Men of Yore: William Ewart

This is another in a series of posts about men from history who have either achieved great things in one form or another by pushing boundaries: either in themselves or in society or science or exploration of some form. Boundary pushing and growth is what men do, it's their nature: to grow and push outwards. We, as men, are the frontiers men, the first to discover/uncover new territory, in a metaphysical sense (i.e. including both material and the immaterial) that is later colonised and 'civilised' by the rest of humanity.

William Ewart
(Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/197548/William-Ewart)

William Ewart (1798–1869), politician, was born on 1 May 1798 at 7 Queen Square in Liverpool, the second of the four sons of William Ewart (1763–1823), merchant, and his wife, Margaret (1773–1844), daughter of Christopher Jaques of Bedale, Yorkshire. Descended from a Kirkcudbrightshire family, William Ewart senior, who was the brother of the diplomatist Joseph Ewart and godfather of the future statesman William Ewart Gladstone, had made his fortune as a general commission merchant, and was senior partner in the firm of Ewart, Rutson & Co. of Liverpool. His son and namesake was educated at Eton College from 1811, and proceeded in 1817 to Christ Church, Oxford, where he won the college prize for Latin verse in 1819 and the Newdigate prize the following year. He graduated in 1821, undertook a two-year tour of the continent, and, having been admitted to the Middle Temple in March 1820, was called to the bar on 26 January 1827. On 15 December 1829 at Prestwich he married his first cousin Mary Anne (1805–1837), the daughter of his father's youngest sister, Mary, and the Manchester cotton merchant George Augustus Lee of Singleton. 

Ewart, who was elected for Bletchingley at a by-election in July 1828, took his seat in the Commons on 5 February and made his maiden speech in favour of Catholic emancipation on 27 March 1829. He was left without a constituency in 1830, but, following the death of William Huskisson later that year, he was narrowly elected for Liverpool after a fierce contest. Although unseated on petition by the house on 28 March 1831, he regained his seat at the general election in May, and held it until 1837. A Liberal with radical leanings, who advocated the ballot, reform of the established church, abolition of colonial slavery, and repeal of the corn laws, he was active in parliament, speaking on general topics ‘with considerable ease, and with much rapidity … without being eloquent’ (Grant, 289–90). In 1832 he secured the passage of an act to end the use of capital punishment in cases of theft of money or animals from a dwelling house (2–3 Will. IV c. 62), and in subsequent years succeeded in obtaining other legislative steps towards the total abolition of the death penalty. On 1 August 1833 he made the first of a series of annual motions for equalization of the duties on East and West Indian sugars, as an indirect attack on the use of slave labour in the West Indies. Other humanitarian achievements of his included the acts of 1834, to end the hanging of the bodies of prisoners in chains (4 & 5 Will. IV c. 26), and of 1836, to allow felons to be defended by counsel (6 & 7 Will. IV c. 114). 

Having been defeated at Liverpool and Kilkenny borough in 1837, Ewart lost a by-election at Marylebone in March 1838, but returned to the Commons as member for Wigan in March 1839. In The Reform of the Reform Bill (1837) he urged the case for widening the scope of political changes, and in a major intervention in the Commons on 28 January 1840, called for these to be extended to the realms of free trade and national education. At the general election of 1841 he returned to his family's Scottish roots, becoming member for Dumfries burghs, which he represented for the next twenty-seven years. In the 1840s he continued to press for free trade, being involved in the activities of the Anti-Corn Law League. Strongly internationalist in his outlook, he also attended several peace congresses in Europe. He maintained consistent opinions on public finance, arguing for a system of more direct taxation in a published speech (28 May 1847). Other speeches which were separately printed were those on capital punishment (10 June 1856) and European settlement in India (16 March 1858), in which he expressed the hope that ‘our mission there would be for the benefit of the Natives themselves’ (Munford, 145). He chaired a select committee on this question, which provoked John Warden to write his Letter to William Ewart. The select committee on the adoption of the metric system, which he also chaired, led to the permissive act of 1864 (27 & 28 Vict. c. 117). On 3 May 1864 he secured the appointment of a royal commission on capital punishment, on which he served from July 1864 to January 1866. 

