1000 Inventions and Discoveries

c 499 bc – 1400

push equal to the weight of fluid it displaces. We now Greek trireme of
call this Archimedes’ principle. Using this, Archimedes about 450 bc
could have immersed the wreath in water and noted
how much weight it lost, then have worked out Greek warship
how much silver the wreath contained, without The magnificent trireme, a
measuring its volume at all. Greek ship with three layers
of oars, showed how much
Archimedes probably didn’t do this. importance the Greeks attached
Nevertheless, he had solved Hieron’s problem. to winning battles at sea. It was
He may also have discovered why things extremely fast, and could sink
float or sink. Objects placed in water move an enemy ship with its built-in
downward until their weight is balanced by the weight of the battering ram. Fighting
water they displace, then stay at that level. If their average density techniques moved on, and the
is more than that of water, they cannot float. They sink. trireme evolved into a ship that
could carry large numbers of
Later, Hieron had more serious problems. When Archimedes heavily armed soldiers.
was an old man, the Romans besieged Syracuse. Once again,
he was called upon. He used his scientific knowledge to
design ships, catapults, and even, it is said, giant
mirrors to burn Roman ships with the Sun’s
rays. In 211 bc, the city was eventually
captured. The Roman soldiers
rampaged through it, burning
and killing. Sadly, one of their
victims was Archimedes,
the genius who did
science in
his bath.

Archimedes was a genius
who needed only the
simplest of equipment to
make profound discoveries.

49

The age of auThoriTy Safety pin Surface area Standardized
and volume Chinese writing
Pipe organ c 250 bc of a sphere
c 220 bc
c 250 bc The modern safety pin was c 250 bc
invented in 1849 by US Shi Huangdi
Ctesibius of Alexandria mechanic Walter Hunt, but this Archimedes
useful fastener has a much In Chinese writing, each
The Greek inventor Ctesibius longer history. A clothing clasp The formulas for calculating pictorial character stands for
was the first person to put called a fibula is thought to the surface area and a word, not a sound. It works
together all three parts of an volume of a sphere are used like numbers in Western
organ: pipes, a keyboard, and a have been invented by a throughout science. The first languages. People in different
supply of air. To get a steady group of people called person to work them out was Western countries all
sound from the pipes, Ctesibius the Phrygians in about the Greek mathematician understand the symbol “2,” but
realized that he needed to 1100 bc. It was worn Archimedes. He proved that a pronounce it “two,” “deux,”
supply air to them at a steady sphere has four times the and so on, depending on their
pressure. So he attached them by the ancient Greeks surface area of a circle the same language. This principle is
to a large container, open at and Romans, often in size. He also proved that a useful in China, because
the bottom and standing in a elaborately decorated sphere has two-thirds the speakers of its many local
tank of water. As he pumped form. By 250 bc, the volume of the cylinder that just dialects can all read the same
air into the container, the contains it. These are easy writing, but only if the same
weight of water pressing on pin had become problems to solve using characters are used everywhere.
the air kept the pressure fairly recognizable as the The standardization of Chinese
constant, even though the object that Hunt modern mathematical tools, writing was just one of the
amount of air in the container but Archimedes had to many reforms that the forceful
varied. His organ, called a reinvented more use imaginary emperor Shi Huangdi
hydrolos because of than 2,000 introduced in about 220 bc,
the water (from years later. as part of his plan to turn the
hydro, the Greek separate states of China into
word for “water”), Safety pin This one nation.
was loud enough type of early pin
to play outdoors. of about 750 bc Three finger holes
was found in allowed only a
Simple pattern Italy. It is a
carved in the brooch that was few different notes
bronze clasp probably worn to be played
by someone of
high rank.

Safety pin Front of Streetcar
This Hungarian brooch
brooch dates from made from c 220 bc
about 50 bc. It glass discs
fastens using the
same principle as Shi Huangdi
a safety pin.
Today, electric streetcars run
Spring spheres, which in many of the world’s
mechanism he sliced, weighed, cities. Chinese emperor Shi
and measured in Huangdi did not have electricity
his imagination to in 220 bc, but he saw the need
get the answers. His for orderly, smoothly flowing
methods, lost for centuries, traffic. He decreed that all carts
anticipated 17th-century should have their wheels the
calculus (✷ see page 96). same distance apart, and had
matching grooves put in the
streets. This may have been the
world’s first streetcar system.

222 bc After four of Italy is overrun by Romans 218 bc Using elephants over the snowbound Alps into
centuries of from the south and becomes part to carry heavy Italy in an attempt to conquer
occupation by Celtic tribes, the of their empire. It will eventually equipment, Carthaginian general Rome. He wins some battles but
city of Mediolanum in the north be known as Milan. Hannibal leads 40,000 soldiers fails in the end.

50

Standardized ChineSe writing There are five c 499 bc – 1400
Each Chinese character consists of a basic strokes
number of lines. Early Chinese characters Punctuation
were simplified pictures, but they
gradually evolved into the shapes of c 200 bC
today. These characters mean “football.”
Aristophanes of Byzantium
Each character is
contained within an The rules of punctuation
imaginary square can make writing more
complicated, but punctuation
Characters written Strokes must be does make life easier for
with a brush made written in the readers. The idea came to us
from animal hair correct order through Greek and Latin. Early
Greek writers used hardly any
Natural gas punctuation, and didn’t even
put spaces between words.
211 bC Aristophanes of Byzantium,
who was librarian of the library
People in the Middle East of Alexandria in about 200 bc,
worshipped “eternal flames” was the first to remedy this. By
escaping from the ground 5,000 adding punctuation to Greek
years ago. But the first people text, he began the trend that
to use natural gases seeping led to modern punctuation,
out of rocks were the Chinese. including one mark that has a
In 211 bc, they sunk their Greek name – the apostrophe.
first gas well using a drill
mounted on bamboo poles. Chain mail
By ad 200, they were making
salt by using gas to boil brine. c 200 bC

The ancient Greek warrior’s
bronze chest protector, or
cuirass, was heavy and
restricted its wearer’s

Chain store Flute Flute Almost any tube can movement. From
form a flute. This bone was perhaps 200 bc onward,
c 200 bC c 200 bC made into a musical instrument Greek soldiers increasingly
by a 10th-century Viking. wore chain mail in battle, and
Achain store is a shop that The flute that musicians play plus an extra hole, with a thin soldiers in Sumeria may
is part of a group run by today is held sideways piece of bamboo or reed over already have been using it a
the same company and selling rather than lengthwise. This it. When a musician blows into few years earlier. Made of
the same goods. They became “transverse” flute may have the pipe, the bamboo vibrates thousands of iron rings looped
a prominent feature of towns developed independently in to create the plaintive sound together over a leather or cloth
and cities everywhere in the both China and Europe. Pipes typical of Chinese flute music. backing, chain mail offered
20th century. But the Hudson’s played sideways were known At about the time that this pipe protection against swords and
Bay Company was operating in China as early as the began to be heard, musicians in spears. It was more flexible
a chain of stores in the US 9th century bc, but the what is now Tuscany, in Italy, than a cuirass so it was
before 1750, and the earliest- instrument now known in also seem to have taken up the relatively comfortable, although
known chain stores were China as the di, or dizi, was transverse flute. In Germany, it a shirt could weigh 22 lb
selling their wares in China not perfected until about was used in military bands (10 kg). Chain mail eventually
as long ago as 200 bc. 200 bc. It has six finger holes, from about ad 1100. became standard equipment for
Roman legionnaires.

215 bc Rome passes have tunics of more than one 213bc Wise men alchemists or magicians who
laws ruling that color. The laws also limit the repeatedly tell can give him eternal life. The
women must not wear more than number of guests at banquets and Chinese emperor Shi Huangdi emperor gets even by having
half an ounce of gold jewelry or prevent men from wearing silk. that he is a fool to look for all their books burned.

51

The age of auThoriTy containing a little carbon. It Telescope through
is much stronger than pure which the stars
Sari iron. The carbon could have were sighted
come from the charcoal the
c 200 bc people burned with iron ore Quadrant was
to extract the iron. Steel pivoted around
Indian women were wearing making started in several this point
the elegant sari as long ago as places at about the same
200 bc. This single piece of fine time. China and India Angle scale
cloth, worn wrapped around had real steel industries marked in
the body and sometimes over from about 200 bc.
the head, appears in Indian They heated iron degrees
sculptures dating from about with charcoal to
150 bc. Women depicted in get carbon into it, AstronomicAl
the sculptures from this period then reheated observAtory This
are typically shown wearing a and hammered brass astronomical
sari, a headscarf, and lots of the metal until quadrant was made in
jewellery. Today, saris are made the carbon Paris during the late 17th to
from synthetic fabrics as well was mixed early 18th century. It would
as traditional silk or cotton. throughout. have been used to measure
the altitude of stars.
Steel

c 200 bc

Once people had Enclosed
discovered iron, plumb line
they accidentally hung vertically
made steel, which is iron

Astronomers read the angle, indicated
by the position of the plumb line on
the scale, and then calculated the
star’s altitude

Piston Astronomical
observatory

c 150 bc c 150 bc

Pistons working in cylinders Hipparchus
drive many machines today,
using compressed air or fuel. Basic astronomical
Pistons are difficult to make observatories existed in
accurately enough to stop leaks, Babylonia in 2500 bc, but they
so early inventors tried to avoid did not have any instruments.
them. For example, the pumps A great observatory built at
that blew air into metalworking Alexandria in Egypt in about
furnaces from about 1000 bc 300 bc did not have many
were usually just bellows. But as instruments either. The first
early as 150 bc, or even earlier, observatory with fairly accurate
some metalworkers were using instruments for measuring star
better air pumps using the positions was probably on the
piston-and-cylinder principle. Greek island of Rhodes, where
Piston Early water pumps often the astronomer Hipparchus
used pistons because the water worked between about 134 and
acted as a lubricant, and leaks 129 bc. Much later, in the 9th
didn’t matter very much. or 10th centuries, great new
observatories were established
at Damascus and Baghdad.

c 200 bc Rome suffers packed into wooden buildings c 150bc Wealthy activity. To protect their children
from success three floors high, which often Romans from what they see as its anti-
as the city’s population grows out collapse or catch fire. Within become convinced that dancing Roman influence, they order that
of control. Poorer people are 20 years, plague sweeps the city. is a shameful and dangerous all dancing schools should close.

52

Horseshoes Hipparchus, a mathematician Groin vault c 499 bc – 1400
and astronomer, used his
c 150 bc knowledge of trigonometry to c 100 bc Iron
measure the distances of the plowshare
People were riding horses by Sun and Moon more accurately The barrel vault, a tunnel-
2000 bc, but it was 150 bc than ever before, even though, like structure made from a c 100 bc
before they began to think of today, we know his series of arches, could be used
ways to protect horses’ feet so measurements were much too to create buildings of any We don’t know if the
they could ride them on rocky small. His research filled 12 length. But unfortunately, its Romans used iron
ground and roads. Shoes for books and he became known walls could contain only small plowshares in the light soils of
horses and mules were as the founder of modern openings. Large ones made the southern Europe, but the
developed by the people in trigonometry. arches collapse. The Romans, implements were ideal for
eastern Europe who had first masters of the arch, found a cutting through the heavier
tamed the horse. Most early Stirrups solution: they made each soils found in the north. While
shoes were made of leather. opening into the start of some people in the north
Metal shoes, nailed to the hoof, c 150 bc another barrel vault. In this continued with wooden plows,
were being used in western way they could make buildings others, including the invading
Europe by about ad 450. Stirrups, those useful of any size from a grid of vaults Romans and local people such
footrests for riders, were crossing each other to form as the Celts, switched to iron.
Precession of almost certainly invented by self-supporting “groin vaults”. Efficient agriculture may have
the equinoxes people from the same area – been one of the things that
modern Ukraine – as those helped the Celts build a strong
c 150 bc who tamed the horse in the culture – and make themselves
first place (✷ see page 28). a nuisance, if not a threat,
Hipparchus This simple invention made a to the Romans.
huge difference to the way
The equinoxes are the times horses were used in war. It is Loops that
of the year when day and very hard to stay on a galloping held leather
night are the same length. horse without stirrups, let straps have
Their dates shift slightly each alone fight for your life at the rusted away
year – an effect called same time.
precession. This was discovered
by the Greek astronomer Star
Hipparchus, who noticed that
his star positions had all magnitudes Triangular
moved by the same amount shape used
from those measured by earlier c 130 bc less iron than
Greek and Babylonian the modern
astronomers. With a little rounded shape
scientific detective work, he
found out that the change was Hipparchus Decorative
caused by a very slow shifting points may also
of Earth’s axis of rotation. Some stars look have been used
brighter than others, as spurs
Trigonometry so astronomers classify
them on a magnitude
c 150 bc scale, which records StirrupS These
their brightness stirrups were
Hipparchus as seen from used by Vikings
Earth. The between ad 850
Trigonometry is a branch of and 1050.
mathematics that studies
the relationships between the astronomer
angles and sides of different Hipparchus
figures or the distance of began this system
objects from each other. This when compiling
relationship can be useful if a star catalogue.
you want to determine the size Working on the
or distance of far away objects. island of Rhodes,
he listed 850
stars so
accurately that
his observations were useful
until as late as the 17th century.

c 150 bc Philosopher make one of the first ever 124 bc Two scholars, will be to teach civil servants
Crates of geographical globes. It shows Gonsun Hong how to run the Chinese empire,
Mallus takes time off from his that by this time the Greeks are and Dong Zhongshu, found including skills like interpreting
usual work on Greek grammar to convinced the world is round. China’s first university. Its job portents and omens.

53

The age of auThoriTy Screw press 100 bc. The top stone was
connected to horizontal
Wheel is screwed down to c 100 bc paddles turned by a fast-
lower the board flowing stream. Within 70
The screw press used a large years, the Romans were
Holes for Grapes or olives wooden screw to squeeze building large vertical water-
the juice to placed between things between two boards. It wheels like those seen today.
run through the boards was probably invented by the
Greeks in about 100 bc for Tin can
ScreW preSS This small wooden pressing olives or grapes. The
press was used to crush grapes for Greeks and the Romans also c 100 bc
wine or olives for oil. used it to press their clothes. Its
real importance, however, Cans made from tin-coated
Woodworking comes from what it was used steel were first used to
plane for 1,500 years later: pressing preserve food in 1810. But
type onto paper to print books about 2,000 years earlier, the
c 100 bc (✷ see pages 76–77). Romans already knew that tin
was ideal for lining metal food
The traditional way to Waterwheel containers because it was
get a flat surface on resistant to corrosion and easy
wood is with a plane. A c 100 bc to apply. They made their tin
plane is a block of wood containers from copper and
or metal, with a blade set Grinding corn in a hand- used them for cooking, not
into it sticking out slightly. powered mill, or quern, storage. Tin-lined copper pans
The blade takes a thin (✷ see page 36) was tiring can still be bought today.
shaving off the surface of work, and was often left to
the wood as the plane is women. Ancient Greek women Shorthand
pushed across it. The origin must have welcomed the first
of the plane is a mystery, water-powered quern in about 63 bc
but the Romans used them
Planes which were very Marcus Tiro
much like modern ones,
were found at Pompeii, an Politicians like their
ancient city in southern words to be
Italy, which the Romans remembered, and the great
colonized in 80 bc and Roman statesman Cicero was
which was buried by the no exception. In 63 bc, he
eruption of Mount Vesuvius
in ad 79. WaterWheel These water-
wheels of the late 16th century

were used to power a mill
grinding corn into flour.

100 bc China’s Silk conquers or makes alliances with 67 bc After decades by introducing a gold coin, the
Road extends large areas of central Asia. Ideas in which its citizens aureus. Seventy years later,
westward to reach the Roman and luxury goods will travel the have seen their coinage fall in Emperor Nero will steal the gold
Empire as Chinese emperor Wudi 3,700 mile (6,000 km) route. value, Rome solves the problem to prop up his empire.

54

asked his friend Marcus Tiro to c 499 bc – 1400
invent a shorthand system so
that the important speeches he THE PAPERMAKERS
made in the senate could be
recorded forever. Tiro did a TradiTional papermakers dip a frame with a mesh bottom into a vat
good job. His system was still containing water and plant fibers. As the water drains away, the fibers cling
in use centuries after the together on top of the mesh. Further drying and pressing form the paper into
Roman Empire had collapsed. a sheet. Modern paper is made from wood fibers using huge machines, but the
first paper was handmade with fibers from Chinese hemp and ramie plants.
News bulletin

59 bc

There has always been a
demand for news. Without
printing, the only way to get it
to people was to write it out
and pin it up where everyone
could see it. Acta Diurna (Daily
Acts) was started by Julius
Caesar in 59 bc as an official
propaganda sheet. It quickly
expanded, and was soon
offering the latest news on
births, marriages, horoscopes,
and public executions.

