them with grease Eli Whitney Britain and David Wilkinson in and then etching them, when Claude Chappe the US invented lathes where he discovered that his plates Cotton is the fibre attached the tool was driven by a screw would print before they were to the seeds of the cotton Between 1792 and 1814, geared to the lathe. They cut etched because the printing plant. It cannot be used until France was usually at war accurate threads with ease. ink stuck to the grease but not the seeds have been removed. with Austria. Some of the to the wet stone. In today’s In 1793, US engineer Eli fighting was near Lille in Chromium lithography, the plates are Whitney invented the first northern France. To speed up metal and the image is formed machine to remove the seeds – communication with Paris, 1797 photographically, but the the cotton gin. A revolving engineer Claude Chappe built a principle remains the same. cylinder covered with rows of chain of towers. Each one had Nicolas Vauquelin hooks forced the cotton through movable arms to signal letters Beryllium a comb to rake out the seeds. It and numbers, which could be Chromium can prevent was so successful that it made seen from the next tower using corrosion of other metals, 1798 the US the world’s leading a telescope. In August 1794, either as plating or in stainless cotton producer, overtaking this semaphore telegraph sent steel. French chemist Nicolas Nicolas Vauquelin other regions such as Egypt news of a victory over a Vauquelin discovered the and India. Despite this, it distance of 128 miles (205 km) element in 1797 as an impurity Perhaps the best known brought Whitney little profit. in less than an hour. in lead ore. He called it beryllium compound is the chromium, from the Greek green gemstone called emerald. Screw-cutting word for color, because its Electrical contacts made of lathe compounds are brightly copper also contain beryllium, colored. This makes them which makes the copper 1797 especially useful in paints. springy without reducing its conductivity. Beryllium was Henry Maudslay, Lithography first identified as beryllium David Wilkinson oxide by French chemist 1798 Nicolas Vauquelin in 1798. Alathe spins metal against This compound conducts heat a tool to give it a circular Aloys Senefelder well but does not conduct shape. If the tool also moves electricity, making it useful Most printing today relies today in certain electronic on a process invented in components. Pure beryllium 1798 by an unsuccessful metal was prepared in 1828 by German chemist Friedrich Wöhler and, independently, by French chemist Antonine Bussy. It is often used in the space and nuclear industries. 1794 What will become burning bright / In the forests of 1795 France replaces its to be one 40-millionth of the one of the world’s old weights and circumference of Earth. By the best loved poems, “The Tyger,” the night,” is printed by British measures with the metric system. late 20th century, it will be used which begins “Tyger, tyger, Its basic unit, the meter, is taken by most countries worldwide. artist and poet William Blake in 114 Songs of Innocence and Experience.

1751 – 1850 Shaft was turned PROTECTION FOR LIFE by a gearbox (now missing) Edward JEnnEr hit on thE principlE by which all vaccines Smallpox work. The body creates different antibodies to destroy specific vaccine viruses or other invaders. But making the right antibody takes 1798 time, so a big infection can overwhelm the system. It works Edward Jenner better with advance warning in the shape of harmless vaccine Smallpox was a deadly viral infection common 200 particles resembling the unwanted guest. Then, if the real years ago. British surgeon Edward Jenner noticed that thing comes along, the body is ready for it. Edward Jenner people who caught cowpox, a similar but milder disease, Simple tools used Smallpox before Jenner Vaccination for all never got smallpox. In 1796, by Jenner for his Before vaccination, the only Jenner’s work stirred up a he scratched a boy’s skin, then early work known precaution against lot of opposition, but his applied fluid from a girl with Cupping smallpox was a dangerous ideas began to take hold as cowpox. It was the first procedure called variolation. deaths from smallpox vaccine. The boy later survived horn Infectious matter from a person dwindled. In 1881, the deliberate smallpox infection, with smallpox was applied to a French biologist Louis and in 1798 Jenner published scrape in the skin of someone who Pasteur created a vaccine the first book on vaccination. wanted to be protected from the against anthrax, a fatal (✷ See also Protection for life.) disease. The procedure produced disease caught from animals. either immunity or smallpox. Today, we can be vaccinated Laughing gas against a wide range of once deadly infections. 1799 Vaccine Humphry Davy points Joseph Priestley discovered Vaccination lancets Lancet nitrous oxide in 1772, but it and was 1799 before Humphry vaccinator (later Sir Humphry) Davy found that the gas could make people laughing gaS In this 1802 cartoon, James Gillray suggests some Stratigraphy laugh. While suggesting that it comical dangers of playing with laughing gas. Davy is wielding the bellows. might be useful in surgery, he 1799 also liked to throw parties at which he used nitrous oxide to William Smith give his guests a good laugh. Stratigraphy, a key way to understand Earth, was developed by British surveyor William Smith. He noticed the same sequence of rock layers in different places. Tracing these over a wide area, he drew the first geological maps. He also saw that each rock had its own fossils, and that those in higher layers were more complex life forms. This lets geologists group rocks by age, according to the fossils they contain. 1796 A new medical Hahnemann. It treats an illness 1798 British poets William Ballads. It opens with Coleridge’s system called with tiny doses of drugs that Wordsworth and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” homeopathy is introduced by a produce effects similar to the German doctor named Samuel symptoms of that illness. Samuel Taylor Coleridge together and marks the start of poetry’s produce the slim volume Lyrical Romantic Movement. 115

RevolutionaRy changes ChromatiC harp This French paper into contact with it. between 1801 and 1810. Its pedal harp dates from about 1810. Wooden presses couldn’t stand double-action pedal mechanism Battery the force needed to print a can instantly retune any of its Strings stretched large sheet. Charles Stanhope, a seven sets of strings. 1800 between the scientifically minded aristocrat, neck and the improved things by making the Jacquard loom Alessandro Volta sound box first cast-iron press. Stronger than a wooden press, it could 1801 In 1780, Italian doctor Pedals for print large sheets in one pull. Luigi Galvani noticed retuning Jacques de Vaucanson, that a frog’s leg in Asteroid Joseph-Marie Jacquard contact with two the strings different metals would 1801 By raising and lowering the twitch, and found that warp (lengthways) threads the effect was electrical. Giuseppe on a loom in the right His friend Alessandro Piazzi sequence, elaborate patterns Volta proved that it was the can be woven. In the 18th metals, not the animal tissue, Italian century, this was done that produced the electricity. In astronomer manually by a “drawboy”. 1800 he made the first battery, Giuseppe Piazzi Inventor Jacques de Vaucanson a stack of silver and zinc discs discovered the replaced the boy with a separated by brine-soaked first asteroid in punch-card mechanism in cardboard, and showed that 1801, but soon 1745, but this was ignored electricity from his “pile” lost it again as it until 1801, when Joseph-Marie behaved like static electricity. moved into the Jacquard turned it into the daytime sky. It Jacquard loom. As well as Electrolysis of fitted just where weaving under the control of water Bode’s Law said punch cards, it acted as an there was a missing inspiration to the earliest 1800 planet (✷ see page computer pioneers. 108). German William Nicholson, mathematician Carl Ultraviolet light Anthony Carlisle Gauss invented a way of calculating its orbit 1801 British engineer William from Piazzi’s few Nicholson and surgeon observations. Using this Johann Ritter Anthony Carlisle began to use information, German Volta’s new battery. They found astronomer Franz von Radio waves, X rays, and that bubbles formed when they Zach later found the many other kinds of put wires from the battery missing asteroid. Piazzi radiation, including light, the into salt water. Investigation named it Ceres. only visible kind, are revealed that the bubbles from electromagnetic waves. They one wire were hydrogen. Chromatic can be arranged in order of Oxygen was liberated at the harp wavelength to form a spectrum. other wire, but it combined The part of the electromagnetic with the wire rather than c 1801 spectrum that we can see, the forming bubbles. This was the visible spectrum, has red at one start of electrochemistry, which Sébastien Érard end and violet at the other. In would reveal much about the 1800, William Herschel nature of chemical compounds. Simple harps have one string discovered infrared radiation per note, and can normally beyond the red end of the Iron-framed play in only one key. Adding visible spectrum when he put a printing press too many extra strings would thermometer there and noted make the instrument that it heated up. This made 1800 unplayable, so attempts to German physicist Johann Ritter solve the problem have all been have a look beyond the violet Charles Stanhope based on rapid retuning. The end. There he found that silver first harp that could play in chloride, which darkens in In printing, the bigger the every key was designed by light, darkened more quickly, area of type, the greater Sébastien Érard in France again revealing the presence of the force needed to squeeze the radiation – ultraviolet light. 1800 In the US, the years earlier, its goal is to collect 1801 Following a decree royal art collections of France Library of Congress at least one copy of everything of the revolutionary at last become fully accessible is founded. Like the British published in the US, as a way government of France, seven to the public. They are displayed Museum library, founded 41 of establishing copyright. years earlier, what were once the at the Louvre palace in Paris. 116

High-pressure Names for Railroad 1751 – 1850 steam engine clouds locomotive It pulled 70 people and 11 tons (10 tonnes) of iron 10 miles 1802 1803 1804 (16 km) at a speed of 5 mph (8 km/h). Its advanced Richard Trevithick, Luke Howard Richard Trevithick features included Oliver Evans blowing used steam up Clouds tell us In 1804, when Richard its own chimney to James Watt would never try a lot about Trevithick added wheels to make the fire burn steam at high pressure the weather, so his high-pressure engine faster. Unfortunately, because he was convinced it it’s not surprising and used it on a tramway, the locomotive wore was too dangerous. British that meteorologists he created the first out the cast-iron tracks engineer Richard Trevithick had recognize many steam locomotive. on which it ran, so no such fears. He made his types. Most of the Trevithick was forced cylinders extra thick and the names they use, to abandon it. pressure 10 times higher. In such as cirrus 1802, he patented the resulting and cumulus, Rods Railway locomotive smaller, more powerful engine, were invented in powered by This is a model of Trevithick’s which made steam power far 1803 by British the piston more versatile. At about the chemist Luke drove the locomotive Catch-Me- same time, Oliver Evans was Howard. His rear wheels Who-Can, which he pioneering high-pressure lifelong interest built in 1808. engines in the US, where they in the weather were taken up with even led him to Strongly Pump fed greater enthusiasm. lecture on built water into boiler the boiler Mass production meteorology and to publish 1802 the first book about it. In Marc Brunel, recognition of Henry Maudslay his work, he was elected to Mass production reduces a the Royal complex operation to Society (a leading simpler operations, each scientific society carried out by a separate founded in machine. The first true mass 1660) in production system made 1821. wooden blocks for the rigging of sailing ships. It was designed by French engineer Marc Brunel and built by British engineer Henry Maudslay. Each of its 45 machines carried out a single operation, such as drilling a hole. It increased output per person by more than 10 times. 1802 After the break-up France, with several models 1804 Tsurya Namboku IV, Tokubei of India: Tales of Strange of her marriage, and two children. She will tour chief playwright of Lands. Written for top actor Marie Tussaud, an expert in wax Britain for 33 years, then start a the Kawarazaki Theatre in Japan, Onoe Matsusuke I, it is full of modelling, arrives in Britain from waxwork museum in London. scores his first big hit with the macabre and the grotesque. 117

