In devising ways of communicating with the right hemisphere ,RW Sperry won the 1981 Nobel Prize for medicine , by showing the right hemisphere is " indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering & reasoning, " —Roger Wolcott Sperry CALTEC
| BIOGRAPHIES |
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HISTORY
| Elizabeth | Stalin | Nelson | |
| Machiavelli | Robespierre | Lincoln | |
| Churchill | Kennedy | Franco | Boneparte |
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was queen of England from 1558 until her death in 1603. Her reign is often called the Golden Age or the Elizabethan Age because it was a time of great achievement in England. Elizabeth made the Church of England, a Protestant denomination, the country's main church. At the same time, she long avoided war with Europe's leading Roman Catholic nations. The English navy defeated a powerful Spanish fleet, and English merchants and sailors challenged the Spaniards with greater confidence throughout the world. The economy prospered, while Elizabeth's court became a centre for poets, musicians, and scholars.
Early years. Elizabeth was born at Greenwich, an estate near London. She was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth's mother was executed for treason in 1536. Henry died in 1547 and was succeeded by Elizabeth's half brother, Edward VI. Like Elizabeth, Edward had been raised a Protestant When he died in 1553, Elizabeth's half sister, Mary Tudor, became queen. Mary had been raised as a Catholic by her mother, Catherine of Aragon, and was determined to make Catholicism the state religion of England. She became known as "Bloody Mary" for her persecution of Protestants. .
Queen Mary distrusted Elizabeth, who was next in line to the throne. Elizabeth cautiously avoided any involvement in politics during Mary's rule. But Elizabeth came under suspicion in 1554, following an uprising known as Wyatt's Rebellion. The rebels tried to overthrow Mary, but failed. Elizabeth was imprisoned for a time though no evidence linking her to the plot was found. Mary died in 1558, and Elizabeth became queen.
Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth's cousin, Mary Stuart, was forced to abdicate her throne as queen of Scotland in 1567. She later fled to England, where her presence caused a great deal of uneasiness. Mary was a Catholic and heir to the English throne. Many English people feared she would try to replace Elizabeth. Several plots against Elizabeth involving Catholic nobility proved unsuccessful. In 1584, the English aristocracy formed an association to protect their queen and vowed to prevent a Catholic succession in England. In 1586, Mary was implicated in another plot against Elizabeth. Public reaction against Mary was strong. Reluctantly, Elizabeth finally agreed to Mary's execution in 1587.
The Spanish Armada. In 1586, Elizabeth sent an army to help Protestants in the Dutch Netherlands fight Spanish rule. She also encouraged English ships to raid Spanish fleets. Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and other "sea dogs" looted several Spanish ships. In 1587, Drake destroyed 30 Spanish ships in port at Cadiz. These events and the execution of Mary Stuart led King Philip II of Spain to approve an invasion of England. He assembled an armada and sent it to England in 1588. But the smaller and swifter English vessels routed the Spanish fleet. Fierce storms then wrecked many of the fleeing Spanish ships off the coasts of Ireland and Scotland. Spain's power was seriously damaged, but the war went on for 16 years.
Despite the armada's defeat, many English people still feared a Spanish invasion. But Elizabeth eased their fears in August of 1588 with a speech to soldiers assembled at Tilbury. English literature, in particular, thrived during this period. Francis Bacon composed his Essays; Christopher Marlowe wrote and staged The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus; Edmund Spenser wrote his epic poem, The Faerie Queene; and William Shakespeare wrote some of the world's greatest poetry and drama
Joseph Stalin
Stalin, Joseph (1879-1953), was dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) from 1929 until 1953. He rose from bitter poverty to become ruler of a country that covers about a sixth of the world's land area.
Stalin ruled by terror during most of his years as dictator. He allowed no one to oppose his decisions. Stalin executed or jailed most of those who had helped him rise to power because he feared they might threaten his rule. Stalin also was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet peasants who opposed his programme of collective agriculture (government control of farms). Under Stalin, the Soviet Union operated a worldwide network of Communist parties. By the time he died, Communism had spread to 11 other countries.
The Soviet people had cause to hate Stalin, and much of the world feared him. But he changed the Soviet Union from an undeveloped country into one of the world's great industrial and military powers. During World War II (1939-1945), the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States and Great Britain against Germany. However, Stalin sharply opposed and, on occasion, betrayed his allies even before World War II was over. The last years of Stalin's rule were marked by the Cold War in which many non-Communist nations banded together to halt the spread of Communism.
Stalin had little personal charm, and could be brutal to even his closest friends. He seemed unable to feel pity. He could not take criticism, and he never forgave an opponent. Few dictators have demanded such terrible sacrifices from their own people.
After Stalin became dictator, he had Soviet histories rewritten to make his role in past events appear far greater than it really was. In 1938, he helped write an official history of the Communist Party. Stalin had not played a leading part in the revolution of November 1917 (October by the old Russian calendar), which brought Communism to Russia. Lenin led this revolution, which is known as the October Revolution, and set up the world's first Communist government. But in his history, Stalin pictured himself as Lenin's chief assistant in the revolution.
Stalin died in 1953. He was honored by having his body placed beside that of Lenin in a huge tomb in Red Square in Moscow. In 1956, Nikita S. Khrushchev strongly criticized Stalin for his terrible crimes against loyal Communists. Later, in 1961, the government renamed many cities, towns, and factories that had been named after Stalin. Stalin's body was taken from the tomb and buried in a simple grave nearby.
Nelson
Nelson, Horatio (1758-1805), was Great Britain's greatest admiral and naval hero. He defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar in the greatest naval victory in British history. His victory broke France's naval power, and established Britain's rule of the seas for the rest of the 1800's.
Early life. Nelson was born at Burnham-Thorpe in Norfolk, on Sept. 29, 1758. His father was rector of the local church, and his mother was a member of the famous Walpole family. Nelson was a small, frail child. But he fell in love with the sea early in life, and made up his mind to be a sailor. He spent much time piloting small boats on the river near his home. When he was 12 years old, his uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, planned a voyage to the Falkland Islands. Nelson begged his family for permission to go along, and was finally allowed to do so. He owed much of his early training to Captain Suckling, who transferred him from time to time to ships engaged in different types of service. Suckling also encouraged him to study navigation and to practise sailing.
Joins the Navy. At the age of 15, Nelson went aboard the Carcass as a coxswain. He served on that vessel in an expedition to the Arctic seas. On his return, he was sent to the East Indies on the Seahorse. On the East Indies voyage he caught a fever that seriously damaged his health. But he became a lieutenant in the Royal Navy at 18.
In 1779, when not yet 21, he was given command of the frigate Hinchinbrook. He was known as a capable officer. His professional ability and his talent for getting along with his men helped him to rise rapidly in the service. A cruise to Central America brought on a second tropical illness and Nelson was sent home in feeble health.
He was given duty on the North Sea as soon as he recovered from the fever. He was then assigned to service in Canadian waters and developed a great fondness for Canada, where the climate strengthened his health. Nelson was given command of the frigate Boreas, which was stationed in the West Indies in 1784. He spent three years there.
Nelson married the widow of Josiah Nisbet, an English doctor, in the West Indies in 1787. Prince William, who later became King William IV of England, gave the bride away at the wedding. Nelson was recalled from active service soon afterward. He remained on the retired list until soon after the outbreak of war with France in 1793.
Wounded at Calvi. In 1793, he was placed in command of the Agamemnon and sailed to join the Mediterranean fleet. This voyage began seven years of almost continual warfare at sea. Nelson was one of the British commanders who blockaded Toulon and captured Corsica. He was wounded at Calvi, on the Corsican coast, and lost the sight of his right eye.
Nelson next distinguished himself at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797. He served under Admiral Sir John Jervis, who defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets. Nelson was made a Knight of the Bath for his part in this victory. He had become a rear admiral a week before the battle. A few months later, Nelson led a small landing party in an attack on the strongly fortified port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The attack was a bold gamble, but unlike others, it failed. The British were driven off with heavy losses and Nelson's right arm was badly mangled up to the elbow. The arm had to be cut off in a crude amputation in a pitching boat, and Nelson was invalided home to England in great pain. But he soon returned to duty.
Battle of the Nile. Napoleon, victorious in Europe, began to gather a French fleet for an expedition to conquer Egypt. Nelson was sent to watch the French ships at Toulon. A storm came up, and under its cover the French fleet escaped. Nelson followed it in a long and tiresome pursuit. He finally cornered the French fleet in Abu Qir Bay. There he attacked and almost destroyed it on Aug. 1, 1798. This engagement is known to history as the Battle of the Nile. It cut off Napoleon's army in Egypt and ruined his Egyptian campaign. Napoleon was forced to desert his army in Egypt, and had to sneak across the Mediterranean in a tiny ship. The victory over Napoleon in the Battle of the Nile made Nelson famous. He was made Baron of the Nile and given a large sum of money by the state.
Nelson was wounded again in this battle, and he went to Naples to recover. Lady Emma Hamilton, wife of Sir William Hamilton, the British Ambassador to Naples, fell in love with the battered, one-eyed, one-armed naval hero and became his mistress. Her influence over Nelson became so great that he disobeyed his orders to leave Naples and join a squadron in the Mediterranean. It was Nelson's good fortune that no British defeat resulted from his refusal to leave Naples. Nelson was condemned for his conduct, however, when he returned to England.
Battle of Copenhagen. Nelson became a vice-admiral in 1801, and sailed for Copenhagen in the squadron of Admiral Parker. Great Britain had claimed the right to search neutral ships for contraband of war. Denmark refused to allow its ships to be searched. A council of war chose Nelson to make the attack on the Danish fleet. Admiral Parker later became doubtful of the outcome. He signaled Nelson to retire. Nelson clapped his telescope to his blind eye and studied the signal. "I really do not see the signal," he said to an aide. He ignored the order and turned what might have been a defeat into a great victory. After the battle, Nelson was given the title of viscount.
Victory at Trafalgar. Nelson was made commander in chief of the fleet in May 1803. Sailing on the flagship Victory, he once more went in search of the French. He found the fleet at Toulon, but it slipped away from him. Nelson chased the French to the West Indies and back. It was more than two years before he was able to bring the French fleet to battle off Cape Trafalgar on the coast of Spain, on Oct. 21, 1805 (see TRAFALGAR, BATTLE OF). Nelson hoisted his famous signal, "England expects that every man will do his duty." With only 27 vessels, he attacked the combined French and Spanish fleets. One of the great naval battles of all time followed. Napoleon's fleet, which had a total of 33 warships, was destroyed. Nelson was wounded at the height of the battle. He was carried below with a bullet embedded in his spine. Nelson died during the battle, but he lived long enough to know that the British fleet had defeated the French and Spanish fleets. Nelson's last words were, "Thank God I have done my duty."
One of Nelson's great characteristics as a commander was his willingness to give full credit to his officers and men. After the Battle of Copenhagen, he refused an honour given him by the City of London because he alone was to be honoured. Nelson replied, "Never till the City of London thinks justly of the merits of my brave companions of the second of April can I, their commander, receive any attention from the City of London." The poet Robert Southey wrote of Nelson, "England has had many heroes. But never one who so entirely possessed the love of his fellow countrymen. All men knew that his heart was as humane as it was fearless ... that with perfect and entire devotion he served his country with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength."
Nelson is perhaps best remembered today by the members of the British Navy. He was a fighter. "I am of the opinion that the boldest measures are the safest," he once said. Nelson's frail body housed a great spirit. He was able to inspire men with his own courage and confidence. Nelson is a symbol of the United Kingdom's navy.
Machiavelli
Machiavelli viewed the state as an organism with its ruler as the head and its people as the body. He maintained that a healthy state is unified, orderly, and in balance, and that its people have happiness, honor, strength, and security. But an unhealthy state is disorderly and unbalanced, and may require strong measures to restore it to normal.
Machiavelli called for a leader to use any means necessary to preserve the state, resorting to cruelty, deception, and force if nothing else worked. As a result, many people thought he supported the use of cruelty and deceit in politics. The word Machiavellian came to mean cunning and unscrupulous.
Machiavelli explained most of his ideas in The Prince, his best-known book, which was written in 1513 and published in 1532. This book describes the methods by which a strong ruler might gain power and keep their country strong. Machiavelli's other works include Discourses upon the First Ten Books of Livy (1517 or 1518) and The Art of War (1520 or 1521). He also wrote plays and poems.
Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy. In 1498, he was appointed secretary of the second highest governing body in the Florentine republic. His duties consisted mainly of conducting diplomatic missions. He also organized a militia for the republic. In 1512, the republic collapsed. The Medici family, which had ruled Florence earlier, was then restored to power. Machiavelli was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned on suspicion of plotting against Medici rule, but he was released after less than a year.
Robespeirre
RobespierreRobespierre (1758-1794) was the most famous and controversial leader of the French Revolution (1789-1799). In the name of democracy, he helped bring about the Reign of Terror, a period in which thousands of suspected opponents of the revolution were executed. In time, Robespierre met the same fate.
Maximilien Robespierre was born in Arras, France. He studied at the College of Louis-le-Grand in Paris and later became a successful lawyer. Robespierre was greatly influenced by the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who argued that the right to govern came from the people.
In 1789, Robespierre was elected to the Estates-General, an assembly that the king called to deal with a financial crisis in France. There, he distinguished himself as a spokesman for the principle of equality and the rights of the common people. He wanted voting rights extended to all the people, including Protestants, Jews, and free blacks of the French colonies. Robespierre was a leader of the Jacobin Club of Paris, a radical political group. By 1792, most Jacobins wanted a democratic republic instead of a constitutional monarchy.
Revolutionary leader. In August 1792, the people of Paris took custody of King Louis XVI and his family and imprisoned them. Soon afterward, Robespierre was elected to the National Convention, a national assembly established to take over the government of France. The Convention declared France a republic, placed Louis XVI on trial, and sentenced him to death as a traitor. Robespierre then led an attack in the Convention against moderate deputies known as the Girondists. He and his followers expelled the Girondists in June 1793 and took control of the Convention.
In July 1793, Robespierre was elected to the Committee of Public Safety, the Convention's governing body. He stressed the republic's need for a single centre of opinion and viewed disagreement with the committee's policies as treachery. His speeches justified the Reign of Terror to defend and "purify" the revolution. By the end of July 1794, about 17,000 rebels and suspected "enemies of the republic" had been executed, including Robespierre's one-time friend and fellow deputy, Georges Danton.
His death and role. As a result of his policies, many members of the Convention became Robespierre's enemies. They feared for their lives and organized a plot against him. On July 26, 1794, Robespierre seemed to call for an end to the use of terror, but he also threatened unnamed deputies. The next day, a group of his opponents persuaded the Convention to order his arrest. The Convention sentenced him to die on the guillotine. He was executed on July 28, 1794.
Today, historians still argue over Robespierre's role. Some scholars regard him as cold-blooded, fanatical, and self-righteous. Others view him as "The Incorruptible," a totally dedicated patriot and democrat.
Lincoln
Abe Lincoln - was born on Feb. 12, 1809Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865), was president of the United States from 1861 to 1865. He led the United States during the American Civil War, which was the greatest crisis in U.S. history. He helped preserve the American Union and helped end slavery in America.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and his many other speeches and writings are classic statements of democratic beliefs and goals. His nobility of character won him worldwide appeal. Many have regarded Lincoln as the greatest person in U.S. history.
Lincoln was the first Republican to become president. He was also the first president to be assassinated.
In 1834, a lawyer called John Stuart urged Lincoln to study law. Lincoln borrowed law books from Stuart and studied them. He sometimes walked the 32 kilometres from New Salem to Stuart's office for books. In 1836, Lincoln embarked on a highly successful career as a lawyer based in the Illinois state capital of Springfield. He eventually founded his own firm in 1846. Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in 1842.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise. It provided that the settlers of new territories should decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery. Lincoln considered that the Kansas-Nebraska Act gave new life to slavery, and it outraged him.
Lincoln as president. On Dec. 20, 1860, South Carolina withdrew from the Union of American States by passing an Ordinance of Secession. By the time Lincoln took up the presidency, six other Southern States had withdrawn from the Union. Four more states followed later. The seceded states organized themselves into the Confederate States of America.
The Civil War. In April 1861, Confederate troops captured the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. This signalled the start of the American Civil War. Lincoln met the crisis with energetic action. He called on the militia, proclaimed a blockade of Southern parts, and expanded the army. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus (a basic protection against unjust detention by authorities). He also ordered the spending of government funds without waiting for approval by the Congress.
As commander in chief of the Union's army, Lincoln had to select an officer capable of organizing untrained volunteers and leading them to victory. His first four choices proved costly failures, and Union forces suffered several defeats during the first year of the war. Lincoln eventually found a general who could win battles in Ulysses S. Grant.
The Gettysburg Address. Union armies won two great victories in 1863, at the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Vicksburg, Mississippi. On Nov. 19, 1863, ceremonies were held to dedicate a cemetery on the Gettysburg battlefield. The principal speaker was Edward Everett, one of the greatest orators of his day. He spoke for two hours. Lincoln was asked to say a few words, and spoke for about two minutes. Lincoln's short Gettysburg Address, with its ringing declaration that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," is probably Lincoln's most famous speech.
In March 1864, Lincoln put General Grant in command of all the Union armies. The Union army in the east, the Army of the Potomac, started to march toward Richmond two months later. At the same time, General William Sherman began his famous march from Tennessee through Confederate Georgia to the sea.
The end of the war was clearly in sight when Lincoln took the oath of office a second time, on March 4, 1865. Grant was besieging Confederate General Robert E. Lee's weary troops at Petersburgh, Virginia. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. Under authority from Lincoln, Grant extended generous terms to Lee and his army. A great wave of joy swept the North when the fighting ended.
Assassination. On the evening of April 14, 1865, Lincoln attended a performance of the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington. A few minutes after 10 o'clock, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor of the day and a Southern sympathizer, shot the president in the head from the rear of the presidential box.
In making his escape Booth was heard to cry "Sic semper tyrannis" (Thus always to tyrants), the motto of Virginia.
Churchill - Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on Nov. 30, 1874
Churchill, Sir Winston (1874-1965), became one of the greatest statesmen in world history. Churchill reached the height of his fame as the heroic prime minister of Great Britain during World War II (1939-1945). He offered his people only "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" as they struggled to keep their freedom. Churchill was also a noted speaker, author, painter, soldier, and war reporter.
Early in World War II, Great Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany. The British people refused to give in despite the tremendous odds against them. Churchill's personal courage and his faith in victory inspired the British to "their finest hour." The mere sight of this stocky, determined man--a cigar in his mouth and two fingers raised high in a "V for victory" salute--cheered the people. Churchill seemed to be John Bull, the symbol of the British people, come to life.
Churchill not only made history, he also wrote it. As a historian, war reporter, and biographer, he showed a matchless command of the English language. In 1953, he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Yet as a schoolboy, he had been the worst student in his class. Churchill spoke as he wrote--clearly, vividly, majestically. Yet he had stuttered as a boy.
Churchill joined the armed forces in 1895 as an army lieutenant under Queen Victoria. He ended his career in 1964 as a member of the House of Commons under Queen Elizabeth II, the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Few men ever served their country so long or so well.
Young Winston, a chunky lad with a mop of red hair, had an unhappy boyhood. He talked with a stutter and lisp, and did poorly in his schoolwork. His stubbornness and high spirits annoyed everyone. In addition, his parents had little time for him. When Winston was 6 years old, his brother, John, was born. The difference in their ages prevented any real companionship. At the age of 12, Winston entered Harrow School, a leading British independent school. Throughout his school career, Winston was bottom of his class. At Harrow, however, his love of the English language began to grow. There, he said later, he "got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary English sentence ..."
In 1893, at the age of 18, Winston entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He had failed the entrance examinations twice before passing them. But he soon led his class in tactics and fortifications, the most important subjects. He graduated eighth in a class of 150. In 1895, Churchill was appointed a second lieutenant in the 4th Hussars, a proud cavalry regiment.
Between wars During the years between World Wars I and II, Churchill spent much of his spare time painting and writing. He did not begin painting until in his 40's, and surprised critics with his talent. He liked to use bold, brilliant colours. Many of Churchill's paintings have hung in the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Painting provided relaxation and pleasure, but Churchill considered writing his chief occupation after politics. In his four-volume World Crisis (1923-1929), he brilliantly recorded the history of World War I. In Marlborough, His Life and Times (1933-1938), he wrote a monumental six-volume study of his ancestor.
The Battle of Britain. After Belgium and France surrendered to Germany, Britain stood alone. A German invasion seemed certain. In a speech to the House of Commons on the day after France asked Germany for an armistice, Churchill declared: "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, 'This was their finest hour. ' "
The Germans had to defeat the Royal Air Force (RAF) before they could invade across the English Channel. In July, the German Luftwaffe (air force) began to bomb British shipping and ports. In September, the Luftwaffe began nightly raids on London. The RAF, though outnumbered, fought bravely and finally defeated the Luftwaffe. Churchill expressed the nation's gratitude to its airmen: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
While the battle raged, Churchill turned up everywhere. He defied air-raid alarms and went into the streets as the bombs fell. He toured RAF headquarters, inspected coastal defences, and visited victims of the air raids. Everywhere he went he held up two fingers in a "V for victory" salute. To the people of all the Allied nations, this simple gesture became an inspiring symbol of faith in eventual victory.
Kennedy
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917-1963), was president of the United States from 1961 to 1963. He was the youngest man ever elected president and the youngest to die in office. He was shot and killed on Nov. 22, 1963, after two years and 10 months as chief executive.
Early life. Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.A. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a self-made millionaire. John F. Kennedy graduated from Harvard University in 1940.
Several months before the United States entered World War II in 1941, Kennedy enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Late in 1942, he was assigned to a patrol torpedo (PT) boat squadron and later learned to command one of the small craft. During his naval service in the South Pacific, Kennedy received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.
Kennedy's administration (1961-1963). The New Frontier was the name Kennedy gave to his legislative programme. In April 1961, the legislators approved aid to economically depressed areas. In September 1962, Congress passed the President's Trade Expansion Act. The act gave the president wide powers to cut tariffs so the United States could trade freely with the European Common Market.