Paper

c 50 bc

It is easy to forget what paper and printing Some copies of this 1455 Bible, the first book to
marvelous stuff paper is. The invention of letterpress printing in be printed, were on vellum, others on paper.
Light, strong, and cheap, it about 1450 made it easier for people
quickly displaced other writing to produce multiple copies of a book. How paper reacHed tHe west
materials as it spread from But if books had continued to be It took 12 centuries for papermaking to complete its
China to the West. The story printed on vellum (a kind of leather), journey from China to Europe. Spreading first to
is that a Chinese courtier they would have remained expensive. Korea, it reached Japan in about ad 650. Paper mills in
invented it in ad 105 as a Paper arrived just in time to turn a Syria were exporting to Europe by the 8th century, but
substitute for silk, but good invention into a great one. Europeans did not start making their own paper until
archaeologists have found about 400 years later.
paper dating from 49 bc in the
Shanxi district of China. Paper special days. When officials Glassblowing first put a blob of molten glass
has been a key component of began mismanaging it to suit onto the end of a tube, blew
many later inventions, from themselves, reform became c 10 bc hard, and watched the glass
printing to teabags. (✷ See also urgent. Julius Caesar swell into a bubble without
The papermakers.) introduced a year of 365 days Centuries after the ancient any mold to shape it. For
with a leap year every fourth Egyptians had discovered some time, most glassworkers
Julian calendar year. While he was at it, he how to shape glass by blowing continued to shape glass in
rearranged the months, naming it into molds (✷ see page 27), molds, but the glassblowing
45 bc July after himself and August people still did not realize that process eventually became as
after Augustus, who was later it could be shaped using air important as molding. The
Julius Caesar to be his successor. The result alone. It was in Syria, probably resulting smooth, rounded
was very close to the calendar in about 10 bc, that someone vessels were shipped all over
By 45 bc, the Roman we use now. the Roman Empire.
Empire’s calendar was in a
mess. Extra days were added in
a confusing way and dates were
counted backward from certain

44 bc On March 15 a as he enters the senate house in c 19bc Roman arches. It channels water over the
group of senators Rome. His assassins believe that engineers in the Gard River to the city of Nimes.
including Gaius Cassius and he wants to make himself king, south of France complete a huge The Pont du Gard will survive for
Marcus Brutus kill Julius Caesar destroying Rome as a republic. aqueduct with three layers of more than 2,000 years.

55

The age of auThoriTy

Dome holding things together. The Topiary Chinese labourers were
thread is very difficult to make, trundling barrows around
c ad 50 especially the female thread on c ad 50 from about ad 50 onwards,
the inside of a nut, which is but people still didn’t catch
Adome is just an arch that used in conjunction with the Topiary, the art of clipping on in the West. The earliest
arches in all directions. male thread on a bolt. By about or growing shrubs into evidence we have of European
Sumerian builders were ad 50, a tool for cutting these, geometric shapes, was a builders and miners using this
building rudimentary domes called a tap, was in use. At fashionable pastime in Rome in versatile one-wheeled vehicle
more than 4,000 years ago, but about the same time, the about ad 50. It is most likely to are depictions of some in
the first great dome builders Greek scientist and inventor have begun as some pruning medieval illustrations.
were the Romans. They made Hero of Alexandria was writing that got out of hand, although
extensive use of concrete. One about machines with parts that a friend of the emperor Augustus Vending
of their earliest domes, which had to be held together with claimed to have invented it. As machine
roofed a palace for the emperor well made bolts. well as being interesting in its
Nero in ad 68, was 50 ft own right, Roman topiary also c ad 60
(15 m) in diameter. The dome Street lamp suggests that the Romans had
of the Pantheon in Rome, developed a form of shears Hero of Alexandria
which was completed 60 years c ad 50 suitable for use in the garden.
later and still stands today, is The first known vending
nearly three times as wide. People in large cities today Wheelbarrow machine was designed by
depend on good street the Greek inventor Hero of
Bolt lighting. By about ad 50, some c ad 50 Alexandria in about ad 60.
public places in Rome had The idea was that when
c ad 50 lighting after dark. It cannot The wheelbarrow should someone dropped in a coin
have been very bright. The have been an obvious the machine would release a
Ascrew thread can exert a street lamps were just giant, invention once the wheel had shot of holy water. Hero
large force when turned metal versions of the teapot- arrived (✷ see page 19), but it described his machine in a
with a small force, making shaped pottery oil lamps appears that no one thought of book. We don’t know whether
bolts and screws ideal for invented in Greece about 750 it for another 3,500 years. he ever built one – or if it
years earlier (✷ see page 35). would have been reliable!

ad60 The British Queen them. After early successes, ad 64 After 10 years Although Nero probably started
Boudicca, wife of a Boudicca is defeated near under the the fire himself, he blames it on
local ruler put in place by the Towcester by the Roman army tyrannical Roman emperor Nero, the Christians, and uses it as an
Romans, leads a rebellion against under Suetonius Paullinus. a fire sweeps through Rome. excuse to persecute them.

56

Steam aeolipyle Scissors c 499 bc – 1400

c ad 60 c ad 100 Truss bridge

Hero of Alexandria Scissors are ideal for cutting c ad 100
cutting soft things such
Often said to be the first as cloth, paper, or hair. The When someone stands on
steam engine, the aeolipyle scissor principle was known a plank laid across a gap,
was built by Hero of Alexandria in 3000 bc, but scissors like only the top and bottom of it
and was really just a toy. It was those used today, with two do much to hold them up.
a metal ball set on a hollow separate blades pivoted at the The wood in the middle adds
spindle. Steam rushed into the center, were invented by the weight but not strength. A
ball through the spindle and Romans in about ad 100. Until truss, which is a framework
out again through two nozzles steel became cheaper in the with most of its strength at
at the sides. These acted like 16th century, scissors remained the top and bottom, is more
little rockets, and made the ball efficient at bearing weight.
spin around. Probably named a specialized tool The Romans had grasped this
after Aeolus, the Greek god of used only by concept by ad 100 and were
the winds, the aeolipyle professionals using truss bridges to get their
didn’t do anything useful, like tailors armies across rivers. By ad 300,
but it did demonstrate they were also using trusses to
the power of steam. and barbers. support roofs up to 75 ft
It would be (23 m) wide.
another 17 Steam escaped
centuries through vents, Earthquake
before this forcing the ball detector
power was to rotate
unleashed. c ad 130

dome The dome of the Pantheon Chang Heng
in Rome was the world’s largest
until modern times. It is obvious when a
major earthquake is
Formula Water was heated in the boiler happening, but smaller
for the area
of a triangle warning
shocks can
c ad 60 go unnoticed
without the help of a
Hero of Alexandria detector, or seismoscope. In
about ad 130, Chinese scientist
There is a well known Chang Heng invented what may
formula for figuring out the have been the first of these.
area of a triangle – half the base certainly one of the strangest.
times the height – but if the It had eight bronze dragons
height isn’t known, it has to be arranged in a circle, each
calculated before the formula holding a ball in its mouth,
can be applied. Nearly 2,000 with eight bronze frogs directly
years ago, Hero of Alexandria below each with their mouths
discovered a different formula pointing upward. Due to the
that doesn’t involve knowing way the dragons were arranged,
the height of the triangle, just at least one of them would feel
the length of its three sides. His the slightest tremor. When this
formula is: area = √[s(s-a)(s-b) happened, its ball would drop,
(s-c)] – where a, b, and c are clanging into the mouth of the
the sides and s is half the frog below, raising the alarm
perimeter. Despite its simplicity, and supposedly indicating the
the formula is not widely used. direction of the earthquake.

Steam aeolipyle This is
a modern reconstruction of
Hero of Alexandria’s toy.

a d79 After an earlier nearby Mount Vesuvius. Its a d115 Chinese scholar, marriage at 14 and the early
earthquake, the inhabitants, including wealthy poet, and single death of her husband, included
southern Italian city of Pompeii Roman vacationers, are mother Ban Zhao dies at the age completing a history of the Han
is destroyed by the eruption of buried alive in ash and lava. of 70. Her career, following dynasty and writing many poems.

57

The age of auThoriTy Bucket was the nerves he identified
found at in about ad 170 are
Epicyclic now known to form
universe Pompeii, Italy
part of the sympathetic
c ad 140 Soap nervous system.
The image
Ptolemy on this Cataract
Roman operation
Ptolemy was an bucket shows
astronomer and the goddess Venus c ad 200
mathematician who using soap to wash her hair.
lived in ancient Egypt. Cataracts is a condition
Five centuries before Soap of the eye in which
him, the Greek the lens becomes cloudy,
astronomer Eudoxus c ad 150 leading to impaired vision
had explained the and even blindness.
movements of the stars People seem to have made Surgeons today can
and planets with his soap from about 1000 bc usually restore sight by
theory of celestial onward, by boiling fat with replacing the damaged
spheres (✷ see page 44), wood ash. Soap was originally lens. Amazingly, cataract
but this did not account used for medicinal purposes, surgery was being done
for all of the details of the and was not really the kind of about 2,000 years ago.
planets’ movements or soap that makes a good lather. An Indian medical
why they sometimes It was probably the Romans, in encyclopedia, the Susruta-
changed brightness. It about ad 150, who first started samhita, which is thought to
became clear that the using soap to wash things, and have been compiled by an
motions of the planets Roman women were using a Indian surgeon called Susruta,
could not be explained with kind of soap as a shampoo one gives detailed instructions for
the simple idea that they hundred years earlier. the procedure. The only
moved in circles. Ptolemy method he suggested for
solved the problem by anaesthetizing patients seems to
suggesting that each heavenly have been to give them alcohol.
body moved in small circles, or
epicycles, at the same time as it Algebra
orbited Earth in a large circle,
generally accepted as the truth c ad 250
by astronomers for the next
1,500 years. Sympathetic Diophantus of Alexandria
nervous system
Crank No single person invented
c ad 170 algebra. The art of doing
c ad 150 arithmetic without actual
Galen numbers developed slowly,
Acrank converts a to-and-fro starting in Babylonia and
movement into a rotary Many parts of the body are ancient Egypt, with calculations
movement. For example, bicycle not under conscious expressed entirely in words.
pedals convert the up- and- control, but are operated by the When Diophantus wrote his
down motion of the legs into sympathetic nervous system. book Arithmetica in about
the rotary motion of the wheels. This system automatically ad 250, he introduced symbols
The date for when the crank readies us for action by, among to replace some of the words.
was invented depends on how other things, speeding up the He also worked out the rules
it is defined. The first rotary heart and shutting down the for powers, and explained how
querns (✷ see page 36) could digestion. The influential Greek negative quantities behave
qualify as early cranks, and physician Galen studied the when multiplied. His book also
they go back to 600 bc, but it is human body extensively, contained some difficult
not until ad 150 that there is including its nerves. Some of mathematical problems,
evidence of the first “bent rod” which became known as
crank being used. One is Diophantine equations and
depicted in a Chinese tomb- are still of interest today.
model of a winnowing machine.

ad136 The Roman Britain. It stretches 73 miles ad184 The Yellow that will cause the collapse of the
emperor Hadrian (118 km) from Bowness on the Turbans, a Han dynasty. They aim to replace
completes a great wall to keep Solway Firth to Segedunum (now religious peasant movement in the Han “Green Heaven” with a
out barbarians from the north of Wallsend) on the Tyne River. northeast China, start a rebellion “Yellow Heaven” of perfect peace.

58

c 499 bc – 1400

Book with BIRTH OF THE BOOK
pages
From about 50 bc, books,
c ad 350 particularly religious texts, started
getting longer and the codex
The first books had no gradually became more attractive.
pages – they were written Papyrus, the usual writing material
on a continuous scroll. Roman at that time (✷ see page 24), tended
emperor Julius Caesar is to crack when folded into pages, so
sometimes credited with most of the new codexes were made
having been the first to fold a from parchment (✷ see page 28), a
scroll into pages instead of material that was known in 2400 bc
rolling it, making it easier for a but had been little used.
messenger to carry. Both the
ancient Greeks and the Why pages Won A page from a Greek Bible of the 4th century
Romans had ring-bound As well as being a handy shape, a codex
notebooks with wooden pages, allows people to turn to any section the oldest codexes
but it wasn’t until about instantly or flip the pages to scan the The oldest surviving book with pages is a Greek
ad 350 that the book with contents. Because the pages of books can Bible written between ad 300 and 400. It is
pages, or codex, became the have writing on both sides, it is also known as the Codex Sinaiticus because it was
standard way of storing words. possible to pack in twice as many words found near Mount Sinai, Egypt. Another Bible,
The early Christians found the as on a scroll of the same size. the Codex Alexandrinus, was written a century
more compact codex useful for later. Both are kept in the British Museum.
hiding their forbidden texts
under their clothes. (✷ See
also Birth of the book.)

Jointed
fishing rod

c ad 350

Fishing rods have
probably been around
nearly as long as fish
hooks (✷ see page 8).
It was only when wealthy

Romans began to take
up fishing as a pastime
in the 4th century ad
that rods more than
about 3 ft 3 in (1 in)
long came into use.
They were made of
wood, and because
they were long they had
to be made in several
sections. So they looked
a bit like a modern,
jointed fishing rod.

Jointed fishing rod
This floor mosaic was found
in the Roman town of Leptis
Magna, now in Libya,
Africa. It clearly shows
people fishing with rods.

ad250The Roman to persuade demons to leave ad330 In Constantinople With room for 60,000
Catholic Church people or places thought to be (now Istanbul), spectators, this “hippodrome”
creates a new class of priests under their power, especially as the world’s largest racetrack is will host chariot races, political
known as exorcists. Their job is a preliminary to baptism. finally completed after 127 years. rallies, and public executions.

59

The age of auThoriTy of northern Europe, something Quill pen Block printed
sturdier was needed. In about book
Public hospital ad 500, heavy wheels were c ad 500
added to the basic plough, c ad 600
c ad 397 making it easier to handle and Quill pens came into use in
stable enough to be pulled by about ad 500 and were in Books were being printed
St Fabiola several animals. common use until the 19th in China long before
century. They were usually movable type was
Temples may have been used Horse collar made from one of the larger perfected (✷ see pages
as refuges for the sick as wing feathers of a goose. The 66–67). The printers
long ago as 4000 bc, but it is c ad 500 feather was prepared by cutting wrote their books
thought that the first public the tip to a sharp point then by hand on thin
hospital opened in Rome in The first animals used for making a slit to channel the ink. paper, then
about ad 397. It was founded hauling things were oxen, The hollow quill held enough stuck each
by a woman who did so much which pushed on a wooden ink for a line or two of writing. page face
good that she was made a saint. bar, or yoke. This didn’t suit down on
Fabiola was a highly educated horses. The yoke pressed on bc and ad dates a block
Roman aristocrat who became a their throats so they couldn’t
Christian. She created several ad 525
hospitals and also gave help to pull very hard. A padded
monasteries. The monks in collar that fitted Dionysius Exiguus
turn started more hospitals. around the neck was
better. Its origins are The year numbers used
Plow with not clear, but it may today were laid down by
wheels have been invented the Christian Church: bc means
in China in about “before Christ” and ad stands
c ad 500 for anno Domini, meaning “in
ad 500. Horse collars the year of the Lord.” In ad 525,
Abasic plow doesn’t have were being used in the a monk named Dionysius
wheels. The person doing West by the 12th century. Exiguus had the idea of using
the plowing holds it upright the birth of Christ as a starting
as an animal pulls it along. astrolaBe This invention point (ad 1), and calculated
This is fine on light let people find their that this was 754 years after the
soils, but in the founding of Rome. This is now
heavy soils latitude or local time by thought to be several years too
studying the stars’ late but the error has never
position. been corrected.

Astrolabe

c ad 550

The astrolabe was Block printed Book Patterns
an astronomical and symbols are carved into this
calculator and star wooden printing block.
finder. Its star map of wood. The writing, visible
would be turned to through the paper, showed
match the sky at any them where to carve the wood
time, and adjustable to leave text standing proud.
sights allowed stars to They inked the block and
be located accurately.
The earliest surviving
examples were made in
the Middle East in the 6th
century ad. By the mid 15th
century, wealthier travelers might
have taken an astrolabe with
them to tell time and provide
other astronomical information.

ad400 The first 2,000 miles (3,200 km) away. ad476 The Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus,
inhabitants of They bring with them no written Roman empire 66 years after the city of Rome
Hawaii reach the island from the language, but a rich oral culture comes to an end. German was overrun by the Germanic
Marquesas Islands more than of myth and practical knowledge. chieftain Odoacer deposes its last people known as the Visigoths.