RevolutionaRy changes connected a battery across the molten masses to extract the Arc light metals from their different compounds electrically. c 1807 Atomic weights Humphry Davy 1808 By 1807, British chemist Humphry Davy had John Dalton demonstrated a sensational effect to an audience at the In 1808, British schoolmaster Royal Institution of Great John Dalton helped to create Britain. He brought together the formulas and equations of two carbon rods connected to modern chemistry. In his New a colossal 3000-volt battery, System of Chemical Philosophy he then drew them apart to said that chemical elements produce a blinding white consist of atoms, each element flame 4 in (10 cm) long. It was having atoms of a different another 70 years before electric weight. The ratios of these generators were good enough weights, and the proportions in to turn this bold experiment which atoms combined, were into practical lighting for streets whole numbers. Ignored for and warehouses. nearly 50 years, Dalton’s work eventually had a great effect. Lace-making machine 1809 arC light In Minneapolis, the John Heathcoat Canning Canned food gradually Compound first electric arc lights were became commonplace as food steam engine illuminated in February 1883. Lace was originally made by companies opened factories for clever hands manipulating canning all kinds of food. 1811 Sodium and lots of bobbins. Only rich 1809. He put jars of food into potassium people could afford to buy it. boiling water, then sealed them Arthur Woolf In 1809, British inventor John while still hot. Although Appert 1807 Heathcoat patented a machine didn’t know it, this killed In a high-pressure steam that could imitate handmade bacteria and prevented engine, the steam released Humphry Davy lace. With his partner Charles reinfection. In 1810, British after each stroke of the piston Lacy, he set up a mill to turn inventor Peter Durand replaced is still under pressure, and Volta’s battery (✷ see page out the new product. It was the jars with tin-coated iron therefore contains wasted 116) brought a flurry of wrecked in 1816 by Luddites – containers, creating the first energy. By feeding it into a new discoveries. Two of them, organized groups of workers canned food. By 1820, it was second cylinder, much of this sodium and potassium, were who tried to stop machines feeding the British navy. made by Humphry Davy at the forcing workers into factories. Royal Institution. Because these elements are so reactive, they Canning are never found uncombined. In separate experiments, Davy 1810 melted sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide, then Nicolas Appert, Peter Durand Canned food started with an attempt to provide better food for French soldiers. The idea was developed by French confectioner Nicolas Appert, in 1807 Three years after all Wilberforce and Thomas 1812 In Germany, of a two-volume set of folktales US states north of Clarkson finally succeed in language and Maryland abolish slavery, British making it illegal to import folklore researchers Jacob and called Kinder- und Hausmärchen. antislavery reformers William slaves into any British colony. Wilhelm Grimm publish the first The stories will appear 45 years 118 later as Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

Cylinder Sensory and 1751 – 1850 printing press motor nerve Miner’s 1811 fibers safety lamp Friedrich König, 1811 1816 Andreas Bauer Charles Bell Humphrey Davy, Early 19th-century printing George Stephenson presses worked in much Scottish anatomist Charles the same way as the one used Bell did fundamental See pages 120–121 for the by Gutenberg in 1455 (✷ see research on the human nervous story of how Davy and page 76). Then, with better system. Working in London, he Stephenson fought to save engineering, faster machines investigated the structure of the miners’ lives. brain and spinal nerves. His became possible. biggest discovery was that there Kaleidoscope The first was are two kinds of nerve fibres: designed by sensory fibres that bring in 1816 German messages to the spinal cord and engineers brain, and motor fibres that David Brewster Friedrich König send out instructions. Bell’s and Andreas findings were later confirmed In 1816, Scottish physicist Bauer in 1811. by the French physiologist David Brewster took time The paper was François Magendie. off work to invent the optical wrapped around toy called a kaleidoscope. a cylinder that Kaleidoscope Brewster’s Multiple reflections between rotated as the kaleidoscope was far a pair of mirrors set at an type rolled more elaborate than angle to each other turn a under it. In today’s toy. collection of colored fragments 1814, a steam- into a constantly changing driven König symmetrical pattern. Its name and Bauer at is Greek, meaning “see the offices of The Times beautiful shapes.” newspaper in London hit a record-breaking total of 1,100 sheets an hour. Tube in which coloured fragments are viewed can be recovered. British Object plates Lockable inventor Jonathan Hornblower containing loose case patented the idea in 1781, colored fragments but was prevented from developing it by James Watt, who claimed that it infringed his own steam engine patent. (✷ see page 107). However, British engineer Arthur Woolf rediscovered the principle in 1804 and produced the first successful compound engine in 1811, after Watt’s patent had expired. 1813 Jane Austen sees her Austen declares the book’s central 1815 On June 18, making some tactical errors, he is novel Pride and character, Elizabeth Bennett, to Napoleon suffers his heavily outnumbered by 133,000 Prejudice in print at last, 17 years be her favorite among the many final defeat, at the Battle of men led by General von Blücher after she started writing it. heroines she has created. Waterloo in Belgium. As well as and the Duke of Wellington. 119

RevolutionaRy changes MAKING THE MAGIC LAMP Humphry Davy and George Stephenson fight to save miners’ lives Monday, May 25, 1812, was a terrible day for the mining village of Felling, near Newcastle, England. A massive underground explosion killed 92 miners, some of them only 10 years old. It was one of a series of disasters caused by the flame in being a miner miners’ lamps making “firedamp,” or methane gas, explode. In the previous 10 years, 108 miners had died in the northeast alone. Now A section through the number had risen to 200. Something had to be done. Bradley mine in Staffordshire, in 1808, A committee was formed to investigate the problem. It asked the shows the rock strata advice of William Clanny, a local doctor, Humphry Davy, a chemist, and the jobs of miners. and George Stephenson, a self-educated mine mechanic. As well as coping with rock fall and floods, Both Clanny and Stephenson started work on a safer lamp. early miners worked Clanny sealed his with water, but miners had to pump air in in almost total by hand, so it wasn’t very useful. Stephenson tried letting darkness. Any light the air in through small holes. Firedamp got in too, and came from candles, which could cause devastating explosions. burned, but the metal around the holes cooled the flame, preventing explosions. Stephenson’s lamp was tested in October 1815, and it worked. Back in London, Davy experimented with firedamp from a mine. Like Stephenson, he fed in air through small holes, but he realized that the holes had to be very small indeed. His lamp had The compeTiTors copper gauze around the flame. It was Humphry Davy and tested in January 1816, and was a George Stephenson success. The mine owners held a were very different people. Davy, born celebration dinner and gave Davy in the southwest some silverware worth 50 times a of England, was miner’s yearly pay. a well educated gentleman and a The miners were not impressed. They skilled scientist. resented a southerner getting credit for Stephenson, who came from the something one of their own people had northeast, was a Humphry Davy was a George Stephenson already invented. Many wouldn’t use tough, practical mine chemist, but he turned pioneered the first public Davy’s lamp, and stuck to their “geordie” his hand to scientific steam railway as well as – Stephenson’s design. Davy said that mechanic who had matters of many kinds. inventing a safety lamp. never been to school. 120

Stephenson had stolen the idea from him and that 1751 – 1850 the geordie wouldn’t work because it wasn’t scientific. Safety lampS Davy’s lamp (right) and In the end, most miners’ lamps incorporated ideas from Stephenson’s lamp (left) were all three inventors. They had glass instead of gauze around the first safety lamps to be used the flame, so they gave more light than Davy’s lamp, but in coal mines, but the Marsaut the air was still fed in through gauze to prevent lamp of the 1880s (center) was explosions. The problem was solved. one of the safest, and saw many years of successful service. Or was it? Unfortunately, the new lamps encouraged mine owners to send miners into areas that were previously thought too dangerous. And because the lamps weren’t totally safe, there were just as many deaths as before. Davy and Stephenson may have fought each other for nothing. The industrial world of the 19th century was powered by coal. The safety lamp, which made it possible to work in dangerous areas, helped coal owners to get a lot more coal out of their mines. Continuing tragedy Explosions like this one in 1866 at Barnsley, England, were still killing miners 50 years after the invention of the safety lamp. 121

Helmet Face plate tunnel rings to be inserted. was perhaps shy of putting his made of South African-born civil ear to their chests. Instead, he copper Diving suit The heavy helmet engineer James Greathead listened through a wooden tube and brass of the 1830 Siebe suit provided a improved this in the 1860s. and found that this cylindre somewhat restricted view. transmitted body sounds that Stirling engine quickly. He called his product Diving suit he could relate to various superphosphate. It didn’t catch medical conditions. After he 1816 on, until 1843 when British 1 819 published his findings in 1819, farmer John Lawes started other doctors improved on his Robert Stirling making it on a larger scale. Augustus Siebe instrument, eventually creating the device seen today. Exploding boilers upset Tunneling The first practical Scottish clergyman Robert shield diving suit was Adding Stirling, so he invented an invented in 1819 by machine engine that didn’t need steam. 1818 German engineer Patented in 1816, it works by Augustus Siebe. Until 1820 compressing a cold gas then Marc Brunel, then, underwater workers transferring it to a heated Peter Barlow, sat in a diving bell – an Thomas de Colmar cylinder, where it expands James Greathead open-bottomed air chamber. against a piston to do work. It Siebe’s first suit was a jacket The first calculating machine is then cooled again by a Digging a tunnel with an airtight helmet into that really worked was the radiator. The Stirling engine is under a river was which air was pumped from arithmometer, patented by quiet, clean, and efficient, but impossible until French the surface. By 1830, he had French insurance agent Thomas its cost and bulk limit its use. engineer Marc Brunel created a totally enclosed suit. de Colmar in 1820. Although it invented his shield in could add, subtract, multiply, Superphosphate 1818. This supported the Stethoscope and divide, it was at first a fertilizer tunnel and stopped water failure, mostly because its from rushing in. As the 1819 inventor was not an engineer. c 1817 tunnel grew, workers By the 1850s, an improved moved the shield forward René Laënnec version was beginning to be James Murray and built a lining behind noticed, and by 1880 hundreds it. Brunel created the first French doctor René Laënnec were in use – particularly in the Plants need phosphorus, river tunnel in 1843. wanted to listen to his insurance industry. and one source of this is Later, Peter Barlow patients’ lungs and hearts, but fertilizer made of bones. In developed a circular about 1817, Irish doctor James shield that allowed precast Murray discovered that treating bones with sulfuric acid made them soluble, so that plants got their phosphorus more 1816 In Rome, the opera Based on an earlier comedy by 1818 The first science- Shelley while she was staying in The Barber of Seville the French writer Pierre de fiction novel, Switzerland with the poet Byron. by Italian composer Gioacchino Beaumarchais, it will become one She was one of several guests he Rossini has its first performance. of Rossini’s most popular operas. Frankenstein, is published. It was challenged to write a ghost story. written two years earlier by Mary 122

