They Laughed at Galileo: How the Great Inventors Proved Their Critics Wrong
Albert Jack
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 1629147583
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
They Laughed at Galileo takes a humorous and reflective look at one thousand years of the development of humankind: those who dreamt, those who taught, those who opposed, and those who, ultimately, did.
At some point in modern history, each and every one of our inventions and discoveries was first envisioned and then developed by a single person, or a handful of people, who dreamt of the seemingly impossible. For them, the future was clear and obvious, but for the vast majority, including the acknowledged experts of their days, such belief was sheer folly.
For just about everything that has improved our modern lifestyles in a way that our ancestors could not possibly imagine, there was once a lone dreamer proclaiming, “It can be done.” That dreamer was nearly always opposed by a team of “enlightened” contemporaries publicly declaring, “It cannot be done.” Well, yes it could.
Marconi’s wireless radio transmissions were initially deemed pointless. Edward L. Drake’s eventual success on August 27, 1859, was called the day “the crazy man first struck oil.” Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs was considered a “ridiculous fiction.” Each of these inventions has had a profound effect on the course of human history, and each one was rejected, resisted, and ridiculed in its day. Ultimately, the innovators who brought these into existence provided invaluable contributions to science and the culture of humankind.
who volunteered to take part in these experiments and Bogdanov himself, after eleven successful transfusions, recorded that his eyesight had improved and his hair loss had decreased. Other volunteers noted that Bogdanov appeared to be at least ten years younger after the transfusions. In 1925 he founded the Institute for Haematology and Blood Transfusions and continued his good work. However, far from increasing his lifespan, the science of blood transfusion was soon to cut it short as he took
his epitaph should read: ‘Seldom has any man held so many offices and yet accomplished so little.’ Yet the sandwich is not his only legacy to history. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Sandwich was one of the sponsors of the voyage Captain James Cook (1728–79) made to the New World in 1778. On 14 January, Cook became the first European to visit the Hawaiian Islands, which he originally called the Sandwich Islands in honour of his benefactor. Although the islands changed their name a century later,
morning, in early 1961, Hickman was at home making a wardrobe and, lacking a workbench, he had balanced a wooden panel on the seats of a pair of Windsor chairs and placed his foot on the board to keep it steady. Then, whilst concentrating on sawing a straight line, he managed to cut through one of the seats, destroying the chair completely. The irony of ruining one piece of furniture in order to create another was not lost on the designer and he set about finding a better solution. Hickman drew a
Great Depression that followed slowed the company’s progress, although by 1937 it had still become the largest employer in central New York. But it was during the post-war economic boom of the late 1940s and 1950s that Carrier’s invention began to revolutionize America. Cinemas, restaurants, factories, schools, hospitals, public buildings, shopping malls and any developing city in the Midwest, West Coast or the Deep South were installing Carrier’s air-conditioning units as fast as they could be
which had been poured away but had left a thin, clear film coating inside the glass. Apparently, an assistant had been too lazy to wash it properly and returned it directly to the shelf instead. To begin with, the scientist thought very little of his discovery. Then, one morning later in the same week, Bénédictus was reading the newspaper when he came across a feature about the new fashion of automobiles and, more to the point, the series of collisions that had occurred between Parisian drivers.