60

Scenes c 499 bc – 1400
painted on Folding Fan This 18th-century folding

silk fan would have been the height of
fashion. It features the first free
ascent of a hydrogen-filled
balloon, which took place
over Paris in 1783.

pressed paper on it to create the Conqueror in 1066, is not a Sticks of Zero to
copies of the original writing. tapestry at all – it’s a piece of carved ivory represent
Things were printed in this way embroidery, which is fabric nothing
from about ad 600 onwards. decorated with needlework. seven centuries before (✷ see
page 54). They developed into c ad 650
Tapestry Windmill today’s wind turbines used to
generate electricity. Brahmagupta
c ad 600 c ad 600
Folding fan Zero is a difficult idea. How
True tapestries are woven on The first known windmill, can you count something
a loom using different invented in 7th-century c ad 650 that isn’t there? It was a long
colored threads.The first Persia, was a simple wheel with time before mathematicians
tapestries were made in China cloth sails used to drive a Folding fans, as opposed to could accept a number that
about 1,500 years ago. Some, millstone to grind grain. The rigid ones, were invented stood for nothing. One of the
made of fine silk, looked wheel was mounted on a in Japan in the 7th century. first scholars to accept the
almost like painted pictures. vertical shaft directly above a This clever accessory became concept was the great Hindu
Others, designed as wall- millstone mounted on the same especially popular in medieval astronomer Brahmagupta, who
hangings, were coarser but shaft. These windmills were China and Japan, where there worked in the 7th century.
larger. Tapestry was invented giant, upside-down versions of was more to fans than simply The English word “zero” comes,
independently in Europe the early waterwheels invented keeping cool – they were in a roundabout way, from the
possibly in the 8th century. The important social items. In Hindu word “sunya”, meaning
famous French Bayeux tapestry, 18th-century Europe, where “empty”. Hindu mathematicians
which tells the story of the all things Chinese were wrote zero as a circle, the same
invasion of Britain by William fashionable, folding fans were symbol that is used today.
also carried by wealthy women.

ad529 As part of a drive closes the 900-year-old Academy ad604 In London, now built on the site of an old Roman
to rid his empire in Athens, a centre of thought under the rule of temple. During the next 1,100
of non-Christian thinking, and learning founded by the King Ethelbert, the first of five years, three will be destroyed by
Byzantine emperor Justinian great Greek philosopher Plato. cathedrals dedicated to St. Paul is fire and one by Viking raiders.

61

The age of auThoriTy Paddlewheel Stained-glaSS
window This
Flame-thrower c ad 780
window was
c ad 670 Ships with paddlewheels created in
have a long history. They about 1330.
Callinicus of Heliopolis may have existed toward the
end of the 5th century ad, but
Setting fire to an enemy’s the first clear description of
property usually means one is given by the writer
having to get close to it, but a Li Kao in about ad 780. It was
weapon that shoots a jet of a Chinese warship with twin
flame can do damage at a paddlewheels turned by sailors
distance. The first people to try walking on treadmills. It was
this were the Byzantines from said to be as fast as a sailing
Constantinople (present-day ship. In 1130, Chinese peasant
Istanbul in Turkey) in the Yang Yao led a revolt backed
7th century ad. Possibly up by paddle warships. In
invented by a Syrian architect 1838, British engineer
called Callinicus, “Greek fire” – Isambard Brunel launched the
a sticky, flaming liquid thrown first transatlantic steamship
in pots or squirted from tubes service with the paddle-
– was much feared by their powered Great Western.
enemies. Greek fire helped the
Byzantines to defeat a Saracen
(Arab) fleet in ad 673.

Paddlewheel This is a model of the
giant wheels that drove Brunel’s ship the
Great Eastern, launched in 1858.

The original paddlewheels
were 56 ft (17 m) in diameter

Kimono Porcelain Stained-glass Systematic
window use of zero
c ad 700 c ad 800
c ad 800 c ad 820
The Japanese kimono – a Porcelain is no ordinary
long, wide-sleeved robe – pottery. It is pure white, In the 7th century, large Muhammad al-Khwarizmi
dates from about ad 700. It has translucent, and very strong. sheets of glass did not exist,
no buttons or other fastenings, Its secret ingredient is a so builders had to make church It is accepted today that a
and is simply wrapped around mineral called petuntse, which windows by joining many small zero at the end of a number
the body in a particular way is a kind of granite. When pieces of glass together. By the makes it 10 times bigger: e.g.
and tied with a sash, which is mixed with china clay and end of the century, they were 20 is 10 times bigger than 2.
called an obi. The kimono fired at a high temperature, it using colored glass, but did not But early number systems
developed from a similar turns to glass. Porcelain was make pictures with this until were rather vague about using
garment worn by courtiers in discovered in China in about the 9th century. The glorious zero in this way. They used it
China as early as 200 bc. By the ad 800, and was perfected by stained glass of Europe’s Gothic to show that the tens column,
17th century, 1,000 years of about ad 1300. From then on, cathedrals was in place by the for example, had nothing in
further development had China exported vast quantities 12th century, and painted glass it, but rarely used it in the
turned it into the beautiful to the West, where potters appeared 200 years later. units column. The first
garment we know today. struggled to imitate it. mathematician to use zero in

ad691 Caliph Abd al- said Muhammad, founder of ad750 At Tegernsee, known as München, meaning
Malik finishes the Islam, ascended into heaven, and on the Isar “home of the monks.” It will
Dome of the Rock, a shrine in Abraham, ancestor of the Jews, River in Germany, a Benedictine grow to become Germany’s third
Jerusalem. It stands where it is prepared to sacrifice his son. monastery is founded. It becomes largest city, Munich.

62

c 499 bc – 1400

today’s systematic way was told doctors how to tell the the people who preached Chinese alchemists were
Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, in difference in about ad 900. He Christianity in eastern Europe surprised to discover that
about ad 820. His ideas said that “inquietude, nausea, in the 9th and 10th centuries. when three well known
reached the West through the and anxiety are more frequent Like the rather different ingredients were mixed in the
efforts of the French scholar in the Measles than in the alphabet used for English, it right proportions, they could
Gerbert of Aurillac, who Smallpox; while the pain in the is derived from the Greek produce an intense flame or
became Pope in ad 999. back is more peculiar to the alphabet that St. Cyril knew, explosion. They put their
Smallpox than to the measles.” but has several extra letters, discovery to work in fireworks
Diagnosing which were needed to represent for fun and rockets for war.
smallpox Cyrillic the speech sounds of the region. From the 14th century onward,
alphabet Europeans used gunpowder in
c ad 900 Gunpowder cannons and firearms and this
c ad 900 changed the whole nature of
Smallpox and the less c ad 900 warfare. Gunpowder remained
dangerous disease measles Russian and some related the only known explosive until
have similar early symptoms. languages are written with Gunpowder was the first the 17th century. (✷ See also
Persian physician ar-Razi, the Cyrillic alphabet. It was known substance that Explosive events.)
known in the West as Rhazes, named after St. Cyril, one of would burn when packed into
a tube. In about ad 900,

EXPLOSIVE EVENTS

The hisTory of gunpowder is not clear. The secret was certainly known

first in China, but nobody is sure whether people in the West learned it

from the East or discovered it for themselves. English scientist Roger Bacon

recorded the formula for making gunpowder in the 13th century, but it is

possible that he discovered it by studying the works of Arabs, who had

themselves learned it from the Chinese. Medieval engraving of workers
packing gunpowder into a tube

Cannons and roCkets
Gunpowder packed into a tube
burns so intensely that it can
throw objects out of the tube,
forming a crude cannon, or propel
the tube itself through the air as a
rocket. Chinese scientists used
both of these effects for military
purposes, and may also have used
gunpowder to make bombs.
Fireworks
Gunpowder was probably first
used in fireworks. Even an
inaccurate rocket made a good
display, experimental cannons
could throw decorative balls of
fire, and the explosive properties
could provide fun in firecrackers.

12th-century Chinese emperor Wu-
Wang entertains guests with gunpowder.

ad837 Planet Earth has wandering ball of dust and ice ad874 Ingólfr Arnarson which he calls Reykjavík,
a near miss on strays to within 310,000 miles reaches Iceland meaning “smoky,” because of the
9 April as Halley’s comet makes (494,000 km) of the planet. It from Norway and becomes its steam from nearby hot springs. It
its closest ever approach. The will return in about 76 years. first inhabitant. He starts a farm, will become Iceland’s capital.

63

The age of auThoriTy

Paper money PaPer money 13th-century Fireworks Movable type
Mongol emperor Kublai Khan
c ad 900 watches as officials pay his bills c 1000 1045
with paper money.
Bi Sheng
As China grew wealthier, hospital in ad 918. Their policy Fireworks were developed
increasing amounts of cash was to treat disturbed people by the Chinese about Printing with movable type
were needed to keep trade with respect. 1,000 years ago, following – separate letter blocks that
going. Paper money was used the invention of gunpowder can be assembled to form text –
occasionally before ad 900, but Andromeda (✷ see page 63). Chinese revolutionized Western
it only really became common galaxy fireworks came in just one communication in the 15th
when merchants in the great color – yellow – but in about century (✷ see pages 76–77),
trading city of Chengdu began ad 965 1800, the French chemist but as early as 1045, Chinese
to use it in the 10th century. Claude Berthollet discovered alchemist Bi Sheng was
Within 300 years, under the as-Sufi potassium chlorate, which molding types from clay and
rule of the Mongol emperor made multicolored fireworks glue, then assembling them by
Kublai Khan, China had Agalaxy is a system of stars. possible. Firework makers sticking them down with resin.
practically replaced metal coins Our Sun is just one star eventually discovered that The types could even be reused
with paper money. among hundreds of millions strontium compounds produce by heating the resin to release
in the Milky Way galaxy. crimson, while barium them. Unfortunately, Chinese
Mental hospital The Andromeda galaxy is compounds produce green. uses thousands of characters
2.3 million light-years away. and doesn’t really suit movable
ad 918 Islamic astronomer as-Sufi type. a powerful idea best
recorded it in ad 965. Although suited to Western languages.
Attitudes toward mental it is very easy to see, it was not
illness have varied from recorded again until 1612, after Musical
place to place and time to time. observation with a telescope. notation
In many countries, people have
often put unusual behaviour Theory of vision c 1050
down to possession by demons,
or treated disturbed people like c 1000 Guido of Arezzo
animals. But the people of
10th-century Baghdad (now the Alhazen Some music doesn’t need to
capital of Iraq) thought be written down because
differently. Despite being See pages 66–67 for the people can just remember it.
constantly under attack from story of how an Arab But the complicated choral
their enemies, they managed to scientist faked insanity to music of 9th-century Europe
set up the first known mental found modern optics. needed to be written down to

Fireworks
A Chinese

family honours
its kitchen god
with a shower

of sparks.

ad968 On December 22, Sun. Writing a description of ad986 Bjarni Herjulfsson his ship is blown off course in a
Byzantine what he sees, he is the first to from Greenland is storm. He sails along what is now
historian Leo the Deacon record the glow, or corona, that the first European to sight the the Atlantic coast of Canada
observes a total eclipse of the surrounds the Sun at totality. mainland of North America when before returning home.

64

indicate where voices should increase nitrogen in the soil, Fireplace c 499 bc – 1400
rise and fall. The squiggles they increased the fertility of A few fireplaces with tall
people used at the time didn’t the land as well. c 1150 chimneys appeared in the 12th
look much like music until century. They carried smoke
about 1050, when Guido of Gothic arch The first fireplaces were just away and created a draught to
Arezzo, a Benedictine monk fire pits in the middle of make the fire burn well. With a
and music teacher, placed the c 1140 the floor, and smoke went out raised iron grate, which let air
marks on a grid of five lines, or through a hole in the roof. reach the fire from below as
stave. It was, however, another The pointed Gothic arches well as from above, they made
500 years before people were in cathedrals made these Metal
writing music as we do today. medieval buildings lighter and sphere a dent in the winter chill.
more spacious than earlier represents
Mechanical ones. Roman arches were Earth Sphere
clock semicircular, so tall arches had turns once
to be wide, which created every
1088 design problems. They also 24 hours
needed heavy walls to stop Decorative
Su Sung, Henry De Vick them from spreading. Gothic dragons
arches could be made taller Gears inside
The first recorded mechanical without making them wider, casing
clock, built in 1088, did and their sideways push was transmit
not use clockwork. Its Chinese smaller so walls could be motion to
inventor, Su Sung, designed a thinner and windows larger. the sphere
waterwheel that paused to
empty a bucket after it filled, Mechanical clock This is
marking intervals of time. The a model of Su Sung’s
first clockwork clock was put
in the Palais de Justice, Paris, mechanical clock tower.
by Henry De Vick in about
1360. It had only one hand,
and with errors of up to two
hours a day was probably less
accurate than Su Sung’s clock.

Three-field
system

c 1100

The same crop grown year
after year in the same field
will eventually exhaust the soil.
Early farmers just moved on
and used new land, but this
was impossible in medieval
Europe because farmers had to
stay in one place. From about
1100, European farmers began
using a three-field system. They
planted one-third of their land
in the fall, another third in
spring, and left the rest
unplanted for a year to recover,
rotating the use of the patches
of land each year. In this way,
the farmers got two harvests a
year, and by planting a spring
crop of peas or beans, which

ad996 On November 1, Bavaria. It is the first time the 1066 On Wednesday, soldiers. He travels east towards
Holy Roman name “Ostarrîchi,” meaning September 27, Hastings, where on October 14
Emperor Otto III seals a “eastern realm,” is used. The land William, Duke of Normandy, he will defeat Harold II’s army
document granting some land in will eventually became Austria. invades England with about 6,000 and change English history.

65

The age of auThoriTy

VISION OF THE FUTURE

Arab scientist Alhazen fakes insanity to
found modern optics

Photography, modern telephones,
and television are just a few of
the inventions that depend on optics

– the science of light. For hundreds

of years, the subject was in confusion.

Then, about 1,000 years ago, a “crazy”

Arab scientist called Alhazen helped

everyone to see things more clearly.

The story is that Alhazen went to Cairo,

Egypt’s fastest-growing city, to advise the

notoriously cruel ruler al-Hakim on how to control

the flow of the all-important Nile River. But Alhazen’s

City of Cairo ideas didn’t work, and the Nile flowed on as usual. He thought that the
Cairo, the capital of Egypt,
is on the Nile River, 100 miles only way to escape the wrath of the terrifying leader – who had once had
(160 km) south of the
Mediterranean coast. In the all the dogs in Cairo killed just to stop them from barking – was to
10th century, it became a
walled city, one of the greatest pretend to be insane. Fortunately, his idea worked, and al-Hakim let him
of the medieval world. Its name
comes from the Arabic words get on with his studies of mathematics and physics.
al-Qahhirah, which
mean “victorious”. Alhazen stopped thinking about water and started thinking about light.

Greek philosopher What happened when he saw something? Did feathery feelers come out
and mathematician
Pythagoras. of his eyes to explore the surface of objects, as Pythagoras had

SenSe thought? Or was ancient Greek philosopher

of Sight Epicurus right to think that light, from a

Pythagoras, source like the Sun, bounced off objects
who lived
from about and entered the eye?
580 to 500 bc,
was one of the To a scientist like Alhazen,
first people to
think about how Pythagoras’ ideas seemed ridiculous. If
the eye worked.
About two they were true, why couldn’t people see
hundred years
later, Epicurus realized in the dark? So he sided with Epicurus,
that sight was caused by
light entering the eye. but took his ideas a lot further. Using his

mathematical skills, Alhazen worked out

much of what is known today about the

way light is reflected by flat and curved

Epicurus (c 341 – c 270 bc) mirrors, and bent by glass or the
was, like Pythagoras, atmosphere. He even explained why
born on the Greek two eyes work better than one.
island of Samos.

66

c 499 bc – 1400

Like modern rulers, Cairo’s
al-Hakim relied on scientists for
help with technical problems, such
as controlling the waters of the

Nile during its annual flood.

Alhazen wrote all this down in a great book called

Optics, which was translated into Latin and reached

Europe in 1270. It may be a coincidence, but this was

exactly when magnifying glasses

and eyeglasses, the forerunners of

microscopes and telescopes, began

to appear in Europe.