Electromagnetism malaria, a disease caused by a mathematical technique called 1751 – 1850 parasite in the blood. It was the Fourier transform, now 1820 isolated in 1820 by French help with the design of Bernhard Riemann extended chemists Pierre Pelletier and electronic communications non-Euclidean geometry, Hans Christian Ørsted Joseph Caventou, and marked systems and much else. providing a basis for Einstein’s the start of a shift from the view of gravity (✷ see pages Until Danish physicist Hans use of whole plant extracts Non-Euclidean 178–179). Christian Ørsted’s crucial toward chemically pure geometry experiment of 1820, electricity drugs for treating disease. Waterproof and magnetism were seen as The same pair of men also 1823 cloth two separate subjects. The isolated several other well experiment was made possible known natural chemicals, János Bolyai, 1823 by the battery, which Volta including chlorophyll. Nikolay Lobachevsky invented in 1800 (✷ see page Charles Macintosh 116). Ørsted put a compass Fourier analysis School geometry includes needle near a wire, then Euclid’s (✷ see page 45) Charles Macintosh, working connected the wire to the 1822 statement that there can be in rainy Glasgow, Scotland, terminals of a battery. The only one line that passes found a way to make the first needle set itself at right angles Joseph Fourier through a given point and waterproof cloth. He to the current in the wire, lies parallel to a given line. discovered that rubber would showing that electricity could Engineers and scientists In 1823, Hungarian dissolve in naphtha, a gasoline- create magnetism. The two often have to deal with mathematician János Bolyai like liquid produced in the subjects were really one. waves, and these can have an discovered that he could forget making of coal gas. In 1823, he infinite variety of shapes. this idea and create a “non- stuck two layers of fabric Quinine Thanks to the work of French Euclidean” geometry that made together with his rubber mathematician Joseph Fourier, sense. Russian mathematician solution. Although at first there 1820 engineers don’t actually have to Nikolay Lobachevsky published were problems with leaking deal with every possible wave the same discovery in 1829. seams and softening rubber, a Pierre Pelletier, shape. In 1822, in a book Euclidean geometry describes “macintosh” soon became the Joseph Caventou about heat flow, he showed that the small spaces we are used only thing to wear in the rain. a wave of any shape can be to but may not be true for Quinine is the active broken down into simpler space as a whole. In the 1850s, Adding mAchine Arithmometers substance in a tree-bark waves known as sine waves. German mathematician were made by several different extract that helps patients with Fourier analysis, and a related companies. This wood-cased brass machine dates from about 1870. Digits of result appeared in windows Handle turned to calculate 1819 British administrator positioned between the Indian 1822 Ancient Egyptian in 1799, this has the same text in Sir Stamford Raffles Ocean and the South China Sea, hieroglyphs are hieroglyphs and Greek, allowing founds a colonial settlement on the island will become a highly deciphered thanks to the Rosetta French scholar Jean François the island of Singapore. Ideally successful country. Stone. Found by French troops Champollion to crack the code. 123

RevolutionaRy changes country by a Yorkshire builder, until Danish chemist Hans to Stockton. The world’s first Joseph Aspdin, in 1824. He Christian Ørsted extracted public steam railroad had Maximum burned a mixture of clay and some from aluminum chloride opened. Both passengers and efficiency of a limestone until it became so in 1825. It had already been freight traveled in open cars – heat engine hot that it partly turned into named by Humphry Davy, who except the railroad’s directors, glass. Aspdin thought his identified it in alum, used in who had a covered carriage. 1824 material was just as good as dyeing. He called it alumium, (✷ See also Railroad mania.) the fine stone quarried in then aluminum (now its name Sadi Carnot Portland, hence the name. in North America), and finally Amalgam filling by its English name, aluminum, Aheat engine, such as a steam Self-trimming to match names like sodium. c 1826 engine, turns heat, a form candle wick Whatever the name, it is one of of energy, into mechanical the world’s most useful metals. August Taveau, Thomas Bell work, another form of energy. 1824 The percentage of heat that gets Public steam Having teeth filled is no turned into work is known as J. J. Cambacères railroad fun, but it used to be the engine’s thermal efficiency. much worse. The first metal It is never anywhere near 100 To burn properly, a candle 1 825 fillings had to be heated to percent. In 1824, French needs just the right length boiling point before going into scientist Sadi Carnot discovered of wick. Before 1824, wicks George Stephenson the tooth. In about 1826, what limits the maximum had to be trimmed by hand, August Taveau in France and power ouput of any given because the wax burned down George Stephenson was Thomas Bell in Britain found engine. It is the temperature but the wick didn’t. French already building industrial that a mixture of mercury and difference between the hottest inventor Cambacères found locomotives when he became silver formed a paste that could and coldest parts inside the that if the wick is braided engineer of a proposed public be inserted cold and would engine: the larger the difference, instead of twisted, it flops over tram system from Darlington harden rapidly. They had the greater the power output. and sticks out through the to Stockton in northeast invented the amalgam filling, flame, constantly burning away England. He thought that which is still used today. Portland and trimming itself. All candles steam locomotives and iron cement are now made this way. rails would be better than the Public steam railroad proposed horses and wooden Stephenson’s Locomotion 1824 Aluminum rails. On September 27, 1825, No. 1, seen here as a model, a steam provided the power for the Joseph Aspdin 1825 train ran first public steam railroad. from Portland cement is ordinary Hans Christian Ørsted Darlington building cement. It has nothing to do with Portland, in Although aluminum is the the south of England; it was most common metal on invented in the north of the Earth, nobody had seen any Water tank was carried in a waggon behind the locomotive 1824 The great German Written for a large choir as 1825 The Bolshoi (Great) Petrovsky Theatre, it renames the composer Ludwig well as full orchestra, its last Theatre opens in company the Bolshoi Ballet. It van Beethoven, now totally deaf, movement contains a setting Moscow, Russia. Taking over the will become one of the world’s composes his ninth symphony. of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”. dancers of its predecessor, the finest ballet companies. 124

RAILRoAd MANIA 1751 – 1850 Bring your own train RailRoads staRted as wooden tRacks for horse-drawn traffic, In Britain, the Surrey Iron Railway opened but once Stephenson had proved what steam could do, steam in 1803 and ran from Wandsworth on the railroads spread across Britain and the Americas with astonishing Thames River to Merstham, south of speed. Money, both public and private, poured into the new London. It was the first to be open to technology. By 1850, Britain had more than 6,250 miles everyone, but carriers had to provide their (10,000 km) of track, while pioneers in the US had opened own wagons and horses. up the West with 9,000 miles (14,500 km) of railroads. Horses walked between A simple horse-drawn railroad the wooden tracks speeded production at a quarry near Bath, England, in about 1730. the railroad age Begins At the opening of the going like a rocket Stockton & Darlington The first all-steam railroad with Railway, crowds fought to its own rolling stock ran between experience the new thrill of Liverpool and Manchester in rail travel. A total of England. It opened on 600 people piled into the September 15, 1830, with a train wagons, some even clinging hauled by Stephenson’s Rocket, to the outside. the clear winner of competitive trials held in 1829. This 1949 painting by Terence Cuneo vividly captures the excitement surrounding the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. Interchangeable John Hall succeeded in making successful reaper was designed Mammals parts exactly what they wanted. He’d in 1826 by Scottish farmer from eggs had to invent a new set of tools Patrick Bell, who encouraged 1826 and techniques, but in doing so other farmers to copy it. A few 1827 had perfected an essential years later, in the US, Cyrus John Hall ingredient of mass production. McCormick invented a similar Karl von Baer machine, which, like Bell’s, Most products today are Reaping had a revolving reel for Most people know that assembled from mass- machine drawing the corn into the birds come from eggs, but produced parts. In the 18th cutter. McCormick’s production it’s not so obvious that mammals century, nobody could make 1826 models went on sale in 1840, do too. This fact was published parts accurately enough to and competed successfully with in 1827 by Estonian naturalist guarantee that they would Patrick Bell, a factory-built version of the Karl von Baer. A professor at fit together, but the US Cyrus McCormick Bell reaper. McCormick sold his Konigsburg University (now government needed guns with reapers by the thousand. His Kaliningrad in Russia), he found interchangeable parts so that Without mechanical help, company continued until 1902, out more about how animals weapons could be repaired harvesting demands when it merged with four develop, and created the science quickly. In 1826, US gunmaker fields full of people. The first others to form the International called comparative embryology. Harvester Company. 1826 Japanese artist Fuji. The series includes 1827The first volume of Robert Havell. The complete Katsushika Hokusai The Breaking Wave off Kanagawa, US bird artist John book contains 435 magnificent which will become the best hand-colored illustrations and starts publishing a series of prints Audubon’s Birds of America is makes Audubon famous. entitled Thirty-six Views of Mount known Japanese print of its time. published by London engraver 125

RevolutionaRy changes Macadamized heat. George Stephenson used Water fell on to a horizontal road the same idea in Rocket, the rotor and rushed through Greenhouse first locomotive to run on an curved blades, making the effect 1827 all-steam railroad. rotor spin and producing as much power as six horses. He 1827 John McAdam Ohm’s law was soon building turbines that spun at 2,000 rpm (revolutions Joseph Fourier Scottish engineer John 1827 per minute) to produce 40 kW McAdam realized that the of power – ideal for generating The greenhouse effect is in best base for a road was dry Georg Ohm electricity. In 1895, Fourneyron the news as cars and power soil. In 1827, he started turbines were installed for this stations pump carbon dioxide building roads made from Ohm’s law is purpose at Niagara Falls on the into the atmosphere. Natural compacted soil with stones on fundamental to Canada/US border. greenhouse effects would top. Iron-tired cartwheels broke electrical and keep the Earth at a comfortable the stones into smaller pieces, electronic Handles for temperature, but the polluting which filled any gaps and made engineering. pushing the gases produced by humans trap the surface waterproof. machine too much heat and make the “Macadamized” roads were It says that electric current Earth warmer. The existence of used everywhere until cars, = voltage ÷ resistance. So Clutch the effect, and its similarity to whose pneumatic tires when you connect a wire lever how a greenhouse works, were damaged them by sucking out across a battery, if you first suggested by the French the smallest stones, demanded double the length of the wire, Differential mathematician Joseph Fourier a road surface made with tar or and therefore the resistance, gear in 1827. He didn’t know how bitumen. you will halve the current. much people would worry George Ohm’s scientific 1827 about it 175 years later. Multiple fire colleagues in Germany tube boiler thought that the law was Onésiphore Pecqueur Match nonsense when he published 1827 it in 1827, but Ohm had the Avehicle with both back 1827 last laugh. In 1841, the Royal wheels on one axle will Marc Séguin, Society in London gave him have trouble getting around John Walker George Stephenson a medal, and his name lives corners. This is because the on as the unit of resistance. wheel on the outside of the As chemical knowledge The first steam boilers were curve has to travel further, and increased, inventors began tanks on top of a fire. This Water turbine therefore turn faster, than the to apply it in the search for a was inefficient because little of wheel on the inside. This is better light. A few burned the water was in contact with 1827 impossible if both wheels are their fingers with creations the fire. In 1827, French like chemical-tipped wood engineer Marc Séguin invented Claude Burdin, attached to the same shaft. dipped in sulfuric acid, then, in a boiler with tubes going Benoît Fourneyron Modern rear-wheel 1827, British chemist John through the water, and hot drive cars avoid this Walker produced the first gases from a fire going through French engineer Claude problem by having practical match. His “friction the tubes. It heated water Burdin coined the word lights” lit up when rubbed on quickly and wasted less “turbine” from the Latin Head tipped turbo, meaning with mixture sandpaper, just like “spinning top.” One containing some matches of his students at the phosphorus today. St Étienne Technical School, Benoît Fourneyron, built a working water turbine in 1827. Match Thin wooden spill Early matches lit as burned easily soon as they were warmed by friction, so were supplied in a fireproof box in case they lit by accident. Modern matches are safer to carry. 1828 Noah Webster of the English Language. It 1829 Following a throws herself on her husband’s introduces American contains about 70,000 entries – campaign by funeral pyre is outlawed by the religious reformer Ram Mohan British authorities who control grammar and spelling when he almost half have not appeared Roy, the rite in which a widow parts of India at this time. publishes the American Dictionary in any earlier dictionary. 126