One of the most successful of Kennedy's programmes was the U.S. Peace Corps. It was launched by executive order in March 1961, and was later authorized by Congress. The corps sent thousands of Americans abroad to help developing nations raise their standards of living.
Civil rights. Demands for equal rights for blacks became the major domestic issue during the Kennedy administration. From 1961 to 1963, racial protests and demonstrations took place in all parts of the United States. To meet the growing demands of blacks, Kennedy asked Congress to pass legislation requiring hotels, motels, and restaurants to admit customers regardless of race. The president also asked Congress to grant the attorney general authority to begin court suits to desegregate schools on behalf of private citizens.
Cuba. On April 17, 1961, Cuban rebels, with U.S. help, invaded their homeland to overthrow Fidel Castro, the Communist-supported dictator. The assault ended in disaster. Kennedy accepted blame for this ill-fated Bay of Pigs Invasion. Another Cuban crisis erupted in October 1962, when the United States learned that the Soviet Union had installed missiles in Cuba capable of striking U.S. cities. Kennedy ordered the U.S. Navy to quarantine (blockade) Cuba. Navy ships were ordered to turn back ships delivering Soviet missiles to Cuba. For a week, war seemed likely. Then, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev ordered all Soviet offensive missiles removed. The president then lifted the quarantine.
Berlin. In 1961, the Soviet Union threatened to give Communist East Germany control over the West's air and land supply routes to Berlin. The threat was part of a Soviet effort to end the combined American, British, and French control of West Berlin, begun when World War II ended. The Western nations opposed any threat to the freedom of West Berlin.
In June 1961, Kennedy discussed Berlin with Khrushchev at a two-day meeting in Vienna, Austria. Nothing was settled, and the crisis deepened. Both countries increased their military strength. In August, the East Germans built a wall between East and West Berlin to prevent people from fleeing to the West. Kennedy called up about 145,000 members of the U.S. National Guard and reservists to strengthen U.S. military defence.
Southeast Asia continued to be a trouble spot. Kennedy sent U.S. military advisers there in 1961 and 1962 when Communist guerrillas threatened South Vietnam and Thailand. Kennedy also sent advisers to Laos.
Disarmament. In July 1963, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed a treaty banning the testing of atomic weapons in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. Testing was permitted underground. The treaty avoided the issue of internal inspections, which had deadlocked previous negotiations. Many countries that had no atomic weapons also signed the treaty.
Kennedy's assassination. Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin on Nov. 22, 1963, as he rode through the streets of Dallas, Texas, in an open car.
Franco
FrancoFranco, Francisco (1892-1975), was dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. He came to power at the end of the Spanish Civil War. During that war, he led the rebel Nationalist Army to victory over the Loyalist (Republican) forces. After the war ended in 1939, Franco held complete control of Spain. His regime was similar to a Fascist dictatorship. He carried out the functions of chief of state, prime minister, commander in chief, and leader of the Falange, the only political party permitted
His early life. Franco was born Francisco Franco Bahamonde in El Ferrol del Caudillo, in the province of La Coruna, Spain. His father was a naval officer. Young Franco was trained as an army officer at the Infantry Academy of Toledo. Between 1912 and 1927, he held important command posts in Spanish Morocco. He was made a general at the age of 34.
In 1931, Spain became a republic. During the next five years, disputes involving Spanish political groups became increasingly severe. At first, Franco avoided becoming involved in the disputes. But when the moderate conservatives won the election of 1933, Franco became identified with them. In 1934, Franco helped put down a revolt by leftists, who wanted sweeping changes in Spain's way of life. In 1935, he became army chief of staff. The following year, the leftists won the election and sent Franco to a post in the Canary Islands.
Military leaders plotted to overthrow the leftist government in 1936. The revolt began in July 1936 and it started a total civil war. The rebel generals named Franco commander in chief and dictator. Franco's forces, called Nationalists, received strong support from Italy and Germany. On April 1, 1939, after 32 months of bitter fighting, the Nationalists gained complete victory. Franco then became dictator without opposition.
As dictator, Franco kept Spain officially neutral during World War II. But he sent "volunteers" to help Germany fight the Soviet Union. After the war, the victorious Allies would have little to do with Spain because of Franco's pro-Fascist policies.
The Western powers became more friendly toward Franco during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, because he was against Communism. In 1953, Franco signed an agreement with the United States. He permitted the United States to build air and naval bases in Spain in exchange for economic and military aid. This aid helped bring about industrial expansion. Spain's living standard rose dramatically during the 1960's.
Napolean Boneparte - Napoleon was born on Aug. 15, 1769
Napoleon I (1769-1821), also known as Napoleon Bonaparte, crowned himself emperor of France. He was the greatest military genius of his time and perhaps the greatest general in history. He created an empire that covered most of western and central Europe.
Napoleon was also an excellent administrator. He introduced many useful reforms, including the creation of a strong, efficient central government and the revision and organization of French laws into collections called codes. Many of Napoleon's reforms are evident today in the institutions of France and of areas once under French control.
Napoleon was 157 centimetres tall, about average for Frenchmen of his time, though most French generals and statesmen were taller. He earned the nickname le Petit Caporal (the little corporal) in 1796 at the Battle of Lodi, near Milan, Italy. In the battle, General Bonaparte startled his troops by personally aiming the cannon, a risky job usually performed by a corporal.
Napoleon was an inspirational and dramatic leader. He could also be cynical and demanding, though this side of his character was usually hidden from the public. In addition, Napoleon had great energy and ambition. He personally directed complex military manoeuvres and at the same time controlled France's press, police system, foreign policy, and domestic affairs. He chose capable subordinates and rewarded them generously with medals, wealth, military rank, and titles of nobility.
Napoleon's ambition ultimately led him to overextend his power. His downfall also resulted in part from feelings of nationalism in some of the areas invaded by French troops and from economic hardship brought on by Napoleon's attempts to exclude British goods from continental Europe. Other factors that contributed to his downfall included bitter reaction to the taxes and conscription (the draft) that he imposed throughout his empire, and the opposition to Napoleon of many of Europe's royal rulers.
In 1779, at the age of 9, Napoleon entered a French military school at Brienne-le-Chateau, a town in France near Troyes. Napoleon was an average student in most subjects, but he excelled in mathematics. In 1784, he was selected for the elite military academy Ecole Militaire in Paris, from which he graduated a year later.
The "whiff of grapeshot." In 1795, Napoleon was in Paris when angry mobs there tried to attack the ruling National Convention at the royal palace called the Tuileries. The mobs had been encouraged by royalists who hoped to destroy the convention before it could install a new moderate government. The convention was protected by troops under Vicomte Paul de Barras. Barras had seen Napoleon in action at Toulon and now sent for him. Napoleon defended the palace with point-blank cannon fire. This cannon fire, which became known as the "whiff of grapeshot," killed or wounded hundreds of people and quickly cleared the streets. Napoleon was hailed as a hero and promoted to major general.
In 1796, Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais, a beautiful woman of French descent from Martinique in the West Indies.
Napoleon left Paris to take command of a French army on the Italian-French border--an underfed, ill-equipped force of about 38,000 men. The Directory hoped that he could tie up Austrian forces in Italy while larger French armies won the war by marching through Germany and attacking Vienna, Austria's capital.
Instead, Napoleon won the war. In less than a year, he defeated four armies, each larger than his own. He won a final victory by marching over the Alps and threatening Vienna in early 1797. In October, France and Austria signed the Treaty of Campoformio, which enlarged France's territory. Napoleon returned to Paris, where once again he was hailed as a hero.
Military strategy. Napoleon had by now developed a highly successful military strategy that was to form the basis of his future campaigns. He would start a battle while holding back as large a reserve as possible. He would then seek the weakest point in the enemy's lines and throw all his strength against that point at the decisive moment. Napoleon had an extraordinary ability to recognize the best time to attack.
Egypt invaded. When Napoleon returned to Paris after defeating Austria, he already had political ambitions.Napoleon reached Egypt in July. There, he defeated the Mamelukes, Egypt's military rulers, in the Battle of the Pyramids near Cairo . On August 1, however, the French fleet anchored in Abu Qir Bay was destroyed in the Battle of the Nile by a British fleet commanded by Lord Horatio Nelson. As a result, Napoleon's army was stranded in Egypt. Turkey then formed an alliance with Great Britain and Russia and declared war on France.
Napoleon formed key political alliances and seized control of the French government on Nov. 9, 1799, in a bold move known as the Coup d'Etat of Eighteenth Brumaire.
The Napoleonic empire
The Peninsular War began in 1808 when Spanish and Portuguese forces rebelled against French rule. Soon after the war began, British troops joined the fight against France on the peninsula that consisted of Portugal and Spain. By April 1814, all French forces had been driven from the peninsula.
Disaster in Russia. On Dec. 31, 1810, Czar Alexander I of Russia withdrew from the Continental System. Napoleon felt that the czar's withdrawal threatened France, and so he assembled a new army to attack Russia. Many years of war had weakened France, but Napoleon raised about 600,000 men.
Napoleon pushed on to Moscow only to find the city nearly empty of people. Soon after the French army entered Moscow, large parts of the city were destroyed by fires that had been set by the retreating Russians. With the bitter Russian winter approaching, Napoleon waited in Moscow for Alexander to offer peace, but no such offer came. In mid-October, Napoleon, unable to supply his troops, began the long retreat from Moscow. His soldiers struggled against snowstorms and freezing temperatures. Soldiers and horses died of starvation and exposure. Russian soldiers called Cossacks killed many of the stragglers. Of the 600,000 men in Napoleon's army, about 500,000 died, deserted, or were captured during the campaign and the retreat from Russia.
Exile to Elba. At Fontainebleau on April 11, 1814, Napoleon abdicated (gave up) the imperial throne. The allies called for the return of a king of the Bourbon family and placed Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, on the French throne (see LOUIS). Napoleon was exiled from France and made ruler of the tiny island of Elba off the northwest coast of Italy.
The Hundred Days and Waterloo. On Elba, Napoleon planned his return to France. In February 1815, he sailed from the island with about 1,100 followers who had shared his exile. He landed at Cannes on March 1 and began marching to Paris, gathering supporters along the way. Troops led by Marshal Michel Ney were dispatched from Paris to arrest Napoleon. But when they saw their old leader, the men gladly joined him and hailed him as their emperor. Louis XVIII fled Paris as Napoleon approached. On March 20, Napoleon entered Paris and was carried on the shoulders of cheering crowds into the Tuileries.
Napoleon advanced into Belgium with about 125,000 men, hoping to defeat the separate armies of Britain's Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Marshal Gebhard von Blucher. On June 16, Napoleon defeated Blucher at Ligny, near Fleurus. On June 18, Napoleon attacked Wellington at Waterloo in what has become one of history's most famous battles. The battle featured spectacular charges by thousands of French cavalry. But just as it seemed the British forces would collapse, Blucher's troops arrived to reinforce Wellington. Badly outnumbered, the French army suffered a crushing defeat.
Napoleon fled to Paris and abdicated for the second time, on June 22. The period from Napoleon's return to Paris from Elba to his second abdication is known as the Hundred Days.
Napoleon tried to escape to the United States, but he failed and surrendered at Rochefort to Frederick Lewis Maitland, the captain of the British battleship Bellerophon. In August, Napoleon was sent to the barren British island of St. Helena, in the South Atlantic Ocean.
On St. Helena, Napoleon spent much of his remaining years dictating to friends his version of the events that occurred during his lifetime. He died of cancer on May 5, 1821, and was buried on the island.
INVENTORS
| Edison | Whittle | Nobel | |
| Marconi | Wright | Lake | |
| Jefferson | Goodyear | Franklin | Bell |
Edison
Thomas Edison was an American inventor who lived between 1847-1931. He patented 1093 inventions in his life, including the incandescent light bulb, which provided a practical means of electical lighting for every family in the U.S.
Edison also invented the phonograph, a device which records and plays back sound. He used his design for the phonograph to later develop the kinetoscope, a motion picture machine used in moviemaking.
Edison credited hard work for his success, and had experimented with 6000 different materials for the filament in his light bulb before finding one that worked. He used to say that "genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration".
Whittle
F WhittleWhittle, Sir Frank (1907-...), a British aeronautical engineer, became one of the leading pioneers in the development of the turbojet engine. His company, Powerjets, Limited, produced the Whittle engine, which powered Britain's first jet plane in 1941.
Whittle was born in Coventry, England, the son of an inventor. He entered Leamington College on a scholarship at the age of 11, and joined the Royal Air Force at 16. Whittle distinguished himself in a mechanics course and was assigned to officers' flight training. He became interested in light turbine engines and received his first patent in 1930 after the Air Ministry rejected his jet engine proposals. Whittle's basic patents lapsed in 1935 because he did not have enough money to pay patent fees. Later that year, a group of engineers became interested in his work and, with the government and Whittle, formed Powerjets, Ltd., to produce engines. Whittle was knighted in 1948.
Nobel
A NobelNobel, Alfred Bernhard (1833-1896), a Swedish chemist, invented dynamite and founded the Nobel Prizes (see NOBEL PRIZES). As a young man, Nobel experimented with nitroglycerin in his father's factory. He hoped to make this dangerous substance into a safe and useful explosive. He prepared a nitroglycerin explosive, but so many accidents occurred when it was put on the market that for a number of years many people considered Nobel almost a public enemy.
Finally, in 1867, Nobel combined nitroglycerin with an absorbent substance. This explosive could be handled and shipped safely. Nobel named it dynamite (see DYNAMITE). Within a few years, he became one of the world's richest men. He set up factories throughout the world, and bought the large Bofors armament plant in Sweden. He worked on synthetic rubber, artificial silk, and many other products.
Nobel was never in good health. In later years, he became increasingly ill and nervous. He suffered from a feeling of guilt at having created a substance that caused so much death and injury. He hated the thought that dynamite could be used in war when he had invented it for peace. Nobel set up a fund of about 9 million U.S. dollars. The interest from the fund was to be used to award annual prizes, one of which was for the most effective work in promoting international peace.
Alfred Nobel was born on Oct. 21, 1833, in Stockholm, the son of an inventor. He was educated in St. Petersburg, Russia, and later studied engineering in the United States.
Marconi
G MarconiMarconi, Guglielmo (1874-1937), was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer who gained international fame for his role in developing wireless telegraphy, or radio (see RADIO). In 1895, he sent the first telegraph signals through the air. Telegraph signals had previously been transmitted through electric wires, and so Marconi's system became known as wireless telegraphy. In 1901, Marconi transmitted the first transatlantic wireless communication. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize for physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun of Germany, who had invented a tube that improved wireless transmission. Their work helped lead to the development of radio broadcasting. Marconi also pioneered tests with short waves and microwaves.
Early life. Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy. His father was a wealthy landowner. As a child, Guglielmo was educated primarily by tutors and took a strong interest in science. He later failed the University of Bologna entrance exam and decided to pursue his scientific studies on his own.
Marconi read about the German physicist Heinrich Hertz's work with electromagnetic waves, and began experimenting with wireless telegraphy in 1894. He set up equipment in the attic of his father's estate and transmitted signals across the room. Marconi later began to experiment outdoors. Marconi found that when his transmitter and receiver were earthed (connected to earth), he could greatly extend the signal's range by increasing the aerial's height. After this discovery, he transmitted signals farther than had ever been done before.
Marconi read about the German physicist Heinrich Hertz's work with electromagnetic waves, and began experimenting with wireless telegraphy in 1894. He set up equipment in the attic of his father's estate and transmitted signals across the room. Marconi later began to experiment outdoors. Marconi found that when his transmitter and receiver were earthed (connected to earth), he could greatly extend the signal's range by increasing the aerial's height. After this discovery, he transmitted signals farther than had ever been done before.
The Italian government showed no interest in the young, unschooled inventor's work, so Marconi went to the United Kingdom. There, in 1896, he received the first patent on wireless telegraphy. Marconi also gained financial support and formed the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company, Ltd., in 1897 in London. In 1899, three British warships were fitted with Marconi's wireless equipment. That same year, he sent a wireless message across the English Channel to France. Private ships also began to use Marconi's system.
First transatlantic signal. On Dec. 12, 1901, Marconi and his staff sent the first wireless transatlantic communication in history. They transmitted the Morse code letter s from Poldhu, Cornwall, England, to St. John's, Canada. Soon afterward, Marconi's equipment enabled ships to communicate with each other and with the shore over distances as great as 3,000 kilometres.
Marconi's fame grew when his wireless equipment helped guide rescue ships to the sinking ocean liners Republic in 1909 and Titanic in 1912, saving many lives. These accidents led to laws requiring that all large passenger ships have wireless equipment.
Wright
O WrightWright brothers--Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948)--were Americans who invented and built the first successful aeroplane. On Dec. 17, 1903, they made the world's first flight in a power-driven, heavier-than-air machine near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, U.S.A. With Orville at the controls, the plane flew 37 metres and was in the air 12 seconds. The brothers made three more flights that day. The longest, by Wilbur, was 260 metres in 59 seconds.
Besides the Wrights, four men and one boy witnessed the flights. One of the men snapped a picture of the plane just as Orville piloted it into the air. Only a few newspapers mentioned the event, and their stories were inaccurate. The Wrights continued to fly from a field near their hometown of Dayton, Ohio, but local newspapers remained uninterested. The Wrights issued a statement about their achievement to the press in January 1904. It received little attention. Octave Chanute, an American civil engineer, reported their success in an article appearing in the March 1904 issue of Popular Science Monthly. The first eyewitness report of a flight by the Wrights appeared in a magazine called Gleanings in Bee Culture in January 1905.
Despite the publication of some factual and accurate stories, the Wrights' achievement was practically unknown for five years. Most people at that time remained doubtful about flying machines. In any case, the Wrights preferred to work quietly, perfecting their aeroplane and developing flight technique. They believed that aeroplanes would eventually be used to transport passengers and mail. They also hoped aeroplanes might serve to prevent war.
Early life. Wilbur Wright was born on April 16, 1867, on a farm 13 kilometres from New Castle, Indiana, and Orville Wright was born on Aug. 19, 1871, in Dayton, Ohio. Their father was a bishop of the United Brethren Church. The boys went through secondary school, but neither received a diploma. Wilbur did not bother to go to the prize giving, and Orville took special subjects rather than a prescribed course in his final year at school.
Mechanics fascinated them even in childhood. To earn pocket money they sold homemade mechanical toys. Orville started a printing business, building his own press. They later launched a weekly paper, the West Side News, with Wilbur as editor. Wilbur was 25 and Orville 21 when they began to rent out and sell bicycles. Then they began to manufacture them, assembling the machines in a room above their shop.
Flying experiments. After reading about the death of pioneer glider Otto Lilienthal in 1896, the brothers became interested in flying. They began serious reading on the subject in 1899, and soon obtained all the scientific knowledge of aeronautics then available.
On the advice of the Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service) in Washington, D.C., the Wrights selected for their experiments a narrow strip of sand called Kill Devil Hill, near the settlement of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1900, they tested their first glider that could carry a person. The glider measured 5 metres from wing tip to wing tip. They returned to Kitty Hawk in 1901 with a larger glider. They showed that they could control sideways balance by presenting the tips of the right and left wings at different angles to the wind. But neither the 1900 nor the 1901 glider had the lifting power they had counted on.
The Wrights concluded that all published tables of air pressures on curved surfaces must be wrong. They set up a 1.8-metre wind tunnel in their shop and began experiments with model wings. They tested more than 200 wing models in the tunnel. From the results of their tests, the brothers made the first reliable tables of air pressures on curved surfaces. These tables made it possible for them to design a machine that could fly.
The brothers built a third glider and took it to Kitty Hawk in the summer of 1902. This glider, based on their new figures, had aerodynamic qualities far in advance of any tried before. With it, they solved most of the problems of balance in flight. They made nearly 1,000 glides in this model, and, on some, covered distances of more than 180 metres. Their basic patent, applied for in 1903, relates to the 1902 glider.
First aeroplane. Before leaving Kitty Hawk in 1902, the brothers started planning a power aeroplane. By the autumn of 1903, they completed building the machine at a cost of less than 1,000 U.S. dollars. It had wings 12 metres long and weighed about 340 kilograms with the pilot. They designed and built their own lightweight petrol engine for the aeroplane.
The Wrights went to Kitty Hawk in September 1903, but a succession of bad storms and minor defects delayed their experiment at Kill Devil Hill until December 17. They had reason to be sure of their eventual success because their gliders had proved their aeroplane's design and control system to be sound. The brothers had also become skilled pilots. Their understanding of aerodynamics and ability as pilots set them apart from most others who tried and failed to fly powered aeroplanes.
Lake
Simon Lake Simon Lake competed with John Holland to build the first submarines for the U.S. Navy. Born in Pleasantville, New Jersey on September 4, 1866, Lake joined his father's foundry business after attending public schools in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Lake had a strong interest in undersea travel. He built his first submarine, Argonaut, in 1894 in response to an 1893 request from the Navy for a submarine torpedo boat.Neither Argonaut nor Lake's following submarine, the Protector, built in 1901, were accepted by the Navy. Protector was the first submarine to have diving planes mounted forward of the conning tower and a flat keel. Four diving planes allowed Protector to maintain depth without changing ballast levels. Protector also had a lock-out chamber for divers to leave the submarine. Lake, lacking Holland's financial backers, was unable to continue building submarines in the United States. He sold the Protector to the Russian Navy in 1904 and spent the next seven years in Europe designing submarines for the Austrian, German, and Russian navies. When he returned to the United States in 1912, he founded the Lake Torpedo Boat Company, which built 24 submarines for the U.S. Navy during and after World War I. Lake's first submarine for the U.S. Navy, G-1 set a submergence record of 256 feet in November 1912. Financial difficulties forced the Lake Torpedo Boat Company to close in the mid-1920s.
Following company closure, Lake continued designing maritime salvage systems, and advised the U.S. Navy on submarine technology and maritime salvage during World War II. By his death on June 23, 1945, Lake had witnessed the submarine's arrival as a front-line weapon in the U.S. Navy.
Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826), was the third president of the United States, holding the office from 1801 to 1809. He is also remembered as the author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was also an important architect, inventor, lawyer, and scholar.Jefferson was one of the leading American architects of his time. He designed the Virginia Capitol, the University of Virginia, and his own home, Monticello. He encouraged the advancement of art and music in the United States. In addition, he invented a decoding device, a lap desk, and an improved type of plough. His collection of more than 6,400 books became a major part of the Library of Congress. Jefferson also revised Virginia's laws and founded its state university.
In politics, Jefferson worked for freedom of speech, press, religion, and other civil liberties. He supported the addition of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution.
Early life. Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, in the British colony of Virginia. After finishing college in 1762, he studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1767. In 1775, he was chosen as one of the delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, in the colony of Pennsylvania.
Political career. During the spring of 1776, after the American Revolution began, Congress appointed a committee to draw up a declaration of independence. Jefferson wrote the draft and it was approved with few changes. Congress adopted the declaration on July 4.
In September 1776, Jefferson resigned from Congress and returned to the Virginia House of Delegates. The Virginia Assembly elected him governor for one-year terms in 1779 and 1780. In 1784, he was elected to the U.S. Congress. In May 1784, Congress sent Jefferson to France to negotiate European treaties of commerce. The next year, Jefferson succeeded Franklin as minister to France.
Jefferson returned to the United States in November 1789. He became secretary of state under President George Washington. Sharp differences soon arose between Jefferson and the secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson opposed Hamilton's plans to encourage shipping and manufacturing, and Hamilton's proposed national bank.
The differences between Jefferson and Hamilton led to the development of the first U.S. political parties. The Federalists adopted Hamilton's principles. Jefferson led the Democratic-Republicans.
In 1796, Jefferson ran for president against John Adams, the Federalist candidate. Adams was elected president. Jefferson became vice president.
The Democratic-Republicans again nominated Jefferson for president in 1800, to run against President Adams. They nominated former Senator Aaron Burr of New York for vice president. Jefferson defeated Adams, but Burr had received the same number of votes as Jefferson. Because of the voting procedures of the time, Burr was technically also a candidate for president. The House of Representatives had to settle the election, and on Feb. 17, 1801, chose Jefferson.
First administration (1801-1805). Probably the greatest achievement of Jefferson's first administration was the Louisiana Purchase. The Louisiana Territory, a vast region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, had been transferred from France to Spain in 1762. Jefferson learned in 1801 that Spain planned to cede the area back to France. In 1803, Jefferson's government reached an agreement with the French government for the purchase of the whole of Louisiana. The purchase almost doubled the country's size. See LOUISIANA PURCHASE.
Second administration (1805-1809). In 1804, Jefferson was reelected president. War had broken out between Great Britain and France in May 1803. Jefferson worked to keep the U.S. out of the war, while at the same time upholding the country's rights as a neutral.
In June 1807, the British frigate Leopard fired on an American ship, the Chesapeake, after the captain of the American vessel refused to let the British search his ship for deserters. The incident almost brought the two nations to war. Jefferson believed that he could bring the warring nations to reason by closing American markets to them, and not selling them any supplies. In 1807, he forced a law through Congress prohibiting exports from the United States and barring American ships from sailing into foreign ports. After 14 months, it became clear that the embargo was hurting the United States more than either Britain or France. Public clamour against the measure grew overwhelming, and Congress eventually repealed it in March 1809.
Later years. Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1809. He turned to the study of music, architecture, chemistry, religion, philosophy, law, and education. He also founded the University of Virginia, which opened in March 1825.
Goodyear
C Goodyear -Goodyear, Charles (1800-1860), was an American inventor. He developed vulcanization, a method of treating rubber to make it resistant to heat and cold.
Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1832, he began experimenting with a crude form of rubber, called India rubber, to find a way to make the substance useful for manufacturing. India rubber becomes brittle when cold and sticky when hot. After many experiments, Goodyear learned that sulphur helps to make rubber less sticky. In 1839, he discovered that heat is needed to cure (strengthen) a rubber-sulphur mixture. He spent the next five years improving this curing process. In 1844, he received the patent for it.
Goodyear licensed the process, later called vulcanization, to many people. But he failed to become wealthy. He spent all his money on unsuccessful businesses, costly experiments, and attempts to promote his process. He died a poor man.
Franklin
B FranklinFranklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), was an American writer, publisher, public servant, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat.
Scientist. Franklin was one of the first people to experiment with electricity. His kite experiment in 1752 proved that lightning is electricity. Later, Franklin invented the lightning conductor. See ELECTRICITY (History).
Franklin was the first scientist to study the movement of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean. He charted its course and recorded its temperature, speed, and depth. Franklin showed how to improve acid soil by using lime. He favoured daylight-saving time in summer.
A G Bell
A G Bell
Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922), a Scottish-born American inventor and educator, is best known for his invention of the telephone. Bell was 27 years old when he worked out the principle of transmitting speech electrically, and was 29 when his basic telephone patent was granted in 1876.
The telegraph had been invented before Bell's time. Signals, music, and even voicelike sounds had been transmitted electrically by wire. But human speech had never been sent by wire. Many inventors were working to accomplish this, and Bell was the first to succeed.
Bell's great invention stemmed from his keen interest in the human voice, his basic understanding of acoustics, his goal of developing an improved telegraph system, and his burning desire for fame and fortune. Bell, a teacher of the deaf, once told his family he would rather be remembered as such a teacher than as the inventor of the telephone. But the telephone was of such great importance to the world that Alexander Graham Bell's name will always be associated with it.
His early life. Bell's family background and early education had a deep influence on his career. He was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh. His mother, Elisa Grace Symonds, was a portrait painter and an accomplished musician. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, taught deaf-mutes to speak and wrote textbooks on correct speech. He invented "Visible Speech," a code of symbols that indicated the position of the throat, tongue, and lips in making sounds. These symbols helped guide the deaf in learning to speak. The boy's grandfather, Alexander Bell, also specialized in speech. He acted for several years and later gave dramatic readings from Shakespeare.
Young Alexander Graham Bell was named after his grandfather. He adopted his middle name from a friend of the family. His family and close friends called him Graham. He was a talented musician. He played by ear from infancy and received a musical education.
Bell and his two brothers assisted their father in public demonstrations of Visible Speech, beginning in 1862. Bell also enrolled as a student-teacher at Weston House, a boys' school near Edinburgh, where he taught music and speech in exchange for instruction in other subjects. He became a full-time teacher after studying for a year at the University of Edinburgh. He also studied at the University of London and used Visible Speech to teach a class of deaf children.
In 1866, Bell carried out a series of experiments to determine how vowel sounds are produced. He read a book on acoustics by the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, which described experiments in combining the notes of electrically driven tuning forks to make vowel sounds. It gave Bell the idea of "telegraphing" speech, though he had no idea of how to do it. But this was the start of Bell's interest in electricity.
Bell took charge of his father's work while the latter lectured in the United States in 1868. Bell became his father's partner in London the following year. He specialized in the anatomy of the vocal apparatus at University College, London, at the same time.
The Boston teacher. Sarah Fuller, principal of a school for the deaf in Boston Massachusetts, U.S.A., asked Melville Bell to show her teachers how to use Visible Speech in teaching deaf pupils to talk. Melville could not go but recommended his son. In 1872, young Bell opened a school for teachers of the deaf in Boston. The following year, he became a professor at Boston University.
Bell's instruction in Visible Speech and his lively mind won him many friends in Boston. One of these friends was a Boston lawyer, Gardiner Green Hubbard. Bell met Hubbard through his work with Hubbard's daughter Mabel, who as a child had been left deaf by scarlet fever. Hubbard was an outspoken critic of Western Union, the leading U.S. telegraph company. When he learned that Bell had been secretly working on improvements to the telegraph, Hubbard immediately offered him financial backing in the hope of outdoing Western Union.
Bell did not attempt to transmit speech electrically when he first began his experiments in 1872. He tried instead to send several telegraph messages over a single wire at the same time--an urgent need of the telegraph industry. In 1874, while visiting his father in Brantford, Bell developed the idea for the telephone. When he returned to Boston, Bell continued his telegraphy experiments, but always with the idea of the telephone in mind.
Bell soon found that he lacked the time and skill to make all the necessary parts for his experiments. At Hubbard's insistence, he went to an electrical instrument-making shop for help. There, Thomas A. Watson began to assist Bell. The two men became firm friends, and Watson eventually received a share in Bell's telephone patents as payment for his early work.
The telephone. During the tedious experiments that followed, Bell reasoned that it would be possible to pick up all the sounds of the human voice on the harmonic telegraph he had developed for sending multiple telegraph messages. Then, on June 2, 1875, while Bell was at one end of the line and Watson worked on the reeds of the telegraph in another room, Bell heard the sound of a plucked reed coming to him over the wire. Quickly he ran to Watson, shouting, "Watson, what did you do then? Don't change anything."
After an hour or so of plucking reeds and listening to the sounds, Bell gave his assistant instructions for making a pair of improved instruments. These instruments transmitted recognizable voice sounds, not words. Bell and Watson experimented all summer, and in September 1875, Bell began to write the specifications for his first telephone patent.
The patent was issued on March 7, 1876. Three days later, Bell transmitted human speech for the first time. Bell and Watson, in different rooms, were about to try a new type of transmitter that Bell had briefly described in his patent. Then Watson heard Bell's voice saying, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!" Bell had upset the acid of a battery over his clothes, but he quickly forgot the accident in his excitement over the success of the new transmitter.
Bell demonstrated his telephones at the American Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in June 1876. One of the judges, the Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil, was impressed by Bell's instruments. The British scientist Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) called the telephone "the most wonderful thing in America."
Bell and Watson gave many successful demonstrations of the telephone, and their work paved the way for commercial telephone service in the United States. The first telephone company, the Bell Telephone Company, came into existence on July 9, 1877. Two days later, Bell married Mabel Hubbard, and they sailed to England to introduce the telephone there. The Bells returned to the United States in 1878 and moved to Washington, D.C.
Bell did not take an active part in the telephone business. But he was frequently called upon to testify in lawsuits brought by men claiming they had invented the telephone earlier, including the American inventors Elisha Grey and Thomas Edison. Several suits reached the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court upheld Bell's rights in all the cases.
His later life. Bell lived a creative life for more than 45 years after the invention of the telephone. He gave many years of service to the deaf and produced other communication devices.
The French government awarded Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs in 1880 for his invention of the telephone. He used the money to help establish the Volta Laboratory for research, invention, and work for the deaf. There, he and his associates developed the method of making phonograph records on wax discs. The patents for the method were sold in 1886, and Bell used his share of the proceeds to establish the Volta Bureau, a branch of the laboratory, to carry on his work for the deaf. In 1890, Bell founded and financed the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (now called the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf).
Bell developed an electrical apparatus to locate bullets in the body in a vain effort to save the life of U.S. President James Garfield. President Garfield had been shot by a would-be assassin in 1881. Tests on President Garfield were unsuccessful, because the doctors failed to remove the steel springs in Garfield's bed. Bell perfected an electric probe which was used in surgery for several years before the X ray was discovered. Bell also advocated a method of locating icebergs by detecting echoes from them. He worked on methods to make fresh water from vapour in the air to aid people adrift at sea in open boats.
Bell was interested in flying throughout his life. He helped finance American scientist Samuel P. Langley's experiments with heavier-than-air flying machines and used his influence on Langley's behalf. He conducted a long series of experiments with kites capable of lifting a person into the air. These experiments tested the lifting power of plane surfaces at slow speeds. In 1907, Bell helped organize the Aerial Experiment Association, which worked to advance aviation. Bell also contributed to the establishment of the magazine Science and helped organize America's National Geographic Society.
MUSICIANS
| Mozart | Tchaikovsky | Handel | |
| Mahler | Rossini | Holst | |
| Chopin | Greig | Verdi | Berlioz |
Mozart
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791), an Austrian composer, is considered one of the greatest and most creative musical geniuses of all time. With Joseph Haydn, he was the leading composer of the classical style of the late 1700's. Mozart died before his 36th birthday, but he still left more than 600 works.
Mozart was born in Salzburg. His father, Leopold, was the leader of the local orchestra, and also wrote an important book about violin playing. At the age of 3, Wolfgang showed signs of remarkable musical talent. He learned to play the harpsichord, a keyboard instrument that preceded the piano, at the age of 4. He was composing music at 5, and when he was 6, he played for the Austrian empress at her court in Vienna.
Before he was 14, Mozart had composed many works for the harpsichord, piano, or the violin, as well as orchestral and other works. His father recognized Wolfgang's amazing talent and devoted most of his time to his son's general and musical education. While serving as his teacher, Leopold took Wolfgang on concert tours through much of Europe. Wolfgang composed, gave public performances, met many musicians, and played the organ in many churches. In 1769, like his father before him, he began working for the archbishop of Salzburg, who also ruled the province. The Mozarts often quarrelled with the archbishop, partly because Wolfgang was often absent from Salzburg. The archbishop dismissed young Mozart in 1781.
Mozart was actually glad to leave Salzburg, a small town, and preferred to seek his fortune in Vienna, one of the music capitals of Europe. By this time people took less notice of him, because he was no longer a child prodigy. But he was a brilliant performer and active as a composer.
Mozart married in 1782. He did not have a permanent job in Vienna and tried to earn a living by selling his compositions, giving public performances, and giving music lessons. None of these activities produced enough income to support his family. He even travelled to Germany for the coronation of a new emperor, but his concerts there did not attract as much attention as he hoped. He died in poverty on Dec. 5, 1791.
His works
Opera : The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787) are operas he composed with words in Italian. The Magic Flute (1791) has German words.
Symphonies : His last and most famous symphony, Number 41 (1788), is nicknamed the Jupiter.
Church : orchestra. Mozart's best-known sacred work is the Requiem (Mass for the Dead). He began it in the last year of his life and while writing it seems to have become concerned about his own death. Parts of the Requiem were composed during his final illness. He died before the work was finished.
Tchaikovsky
P TchaikovskyTchaikovsky, Peter Ilich (1840-1893), was the first Russian composer to gain international fame. He was a master of orchestration with a superb talent for blending instrumental sounds and for achieving rousing orchestral effects. He also had a remarkable gift for writing melody.
Tchaikovsky is often described as a composer of music that is basically melancholy. Some of his music is melancholy, especially the last movement of his Symphony No. 6. But he also wrote spirited music, as in Marche Slave and the "1812" overture; lyrical music, as in the symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet; lively ballet music, as in the Nutcracker Suite; and powerful symphonies.
His works. Tchaikovsky's six symphonies stand out as landmarks in his artistic development. His first three are seldom performed today. His fourth, written in 1877, is his first masterpiece in the symphonic form. Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 (1888) is his finest from the standpoint of formal construction. Symphony No. 6 (1893) is called the "Pathetique" ("Pathetic"). It departed from the traditional symphonic form by expressing a deeply emotional feeling of tragedy in the final movement. Tchaikovsky's other orchestral works include Italian Capriccio (1880), Nutcracker Suite, and four other suites.
Tchaikovsky's three ballets have become classics. They are Swan Lake (1875-1876), Sleeping Beauty (1888-1889), and The Nutcracker (1892).
Handel
Handel, George Frideric (1685-1759), was a German-born composer who is known today mainly through his musical compositions called oratorios. His famous oratorio Messiah is one of the most popular works in music. In the mid-1900's, Handel's operas, neglected for 200 years, gained recognition as at least equal in quality to his oratorios.
Handel also composed much orchestral music, chamber music (music for small groups of instruments), and solo music for harpsichord.
His work. The oratorio developed in Italy as a music drama to be played without staging in the oratory (meeting room) of a religious association. Singers represented characters in a Biblical story or in the life of a saint. In addition to the dialogue and songs of the singers, a narrator often filled in necessary details in the story. A chorus usually represented groups of people or crowds and reacted to the events. His works Water music , Fireworks and Messiah
Mahler
G Mahler - emotional and imaginationMahler, Gustav (1860-1911), was a Bohemian-born composer of the romantic period. He completed nine symphonies and died before completing a tenth. He also composed numerous songs, many with orchestral accompaniment. Much of Mahler's music has a religious or philosophical basis. The early works often describe nature, and the later ones describe the struggles and triumphs of the soul. There is a note of sadness and resignation in many of his works.
Mahler's symphonies are large-scale works that try to include every human emotion. They employ a large orchestra, and four of them (Numbers 2, 3, 4, and 8) use voices. Although Mahler wrote for a large orchestra, he often used it very delicately. Mahler's songs are more intimate in style. Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children, 1905) is a cycle of five songs set to poems by Friedrich Ruckert. Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth, 1911) is a symphony for tenor, baritone (or contralto), and orchestra. It explores the evanescence or temporary nature of human achievement and the enduring beauty of the earth.
Mahler was born in Kaliste, Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). He studied at the Vienna Conservatory, Austria, from 1875 to 1878. Mahler spent virtually his entire career as an opera and orchestra conductor.
Rossini
Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio (1792-1868), was an Italian opera composer. His The Barber of Seville (1816) is perhaps the greatest farce opera ever written.
Rossini was born in Pesaro and received advanced musical training in Bologna. His second opera, La Cambiale di matrimonio (1810), made him an important force in Italian music. This was the first of his operas to be performed. For the next 13 years, Rossini wrote comic and tragic operas, sometimes as many as three or four a year. The most popular ones include The Italian in Algiers (1813), The Turk in Italy (1814), Otello (1816), Cinderella (1817), Moses in Egypt (1818), The Lady of the Lake (1819), and Semiramide (1823). They are noted for their rich and catchy melodies, surging vitality, and expert vocal writing. Rossini composed many of the great female roles in his tragic operas for his first wife, Isabella Colbran.
In 1824, Rossini moved to Paris, then the opera capital of the world. In 1826 and 1827, he revised two of his Italian operas for French words. He then composed--to French texts--the masterly comic Le Comte Ory (1828) and his serious masterpiece William Tell (1829), with its well known overture.
Rossini composed no operas after 1829, partly because he was often in poor health, and partly because he did not like the new operatic styles. His compositions after that year include the religious work Stabat Mater (1842) and many small instrumental and vocal pieces that he called Peches de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age). Rossini had intelligence, wit, and humour, and became a famous host while living in Paris.
Holst
Holst, Gustav (1874-1934), was an English composer and teacher. Holst composed many of his works for vocal soloists and chorus. These compositions show his sensitivity to the human voice and to language as well as his love for the English folk song tradition. However, Holst's best-known work is the orchestral suite The Planets (1914-1916). This suite consists of seven parts, each interpreting the astrological nature of a planet.
Holst composed two suites for military band (1909, 1911) based on English folk songs. The Hymn of Jesus (1917) is a work for orchestra and chorus based on the Apocrypha of the New Testament. The poetry of John Keats inspired Holst's First Choral Symphony (1925) for soprano, chorus, and orchestra. Holst also wrote a number of works that reflect his interest in Hindu literature. In 1908, for example, Holst composed nine hymns for vocal soloist and piano based on the ancient Hindu sacred book the Rig-Veda.
Holst was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. In 1905 he became director of music at St. Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith, London. His St. Paul's Suite (1913) for strings is dedicated to the school orchestra. From 1907 until his death, he served as musical director at Morley College, London. Holst also taught at the Royal College of Music from 1919 until his death.
Chopin
Chopin, Frederic Francois (1810?-1849), a Polish-born composer, was one of the masters of piano composition. Chopin wrote chamber music (music for small groups of instruments), a few songs, and several pieces for piano and orchestra. But his fame rests almost entirely on his more than 200 compositions for solo piano.
His life. Chopin was born in Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw, Poland. A child prodigy, Chopin played the piano in public when he was only 8 years old. He began to compose soon afterward. He studied at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1826 to 1829 before leaving Poland in 1830. He settled in Paris in 1831, and, except for some travel, lived there the rest of his life.
In 1837, Chopin began a love affair with George Sand, a French woman novelist. He travelled with her to the Mediterranean island of Majorca during the winter of 1838-1839. Bad weather there weakened his failing health. His affair with George Sand ended with a quarrel in 1847. He was then seriously ill with tuberculosis. He died on Oct. 17, 1849.
Work Minute waltz - d flat
Grieg
Grieg, Edvard (1843-1907), was a Norwegian composer. He wrote his music in the style of Norwegian folk songs and folk dances. Grieg's works include songs, music for chorus and orchestra, and numbers for small instrumental groups. His compositions feature expressive melodies and original rhythms and harmonies.
Grieg's most famous music includes such compositions for piano as the 10-volume Lyric Pieces. This work includes a number of well-known pieces--"Album-Leaf" (1867), "To Spring" (1886), and "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" (1896). Grieg was also noted for his Concerto in A Minor (1869) for piano and orchestra. The Peer Gynt suite (1876), Grieg's most famous orchestral work, includes such popular selections as "Morning," "Anitra's Dance," and "In the Hall of the Mountain King." In 1876, the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen used this suite for his play Peer Gynt.
Verdi
Verdi, Giuseppe (1813-1901), was an Italian composer of operas. His works are performed more often today than those of any other opera composer. Between 1851 and 1871, Verdi produced a remarkable series of masterpieces, including Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (1853), La Traviata (1853), The Sicilian Vespers (1855), Simon Boccanegra (1857, revised 1881), A Masked Ball (1859), La Forza del Destino (1862), Don Carlos (1867), and Aida (1871). Verdi wrote 26 operas. He composed all to Italian librettos (texts) except the Sicilian Vespers and Don Carlos, which he wrote to French librettos.
Verdi gained fame for his mastery of theatrical effect and for the stirring melodic quality of his operas. He took several of his plots from the plays of such great dramatists as Victor Hugo, Friedrich Schiller, and William Shakespeare. Verdi wrote many melodies for soloists and small groups of singers. His operatic choruses remain familiar throughout the world.
Verdi, a fiery Italian patriot, became a symbol of Italy's struggle for independence from Austria during the mid-1800's. He had frequent conflicts with Austrian authorities, who felt that his operas encouraged Italian nationalism. Much of the music of his early operas, particularly of Nabucco (1842) and I Lombardi (1843), became identified with the Italian nationalist movement.
Verdi was born in Le Roncole, near Parma. He studied music as a boy in Busseto, a nearby town. He tried to enter the Milan Conservatory in 1832 but was rejected because he was too old and lacked sufficient formal training. He began taking private music lessons in Milan.