The feared al-Hakim

eventually disappeared in

mysterious circumstances one helpful lenses

night in 1021. Alhazen, who was 17th-century Lenses to improve vision first
glass was often appeared in the late 13th
instantly restored to sanity, lived on
colored century, perhaps as a result of
for another 20 years. Brilliant though 17th-century Alhazen’s work. By the 17th
eyeglasses century, eyeglass making had
he was, he can never have imagined led to the development of
much more powerful optical
where his work would lead. Even 17th-century instruments. But simple
magnifying eyeglasses and magnifying
the internet makes use of ideas glasses glasses like these were still

that Alhazen wrote about needed, just as they are today.

nearly a thousand years ago.

67

The age of auThoriTy Crowsnest, from Rudder Modern
RuddeR This model where the ship’s numerals
of an English ship of lookout would c 1200
about 1430 has a fully have kept watch 1202
developed rudder. Copied It is thought that some early
from a small image, it Stay to hold Chinese boats were steered Leonardo Pisano
does not show the tiller up the mast with simple rudders, but until
that would have been about ad 1200, most boats The modern number system
used to control it. around the world were steered arrived in the West after a
by sailors trailing oars over the long, slow trip from India. The
1215 Supported by the side. The modern rudder system, which was started in
Archbishop of arrived in stages. First, a large the 6th or 7th centuries in
Canterbury, England’s barons steering oar was attached near India, was taken up by Arab
demand a declaration of rights to the back, or stern, of the mathematicians in the 9th
century and reached the West
68 boat. In about 1200, it was during the 10th century. It
moved right to the stern to made little impact until
become a simple rudder. Leonardo Pisano wrote Liber
By about 1300, a long Abaci (Book of the Abacus) in
steering lever, called 1202. The book explained
the tiller, had been everything about Arabic
added to complete numerals, from how to write
the rudder. them to the mysteries of
hundreds, tens, and units.
Rudder was placed The new system made
amidships at the calculations much easier.
stern of the ship,
and extended the Propaganda
depth of the hull dropped from

the air

1232

Military
commanders
have often tried to
win battles with
words instead
of weapons.
One way is to
drop leaflets
from the air.
This tactic was tried
as early as 1232,
when the Mongols
(nomads of central
Asia) besieged the
Chinese city of K’ai-
feng. They used kites
to drop leaflets on
the people inside.
It is not known
whether any of the
citizens read the
leaflets, but by 1234
the Mongols had
taken over the city.

from King John. The Magna 1225 On the Île de la Cité after 65 years’ work. It sets a new
Carta (great charter) is drafted at in the centre of standard for cathedrals and will
Runnymede, near Windsor, and Paris, the great cathedral of Notre become one of the world’s most
sealed by John on June 15. Dame (Our Lady) is completed visited buildings.

Buttonhole thing. In Italy, where spectacle NavigatioN c 499 bc – 1400
making was established by chart This 1375
c 1250 1301, two men from Florence, chart centres on the Navigation chart
Alessandro di Spina and Mediterranean Sea.
You might think that Salvino degli Armati, have been The many straight 1311
buttons and buttonholes credited with the invention. lines aided navigation.
were invented together, but But, like so much else at this Petrus Vesconte
buttons actually came first. time, spectacles serious military use came only
The ancient Greeks and may have been later. “Arrows of flying fire” World maps were mostly
Romans used buttons to fasten invented in were used when the Mongols used as book illustrations
their clothes at the shoulder, China as early besieged the Chinese city of prior to the 12th century. Petrus
but these went through loops, as the 10th Kai-feng in 1232, but these Vesconte of Genoa, Italy, was one
not holes. Buttonholes were century. were probably just fireworks of the first to make navigation
invented in Europe in the tied to arrows. Chinese soldiers charts – maps useful to sailors.
13th century. They made SpectacleS are not thought to have begun A 1311 chart made by him,
buttons so popular that Medieval using rockets as weapons until drawn mostly from information
laws were passed to limit spectacles were 1300 at the earliest, but by he collected from sailors, rather
the number that people pivoted to grip 1330, rockets were equipped than based on careful measure-
could have, to prevent rich the nose. with explosive warheads and ments, is the oldest known
people from having too many. were no longer toys.
Mathematics of Printer’s
Magnetic poles the rainbow Shoe sizes type case

1269 c 1280 c 1305 c 1313

Petrus Peregrinus de Qutb ash-Shirazi, The earliest system of Wang Chen
Maricourt Kamal Farisi standard shoe sizes may
possibly date back to 1305, Unaware of Bi Sheng’s failure
French engineer Petrus Working out what’s going when King Edward I of with movable type in 1045
Peregrinus de Maricourt did on when we see a England decided that the inch (✷ see page 64), Chinese
the first known scientific rainbow requires advanced should be fixed at the length magistrate Wang Chen tried
experiment on a magnet. He trigonometry (✷ see page 53), of three barleycorns. This made something similar in about
put a sliver of iron in various and by about 1280, Muslim the official barleycorn one-third 1313. He needed 60,000
places on a round lump of astronomers had created the of an inch long. It has been wooden Chinese characters to
magnetic rock called lodestone, maths they needed. At an said that children’s shoes then print a book. To store these, he
and marked the stone to show observatory financed by a began to be based on this invented the first printer’s type
how the iron positioned itself grandson of the 13th-century barleycorn measure. As a large case, which had a compartment
each time. His lines converged Mongol ruler Genghis Khan, child’s foot at that time was for each character. Because he
at opposite sides of the stone. two students, Qutb ash-Shirazi about 13 barleycorns (4.33 in/ needed so many cases, Wang
The marked stone looked like a and Kamal Farisi, applied the 11 cm) long, a shoe to fit it Chen stacked them in layers on
globe with lines of longitude new math to the optical theories was called size 13. a spindle so that he could
radiating from the north and of Alhazen (✷ see pages swivel one out as needed.
south poles. He called these 66–67) to offer an explanation
points the magnetic poles, a of the way rain bends sunlight
term that is still used today. into a multicolored circle.

Spectacles Rocket

c 1280 c 1300

Spectacles, in the form of a Although the Chinese may
pair of lenses clipped on to have made simple rockets
the nose, appeared in the 13th as fireworks soon after the
century, but nobody is sure invention of gunpowder,
where they came from. The
English scientist Roger Bacon
described a magnifying glass
for reading small print in 1268,
but this is not quite the same

1275 Venetian explorer Kublai Khan, ruler of China and 1306 A small town recognition after being granted
Marco Polo crosses protected by a dam privileges in 1275. Its name,
Asia’s Gobi desert into China, lands beyond. Polo will later on the Amstel River in the Amsterdam, from “Amstel dam,”
where he travels to the court of Netherlands finally gets official will become familiar to millions.
recount this meeting, and more,
in The Travels of Marco Polo. 69

The age of auThoriTy

Practical manual Cannon This French print shows Alchemy Striking clock
of anatomy highly developed cannons being textbook
used during the siege of Paris by 1335
1316 the German Empire, 1870–1871. c 1320
Early clocks just rang a bell
Mondino de’ Luzzi Cannon Geber to mark the beginning of
each hour. The first clock to
Much of what doctors now c 1320 The first popular books on sound out the actual time was
know about the human alchemy – the study of base built in Milan, Italy, and started
body originally came from early The Chinese made cannons metals and theories for turning striking in 1335. It was a major
examinations of the dead. An (large guns that stand on them into gold – were achievement for medieval
Italian doctor, Mondino de’ the ground) soon after they published in 1320 under a false technology – a machine that
Luzzi, did a lot of this, and invented gunpowder (✷ see name. By 1300, several books could count. The Milan clock
often gave public lectures page 63), but because they written by 8th-century Arab was quickly followed by others
while he dissected corpses. were made only of bamboo alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan had throughout Europe, including
Although he tended to see what they were really just oversized been translated into Latin. The one in Salisbury cathedral,
his predecessor Galen (✷ see fireworks. Only cannon barrels books had made Jabir famous, England, which was installed in
page 58) told him he should, made of bronze or iron were so an unknown alchemist 1386 and is still working today.
his 1316 book Anathomia strong enough to withstand a pretended to be Jabir when he
Mundini was the first European powerful explosion. They were wrote De Investigatione Chromatic
anatomy book since ancient not made until about 1320, Perfectionis (The Study of keyboard
times that was based on when techniques for casting Perfection) to make people read
observation of human bodies. and boring them were perfected. it. He wrote several other books c 1350
It was the first systematic guide The new weapons were rushed under the name Geber (his
to human dissection and into action all over Europe. By version of Jabir), but he could The first keyboard instrument
remained the standard manual the 15th century, the cannon really have used his own name. was the organ, but it
until 1543, when Andreas had grown into a monster that His books were so good that couldn’t play all the different
Vesalius’ manual was published could fire balls weighing more alchemists everywhere used
(✷ see page 80). than 55 lb (25 kg). them anyway.

1321Italian poet Dante Italian, not Latin, describes a 1333 A catastrophic flood All of the city’s bridges are
Alighieri dies on journey through hell, purgatory, sweeps through the destroyed. Despite this, Florence
September 14 at the age of 56. and paradise. It is one of the Italian city of Florence as the grows and prospers, becoming
His Divine Comedy, written in greatest poems in all literature. Arno River overflows its banks. one of Italy’s finest cities.

70

sharps and flats, or semitones. Canal lock As the name suggests, the c 499 bc – 1400
It was therefore a great step French game was played with
forward when, in about 1350, c 1373 hands, not rackets. By about Carpenter’s
organs in Europe began to have 1400, wooden bats had brace
chromatic keyboards. These Canal locks are pieces of replaced hands, and a game
had semitones as well as whole medieval technology that resembling tennis emerged. In c 1400
notes, allowing them to play in can still be seen in action. They the 16th century, it was played
more than one key. But the move boats up and down indoors with rackets. Then, Atype of drill invented in
keyboards were designed for between stretches of canal with about 300 years later, a British about 1400, the brace is
chubby fingers, and it was the different water levels, trapping army officer, Walter Wingfield, also the ancestor of the car-
end of the 15th century before boats in a basin that fills to adapted the game to
organ keys slimmed down to raise them or empties to lower outdoors, creating engine crankshaft. It is a
their present size. them. The first is said to have “lawn” tennis as it rod with a U-shape
been built at Vreeswijk in the is now known. in the middle, a
Firearms Netherlands, in 1373, but there Tennis The game hand-rest at the
were certainly locks at Viterbo, of jeu de paume top, and a drill bit
c 1350 Italy, by 1481. was popular in
18th-century France. at the bottom. The
Cannons were fairly easy to Woodcut carpenter steadies it
design, but working out with the hand-rest,
how smaller, portable weapons c 1400 grasps the U, and moves
could be charged with powder, his arm, making the
aimed, and fired proved more Awoodcut is a picture
difficult. The earliest attempts, carved on a piece of fine- same action as a
used in Europe from about grained wood, which is then piston in
1350, had no triggers and were used for printing. Whole books a car.
held under the arm, making it were being printed from wood
impossible to aim them blocks in China by ad 600, but
accurately. The first firearm that the woodcut has a different
looked anything like a modern history. It began to be used in
weapon was the harquebus. about 1400, especially for the
This didn’t reach the battlefield production of playing cards.
until about 1470, and it was But it really came into its
useless against fast, accurate own after 1450, when
bows and arrows. printing from movable
types had been perfected.
Clavichord Readers wanted to see the
same kind of pictures they had
c 1360 always had in handwritten
books, and the woodcut was
The clavichord is a distant there to provide them.
ancestor of the piano.
The first reference to what Players used a bat
was probably a clavichord resembling a modern
is in a French ledger of tennis racket
about 1360, although the
musical instrument did not Tennis
get its modern name until
later. The clavichord’s c 1400
mechanism is very simple:
when a key is pushed Tennis today is a very
down, a thin metal blade different game from the
strikes the string. The note French pastime jeu de paume
sounds until the key is (palm game) that started it all.
released, giving the player great
control over the sound – a
definite advantage for
musicians who like to practice
at night.

1347 Germ warfare hits trading post in southern Ukraine. 1362 For the first time Norman French. The Statute of
Europe as soldiers The virulent disease spreads since 1066, English Pleadings, which makes this
from the East catapult corpses rapidly, killing a third of Europe’s court proceedings are conducted possible, says that proceedings
infected with Black Death into a population in four years. in English instead of Latin or must still be recorded in Latin.

71

neneww wiodrledsa, s
Human understanding of the
world grew enormously between
1400 and 1750. Our planet ceased
to be seen as the center of the
universe, and seemed to grow as
explorers reached new lands.
New discoveries, and new means
to communicate them, led to an
age of reason and the beginnings
of modern science.

72

1401 – 1750

meTal Tower windmill Sails
turned by
movable Type c 1420 the wind

Metal These casts are One problem with Fantail
movable type from Korean windmills is regulates
bronze type used that the wind movement of
1403 in about 1406. doesn’t always the top cap
blow from the Gear wheel
Htai Tjong Code breaking same direction. transmits
Early windmills power to the
People in Korea started 1412 contained their grindstone
working on movable metal entire mechanism
types in the 14th century, and al-Kalka-shandi in a huge wooden
in 1403, King Htai Tjong of box mounted on a
Korea had the first true font of Early attempts at secret pivot, so it was
metal type made. One hundred writing were not effective, difficult to swing the
thousand bronze characters but by the late 14th century sails into the wind.
were cast, and that was just the Arab code writers and breakers, The tower mill,
start. The king had two more called cryptographers, were invented in about
complete fonts ready long getting serious. They invented 1420, had all its
before movable type was systems for changing each letter heavy machinery
perfected in Germany (✷ see into a different one, and used in a fixed
pages 75 and 76–77). the fact that some letters occur tower.
more often than others to
Water-powered decipher supposedly secret Top cap
iron works messages. These tricks of the turns so the
trade were published in 1412
1408 by Egyptian scholar al-Kalka- sails face
shandi, forming the first the wind
Walter Skirlaw reliable set of instructions for Grindstone
code makers and breakers.
Medieval ironworkers Only the sails,
heated iron ore with Perspective which were mounted
charcoal in a furnace to on a movable cap,
produce a spongy lump of iron c 1412 had to
called a bloom. The hotter the be moved
fire was, the better the furnace Filippo Brunelleschi, to track
worked, so air was pumped in Leon Alberti the wind –
with bellows to feed the flames. a much
As demand for iron grew and The Italian architect and easier task.
furnaces got larger, something artist Filippo Brunelleschi Tower windmill
more than muscle power was discovered linear perspective – The 19th-century mill
needed to work the bellows. In the art of drawing objects in a represented by this
England, which would become way that gives an impression of model could steer its
the largest iron producer in the their size and relative position sails into the wind
world, the problem was tackled – between 1410 and 1415. The automatically.
by Walter Skirlaw, the Bishop discovery revolutionized the
of Durham. He set up a water- way artists drew pictures. Until
powered bloomery in 1408. he discovered the “vanishing
point,” to which all parallel
lines converge, pictures were
built up from flat shapes.
Twenty years later, his friend
Leon Alberti wrote a book
giving detailed instructions on
how to create the correct
perspective. This enabled
painters to produce
pictures with a realism
that was unsurpassed
until 19th-century
photography.

1405 Chinese admiral around the South China Sea, 1418 Italian architect original solution, octagonal in
Zheng He ends which he knows as the Western Filippo Brunelleschi form, with its white structural
China’s isolation with the first of Oceans. Sixty-two ships reach is asked to design the dome of ribs exposed on the outside, will
a series of missions to countries Indochina, Java, and Sri Lanka. Florence’s cathedral. His highly dominate the city’s skyline.