each rear wheel on a separate Lawnmower eLectromagnetic 1751 – 1850 axle, driven from the engine induction Faraday’s through an arrangement called 1830 ring looks very much which is used to change a differential gear. This contains electric voltages. US scientist several gearwheels, which allow Edwin Budding like some modern Joseph Henry discovered the two rear wheels to rotate at transformers. different speeds where Lawns were possible electromagnetic induction at necessary. It was invented by before lawnmowers, British scientist Michael about the same time, but French engineer Onésiphore but only for people Faraday guessed that Faraday published his Pecquer in 1827, long before with gardeners or sheep magnetism might produce findings first. cars were thought of, for use on to keep them trimmed. electricity. In 1831, he showed steam vehicles. Edwin Budding’s cylinder that it could. Plunging a Cell nucleus mower, patented in 1830, magnet into a coil of wire Braille made tidy green squares produced a surge of current – 1831 available to far more the principle of the electric 1829 people. Largely displaced by generator. Faraday also found Robert Brown other machines for small lawns, that if two coils were wound Louis Braille Budding’s mechanism lives on on an iron ring, connecting or Most living cells keep their in tractor-pulled mowers for disconnecting one coil to or genes in a nucleus, a Louis Braille was blinded in large areas of grass. from a battery produced a distinct blob in their centre. an accident at the age of current in the other – This structure was first noticed three. When he was 10, he Electromagnetic the principle of the and named by Scottish botanist went to Paris, where he was induction transformer, Robert Brown in 1831, while he was investigating orchids. shown a way of writing 1831 Although Brown didn’t messages with raised dots, understand what the nucleus designed for soldiers to use Michael Faraday, did, his discovery was part of Joseph Henry a growing realization that at night. Braille simplified plant cells, far from and improved this system, When Hans Christian being empty, were and in 1829 and 1837 Ørsted discovered that full of life. electricity could produce published his own six- magnetism (✷ see page 123), dot code for blind people. It’s difficult to learn, but is still in use today. Gears turned Lawnmower Budding based his the cutting grass-cutting machine on the rotary cylinder cutter used for trimming the surface of woollen cloth in textile mills. Early Budding mowers were large machines for professional gardeners – this one was made by Ransomes of Ipswich, England – but the principle was later applied to domestic models. Cutting Handle for a cylinder second person to help with the machine Roller for adjusting the height of the cut Main roller provided drive 1830 A group of British It supports explorations in Africa, 1831 Inspired by love for romantic Symphonie Fantastique. travelers, the Raleigh the Arctic, and other areas, and Irish actress Harriet He fashions the huge orchestral Travellers’ Club, forms the in 1859 will become the Royal Smithson, French composer work as a musical drama that Geographical Society of London. Geographical Society. Hector Berlioz writes his highly ends with its hero’s death. 127

RevolutionaRy changes Iron core Safety fuse electric current, Hippolyte Two wire Pixii, son of a Paris instrument North pole coils 1831 maker, devised the first of magnet South pole practical electric generator. His of rotating William Bickford machine, built in 1832, rotated Magneto permanent a magnet near a coil of wire, Pixii’s machine magnet Blasting out rock from generating alternating current was called a mines and quarries with in the wire. Later, at the magneto Hand-turned gunpowder is a good idea as suggestion of physicist André because it used wheel rotated long as nobody gets blown Ampère, he added a switch that a permanent the magnet up. Until William Bickford’s broke the circuit for half of magnet to invention of the safety fuse each rotation, creating a pulsed provide the in 1831, miners set off direct current for experiment changing explosions with gunpowder in electrolysis. magnetic field laid on the ground or needed to packed into reeds or goose Electric motor generate quills – all highly dangerous. current. Bickford made his fuse from 1832 cloth wrapped around gunpowder. It burned at a William Sturgeon, predictable rate, allowing Thomas Davenport people to get away to safety before the big bang. It wasn’t easy to develop a useful motor from Hans Steam bus Christian Ørsted’s discovery that electricity could move a 1831 magnet (✷ see page 123). The vital component was the Goldsworthy Gurney, commutator, a switch that Walter Hancock continually reverses the current to keep the motor rotating. Buses existed before Practical commutators were 1831, but they were invented in 1832 by British pulled by horses. The first engineer William Sturgeon mechanical buses appeared and in 1834 by US blacksmith in Britain. Inspired by Thomas Davenport. Davenport Stephenson’s Rocket (✷ see used his motor to drive several page 125), English inventor machines, including a car. Goldsworthy Gurney built several steam coaches that Inductance operated between Cheltenham and Gloucester. 1832 In London, Walter Hancock set up a steam omnibus Joseph Henry service. Opposition from horse-coach owners soon In 1832, US scientist Joseph forced Gurney off the road, Henry discovered self- but Hancock’s service was inductance, often called able to survive for five years. simply inductance. In this, the magnetism created by an Magneto electric current tends to maintain that current when 1832 conditions change. The effect is shown clearly when a wire Hippolyte Pixii is coiled up to create a stronger magnetic field. Joseph Henry Soon after Michael discovered it when he Faraday discovered disconnected an electromagnet that relative motion and saw big sparks as the between a magnet and current carried on through the a wire produces air instead of stopping. 1833 Oberlin College, the later, it will be the first college 1835 Fourteen years after top of the Champs Élysées in first college to admit to admit African–Americans, his death, one of Paris. Built by Jean Chalgrin and both men and women, is and in 1841 will award academic Napoleon’s pet projects, the Arc Jean Raymond, it celebrates past established in Ohio. Two years degrees to three women. de Triomphe, is completed at the French victories. 128

Drawing Mirror STereoScope Wheatstone’s 1751 – 1850 placed here reflected the original device was cumbersome, was seen right-hand but useful for investigating Telegraph only by the drawing and stereoscopic vision. Brewster left eye blocked the redesigned it without the mirrors. 1837 left-hand one Stereoscope Letters William Cooke, engraved Charles Wheatstone 1832 on the face Hans Christian Ørsted’s Charles Wheatstone Drawing placed Pivoted discovery that a compass here was seen magnetic needle responds to electric Astereoscope combines two only by the current suggested a way of slightly different pictures, right eye needles making an effective electric one for each eye, into a three- telegraph. In 1837, ex-soldier dimensional image. The Telegraph The five-needle William Cooke and physicist pictures are normally telegraph was easy to use Charles Wheatstone patented photographs, but British but needed a six-wire the first telegraph to send physicist Charles Wheatstone connection. Pairs of invented the stereoscope before needles swung left or useful messages. Its five photography existed. His right to point to needles, operated by six invention was little used until the letters on wires, could point to David Brewster showed a the face. 20 letters of the simplified version at London’s alphabet. By 1839, it Great Exhibition in 1851. Terminals was installed Queen Victoria was entranced, used to on the Great and stereoscopy soon became Western a popular craze. connect wires Railway in England and Horse-drawn was sending the tram service first public telegrams. 1832 John Stephenson, Reflex Keys pressed in pairs to send letters G. F. Train 1837 Hall, seeing a headless newt Morse code The idea of using tracks for respond to a pin-prick, was vehicles eventually spread Marshall Hall the first to realize that nerves 1837 from mines and railroads to from the spinal cord can act the streets. Trams were at first When someone pulls their independently to receive Samuel Morse, Alfred Vail drawn by horses. Probably the finger away from a hot sensations and make suitable earliest tram builder was the iron, they’re using a reflex, a responses. British colleagues See pages 130–131 for Irish-US inventor John response that bypasses the ridiculed Hall’s ideas, but the story of how Morse Stephenson. His trams started brain for maximum speed. European scientists discovered and Vail invented a new way running on the New York and British physiologist Marshall that he was right. to communicate. Harlem Railroad in 1832, and his company later built trams for services all over the world. The US entrepreneur G. F. Train also brought the tram to many cities. In 1860, he installed a tramway in Birkenhead, near Liverpool – the first in Britain. 1836 During its fight for Santa Anna, wipe out everyone in 1837 In the United Victoria, aged only 18, becomes independence from the fort called the Alamo. Santa Kingdom, King Queen. She will become one of Mexico, the state of Texas is hit Anna is later defeated by Texans William IV dies without an heir. the most important figures in hard when the Mexicans, under shouting “Remember the Alamo!” On Tuesday 20 June, his niece British history. 129

RevolutionaRy changes WIRING THE WORLD Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail invent a new way to communicate Morse’s first telegraph The Reverend Jedidiah Morse did not want his son to be an artist, but he The first telegraph Morse built felt it was better than having him waste time with electricity. So, after was more elaborate than the being tutored in England, Samuel Morse became a painter, one of the best final version reengineered by Vail. Its operator did not tap in the US. out messages directly, but In 1832, on a ship home from Europe, Samuel heard assembled shaped pieces of metal in a holder, which moved about the newly invented electromagnet, and his interest through a switch mechanism in electricity was rekindled. With his artist’s imagination, to turn the current on and off. he could see it sending messages around the world. By 1835, Morse had built an electric telegraph, using This unlikely odds and ends that included one of his wooden frames contraption was for stretching artists’ canvas. But how was he to convey Morse’s first thousands of different words along its single wire? receiver. His first idea was to make a numbered list of words, then send the numbers, switching the current once for one, Morse’s telegraph needed only one wire, which made it easy to construct. To make the single wire work, Morse and Vail invented a code based on patterns of pulses – an idea now used for all kinds of telecommunications. 130

1751 – 1850 twice for two, and so on. It was terribly slow, even with an Alfred VAil Vail met Morse automatic switch and a better code that used short and long soon after graduating from bursts of current – “dots” and “dashes.” His homemade college. He agreed to help telegraph proved to be unreliable, too. Morse and pay for getting patents That might have been the end of it, but in 1837, at an as long as he could share in any profits. unsuccessful demonstration of the telegraph in New York, He got his father to help Morse as well. Morse met the young engineer Alfred Vail. Vail took one look A Morse key for at Morse’s amateurish efforts and offered to redesign the whole sending messages thing. He strengthened the electromagnet and replaced Morse’s the fiNAl complicated switch with a simple, hand-operated key. He threw out system Morse’s word list and devised a dot-and-dash code for each letter of the By about 1870, many refinements had been made to alphabet. The telegraph was beginning to take shape. the telegraph. Operators could In 1843, after several successful decode a message just by listening to the clicking of a demonstrations and some political sounder, leaving them free to write it down. Punched tape wrangling, the US government gave allowed messages to be stored, and a version of Morse code Morse $30,000 to build a telegraph had been developed for use line between Baltimore and with underwater cables. Not Very priVAte Washington, DC. There were A picture from a songsheet of 1860 illustrates one problem quite a few technical with the telegraph: every message had to be read by the problems, because nobody operator. This could cause embarrassment, as here, with had ever laid 40 miles messages of an intimate nature. (65 kilometers) of wire before. But by May 24, 1844, everything was ready.. With Vail in Baltimore tending a stack of batteries, and Morse in Washington looking after the This receiver politicians, the new line delivered its first message: embossed dots “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT”. Within a year, it was and dashes on paper tape. open to the public. Within another 30 years, telegraphs covered the globe. Thanks to Vail the engineer, the vision of Morse the artist had become a reality. 131

