Bellarmine, Robert, 1542-1621 AD. Cardinal, 1599; canonized 1930. As Cardinal Inquisitor, Bellarmine was one of the judges who sentenced Giordano Bruno (see below for Bruno) to be burned at the stake in 1600 for his "heresy" that the sun was just one of many stars with planets. In 1616, Bellarmine pressured Galileo to cease his support of the Copernican view of the solar system, which held, contrary to Ptolemaic and Church doctrine, that the Earth moved around a stationary sun (see below for Galileo). In 1623, Galileo resumed his development and presentation of Copernican theory.
Biden, Joseph Robinette, Jr., "Joe", 1942 AD -. 47th Vice President of the United States of America (2009-present), a strong supporter of railroad travel. Nicknamed "Amtrak Joe" for the 7,000+ train trips he made between Wilmington Station and Washington, DC while U. S. Senator from Delaware. Wilmington Station was renamed the Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Railroad Station in his honor in 2011.
Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600 AD. Franciscan friar, whose views that the sun was a star – along with other stars in the universe which likely had planets – and divinity resided not in an anthropomorphic deity but the Universe itself as a whole (pantheism), led to him being burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Inquisition.
Dickson, William Kennedy, 1860-1935 AD. Inventor and pioneering filmmaker. Built the kinetoscope motion picture player for Thomas Edison (see below for Edison), publicly displayed for the first time in 1893, on the basis of Edison's 1888 and 1889 preliminary patents. Also invented the kinetograph motion picture camera and perfected celluloid as a medium of film. Produced Fred Ott's Sneeze (5 seconds), the first motion picture copyrighted in the United States, for the Edison Manufacturing Company in 1894. Later, in England, Dickson produced the What the Butler Saw series, an early example of soft-core pornography.
Dvořák, Antonin Leopold, 1841-1904 AD. Czech composer, best known today for his Symphony No.9 in E Minor, From the New World – aka the New World Symphony – commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in 1893 and written while Dvořák lived at 327 East 17th Street in New York City. The symphony was immediately popular and frequently performed at The National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. The song "Goin' Home" was adapted from the symphony with lyrics added by Dvořák's student William Arms Fisher in 1922, and was recorded numerous times in the 20th century, most famously by Paul Robeson. Neil Armstrong brought a copy of the symphony along with him on the first human visit to the Moon in 1969.
Edison, Thomas Alva, 1847-1931 AD. One of the most prolific inventors in all of human history and certainly the most prolific American inventor, not only in the number of inventions (1,093 US patents), but in inventions which transformed human life. These include the phonograph, a motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, easy-to-use electric light bulb. Edison was also an intrepid businessman, and pioneered ways of commercializing and mass distributing his inventions in corporate America. You could say he was the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of his day, combined into one. Nonetheless, Edison initially missed the ultimate uses of some of his inventions, at first thinking of the phonograph as a recorder of telephone conversation (not a recorder of music) and motion pictures as providing visual images for sound recordings (rather than, in effect, bringing short stories and novels to the screen).
Ford, Henry, 1863-1947 AD. Revolutionized life and society by manufacturing, mass producing, and distributing the first affordable automobile in 1908. The Model T sold for $825 – equivalent to a little more than $20,000 today – and its price fell every year. He didn't invent but pioneered and perfected the assembly line manufacturing technique. Ford made his first automobiles – the very first was the Ford Quadricycle in 1896 – while in the employ of the Edison Illuminating Company as Chief Engineer (see above for Edison). Ford left Edison's company in August 1899 to go out on his own, but the two remained steadfast friends for life.
Galileo, Galilei, 1564-1642 AD. Astronomer and philosopher of science, his telescopic observations and treatises in support of the Copernican heliocentric model of the solar system were one of the watersheds and indeed the establishing event of the Scientific Revolution. Galileo pulled back under pressure from Cardinal Bellarmine (see above for Bellarmine) and the Inquisition in 1615. But he published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and its stinging critique of Ptolemaic astronomy in 1632, for which he was put on trial in Rome, under the auspices of Pope Urban VIII (see above for Barberini). Galileo recanted under the implied threat of torture and worse. But the Church could not call back the mass-produced printed copies of his book already in many learned places in Europe, and his theory and championing of scientific method ultimately won the day.
Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria, 150 BC??-250 AD?? The years of his birth and death are debatable – Heron pops up throughout a 400-year span of ancient history. He was a prolific inventor of devices that embodied principles and techniques that were 2,000 years ahead of their mass application in the Industrial Age. These included a toy that ran on steam power (the aeolipile) and an automated theater that utilized "phantom mirror" and persistence-of-vision effects that are the basis of our motion pictures. Many of his treatises on other inventions, and mathematics, exist just in fragments, or are known only via reference to them by later Greek, Roman, and Arabic writers. His Metrica, considered his most important mathematic work, was discovered in Istanbul in 1896.
Hypatia, 355/370?-415 AD. Daughter of Theon, who was an astronomer, mathematician, and one of the last members of the Museum in Alexandria. Hypatia likely assisted her father in his new edition of Euclid's Elements and his commentaries on Ptolemy's Almagest, but she was considered a brilliant philosopher and mathematician in her own right, and led the Neoplatonist school in Alexandria. Renowned not only for her intellect, but her beauty and eloquence, Hypatia attracted many students and admirers. Hypatia was pagan, however, and her charm and accomplishments infuriated certain Christian fanatics, who brutally murdered and mutilated her. The death is thought to mark the end of Alexandria as an intellectual center of the ancient world; it was followed by an exodus of scholars. Charles Kingsley's 1853 novel Hypatia made her a heroine of the Victorian era, and she is today regarded as the first woman to have made a significant contribution in mathematics. (Kingsley is today better known for his 1863 urban fantasy, The Water-Babies.)
Jowett, Benjamin, 1817-1893 AD. Translator of The Dialogues of Plato, in four volumes, with extensive analyses and introductions, first edition, 1871 – still the standard English translation – as well as translations of Aristotle's Politics. Declining health prevented him from completing a series of essays about the Politics. He was for 28 years a tutor, and then for 23 years Master, at Balliol College, Oxford.
Morgan, John Pierpont, "J. P.", 1837-1913 AD. Leading financier in the first decade of the 20th century in America, the "Progressive Era". Arranged for the creation of General Electric, merging Edison General Electric (see above for Edison) and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. Bankrolled Nikola Tesla's attempt to develop radio at Wardenclyffe Tower in 1900 (see below for Tesla), but withdrew support in 1903 due to the success of Marconi with less expensive equipment.
Porter, Edwin Stanton, 1870-1941 AD. The most important filmmaker in the United States in the first decade of the 20th century. Joined Edison's Manufacturing Company (see above for Edison) in 1899, soon became its head movie director, and produced nearly 300 films between then and 1915, including The Great Train Robbery (1903), which was pathbreaking in its splicing together of simultaneously occurring action shots from different places and use of close-ups. The Great Train Robbery was highly popular and established motion pictures as viable commercial entertainment.
Ptolemy, Claudius, 90-168 AD. His Almagest and related astronomical studies provided an intricate and mathematically detailed, geocentric (Earth at the center of universe) mapping of the "epicycles" of the Sun, the Moon, and the five known planets at the time (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn - Earth was not considered a planet). Ptolemy's model h
eld sway until the Copernican heliocentric (Sun at the center) model developed by Copernicus (1473-1543 AD) and supported by Galileo (see above for Galileo) and his telescopic observations. The Church strongly opposed this model and continued its opposition until the 20th century. The accuracy of Ptolemy's lunar equations, notwithstanding its incorrect geocentric premise, has been noted, though flaws in his lunar model were corrected by Copernicus.
Régnaul, Jean-Baptiste, 1754-1829 AD. French allegorical and historical painter, best known for his L'Éducation d'Achille (1782), Déscente de Croix (1789), and Socrate arrachant Alcibiade des bras de la Volupté (1791). The title of the last is frequently rendered in English as Socrates dragging Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sin, or Socrates dragging Alcibiades from the Embrace of S., and currently hangs in the Louvre.