73

New worlds, New ideas HarpsicHord This harpsichord
was made in Belgium in about
Flywheel 1600. It has two keyboards,
known as manuals.
c 1430
Greek word
Acar engine (✷ see page “anemos,” meaning
150) wouldn’t work “wind”). The
without its flywheel, a heavy type with cups
wheel that stores energy during attached to a
the brief bursts of burning vertical shaft
inside the cylinders, then dates from about
releases it to keep the engine 1850, but the
running smoothly. Although first anemometer
early devices like the potter’s was devised
wheel incorporated a kind 400 years earlier.
of flywheel action, Italian artist and
separate flywheels mathematician
first appeared in the Beautifully decorated case Leon Alberti’s
early 15th century. indicates the status of the instrument
They evened out harpsichord’s owner
the jerky rhythm
of machines was much simpler – just a
powered by feet rectangular metal plate, hinged
moving up and at the top. When the wind
down on a treadle. blew, the plate tilted, giving a
(✷ see page 100). rough indication of the speed.
Oil Unlike the piano, Alberti described it in about
painting its strings are 1450 in his book The Pleasures
plucked, not of Mathematics. As British
1430 struck with scientist Robert Hooke was
to a miniature scene to hammers, as the reinventing a more accurate
Robert Campin, make it more realistic. keys are pressed. form of anemometer, Mayans
Jan van Eyck The peep show was a Because of this, it were building “windtowers.”
box with a hole in one is not possible to
Although the Romans knew end. Inside was a three- vary the loudness Trombone
about oil paint, it was the dimensional scene of a note by
French and Flemish painters modeled in perspective. c 1450
Robert Campin and Jan van When the model was striking the key
Eyck who perfected its use in viewed through the with more or less
art. Both were attracted by the hole, it leapt to life force. Some harpsichords have
realism that oil paint allowed. with startling realism. several sets of strings so that Originally called the
Earlier paints, such as tempera, Alberti made his first pieces of music can be played sackbut, the trombone
which was made with eggs, peep shows in 1437. at different volumes. The was invented in France in
couldn’t produce the same He even painted the instrument was first described about 1450. It is basically
smoothly graded tones. Using scenery on glass to allow in about 1450. It spread a tube that produces sound
the new paint and the new for lighting effects. rapidly throughout Europe from vibration of the lips. The
laws of perspective (✷ see and is still played today. simplest instruments of this
page 73), van Eyck painted Harpsichord type can play only a few notes
pictures with a realism never Anemometer because their length is fixed. A
seen before. c 1450 trombone can play a full range
c 1450 of notes because its length can
Peep show The harpsichord was king be changed with tubes that
of the keyboards from slide in and out. The modern
1437 about 1500 until well after the Leon Alberti trombone has not changed
piano was invented in 1709 much since the original
Leon Alberti Weather watchers measure instrument was designed
the speed of the wind
Having studied perspective, with an anemometer (from the more than 550 years ago.
Leon Alberti realized that
he could apply the same laws

1431French military Guided by inner voices, she had 1435Italian sculptor nude figure made since ancient
leader Joan of Arc is incited the French to expel the Donatello completes times. People are astonished by
burned at the stake by the English English at the battle of Orleans a nearly life-size bronze statue of the expressive realism of this
in Rouen on Wednesday, May 30. during the Hundred Years’ War. the biblical hero David, the first freestanding work of art.

74

Metal printing used for the same purpose in Roman type 1401 – 1750
plate instruction books for dancers, an alphabet they thought was
such as two found in the 1464 Roman, but which had actually
c 1455 library of Margaret of Austria: been designed by a 9th-century
The book of Low Dances (c.1460) Adolf Rusch English monk. The first
Woodcuts, made in Europe and The Art and Teaching of Fine “roman” type was used by
from about 1400 (✷ see Dancing (c.1488). The first printed books used German printer Adolf Rusch in
page 71), could not produce Roman type This title page from heavy, spiked letters. 1464. In 1465, two other
as finely detailed pictures, but a 16th-century philosophical work Printers soon wanted lighter German printers, Sweynheim
metal plates could. An artist shows the elegant type at its best. letters better suited to the new and Pannartz, used a type even
engraved the required lines on printing technique. They chose closer to today’s roman type,
the plate, usually made of which is what you are reading.
copper, with a sharp tool called
a graver. The plate was then
covered with greasy ink and
the surface wiped clean again,
leaving ink only in the
engraved lines. When damp
paper was pressed hard onto
the plate, it picked up the
ink from the lines, forming a
print. This process, known
as intaglio, was first used in
about 1455. It required more
pressure than normal printing,
so printers still used woodcuts
in books containing text
printed with type.

Letterpress
printing

1455

Johann Gutenberg

See pages 76–77 for the
story of how Gutenberg
died in poverty as printing
changed the world.

Dance notation

c 1460

People who teach dance or
develop dances have often
needed to write down the
movements they want the
dancers to make. The ancient
Egyptians did this to some
extent with hieroglyphs, but
the earliest written system
appeared in Spain in about
1460, using letters to represent
movements. In other parts of
Europe, shortened words were

1436The first of two laws Britain self-sufficient in grain by 1452The cathedral in They show Old Testament scenes
limiting trade in restricting both imports and Florence receives the modeled in deep, naturalistic
grain is passed in Britain. The exports. The effect is widespread last of three pairs of bronze doors
aim of the Corn Laws is to make starvation as prices rocket. by sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti. relief. Centuries later, people will

still flock to see them.

75

NEW WORLDS, NEW IDEAS

THE POWER OF THE PRESS

Inventor Johann Gutenberg dies in poverty
as printing changes the world

JOHANN GUTENBERG Fifteenth-century Europe was itching for
Little is known about Johann change. For more than 1,000 years it
Gutenberg, not even his date of had been dominated by the Church and
birth. His skill as a jeweler
must have helped him to perfect a society that valued traditional
the metal types he needed. wisdom. Now new ideas were

in the air. But with only pen and

parchment to spread the word,

Printer Paper is held that was where they
pulls this on this tympan, were likely to stay.
bar to bring which is folded
the platen down on top of In the German city
down on of Strasburg, a young
the type the type jeweller called Johann
Gutenberg was acting very
A forme strangely. He was borrowing
of type money from his friends to buy
is placed
on the
press bed

Platen

materials that had nothing to do

with jewelry. He wouldn’t say

why he needed them, or why they cost so much.

In the end, his friends refused to lend him any more

money until he came clean. His secret astonished them. He

Coffin was working on an invention that would allow books to be
moves mass-produced instead of copied out by hand.
under the
platen Gutenberg’s new movable type, oil-based ink, and

PRINTING PRESS printing press looked as if they had a future, and in
The printing press developed
from winemaking and book 1438, the friends formed a partnership. But things began
binding presses. The inked
type faced upward and paper to go wrong. One partner died and his children wanted a share in the
was pressed down on to it.
MAKING A MATRIX partnership. They took Gutenberg to court. They lost, but the secret of
Each letter was carved on a
steel punch, which was then Steel Gutenberg’s work got
hammered into a piece of punches
copper to form a matrix. This have a out, and the race to
was clamped into a mold, and print a book was on.
molten metal was poured in, letter
filling the shape punched into carved on Gutenberg returned
the matrix to form the type. the end to his home city,

Mainz, to perfect

Punch hammered Copper matrices carry an his invention. Still
into soft copper impression of the letter desperate for money,

76

1401 – 1750

he persuaded businessman Johann Fust Early printing was hard
work. Type was set and
to make him two large loans. By 1455, inked by hand, and it took
Gutenberg’s first book was ready. He showed two or three people to
it off at the trade fair in nearby Frankfurt, produce each page.
where visitors commented on the book’s clarity.

It was then that Fust suggested it was time he got his

money back. But Gutenberg couldn’t or wouldn’t

pay. Once again he found himself facing a judge

in court. This time, he didn’t win. Fust got

control of everything. Pausing only to steal

Gutenberg’s best assistant, he set himself up as

the world’s first successful printer.

Fust didn’t keep his lead for long. Within

25 years, there were printers all over Europe.

By 1500 they had printed 30,000 books,

spreading new ideas far and wide and helping

to launch the age we call the Renaissance.

And Johann Gutenberg? He kept on printing,

but didn’t make much money. The Archbishop of

Mainz gave him food and clothing, but by 1468, FIRST BOOKS
Gutenberg was dead. The future he had helped The first books, like this Gutenberg Bible, were designed
to create was on its way without him. to imitate handwritten work. The printed letters were often
embellished by hand with elaborate colored decoration.

77

New worlds, New ideas Carillon Stove America

Cryptographic c 1480 1490 1492
frequency table
Visitors to the Netherlands An open fire wastes energy, Christopher Columbus
1465 and Belgium can still enjoy so people put their fires in
the haunting sound of the stone, tile, or brick ovens. The In the 15th century, a young
Leon Alberti carillon, a set of bells that first recorded stove was built Italian sailor made a
plays tunes. Developed from in Alsace, France, in 1490, miscalculation that led him to
Afrequency table shows how earlier devices that produced trapping heat before it went up the Americas. Christopher
often each letter of the simple clock chimes, it the chimney. Later stoves had Columbus thought the Earth
alphabet is used. With this appeared around 1480. The iron fins to regulate the flow of was smaller than it really is.
table, anyone can crack a secret of the carillon lies in Because it was round, he said, a
simple substitution cipher. For the careful shaping of the the smoke and extract heat quicker way of getting to China
example, in English, “e” is the bells. If this is not done from it. In Russia, it was and India in the east would be
most often-used letter. If “k” is correctly, they generate to sail westward. Most people
the most common letter in a discordant tones often part of the building, thought he was crazy, but in
ciphered document, it must that ruin the music. with flues heating 1492 Queen Isabella of Spain
represent “e”. The first all the rooms. sponsored a voyage to try out
frequency table was published Square sails his idea. He never reached
in 1465 by the Italian carried on the India, but landed instead in the
architect Leon Alberti. West Indies. Columbus made
Because it made main mast four voyages to this “New World”
simple ciphers and foremast and reached South America, at
useless, Alberti what is now Venezuela, on his
also invented a third voyage, in 1498. Although
cipher wheel he failed to find a new route to
that encrypted
messages more Asia, his discovery brought
securely. the New World and Europe
together, changing both
AmericA forever. (✷ See also
Columbus sailed
westward on Europe’s New World.)
August 3, 1492,
in this ship, the Automatic
Santa Maria. keyboard
instrument

c 1500

The Santa Before about 1500,
Maria was a musicians were
caravel from needed to make
northern Spain instruments play music.
Then instruments that played
Short, stocky themselves began to appear.
body One had a cylinder the width
of the keyboard with pins
sticking out of it, one for each
note to be played. Someone
turned a handle to make the
cylinder revolve, and the pins
worked the keys to make them
play harpsichord or organ
music. King Henry VIII of
England had an automatic
keyboard instrument, and street
entertainers are still using
them in the 21st century.

1455The Wars of the a battle at St. Albans. On this 1475In Bruges, Flanders, about printing in Germany, he
Roses, a series of occasion, York, whose emblem is William Caxton
civil wars fought over who a white rose, defeats Lancaster, publishes the first book to be uses it to produce Recuyell of the
should rule England, begins with with their emblem of a red rose. printed in English. Having learned Historyes of Troye, which he has
translated from French.
78

EUROPE’S NEW WORLD 1401 – 1750
PineaPPle
AmericA wAs new only to Columbus and other A pineapple’s fruit is formed
by a number of separate
flowers fusing together.

non-Americans. Both the north and south of the

continent were inhabited by people who had Pineapple

lived there for thousands of years and built c1500

advanced cultures of their own. Once the New

World was discovered, other people flooded in,

creating new colonies. Some of these became The pineapple,
a native of
the United States of America, which within a South America,
was unknown to
few centuries would dominate the world’s science, Europeans before
Columbus’ discovery
technology, and industry. Columbus greets of America in 1498.
the inhabitants Europeans then began to
of the New World transport the fruit and grow
the plants elsewhere. By 1502,
The medieval world Watch Portuguese explorers had
Before Columbus sailed west, the entire world known to found pineapples in the
Europeans consisted of Asia, Africa, and Europe. China 1500 West Indies. They were soon
dominated Asia, while power in Europe was shared by growing them 4,400 miles
many countries, including England, France, and Spain. Peter Henlein (7,000 km) away on
Columbus’ big idea St. Helena, an island in the
Trade with the East was important in the 15th century, The first watch was the size South Atlantic, which was
but getting there was difficult. Columbus thought he could of a hamburger. Invented trading with Europe by 1590.
reach the East by sailing west. Expert sailors told him he by German locksmith Peter By this time, the English
was wrong, but failed to stop him from attempting it. Henlein, it used a spring adventurer Sir Walter Ralegh
The growTh of ameriCa instead of weights to drive had discovered the pineapple
Part of North America was temporarily colonized by England clockwork inside. Henlein’s on one of his voyages to
in 1587 and named Virginia. Later, the same name was used “Nuremberg egg”’ had a North and South America.
for one of the states in the US, which by 1880 had overtaken metal cover, which had to be
Britain to become the world’s industrial leader. lifted to see the time, and no Halftone
minute hand. Despite these woodblock
shortcomings, people could at
last carry the time with them. print

1510

Lucas Cranach,
Hans Burgkmair

Early printing could produce
pictures only in stark
black and white. Cross-
hatching could be used to
suggest in- between tones,
but it was not very convincing.
Two German artists, Lucas
Cranach and Hans Burgkmair,
were the first to solve this
problem. They made several
woodcuts for each picture,
one for black, one for gray, one
for a lighter grey, and so on.
Printed on top of each other,
they gave realistic results.

1478King Ferdinand V Its aim is to seek out and destroy 1510In the Netherlands, three sections) called The Garden
and Queen Isabella enemies of the Roman Catholic painter Hieronymus of Earthly Delights. Its nightmare
of Spain, tell Pope Sixtus VI to Church. It will become notorious Bosch completes his strange and symbolism will influence painters
set up the Spanish Inquisition. for its use of torture. disturbing triptych (picture in 400 years later.

79

New worlds, New ideas Fluorspar Solar system botanical garden was opened at
Pisa, Italy, in 1543. Two years
Laudanum 1529 1543 later, another was opened by
the University of Padua in Italy.
c 1520 Modern botanical gardens, such
as Kew Gardens in England,
Paracelcus Georgius Bauer Nicolaus Copernicus maintain seed banks to help to
save plants from extinction.
From the early 16th century, As well as being a beautiful In the 16th century, most
doctors used laudanum as a crystal, fluorspar, or people believed that the Complex
painkiller, until other drugs fluorite, is important in making planet Earth stood still at the numbers
became popular nearly 400 steel and aluminum. It is a centre of a moving universe.
years later. Made by dissolving compound of calcium and 1545
opium in alcohol, it was fluorine, often found Solar SyStem
introduced by Paracelcus, a Swiss near hot springs. Users turned the Gerolamo Cardano
physician. In England, Thomas The German handle of this 18th-
Sydenham pioneered its use scholar and century orrery to Complex numbers
about a century after Paracelcus. scientist Georgius show the annual are used in
Laudanum was widely used as Bauer, usually rotation of the Earth advanced mathematics.
a painkiller in the 18th and known as Agricola, around the Sun and Without them, problems
19th centuries, and many described it first the Moon’s rotation that involve the square root
patients became addicted to it. in 1529. He around Earth. of a negative number cannot
regarded it as a be solved. This is because the
fossil, the term squares of negative numbers
that scientists used are always positive, so there is

then for anything
found in the earth.

laudanum These laudanum Scientific study When Nicolaus Copernicus
bottles were essential items in the of human published a book in 1543
19th-century medicine chest. anatomy saying that Earth orbits the Sun
and revolves daily on its own
Music type 1543 axis, few believed him. By the
late 17th century, however,
c 1525 Andreas Vesalius most scientists in Britain,
France, Denmark, and the
Pierre Attaignant For centuries, what doctors Netherlands agreed with
knew about the structure Copernicus, and in 1758 the
Printing music from movable of the human body was largely Roman Catholic Church finally
type was, to begin with, based on the work of the allowed its members to read
done in two steps: first the five- Greek physician Galen (✷ see what he had written.
line stave, then the notes. By page 58). Then, Flemish
1525, French printer Pierre physician Andreas Vesalius Botanical
Attaignant had invented a took a fresh look at human garden
better system. Each note anatomy. From his own
carried a bit of stave, so lines dissections, he discovered that 1543
and notes were printed Galen had based his work on
together. Within ten years, animals, not humans. In 1543, Botanical gardens are not just
Attaignant was printing music Vesalius produced a book places to stroll. They are
by every leading composer. describing human anatomy in also living libraries of scientific
detail. It showed what could be knowledge, often gathered over
done by daring to dissect. centuries. The first public

1535French explorer a river he names the St. Lawrence 1535The Inca empire of chieftain Atahualpa two years
Jacques Cartier, to a hill he calls Mont Réal and a Peru is destroyed by earlier, he sacks Cuzco, capital of
trying to find a route to China village that will become Quebec. Spanish conqueror Francisco the Inca Empire, and founds the
through North America, sails up It is the beginning of Canada. Pizarro. Having executed modern city of Lima.