RevolutionaRy changes both invented underwater Photography Talbot announced a rival propellers. Smith’s looked like a system. It allowed shorter Ship’s propeller screw, while Ericsson’s was c 1839 exposures and could produce more like a fan. The British multiple prints. (✷ See also 1839 Navy wasn’t interested in either, Louis Daguerre, Photo pioneers.) but a small ship equipped with William Fox Talbot John Ericsson, Francis Smith Ericsson’s propeller was shown Cell as the basic to the US Navy. In 1839, both In 1826, French inventor unit of living Early steamships had propellers were attached to Nicéphore Niepce coated a things paddlewheels, but these larger ships, and trials sheet of metal with tar, put it did not work well in high seas. confirmed the effectiveness of in a box with a lens, and 1839 Engineers John Ericsson of this new form of propulsion. pointed it out of the window. Sweden and Francis Smith Matthias Schleiden, (later Sir Francis) of Britain Eight hours later, he Theodor Schwann had a permanent Ship’S propeller This is a model of SS Francis Smith, which was fitted photograph. By 1839, German lawyer Matthias with Smith’s propeller. Modern ships have their propeller further back. his colleague Louis Schleiden turned his Daguerre was taking hobby of botany into a full- pictures in 20 minutes. time job and studied plants A year later, William Fox under the microscope. In 1838 he concluded that all plants are made of tiny building blocks, or cells, and they grow as the cells divide. A year later, his friend Theodor Schwann found that the same applied to animals, establishing one of the basics of biology. Vulcanized rubber 1839 Charles Goodyear Raw rubber gets weak and sticky when warm. In the US, rubber worker Nathaniel Hayward discovered that sulfur reduced the stickiness. Businessman Charles Goodyear, who had himself been trying to improve rubber, bought Hayward’s invention. In 1839, after a series of experiments, he discovered a chemical reaction with sulfur that made the rubber harder and stronger. This way of hardening rubber is called vulcanization, and it is essential today for car tires and many other rubber items. Vulcanized rubber By 1923, when this advertisement appeared, cars had become more common and rubber tires were big business. 1838 US lion tamer Isaac lion’s mouth. She 1839 The Grand Liverpool at Aintree, Liverpool, in England. van Amburgh comes asks artist Edwin Steeplechase, the The winner is Lottery, a nine- to England and amazes Queen Landseer to paint the American’s horse race now called the Grand year-old owned by John Elmore Victoria by putting his head in a portrait, complete with lions. National, is run for the first time and ridden by Jem Mason. 132

1751 – 1850 PHOTO PIONEERS Many early 19th-century artists and Plate holder Daguerreotypes Daguerreotype scientists wanted to capture the lifelike images Daguerre’s pictures were taken with silver iodide, images they saw in the camera obscura formed by iodine acting on (✷ see page 81), a common a silvered copper plate. drawing aid at that time. Sitters had to be clamped in place for the extremely long Silver salts darkened on exposure. After treatment exposure to light, but they with mercury vapor and were not really sensitive fixing with salt, the delicate, silvery image enough. Worse still, they was framed kept what sensitivity they Aperture under glass to rings protect it. had after the picture was Early taken, so the image was daguerreotype soon destroyed. Daguerre and camera Fox Talbot both solved these problems, but in completely different ways. Lens and attachments A daguerreotype camera of the 1840s Calotypes When daguerreotypes appeared, Fox Talbot hastened to perfect his calotype process. It used paper soaked in silver salts. He discovered that before these darkened visibly they formed a hidden image, which a developing solution could reveal, allowing shorter exposures. After fixing with a sodium salt, he used his paper negatives to make positive prints. Calotype made by Fox Talbot at his home, Lacock Abbey, England, in about 1843 Fuel cell Polystyrene Babbitt metal Electroplating 1839 1839 1839 c 1840 William Grove Eduard Simon Isaac Babbitt George Elkington, Auguste de La Rive Unlike ordinary electric The clear plastic of CD cases Rotating machinery needs batteries, fuel cells never is polystyrene. It is also bearings – holes lined Electroplating uses electricity run down – as long as they’ve made into a lightweight with metal that can stand up to coat surfaces with a layer got something to burn. A packaging material. It consists to the constant rubbing of a of metal. It can make brass Welsh judge, William Grove, of molecules of a carbon-based shaft. One of the best materials look like gold. The process was made the first one in 1839. chemical, styrene, linked to for lining plain bearings is invented independently in Knowing that electricity splits form chains. It was first made babbitt metal. It is an alloy of about 1840 by British water into hydrogen and in 1839 by German chemist two soft metals, tin and lead, industrialist George Elkington oxygen, he simply reversed the Eduard Simon, but was not and two harder ones, antimony and Swiss physicist Auguste de process. His cell burned used because impurities made and copper. It takes oil well, La Rive. It was Elkington who hydrogen in oxygen to produce it brittle. In 1937, US chemist will not seize up if it runs dry, made it a success. He invented water and electricity. Today, fuel Robert Dreisbach made purer and lasts a long time. It was a plating bath, then bought up cells are used in space and may styrene, and within a year invented by US goldsmith all the rival processes so that soon appear in electric cars. polystyrene was on the market. Isaac Babbitt in 1839. people had to use his system. 1840 Britain gains control give Maoris British citizenship 1840 Canadian Samuel from Liverpool to Boston. Cunard of New Zealand as and protect their land, but its Cunard starts the will continue to lead the way 45 Maori chiefs sign the Treaty terms are not clear and will across the Atlantic with larger of Waitangi. The treaty aims to later lead to conflict. first regular Atlantic steamship ships, such as Queen Elizabeth. service when RMS Britannia sails 133

RevolutionaRy changes expensive for ordinary people, it in 1842. By then, though, Package tour By the 1870s, he pointed out the folly of Brunel had changed his mind Cook’s brochure offered package Ozone charges that were based on about his ship, deciding to use tours to wonders of the world both distance and collected on the more modern propellers ancient and modern. 1840 delivery. A fixed charge, he instead of paddlewheels. said, prepaid with an adhesive Package tour Christian Schönbein stamp, would slash costs by Dinosaurs 75 percent. People listened in 1841 Ozone in the stratosphere the end, and in 1840 Britain 1841 protects us from radiation, introduced the penny post. Thomas Cook but ozone from a photocopier With it came the first postage Richard Owen can be dangerous. It’s a highly stamp, the famous penny black. ABritish missionary, Thomas reactive form of oxygen, with People had been finding Cook, organized the first three atoms per molecule Steam hammer fossilized dinosaur bones all vacation tour in 1841. It was instead of two. Ozone can be over the place, but they didn’t only a train trip from Leicester made by passing air through an 1840 know what they were. Then to Loughborough, but it electrical discharge – as in a British surgeon Richard Owen proved there was a demand. photocopier. Discovered and James Nasmyth recognized that they belonged In 1855, Cook organized trips named in 1840 by German to an extinct group of reptiles to France, and then tours of chemist Christian Schönbein, In 1839, British engineer unlike any now living. He Europe. His firm is now many uses have since been Isambard Kingdom Brunel named them “Dinosauria,” famous worldwide. found for it, from purifying started work on his ship Great meaning “terrible lizards,” in water to bleaching food. Britain. He soon discovered that 1841. Owen later became Doppler effect hammering out the giant shafts famous for opposing Darwin’s Postage stamp for its paddlewheels was theory of evolution and for 1842 beyond human ability. Scottish getting the details of the earliest 1840 engineer James Nasmyth came fossil bird completely wrong. up with the idea of a steam Rowland Hill hammer and designed one that Steam hammer A gang of would hit harder than a whole workers feeds a red-hot piece of iron Rowland Hill believed in gang of people. He made the through a hammer which slowly democracy. When he first one in 1840 and patented pounds it into shape. discovered that post office procedures made letters too Christian Doppler The sound of a speeding car falls to a lower pitch as the car passes. Austrian physicist Doppler explained this in 1842. As a sound source approaches, the waves reaching our ears are bunched up, but as it recedes they stretch out. This happens with light too, so astronomers can tell how fast stars are approaching or receding. With radar, it enables police to check the speed of cars. 1840 Snowshoe racing Snowshoe Club. Racers strap 1841 George Catlin American Indians. He had painted becomes an broad, flat frames to their feet to publishes Letters and over 500 works while traveling organized sport in Canada with stop them from sinking, and run Notes on the Manners, Customs, the formation of the Montreal races of up to 1 mile (1.6 km). and Condition of the North the Great Plains and visiting 134 American Indian tribes.

1751 – 1850 Conservation of Christmas before the first phone. Bain Christmas Card John Horsley’s energy card proposed scanning printers’ card combined religion, good cheer, type to create a telegraph and rustic decoration. 1842 1843 signal, with pendulums synchronizing transmitter and seriously that work stopped Julius von Mayer John Horsley receiver. Bain never built his for several years. London machine, but Giovanni Caselli Underground trains now rattle As early as 1806, a British The first Christmas card was used much the same principle through the tunnel every day. doctor, Thomas Young, was designed by British painter for a fax service between Paris using the word “energy” in its John Horsley for Henry Cole, and Lyon in 1863. Sunspot cycle modern sense: the capacity to later a founder of the Victoria do work. In 1842, another & Albert Museum in London. River tunnel 1843 doctor, Julius von Mayer of Showing people enjoying a Germany, stated that energy Christmas party, it went on sale 1843 Samuel Schwabe cannot be created or destroyed. in London in 1843. Mayer did not have much Marc Brunel, Amateurs can contribute a supporting evidence, and at the Fax principle Isambard Brunel lot to astronomy by time few people understood making regular observations. In what he was saying, but this 1843 The first underwater tunnel Germany, Samuel Schwabe kept principle of conservation of was dug under the Thames watch on the Sun for 17 years, energy has since become Alexander Bain River in London, from hoping to find a planet closer central to science. The Rotherhithe to Wapping. It was to the Sun than Mercury. principle was discovered Surprisingly, faxes were started in 1825 but didn’t open Instead, he found that the independently by at least three invented before phones. until 1843. Even using Marc spottiness of the Sun increased others with more influence: Scottish mechanic Alexander Brunel’s tunneling shield and decreased in an 11-year William Grove in 1846, and Bain patented his “electric (✷ see page 122), water cycle. He announced the fact in James Joule and Hermann von printing and signal telegraph” poured in several times during 1843. It’s of great importance Helmholtz in 1847. in 1843, more than 30 years construction, once injuring on Earth, because sunspots can Brunel’s son Isambard so ruin radio communication. 1842 China surrenders the the First Opium War. Another 1843 A new dance with a lively 2–4 rhythm. In no island of Hong Kong island will be added in 1860, sensation hits Paris time at all, people in the US, to Great Britain as part of the and in 1898 more territory will in the shape of the polka, a step- Latin America, and Scandinavia Treaty of Nanking, which ends be leased for 99 years. and-hop dance from Bohemia will be polka-crazy, too. 135

RevolutionaRy changes Anaesthetic Lock-stitch Neptune sewing machine Type-rotating 1846 1846 printing press 1846 William Morton Urbain Le Verrier, 1845 Walter Hunt, Elias Howe, Johann Galle Anaesthetics were first used Isaac Singer Richard Hoe by two US dentists, The discovery of the planet Horace Wells and William Inventors struggled for years Neptune proved the power The first printing press Morton. Wells tried using to mechanize sewing. The of physics. Astronomers knew produced a couple of sheets laughing gas (✷ see page 115), solution was to use two threads. that Uranus had an irregular a minute. Modern presses print unsuccessfully, in 1845 and An eye-pointed needle pushed orbit, and the only explanation 10 whole newspapers every had also tried ether as a local one thread through the cloth was that it must be attracted second, mainly because they go anaesthetic. Morton thought from above while a shuttle by another planet. French around and around instead of that he would try to get his whizzing to and fro below astronomer Urbain Le Verrier up and down. The first totally patients to inhale ether, and looped another thread through calculated where this planet rotary press was built by US he used it in a successful it. Walter Hunt invented this in must be. When German engineer Richard Hoe in 1845. demonstration of anaesthetic the US in about 1843, and astronomer Johann Galle It could print two sheets a surgery in 1846. A year later, Elias Howe patented the same looked there on September 23 second, but had one snag: if all Scottish surgeon James idea in 1846, but we really owe 1846, he found the planet the pieces of type on its Simpson started using the sewing machine to US within an hour. A British revolving cylinder were not chloroform to help women inventor Isaac Singer. He added mathematician, John Adams, locked in tightly, they shot out through the pain of childbirth. his own ideas to Howe’s and had already done the same when the press started. turned a raw invention into a calculation in 1844, but Thread unwinds mass-market product. British astronomers did not Wheel drives as it is used up take this seriously. the machine Lacquered cast-iron Screw adjusts body supports and pressure of protects the mechanism the foot Crank system Lock-stitch sewing machine Lever raises drives needle This Singer sewing machine of the and lowers and bobbin 1930s shows a new addition – an the foot Electric motor electric motor. Before this, users who Needle moves wanted both hands free had to power up and down a treadle machine with their feet. The to link thread covers of this machine have been with another removed to show the mechanism. thread on a bobbin Foot holds underneath the material to be sewn 1846 Founded on the Institution for “the increase and 1847 Charlotte Brontë, with its self-willed heroine and bequest of English diffusion of knowledge.” In the one of three literary emphasis on social psychology, scientist James Smithson, Congress 21st century it will be the world’s sisters living in Yorkshire, writes will become one of the most establishes the Smithsonian largest museum complex. Jane Eyre. This powerful novel, famous in English literature. 136