In 1839, Verdi's first opera, Oberto, was a success at its premiere at La Scala, the leading opera house in Milan. Between 1838 and 1840, his first wife and two small children died. The grief-stricken composer finished a comic opera, Un Giorno di Regno, which was a failure when presented in 1840. But his third opera, Nabucco, made him the foremost Italian composer of his time. After completing Aida in 1871, Verdi apparently decided to end his career because of illness and age. During the next 16 years, his only important composition was a Requiem Mass (1874), written in memory of the Italian author Alessandro Manzoni.
Verdi returned to opera composing in the mid-1880's through the urging of his friend Arrigo Boito, a noted Italian poet and composer. Boito contributed librettos for Verdi's Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). Many critics have called Otello Verdi's greatest tragic opera, and some consider it the greatest of all Italian operas. Falstaff was only Verdi's second comic opera, but it ranks as one of the greatest comic operas ever written.
Verdi's only works after Falstaff were four beautiful religious compositions for voices called Quattro Pezzi Sacri (1898). A period of national mourning was declared in Italy following Verdi's death. The Complete Operas of Verdi (1970) by Charles Osborne analyses the historical, literary, and musical elements of the operas composed by Verdi.
Berlioz
Berlioz became famous for his way of relating his musical compositions to stories ideas and landscapes , known as programme music.Berlioz, Hector (1803-1869), was a French composer. He is known for his orchestrating genius and his long, uninterrupted melodies
Berlioz composed symphonies, operas, and other large works. Many of these compositions had a text or programme. His symphonies include the Symphonie fantastique (1830); Harold in Italy (1834), with viola solo; and Romeo and Juliet (1839), with solo voices and chorus. He composed five operas, among them Benvenuto Cellini (1838), Beatrice and Benedict (1862), and The Trojans (1863, 1890). His other works for soloists, chorus, and orchestra include the Requiem (1837), L'Enfance du Christ (1854), and The Damnation of Faust (1846).
Berlioz was admired as a conductor, critic, and writer. His books on music include Grand Treatise on Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration (1844), Evenings with the Orchestra (1852), and The Conductor: The Theory of His Art (1855). His Memoirs were published in 1870, after his death. Louis Hector Berlioz was born in La Cote Saint-Andre, near Grenoble, France.
ARTISTS
| Da Vinci | Dali | Ingnes | |
| Monet | Rembrandt | Lowry | |
| Durer | Canaletto | Van Gogh | Picasso |
Da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was one of the greatest painters and most versatile geniuses in history. He was one of the key figures of the Renaissance, a great cultural movement that had begun in Italy in the 1300's. His portrait Mona Lisa and his religious scene The Last Supper rank among the most famous pictures ever painted. His scientific work includes accurate drawings of human anatomy.
Leonardo, as he is almost always called, was trained to be a painter. But his interests and achievements spread into an astonishing variety of fields that are now considered scientific specialisms. Leonardo studied anatomy, astronomy, botany, geology, geometry, and optics, and he designed machines and drew plans for hundreds of inventions.
Because Leonardo excelled in such an amazing number of areas of human knowledge, he is often called a universal genius. However, he had little interest in literature, history, or religion. He formulated a few scientific laws, but he never developed his ideas systematically. Leonardo was most of all an excellent observer. He concerned himself with what the eye could see, rather than with purely abstract concepts.
Leonardo's works
Drawings and scientific studies. Leonardo used drawings both as a tool of scientific investigation and as an expression of artistic imagination. He changed forever the art of drawing. He made drawings in much greater numbers than any artist before him, and he was one of the first artists to use sketches to work out his artistic and architectural compositions. Drawing was indispensable to Leonardo's processes of observation, creation, and invention.
Physical sciences. Leonardo was interested in mechanics (the science of motion and force), and many of his ideas and designs were far ahead of their time. For example, he drew plans for aircraft, including a helicopter, and for a parachute. Like many Renaissance artists, Leonardo sometimes worked as an engineer or military architect. He produced designs for a variety of war machines, among them tanks, machine guns, and movable bridges.
Life sciences. Leonardo studied anatomy by dissecting human corpses and the bodies of animals. He made scientific drawings that clarify not only the appearance of bones, tendons, and other body parts, but also their function. These drawings are considered the first accurate portrayals of human anatomy.
Leonardo tried to understand the human body as a mechanism. As his studies progressed, he also tried to understand the forces of life that animated the body. His drawings of anatomy, for example, extended to investigations of human reproduction and embryology and the circulation of the blood. None of these things were understood at the time. His anatomical drawing of a female, which he made about 1508, is his attempt, partly erroneous in detail, to illustrate the body's circulatory and other systems in a single image.
Dali
Dali, Salvador (1904-1989), was a surrealist painter. His unusual pictures made him one of the most publicized figures in modern art.
Dali called his surrealist paintings "hand-painted dream photographs." The pictures show strange, often nightmarish combinations of precisely detailed figures and objects. Many of his paintings have strong sexual associations. The barren landscapes and fantastic rock formations of the Spanish region of Catalonia, where Dali was born, appear in a number of his works. Dali's Gala and the Angelus of Millet Immediately Preceding the Arrival of the Conic Anamorphoses illustrates his realistic technique and his use of complicated, puzzling symbols. Dali also created many etchings and lithographs. He designed many of these prints to illustrate books.
Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali was born in Figueras, Spain. He was also a sculptor and jewellery designer. Dali worked with the Spanish film director Luis Bunuel on two surrealist feature films--Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) (1929) and L'Age d'or (The Golden Age) (1930).
Surrealism. The artists who became the surrealists gathered around poet Andre Breton in Paris in the 1920's. The first Surrealist Manifesto was published in 1924, declaring the artistic goals of the organization, especially as conceived by Breton. For Breton, surrealism was a creative method that employed many of the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian doctor who developed psychoanalysis as a method of treating mental illness. The basic strategy for Breton was automatism, a process for tapping the unconscious by writing in a trancelike state and recording the involuntary images that emerged. Taking his cue from the writings of Freud, Breton believed that dreams were the natural expression of the unconscious mind. Automatism, irrational thought associations, hallucinations, and the recollection of dream images offered a way to liberate the creative mind from the bonds of logic and reason.
Surrealism, like dada, began primarily as a literary movement. However, artists did organize themselves under the name of surrealism and staged a series of exhibitions. Gradually, the artists moved away from the influence of Breton and developed a broader appeal to artists and viewers alike.
Two branches of surrealist painting developed in Paris in the mid-1920's. Abstract surrealism included the work of Andre Masson of France and Joan Miro of Spain. Illusionistic surrealism included the work of Salvador Dali of Spain, Max Ernst of Germany, Yves Tanguy of France, and Paul Delvaux and Rene Magritte of Belgium.
Ingnes
Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique (1780-1867), was a leading French artist who painted in the style known as neoclassicism. Ingres painted many historical, mythological, and religious subjects. However, he is probably most admired for his portraits and female nudes. Ingres's style emphasizes orderly compositions, smoothly painted surfaces, and accurate drawing. Ingres ranks among the finest draughtsmen in the history of painting.
Although Ingres is identified with neoclassicism, he painted in a variety of styles. For example, his painting The Dream of Ossian resembles works painted in the romantic style. Several of Ingres's works reflect the influence of one of his favourite artists, the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael.
Ingres was born in Montauban. He studied in Paris with the famous neoclassical artist Jacques Louis David for four years and then studied and worked in Italy from 1806 to 1824. His altarpiece The Vow of Louis XIII was exhibited in Paris in 1824. From 1835 to 1841, Ingres directed the French Academy, an art school in Rome supported by the French government.
Monet
Monet, Claude (1840-1926), a French painter, was a leader of the impressionist movement. He influenced art by trying to paint his personal, spontaneous response to outdoor scenes or events. Earlier artists had also painted outdoor studies rapidly--almost in shorthand. But they used such studies as "notes" for more elaborate pictures painted in the studio. Monet was the most important of the artists who first allowed their initial impressions of outdoor scenes to stand as complete works. He was especially concerned with the effect of outdoor light and atmosphere. This concern can be seen in his La Grenouillere (1869).
Monet was born in Paris. In 1874, he exhibited a landscape called Impression: Sunrise (1872) in an exhibition. This patchily textured work caused one critic to sceptically call the entire show impressionist, which gave the movement its name.
Monet's fascination with light led him to paint several series of pictures showing the effect of sunlight on a subject. For example, he painted views of a cathedral or of a haystack under changing atmospheric conditions and at different hours of the day. In 1883, Monet settled in Giverny, near Vernon. There, at his country home, he painted garden scenes and a series of large pictures of water lilies. The swirling colours of the lilies influenced later abstract painters.
Rembrandt
Rembrandt (1606-1669) was the Netherlands' greatest artist. Rembrandt's output was tremendous. Scholars credit him with about 600 paintings, 300 etchings, and 1,400 drawings. Many other works have been lost. Unlike some other great artists, he wrote almost nothing about his art.
The range of Rembrandt's subjects is extraordinary. His works include landscapes, nudes, portraits, scenes of everyday life, animals and birds, historical and mythological subjects, and works inspired by stories from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Throughout his career, Rembrandt also made about 100 known portraits of himself. They form a unique autobiography.
Rembrandt's reputation rests on his power as a storyteller, his warm sympathy, and his ability to show the innermost feelings of the people he portrayed. His use of light and shadow creates an atmosphere that enables us to share his sensitive response to nature and profound understanding of the individual's inner life. Few artists match his genius for showing the human aspect of Biblical characters, yet on the other hand, he was equally capable of suggesting the divine spark which rests in every human being.
Early years. Rembrandt was born in Leiden on July 15, 1606. His full name was Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. He first studied art with an obscure Leiden painter from about 1621 to 1624. Then he studied with Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. About 1625, Rembrandt returned to Leiden to paint on his own.
Leiden years: 1625-1631. Most of Rembrandt's early works are small, precisely finished pictures of Biblical and historical subjects. The influence of Lastman can be seen in the lively gestures and expressions of his figures and also in his use of vivid colours and glossy paint. However, Rembrandt rapidly surpassed his teacher's ability to tell a story. He used light and shadow better than anyone else to heighten the drama of his works. Light and shadow became his principal means of pictorial expression.
Rembrandt quickly achieved local success. He began to teach in 1628, and his strong personality continued to attract students and followers throughout his career.
The last years: 1640-1669. Rembrandt's most famous picture, The Night Watch, was painted in 1642. According to a legend, the people who commissioned the portrait were not satisfied with it and refused the painting because Rembrandt would not change it in any way. Because he would not change to please public taste, the tale continues, he soon lost patrons and friends and spent his last years penniless and in total obscurity. However, evidence proves that Rembrandt received a high price for The Night Watch, and that he continued to receive important public and private commissions during the last years of his life. These commissions included Portrait of Jan Six, Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, and The Syndics.
However, tragedy did strike Rembrandt in 1642 when his beloved wife, Saskia, died. Also, the mature Rembrandt did not enjoy the wide popularity he had as a young painter. Although he still ranked as one of his country's leading artists, he ran short of money. The house he purchased in 1639 was too expensive. Rembrandt also collected works of art on a scale he could not afford. Most important, he began to paint more and more for himself. His late majestic Biblical paintings were not commissioned works.
During this period, Rembrandt's art gained steadily in spiritual depth and pictorial richness. His wonderful light now seemed to glow from within his works. The shadows became more intense and vibrant. In place of earlier sensational effects, his work shows solemn restraint, calmness, and tenderness. When humanity is represented, the thoughtful rather than active side of human nature is stressed. Rembrandt's landscape etchings and drawings during these years have an unmatched sense of space and fresh air.
Rembrandt was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1656. His house and possessions were sold at auction in 1657 and 1658. But when he died on Oct. 4, 1669, he was nevertheless able to leave his surviving relatives a fairly large inheritance.
Lowry
Lowry, L. S. (1887-1976), a British artist, became famous for his paintings depicting industrial towns in Greater Manchester. His striking use of white and greys gave his work a highly individual style. Laurence Stephen Lowry was born in Manchester. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1962.
Durer
Durer, Albrecht (1471-1528), was the most famous painter and printmaker in the history of German art. He also became famous as a scholar and author. Durer was the first writer to describe the concept of artistic genius and he was the first to publish scientific literature in German.
Durer's published works include books on geometry and perspective, civil defence, and the measurements of the human body. In his studies on artistic theory, Durer tried to explain idealized beauty as well as ugliness, and differences in personality.
Durer was born in Nuremberg. Between the ages of 13 and 40, he painted and drew a remarkable series of revealing self-portraits.
Durer's most famous oil paintings include Self-Portrait (1500); an altarpiece for the Church of the Germans in Venice, called The Feast of the Rose Garlands (1506); and Four Apostles (1526), painted for the Nuremberg city hall. One of his most popular pictures is a brush drawing called Praying Hands (1508), which was a study for part of an altarpiece for a church in Frankfurt.
Cannaletto
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal) (1697-1768) was an Italian painter celebrated for his views of Venice, where he was born. He learnt theatrical scene-painting from his father, Bernardo Canal. Together, they prepared opera sets for the composer Alessandro Scarlatti in Rome. Canaletto returned to Venice in about 1720. For the next 20 years, he was among the most influential and sought-after landscape artists.
His work in oils shows a rare appreciation of light and shade. Canaletto explored the tones of colour on land, reflected in water, and in shadows. He often worked directly onto canvas. Canaletto worked with a camera oscura, which uses a lens to project an image of a scene onto a flat surface, providing an outline for the artist's drawing.
After 1742, Canaletto travelled to Rome, and then to London, where he produced notable studies of the River Thames. But many of his wealthy patrons considered these below his best. He returned to Venice in 1756.
Van Gogh
Van Gogh, Vincent (1853-1890), is one of the most famous painters in modern art. Yet during his lifetime, he received no recognition and sold only one painting. Van Gogh failed in every career he attempted and felt unloved and friendless. He turned to art to express his strong religious feelings and his deep need for love and respect. During the last five years of his life, van Gogh completed more than 800 oil paintings.
Van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert, near Breda, the Netherlands. When he was 16 years old, his parents sent him to The Hague to work for an uncle who was an art dealer. Between 1873 and 1876, he worked for art dealers in London and Paris. But van Gogh was unsuited for a business career.
In 1878, van Gogh applied for admission to a theological school but was rejected. He then decided to become an unordained preacher and received his training from a missionary society in Brussels, Belgium. Late in 1878, van Gogh represented the society as a minister in the Borinage, a poor coal-mining district in Belgium. He took his work so seriously that he went without food and other necessities so he could give more to the poor. The missionary society objected to van Gogh's unorthodox behaviour and relieved him in the summer of 1879. Van Gogh began to draw while in the Borinage, and late in 1880 he decided to become a painter.
Van Gogh's first pictures were still lifes and scenes of peasants at work. He favoured dark brown and olive colours and heavy brushstrokes. The Potato Eaters (1885) is his finest and most ambitious work of this period. In 1886, he went to Paris to visit his brother Theo and was immediately attracted to the impressionist art he saw there. Under the influence of impressionism, van Gogh lightened his brushstrokes and used bright, clear colours.
In 1888, van Gogh moved to Arles in southern France. There, he painted his most expressive and original pictures. An example of his work of this period is The Postman Roulin. In Arles, van Gogh suffered from occasional violent seizures, which were diagnosed after his death as epilepsy. The intense colour and slashing brushstrokes of van Gogh's paintings reflect his disturbed mind. An example is van Gogh's picture The Night Cafe. During a seizure late in 1888, he threatened to kill the French painter Paul Gauguin, who was visiting him. Van Gogh cut off one of his own ears during this seizure. He committed suicide in 1890.
Throughout his life, van Gogh corresponded with his brother Theo and other people. Van Gogh's Complete Letters, published in three volumes in 1958, provide an intimate view of his life and thought.
Picasso
Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973), was the most famous painter of the 1900's. He also became known for his sculpture, drawings, graphics, and ceramics. In some ways, he was the artist most characteristic of the 1900's, because he responded to changing conditions, moods, and challenges so intensely and so rapidly. His searching style made him the leader in expressing the complexity of the 1900's.
Picasso's art challenges the viewer's traditional view of life. He appeared drawn to tension and conflict. Picasso seemed to explore the fantastic world of nightmare and deep imagination which modern psychology and modern art cite as great influences on our daily actions. He hoped to arouse and reveal unknown influences that lie hidden in the viewer's subconscious mind. His images radiate the strangeness of dreams, yet have the appearance of fact. Perhaps Picasso was influenced by the art of his native Spain, which often seems fascinated by the visionary and the monstrous.
Early career. Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, but lived in France from 1904 until his death. He was a child prodigy, painting realistic works when he was only 14 years old. Picasso's first personal style, called the Blue Period (1901-1904), focused on the themes of loneliness and despair, and featured mainly shades of blue. The style of this period gave way between 1904 and 1906 to a style that stressed warmer colours and moods. Abandoning the thin, discouraged faces of the Blue Period, Picasso gave his subjects new flexibility and frequently included circus scenes in his works. By 1906, he began painting great figures that are massive, as if to withstand potential shock or fear.
In 1907, Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a landmark in art. This picture marked a decisive break with traditional notions of beauty and harmony. Five monstrous female figures with masks rather than faces pose in a convulsive, jagged array--distorted, shaken, and savagely transformed. Out of this disruptive image grew the style known as cubism.
Early in 1912, Picasso began including newspaper clippings, bits of debris, and stencilled words in his paintings. In this way he hoped to break down the distinction between art and nonart and to make viewers rethink their relationship to traditional art.
Later career. After World War I, Picasso extended his explorations of form, placing special emphasis on brilliantly coloured dreamlike images. From 1918 to 1924, he painted in a classical style, with huge and stately figures. In the 1920's and 1930's, Picasso portrayed figures as though from the inside out, and the lifeless objects in these works appear to have a life of their own. His Guernica (1937) was painted as a protest against the bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The painting was Picasso's attempt to make a public statement using his personal symbols of rage and despair. The picture is a powerful expression of crisis and disaster beyond individual control.
In 1944, Picasso joined the Communist Party because he felt the Communists had been more effective in fighting the Nazis. But Picasso's art was officially condemned as "decadent" and "unacceptable" in most Communist countries.
After 1945, Picasso's painting, sculpture, and ceramics developed a more relaxed and gentle feeling. He appeared to make peace with the emotions that had tormented him so often in the past. Some critics feel this new Picasso had outlived the best days of his art. Others feel this represented another advance in Picasso's visual and mental adventures in art.
LITERATURE
| Shakespeare | Dickens | O'Neil | |
| Hemingway | Orwell | Wells | |
| Joyce | Carolle | Swift | Pepys |
Shakespeare
English dramatist and poet. He is considered the greatest English dramatist. His plays, written in blank verse with some prose, can be broadly divided into lyric plays, including Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream; comedies, including The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Measure For Measure; historical plays, such as Henry VI (in three parts), Richard III, and Henry IV (in two parts), which often showed cynical political wisdom; and tragedies, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. He also wrote numerous sonnets.
Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of a wool dealer, he was educated at the grammar school, and in 1582 married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter, Susanna, 1583, and in 1585 twins, Hamnet (died 1596) and Judith. By 1592 Shakespeare was established in London as an actor and a dramatist, and from 1594 he was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain's Company of actors. In 1598 the Company tore down their regular playhouse, the Theatre, and used the timber to build the Globe Theatre in Southwark. Shakespeare became a 'sharer' in the venture, which entitled him to a percentage of the profits. In 1603 the Company became the King's Men. By this time Shakespeare was the leading playwright of the company and one of its business directors; he also continued to act. He retired to Stratford about 1610, where he died on 23 April 1616. He was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity, Stratford.
Early plays
In the plays written around 1589–94, Shakespeare may be regarded as a young writer learning the techniques of his art and experimenting with different forms. These include the three parts of Henry VI; the comedies The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona; the Senecan revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus; and Richard III. About 1593 he came under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his long poems Venus and Adonis 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece 1594; he also wrote for him the comedy Love's Labour's Lost, satirizing the explorer Walter Raleigh's circle, and seems to have dedicated to him his sonnets written around 1593–96, in which the mysterious 'Dark Lady' appears.
Lyric plays
The lyric plays Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Richard II (which explores the relationship between the private man and the public life of the state) 1594–97 were followed by King John (again exploring the ironies and problems of politics) and The Merchant of Venice 1596–97. The Falstaff plays of 1597–1600 – Henry IV (parts I and II, juxtaposing the comic world of the tavern and the dilemmas and responsibilities attending kingship and political ambition), Henry V (a portrait of King Hal as the ideal soldier-king), and The Merry Wives of Windsor (said to have been written at the request of Elizabeth I, to show Falstaff in love) – brought his fame to its height. He wrote Julius Caesar 1599 (anticipating the great tragedies in its concentration on a central theme and plot: the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar, and the confrontation between political rivals, in which the more ruthless win). The period ended with the lyrically witty Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, about 1598–1601.
Tragedies and late plays
With Hamlet begins the period of the great tragedies, 1601–08: Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Timon of Athens, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus (the hero of which comes into disastrous conflict with the Roman people through his overriding sense of personal honour). This 'darker' period is also reflected in the comedies Troilus and Cressida (a sardonic exploration of the concept of chivalric honour in relation to sexual conduct and the war between Greece and Troy), All's Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure around 1601–04. It is thought that Shakespeare was only part author of Pericles, which is grouped with the other plays of around 1608–11 – Cymbeline (set in ancient Britain, when Augustus Caesar ruled in Rome and Christ was born in Palestine), The Winter's Tale (a refashioning of a romance by an envious rival, Robert Greene), and The Tempest – as the mature romance or 'reconciliation' plays of the end of his career. It is thought that The Tempest may have been based on the real-life story of William Strachey, who was shipwrecked off Bermuda in 1609. During 1613 it is thought that Shakespeare collaborated with John Fletcher on Henry VIII (in which the theme of reconciliation and regeneration after strife is played out in historical terms, so that the young child who represents hope for the future is none other than Elizabeth I) and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
For the first 200 years after his death, Shakespeare's plays were frequently performed in cut or revised form (Nahum Tate's King Lear was given a happy ending), and it was not until the 19th century, with the critical assessment of Samuel Coleridge and William Hazlitt, that the original texts were restored.
