Discovery and Invention
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Discovery and Invention’
Henry Maudslay, the great engineer, had seen enough apprentices to last him a lifetime.
In 1829, artist Alexander Nasmyth tried to realise his son James’s abiding dream, an apprenticeship at Maudslay’s engineering firm in London. Presuming on a slight acquaintance, father and son presented themselves at Henry Maudslay’s home in Westminster, only to be told that apprentices had been such a disappointment that he would take no more. A guided tour of the factory was small compensation.
In 1573, Sir Francis Drake had two ambitions: to revenge himself on the Spanish, and to see with his own eyes the Pacific Ocean.
In 1567, Francis Drake had been humiliated on an English expedition against Spanish possessions around the Caribbean. Five years later he returned, seeking revenge. With the help of the Cimarrons — Africans escaped from Spanish slavers, and nursing their own grievances — he planned to snatch gold bound for the Spanish Treasury at Nombre de Dios. But first, his chaplain tells us, he had a stop to make.
Thomas Wright offers his readers a way of thinking about the enormous distances involved in any description of the solar system.
As an astronomer, Thomas Wright was particularly struck by the sheer size of the universe, “the secret Depths of Infinity, and the wonderful hidden Truths of this vast Ocean of Beings”. He often found that others, though fascinated by the solar system, had no conception of the distances involved, so he came up with this homely illustration.
Though some other sciences may seem to destroy it, astronomy restores a sense of religious awe.
Astronomer Thomas Wright approached his subject not only with passion but also with reverence. In a preface to his collection of nine ‘Letters’, in which he discussed fifteen years of observations, he told his unnamed correspondent that in common with many heroes of science and literature, he had found his religious belief deepened by studying the stars.
As a young man, surveyor Thomas Telford was a red-hot political activist who yearned for revolution, but admittedly he had read just one book on the matter.
In 1791 Norfolk-born Thomas Paine (lately of the USA), a vocal enthusiast of the French revolution, published a withering denunciation of the British constitution entitled The Rights of Man. Surveyor Thomas Telford, who was living in Shrewsbury Castle as a guest of the local MP, Sir William Pulteney, was swept away by it, and began recommending it to his friends back home in Galloway.
Man had proved spiritually unprepared for the discovery of coal, said Robert Bruère, and was poised to squander the next energy revolution too.
In 1922, Robert W. Bruère gave thanks for the enormous social and economic benefits brought by the Coal Age. Yet the benefits could have been far greater. Despite so much plenty, mankind went on living as if life were still a desperate scramble for survival in which might is right and the weakest go to the wall. When we finally realise our dream of solar energy, will we be any better prepared?