Nitroglycerine 1751 – 1850 1846 Albumen print Lewis Carrroll, the author of Alice, Ascanio Sobrero made this albumen print of two of his aunts in about 1858. Until 1846, the only widely used explosive was Albumen print gunpowder. Then Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero c 1850 discovered nitroglycerine, the first “high explosive.” Much Louis Blanquart-Évrard more powerful than gunpowder, it is also extremely Those very old, brown dangerous: just dropping a family photos that you container of the chemical on may have seen could have the floor can cause a been printed on albumen devastating explosion. Despite paper. It was a breakthrough this problem, nitroglycerine was in its time. Before French used in mining even before a photographer Louis way was found to make it safe. Blanquart-Évrard invented it in about 1850, prints were made by Fox Talbot’s original process (✷ see page 132). The new paper, with its glossy coating of egg white, gave much richer, sharper results. electricAl nAture of nerve Laws of Mechanical Keys used impulses Emil Du Bois-Reymond thermodynamics equivalent of to make a invented this “frog pistol.” He put a contact with frog’s leg inside the tube and formed 1849 heat the nerve a contact with the nerve ends, which ends in the made the leg muscles contract. William Thomson, 1849 frog’s leg Rudolf Clausius Electrical James Joule Speed of nerve nature of nerve The first law of impulses thermodynamics is just Steam engines showed that impulses conservation of energy (✷ see heat could turn into work. 1850 page 135). The second is: heat Could the opposite be true? 1849 energy flows only from hot to When British physicist James Hermann von Helmholtz cold. The consequences are Joule announced in 1847 that Emil Du Bois-Reymond surprising. For example, a glass he had warmed water simply By 1849, scientists knew of cold water contains more by stirring it, nobody believed that nerve impulses were German physiologist Emil heat than a teaspoonful of him. After a further two years’ electrical, making it possible Du Bois-Reymond knew boiling water (even though the work, Joule submitted a paper to measure their speed. The there was something electrical boiling water has a higher to the Royal Society called On German scientist Hermann von about animals when a fish gave temperature) because there is the Mechanical Equivalent of Helmholtz quickly invented the him an electric shock. In 1849, more of it. But the second law Heat, which was accepted. It necessary equipment. In 1850, he discovered that when nerves prevents this heat from doing stated exactly how much heat his new “myograph” showed were stimulated electrical waves any work. Several scientists was produced by a given that nerves were quicker than traveled along them. Du Bois- worked on this idea from amount of work. The unit of most other things biological. Reymond realized that far from 1824 onward. William energy now bears his name. He saw impulses zipping along being channels for “animal Thomson coined the term at about 60 mph (100 km/h). spirits”, as some people had “thermodynamics” in 1849 and thought, nerves were more like Rudolf Clausius published the telegraph wires delivering laws in 1850. Since then, two messages around the body. more have been added. 1848 Revolution sweeps Transylvanians demand greater 1849 The British writer David Copperfield. The story of a Europe as French, political rights, better Charles Dickens young man betrayed by his Germans, Italians, Poles, Czechs, government, and, where starts serial publication of what stepfather earns Dickens the Slovaks, Hungarians, Danes, and necessary, national independence. he considers his best novel, amazing sum of £7000 ($34,000). 137

cscoienncte traokesl The laTe 19Th cenTury saw the rise of totally new industries that could not have existed without science. Plastics, synthetic fabrics, electric light, telephones, sound recording, popular photography, cars, and radio were just a few of the inventions that would eventually transform people’s lives. 138

Mechanism of Wet-plate photogRaphy 1851 – 1900 the inner ear Roving photographers had to carry all these Wet-plate 1851 bottles of photography chemicals Alfonso Corti – and a 1851 darkroom. Buried deep inside the ear Frederick Archer is the organ of Corti, a RefRigeRatoR The US delicate mechanism that turns General Electric “monitor top” Although calotypes could sound into nerve impulses. It refrigerator of 1934 had its be reprinted, their paper was first described in 1851 by compressor mounted on top. negatives were grainy (✷ see Italian anatomist Alfonso page 133). In 1851, British Corti. It contains thousands of a 220 ft (67 m) wire inside a one way to refrigerate is to sculptor Frederick Archer tiny hairs, which brush against tall building in Paris, forming compress a gas, let it cool, then made the first transparent a membrane suspended in a large pendulum. As it swung lower its pressure to cool it still negatives by coating glass fluid. When sound waves back and forth, it appeared to more. The cold gas can then with a light-sensitive cellulose shake the fluid, the membrane be turning gradually, but it was cool other objects. US doctor solution. The new plates ripples against the hairs, actually Earth turning beneath John Gorrie found that he produced clearer pictures than making nerve cells attached to it. Foucault’s pendulum is a could produce cold air to cool their predecessors, and needed them send signals to the brain. popular science exhibit today. feverish patients in this way, shorter exposures, but they had and patented a refrigerator to be exposed while wet and Prefabricated Refrigerator based on this principle in developed immediately. The building 1851. Eight years later, French results were so good that 1851 inventor Ferdinand Carré photographers did not mind, 1851 developed a refrigerator more and “wet plates” quickly John Gorrie, like those we use today. These replaced the earlier processes. Joseph Paxton Ferdinand Carré use a working fluid that changes from liquid to gas Airship In 1851, British gardener Gases get hot when they when it expands. This makes it Joseph Paxton created the are compressed and cool absorb even more heat from 1852 first large building made from down when they expand. So inside the fridge. prefabricated components. The Henri Giffard Crystal Palace was built to house the Great Exhibition in French engineer Henri London. The spectacular glass Giffard’s airship was the and iron structure was 1,848 ft first successful powered flying (563 m) long, 108 ft (33 m) machine. As in all airships, lift high and 408 ft (124 m) at its came from a light gas, in this widest point. It went up in just case hydrogen, so its three- six months. Paxton’s secret was horsepower steam engine had the repeated use of basic parts only to push it along. Choosing that slotted together like a a dead calm day, Giffard piloted construction kit. the 144 ft (44 m) cigar-shaped craft over Paris at a speed of Foucault’s 6 mph (10 km/h) for 20 miles pendulum (30 km). It would be years before airships could cope with 1851 windy conditions. Jean Foucault Although early 19th-century scientists knew that the Earth must rotate on its axis, they had no direct proof. Then, in 1851, French physicist Jean Foucault hung a heavy ball on 1851 At La Fenice Theatre his 17th opera. It is a big step 1852 One of Europe’s Brooklyn, New York, and fed in Venice, Italian forward in the development of most common birds, partly by grain spilled by horses, opera, with music and the house sparrow, is introduced the newcomer will cover the composer Guiseppe Verdi sees storytelling cleverly intertwined. into the US. Arriving in continent within a century. the first performance of Rigoletto, 139

Science takeS control Plunger Hypodermic Boolean algebra with screw syringe This Gyroscope fearsome syringe of 1854 thread the Pravaz type was 1852 made in France. George Boole to lift, stabilize, Jean Foucault and control a fixed-wing Hypodermic Today’s computers owe a lot machine. Realizing that syringe to someone whose only Awheel that is spinning no existing engine could math teaching came from a resists changes in the power an airplane, he 1853 shoe repairer – his father. direction of its axis. Jean stuck to gliders. In George Boole had to learn the Foucault used this fact to 1853, his coachman Charles Pravaz, rest himself, but by the age of confirm his earlier observation flew the first Alexander Wood 24 he was submitting work to of the Earth rotating beneath a manned glider serious mathematical journals. swinging pendulum (✷ see flight. Later, a The two parts of the He thought that logic should be page 139). In 1852, he young German hypodermic syringe – part of math, and in 1854 he mounted a wheel so that its named Otto the needle and the plunger published An Investigation into axis was free to point in any Lilienthal built a – were invented in 1853 the Laws of Thought. It described direction. He set it spinning series of small by two different people in what is now called Boolean and watched as it kept its gliders and two different countries. In algebra. This allows position while the Earth turned succeeded in France, surgeon Charles complicated logical statements beneath it. He called this making regular Pravaz invented a gadget to be simplified, and underlies arrangement a gyroscope, controlled flights for injecting fluid into the design of much digital meaning “something that in them. Cayley’s veins through a tube with a hardware and software. makes rotation visible.” and Lilienthal’s blade inside it. In Scotland, work established physician Alexander Wood Can-opener Bloomers the basics of invented the hollow needle aircraft design. and adapted Pravaz’s device 1855 c 1853 to go with it, forming the first hypodermic syringe. Robert Yeates Amelia Bloomer Hollow needle Safety elevator Ahammer and chisel for Pants for women were getting into cans were thought outrageous in the Bloomers The new fashion, 1853 essential kitchen tools until 19th century, which may have also known as Turkish British inventor Robert Yeates been why US reformer Amelia trousers, was worn as early as Elisha Otis invented his can-opener in Bloomer liked them. She 1849 by the actor Fanny 1855. It wasn’t very convenient advocated long, baggy pants Kemble and others, but it was Elisha Otis was working – just a sharp blade that had to gathered at the ankle as part Amelia Bloomer who gave it as a master mechanic in be stuck into the can top and of a new costume that she publicity, hence the name. a US bed factory when he worked around the rim. But the hoped would liberate invented something to diminish design became popular in the women. When she appeared a recurring nightmare. Knowing US when a canned-beef in her pants in about 1853, that people were scared of company gave it a cast-iron there was more laughter elevators, he invented a safety bull’s head and issued it free of than liberation. But within hoist with arms that shot out charge with their cans. 35 years, a new invention and grabbed the sides of the made “bloomers” seem like elevator shaft if the supporting Printing a good idea: they were cable broke. He sold the first telegraph ideal for women who safety hoist, for goods only, in wanted to ride a bike. 1853. Later, in New York City, 1855 he demonstrated its Glider effectiveness by having the David Hughes cable cut while he was in it. He 1853 installed his first passenger The first electric telegraphs safety elevator in 1857 in a allowed messages to be sent George Cayley, New York store. After his death, along a wire (✷ see page 129). Otto Lillienthal his sons, Charles and Norton, The message was given to a continued the business, and the clerk, who tapped it out in Attempts to soar like a bird name Otis is on elevators and Morse code. At the other end, came to nothing until escalators everywhere today. another clerk translated the British aristocrat George Cayley abandoned flapping wings. He worked out what was needed 1854 Florence Nightingale disease than from bullets in 1855 While exploring the enormous waterfall 355 ft arrives at a British the war they are fighting. Her Zambesi River in (108 m) high and nearly 1 mile army hospital in Turkey, where nursing services will make her Africa, Scottish missionary David (1.6 km) wide. He loyally names more soldiers are dying from famous worldwide. Livingstone discovers an it after Queen Victoria. 140