Appreciation of Shakespeare's plays in the present century has become analytical, examining in detail such aspects as language, structure, contemporary theatrical conditions, and the social and intellectual context of his work. His plays were collected and edited by John Hemige and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's former colleagues from the King's company, into the First Folio 1623. Later editions were published 1632, 1664, and 1685 as the Second, Third, and Fourth Folios, respectively.
Dickens
Dickens, Charles (1812-1870), was a great English novelist and one of the most popular writers of all time. His best-known books include A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, and A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens created some of the most famous characters in English literature. He also created scenes and descriptions of places that have long delighted readers. Dickens was a keen observer of life and had a great understanding of humanity, especially of young people. He sympathized with the poor and helpless, and mocked and criticized the selfish, the greedy, and the cruel.Dickens was also a wonderfully inventive comic artist. The warmth and humour of his personality appear in all his works. Perhaps in no other large body of fiction does the reader receive so strong and agreeable an impression of the person behind the story.
Dickens' life
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth on Feb. 7, 1812. He moved with his family to London when he was about two years old. Many of the events and people in his books are based on events and people in his life. Dickens' father, John Dickens, was a poor and easygoing clerk who worked for the navy. John served in some respects as the model for Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield. He spent time in prison for debt, an event Charles re-created in Little Dorrit.
Even when John was free, he lacked the money to support his family adequately. At the age of 12, Charles worked in a London factory pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish. He held the job only a few months, but the misery of that experience remained with him all his life.
Dickens attended school off and on until he was 15, and then left for good. He enjoyed reading and was especially fond of adventure stories, fairy tales, and novels. He was influenced by such earlier English writers as William Shakespeare, Tobias Smollett, and Henry Fielding. However, most of the knowledge he later used as an author came from his observation of life around him.
Dickens became a newspaper reporter in the late 1820's. He specialized in covering debates in Parliament, and also wrote feature articles. His work as a reporter sharpened his naturally keen ear for conversation and helped develop his skill in portraying his characters' speech realistically. It also increased his ability to observe and to write swiftly and clearly. Dickens' first book, Sketches by Boz (1836), consisted of articles he wrote for the London Evening Chronicle. These descriptions, fictional portraits, and short stories surveyed the manners and conditions of the time.
Literary - Began with Pickwick Papers
Oliver Twist (1837-1839) describes the adventures of a poor orphan boy. The book was noted for its sensational presentation of London's criminal world and for its attack on England's mistreatment of the poor.
In Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), Dickens criticized greedy proprietors of private schools, who treated students brutally and taught them nothing.
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841) is less respected today than when it was first published, largely because the death scene of Little Nell seems sentimental to modern tastes.
Barnaby Rudge (1841) is a historical novel that deals with a series of riots in London in 1780. Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844) is one of two books that Dickens based on his first trip to America. The other is the travel book American Notes (1842). Dickens intended Martin Chuzzlewit to be a study of many forms of selfishness. But it is best known for its unflattering picture of the crudeness of American manners and for its comic characters. Two of its finest creations are the hypocrite Pecksniff and the chattering, alcoholic midwife Sairey Gamp.
Dickens wrote his five "Christmas books" during the 1840's. The first, A Christmas Carol (1843), is one of the most famous stories ever written. In the book, three ghosts show the old miser Ebenezer Scrooge his past, present, and future. Realizing that he has been living a life of greed, Scrooge changes into a warm and unselfish person. The other Christmas books are The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848).
The second phase. During the 1840's, Dickens' view of Victorian society, and perhaps of the world, grew darker. His humour became more bitter, often taking the form of biting satire. His characters and plots seemed to emphasize the evil side of human experience.
Dombey and Son (1846-1848) deals primarily with a selfish egotist whose pride cuts him off from the warmth of human love. The book stresses the evils of the Victorian admiration for money. Dickens believed that money had become the measure of all personal relations and the goal of all ambition.
With David Copperfield (1849-1850), Dickens temporarily lessened the role of social criticism to concentrate more on semiautobiography. The novel describes a young man's discovery of the realities of adult life. David's youth is clearly patterned after Dickens' youth.
Bleak House (1852-1853) is in many respects Dickens' greatest novel. It has a complex structure and many levels of meaning, mixing melodrama with satire and social commentary. The book deals with many social evils, chiefly wasteful and cruel legal processes. It also attacks the neglect of the poor, false humanitarians and clergymen, and poor sanitation.
This long novel was followed by the much shorter and simpler Hard Times (1854). Hard Times attacks philosopher Jeremy Bentham's doctrine of utilitarianism. Bentham believed that all human ideas, actions, and institutions should be judged by their usefulness. Dickens was convinced that Bentham reduced social relations to problems of cold, mechanical self-interest.
In Little Dorrit (1855-1857), Dickens continued his campaign against materialism and snobbery, which were represented by the rich Merdle family and their social-climbing friends. He also ridiculed government inefficiency in the form of the "Circumlocution Office." The prison, like the fog in Bleak House, is symbolic. It stands for the painful conditions of life in a materialistic, decaying society.
A Tale of Two Cities (1859) was the second of Dickens' two historical novels. It is set in London and Paris and tells of the heroism of fictional Sidney Carton during the French Revolution.
In Great Expectations (1860-1861), Dickens returned to the theme of a youth's discovery of the realities of life. An unknown person provides the young hero Pip with money so that Pip can live as a gentleman. Pip's pride is shattered when he learns the source of his "great expectations." Only by painfully revising his values does Pip reestablish his life on a foundation of sympathy, rather than on vanity, possessions, and social position.
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) was Dickens' final novel of social criticism. Dickens again attacked the false values of the newly rich. He satirized greed, using the great rubbish heaps of the London dumps as a symbol of filthy money. The novel is also notable for its suggestive use of London's River Thames. Dickens had completed about one-third of his novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood when he died. Nobody knows how Dickens intended the story to end. Scholars and readers throughout the years have proposed many possible solutions for the mystery.
O'Neil
O'Neill, Eugene Gladstone (1888-1953), is considered America's greatest playwright. He was the first American dramatist to write tragedy consistently. Before O'Neill, most successful American plays tended to be either melodramas or sentimental comedies. O'Neill won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936. Four of his plays won Pulitzer Prizes--Beyond the Horizon in 1920; Anna Christie in 1922; Strange Interlude in 1928; and Long Day's Journey into Night in 1957.
O'Neill was born in New York City. He was the son of James O'Neill, a well-known actor. Eugene O'Neill attended Princeton University briefly in 1906, and then left college and took a variety of jobs. As a seaman, O'Neill sailed to South Africa and South America in 1910 and 1911. Many of O'Neill's plays reflect his experiences at sea. Others show his sympathy for the failures and outcasts of society that he met during this time.
O'Neill's 45 plays cover a wide range of styles and subjects. They vary in length from one act, to the nine-act Strange Interlude (1928) and the 11-act Mourning Becomes Electra (1931). O'Neill wrote brutally realistic plays, including Desire Under the Elms (1924); expressionistic plays, including The Hairy Ape (1922); satire, including Marco Millions (1928); and autobiographical plays, including Long Day's Journey into Night (1956).
O'Neill stated that his task as a playwright was to "dig at the roots of the sickness of today." He believed that science had robbed people of their faith in traditional beliefs and had not given them a new faith. O'Neill's pessimistic view of life was influenced by the writings of German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. Modern psychology also influenced O'Neill. In The Great God Brown (1926), his characters wear masks to express their personalities. The characters in Strange Interlude speak their thoughts aloud, exposing their inner feelings. In Days Without End (1934), two actors portray different parts of a character's personality.
Most of O'Neill's characters seek some meaning for their lives. In Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1921), and Strange Interlude, the characters turn to love to find meaning. In Dynamo (1929) and Days Without End, they turn to religion. All suffer disappointment. In The Iceman Cometh (1939), O'Neill's most pessimistic play, the characters in a waterfront saloon have ruined their lives. But they find meaning in their illusions about themselves. When these illusions are taken from them, they come close to despair. O'Neill says that all illusions are "pipe dreams." He seems to assert that humanity's only "hopeless hope" is in drink and death. But he also seems to say there is an admirable heroism in people who persist in living without hope.
Hemingway
Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961), was one of the most well-known and influential American writers of the 1900's. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. He had won a Pulitzer Prize the previous year for his novel The Old Man and the Sea (1952).
Hemingway developed a plain, forceful prose style characterized by simple sentences and few adjectives or adverbs. He wrote crisp, vivid dialogue and detailed descriptions of places and things.
Hemingway also created a type of male character, sometimes called the Hemingway hero, who faces violence and destruction with courage. The trait of "grace under pressure"--that is, unemotional behaviour even in highly dangerous situations--is part of what became known as the Hemingway code.
Early life. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois. After finishing school, he worked briefly as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. In 1918, he served as a Red Cross volunteer in Italy, driving an ambulance and working at a canteen. While there, he was seriously wounded. Hemingway's wartime experiences help explain why his writing emphasizes physical and psychological violence and the need for courage.
Rise to fame. Hemingway's most famous novels are two of his early works, The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929). The Sun Also Rises portrays a group of Americans who, like the members of the "lost generation," were disillusioned by the war. A Farewell to Arms, set in Italy in World War I, is a tragic love story.
Hemingway returned to the United States in 1927. Two collections of his short stories were published during the 1930's. They contain some of his best writing, including "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." He also wrote some nonfiction. Death in the Afternoon (1932) deals with bullfighting, which fascinated him. In Green Hills of Africa (1935), Hemingway described his experiences on an African safari.
In 1936, Hemingway went to Spain and covered the Spanish Civil War as a war correspondent. He used the war as the setting of For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). This novel, about an idealistic American fighting the fascist forces in Spain, is one of Hemingway's finest books.
Later years. By the 1940's, Hemingway had become famous for his colourful life style and his extreme concern with presenting a tough, masculine image.
Hemingway's first published work after 1940 was Across the River and Into the Trees (1950). This novel reflects his growing bitterness toward life. It is largely regarded as inferior because of its sentimentality. In The Old Man and the Sea (1952), Hemingway revived his theme of a strong man courageously accepting fate. The hero, an old fisherman, catches a giant marlin after a long struggle--only to have the fish eaten by sharks.
Hemingway suffered physical and mental illnesses during the 1950's, and he committed suicide in 1961. A Moveable Feast was published in 1964, after his death. It is an autobiographical book based on notebooks he kept in Paris in the 1920's. Two novels were also published after his death--Islands in the Stream (1970) and the unfinished The Garden of Eden (1986).
Orwell
"On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed down from the wall. It was one of these pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath ran." - from Nineteen Eighty-Four
Orwell, George, was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), an English novelist and social critic. Orwell became famous with his novel 1984, published in 1949. The book is a frightening portrait of a totalitarian society that punishes love, destroys privacy, and distorts truth. The grim tone of 1984 distinguishes it from Orwell's Animal Farm (1945), an animal fable satirizing the communist government of the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Orwell was a unique combination of middle-class intellectual and working-class reformer. A strong autobiographical element runs through most of Orwell's writing, giving both his novels and essays a sense of immediacy and conviction. For example, his experiences living in poverty colour A Clergyman's Daughter (1935). The novel attacks social injustice and ranges from the miseries and hypocrisies of the poor of middle-class background to the near-starvation of the slumdweller. Homage to Catalonia (1938) is a nonfiction work based on Orwell's brief career as a soldier. He describes his disillusionment with the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War.
Orwell was born in Bengal, India, the son of an English civil servant. He attended Eton public school in England from 1917 to 1921 and served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma for five years. On his return to England in 1927, he chose to experience a life of poverty, and lived as a tramp in England and Europe until the mid-1930's. Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) is an account, in fictional form, of his experiences during this period.
Wells
Wells, H. G. (1866-1946), was a famous English novelist, historian, science writer, and author of science-fiction stories. Wells's novel Tono-Bungay (1909) best reveals his varied talents. The novel, a story of the dishonest promotion of a patent medicine, contains social criticism tinged with satire. In it, Wells described trips in aeroplanes and submarines at a time when such journeys seemed like science fiction.
Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent. He drew on his lower-middle-class background in some of his finest novels, including Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr. Polly (1909). His training as a scientist is reflected in his imaginative science-fiction stories. The Time Machine (1895) describes the adventures of a man who can transport himself into the future. Wells wrote about an invasion from Mars in The War of the Worlds (1898) and described a fictional utopia in The Shape of Things to Come (1933).
Wells supported social reform in the novel The New Machiavelli (1911), in the nonfiction study The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932), and in other books. He wrote The Outline of History (1920), a story of the development of the human race. The book shows Wells's knowledge of biology and his liberal attitude in politics. With his son Geoffrey and Sir Julian Huxley, Wells wrote The Science of Life (1929-1930), a four-volume discussion of the principles of biology. Wells told his life story in Experiment in Autobiography (1934).
Joyce
Joyce, James (1882-1941), an Irish novelist, revolutionized the treatment of plot and characterization in fiction. Many critics consider William Shakespeare his only rival as a master of the English language.
Joyce was born in Dublin and wrote all his works about that city, though he lived outside Ireland from 1904 on. He lived and wrote in Paris, Rome, Trieste, and Zurich and returned to Ireland only twice, briefly in 1909 and 1912. Joyce suffered a painful eye disease for most of his adult life and became almost blind.
Joyce's first major work was Dubliners (1914), a collection of stories that reflects his concern with life among the Irish lower middle class. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is a largely autobiographical novel. Joyce appears as the character Stephen Dedalus. Like Joyce, Stephen finds himself in conflict with his family, the Roman Catholic Church, and the nationalistic zeal of the Irish people. And like Joyce, Dedalus leaves Ireland and wishes to become a writer. In tracing Stephen's growth to young manhood, Joyce mixed conventional realist prose with passages using techniques known as interior monologue and stream of consciousness. These techniques give the reader the illusion of following the character's thoughts.
Joyce lived in poverty and obscurity until 1922, when the publication of Ulysses made him one of the most celebrated novelists of the 1900's. Ulysses takes its title from parallels Joyce established between the adventures of his main character, Leopold Bloom, and those of Ulysses. Ulysses (Odysseus in Greek) was the hero of the Odyssey, a Greek epic poem. Bloom suffers ridicule because he is Jewish and has peculiar sexual tastes and because his wife, Molly, is unfaithful. He survives the pain and sorrow of his life by a remarkable capacity to absorb suffering--and even to enjoy it.
Finnegans Wake (1939) is probably Joyce's greatest work. In this novel, Joyce portrayed one family and at the same time all families, everywhere, at all times in history. The hero's initials, HCE, stand for Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, a Dublin innkeeper. But they also stand for Here Comes Everybody. In the story, Dublin symbolizes all cities. Joyce crammed the book with topical and historical names, events, myths, songs, jokes, and gossip. His goal was to make all people, places, things, and times repeat and resemble each other.
Joyce's technique can be studied from the first sentence of Finnegans Wake: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." The book's last sentence breaks off in the middle but is completed by the book's first sentence. The device is a grammatical representation of the cyclic theory of history that Joyce borrowed from the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. The theory also provides the structure for Finnegans Wake.
The above sentence traces the flow of the River Liffey through Dublin, past the Church of Adam and Eve, out into Dublin Bay and the Irish Sea. From there, by evaporation and recirculation, the water returns to the physical starting point of the book, Howth Castle. The reference to Adam and Eve introduces a major theme of the book, the Fall of Man. In Irish-Gaelic, the river is called Anna Liffey, meaning River of Life. The river becomes interchangeable with Joyce's major female character, Anna Livia Plurabelle. She symbolizes the mother of humanity.
Joyce's other works include two collections of poems, Chamber Music (1907)
Carolle
Carroll, Lewis, was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), an English author. Carroll wrote two of the most famous books in English literature--Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its continuation, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). People throughout the world read these books. Alice in Wonderland, as the first book is usually called, has been translated into more than 30 languages, including Arabic and Chinese. It is also published in Braille so that blind people can read it.
Carroll wrote both books to give pleasure to children. But adults also enjoy the humour, fantastic characters, and adventures in the stories. Scholars study the books to find meanings in what seems to be nonsense.
Life. Carroll was born on Jan. 27, 1832, in Daresbury, Cheshire, England. He graduated from the Christ Church College of Oxford University in 1854. He began teaching mathematics at Christ Church in 1855 and spent most of his life at the school. He was ordained a deacon (minister) in the Church of England in 1861.
Other works. Carroll also wrote Sylvie and Bruno, a fairy tale in verse and prose (two parts, 1889 and 1893). The poem "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876) tells the story of the Banker, Baker, Beaver, Bellman, and other amusing characters in search of a Snark, an animal that does not exist. Carroll wrote many works on mathematics under his real name. They include "Notes on the First Two Books of Euclid" (1860) and Curiosa Mathematica (two parts, 1888 and 1894). Carroll was also a fine photographer.
Swift
Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745), an English author, wrote Gulliver's Travels (1726), a masterpiece of comic literature. Swift is called a great satirist because of his ability to ridicule customs, ideas, and actions he considered silly or harmful. His satire is often bitter, but it is also delightfully humorous. Swift was deeply concerned about the welfare and behaviour of the people of his time, especially the welfare of the Irish and the behaviour of the English toward Ireland. Swift was a Protestant churchman who became a hero in Roman Catholic Ireland.
Gulliver's Travels is often described as a book that children read with delight, but which adults find serious and disturbing. However, even young readers usually recognize that Swift's "make-believe" world sometimes resembles their own world. Adults recognize that, in spite of the book's serious themes, it is a highly comic work.
Gulliver's Travels describes four voyages that Lemuel Gulliver, who was trained as a ship's doctor, makes to strange lands. Gulliver first visits the Lilliputians--tiny people whose bodies and surroundings are only one-twelfth the size of normal people and things. The Lilliputians treat Gulliver well at first. Gulliver helps them, but after a time they turn against him and he is happy to escape their land. The story's events resemble those of Swift's own political life.
Gulliver's second voyage takes him to the country of Brobdingnag, where the people are 12 times larger than Gulliver and greatly amused by his puny size.
Gulliver's third voyage takes him to several strange kingdoms. The conduct of the odd people of these countries represents the kinds of foolishness Swift saw in his world. For example, in the academy of Lagado, scholars spend all their time on useless projects such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Here Swift was satirizing impractical scientists and philosophers.
In his last voyage, Gulliver discovers a land ruled by wise and gentle horses called Houyhnhnms. Savage, stupid animals called Yahoos also live there. The Yahoos look like human beings. The Houyhnhnms distrust Gulliver because they believe he is a Yahoo. Gulliver wishes to stay in the agreeable company of the Houyhnhnms, but they force him to leave. After Gulliver returns to England, he converses at first only with the horses in his stable.
Some people believe Swift was a misanthrope (hater of humanity), and that the ugliness and stupidity in his book reflect his view of the world. Other people argue that Swift was a devoted and courageous Christian who could not have denied the existence of goodness and hope. Still others claim that in Gulliver's Travels, Swift is really urging us to avoid the extremes of the boringly perfect Houyhnhnms and the wild Yahoos, and to lead moderate, sensible lives.
Scholars are still trying to discover all the ways in which real people, institutions, and events are represented in Gulliver's Travels. But readers need not be scholars to find pleasure in the book and to find themselves thinking about its distinctive picture of human life.
Swift's personality. Whether Swift hated humanity or whether he mocked people to reform them is still disputed. However, there are some things Swift clearly hated and loved. He hated those who attacked religion, particularly when they pretended to be religious themselves. He also hated the tyranny of one nation over another nation. Above all, he hated false pride--the tendency of people to exaggerate their own accomplishments and overlook their own weaknesses. Swift loved liberty, common sense, honesty, and humility. His writings--whether bitter, shocking, or humorous--ask the reader to share these values.
Pepys
Pepys, Samuel (1633-1703), was an English writer and government official. His famous Diary provides an intimate self-portrait and a vivid picture of an exciting period in English history. Pepys also became known for his role in the development of the British Navy.
His diary covers the period from 1660 to 1669. It deals with an early part of Pepys's life, when he was clerk of the navy. He wrote the Diary in a code combination of shorthand, foreign words and phrases, and contractions of his own invention.
Pepys meticulously recorded events of his daily life. He wrote frankly about his affairs with women and his desire to become wealthy. He described his enthusiasm for music and the theatre, and his interest in collecting books and paintings. Pepys told of his public career and his pride in his success. The Diary documents his curiosity about everything from science to the gossip at the court of King Charles II. Pepys did not intend to have the Diary read by the public, and he wrote about himself with unusual honesty.
Pepys recorded many of the important events of the 1660's as a witness and participant. The Diary colourfully describes the restoration of the king as ruler of England. The work also contains thrilling accounts of the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, and England's naval war with the Netherlands. In an especially memorable entry, Pepys related his court defence of the navy board after the board came under attack by a parliamentary committee.
Pepys stopped writing the Diary because his vision deteriorated. The work was first translated from 1819 to 1822 and was published in an abridged edition. The unabridged Diary was published in nine volumes from 1970 to 1976.
His life. Pepys was born in London and attended Cambridge University. Through the influence of a powerful relative, Sir Edward Montagu, he was appointed Clerk of the Acts of the Navy in 1660. This post gave Pepys a position on the navy board. His ability, dedication, and industriousness soon made him the most efficient administrator in the navy office.
In 1673, Pepys became Secretary of the Admiralty and thus, in effect, head of the navy. Under Pepys, the navy administration developed into an efficient, professional organization. Pepys introduced numerous changes that reflected a great capacity for detail. His reforms affected functions ranging from the appointment of naval officers to the maintenance of dockyards.