80

no “real” number that can In 1545, Sebastiano Serlio Occupational 1401 – 1750
be a square root of a negative suggested placing a globe of disease
number. In 1545, Italian colored water in front of a Camera obscura
mathematician Gerolamo torch or candle to tint and 1556
Cardano swept this difficulty concentrate the light. 1558
aside by inventing a new Georgius Bauer
number to represent the square Railroads in Giambattista della Porta
root of -1. Combined with mines People are not designed to
ordinary numbers, it gave what work in mines and The term “camera obscura”
are now called complex c 1550 factories, where dust and means “a dark room,” and
numbers, providing the chemicals can attack them at the modern camera started as a
solution to a wide range of Trains pulled by locomotives close quarters and make them darkened room with a tiny hole
mathematical problems. did not appear until the ill. One of the first people to in it. On the wall opposite the
19th century, but rail transport recognize this was Georgius hole, a faithful, though upside-
Stage lighting ation was used earlier. Wheels Bauer, better known as down, image of the outside
roll more easily on rails than on Agricola. In his great book world appeared. It was fuzzy
1545 a road, which allows heavier De Re Metallica (About and dim until 1558, when
loads to be pulled. Railroads Metallurgy) he described the Italian physicist Giambattista
Sebastiano Serlio first appeared in mines, where appalling conditions that della Porta suggested changing
tons of rock had to be moved existed in 16th-century mines, the hole to a lens. The lens let
In the early 16th century, the through narrow tunnels. The and the occupational diseases, in more light and focused it to
stages of most theatres in earliest was built in France in such as “difficulty in breathing a sharp image, which an artist
Europe were lit by daylight, but about 1550. Similar railroads and destruction of the lungs” could trace accurately.
Italian architects were hoping existed in England by 1605. that miners suffered.
to create a type of theatrical Botanical garden The Jardin
lighting to control stage effects. des Plantes, Paris, was opened to
the public in 1650.

1536When the Roman that he will no longer obey the 1555French astrologer language that can be interpreted
Catholic Church will Pope. He closes down nunneries, and doctor in different ways, are said to
not allow him to divorce his wife, monasteries, and similar places, predict the future. One says the
King Henry VIII of England says and confiscates their property. Nostradamus publishes his book end of the world will be in 3797.
Centuries. Its verses, written in
81

New worlds, New ideas they cannot avoid distorting it when he noticed that the character says to another, “Take
in some way. The Flemish constellation of Cassiopeia the cork out of thy mouth,
Pulmonary geographer Gerhard Mercator had acquired a bright new star. that I may drink thy tidings,”
circulation was the first person to tackle We know now that it was a showing that Shakespeare’s
this systematically. He knew supernova – a star destroying audience must have been
1564 that for easy navigation, sailors itself in a massive explosion. familiar with the invention.
needed a map that showed Tycho confirmed that the star
Matteo Colombo constant compass directions as was beyond the Moon, Gregorian
straight lines. His way of therefore in the realm of the calendar
Long before William Harvey representing the world does “fixed” stars. When he
showed that blood circulates this. Although it makes published this observation in 1582
around the body (✷ see page countries near the poles look 1573, his reputation was made.
89), Italian surgeon Matteo much too big, it is still used for His star had exploded those Pope Gregory XIII
Colombo showed its circulation many maps today. ancient beliefs.
through the lungs. In a book Although Julius Caesar
published in 1559, he described Supernova Instructions improved the calendar
how blood was pumped by the for finding enormously in 45 bc (✷ see
heart to the lungs, where it 1572 the date of page 55), by 1582 it had
mixed with a “spirit” (oxygen), Easter are
became bright red, and was Tycho Brahe given on fallen behind the seasons
then returned to the heart. the back again. The reason was that
Acentral point of an Earth year is 365.242
Pencil the teachings of
Aristotle was that days, not 365.25 as
1565 the stars never Caesar had assumed.
changed. So the Pope Gregory XIII
Conrad Gesner Danish astronomer sorted things out once
Tycho Brahe got and for all. First he
Conrad Gesner, a German- a big shock on chopped out 10 days to
Swiss naturalist, was the November 11, 1572, reset the calendar. Then,
first person to identify graphite by decreeing that one
as a distinct mineral. And he GreGorian leap year should disappear
was also the first to think of in three out of every four
using this soft, slippery calendar centuries, he corrected the
form of carbon for error, creating the calendar we
writing. In 1565 he This 18th- use today.
had the idea of century
placing it in a perpetual Constant swing
wooden holder to calendar gives of a pendulum
form a writing the date of
instrument. An Easter each c 1583
abundant source year either in
of graphite was the Julian or Bottle cork Galileo Galilei
discovered in Gregorian
England at about calendar. c 1580 The time a pendulum takes
this time, but to swing from side to side
pencils as we know For centuries, wine came in is the same whatever the size of
them, with their jars or barrels, which did the swing, provided it is not
“lead” glued into place, not usually have corks. When too large. The great Italian
were not made until 1812. bottles appeared, their stoppers scientist Galileo was the first to
were often made of cork. It is notice this in about 1583,
Mercator map not clear when this material supposedly while watching a
projection became widely used, but in lamp swinging in Pisa cathedral
about 1600 Shakespeare wrote during a boring service. The
1568 his play As you Like it. One problem of accurate time-
keeping was solved in principle,
Gerhard Mercator but a practical pendulum clock
was not available until
Mapmakers have to show Christiaan Huygens of the
the curved Earth on flat Netherlands built one in 1657
paper, called a projection, so (✷ see page 92).

1564On April 26, a baby Avon, England. His father, 1570A new architecture Palladio completes the Villa
who will become the merchant John Shakespeare, based on clean, Rotunda in Vincenza. Thousands
world’s most famous writer is and mother, Mary Arden, call classical lines and simple layout of “Palladian” buildings will
christened in Stratford-upon- their first son William. is born in Italy as Andrea appear in the centuries to come.

82

1401 – 1750

Lever drops Top lever raises of worlds like our own. What can solve it with something
to stop the left-hand lever really sealed his fate was his called a parallelogram of forces,
to release the statement that the Bible should in which the strength and
wheel wheel guide morality, not astronomy. direction of forces acting on an
Toothed object are represented by the
gearwheel is Teeth Pendulum Decimals sides of a parallelogram. This
regularly held move operates technique was developed from
and released by bottom top lever 1585 the slightly simpler triangle of
left-hand lever lever to forces invented by Simon
Shaft, to keep the Simon Stevin Stevin in 1586. It was a new
which a pendulum departure at the time, as were
hand could swinging The idea of decimals was many of Stevin’s discoveries,
be attached, known but not much some of which put him ahead
is driven by Spring is allowed used until the Flemish of the more famous Galileo.
the spring to release energy mathematician Simon Stevin
at exactly the published a little pamphlet Book carousel
Constant correct rate called La Thiende (The Tenth)
Pendulum swings in 1585. He proposed a 1588
swIng of a regularly out and in complicated way of writing
pendUlUm decimal fractions, which we no Agostino Ramelli
longer use. He also advocated
Galileo designed the use of decimal coins, These days, we can access
his pendulum measures, and weights – a a range of information
machine in the suggestion that has been taken without leaving our seats, using
16th century. This up, with varying degrees of CD-ROMs and the Internet.
model of it was enthusiasm, almost everywhere. This is not a new idea. In 1588,
built in 1883. Italian engineer Agostino
Triangle of Ramelli realized that readers
forces were natural couch potatoes,
and designed a large wooden
1586 gadget like a fairground Ferris
wheel, with shelves that stayed
Simon Stevin horizontal as the wheel turned.
Users could stay seated while
Aproblem in mechanics they spun the wheel to consult
is how an object will any one of 10 volumes. Ramelli
move when pulled or pushed recommended it particularly for
in two directions at once. We “those who are suffering from
indisposition.”

Infinity of the stake in 1600 for
universe views that now seem
normal. It was bad
1584 enough that he
believed that Earth
Giordano Bruno orbited the Sun. It was
unforgivable of him to
Astronomical references in say that the universe
the Bible reflect the current contained an infinity
beliefs of the time, that Earth is
the centre of the universe. The InfInIty of the
Italian philosopher and poet UnIverse The universe
Giordano Bruno had other is much bigger than early
ideas, and was burned at the
astronomers, such as
Hipparchus, once thought.

1577El Greco, a painter artist expresses his spirituality 1588In May, Philip II of England. It anchors off Calais,
with a unique, by crowding his pictures with Spain sends a heavily but the ships are forced to flee
almost mystical style, arrives in elongated figures stretching armed fleet of 130 ships – the toward Scotland, where rocks
Toledo, Spain. The Cretan-born towards heaven. Spanish Armada – to invade and storms destroy 63 of them.

83

New worlds, New ideas Knitting machine This Thermoscope about it until a Dutch painter
19th-century machine is a with the memorable name of
Knitting development of Lee’s design. 1592 Cornelis Cornelisz thought of
machine applying wind power to
before the late 18th Galileo Galilei another industrial task: sawing
1589 century, when the U-bend wood. Like other mills, the one
and cistern were invented. Galileo is famous for he built in 1592 needed to be
William Lee revolutionizing physics turned to face the wind. It was
Modern with his experiments, and for so big that he had to float it on
When English clergyman algebraic insisting that the Earth orbited a raft to make this possible.
William Lee realized that notation the Sun. He also made several
his girlfriend liked hand useful inventions, including the Southern star
knitting more than him, he set 1591 thermoscope. Noticing that air constellations
out to change this. He designed expanded when it got warm, he
a knitting machine in 1589, François Viète dipped the neck of a bottle into 1595
which remained in use until liquid. As the air in the bottle
the 19th century. Some of its The first person to write warmed or cooled, the liquid Pieter Keyser
principles are still used today. algebra more or less as we was pushed out or sucked in,
Lee asked Queen Elizabeth I to do today was the French indicating the temperature. From any one point on
protect his ideas. First she said mathematician François Viète. Earth, only half the
the machine was no good, His book Introduction to the Wind-driven stars are visible. Earth
then she said it was too good Analytical Arts was the first to sawmill gets in the way of
and would ruin hand knitters. use letters consistently to the rest. So
Lee died in poverty. represent mathematical quan- 1592 until Western
tities. Viète also introduced the explorers
Flush lavatory plus and minus signs and used Cornelis Cornelisz ventured
south of the
1591 words such as Windmills for grinding equator,
“quadratus” grain and windmills for
John Harington instead of signs. pumping water – that was Microscope was
turned up and
Toilet humor goes back to Water-filled globe down a screw-
the inventor of the flush focuses flame on thread to focus
lavatory, or water closet, John the image
Harington. He was a famous to lens below
wit at the court of the English compound
queen Elizabeth I, and he Reservoir Lens to Objective lens microscope During
published his design under the of oil focus the 1660s, Englishman
title The Metamorphosis of Ajax, Oil lamp Robert Hooke made
a pun on the word “jakes” – used to light light on compound microscopes,
Elizabethan slang for a lavatory. specimen specimen such as this one,
Harington installed the first containing two or
water closet in England at sometimes three lenses.
Richmond Palace, but his
invention was not much used

1591The Rialto Bridge, bridge. Antonio da Ponte, who 1597One of the greatest of Songs or Ayres. It will be the
one of the best-loved won a competition with his singer-songwriters of best-selling song book of its
bridges in Venice, Italy, is design, gives it a single stone
completed, replacing an earlier arch and a double row of shops. the Elizabethan age, John time. Many of the lyrics express
Dowland, publishes his First Book
unbearable sadness.

84

1401 – 1750

European astronomers knew which he had discovered while 1600, possibly by Dutch started his experiments. He
nothing about large areas of he was sailing to the East spectacle maker Hans Janssen. published the results in 1600.
the heavens. In 1595, Pieter Indies. By 1603, these had Hampered by poor lenses, His book on the magnet took
Keyser, a Dutch navigator, found their way into the latest early compound microscopes the first steps toward modern
named 12 new constellations, celestial globes and atlases. didn’t give such clear images electromagnetic theory and also
as the single-lens instruments contained many observations
Eyepiece Compound created later by Dutch naturalist about the magnetism of Earth.
lens inside microscope Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Gilbert concluded that compass
needles point north because
base of c 1600 Magnetism Earth itself is a giant magnet
eye cup of Earth whose north and south poles
Hans Janssen roughly coincide with its
Pasteboard 1600 geographic poles. In an age
barrel It’s possible to magnify things without Newton’s theory of
covered with a single lens, but in William Gilbert gravity (✷ see pages 98–99),
with fine theory it’s better with two. The Gilbert was not the only
leather first microscope with two Magnetism was a complete scientist who speculated that
lenses, called a compound mystery until the English the whole universe was held
microscope, was built in about physician William Gilbert together by magnetic attraction.
(✷ See also Magnetic planet.)

MAGNETIC PLANET

William Gilbert believed that the

Earth contained a huge bar magnet, but

in reality its core is too hot to allow this.

The modern theory is that electric currents

circulating in its liquid iron core create the

magnetic field. However this field arises,

navigators have been using it for William
centuries whenever they use a Gilbert
magnetic compass to guide (1544–
them. We now know that its 1603)

influence extends far

beyond Earth.

The magneTic compass
The principle of the
compass may first have
been used by the Chinese
for land exploration
and in their feng shui
philosophy for checking
the orientation of
buildings. The difference
between magnetic and geographic north was known by 1050,
and compasses with iron needles floating on water were in use
at sea by the 12th century.

The norThern lighTs Lights, or auroras, like this can be seen near both north and south poles.
Early sailors would have been familiar with the northern lights
– eerie, dancing curtains of light that sometimes appear in the
night sky of the far north and south. But they would not have
connected them with the behavior of their compasses. In fact,

both reveal the existence of Earth’s magnetic field.

1598In England, the Poor provide money for them, but say 1599The Globe Theatre Chamberlain’s Men. The
Laws are passed to that if people can work they must opens near the company’s leading playwright
deal with people who are old, go into a workhouse – often little River Thames in south London is William Shakespeare, who
sick, or have no money. The laws better than going to prison. with a performance by the has shares in the theater.

85

New worlds, New ideas

NamiNg of stars Before Bayer Valves in the
published Uranometria, there was veins
no systematic way of naming the
stars. The book’s ornate title page is 1603
typical of the period.
Hieronymus Fabricius
Naming of stars ab Aquapendente

1603 Once blood has done its job
of transporting important
Johann Bayer substances around the body, it
goes back through the veins to
Thousands of stars can be the heart to be pumped around
seen without a telescope, so again. But gravity and friction
astronomers need a system for are against it. Without oneway
naming them all. The standard valves in veins, it might go the
way is to label the stars in each wrong way. In 1603, the Italian
constellation with Greek letters: surgeon Hieronymus Fabricius
our nearest star (actually three ab Aquapendente published
stars close together) is called details of the valves that he had
alpha Centauri because it is the discovered in human veins. He
brightest star in the Centaurus didn’t quite understand why
constellation and alpha is the they were there, but his
first letter of the Greek observation helped William
alphabet. This system was Harvey to prove that blood
invented by German lawyer circulates (✷ see page 89).
Johann Bayer for a guide to the
stars, Uranometria, which was Theory of
published in 1603. It was the shadows
first really accurate star atlas.
Where there were more visible 1604
stars than letters in the Greek
alphabet, Bayer continued with Johannes Kepler
Latin characters. His system has
since been extended to cover The recording of light and
about 1,300 stars. shade, so easily done by
the camera today, demanded
Convex objective lens gathers
light and bends it to form an
upside-down image

Thermostat heat up and down. In about telescope This is a replica Convex objective lens
1600, Dutch inventor Cornelis of one of Galileo’s telescopes, gathers light and bends
c 1600 Drebbel made a mechanical which he made in 1610.
thermostat by coupling the it to form an upside-
Cornelis Drebbel damper of a furnace, which down image
regulates the flow of air,
Athermostat keeps with a thermometer. This Trigger Frizzen
something at a constant was significant because it
temperature by turning the was one of the first examples Butt rests against Trigger
of a feedback control system. the shoulder guard

1600 Shakespeare writes behind him, he produces a 1605 Spanish writer most translated book in the world.
what will become tragedy that presents, like no Miguel de Cervantes Its main character, Don Quixote,
one of his greatest plays, Hamlet. other play, the highs and lows publishes his book Don Quixote and his servant Sancho Panza,
With 10 years of experience of human existence. de la Mancha. It will become the overcome many imaginary foes