Ewart's concern to promote education and public libraries, which was largely motivated by a wish to improve the economic and social status of the lower classes, began in 1836, when his select committee's report on arts and manufactures led to the creation of the School of Design at Somerset House, London. He spoke often on education—for instance, on the need to free it from church domination (20 June 1839)—and in 1841 requested that an annual ministerial statement be made to parliament. In the autumn of 1846 he explained to Lord John Russell that while he was against large-scale public provision of education, he was ‘rather desirous of combining the voluntary system with government inspection and public encouragement of it’ (Baines, 135). He endeavoured to introduce competitive examinations for entry to the civil and diplomatic services (1845 and 1852), and the army (1847). He supported the Museums Act of 1845, which enabled town councils to levy rates to pay for local museums, and was instrumental in securing the extension of this scheme to libraries, chairing the select committees which were appointed in 1849 and 1850. The resulting Libraries Act of 1850 (13 & 14 Vict. c. 65) established what ultimately became a nationwide system of public library provision. He sponsored an amendment bill in 1855, and on the introduction of another on 27 February 1866, Gladstone told the Commons that Ewart's name was ‘associated with many achievements of public utility, but with this act of legislation [of 1850], I think, he may feel assured that his name will be associated not only during his life, but after he is gone’ (Munford, 151). In July 1863 Ewart proposed in the Commons a scheme for ‘inscribing on those houses in London which have been inhabited by celebrated persons, the names of such persons’ (Cole, 9). Ewart's idea of identifying residences with plaques was initiated by the Society of Arts in 1866 and taken on by London county council in 1901 and English Heritage from 1986. A blue plaque marking Ewart's home at 16 Eaton Place, Belgravia, was installed in 1963, a century after his original proposal. 

Ewart, who retired from parliament in 1868, died of pneumonia on 23 January 1869, at Broadleas, near Devizes, Wiltshire, which had been his country residence since 1854. He was buried on 28 January at Bishops Cannings, Wiltshire, where his next younger brother, Joseph Christopher Ewart (1799–1868), who was Liberal member for Liverpool from 1855 to 1865, had recently been interred. He left the bulk of his estate, which included personalty sworn under £70,000, to his only son, William Lee Ewart (1836–1892), and provided for the two of his four daughters who survived him. Ewart, who was described by Benjamin Robert Haydon as ‘a keen little man’ (Diary, ed. Pope, 3.356), was a slightly built figure of respectable character, who applied himself diligently to the introduction of many social improvements over a long career. He was an advanced Liberal, whose political philosophy was based on a desire for better public administration, and this was expressed in all his concerns, which ranged from the organization of business in the Commons to the establishment of free public libraries. The Ewart Library in Dumfries is named in his honour, and a bust of him is displayed in the Ewart room at the Library Association headquarters in London. 

Source: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9011?docPos=1

We may all have access to books, libraries and the internet nowadays, but this was not always the case.  Yonks ago books were only accessable to those who were part of the establishment or those who could afford to pay the subscription fees, William Ewart was one of the pioneers who made public access to libraries a key part of modern day culture.  And that was amongst his many other reforms to make the law more favourable to the less well fortunate.


[End.]

Men of Yore: Humphry Davy

This is another in a series of posts about men from history who have either achieved great things in one form or another by pushing boundaries: either in themselves or in society or science or exploration of some form. Boundary pushing and growth is what men do, it's their nature: to grow and push outwards. We, as men, are the frontiers men, the first to discover/uncover new territory, in a metaphysical sense (i.e. including both material and the immaterial) that is later colonised and 'civilised' by the rest of humanity.

Humphry Davy

Sir Humphry Davy, widely considered to be one of the greatest chemists and inventors that Great Britain has ever produced, is highly regarded for his work on various alkali and alkaline earth metals, and for his valuable contributions regarding the findings of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine.