Socrates, 470?-399 BC. No texts written by Socrates have survived or are alluded to by ancient authors; all that we know of him are from the writings of his students, mainly Plato, and a few contemporaries. Socrates taught that the pursuit of knowledge was the highest virtue, and knowledge was best obtained through continuing questioning and dialog. He was no fan of democracy – in the Phaedrus (where Socrates also condemns the written word as conveying only the "pretense of wisdom"), Socrates asks why, if we would not trust a man ignorant of horses to give us advice about horses, should we have confidence in a government composed of everyday people with no philosophic training in understanding good and evil – yet Socrates, condemned by the Athenian democracy on charges of corrupting the youth of the city with his ideas, accepted its death sentence. Indeed, waiting in prison for thirty days for the return of the priest of Apollo from Delos (no death sentences could be carried out in his absence), Socrates refused an offer of escape and refuge made by his old friend Crito. Socrates explains in the Platonic dialogue of that name that to evade the death sentence would be to put himself above the state, which as a critic of the state he had no desire to do. I. F. Stone in The Trial of Socrates (1988) argues that Socrates may also have wanted his death penalty carried out as a way of publicly shaming the democracy he hated. In any case, that was certainly the result, and more than Socrates could ever have envisioned: his death by prescribed hemlock in 399 BC redounds as one of the worst cases in history of a dissident destroyed by government, all the worse because that government was the world's first-known democracy.
Synesius of Cyrene, 370-414 AD. Student of Hypatia (see above for Hypatia) and her devoted disciple. Christian Bishop of Ptolemais, 410-414. Synesius was earlier in Athens and Constantinople. His letters to Hypatia show a deep interest in science and invention, and a profound affection for Hypatia. One of his last letters to Hypatia, written in 413, reproaches her for not writing to him, and avers that, if she had, he would be "rejoicing at your happiness". Whether or not his feelings for Hypatia were carnal, and whether or not they were consummated, is unknown.
Tesla, Nikola, 1856-1943 AD. A prolific and experimental inventor of devices (some 300 patents worldwide) using electricity, radio waves, remote control, and X-rays, most of which never attained widespread commercial success. Born in Serbia, Tesla came to New York City to work for Thomas Edison in 1884 (see above for Edison). The two soon fell out over a dispute about Edison's amount of payment for Tesla's improvement of Edison's motors and generators. Tesla resigned and the two became bitter rivals for most of Edison's and the rest of Tesla's life, to the point that Tesla wrote a scathing obituary when Edison died in 1931, criticizing Edison's "utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene" and claiming his method of invention "was inefficient in the extreme." Tesla was on the cover of Time magazine the same year. He did much of his later work at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel (see above for Astor), where he lived. Tesla achieved pop-cult status by the end of the 20th century, mostly because of his "peace ray" or death-ray weapon, which he described but never built, operating as a high-energy particle gun. In the 21st century, conspiracy theories about "weather weapons" – use of tornados, for example, as weapons – have called upon Tesla's work for support. The all-electric and ergonomically sophisticated "Telsa" automobile was named after him in 2006.
Twain, Mark (pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens), 1835-1910 AD. Celebrated American author, best known for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), a time-travel fantasy novel. He was known in the last decade of his life – the first decade of the 20th century – for strolling down Fifth Avenue in New York City, resplendent in his all-white suit.
Wells, Herbert George, "H. G." 1866-1946 AD. One of the deans or "fathers" of science fiction, along with Jules Verne. Wells' The Time Machine (1895) – his first novel, based on his short story "The Chronic Argonauts" (1888) – established time travel as a major genre of science fiction that continues and thrives to this day, as well as the appelation "time machine" as the standard way of describing a device that transports its passenger to the past or the future.
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One of the best novels I've come across this year - I liked it so much, I added it to my best first science fiction novels list. A really fine mix of ancient culture, modern-future nanotech, written by a sure hand -- Paul Levinson, author of The Silk Code and The Plot to Save Socrates
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Chronica (Sierra Waters Book 3) Page 31