dots and dashes into words. by David Hughes, who taught Condensed 1851 – 1900 Many inventors tried to bypass music in the US. Its keyboard, milk this with “printing telegraphs” which looked a little like a children becoming ill from that sent written messages piano, sent out signals that were c 1856 infected milk. By 1856, he had directly. The first successful automatically translated and patented a process of boiling system was invented in 1855 printed at the receiving end. Gail Borden milk under vacuum, which sterilized it without spoiling its Each key Printing telegraPh In 1851, US flavor. He called it condensed sent out a Hughes’ “piano” keyboard inventor milk because, knowing nothing would have seemed quite Gail Borden about bacteria, he thought that different natural in an age without was distressed it was the removal of water that letter of the typewriters. Each key sent a made it safer to drink. differently timed pulse to a to see alphabet printer at the other end of the Aniline dye line. Good operators could The message send 30 words a minute. was recorded 1856 on paper tape Chain William Perkin and pulley drove the Until 1856, natural plant rotating extracts dominated the dye mechanism industry. This changed when a young British chemistry Heavy weight student, William Perkin, tried attached to the to make the drug quinine and pulley descended produced an intense violet dye to power the instead. Mauve was soon in machine great demand by fashionable Victorians. Many more dyes of the same type, known as aniline dyes, were to come out of different labs as Perkin’s little error turned into an industry. Transatlantic telegraph 1858 Cyrus Field, Charles Bright, William Thomson By the 1850s, there were several short underwater telegraph lines. US financier Cyrus Field wanted to go further and link the US and Britain with a cable across the Atlantic. He recruited several brilliant engineers and scientists, including Charles Bright and William Thomson. After heroic efforts, a cable was laid in 1858 to great rejoicing on both sides. There were problems, including poor insulation, which made the cable fail within weeks, but it proved that the idea worked. A permanent link between the two countries was finally established in 1866. 1858 In Australia, and South Australia. The system 1858 The third and final government for years to keep voting slips and will be adopted in Britain in Seminole war ends. their native lands in Florida. ballot boxes appear as the first 1872 and in the USA after the Led by chief Oceola, the Ultimately, the tribe will be secret ballots are held in Victoria 1884 presidential elections. Seminole tribe has fought the US forced to relocate in the West. 141

Science takeS control Although Lenoir’s engines did Machine supported not produce much power, he by the cow itself Evolution by sold hundreds of them in natural selection France and Britain. The machine was operated 1859 Lead–acid manually battery Charles Darwin Milking Machine 1859 This Danish milking In 1859, Charles Darwin, the machine of 1892 son of a doctor, published a Gaston Planté demanded a very book that shook the world. On patient animal. the Origin of Species presented Even the latest cars rely on a evidence that animals and very old type of battery. plants were not created as we French physicist Gaston Planté see them today, but evolved knew that electrodes of lead from earlier forms and are still and lead oxide immersed in evolving. Darwin’s theory was sulfuric acid formed a based on what he called natural rechargeable cell. Realizing that selection. Every member of a this would deliver more current species is slightly different. than existing cells, he Darwin said that the members developed it into a practical with differences that make battery in 1859. Commercial them more able to compete are versions were ready just in more likely to survive and pass time for the first cars. on these useful differences to their offspring. (✷ See also Arguing about apes.) Light from Parallel beam of Prism separates Telescope source light produced light into its to view the enters here spectrum spectrum in here Spectroscope Gas engine Oil well 1859 1859 1859 Robert Bunsen, Étienne Lenoir Edwin Drake, George Bissell Gustav Kirchhoff Burning an engine’s fuel People originally used Each element, when made inside it rather than in a petroleum only for lighting hot enough, gives out light boiler promised a smaller, more and medicinal purposes. They at wavelengths that identify it efficient machine. But the first collected it as it oozed out of like a fingerprint identifies a successful engine of this type a soft rock called shale. One person. The spectroscope was not particularly small and of the best places for this was reveals these as lines that can be certainly not very efficient. Titusville, Pennsylvania, photographed and measured. It Invented by French engineer There in 1859, Edwin Drake Étienne Lenoir in 1859, it persuaded landowner was invented in 1859 by was basically a steam engine George Bissell to let him German chemist converted to run on gas. Its try drilling for oil instead Robert single piston sucked a mixture of just waiting for it to of gas and air into a cylinder. emerge. Only 69 ft (21 m) SpectroScope This 19th- A spark then lit the mixture down he struck lucky, century instrument, based on to push the piston out again. creating the world’s first oil Bunsen’s and Kirchoff’s well and the industry that design, used a prism to split would make the US rich. light into its colours. 1859 A clock with a huge Parliament. The sound of Big Ben 1859 Rights such as self- take for granted, are defended by bell known as Big will become known all around expression, privacy, Ben is installed in St. Stephen’s the world when the BBC begins and the rights of minorities, British philosopher John Stuart tower at London’s Houses of to broadcast it 65 years later. which future generations will Mill in his essay On Liberty. It will influence many people. 142

1851 – 1900 Bunsen and physicist Gustav chambers. Air to feed the cloth with layers of a substance area, which helps us to find the Kirchhoff. The two scientists flame is drawn through these containing linseed oil and other right words. It was identified used their new instrument to chambers to preheat it. This ingredients. This slowly reacted by French surgeon and compare lines from the Sun saves fuel and also allows the with air to form a thick, resilient anthropologist Paul Broca in with those from elements on flame to be made hot enough coating. Linoleum is still used 1861. He studied people with Earth, giving the first analysis to melt steel. in areas that get heavy wear. injuries that made them speak of the Sun’s atmosphere. hesitantly, but did not stop Linoleum Speech centre them from understanding what Milking machine in the brain people said. He usually found c 1861 damage to an area in the front 1860 1861 left of the brain. It was the first Frederick Walton time that anyone had identified L. O. Colvin Paul Broca a part of the brain with a Linoleum, invented by particular job. Other scientists, The first successful milking British rubber manufacturer Whenever we talk, certain notably the German neurologist machine was patented by Frederick Walton, in about parts of our brain, Carl Wernicke, later found US engineer L. O. Colvin in 1861, was the first successful mostly on the left side, go into areas near Broca’s that were 1860. Its big disadvantage was smooth floor covering. Walton action. One of them is Broca’s associated with other aspects of that it applied a constant originally made it by coating speech and language. vacuum to suck out the milk, which could damage the cow’s ARGUING ABOUT APES udder. It was 1889 before Scottish engineer Alexander Although most scientists accepted Shields introduced the modern Darwin’s theory, the public and most type of machine, which sucks of the Church were not so happy. As intermittently like a calf. well as contradicting religious beliefs, the theory implied that living Open-hearth creatures were ruled entirely by process for physical laws. Worse still, it seemed making steel to treat people as animals descended from apes. Fortunately for Darwin, 1861 who was a shy man, his friend, the naturalist Thomas Huxley, positively enjoyed speaking up for him in the great debate. William Siemens, Life before Darwin In 1874, when this cartoon was published, the idea of Pierre Martin Most people thought species were fixed, people having apes for ancestors still seemed strange. or replaced occasionally by God. Some The open-hearth process scientists had proposed theories of new forms of Darwinism was once the most evolution: Jean Lamarck thought that Darwin’s theory fits well with modern genetics, important way of making steel. animals could pass on changes that but not all scientists accept it completely. The It was invented by German- happened to them during their lives. renowned US geologist Stephen Jay Gould says British engineer William How Darwin got His iDeas that it fails to explain the way species have Siemens in 1861 and perfected Darwin saw that finches on various Pacific evolved in jumps, rather than smoothly. by French engineer Pierre islands were different. He also looked at the Martin. It works by blowing a fossil record. The idea of natural selection very hot flame on to a mixture came to him after he read an essay by the of steel scrap and molten iron naturalist Thomas Malthus. Malthus said from a blast furnace, held in a that animals compete to survive, and shallow, brick-lined bath. This Darwin realized that competition could melts the steel and burns out explain why animals change. excess carbon from the iron. The hot gases from the hearth are used to heat brick-lined 1861 The tiny principality 46 years of rule by Sardinia. Its 1861 On March 17, after proclaimed by a parliament of Monaco, just east only city, Monte Carlo, opens years of struggle, assembled in Turin. Rome and of Nice in the south of France, what will rapidly become the the Kingdom of Italy, with Victor Venice, still occupied by foreign regains its independence after world’s best known casino. Emmanuel II as its king, is troops, are not part of it. 143

Science takeS control Yale lock This of things by studying the light American, James Plimpton. lock has been cut in they give out when hot. One of He started a US and British Yale lock half to show how the things he studied was very craze for roller skating, which the key moves the hot – the Sun. By comparing is still popular today. 1861 tumblers to the right its light with light given out height so that the Underground Linus Yale inner cylinder can by hydrogen in his railroad be turned. laboratory, he was able The Yale is probably the to show in 1862 that 1863 most widely used type of Solar the Sun’s atmosphere lock. It was invented in the US hydrogen contains hydrogen. John Fowler in 1861, and is based on a principle known to the ancient 1862 Roller- Traffic threatened mid- Egyptians: several pins stop the skates 19th-century cities with lock from moving until the Anders Ångström death by choking. London right key pushes them all into 1863 fought back in 1863 with the the right positions. Linus Yale’s The Swedish physicist world’s first underground father had designed a lock Anders Ångström was a Joseph Merlin, railroad. It wasn’t very far using this “pin tumbler” idea in pioneer of spectroscopy, a way James Plimpton underground: just a deep 1848, but it was Linus Yale Jr. of discovering the composition trench dug down the centre of who perfected the compact The first person to skate the street and roofed over so revolving barrel and flat key Plaque without ice may have been that traffic could run above it. that is used today. Joseph Merlin, who lived in Despite fumes from its steam the 18th century in what is locomotives, the Metropolitan Parkesine now Belgium. But his skates Railway, engineered by John seem to have been more like Fowler, was a great success. 1862 in-line skates than roller skates. Electrified in 1906, the line is Four-wheeled skates were still in use today. invented in 1863 by an Dish Alexander Parkes Medallions The first plastic was based Female Head on the natural substance head of Jesus cellulose. British chemist Alexander Parkes discovered Female head that if he treated cellulose with nitric acid, dissolved it in Parkesine The first plastic did Seal Box alcohol and ether, and mixed not melt like most modern plastics, Flat disc it with pigments, it formed a but was shaped by being squeezed dough that he could mold into a mold while soft. It was not into small articles. He won a very strong, so was used only for medal for his discovery in small decorative items. 1862, and in 1866 the Parkesine Company went into business. It failed within two years, possibly because Parkes was too stingy to make his new material properly. 1863 During this year of the Emancipation Proclamation 1863 In October, soccer’s standardize the rules of the game the Civil War, and the Gettysburg Address. governing body, the and, within eight years, organize President Abraham Lincoln gives Both emphasize the importance Football Association, is founded the English championship, which his two most famous speeches, of the freedom of all men. at a meeting in London. It will will be known as the FA Cup. 144