Early Life and Education:

Humphry was born on December 17, 1778 at Penzance, Cornwall to a wood carver. After learning to read and write from ‘old Mr Bushell’, he was sent at the age of six to the grammar school at Penzance, where the schoolmaster, the Revd Mr Coryton, made learning a pain (notably by twisting the boys' ears). Here Davy enjoyed much idleness, which he later felt was fortunate for him, the source indeed of his talents and their application. He became intellectually self-propelled. He was naturally a gifted and sharp boy who could write impressive fiction and poetry, who also enjoyed fishing and shooting. His first experience of chemistry was when he made fireworks with his sister. At sixteen, he lost his father. After the tragic event, Gregory Watt, son of the famous Scottish inventor James Watt, came to visit him and subsequently became a lodger in the house of Mrs. Davy, his mother. They became great friends and their strong relationship have had an important influence on the later career of Davy. Mr. Davies Gilbert was a huge source of inspiration and encouragement for Davy, who later went on to introduce him to the notice of the Royal Institution in London.

Contributions and Achievements:

Dr. Thomas Beddoes, an emiment English physician and scientific writer, founded the “Pneumatic Institution” (a medical research facility) in Bristol, and Davy became associated with it in 1756. Within one year, Davy wrote his legendary publications “Essays on MAI and Light, with a New Theory of Respiration” and “Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration”. Both of these works instantly gained worldwide recognition. Davy was not only the first scientist to reveal the peculiar exhilarating or intoxicating properties of nitrous oxide gas, but his “Researches” also featured the results of various interesting experiments on the respiration of carburetted hydrogen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbonic acid and nitrous gases. 

Davy delivered his first lecture at the Royal Institution in 1801 and instantly became a popular figure there. His tenure as a lecturer was immensely successful. During his second Bakerian lecture at the Royal Society in 1807, he made public his tremendous achievement – the decomposition by galvanism of the fixed alkalies. He performed a demonstration that these alkalies are simply metallic oxides. These discoveries are said to be the most important contribution made to the “Philosophical Transactions” (of the Royal Society) since Sir Isaac Newton.   

1812 saw the development of the Davy Lamp, a head-lamp worn by miners, which eliminated the risk of methane-based explosions in mines for which he received the Rumford Medal.

Other important books of Davy include “Elements of Chemical Philosophy” (1812), “Elements of Agricultural Chemistry” (1813) and “Consolations in Travel” (1830).

Later Life and Death:

Davy was knighted in 1812, after which he married a rich widow named Mrs. Apreece. He was also made a baronet in 1818 for outstanding contributions to his country and mankind; most importantly, his invention of the safety-lamp. He was promoted to the president of the Royal Society in 1820 and he performed his duties for consecutive seven years. 

His health began to decline in 1827 which became the cause of his resignation. Davy died at Geneva on May 29, 1829.

Source: http://www.famousscientists.org/humphry-davy/ (slightly modified)

Here we have another example of a scientist who had a strong sense of curiosity about the world combined with genuine love for whatever he turned his hand to.  His curiosity wasn't limited to just one field, as is shown by his love of poetry, fishing, shooting and chemistry; nor was he limited to being a cloistered scientist living in a laboratory cut-off from the real-world, as is shown by his practical lectures and his inventions like the Davy Lamp and the anaesthetic Nitrous Oxide.  This shows us that true scientists are simply human beings who have a love for knowledge, and for learning, wherever they may be and whatever environment they find themselves in.  And that curiosity about the world is something that we can all foster and enjoy, regardless of whether we are PhD students or backstreet chemists or whatever.

For those who are interested there's a much more extensive biography that can be found HERE.


[End.]

Alternative Lyrics to Well Known Songs 35 - I am the PUA

('I am the PUA' is based on the hit song 'Stand and Deliver' by Adam & the Ants).


We might as well start off with a definition of what a PUA (Pick Up Artist) is for those who aren't familiar with the term, so here's a rather sardonic one from Urban Dictionary:

pua

An overrated self-help movement started by frustrated 30 year old virgins turned amateur con-men that attempts to systematically change meek nerds into false-confident assholes.