Pepys served in Parliament several times, and he was president of the Royal Society in 1684 and 1685 (see ROYAL SOCIETY). He lost his post in the admiralty after the fall of King James II in 1688. Pepys then wrote Memoires of the Royal Navy, 1679-1688, which was published in 1690. ***
ENGINEERS
| Stephenson | Daimler | Niemeyer | |
| Mccoy | Wren | Lutyens | |
| Jones | Goddard | Eiffel | Brunnel |
Stephenson
Stephenson, George (1781-1848), was a British engineer whose inventions helped create the British railway system. Stephenson's skill in repairing coal-hauling engines in the mines earned him the title of "engine doctor." He finally decided to build a locomotive of his own. His first locomotive, Blucher (1814), was able to pull eight coal wagons at 6 kilometres per hour. Stephenson soon introduced the use of steam exhausted from the cylinders to increase the draught in the firebox. The fire in turn became hotter and made steam of a higher pressure. His locomotive Rocket (1829) travelled at the then unheard-of speed of 46 kph. It was a model for later steam locomotives.
Stephenson invented many useful things besides engines, including a miner's lamp and an alarm clock. He became well known for building the world's first public railway, the Stockton and Darlington, which opened in 1825. Then he built the difficult Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Here he used his ideas for tunnels, grading, and bridges to make a level roadbed.
Stephenson was born in Wylam, near Newcastle, England. As a boy, he made models of engines of clay and sticks which later helped him work out some of his great projects. He was consulted on railway projects in many countries, and spread his ideas for safety and passenger comfort. With the wealth from his inventions and locomotives, he became a philanthropist. His night schools for miners, and libraries, music clubs, recreation rooms, and schools for miners' children, were as original in his day as were his inventions.
Daimler
Daimler, Gottlieb (1834-1900), a German engineer, developed an internal-combustion engine light enough to power a car. He and Wilhelm Maybach worked with motors for years, and produced a motor-bicycle in 1885. They made a four-wheeled car in 1886. The Daimler Company was founded in 1890, and produced the Mercedes car. The Daimler and Benz companies merged to make the Mercedes-Benz car in 1926.
Niemeyer
Niemeyer, Oscar (1907-...), is a Brazilian architect. He is best known as the designer of the principal buildings of Brasilia, the Brazilian capital (see BRASILIA). Niemeyer often uses decorative shapes for entire buildings, and in repetitious architectural elements. He has said that his designs are inspired by Brazilian climatic and social conditions, and the nation's colonial baroque art heritage.
Niemeyer was born in Rio de Janeiro. His early work was influenced by brief contact with the architect Le Corbusier. An example of this work is the Ministry of Education (1937-1943) in Rio de Janeiro. It is shaped like a concrete slab, with windows set deeply into the building to provide sun shades. During the early 1940's, Niemeyer served as chief architect for Pampulha, a new residential suburb near Belo Horizonte.
McCoy
McCoy, Elijah (1844?-1929), was a black American engineer and inventor who developed the automatic lubricator. His invention, the lubricator cup, continuously supplies lubricants to moving parts of machines.
Before McCoy's invention in the early 1870's, machines had to be shut down frequently for lubrication. The lubricator cup saves both time and money because it oils machine parts as they operate. Throughout his life, McCoy worked to design and improve lubricating systems for locomotives and other machines. The expression the real McCoy, meaning the real thing, may have originated with machinery buyers who insisted that their new equipment have only McCoy lubricators.
McCoy was born in Colchester, Ontario. He was apprenticed to a mechanical engineer and later worked as a fireman-oilman for several railways in Michigan, U.S.A.
Wren
Wren, Sir Christopher (1632-1723), was an English architect, scientist, and mathematician. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, he redesigned part or all of 55 of the 87 churches that had been destroyed. The most famous one is St. Paul's Cathedral (1710). The grace and variety of many of Wren's church spires are still a feature of the London skyline. His other major buildings include the churches of St. Bride (about 1678) and St. James (about 1684), Chelsea Hospital (about 1691), and Greenwich Hospital (about 1715).
Wren was born in the village of East Knoyle in the county of Wiltshire. His early interests and training were in science and mathematics. From 1641 to 1646, he attended Westminster School in London, where the poet John Dryden and the philosopher John Locke were fellow students. Wren received his B.A. degree from Oxford University in 1651 and his M.A. degree there in 1653. Wren also studied anatomy and physiology and prepared models to show how muscles function. In 1657, Wren was appointed professor of astronomy at Gresham College in London. His lectures in Latin and English became popular and helped spread his reputation among European scientists.
In 1661, King Charles II appointed Wren to the important architectural position of assistant surveyor-general. In 1663, Wren attracted attention with his proposal for a unique roofing system over the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. Unlike other English architects of his day, Wren never went to Italy to gain firsthand knowledge of classical architecture. He did visit France in 1665, and the architecture he saw there probably influenced his work.
Wren was a founding member of the Royal Society in 1660. According to a biography written by his son, Wren was responsible for 53 inventions, experiments, and theories.
Lutyens
Lutyens, Sir Edwin Landseer (1869-1944), was one of the most important English architects of the early 1900's. His designs show the influence of Palladian Revival and other English architectural styles of the 1700's (see ARCHITECTURE [The Palladian Revival]). Lutyens first became prominent for country houses he designed with the English landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll. Their best-known country houses included Munstead Wood (1896) near Godalming, Surrey, and Deanery Garden (1901) in Sonning, Berkshire. Later in his career, Lutyens turned to town planning. Two of his most important projects were the village centre in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, and the layout for the city of New Delhi, India. His other works include the Cenotaph war memorial (1920) in London and the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. (1930). Lutyens was born in London.
Jones
Jones, Inigo (1573-1652), was the first major architect of the English Renaissance. He introduced the Palladian influence of northern Italy into English architecture. The term Palladian comes from the name of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio (see PALLADIO, ANDREA). Its qualities appear in Jones's most admired building, the Banqueting House (1622) at Whitehall Palace in London.
Jones was also famous as a designer of sets, costumes, and stage machinery for dramatic spectacles called masques. The works he created for the courts of James I and Charles I influenced later theatrical design.
Jones was born in London. He studied Palladio's architecture during trips to Italy in about 1600 and again in 1613-1614. Jones served as surveyor (architect) to King James I from 1615 to 1625 and to King Charles I from 1625 to 1642.
Goddard
Robert Goddard was an American physicist who lived between 1882-1945. He was a pioneer of modern rocketry who discovered that liquid fuel is more efficient than solid fuel. Although Goddard's first rocket flew for only 2 1/2 seconds, it made him believe that travel into space and to the Moon was possible, a position for which he was often ridiculed.
Goddard spent much of his life perfecting the liquid propulsion system which he had invented. He also learned how to control rocket flight and how to equip them with parachutes so they could land safely.
Eiffel
Eiffel, Alexandre Gustave (1832-1923), was the French structural and aeronautical engineer who designed the 300-metre Eiffel Tower in Paris for the World's Fair of 1889. His notable bridges include the wrought iron bridge at Porto, Portugal, and the Garabit viaduct in southern France. Eiffel also designed many other iron structures, including the framework for the Statue of Liberty in New York. Eiffel was born in Dijon, France.
Brunnel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) was a bridge and railway engineer. In 1831, he designed the Clifton suspension bridge over the River Avon, in Bristol, England. Work on the bridge started in 1836, but was abandoned for lack of funds. It was eventually completed in 1864. He also built the Hungerford bridge over the River Thames, completed in 1845, and the Tamar bridge over the River Tamar, in southwest England, completed in 1859. In 1833, he was appointed engineer to the Great Western Railway. He constructed railways in Italy, and was consultant for railways built in Australia and Asia.
In the 1840's, Brunel designed the Great Britain, which was the first iron-built steamship to be screw-propelled across the Atlantic. The Great Britain made its first transatlantic crossing in 1845.
During the 1850's, Brunel worked on the Great Eastern, the largest steamship to have been built at that time. The work and worry of building the Great Eastern broke Brunel's health, and he died soon after the start of its trial voyage in 1859.
Isambard Brunel was born at Portsmouth, in Hampshire, England. In 1823, he joined his father in working on the Rotherhithe Tunnel, under the River Thames.
COMPUTING
| Babbage | Turing | Napier | |
| Minsky | Russel | Burners Lee | |
| Jobs | Gates | Vannavar | Byron |
Babbage
Babbage, Charles (1791-1871), was an English mathematician known for his designs of two mechanical computing machines. These designs were based on some of the same principles that were later applied to electronic digital computers. However, Babbage could not build a working model of his machines. The technology of the time was not advanced enough, and Babbage lacked funding for the project.
Babbage was born in Surrey, England. He helped found the Astronomical Society (now the Royal Astronomical Society). He was also the author of many books, including On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832).
Turing
Turing, Alan Mathison (1912-1954), an English mathematician, made important contributions to the development of electronic digital computers. In 1937, he described a hypothetical computing machine, now called the Turing machine, that could, in principle, perform any calculation. The device had a long tape divided into squares on which symbols could be written or read. The tape head of the machine could move to the left or to the right. The machine also had a table to tell it the order in which to carry out operations. The Turing machine became an important tool for determining what could be programmed on a computer.
Turing was born in London. He studied mathematics at Cambridge University, England, and at Princeton University, U.S.A. During World War II (1939-1945), he helped crack German codes. After the war, he worked on a project to build the first British electronic digital computer. In 1950, he proposed a test for determining if machines might be said to "think." This test, now called the Turing test, is often mentioned in discussions of artificial intelligence
Napier
Napier, John (1550-1617), Laird of Merchiston, was a Scottish mathematician. He developed methods of rapid calculation, which he sought to apply to astronomy, trigonometry, navigation, mapmaking, and surveying. Napier discovered how to multiply numbers by doing the easier task of adding other, corresponding numbers that he called logarithms . Logarithms are used to describe mathematically many natural phenomena. Napier also invented a set of "rods" or "bones" that could be arranged for arithmetical calculations. He was born near Edinburgh, Scotland.
Minsky
Electrical engineer, mathematician, educator; born in New York City. A pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, as early as 1951 he built a "learning machine" to try to demonstrate that what we call mind is composed of mindless parts. In 1958 he became an assistant professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1974, professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer science.
Russel l
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970), was a British philosopher and mathematician. Russell ranks among the greatest philosophers of the 1900's. He has also been called the most important logician (expert in logic) since the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.
Russell made his most important contributions in formal logic and the theory of knowledge. However, his influence extends far beyond these fields. Russell developed a prose style of extraordinary clarity, wit, and passion. He received the 1950 Nobel Prize for literature.
Russell became an influential and controversial figure on social, political, and educational issues. He was an outspoken pacifist and advocated liberal attitudes toward sex, marriage, and methods of education. Russell was a critic of World War I (1914-1918). He was imprisoned in 1918 for statements considered harmful to British-American relations, and again in 1961 for "incitement to civil disobedience" in a campaign for nuclear disarmament.
Russell made his major contributions to philosophy and mathematics in the early 1900's. He wanted to derive all of mathematics from logic, thus putting it on a sure foundation. Russell collaborated with the English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead on the monumental three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). This work attempts to show that all pure mathematics follows from premises that are strictly logical and uses only those concepts that can be defined in purely logical terms. Although Russell's ideas have been refined and corrected by later mathematicians, all modern work in logic and the foundations of mathematics begins with his ideas.
Russell made important contributions to the history of philosophy in such books as A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900) and A History of Western Philosophy (1945). He expressed his social and political ideas in a number of works, including German Social Democracy (1896), Roads to Freedom (1918), Power (1938), and Authority and the Individual (1949). Russell also influenced morality and education in many essays and in such books as Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), Marriage and Morals (1929), and The Conquest of Happiness (1930). Russell wrote many accounts of his life, including a three-volume autobiography published from 1967 to 1969.
Russell was born near Trellek, Wales, north of Chepstow. His full name was Bertrand Arthur William Russell. He was a member of an old and noble family. In 1931, on the death of his older brother, he inherited the family title and became Earl Russell.
Burners Lee
BORN: 1955NATIVE CITY: London
EDUCATION: B.A. in physics, Queen's College, Oxford, 1976
LITTLE KNOWN FACTS: He was knighted by the British Empire in 1998. Alternative names he considered, before settling on the World Wide Web, included "The Information Mine" and "Information Mesh."
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, grew up talking about imaginary numbers with his parents over breakfast. The son of two British computer scientists who met while developing the Ferranti Mark II—one of the first commercially sold computers—young Berners-Lee played with computer programming tape and built toy computers out of cardboard boxes.
Later, he repeated the feat—using a soldering iron and a discarded television set—to build a real computer while at Queen's College, Oxford, in the early 1970s. Talented in mathematics and electronics, Berners-Lee studied physics at Oxford, then worked for several high-tech computer companies in England. In 1980, he went to work for CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in Geneva, Switzerland, where he developed a computer system to help physicists share information stored on different computers. He named the program after a Victorian encyclopedia whose name had tickled his fancy—Enquire Within Upon Everything.
After helping to found Image Computer Systems in England, he returned to CERN in 1984, and proposed a global hypertext project, based on Enquire, which would link physicists around the world using the Internet. By late 1989, he had developed a Web server and a basic browser, which he posted on the Web in 1991. The Web, which provided a way to easily publish text and pictures on the Internet, quickly caught on, especially when University of Illinois college student Marc Andreesen spearheaded a programming team to create a browser called Mosaic that was simple for computer novices to use. Use of the Internet grew to 40 million users in 1996.
Unlike other technological innovators, Berners-Lee did not try to capitalize on his invention of the Web. He pointed out that any attempt to make the Web proprietary would undermine its purpose. Rejecting numerous commercial job offers, the slender blond man who prefers windsurfing to Net surfing instead became director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in 1994. At W3C he works to expand the Web's technological capabilities and set standards for protocol design which will keep the Web open and easy to use, and prevent a single company from dominating the Web with its own standards.
In October 1999, Berners-Lee published the book Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor, which told the personal story of how he created the World Wide Web and discussed the future of the mass medium.
Jobs
BORN: February 24, 1955
NATIVE CITY: Los Altos, California
EDUCATION: Dropped out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after one semester.
LITTLE KNOWN FACT: At age 27, Jobs, who was adopted, discovered he had a sister best-selling novelist Mona Simpson.
He's been called a brilliant visionary, an insufferable egotist, a passionate renegade, and an arrogant jerk. But prophet or prima donna, Steven Paul Jobs changed the way people think about technology and helped ignite the personal computer revolution. Adopted as an infant by a Northern California machinist, Jobs attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, where he befriended Steve Wozniak. After a brief stint at Reed College in Oregon, Jobs dropped out and trekked around India seeking spiritual enlightenment. He returned to find Wozniak working at Hewlett-Packard and building computers to impress pals in the Homebrew Computer Club. Convinced Wozniak's latest invention, the Apple I computer, would attract a wider audience than computer hobbyists, Jobs persuaded his friend to launch a business. Together the two started Apple Computers in Jobs' garage in 1976.
By building the first personal computer that appealed to businesses and the public, Apple quickly became a $335 million company that dominated the fledgling market. But by 1981, IBM had joined the race with the IBM PC and Apple began losing ground.
Meanwhile, Jobs was leading a development team that would change the face of personal computing forever. In December 1979, Jobs and his team visited the elite Xerox PARC research center, where they saw the Alto computer, a prototype which featured a graphical user interface and a mouse. Jobs' team rushed back to the office and modified specifications for the Lisa (a computer which bore the same name as Jobs' daughter). Both the Lisa, and its successor, the Macintosh, launched with a mouse and a point-and-click interface. Xerox unsuccessfully sued Apple for hijacking the graphic interface. Ironically, Apple also later sued Microsoft for using a graphic interface on its Windows operating system. Like Xerox, Apple lost the case.
Although the graphic user interface radically changed the way people thought of computers, the Macintosh fell short of its early sales predictions, and Jobs was ousted from the Macintosh team before the product became successful. In 1985, Jobs left the company. He founded NeXT Software and purchased Pixar Animation Studios from filmmaker George Lucas in 1986. Under Jobs, Pixar produced 1995’s Toy Story (the first wholly computer generated film), 1998’s A Bug's Life, and 1999’s Toy Story 2. The studio is currently in production on its fourth animated feature, Monsters Inc., which is targeted for release in 2001.
In a strange twist, Jobs was invited back to Apple in 1996 when Apple bought NeXT for $400 million. Jobs became interim CEO, and helped turn around the company's dwindling market share with the introduction of the tremendously popular iMac and iBook computer lines in the summer of 1998.
In January 2000, Jobs was appointed permanent CEO of Apple Computers Inc. That same month, Apple also announced a $200 million investment in EarthLink, an Internet service provider that will work with Apple to bring new online features to computer users, including customized email service. Under Jobs’ direction, Apple has recently released the stylish Power Mac G4 Cube, a user-friendly supercomputer miraculously engineered into an eight-inch cube.
Gates
BORN: October 28, 1955
NATIVE CITY: Seattle, Washington
EDUCATION: Public elementary school. Entered private Lakeside School at age 12. Dropped out of Harvard University junior year.
LITTLE KNOWN FACT: His family called him "Trey," in reference to the III after his name.
HOBBIES: Bridge, golf, reading, philanthropy. Donated $6 billion to his charitable foundation in August 1999, the largest bequest ever by a living individual.
FAMILY: wife, Melinda; daughter, Jennifer, born 1996; son, Rory, born 1999.
Skinny, shy and awkward, teenaged Bill Gates seemed an unlikely successor to his overachieving parents. His father, powerfully built and 6'6'' tall, was a prominent Seattle attorney, and his gregarious mother served on charitable boards and ran the United Way. While he showed enormous talent for math and logic, young Bill, a middle child, was no one's idea of a natural leader, let alone a future billionaire who would reinvent American business.
Born in 1955, Gates attended public elementary school, and enrolled in the private Lakeside School at age 12. The following year, Gates wrote his first computer program, at a time when computers were still room-sized machines run by scientists in white coats. Soon afterwards, he and his friend Paul Allen wrote a scheduling program for the school—which coincidentally placed the two in the same classes as the prettiest girls in school. Still in high school, Gates and Allen founded a company called Traf-O-Data, which analyzed city traffic data.
Gates set off for Harvard University intending to become a lawyer like his father. Still shy and awkward, he rarely ventured out to parties unless dragged by his friend Steve Ballmer, whom he later repaid by naming him president of Microsoft.
One day in December 1974, Allen, who was working at Honeywell outside of Boston, showed Gates a Popular Mechanics cover featuring the Altair 8800, a $397 computer from M.I.T.S. computing that any hobbyist could build. The only thing the computer lacked, besides a keyboard and monitor, was software. Gates and Allen contacted the head of M.I.T.S. and said they could provide a version of BASIC for the Altair.
After a successful demonstration at the company's Albuquerque headquarters, M.I.T.S. contracted with Gates and Allen for programming languages. The pair moved to New Mexico and started Micro-soft (they dropped the hypen later). Although the company's first five clients went bankrupt, the company struggled on, moving to Seattle in 1979. The following year, IBM asked Gates to provide an operating system for its first personal computer. Gates purchased a system called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $50,000 from another company, changed the name to MS-DOS, and licensed it to IBM. The IBM PC took the market by storm when it was introduced in 1981—and licensing fees streamed into Microsoft, ensuring the company's survival over the next several years.
Microsoft continued concentrating on the software market, adding consumer applications like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Through Gates' company Corbis, Microsoft acquired the vast Bettmann photo archives and other collections for use in electronic distribution. In 1986, when the company went public, Gates became a paper billionaire at the age of 31. The following year, the company introduced its first version of Windows, and by 1993 it was selling a million copies a month. When Windows 95 was introduced in August 1995, seven million copies were sold in the first six weeks alone. Microsoft's software became so ubiquitous that the U.S. Justice Department began a series of long-lasting antitrust investigations against the company, bogging it down in protracted legal battles.
In 1995, Gates dramatically changed the direction of the entire company and focused on the Internet. While some of his efforts, including the much hyped Microsoft Network and its highly touted Web shows, fizzled, the company quickly gained ground on Netscape with its popular Internet Explorer browser.
Meanwhile, Gates built a 40,000-square-foot technological showcase of a home on Lake Washington and in 1994, married Melinda French, a marketing executive at Microsoft. At the same time, Gates increased his charitable giving: He earmarked $1 billion over 20 years to establish the Gates Millennium Scholarship Program, which will support promising minority students through college and some kinds of graduate school; and $750 million over five years to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which includes the World Health Organization, the Rockefeller Foundation, Unicef, pharmaceutical companies, and the World Bank.
In November 1999, the U.S. District Court issued a preliminary decision that the software giant was a monopoly, signaling continued trouble for both Gates and the Microsoft Corporation. Shortly after the ruling, Gates stepped down as Microsoft’s CEO and assumed the position of chairman and chief software architect.
Under the 1999 ruling, Microsoft was required to release the Windows 2000 operating code to manufacturers. In April 2000, the Justice Department proposed that Microsoft should be divided into two companies. One company would develop software mainstays like Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, while the other would solely concentrate on the Windows operating systems (which currently run on 85% of the world’s computers).
Gates consistently maintained that it would be functionally impossible to sever the Windows operating system from other Microsoft applications. No immediate restrictions were implemented on the company, and in late July 2001 a federal appeals court unanimously overturned the lower court's order to break up Microsoft.
Vannevar
Bush, Vannevar (1890-1974), was a famous United States electrical engineer and scientific research administrator. During World War II (1939-1945), he was director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Research sponsored by this agency led to such developments as the atomic bomb and improved radar systems, as well as drugs to fight malaria. Bush later played an important role in the establishment of the U.S. National Science Foundation. This organization, set up by the U.S. government in 1950, is one of the chief supporters of scientific research in the United States today.
Bush patented a number of inventions, including the differential analyser and several other mechanical calculators. The differential analyser, which solved complicated mathematical equations, was the first reliable analog computer (see ANALOG COMPUTER). Vannevar Bush was born in Everett, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Ada Byron
Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, was a British mathematician who lived between 1815-1852. She was a major influence in computer programming. Computer programming is essential for building space shuttles and satellites and in analyzing scientific data.
Byron published "Sketch of the Analytical Engine" which discussed Charles Babbage's analytical engine (later to be known as the first computer). Her work was based on the writings of the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, and meetings with Babbage himself.
Byron designed the "punch-card" program which was a program that gave instructions to a computer. She also created the computer law known as GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). This law basically states that a computer can use only what is put into it. In other words, a computer cannot have a mind of its own.
