Tales of scientific innovation and merchant enterprise, from steam power and life-saving medicines to new trade partners far away, and new ways to reach them.
Alfred Bird’s wife could eat neither eggs nor yeast. So being a Victorian, Alfred put his thinking-cap on.
98
The Fleming Valve
ByClay Lane
A Victorian children’s book inspired the birth of modern electronics.
99
The Rewards of ‘Patience’
ByClay Lane
How appropriate that the comic opera ‘Patience’ should introduce the world to the results of thirty years of labour.
100
The Character of George Stephenson
BySamuel Smiles
A self-made man who never forgot his humble beginnings.
101
Edmond Halley
ByClay Lane
Edmond Halley will forever be associated with the
comet named after him, but his greatest achievement was getting Sir Isaac Newton to publish ‘Principia Mathematica’.
102
Fashionable Freedom
ByThomas Clarkson
Josiah Wedgwood’s promotional gift made Abolitionism fashionable.