86

careful thought from 16th- Newspaper Moons of 1401 – 1750
century artists. The key is that Jupiter
light travels in straight lines, 1609 glowing gas containing new
illuminating some areas but 1610 stars, which we call a nebula.
being blocked from others. Johann Carolus It is strange that nobody
Much of the theory of shadows Galileo Galilei, recorded the Orion nebula
was figured out by Leonardo da Newspapers started as Simon Marius before, because it is visible
Vinci, the Renaissance genius, private newsletters without a telescope.
but it was a German circulated between company Galileo became expert at
astronomer, Johannes Kepler, offices. They gradually turned making telescopes, and Maths for fun
who produced a coherent into publications of political eventually built one that made
theory of light rays in 1604. news. Either of two German objects look 20 times bigger. 1612
papers that started in 1609 In January 1610, he trained it
Telescope could have been the world’s on Jupiter and saw the planet’s Claude-Gaspar de Méziriac
first: the Relation published by four largest moons. He
1608 Johann Carolus) or the Avisa published this observation, One of the first and most
Relation oder Zeitung. By 1650, and much else revealed by the successful puzzle makers
Hans Lippershey all the major cities in Europe telescope, in a book called The was the French mathematician
had newspapers, usually only Starry Messenger. The moons Claude-Gaspar de Méziriac,
In 1608, Dutch spectacle a single sheet without headlines were named – Io, Europa, with his 1612 book Pleasing
maker Hans Lippershey or pictures. Ganymede, and Callisto – by and Delightful Number Problems.
discovered that if you look the German astronomer Simon As well as the usual brain-
through the right pair of lenses, Moon craters Marius. teasers involving weighing
distant objects appear bigger. things with strange sets of
Possibly the first to invent the 1609 Orion nebula weights and getting awkward
telescope, he may also have combinations of objects across
invented a microscope, which, Galileo Galilei 1610 rivers, it included a number of
like the telescope, involves intriguing card tricks. Its last
looking through two lenses. He Everyone believed the Greek Nicolas de Peiresc reprint was in 1959.
offered his telescope, or philosopher Aristotle’s
“looker,” as he called it, to the theory that the Moon was a Stargazing became a popular Flintlock
government, but they said they perfect sphere – until 1610, occupation once the musket
would prefer binoculars. when Galileo pointed a telescope was invented. In
However, within a year, the telescope at it. He saw that the 1610, a French scholar, Nicolas c 1612
Italian scientist Galileo had Moon was far from perfect, de Peiresc, aimed his telescope
recognized the importance of being pockmarked with clearly at the constellation of Orion The first portable firearms
the telescope and was using his visible craters. It was just one and was the first to notice what were made in the 14th
own to make startling of many observations that looked like a cloud. We now century, but it was not until the
discoveries about our galaxy. began to shake the certainties know this to be a mass of 17th century that the first really
of the ancient world. effective ones appeared. They
Sliding tube Eyepiece contains a concave used a trigger mechanism to set
for focusing lens, which bends the light, off the powder, allowing a

magnifying the image soldier to hold the weapon
with both hands and aim it
accurately. The best of them
was the flintlock musket.
The first true flintlock may
have been made by a French
gun maker called Marin de
Bourgeoys for Louis XIII of
France, in about 1612. Its

Wooden Spiral grooving, or Flintlock musket The trigger released a spring-loaded
stock rifling, cut inside the flintlock musket was loaded from flint, which struck a steel plate,
musket barrel spins the the muzzle end. This made it slow creating sparks to light the
musket ball so that it in action, but it remained the gunpowder and fire a bullet. By
flies in a straight line standard long-range firearm until 1630, the flintlock musket was
cartridges preloaded with powder being used throughout Europe.
and a bullet made it obsolete.

1607On Thursday It is the first permanent English 1612Englishman John tobacco to be exported and sold.
May 14, colonists settlement in the Americas. The Rolfe discovers a By 1630, as much as 1.5m lb
found Jamestown, on an island colonists have been led there by new method for curing tobacco. (0.7m kg) of tobacco will have
in the James River, Virginia. a guide, Christopher Newport. This enables large quantities of been exported to England.

87

Systematic Laws of pLanetary Index to a book books and making hasty
study of motion Astronomer judgments. In 1620, he
1614 published details of a revealing
metabolism Johannes Kepler was observation he had made: a
the first to apply Antonio Zara candle flame has a distinct
1614 advanced structure, with a dark center
mathematics Abook without an index is and a bright edge. This simple
Santorio Santorio to the like a website without a fact eventually helped scientists
planets. search engine. This applies to understand combustion.
Italian physician Santorio especially to large, factual Bacon’s way of thinking about
Santorio was trying to find out 30-year experiment was the books, so it’s not surprising that observations has become a key
whether the solids and liquids first in which detailed the first index was compiled by method of science.
leaving the body weighed the measurements of the body’s an encyclopedia maker. When
same as the food and drink metabolism were made. Antonio Zara, Bishop of Petina, Submarine
being consumed. To do this, he now in Croatia, compiled his
sat on a pair of scales weighing Logarithms Anatomy of the Arts and Sciences 1620
his solid and liquid intake and in 1614, he took pity on his
outtake. He found that they 1614 readers and included a list of Cornelis Drebbel
didn’t: there was something words and where to find them.
missing. We now know the John Napier, Joost Bürgi English mathematician
missing ingredient is carbon Laws of William Bourne described a
dioxide, but Santorio called it Logarithms simplify planetary submarine in 1578, but Dutch
“insensible perspiration.” His calculations by converting motion engraver Cornelis Drebbel was
multiplication and division into the first person to build one.
addition and subtraction. 1619 His “diving boat” of 1620 was
Scottish mathematician John made of wood and covered in
Napier started working on the Johannes Kepler greased leather to stop leaks.
idea in about 1594 and Powered by 12 oarsmen, it
published it in 1614. Further In the early 17th century, made trips up and down the
details followed in another book people accepted Copernicus’ Thames River at a depth of
that came out two years after theory that the planets orbited about 15 ft (4.5 m). Passengers
his death. Swiss mathematician the Sun at a constant speed and breathed through tubes held up
Joost Bürgi published the same in perfect circles. Then the on the surface of the water by
idea independently in 1620. astronomer Johannes Kepler floats. The passengers once
showed that they didn’t. Using included the man who paid for
the excellent data gathered by the invention, King James I.
his former employer Tycho
Brahe, he calculated that the Law of
planets’ paths were ovals, or refraction
ellipses, not circles, and that
their speed was not constant. 1621
The universe was turning out
to be more complicated than Willebrord Snell
people thought.
Light normally travels in
Structure of a straight lines, but when it
candle flame enters something like glass, its
direction can change,– an effect
1620 called refraction. In 1621,
Dutch astronomer Willebrord
Francis Bacon Snell discovered the law that
describes this change in
The English statesman and direction. Once people knew
philosopher Francis Bacon the law, scientists eventually
believed that people could began to use it to design more
learn more about nature by effective lenses. Later, French
observing things and thinking mathematician Pierre de Fermat
about them than by reading showed that Snell’s law
amounted to saying that light
always takes the quickest route.

1614 Native American Rolfe in Virginia. She had been 1616 Architect Mehmet for Sultan Ahmet I. Its interior is
woman Pocahontas, captured by the English and had Aga completes a decorated with blue tiles, which
daughter of Chief Powhatan, converted to Christianity, splendid new mosque in will in future give it its popular
marries English colonist John changing her name to Rebecca. Constantinople (now Istanbul) name, the Blue Mosque.

88

Convection 1401 – 1750
heating
Circulation of
1624 the blood

1628

Louis Savot William Harvey

The Romans used warm air In 1628, English physician
for heating, but it traveled William Harvey made one of
under the floor, not inside the the most important discoveries
room. The alternative method in the history of medicine.
of heating was an open fire, Through observation and
which sent most of its warm experiment, he proved that our
air up the chimney. French blood circulates. Before this,
architect Louis Savot thought doctors believed that blood was
he could combine both ideas made in the liver and then
to heat rooms. In 1624, he turned into flesh. Harvey’s idea
designed a fireplace that drew seems obvious today, but that’s
in air under the floor, heated it, only because we live in the era
then wafted it into the room. of scientific medicine that he
He published the idea in 1685. helped to create.

Smelting iron with coke was almost pure carbon. Finger placed on
Flames light the sky as coal is Dudley got a patent for his a vein stops blood
heated to make coke for smelting process in 1621, but coke was flowing toward
iron in 18th-century Britain. not widely used in smelting the heart
iron until 1709, when English
Smelting iron iron master Abraham Darby Fist closed
with coke started using it on a large scale. to build up

1621 Dictionary pressure

Dud Dudley 1623 Empty vein

Iron is made by heating its ore Henry Cockeram Tourniquet squeezes circulation of the
with carbon, and until the the arm to slow blood These diagrams were
17th century, the carbon came The first dictionary actually blood flow based on illustrations Harvey used in
from wood charcoal. By 1620, called a dictionary was 1628 to explain blood circulation.
trees were getting scarce, so published by an Englishman,
English iron maker Dud Henry Cockeram, in 1623. His
Dudley began to experiment English Dictionarie contained
with coal. Coal contains a lot of only “hard” words. He didn’t
sulfur, which would ruin the see the point of listing words
iron, so Dudley devised a way that everybody knew. John
of removing the sulfur and Kersey, however, in his New
other unwanted elements by English Dictionary of 1702, did
roasting the coal. The solid that give definitions of everyday
remained, which we call coke, words, creating one of the first
modern dictionaries.

1620 One hundred as they will be known, set sail 1624 Dutch painter Frans The Laughing Cavalier. Unusually,
Puritans escape from Plymouth on September 16, Hals, a master of its subject – an extravagantly
persecution by leaving England heading for Virginia, but get lost the quick, bold brushstroke,
for America. The Pilgrim Fathers, and settle at Cape Cod. paints his best-known picture, dressed soldier – is smiling, as if

for a photograph.

89

New worlds, New ideas Robert Bissaker improved the Descartes also started the looked like traditional Chinese
sliding action in 1654, and convention of using letters from and Japanese parasols, with a
Vernier scale the slide rule became a basic the end of the alphabet to folding wooden frame. The
tool for scientists and engineers represent unknown quantities, steel-ribbed device we use now
1631 until the invention of and letters from the beginning was invented by Samuel Fox of
calculators made it obsolete. of the alphabet to represent England in 1852.
Pierre Vernier known ones.
X–Y coordinates Parabolic path
Readings from a graduated Umbrella of a projectile
scale can be inaccurate 1637
because the position of a 1637 1638
pointer has to be estimated by René Descartes
eye. In 1631, French civil
servant Pierre Vernier invented Graphs turn pairs of The first rain-proof umbrella Galileo Galilei
an improved scale, which is numbers represented by x dates from 1637. King
still used today. Instead of a and y into meaningful shapes. Louis XIII of France was Until the 17th century,
simple pointer, it has a second This idea was invented by the reported as having sunshades people believed that things
smaller scale with slightly French philosopher René and “umbrellas of oiled cloth.” kept moving only if something
narrower divisions than the Descartes, who is perhaps more These would probably have kept pushing them. Galileo
main scale. By noting which of famous for saying “I think,
these lines up exactly with the therefore I am.” It allowed TransiT of Venus This
main scale, its user can obtain a people to solve geometric model, made in about
much more precise readout. problems with algebra 1760, shows how
and algebraic Ring rotates Venus can seem
Slide rule problems with Brass ball slowly to to move
geometry. represents across
1633 represent change the Sun.
the Sun in Venus’ orbit
William Oughtred
Support placed
An English minister, William where Venus’
Oughtred, turned math and Earth’s
into mechanics in 1633 by orbits cross
making two scales showing the
logarithms of numbers (✷ see Bar supporting
page 88). Users could Venus rotates
multiply and divide quickly
by sliding the
scales to a
certain position
and reading off
the answer.

Ivory
globe
represents
Earth

Engraved
line
shows
the path
of Venus

1632 Overweight but become the world’s first 1642 The great Dutch painting shows an army company
agile, Sumo wrestler Yokozuna, or grand champion of artist Rembrandt van marching out from its
Akashi Shiganosuke forces his Sumo, after the revival of public headquarters in the shadowy
opponent out of the ring to matches 32 years earlier. Rijn paints a huge group portrait gloom of early morning.
called The Night Watch. The
90

showed that this was 1401 – 1750
untrue: a moving object
keeps moving until Revolving
something stops it. Objects stage
in the real world slow down
and stop because of friction 1645
or gravity. Galileo did
further experiments that Giacomo Torelli
proved that a falling object
speeds up as it falls. He Behind every stage show
went on to study projectiles is machinery that the
– objects that are thrown audience never sees,
into the air. He deduced that including the revolve.
a projectile moves forward With this huge turntable,
at a constant speed but a scene can be changed in
accelerates downward. It seconds. The first revolve
therefore follows a curved was probably built by an
path called a parabola. Italian architect, Giacomo
Torelli. He built a theatre
Transit of containing one in Venice,
Venus Italy, in about 1645. He
then worked at a theatre in
1639 Paris, France. His work
there was so good that
Jeremiah Horrocks Mezzotint engraving BaroMeter This when he returned to Italy,
Mezzotints were used to publish is a replica of the his successor in Paris
A“transit” of Mercury or pictures of many celebrities, barometer invented destroyed the machinery
Venus occurs when one of including chemist Humphry Davy. in a fit of jealousy.
them appears to travel across by Torricelli.
the face of the Sun. Transits of (✷ see page 75). Instead of upended it in a Recognition
Venus happen only in June or drawing directly on the metal dish. The mercury of gases
December, and always in pairs plate, the artist first roughens started to drop as distinct
eight years apart. They are very its entire surface. Printed, this out, then stopped. from air
rare, the pairs occurring at would give solid black, because Torricelli realized
intervals of well over a century. the roughened surface traps the that the mercury 1648
English clergyman Jeremiah ink. By smoothing different was prevented
Horrocks was an amateur areas of the plate to varying from falling Jan Baptista van Helmont
astronomer. Using standard degrees however, the artist can further by the
astronomical tables, he produce lighter tones where pressure of the Jan Baptista van
calculated that there would be required – completely smooth atmosphere. As Helmont was an
a transit of Venus in December areas do not print at all. the air pressure alchemist. He believed in
1639. the first ever recorded. Mezzotint reproductions of rose and fell, so the “philosopher’s stone”,
He also calculated a new paintings were popular until did the mercury which was supposed to
distance for the Sun. the invention of photography. in the tube. turn ordinary metals into
Torricelli had gold. He also made a real
Mezzotint Barometer invented the discovery: that the gases
engraving barometer, given off by two different
1643 although it was processes – burning
1642 French physicist charcoal and fermenting
Evangelista Torricelli Edmé Mariotte grape juice – were actually
Ludwig von Siegen who named it one and the same. He
Italian physicist Evangelista in 1676. recognized, too, that it was
There was no good way of Torricelli helped Galileo in Torricelli’s column a distinct gas, not just
printing all the tones of a the last months of the great another form of air. We now
picture until Dutch artist scientist’s life. Galileo suggested of mercury could call this gas carbon dioxide.
Ludwig von Siegen invented the experiment that made reach a height of His works, published after
the mezzotint, a variation on Torricelli famous. Torricelli his death in 1648, show
the ordinary engraving process filled a tube with mercury, then about 30 in that he also discovered
used with metal printing plates (760 mm) another gas, nitric oxide.

1643 Louis XIV, who will having absolute power over his 1647 In India, the Taj Mumtaz Mahal, it is made of white
later be known as subjects. As well as spending Mahal is completed. marble, inlaid with semiprecious
the Sun King, becomes king of hugely on war, he will also be an Built by the emperor Shah Jahan stones. It will attract visitors for
France. He regards himself as extravagant patron of the arts. in memory of his favorite wife, centuries to come

91

New worlds, New ideas Pendulum many new facts. Unfortunately, Italian-born French astronomer
clock his father thought this was all a Gian Cassini measured the
Strength of a waste of time, and stopped his length of a day on Mars – the
vacuum 1657 allowance. Swammerdam died time the planet takes to make
an unhappy man. one rotation. He found it was
1654 Christiaan Huygens just 40 minutes longer than a
Rotation of day on Earth.
Otto von Guericke Galileo realized as early as Mars
1583 that a pendulum Capillaries
Torricelli’s barometer (✷ see would make an excellent 1659
page 91) showed that the timekeeper, but he never 1661
atmosphere exerts a force. managed to turn it into a
According to legend, Engineer practical clock. The Dutch Christiaan Huygens Marcello Malpighi
Otto von Guericke of mathematician Christiaan
Magdeburg in Germany showed Huygens solved the problem in Squinting through what The microscope helped to
just how large that force could 1657 when he designed a would today be considered solve many mysteries. One
be. In 1654, he gave an amazing mechanism that allowed the very poor telescopes, of them was the missing link
demonstration to Emperor swing of a pendulum to control 17th-century astronomers in William Harvey’s
Ferdinand III. He took two the rotation of weight-driven made many discoveries. In theory of the
metal bowls, put them together gearwheels. He also devised a 1659, Christiaan Huygens way blood
to form a sphere, and pumped pendulum that would swing at managed to sketch surface
the air out with a pump he had exactly the same rate whatever features on Mars. He noticed spiRit level
developed. With no air inside the size of its swing. The that the features moved This early 20th-century
the bowls, the air pressure on pendulum improved the between his observations, instrument uses the principle
the outside held them together accuracy of timekeeping so and he realized that the of the spirit level to measure
so strongly that teams of horses much that it was at last worth planet was rotating. small changes of height of
could not pull these “Magdeburg giving clocks a minute hand. Seven years
hemispheres” apart.. (✷ See also later, the plots of land.
Working in a vacuum.)

