Biographical Extracts
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Biographical Extracts’
Young inventor James Watt’s life in London was overshadowed by the perpetual fear of being snatched.
In 1756, James Watt was not yet the creator of the first commercial steam engine, but a lowly maker of scientific instruments in London. The Seven Years’ War was just getting under way, and Watt was so afraid of being scooped up for service at sea or in some colonial plantation that he dared not go out of his door.
Michael Faraday’s tour of Europe included a ‘picturesque’ multicultural event on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.
In November 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte, smarting from his humiliating Retreat from Moscow, was waging war across Europe. This did not stop Sir Humphry Davy (who called him ‘the Corsican robber’) going to Paris to receive the Napoleon Prize, or young Michael Faraday from going with him, and afterwards they went on to the Kingdom of Naples, then under French control.
The more that pioneering engineer George Stephenson understood of the world around him, the more his sense of wonder grew.
Many Victorian scientists rebelled against the Church, at that time dominated by a colourless Calvinism that stifled wonder and mistrusted enthusiasm. But in private, many retained a powerful sense of the reality of God through wondering at his creation, as railway pioneer George Stephenson did.
Ethel Smyth puts on a show for a self-declared music enthusiast.
Ethel Smyth (to rhyme with ‘blithe’) came home to England in 1880 after winning many friends among the musical celebrities of Leipzig, and found that she had become something of a celebrity herself. It took a visit from a neighbour to remind her that whether you are a Smyth or a Schubert, ‘celebrity’ is a relative term.
George Stephenson was only too pleased to save the Government from its scientific advisers.
When a line from London to Newcastle was first planned in the 1840s, Brunel recommended an atmospheric railway, which pulls carriages along with vacuum tubes laid between the rails instead of locomotives. The decision lay with the Government’s chief engineer, Robert Stephenson, but his father George made sure the idea got no further than Robert’s outer office.
Young Thomas Arne goes to extreme lengths to conceal his musical talent from his family.
Thomas Arne (1710-1778) remains one of England’s greatest composers, though overshadowed now by his contemporary George Frideric Handel. He wrote the music for the National Anthem and ‘Rule Britannia!’ and composed dozens of popular songs and operas, but if his father had had his way, Thomas would have been a bored London attorney.