Because of Byron's pioneering efforts in the computer era, the U.S. Department of Defense named a computer programming language (ADA) after her in 1977.
PHILOSOPHERS
| Des Cartes | Heidigger | Nietzsche | |
| Marx | Aristotle | Locke | |
| Schopenhauer | Kant | Voltaire | Bentham |
Des Cartes
Descartes, Rene (1596-1650), was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He is often called the father of modern philosophy. Descartes invented analytic geometry and was the first philosopher to describe the physical universe in terms of matter and motion. He was a pioneer in the attempt to formulate simple, universal laws of motion that govern all physical change.
Descartes wrote three major works. The first was Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences (1637), commonly known as the Discourse on Method. The other two books were Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), perhaps his most important work, and Principles of Philosophy (1644). His philosophy became known as Cartesianism.
His life. Descartes was born at La Haye, near Chatellerault, and was educated at a Jesuit college. He served in the armies of two countries and travelled widely. Money from an inheritance and from patrons enabled him to devote most of his life to study. From 1628 to 1649, Descartes led a quiet, scholarly life in the Netherlands and produced most of his philosophical writings. Late in 1649, he accepted an invitation from Queen Christina to visit Sweden. He became seriously ill there and died in February 1650.
His philosophy. Descartes is called a dualist because he claimed that the world consists of two sorts of basic substances--matter and spirit. Matter is the physical universe, of which our bodies are a part. Spirit is the human mind, which interacts with the body but can, in principle, exist without it.
Descartes believed that matter could be understood through certain simple concepts he borrowed from geometry, together with his laws of motion. In Descartes's view, the whole world--including its laws and even the truths of mathematics--was created by God, on whose power everything depends. Descartes thought of God as resembling the mind in that both God and the mind think but have no physical being. But he believed God is unlike the mind in that God is infinite and does not depend for His existence on some other creator.
In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes first considered the strongest reasons that might be used to show that he could never be certain of anything. These so-called "sceptical" arguments included the idea that perhaps he might be dreaming, so that nothing he seemed to perceive would be real. In another argument, Descartes reflected that perhaps God or some evil spirit was constantly tricking his mind, causing him to believe what was false. Descartes then responded to these arguments. He began with the observation that even if he were dreaming, or constantly deceived, he could at least be certain that he had thoughts, and therefore existed as a thinking being. This, he wrote, was a "clear and distinct" perception of the mind. Nothing could make him doubt it. In another work, Descartes created the famous Latin phrase cogito, ergo sum, which means I think, therefore I am.
Descartes then argued that he could also clearly and distinctly perceive that an infinitely powerful and good God exists. This God would not allow Descartes to be deceived in his clearest perceptions. Through this conception of God, Descartes sought to establish that the physical world exists with the properties the philosopher assumed in his theories of physics.
Heidigger
Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976), was a German philosopher who exercised a tremendous influence on the philosophers of continental Europe, South America, and Japan. His work is an attempt to understand the nature of Being (Sein in German). To study Being, Heidegger analysed human existence (Dasein), because it is the form of Being that can be known best. In his attempt to understand Being, he often sought philosophical enlightenment in the etymologies (origins) of words. Heidegger also sought enlightenment in the insights of poets, especially his favourite poet, Friedrich Holderlin.
Heidegger's extensive discussion of human existence, which emphasizes anxiety, alienation, and death, has led many people to call him an existentialist (see EXISTENTIALISM). However, he denied being an existentialist, claiming that he was interested in human existence only to better understand Being. He held that the most important philosophical question is: "Why is there something rather than nothing at all?"
Heidegger was born in Baden-Wurttemberg. He studied philosophy at the University of Freiburg under Edmund Husserl. Heidegger succeeded Husserl in 1928, and became rector of the university in 1933. His bestknown book is Being and Time (1927). He also wrote What Is Metaphysics? (1929), Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), and What Is Thinking? (1954).
Nietzsche
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), was a German philosopher, poet, and classical scholar. Many philosophers, writers, and psychologists of the 1900's have been deeply influenced by him.
Nietzsche greatly admired classical Greek civilization. In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), he presented a revolutionary theory about the nature of Greek tragedy and civilization. He said they could best be understood as the results of a conflict between two basic human tendencies. The Apollonian tendency was a desire for clarity and order, represented by the Greek sun god, Apollo. The other, Dionysian, tendency was a wild, irrational drive toward disorder, represented by the god of wine, Dionysus.
Nietzsche criticized religion. In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1885), he proclaimed, "God is dead." He meant that religion, in his time, had lost its meaningfulness and power over people and could no longer serve as the foundation for moral values. He believed the time had come for people to critically examine their traditional values and the origins of these values.
Nietzsche tried to begin this "re-evaluation of all values" in such works as Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and Genealogy of Morals (1887). He said that the warriors who originally dominated society had defined their own strength and nobility as "good," and the weakness of the common people as "bad." Later, when the priests and common people came to dominate society, they redefined their own weakness and humility as "good" and the strength and cruelty of the warriors whom they feared as "evil." Nietzsche criticized this second set of values because it was based on fear and resentment, and he associated these values with the Judeo-Christian tradition. He repeatedly criticized Christianity, particularly in The Antichrist (1895).
Nietzsche boasted that he was one of the few philosophers who was also a psychologist. Nietzsche's major psychological theory is that all human behaviour is basically motivated by the "will to power." He did not mean that people wanted only to overpower each other physically. He thought that people also wanted to gain power and control over their own unruly passions. He thought that the self-control exhibited by ascetics and artists was a higher form of power than the physical bullying of the weak by the strong. Nietzsche's ideal person, the overman or superman, is the passionate individual who learns to control passions and use them in a creative manner. Nietzsche said that people should accept and love their own life so completely that they would choose to relive it, with its joys and sufferings, an infinite number of times.
Nietzsche was born in Saxony, the son and grandson of Protestant ministers. He studied at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. When he was only 24, he became professor of classics at the University of Basel in Switzerland. There he became the close friend of the composer Richard Wagner, but the friendship ended in hostility. In 1870, Nietzsche became a Swiss citizen. After teaching at the university for only 10 years, he retired because of poor health. He then devoted all his time and energy to his writing. In 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown from which he never recovered.
Nietzsche has unjustly suffered notoriety as a racist, anti-Semite, and forerunner of Nazism. This is largely due to the editing of his writings and misrepresentation of his ideas by Nazi propagandists and by his racist sister Elizabeth.
Marx
Marx, Karl (1818-1883), was a German philosopher, social scientist, and professional revolutionary. Few writers have had such a great and lasting influence on the world. Marx was the chief founder of two of the most powerful mass movements in history--democratic socialism and revolutionary communism. See COMMUNISM; SOCIALISM.
Marx was sometimes ignored or misunderstood, even by his followers. Yet many of the social sciences--especially sociology--have been influenced by his theories. Many important social scientists of the late 1800's and the 1900's can be fully understood only by realizing how much they were reacting to Marx's beliefs.
The life of Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was born and raised in Trier, in what was then Prussia. His father was a lawyer. Marx showed intellectual promise in school and went to the University of Bonn in 1835 to study law. The next year, he transferred to the University of Berlin. There he became much more interested in philosophy, a highly political subject in Prussia. Marx joined a group of radical leftist students and professors whose philosophic views implied strong criticism of the severe way in which Prussia was governed.
In 1841, Marx obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the university in Jena. He tried to get a teaching position but failed because of his opposition to the Prussian government. He became a freelance journalist and helped create and manage several radical journals.
After his marriage in 1843, Marx and his wife moved to Paris. There they met Friedrich Engels, a young German radical, who became Marx's best friend and worked with him on several articles and books. Marx lived in Brussels, Belgium, from 1845 to 1848, when he returned to Germany. He edited the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which was published in Cologne during the German revolution of 1848. Marx became known throughout Germany as a spokesman for radical democratic reform. See GERMANY (History [The Revolution of 1848]).
After the collapse of the 1848 revolution, Marx fled from Prussia. He spent the rest of his life as a political exile in London.
Marx led a hand-to-mouth existence because he was too proud--or too much a professional revolutionary--to work for a living. He did write occasional articles for newspapers. His most regular job of this kind was that of political reporter for the New York Tribune. But generally, Marx, his wife, and their six children survived only because Engels sent them money regularly. In 1864, Marx founded The International Workingmen's Association, an organization dedicated to improving the life of the working classes and preparing for a socialist revolution (see INTERNATIONAL, THE).
Marx suffered from frequent illnesses, many of which may have been psychological. Even when physically healthy, he suffered from long periods of apathy and depression and could not work. Marx was learned and sophisticated, but he was often opinionated and arrogant. He had many admirers but few friends. Except for Engels, he lost most of his friends--and many of them became his enemies. He broke all contact with his mother and was cool to his sisters. But with his wife and children, Marx was relaxed, witty, and playful.
Marx's writings
Most of Marx's writings have been preserved. They include not only his books, but also most of his correspondence and the notes of his speeches.
Philosophic essays. Some of Marx's philosophic essays were published during his lifetime, but others were not discovered until the 1900's. Marx wrote some of them alone and some with Engels. The essays range from one of about 15 sentences to a 700-page book, The German Ideology (1845-1846), written with Engels.
Marx wrote his essays between 1842 and 1847. They spell out the philosophic foundations of his radicalism. The chief themes in the essays include Marx's bitter view that economic forces were increasingly oppressing human beings and his belief that political action is a necessary part of philosophy. The essays also show the influence of the philosophy of history developed by the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see HEGEL, G. W. F.).
The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet written jointly with Engels on the eve of the German revolution of 1848. Its full title is the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The manifesto is a brief but forceful presentation of the authors' political and historical theories. It is the only work they produced that can be considered a systematic statement of the theories that became known as Marxism. The Communist Manifesto considers history to be a series of conflicts between classes. It predicts that the ruling middle class will be overthrown by the working class. The result of this revolution, according to Marx and Engels, will be a classless society in which the chief means of production are publicly owned.
Das Kapital (Capital) was Marx's major work. He spent about 30 years writing it. The first volume appeared in 1867. Engels edited the second and third volumes from Marx's manuscripts. Both of these volumes were published after Marx's death. The fourth volume exists only as a mass of scattered notes.
In Das Kapital, Marx described the free enterprise system as he saw it. He considered it the most efficient, dynamic economic system ever devised. But he also regarded it as afflicted with flaws that would destroy it through increasingly severe periods of inflation and depression. The most serious flaw in the free enterprise system, according to Marx, is that it accumulates more and more wealth but becomes less and less capable of using this wealth wisely. As a result, Marx saw the accumulation of riches being accompanied by the rapid spread of human misery. See CAPITALISM.
Other writings. Marx and Engels also wrote about all sorts of events in and influences on national and international affairs--personalities, overthrowing of governments, cabinet changes, parliamentary debates, wars, and workers' uprisings.
Marx also wrote about the practical problems of leading an international revolutionary movement. The major source of these comments is his correspondence with Engels and other friends.
Marx's theories
Marx's doctrine is sometimes called dialectical materialism, and part of it is referred to as historical materialism. These terms were taken from Hegel's philosophy of history. Marx never used them, but Engels did and so have most later Marxists. The concepts of dialectical and historical materialism are difficult and obscure and may be unnecessary for an understanding of Marx's theories. See MATERIALISM.
Marx's writings cover more than 40 years. His interests shifted and he often changed his mind. But his philosophy remained surprisingly consistent--and very complex. Apart from the brief Communist Manifesto, he never presented his ideas systematically.
Production and society. The basis of Marxism is the conviction that socialism is inevitable. Marx believed that the free enterprise system, or capitalism, was doomed and that socialism was the only alternative.
Marx discussed capitalism within a broad historical perspective that covered the history of the human race. He believed that the individual, not God, is the highest being. People have made themselves what they are by their own labour. They use their intelligence and creative talent to dominate the world by a process called production. Through production, people make the goods they need to live. The means of production include natural resources, factories, machinery, and labour.
The process of production, according to Marx, is a collective effort, not an individual one. Organized societies are the chief creative agents in human history, and historical progress requires increasingly developed societies for production. Such societies are achieved by continual refinement of production methods and of the division of labour. By the division of labour, Marx meant that each person specializes in one job, resulting in the development of two classes of people--the rulers and the workers. The ruling class owns the means of production. The working class consists of the nonowners, who are exploited (treated unfairly) by the owners.
The class struggle. Marx believed there was a strain in all societies because the social organization never kept pace with the development of the means of production. An even greater strain developed from the division of people into two classes.
According to Marx, all history is a struggle between the ruling and working classes, and all societies have been torn by this conflict. Past societies tried to keep the exploited class under control by using elaborate political organizations, laws, customs, traditions, ideologies, religions, and rituals. Marx argued that personality, beliefs, and activities are shaped by these institutions. By recognizing these forces, he reasoned, people will be able to overcome them through revolutionary action.
Marx believed that private ownership of the chief means of production was the heart of the class system. For people to be truly free, he declared, the means of production must be publicly owned--by the community as a whole. With the resulting general economic and social equality, all people would have an opportunity to follow their own desires and to use their leisure time creatively. Unfair institutions and customs would disappear. All these events, said Marx, will take place when the proletariat (working class) revolts against the bourgeoisie (owners of the means of production).
Political strategy. It is not clear what strategy Marx might have proposed to achieve the revolution he favoured. An idea of this strategy can come only from his speeches, articles, letters, and political activities. As a guideline for practical politics, Marxism is vague. Marx's followers have quarrelled bitterly among themselves over different interpretations and policies.
Marx today
Today, Marx is studied as both a revolutionary and an economist. His importance as a pioneer in the social sciences is being recognized increasingly. Marx has often been attacked because he rebelled against all established societies, because he was an arrogant writer who scorned his critics, and because of his radical views.
As the founding father of the Communist movement, Marx is regarded in most Communist countries as one of the greatest thinkers of all time. In those countries, many people believe that Marx's writings are the source of all important truths in social science as well as philosophy. They believe that a person cannot be an intelligent student of society, history, economics, philosophy, and numerous other fields without first studying Marx or his principal disciples.
Scholars in the Western world were slow to recognize the importance of Marx. For many years, few people bothered to study his writings. But today, in a variety of fields, it has become essential to have some knowledge of Marx. One of these fields is economics. Although his methods of analysing capitalism are considered old-fashioned, many scholars recognize the brilliance of this analysis. Many people consider his criticism of capitalism and his view of what humanity has made of the world as timely today as they were 100 years ago. Even the analysis that Marx made of the business cycle is studied as one of the many explanations of inflation and depression.
In sociology, Marx's work is also regarded with increasing respect. Without his contributions, sociology would not have developed into what it is today. Marx wrote on social classes, on the relationship between the economy and the state, and on the principles that underlie a political or economic system.
Many people still turn to Marx for an explanation of current social, economic, and political evils. But most of them are unlikely to agree with his view of the ease and speed with which the working class will overthrow the class system and set up a Communist classless society.
Aristotle
AristotleAristotle (384-322 B.C.), a Greek philosopher, educator, and scientist, was one of the greatest and most influential thinkers in Western culture. Aristotle was probably the most scholarly and learned of the classical or ancient Greek philosophers. He familiarized himself with the entire development of Greek thought preceding him. In his own writings, Aristotle considered, summarized, criticized, and further developed all the rich intellectual tradition that he had inherited. Aristotle and his teacher Plato are usually considered to be the two most important of all the ancient Greek philosophers.
Metaphysics. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle tried to develop a science of things that never change and investigate the most general and basic principles of reality and knowledge. Since the most important of these unchanging things is God, Aristotle sometimes called this science theology, the study of God. He also called this branch of his philosophy first philosophy, because of its fundamental importance. Aristotle himself never used the name metaphysics, which literally means after the physics. This name was given to the work centuries later simply because it followed the Physics in the written edition of Aristotle's works. But the word metaphysics has now come to mean any philosophic study of the basic principles of reality and knowledge.
Ethics and politics. For Aristotle, ethics and politics both study practical knowledge, that is, knowledge that enables people to act properly and live happily. Aristotle's works on this subject include the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics.
Aristotle argued that the goal of human beings is happiness, and that we achieve happiness when we fulfil our function. Therefore, it is necessary to determine what our function is. The function of a thing is what it alone can do, or what it can do best. For example, the function of the eye is to see, and the function of a knife is to cut. Aristotle declared that a human being is "the rational animal" whose function is to reason. Thus, according to Aristotle, a happy life for human beings is a life governed by reason.
Aristotle believed that a person who has difficulty behaving ethically is morally imperfect. His ideal person practises behaving reasonably and properly until he or she can do so naturally and without effort. Aristotle believed that moral virtue is a matter of avoiding extremes in behaviour and finding instead the mean that lies between the extremes. For example, the virtue of courage is the mean between the vices of cowardice at one extreme and foolhardiness at the other. Similarly, the virtue of generosity is the mean between stinginess and wastefulness.
Literary criticism. Aristotle's Poetics has probably been the single most influential work in all literary criticism. The Poetics examines the nature of tragedy, and takes as its prime example Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex. Aristotle believed that tragedy affects the spectator by arousing the emotions of pity and fear, and then purifying and cleansing the spectator of these emotions. Aristotle called this process catharsis.
Logic. Aristotle's works on logic are collectively called the Organon, which means instrument, because they investigate thought, which is the instrument of knowledge. The Organon includes The Categories, The Prior and Posterior Analytics, The Topics, and On Interpretation. Aristotle was the first philosopher to analyse the process whereby certain propositions can be logically inferred to be true from the fact that certain other propositions are true. He believed that this process of logical inference was based on a form of argument he called the syllogism. In a syllogism, a proposition is argued or logically inferred to be true from the fact that two other propositions are true. For example, from the facts that (1) all people are mortal and (2) Socrates is a person, it can be logically argued that (3) Socrates is mortal. The syllogism continued to play an important role in later philosophy. See LOGIC.
Philosophy of nature. For Aristotle, the most striking aspect of nature was change. He even defined the philosophy of nature in his Physics as the study of things that change. Aristotle argued that to understand change, a distinction must be made between the form and matter of a thing. For example, a sculpture might have the form of a human being, and bronze as its matter. Aristotle believed that change essentially consists of the same matter acquiring new form. In our example, change occurs if the bronze sculpture is moulded into a new form.
To understand change better, Aristotle studied its causes. He distinguished four kinds of causes: (1) material, (2) efficient, (3) formal, and (4) final. The material cause of the sculpture is the material of which it is made. Its efficient cause is the activity of the sculptor who made it. Its formal cause is the form in which the bronze is moulded. Its final cause is the plan or design in the sculptor's mind.
Aristotle studied movement as a kind of change and wrote about the movement of the heavenly bodies in On the Heavens. In On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, he investigated the changes that occur when something seems to be created or destroyed.
Aristotle's philosophy of nature includes psychology and biology. In On the Soul, he investigated the various functions of the soul and the relationship between the soul and the body. Aristotle was the world's first great biologist. He gathered vast amounts of information about the variety, structure, and behaviour of animals and plants. Aristotle analysed the parts of living organisms teleologically, that is, in terms of the purposes they serve.
Locke
Locke, John (1632-1704), was an English philosopher. His writings have influenced political science and philosophy. Locke's book Two Treatises of Government (1690) strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson in the writing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
His life. Locke was born in Wrington in the county of Somerset, England. He attended Oxford University. In 1666, he met Anthony Ashley Cooper, who later became the first Earl of Shaftesbury. The two men became close friends. In 1679, the earl became involved in plots against the king, and suspicion also fell on Locke. The philosopher decided to leave England. In 1683, he moved to the Netherlands, where he met Prince William and Princess Mary of Orange. William and Mary became the rulers of England in 1689, and Locke returned to England as a court favourite. Until his death, he wrote widely on such subjects as educational reform, freedom of the press, and religious tolerance.
His philosophy. Locke's major work was An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). It describes his theory of how the mind functions in learning about the world. Locke argued against the doctrine of innate ideas, which stated that ideas were part of the mind at birth and not learned or acquired later from outside sources. Locke claimed that all ideas were placed in the mind by experience. He declared that there were two kinds of experience, outer and inner. Outer experience was acquired through the senses of sight, taste, hearing, smell, and touch, which provide information about the external world. Inner experience was acquired by thinking about the mental processes involved in sifting these data, which furnished information about the mind.
Locke believed that the universe contained three kinds of things--minds, various types of bodies, and God. Bodies had two kinds of properties. One kind was mathematically measurable, such as length and weight, and existed in the bodies themselves. The second kind was qualitative, such as sound and colour. These properties were not in the bodies themselves but were simply powers that bodies had to produce ideas of colours and sounds in the mind.
According to Locke, a good life was a life of pleasure. Pleasure and pain were simple ideas that accompanied nearly all human experiences. Ethical action involved determining which act in a given situation would produce the greatest pleasure--and then performing that act. Locke also believed that God had established divine law. This law could be discovered by reason, and to disobey it was morally wrong. Locke thought that divine law and the pleasure principle were compatible.
Locke believed that people by nature had certain rights and duties.
Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860), was a German philosopher who became widely known for his pessimistic views and his fine prose style. Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Following Kant's argument, Schopenhauer insisted that the world we experience through our senses is mere representation. By this he meant that we experience the world not as it really is, but only as we represent it to ourselves. In representing the world to ourselves, we change it.
Both Kant and Schopenhauer argued that we represent objects as existing in space and time, and we represent all events as having a cause. But according to these philosophers, space, time, and causality are not really properties of the world. Instead they argue, we add them to our experience of the world. They are the structures we always necessarily use to organize our experience. But the price we pay for this ordering is never knowing the world as it really is--that is, as it exists apart from the structures we add to the world as we experience it.
Schopenhauer believed that we can at least know ourselves without introducing this distortion. In addition to knowing ourselves as we know other things, we also experience ourselves from the inside as individuals making choices and willing certain desired ends. As Schopenhauer expressed it, we experience ourselves as will as well as representation. In knowing ourselves as will, we know ourselves apart from the structures of space, time, and causality. Thus, we know ourselves as we really are. For Schopenhauer, the real inner nature of the world is will.