 

"Why is that guy who usually wears videogame t-shirts and unkempt hygiene suddenly wearing douchey sunglasses indoors with a bad haircut and trying to insult every girl in here?"
"Oh him? He read a PUA book"

 

by jwattNovember 30, 2011

Source: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=PUA

Sardonics aside the PUA movement is a disengenuous one that not only lies to men on how to have sex with women it also promulgates the erroneous view that 'it is manly to chase after women for carnal purposes'.  Otto Weininger pointed this out to us about a hundred years ago in his magnum opus 'Sex and Character' writing that Don Juans, as PUAs used to be known, had allowed women to determine their being, their very nature (emphasis added):

Woman is able, in a quite extraordinary way, to produce the impression that she herself is really non-sexual, and that her sexuality is only a concession to man. But be that as it may, at the present time men have almost allowed themselves to be persuaded by woman that their strongest and most markedly characteristic desire lies in sexuality, that it is only through woman that they can hope to satisfy their truest and best ambitions, and that chastity is an unnatural and impossible state for them.
[..]
It is now apparent from where this demand for “seeing life,” the Dionysian view of the music-hall, the cult of Goethe in so far as he follows Ovid, and this quite modern “coitus-cult” comes. There is no doubt that the movement is so widespread that very few men have the courage to acknowledge their chastity, preferring to pretend that they are regular Don Juans. Sexual excess is held to be the most desirable characteristic of a man of the world, and sexuality has attained such pre-eminence that a man is doubted unless he can, as it were, show proofs of his prowess. Chastity, on the other hand, is so despised that many a really pure lad attempts to appear Blasé Roué. It is even true that those who are modest are ashamed of the feeling; but there is another, the modern form of shame - not the eroticist's shame, but the shame of the woman who has no lover, who has not received appraisement from the opposite sex. Hence it comes that men make it their business to tell each other what a right and proper pleasure they take in “doing their duty” by the opposite sex. And women are careful to let it be known that only what is "manly" in man can appeal to them: and man takes their measure of his manliness and makes it his own. Man's qualification as a male have, in fact, become identical with his value with women, in women’s eyes.

But God forbid that it should be so; that would mean that there are no longer any
men.

Source: Otto Weininger, Sex and Character.  PDF Book is available HERE

So as you can see, the character of the Don Juan, the PUA, is the same now as it's always been: a man who has allowed women to define his character and what he does with his life.

As odd as it may seems this mindset is similar to the mindset of feminist men who also allow women to define what a man is.  They are both victims of a psychological flaw: over-valuing women (for whatever reason) to the point that they allow women to rule over them and define their existence. In one camp the male feminist kow-tows to the woman and becomes an emasculated house-husband, while in the other camp the PUA kow-tows to the woman and becomes her no-fee gigolo. Both are eager to please women at the expense of themselves.  It's a mindset that's far from manly, and a mindset that young men should be discouraged from pursuing.

But that's enough of my musings on the mindsets of PUAs and manginas, let's get on to the song!

This song highlights a couple of the well known facts about PUAs:
- They don't have many more partners than they average John Doe. (Krauser had a success rate of 2.7%, that means for every 1,000 women he approached he had sex with 27 of them.)
- They engage in self-deception, believing that they are 'successful with women'.  (Krausers own figures prove that they don't have any more success than the average John Doe; while Roosh had sex with only six women in one year, each lay costing him $6,500.)
- They live in a community of other PUAs who only serve to give confirmation bias and thereby convince the naive and the neotenous that PUAs know more about women than the average John Doe, which they don't.

Play the music video above and sing along using the alternative lyrics given below.

# I am the PUA #
I am the PUA

I'm the dandy P. U. A.
the dregs of US nation.
I spend my cash on chasing gash,
Well, that's my proclamation.
If truth be known I rarely score,
despite my ernest action.
Yet no-one knows because I use
data manipulation.

I am the PUA
who wastes his own life.
Huh!
And the lives of others,
in some vainglorious strife.
Huh!

I'm the dandy P. U. A.
one versed in self-deception.
I convince myself that I am right,
while others are mistaken.
To me insults are known as negs,
with which I snare women.
Evo-Psych and Game to me
are thruthful realisations.

I am the PUA
who wastes his own life.
Huh!
And the lives of some others,
in some vainglorious strife.
Huh!

And it's because I fooled myself,
that I have a delusional mind.
A mind.