Telescope through which surveyor
sights a measuring rod

Red blood cells A scanning Red blood cells
electron microscope reveals the
dish shape of red blood cells. 1658

Jan Swammerdam

Blood is red
because it is full
of red cells. Nobody
knew this until the
Dutch naturalist Jan
Swammerdam
looked at blood
under a microscope
in 1658. One of the
best microscopists of
his day, he used the
instrument to discover

1652 Dutch commander station for Dutch ships on their 1655 The island of General Robert Venables
Jan Van Riebeeck way to the Dutch East Indies. Jamaica becomes an overwhelms the Spanish settlers
lands at Table Bay in the Cape of The country of South Africa will English colony. An expedition led who have been there since the
Good Hope to set up a supply develop from this settlement. by Admiral William Penn and time of Christopher Columbus.

92

1401 – 1750

circulates (✷ see page 89). How contract if the pressure is WORKING IN A VACUUM
did blood get from arteries to raised and vice versa. In
veins? Marcello Malpighi, France, this principle is called The ancienT physics of arisToTle said that a
working in Bologna, Italy, in Mariotte’s law, because Edmé
1661, found the answer. The Mariotte not only discovered it vacuum was impossible. In the 17th century,
blood travelled through tiny for himself but also noted that
vessels, which were visible only the law does not hold if the improved technology
under a microscope: capillaries. temperature changes.
could challenge this
Level Life table
directly. Once Guericke
1661 1662
had demonstrated an

effective air pump, other

people, such as Irish

Anything affected by gravity John Graunt chemist Robert Boyle, built
can be used to check
whether something is level. People who study them too. With the ability
The best thing is a bubble in a population are known as
liquid, which always rises to demographers. They use to move air around at will,
the highest point. In a slightly statistics, such as how many
curved-shape tube, this is in people live in an area and how they began to find out
the center when the tube is many births and deaths per
level. If the tube is mounted thousand. English shopkeeper more about combustion,
in a suitable holder, the user John Graunt founded the
only has to place it on an subject by studying death sound, weather, and
object and center the bubble records. In 1662, he published
to ensure the object is level. tables showing the probability much else. Otto von Guericke was a
This gadget, the level, first that someone of a given age great showman as well as a
appeared in 1661, and builders would live to some greater age. Replica good scientist.
“Life tables” like these are now Boyle-Hooke
still use levels today. the basis of life insurance. vacuum pump Making a vacuuM
of 1659 Simple pumps use pistons to
suck out air. Oneway valves
Glass chamber stop it from rushing back in.
fitted on top Because a piston sucks out only
a fraction of the remaining air
of this cylinder

on each stroke, the vacuum is
never perfect, even if the valves
and seals don’t leak. This did
not put off early experimenters.

Boyle’s law Reflecting Handle The science of air
telescope moved With air under control,
1662 to force scientists like Guericke, Boyle,
1663 piston in
Robert Boyle, or out and Edmé Mariotte could
Edmé Mariotte James Gregory Rack turned find out some facts about it.
by gearwheel For example, without air,
Robert Boyle worked with The first telescopes used to move piston
the English physicist Robert lenses to refract light from candles don’t burn and
Hooke, who helped him to a distant object before it there is no sound; and
build an effective air pump. reached the observer. The reducing the pressure of
Boyle used the new pump to lenses produced color fringes,
make all sorts of discoveries making the images indistinct. moist air makes clouds
about air, but the one Mirrors didn’t do this, so a form. Mariotte and
everybody remembers is Boyle’s telescope that used mirrors Boyle also discovered
law. This says that the volume promised clearer vision. Italian
of a given mass of gas varies astronomer Niccolò Zucchi the law that links air
inversely with its pressure, suggested this in 1616, but the pressure and volume
which means that the gas will (✷ see this page).

first practical design came from which drew the reflecting
Scottish mathematician and telescope to the attention of
astronomer James Gregory in scientists. Gregorian reflectors
1663. In 1668, Isaac Newton are still used. One was
produced his own design, launched into space in 1980.

1660 Britain’s premier meetings between prominent 1661 King Louis XIV of first director, Pierre Beauchamps,
scientific association, English scientists. Two years France sets up the professional standards improve.
the Royal Society, is founded in later, it will receive a royal Royal Academy of Dancing to Centuries later, it will become the
London after 15 years of informal charter from King Charles II. improve ballet training. Under its Paris Opéra Ballet.

93

New worlds, New ideas Phosphorus Shop scales suggest. This effect is called
diffraction, and was discovered
Polar caps 1669 1669 in 1672 by the English physicist
of Mars Robert Hooke. Hooke’s
Hennig Brand, Gilles de Roberval discovery later supported
c 1666 Robert Boyle the theory that light traveled
Old-fashioned scales with in waves (✷ see page 97)
Gian Cassini Phosphorus makes matches separate weights use a because waves would bend
burn. It is also an essential mechanism devised by French around objects in exactly
Mars has polar ice caps like part of the chemistry of our mathematician Gilles de this way.
Earth. At least they look bodies. German alchemist Roberval in 1669. The pans are
like them but they are probably Hennig Brand discovered it in supported from below with a Protozoa
thinner and made mainly of 1669 when, for some reason, system of arms that makes
frozen carbon dioxide. In he made an extract of his own them move vertically. Objects 1676
about 1666, Gian Cassini, who urine. To his amazement, the do not have to go exactly in
made some of the earliest extract glowed in the dark: it the center of the pans, making Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
telescopic observations of was phosphorus. Hennig kept the scales ideal for shops and
Mars, was the first person to his discovery secret, but in other places where speed and Dutch naturalist Antoni van
report the caps. In spite of his 1680, Robert Boyle also simplicity matter. Leeuwenhoek was not a
pioneering work, Cassini was discovered the new element trained scientist, but he was
somewhat old-fashioned in his for himself. Champagne lucky enough to have a job that
approach. He later rejected left him plenty of spare time.
Isaac Newton’s theory of c 1670 He spent it making ever better
gravity (✷ see page 98). lenses with which he could see
Dom Pérignon ever smaller things. In 1674, he
Polar caPs of Mars Polar cap became the first person to see
The Hubble Space Telescope Winning race-car drivers protozoa – tiny, single-celled
took this photo of Mars in 1997. cannot resist shaking the creatures that swim around in
bottle of champagne they get, ponds and rain barrels. His
and squirting its overflowing descriptions of the hidden
contents everywhere. The trick world around us made a big
works because champagne impact on science.
contains carbon dioxide, which
is formed by a special method Speed of light

of fermentation called 1676
méthode champenoise. It was
invented, it is said, by a Ole Rømer

Benedictine monk called Light travels so fast that it’s
Dom Pérignon, in about difficult to measure its
1670. But he was speed. It helps if you work
probably only one of with light that has to travel a
many winemakers in the long way. Danish astronomer
Champagne region of Ole Rømer found this out by
France who contributed accident in 1676, when he
to the development of noticed that the time between
this unique drink. eclipses of Jupiter’s moons
(when they are hidden behind
Diffraction the planet) varied throughout
of light the year. Rømer realized that
this must be because the
1672 distance from Earth to Jupiter
varied throughout the year,
Robert Hooke and so did the distance that
light from the moons had to
Light travels in straight lines. travel. Rømer calculated that
This is almost true. At the the speed of light was
edges of objects it actually 137,000 miles (225,000 km)
bends very slightly, so shadows per second. This was 25 percent
are a little smaller than the too slow, but a good start.
simple straight-line idea would

1666 On September 2, London. Four days later, more 1675 After the Great Fire, bold new replacement for St.
a small blaze in a than 13,000 houses and many of London in 1666, Paul’s Cathedral are accepted.
bakery in London gets out of public buildings, including mathematician and architect Some of the boldness is removed
control, starting the Great Fire of St. Paul’s Cathedral, lie in ashes. Christopher Wren’s designs of a by his client, the Church.

94

Bacterium is magnified Bacteria The Binary system 1401 – 1750
thousands of times E. coli bacterium, binary patterns. The 11th-
1679 century Chinese philosopher
shown here, is Shao Yung was influenced by
essential to Gottfried Leibniz, Shao Yung the book, and it is possible that
German mathematician
health, but some The binary system records Gottfried Leibniz was made
strains can cause numbers by using just two aware of the binary system
symbols, such as 0 and 1. The through his writings. Leibniz
food poisoning. system is essential to modern loved the beauty of the binary
computers, but it may go back system. To him its two digits
more than 3,000 years. The stood for nothingness and God.
Chinese book I Ching, written He thought it could form a
in the 12th century bc, showed universal language, something
how to make predictions from that never occurred to the
writer of I Ching.

Bacteria Slender hairs, Lemonade By the
or fimbriae, 19th century, lemonade was
1676 anchor the big business. This Italian
bacterium to lemonade seller is no
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek a surface longer roaming the streets,
but has a permanent stall.
Bacteria are even smaller
than protozoa. So it wasn’t Rigid cell wall
until 1676, when Antoni van with slimy
Leeuwenhoek had made a lens outer covering
that magnified 280 times, that
he saw some of the larger types
of bacteria, collected from his
own mouth. To see them, he
used some secret techniques,
which probably included
lighting his tiny subjects from
the side so that they stood out
sharply like dust in a sunbeam.

Lemonade

1676

Lemon juice must have been
used in drinks for a very
long time, but the first
commercial lemonade appeared
in Paris in 1676. Thirsty
Parisians could buy it from
roaming sellers belonging to
the Compagnie de Limonadiers,
which had an exclusive licence
to distribute the drink.
Lemonade sellers dispensed the
refreshing mixture of water,
lemon juice, and honey from
tanks strapped to their backs.

1678 Puritan preacher of a soul seeking salvation. His 1679 The onion-shaped finally completed after 124 years
John Bunyan writes rich, biblical prose conveys the domes and twisted, of work. The building is a high
the first part of The Pilgrim’s ideas of vice and virtue through brightly colored turrets of point of Russian Orthodox
Progress, the story of the journey the book’s human characters. St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow, are church architecture.

95

New worlds, New ideas authority, the first major tunnel Calculus
made this way was for the
Gilt Canal du Midi, which crosses 1684
balance-
France, linking the Atlantic Gottfried Leibniz,
wheel Ocean and the Isaac Newton
cover Mediterranean Sea.
Between 1666 and Calculus is the mathematics
1681, French engineer of change: physical change,
Pierre Riquet cleared such as movement, or
a 515 ft (160 m) mathematical change, such as
path for the canal increasing area. It was invented
through a independently by Gottfried
sandstone hill by Leibniz in Germany and Isaac
setting off Newton in England. Newton
gunpowder in created a special method to
hundreds of solve problems in mechanics.
holes, which he Leibniz produced something
had drilled more like modern calculus.
into the rock.

Plate Repeating watch halley’s comet All comets Newton had the basics by
supporting The exquisite mechanism of this are giant “dirty snowballs” made 1666, but in 1684 Leibniz
of ice and dust. became the first to publish
wheels Quare repeating watch was his work, making Newton his
normally hidden from its user. Halley’s comet lifelong enemy.
Pressure cooker
cover before they could read 1682 Laws of motion
1679 the time – assuming there was
enough light. In 1680, English Edmond Halley 1687
Denis Papin clockmaker Daniel Quare made
life easier when he invented his It used to be thought that Isaac Newton
Food cooks more quickly in “repeater”. Its owner had only comets appeared only once.
water that is hotter than its to reach into a pocket and Then English astronomer English scientist Isaac
normal boiling point. In 1679, touch a button or move a lever Edmond Halley showed that Newton formulated three
French-English physicist Denis to hear the approximate time they could orbit the Sun, laws of motion, which he
Papin made water hotter than ring out on a tiny bell inside coming back repeatedly. He published in 1687. The laws
hot with his “digester”, a closed the watch. This was especially studied the path of a comet are still used to get people to
vessel with a safety valve. useful at night. that appeared in 1682, and was the Moon. The first law states
When water was heated inside able to show that this, and two that the velocity of an object
it, the pressure rose. The Tunneling with earlier comets, were in fact the (its speed and direction) will
increased pressure stopped the explosives same comet. In 1705, he change only if a force acts on it.
water from boiling until it was predicted that it would return This was discovered by Galileo,
hotter than normal. 1681 again in 1758. It did, and was but the other two laws are all
named in his honor. Newton. The second says how
Repeating Pierre Riquet
watch
The mountains of Europe are
1680 riddled with tunnels, many
of which were blasted through
Daniel Quare the solid rock with the help of
explosives. According to one
Owners of early watches had
to take them out of their
pocket and open a protective

1682 The Palace of that at times involved 30,000 1688 England’s first who is made a slave. Some
Versailles is ready at workers. King Louis XIV moves female novelist, people do not believe a woman
last on a site just southwest of his court into the extravagantly could have written anything so
Paris, after 21 years of building furnished new buildings. Aphra Behn, publishes Oroonoko, good, and accuse her of copying.
the story of an African prince
96

much an object’s velocity will could explain why light obeyed three extra keys to bridge the 1401 – 1750
be changed by a given force, it. Christiaan Huygens proposed awkward gap between the
while the third says that the first theory that light was a instrument’s lower and upper Lavoisier had substituted gain
pushing on an object makes it stream of waves. These waves registers. The lower register of of oxygen for loss of
push back equally hard in the made secondary “wavelets” a clarinet is still sometimes phlogiston, which is the true
opposite direction. when passed through an object. called the chalumeau. explanation of burning.
When light hit glass at an angle,
Gravity the “wavelets” produced slowed Phlogiston Seed drill
down, making the light bend. theory of
1687 In conflict with Newton’s ideas, combustion c 1701
it was not seriously considered
Isaac Newton until the 19th century. c 1700 Jethro Tull

See pages 98–99 for the Clarinet Georg Stahl Seed drills sow seed in neat
story of how Newton rows instead of scattering it.
discovered the glue that holds c 1700 When something burns, The Babylonians had them, but
the universe together. flames come out, so in about 1701, English farmer
Johann Denner people naturally thought that Jethro Tull invented the first
Wave theory combustible substances lost automatic seed drill. It was part
of light The clarinet is a woodwind something when they burned. of a system of farming that he
instrument with a wide In about 1700, German developed after seeing
1690 range of notes and a smooth, chemist Georg Stahl called this grapevines flourishing in rows
distinctive tone. It was “phlogiston.” A problem with with the soil between them
Christiaan Huygens developed from an earlier this theory is that things get loose and weed-free. Not all his
musical instrument, the heavier when they burn, so ideas were accepted, but the
Light has puzzled scientists chalumeau, by the German phlogiston would have to benefits of precise drilling were.
since the earliest times. musician and instrument maker weigh less than nothing. By The successors to Tull’s drill are
Although the law of refraction Johann Denner, in about 1700. 1783, French chemist Antoine at work in fields today.
was known by 1621, nobody To extend the range of the
chalumeau, Denner added Seed drill Jethro Tull shows off
Seed drill sowed his seed drill in this mural from the
three rows at a time Science Museum in London.

1694 The Bank of England – to the government, and is in 1697 “Sleeping Beauty,” French writer Charles Perrault
is founded on Friday, turn granted the right to issue “Cinderella,” and publishes Tales of Mother Goose.
July 27. Although private, it currency and do all the country’s other fairy tales reach a wide He has collected them from
lends all its money – £1.2 million company banking. public for the first time, as people who knew them by heart.

97

New worlds, New ideas

THE MOON IS FALLING

Isaac Newton discovers the glue that
holds the universe together

TriniTy College When Isaac Newton was only three years old,
Trinity College, Cambridge, his father died and his mother married
England, was founded by King again. She went to live in the next village,
Henry VIII in 1546. Newton leaving him with his grandmother. Isaac was
went there to study in 1661. not happy. He often sat in the orchard behind
his home, Woolsthorpe Manor in
Lincolnshire, England, smoldering with
hatred for his new stepfather. In 1653, when
Isaac was 10, his mother came back. She
expected him to make himself useful, but he only wanted to read. In the
end, she packed him off to school.
Isaac didn’t learn much at school except Latin, but Latin was the
language of science. He certainly needed it when he got to Cambridge

Newton knew his orchard
well. It was an ideal spot for the
intense thought that led him to the
idea of universal gravitation.
98