Schopenhauer's pessimism was based on his belief that the will can never really be satisfied. According to Schopenhauer, the will is either striving for something that it unhappily does not yet possess, or it quickly experiences the boredom that invariably follows the attainment of any goal. Given the impossibility of ever satisfying the strivings of the will, Schopenhauer advised us to dissociate ourselves as much as possible from these strivings. He suggested that one important way of achieving this withdrawal is through the quiet contemplation of natural and artistic beauty.
Schopenhauer was born in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). At his father's urging, he began training for a career in business. But he turned to philosophy after his father's death. Schopenhauer's first book is On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813). His most important work is The World as Will and Representation (1819, second edition 1844). A collection of essays titled Parerga and Paralipomena (1851) brought Schopenhauer international fame toward the end of his life.
Kant
Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804), was a German philosopher. The central problem of his chief work, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), is the nature and limits of human knowledge. This problem seemed important to him because of David Hume's findings. Until Hume's time, almost everyone had taken for granted that we are justified in making generalizations based on a few cases. "All bodies gravitate" is an example of this kind of generalization. Hume asked how we can possibly know that all bodies gravitate since we have seen and measured only a few of them. Hume had challenged other philosophers and scientists to produce evidence that would allow us to make assertions about things we have not actually experienced (see HUME, DAVID).
Kant's ideas. Kant believed that it is not possible to find such evidence as long as we continue to think of the mind and its objects as separate things. He held instead that the mind is actively involved in the objects it experiences. That is, it organizes experience into definite patterns. Therefore, we can be sure that all things capable of being experienced are arranged in these patterns even though we may not yet have experienced them. We can have knowledge of things that have not been experienced as well as those we have already experienced.
This answered Hume's challenge, but it meant having to abandon any claim to know things as they are in themselves, things in which the mind is not involved. Some philosophers regarded this refusal to claim absolute knowledge as too serious a limitation on a system of philosophy. Other philosophers argued that we have an intuitive, nonrational knowledge of things.
Other works. In addition to his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant also wrote on aesthetics and ethics. In ethics, he tried to show: (1) that doing one's duty is more important than being happy or making other people happy, and (2) that even assuming that scientists can predict what we are going to do, the predictions do not conflict with our use of free will. Therefore, the predictions of scientists have no bearing on our duty to live morally. Kant's chief work on ethics is the Critique of Practical Reason (1788). Further comments on his two main works were published as Critique of Judgment (1790).
Kant never travelled. He was born and lived in Konigsberg, in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, in Russia). He taught near Konigsberg from 1746 to 1755, and then taught at Konigsberg University until his death nearly 50 years later. His work was epoch-making because he established the main lines for philosophical developments since his day.
included liberty, life, and ownership of property. By liberty, Locke meant political equality. The task of any state was to protect people's rights. States inconvenience people in various ways. Therefore, the justification for a state's existence had to be found in its ability to protect human rights better than individuals could on their own. Locke declared that if a government did not adequately protect the rights of its citizens, they had the right to find other rulers. He believed that the people should decide who governs them.
Voltaire
If god did not exist it would be neccassary to invent him !
Voltaire (1694-1778) was the pen name of Francois Marie Arouet, a French author and philosopher. Voltaire's clear style, sparkling wit, keen intelligence, and strong sense of justice made him famous.
Candide (1759), Voltaire's best-known work, is a brilliant philosophical tale that has been translated into more than 100 languages. On the surface, it describes the adventures of an inexperienced young man as he wanders around the world. Philosophically, Candide is a complex inquiry into the nature of good and evil.
Voltaire, the son of a lawyer, was born in Paris. He received an excellent education at a Jesuit school, where many of the students belonged to the nobility. He showed little inclination to study law, and his schooling ended at the age of 16. He soon joined a group of sophisticated aristocrats who had little reverence for anything except wit, pleasure, and literary talent. Paris society sought Voltaire's company because of his cleverness, his remarkable ability to write verses, and his gift for making people laugh.
There are several theories about the origin of Voltaire's pen name, which he adopted in 1718. The most widely accepted one is that Voltaire comes from an imperfect arrangement of the letters making up the French equivalent of Arouet the Younger.
Bentham
Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832), an English philosopher, founded the philosophy known as utilitarianism. He thought that ideas, institutions, and actions should be judged on the basis of their utility (usefulness).
Bentham defined utility as the ability to produce happiness. He advocated the production of the greatest possible amount of happiness in and for society. Bentham thought of happiness and good in terms of pleasure. He believed that (1) pleasure can be exactly measured, (2) individuals care only about increasing their own pleasure and decreasing their pain, and (3) a person should always do what will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Bentham set up a number of principles for measuring pleasure. He also sought an opportunity to organize a country's laws and institutions in such a way that they would place the general good above each person's individual pleasure.
His criticisms brought about many needed reforms. For example, in Great Britain the law courts were reformed because they had not promoted the good of all.
Bentham's writings include Fragment on Government (1776) and Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). He was born in London. Bentham graduated from Queen's College, Oxford, in 1763.
PIONEERS
| Columbus | Drake | Nansen | |
| Magellan | Armstrong | Livingstone | |
| Shackelton | Cook | Fuchs | Polo |
Columbus
Columbus, Christopher (1451-1506), was an outstanding navigator and organizer of expeditions. He achieved fame by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a sea route to Asia. But he did not accomplish this goal. Instead, he encountered islands in the Caribbean Sea. At that time, the people of Europe and the Americas did not know of each other's existence. During his four voyages westward--between 1492 and 1504--Columbus explored what are now the West Indies and the coasts of Central and South America.
Columbus was not the first European to reach the Western Hemisphere. The Norse (also called the Vikings) had settled for a time on the coast of North America about A.D. 1000. But that contact did not last, and most Europeans of the 1400's did not know it had taken place. Columbus' voyages led to enduring links between the Eastern and Western hemispheres.
The world of Columbus
The Europe into which Columbus was born in 1451 was struggling against the growing power of the Ottoman Turks, who had conquered much of southeastern Europe. In 1453, the Ottomans took control of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), a major centre of trade between Europe and Asia. The Ottomans made Constantinople the capital of their empire, cutting off easy European access to Asian goods. The only alternative to a difficult, dangerous land journey was a sea route--either around Africa or westward across the Atlantic.
The desire for a sea route to Asia launched a remarkable wave of exploration. European explorers combined the seafaring skill of the Italians with the resources of the Portuguese and the Spanish. Europe constantly improved its ships and navigational aids, as well as its arms and firepower. Europeans also had other qualities that encouraged overseas exploration, including a passion for trading and a desire to preach Christianity throughout the world.
Drake
Elizabethan seaman, born in Crowndale, Devon, SW England, UK. In 1567 he commanded the Judith in his kinsman John Hawkyns's ill-fated expedition to the West Indies, and returned there several times to recover the losses sustained from the Spaniards, his exploits gaining him great popularity in England. In 1577 he set out with five ships for the Pacific, through the Straits of Magellan, but after his fleet was battered by storm and fire, he alone continued in the Golden Hind. He then struck out across the Pacific, reached the Pelew Is, and returned to England via the Cape of Good Hope in 1580. The following year, the queen visited his ship and knighted him. In 1585 he sailed with 25 ships against the Spanish Indies, bringing home tobacco, potatoes, and the dispirited Virginian colonists. In the battle against the Spanish Armada, which raged for a week in the Channel (1588), his seamanship and courage brought him further distinction. In 1595 he sailed again to the West Indies, but died of dysentery off Porto Bello.
Nansen
Explorer, born near Oslo, Norway. He studied at Oslo University and later at Naples. In 1
Magellan
Magellan, Ferdinand (1480?-1521), was a Portuguese sea captain who commanded the first expedition that sailed around the world. His voyage provided the first positive proof that the earth is round. Magellan did not live to complete the voyage, but his imaginative planning and courageous leadership made the entire expedition possible. Many scholars consider it the greatest navigational feat in history.
Early life
Magellan was born in about 1480 in northern Portugal. His name in Portuguese was Fernao de Magalhaes. His parents, who were members of the nobility, died when he was about 10 years old. At the age of 12, Magellan became a page to Queen Leonor at the royal court. Such a position commonly served as a means of education for sons of the Portuguese nobility.
At the court, Magellan learned about the voyages of such explorers as Christopher Columbus of Italy and Vasco da Gama of Portugal. He also learned the fundamentals of navigation. In 1496, Magellan was promoted to the rank of squire and became a clerk in the marine department. There, he helped fit out ships for trade along the west coast of Africa.
Magellan first went to sea in 1505, when he sailed to India with the fleet of Francisco de Almeida, Portugal's first viceroy to that country. In 1506, Magellan went on an expedition sent by Almeida to the east coast of Africa to strengthen Portuguese bases there. The next year, he returned to India, where he participated in trade and in several naval battles against Turkish fleets.
In 1509, Magellan sailed with a Portuguese fleet to Melaka, a commercial centre in what is now Malaysia. The Malays attacked the Portuguese who went ashore, and Magellan helped rescue his comrades. In 1511, he took part in an expedition that conquered Melaka. After this victory, a Portuguese fleet sailed farther east to the Spice Islands (also called the Molucca Islands). Portugal claimed the islands at this time. Magellan's close personal friend Francisco Serrao went along on the voyage and wrote to Magellan, describing the route and the island of Ternate. Serrao's letters helped establish in Magellan's mind the location of the Spice Islands, which later became the destination of his great voyage.
Magellan returned to Portugal in 1513. He then joined a military expedition to Morocco. On this expedition, Magellan suffered a wound that made him limp for the rest of his life.
Voyage around the world
Planning the expedition. After returning to Portugal from Morocco, Magellan sought the support of King Manuel I for a voyage to the Spice Islands. The best maps available had convinced Magellan that he could reach the Spice Islands by sailing south of South America. Magellan believed such a route would be shorter than the eastward voyage around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. However, Manuel disliked Magellan and refused to support the proposed voyage.
Magellan then studied astronomy and navigation for about two years in Porto in northern Portugal. In Porto, he met Ruy Faleiro, an astronomer and geographer who strongly influenced his ideas. Magellan and Faleiro concluded from their studies that the Spice Islands lay in territory that had been awarded to Spain in 1494 (see LINE OF DEMARCATION). For that reason, Magellan decided that he would seek support for his plans from the king of Spain.
In 1517, Magellan went to Spain. There, he presented his proposal for visiting the Spice Islands as part of a westward circumnavigation of the earth. The next year, Magellan convinced Charles I of Spain to support such a voyage. The king promised Magellan a fifth of the profits from the voyage to the Spice Islands, plus a salary.
Preparations for the expedition took more than a year. The Spaniards became suspicious of Magellan, partly because he recruited many Portuguese sailors to crew his ships. As a result, the king forced Magellan to replace most of the Portuguese sailors with Spanish crew members.
Armstong
Armstrong, Neil Alden (1930-...), a United States astronaut, was the first person to set foot on the moon. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., landed the Apollo 11 lunar module on the moon, left the module, and explored the lunar surface. See SPACE EXPLORATION.
Armstrong made his first space flight aboard Gemini 8 in 1966 with David R. Scott. He and Scott performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space. However, Gemini 8 and the unmanned target vehicle suddenly began to roll violently. The two men responded calmly to the first United States emergency in space and landed their craft safely.
Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, and graduated from Purdue University. He was a Navy pilot from 1949 to 1952. Armstrong was a civilian test pilot assigned to test the X-15 rocket aeroplane before becoming an astronaut in 1962. He resigned from the astronaut programme in 1970. Armstrong continued to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) until 1971. From 1971 to 1979, he served as an engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati. In 1980, Armstrong became chairman of Cardwell International, a supplier of oil-drilling equipment. In 1986, he was named co-chairman of the presidential commission investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
Livingstone
Livingstone's discoveries. David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland, near Glasgow. He received a medical degree from the University of Glasgow and joined the London Missionary Society. The society sent him to southern Africa. There he worked to convert Africans to Christianity and to end the business of selling captured Africans as slaves.
Livingstone made several difficult journeys into the interior, mapping the land and searching for navigable rivers that British missionaries and traders could use. In 1849, he arrived at Lake Ngami, in what is now Botswana. In 1851, Livingstone travelled to the Zambezi River, on the border between present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe.
He became the first European to cross Africa during an amazing journey between 1853 and 1856. On this trip, Livingstone started at the Zambezi and went north and west across Angola to Luanda on the Atlantic Ocean. On the return journey, he followed the Zambezi to its mouth, in what is now Mozambique. In 1855, during the return, Livingstone became the first European to sight Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River. He named the falls after Queen Victoria of Great Britain.
Between 1859 and 1863, Livingstone led a large expedition across Africa's interior. He became the first European to see Lakes Nyasa and Chilwa, in what is now Malawi. In the late 1860's, Livingstone began to explore the Lake Tanganyika region. He learned more about African customs, geography, and the slave trade than any other European of his day. His discoveries led to a great competition among European nations for control of Africa.
Stanley and Livingstone were two British explorers who excited the Western world with their travels in Africa. Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) went to Africa to find David Livingstone (1813-1873) in 1869. Livingstone was known to be exploring the interior of the continent. But no one had heard from him in several years, and so the New York Herald sent Stanley to find him. Stanley's search ended on November 10, 1871, when he met Livingstone at the town of Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika. Stanley greeted him with the now-famous words: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
Shackelton
Explorer, born in Kilkea, Co Kildare, Ireland. He was a junior officer in Scott's National Antarctic Expedition (1901--3), and nearly reached the South Pole in his own expedition of 1909. In 1915 his ship Endurance was crushed in the ice, and he and five others made a perilous journey of 1300`m/800`i to bring relief for the crew. Knighted in 1909, he died at South Georgia during a fourth expedition
Cook
Cook, James (1728-1779), was a British navigator and one of the world's greatest explorers. He commanded three voyages to the Pacific Ocean and sailed around the world twice. His voyages led to the establishment of colonies throughout the Pacific region by several European nations.
During his historic voyage in HMS Endeavour, Cook raised the British flag in New Zealand in 1769. In 1770, he became the first European to visit the eastern coast of Australia. He claimed possession of the land for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales. As a result of his voyage, Australia became a British colony in 1788.
During his three voyages to the Pacific. Cook developed charts that added greatly to knowledge of the geography of the region. A seaman and mapmaker of wide experience, he is rated highly among the world's great maritime explorers. Cook has been called Columbus of Australia. His murder by Hawaiian islanders on Feb. 14, 1779 was a great loss to Britain.
Early life
James Cook was born on Oct. 27, 1728, in the small village of Marton in Yorkshire, England. He was the second of seven children of a Scottish farm labourer. After a brief elementary education, he became an assistant to a grocer and haberdasher in the coastal village of Staithes. In 1746, he was apprenticed to a firm of shipowners at Whitby. His new employers were engaged in the coal trade.
In 1755, Great Britain was preparing for war. Cook enlisted in the navy as an ordinary seaman. He displayed considerable skill in surveying and charting the St. Lawrence River. This work played an important part in General James Wolfe's capture of Quebec. It also brought Cook to the notice of the Admiralty, and his report of an eclipse was published by the Royal Society of London.
The first voyage
The transit of Venus. In 1767, the Royal Society was making elaborate preparations to observe a transit of the planet Venus across the sun's face. The transit was to take place in June 1769. King George III took a personal interest in the project. The King ordered the Admiralty to provide a ship to carry the scientific expedition to Tahiti. Cook was promoted to lieutenant and was given command of a ship. This historic voyage to the South Seas to observe the transit began his career as an explorer.
The Endeavour, a converted collier of 374 metric tons, was bought by the Admiralty for the voyage. By modern standards, the three-masted bark Endeavour was unbelievably small for a long voyage through uncharted seas. Its overall length was 32 metres, and its breadth was 9 metres. But its shallow draught made it ideal for coastal exploration. The ship was altered extensively to accommodate the expedition's scientific staff. This included botanist Joseph Banks and the Swedish naturalist Daniel Carl Solander. Together with their assistants, they shared the great cabin. Charles Green was the astronomer.
Tahiti was Cook's first destination. The Endeavour sailed from Plymouth in August 1768. It had on board 94 people, nearly 18 months' provisions, and 10 carriage guns. Cook travelled by way of Rio de Janeiro and around Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean. The ship anchored in Matavai Bay, Tahiti, on April 13, 1769. Having observed the transit and explored the island, Cook and his party left Tahiti after a stay of three months. A Tahitian named Tupia sailed with them and later acted as interpreter among the Maoris.
Secret instructions were given to Cook by the Admiralty before he left England. These instructions ordered him to search for an unknown southern continent. Geographers had always believed such a continent must exist to balance the world. Cook sailed south. But after he reached a latitude of 40° without finding any land mass, he followed his secret orders. These orders told him to proceed in search of land to the westward "until you discover it or fall in with the eastern side of the land discovered by Tasman and now named New Zealand." In 1642, Abel Tasman, a Dutch navigator, became the first European to sight New Zealand.
New Zealand was reached by Cook's expedition in early October 1769. The sailors landed at Poverty Bay. There they first encountered the warlike Maoris. Cook spent four months sailing around the North Island, landing frequently. Maoris at Queen Charlotte Sound proved less hostile. But the Englishmen were shocked to find that they were cannibals, and that they preserved their enemies' heads as trophies.
Cook then circled the South Island, proving New Zealand to be two large islands, and not part of a southern continent. He sailed around both islands in six months. Experts have marvelled at Cook's speed and thoroughness in surveying New Zealand.
Australian exploration. Cook set a westerly course from New Zealand. He intended to pick up Tasman's route where the Dutch navigator left Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). But a southerly gale drove the Endeavour towards the then unknown east coast of Australia. Early in the morning of April 20, 1770, the officer on watch, Zachary Hicks, sighted land. This sighting occurred near the present border of Victoria and New South Wales. Cook named the spot Point Hicks. Turning north, he proceeded to chart and name the main features along Australia's eastern seaboard. Later, he called the whole area of land New South Wales because he thought it looked like the shore of Wales.
Botany Bay was the site of Cook's first landing.
Fuchs
Fuchs, Sir Vivian Ernest (1908-...), is a British geologist and Antarctic expert. He headed the British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1957 and 1958. Sir Edmund Hillary led the New Zealand party. The expedition, the first known party to cross Antarctica, covered 3,473 kilometres in 99 days, and made geophysical observations. Fuchs became director of the British Antarctic Survey in 1958. See also ANTARCTICA (International cooperation).
Polo
Polo, Marco (1254-1324?), an Italian trader and traveller, became famous for his travels in central Asia and China. He wrote a book that gave Europeans some of their earliest information about China.
Early life. Marco Polo was born in Venice. His father, Nicolo Polo, was a merchant. Nicolo and his brother, Maffeo Polo, had left on a trading mission shortly before Marco's birth. Marco's mother died when he was a young boy, and an aunt and uncle raised him. They trained Marco to be a merchant. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, Marco learned about using foreign money, judging products, and handling cargo ships.
Nicolo and Maffeo Polo returned to Venice in 1269. On their travels, the brothers had been to eastern Asia and had met the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan in China. The Khan had invited them to visit China again, and so they prepared for another expedition--one that would include Marco.
Journey to China. In 1271, Marco Polo--then 17 years old--and his father and uncle sailed from Venice to Acre (now Akko), a port in Palestine. From there, they rode camels to the Persian port of Hormuz, which is now in Iran. The Polos wanted to sail to China from Hormuz, but the ships available there did not seem seaworthy. The travellers continued by camel across the deserts and mountains of Asia. More than three years after leaving Venice, they reached Kublai Khan's summer palace in Shangdu (also spelled Shang-tu), near what is now Kalgan. The Khan gave the Polos a hearty welcome.
Kublai Khan valued the experience and knowledge of his guests. Marco knew four languages, and the Khan sent him on many official tours of the kingdom. These tours took Marco to China's southern and eastern provinces and as far south as Burma. Marco served as a government official in the Chinese city of Yangzhou (also spelled Yang-chou) for three years.
As time passed, the Polos began to worry about returning home safely. Kublai Khan did not want the Polos to leave China, but they believed that if Kublai Khan were to die before they left China, his enemies might capture them. Finally, in 1292, their chance came. The Khan's great-nephew, the Mongol ruler of Persia, had sent representatives to China to bring back a bride whom the Khan had selected for him. The representatives asked the Polos to accompany them on their return to Persia. Kublai Khan reluctantly agreed. That same year, the Polos and a fleet of 14 junks sailed from Zaitun (now Quanzhou, also spelled Ch"uan-chou), a port in southern China.
The fleet sailed to what is now Singapore. From there, it travelled north of Sumatra and then around the southern tip of India. The Polos crossed the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman to Hormuz. There, they left the wedding party and travelled overland to the Turkish port of Trebizond (now Trabzon) on the Black Sea. They sailed to Constantinople (now Istanbul) and from there to Venice, arriving in 1295. Their journey to China and back probably totalled about 24,000 kilometres. The men had been gone for 24 years.
Later life. The Polos returned from China with many riches. Kublai Khan had given them ivory, jade, jewels, porcelain, silk, and other treasures. When they arrived in Venice, the city was at war with Genoa, its long-time rival. In 1296, the Genoese captured and jailed Marco Polo. Historians do not know the details of his capture. In prison, Polo decided to write about his travels. Aided by his notes, he dictated the story to a popular writer, Rustichello of Pisa. Rustichello translated it into Old French, the literary language of Italy at the time. The book was completed in 1298.
In his book, called Description of the World, Polo told about Kublai Khan's prosperous, advanced empire. He described the Khan's postal system, which consisted of a network of courier stations throughout the kingdom. Riders on horseback relayed messages from one station to another.
Polo commented on many Chinese customs, such as the mining and use of coal as fuel. Coal had not yet been used in Europe. Polo called coal black stones. He also marvelled at the Chinese use of paper money, which bore the seal of the emperor. At that time, Europeans traded with heavy coins, which were made of copper, gold, or lead.
Printing had not yet been invented in Europe, and so scholars copied Polo's book by hand. Description of the World was widely read in Europe. Historians believe it may have influenced many explorers. The book influenced Christopher Columbus's estimate of the distance between Spain and Asia.
Description of the World also stimulated European interest in Asia and helped bring to Europe such Chinese inventions as the compass, papermaking, and printing. Genoa and Venice made peace in 1299. Polo was freed and returned to trading in Venice.
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