Antiseptics Mercury Pullman 1851 – 1900 vacuum pump sleeping car 1865 Clinical 1865 1865 thermometer Ignaz Semmelweis, Joseph Lister Hermann Sprengel George Pullman, Ben Field 1866 Hungarian doctor Ignaz Early-19th-century vacuum Before air travel, it could take Thomas Allbutt Semmelweis upset his boss pumps moved air with days to travel between cities by telling medical students at pistons. But, as the pressure in the US, and people usually Nineteenth-century doctors Vienna’s maternity hospital to dropped, the pistons and had nowhere to sleep but in knew that a patient’s disinfect their hands. Although valves began to leak and their seat on the train. Builder temperature was a good guide he proved that this made giving contamination of the vacuum George Pullman realized that to their health, but until birth less dangerous, he was by lubricants became a there was a market for British physician Thomas fired in 1849. Even after 1864, problem. A German something more civilized than Allbutt invented the clinical when Louis Pasteur’s germ glassblower, Heinrich Geissler, this. Working with his friend thermometer, there was no theory was accepted in France, found a solution in 1855 when Ben Field, he introduced the convenient way of measuring it. most surgeons still did not even he made use of the vacuum first railroad car with The only thermometers put on clean clothes before an that appears above the mercury comfortable beds, the Pioneer, available could take 20 minutes operation. In 1865, Scottish in a barometer. Then in 1865, in 1865. The beds were to give a reading, and some of surgeon Joseph Lister sprayed Hermann Sprengel used falling arranged like bunks, with the them were 12 in (30 cm) long. carbolic acid, a powerful germ mercury to sweep out gas lower bed doubling as a seat Allbutt reduced them to a killer, around his operating molecules, producing a high- for daytime. Pullman was soon pocket-sized instrument, which room and onto dressings, and vacuum pump, which led to running a big organization with was not only more convenient things began to change. Lister’s many further inventions, its own town, Pullman, to to handle but also worked ideas led in the end to modern, including the cathode-ray tube. house its workers. much faster. He usually put his sterile surgery. thermometer under a patient’s arm, not in their mouth. Hair slides CliniCal thermometer This Pasteurization Laws of Allbutt-type thermometer of heredity about 1880 looks very much 1865 like those used a century 1866 later. It was designed to Louis Pasteur hold its reading after Gregor Mendel removal from the Pasteurization gets its name patient. from the great French Aman and a woman, both Barrette scientist Louis Pasteur, who with brown eyes, could was the first person to show have a one-in-four chance of Flat discs that invisible organisms can producing a child with blue spoil food and cause disease. eyes. Basic genetic facts like He invented the process in this go back to the work of an 1865. It makes liquids hot Austrian monk, Gregor enough to kill any harmful Mendel. By crossing different organisms without destroying strains of peas, he discovered their food value. For example, that organisms inherit their milk can be pasteurized by characteristics in a way being heated to 145°F (63°C) governed by mathematical for 30 minutes, then quickly laws. He published his results chilled for storage. Although in 1866, but it was only in pasteurization increases food 1900 that Dutch botanist safety, some people prefer Hugo De Vries realized their untreated dairy products importance to modern biology. from disease-free cows. 1865 On Friday, April 14, performance of Our American 1865 Writing as Lewis Based on stories written for a just days after the Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Carroll, British child called Alice Liddell, and end of the Civil War, President Washington, D.C. is shot. He illustrated by John Tenniel, the Abraham Lincoln, attending a mathematician Charles Dodgson book is an immediate success. dies the following morning. publishes Alice in Wonderland. 145

leclanché cell Liquid-filled THE BUG HUNTERS glass cells just like this one remained in use well into the Others befOre Pasteur had thought that invasion 20th century. They were ideal for by invisible organisms might be responsible for powering electric door bells. decay and disease. But they had not been able to prove it, so most people believed that decaying Germs matter created life by “spontaneous generation.” Even after Pasteur, many people found it hard to 1867 believe in the invisible killers. Those who did, such as Scottish surgeon Joseph Lister and German Leclanché cell Louis Pasteur doctor Robert Koch, made great progress. 1866 In the mid 19th century, Germs before Pasteur some natural processes In 100 bc, a Roman writer declared that disease was caused by Georges Leclanché were still a mystery. What an invisible invasion. Much later, in 1684, Francesco Redi wrote turned grape juice into that spontaneous generation could not occur because “only life Modern batteries started as wine, for example? Why produces life.” In the 19th century, Italian scientist Agostino the Leclanché cell, did it sometimes go sour? Bassi showed that a disease of silkworms was caused by invented in 1866 by French French chemist Louis infection with invisible fungus spores. engineer Georges Leclanché. Pasteur proved that invisible The cell’s negative terminal was organisms were responsible. Pasteur’s leGacy a glass jar containing a zinc rod He also proved that diseases German doctor Robert Koch showed that bacteria could be in a solution of ammonium were transmitted by bred in the laboratory, and established many of the techniques chloride. A smaller pot inside microorganisms, rather than of bacteriology. By 1883, he had isolated the organisms that the jar contained manganese polluted air. The Academy of cause cholera and tuberculosis. Scientists now know that not dioxide and a carbon rod, Sciences officially accepted all bacteria are bad: we forming the positive terminal. his conclusions in 1864, and depend on many It eventually developed Pasteur was given his own microorganisms inside into today’s smaller, laboratory at France’s École our bodies to keep them dryer battery. Supérieure in 1867. His working properly. “germ” theory then began to be more widely accepted. Compound By establishing the reality microscopes of germs, Pasteur revolutionized medicine and the food industry. (✷ See also The bug hunters.) Glass beaker Silkworm Culture cocoons slide Germs This selection of equipment from Pasteur’s laboratory Pipette shows both his tools for studying germs and one of his major Bronze ink stand concerns – the health of silkworms. and ink wells 1866 The world’s first ski- made the sport possible by 1867 Russia sells Alaska to invasion. Many Americans think jumping competition inventing ski bindings. He will the US, prompted by the price of $7.2 million is too is held in Telemark, Norway. It is later ski the 200 miles (322 km) a fall in demand for furs from the high, but Alaska will prove won by Sondre Nordheim, who from Telemark to Oslo. region and the threat of British to be rich in oil. 146

1851 – 1900 Dynamite yellow region of the Sun’s Chewing gum Early competition produced some unlikely advertising, spectrum. He thought it came such as this suggestion that gum chewing was the height of fashion. 1867 from sodium, but British astronomer Norman Lockyer Air brake Chewing gum Alfred Nobel declared that it indicated an unknown element. He named 1869 1869 The dangers of nitroglycerine it with the help of chemist were brought home to Edward Frankland. George Westinghouse Thomas Adams Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel in 1864 when his Möbius strip To stop a long train, the The main ingredient of nitroglycerine factory blew up, brakes must be applied to chewing gum is chicle, a killing his younger brother. 1868 all the wheels, but how? US rubbery substance from a Determined to tame this inventor George Westinghouse Central American tree. Many otherwise useful explosive, he August Möbius found the answer in 1869 – use 19th-century inventors tried to mixed it with an absorbent air. Unlike a mechanical linkage, use it like rubber. One of them material, kieselguhr, converting German air can be taken from carriage was US photographer Thomas the dangerous liquid into a mathematician to carriage easily. Westinghouse’s Adams, who bought some from safer solid, which he patented August Möbius died system also had an important a Mexican. He failed to make in 1867 as dynamite. Ironically, without revealing his safety feature. The brakes were rubber, but he noticed that the it made him rich enough to set best-known discovery, the held in the off position by air Mexican liked chewing chicle. up the foundation that awards Möbius strip. It was found pressure and applied by In 1869, he boiled up some the Nobel peace prize. among his papers after his releasing it, so any leaks with flavorings and offered it to death in 1868. It is a simple automatically put them on. a store. Customers loved it. Paper boat strip of paper given a half-twist and then glued to form a loop, 1867 and it has weird properties. For example, it has only one edge Elisha Waters, and it is impossible to make George Waters each side of it a different color because it has only one side. In 1867, US carton maker When cut down the center, it Elisha Waters and his son opens out into a single loop George started making rowing twice the size with a double boats out of paper. They glued half-twist. Two Mobiüs strips paper over a wooden form, let zipped together form what is it dry, then varnished it. The called a Klein bottle, which has keel and other main members no edges and only one surface. were made of wood. The light, stiff boats were ideal for sports: Margarine during 1876, US crews rowing Waters boats won no fewer 1869 than 12 major races. The Waters construction technique Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés has since been reinvented in the modern fiberglass boat. Many people today prefer margarine to butter, but Helium it’s hard to believe that anybody in the Sun preferred the first margarine, a mixture of beef fat, skimmed 1868 milk, cow’s udder, and pig’s stomach. When French Pierre Janssen, inventor Hippolyte Mège- Norman Lockyer Mouriés concocted it in 1869, Napoleon III awarded him a The gas helium gets its name prize for producing the first from helios, the Greek for alternative to butter. It soon “Sun,” because that’s where it improved, and by 1885 it was first detected. In 1868, was enough of a threat to the French astronomer Pierre dairy industry for the British Janssen saw a dark line in the government to stop the use of its original name, “Butterine”. 1867 The British North and what will be Quebec and 1869 In Victoria, Australian more than 56 lb (71 kg). They America Act creates Ontario. Its government is based John Deason and get £9,534 ($36,540) for the the Dominion of Canada from on British practice and its Richard Oates dig up Australia’s find, which becomes known as New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, sovereign is the British monarch. largest gold nugget, weighing the “Welcome Stranger” nugget. 147

Science takeS control Periodic table his dynamo in 1870. It used cuffs. Unfortunately, it was an electromagnet powered by extremely flammable and Synthetic 1869 the generator itself. Several caused many accidents, so alizarin other types of dynomos it is rarely used today. Dmitry Mendeleyev already existed, but Gramme’s 1869 version went further. It had a Penny-farthing In 1866, Russian chemist highly efficient design and a bicycle Heinrich Caro, Dmitry Mendeleyev listed the new way of connecting its William Perkin elements by atomic weight. He generating coils. Gramme’s 1870 found that the list showed a dynamo gave a strong, steady In 1869, Heinrich Caro in pattern, with similar elements output, making it a much James Starley, Germany and William Perkin appearing at regular intervals, better generator. William Hillman in Britain demonstrated the or periods. He published his power of chemistry by wiping periodic table in 1869, and in Celluloid Bizarre though it looks, out an entire industry. They 1871 produced a version with with its huge front wheel both found a way to make gaps where there were breaks 1870 and tiny rear wheel, the alizarin, the active component in the pattern. He said that the penny-farthing was a serious of a natural red dye. It was one gaps represented undiscovered John Hyatt invention by leading bicycle of the few red dyes available at elements, but most chemists pioneers. British engineers the time, and thousands of did not see the importance of Celluloid was the first truly James Starley and William people earned their living this until at least 20 years later. successful plastic. Like its Hillman created it in 1870 as producing the natural substance unsuccessful predecessor a lighter alternative to existing – until the chemists got to Dynamo Parkesine (✷ see page 144), it velocipedes. The big front work. Caro beat Perkin to the was based on cellulose. Its US wheel did the same job as patent by one day, but Perkin 1870 inventor, John Hyatt, created modern gears, enabling the still made the dye in Britain, the first clear, flexible material, rider to power the bike using a cheaper method. Zénobe Gramme making possible both popular efficiently. It worked: on one photography and motion long trip, a group of penny- Celluloid Basically colourless, Electric generators were not pictures. Patented in 1870, farthing riders averaged celluloid could be made in a very effective until Belgian celluloid was also used for 46 miles (74 km) a day. variety of forms, from fake ivory engineer Zénobe Gramme built everything from dolls to shirt to mock tortoiseshell. “Ivory” “Tortoiseshell” box haircombs “Ivory” evening handbag “Mother of Marble-effect “Ivory” pearl” handbag hand mirror cigarette case Designed by French diplomat 1870 German Ferdinand de Lesseps, it provides archaeologist be just the stuff of ancient Greek “Ivory” a short cut from the Indian Heinrich Schliemann discovers legends. He finds battlements, hairpin box Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. the city of Troy, long thought to walls, and gold treasure on a mound called Hissarlik in Turkey. 1869 On November 17, after 15 years’ hard negotiating and harder digging, the Suez canal is opened. 148