Biographical Extracts

George Stephenson argued that his steam engines were solar-powered.

Today’s enthusiasts for ‘renewable energy’ have brought Britain’s once-mighty coal industry to an end. Yet judging by George Stephenson’s exchange with William Buckland, the eccentric but brilliant Oxford geologist, there may have been a serious misunderstanding...

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Mark Twain’s attention was drawn off people-watching for a moment by an extraordinarily lifelike machine.

At the World’s Fair in Paris in 1867, American novelist Mark Twain saw a remarkable ‘automaton’, a silver swan that seemed for all the world like a living thing. But the incorrigible people-watcher could not keep his attention fixed even on that.

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High praise from someone who knew him better than most.

The Revd Alexander Scott was the chaplain on Nelson’s ship, and was with him when the great Admiral died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. This is what he wrote about his friend.

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Michelangelo had a message for all serious entrepreneurs.

In business as in life, little things can make a big difference, as this story about Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo (1475-1564) shows.

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A self-made man who never forgot his humble beginnings.

George Stephenson (1781-1848) was an illiterate boy from the North East, who, through his pioneering railways and steam engines, became arguably the most important civil engineer in world history.

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Josiah Wedgwood’s promotional gift made Abolitionism fashionable.

The Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, founded in 1787 by Thomas Clarkson, distributed a tasteful cameo of its emblem done in jasperware by Josiah Wedgwood. Clarkson (who sent some to Benjamin Franklin, President of Pennsylvania) later expressed his warm appreciation.

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