We're the dandy P. U. A.s
who live on the net forums.
A circle-jerk of self-confirm
and total self-absorption.
We're the dandy P. U. A.s
And here's our invitation
Throw your minds overboard
And join our degener-nation!

I am the PUA.
who wastes his own life.
Huh!
And the lives of some others,
in some vainglorious strife.
Huh!

And it's because I fooled myself,
that I have a delusional mind.
A mind.

Qua qua
Da diddly qua qua
Da diddly qua qua
Da diddly qua qua

I am the PUA
I am the PUA
I am the PUA


[End of Lyrics.]

Men of Yore: Nicephore Niepce

This is another in a series of posts about men from history who have either achieved great things in one form or another by pushing boundaries: either in themselves or in society or science or exploration of some form. Boundary pushing and growth is what men do, it's their nature: to grow and push outwards. We, as men, are the frontiers men, the first to discover/uncover new territory, in a metaphysical sense (i.e. including both material and the immaterial) that is later colonised and 'civilised' by the rest of humanity.

Nicephore Niepce

Nicéphore Niépce (born Joseph Niépce 7 March 1765 – 5 July 1833)^[1] was a French inventor, now usually credited as the inventor of photography and a pioneer in that field.^[2] Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world's oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photoengraved printing plate in 1825.^[3] In 1826 or 1827, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. Among Niépce's other inventions was the Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, which he conceived, created, and developed with his older brother Claude.^[4]

Early Life

Niépce was born in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, where his father was a wealthy lawyer; this caused the whole family to flee the French Revolution. His older brother Claude (1763–1828) was also his collaborator in research and invention, but died half-mad and broke in England, having squandered the family wealth in pursuit of non-opportunities for the Pyréolophore. Niepce also had a sister and a younger brother called Bernard.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

Nicéphore was baptized Joseph but adopted the name Nicéphore, in honour of Saint Nicephorus the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, while studying at the Oratorian college in Angers.^{[citation needed]} At the college he learned science and the experimental method, rapidly achieving success and graduating to work as a professor of the college.^[5][6][7][8]

Military career

Niépce served as a staff officer in the French army under Napoleon, spending a number of years in Italy and on the island of Sardinia, but ill health forced him to resign, whereupon he married Agnes Romero and became the Administrator of the district of Nice in post-revolutionary France. In 1795, Niepce resigned as administrator of Nice to pursue scientific research with his brother Claude. One source reports his resignation to have been forced due to his unpopularity.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

Scientific Research

In 1801 the brothers returned to the family's estates in Chalon to continue their scientific research, and where they were united with their mother, their sister and their younger brother Bernard. Here they managed the family estate as independently wealthy gentlemen-farmers, raising beets and producing sugar.^{[5][6][7][8][9][9]}

Claude Niépce
In 1827 Niépce journeyed to England to visit his seriously ill elder brother Claude, who was now living in Kew, near London. Claude had descended into delirium and squandered much of the family fortune chasing inappropriate business opportunities for the Pyréolophore.^[5][6]

Inventions

Photography:
The date of Niépce's first photographic experiments is uncertain. He was led to them by his interest in the new art of lithography,^[13] for which he realized he lacked the necessary skill and artistic ability, and by his acquaintance with the camera obscura, a drawing aid which was popular among affluent dilettantes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The camera obscura's beautiful but fleeting little "light paintings" inspired a number of people, including Thomas Wedgwood and Henry Fox Talbot, to seek some way of capturing them more easily and effectively than could be done by tracing over them with a pencil.
[..]
Niépce called his process heliography, which literally means "sun drawing".^[16] In 1822, he used it to create what is believed to have been the world’s first permanent photographic image,^[17] a contact-exposed copy of an engraving of Pope Pius VII, but it was later destroyed when Niépce attempted to make prints from it.^[17] The earliest surviving photographic artifacts by Niépce, made in 1825,^[3] are copies of a 17th-century engraving of a man with a horse and of what may be an etching or engraving of a woman with a spinning wheel. They are simply sheets of plain paper printed with ink in a printing press, like ordinary etchings, engravings, or lithographs, but the plates used to print them were created photographically by Niépce's process rather than by laborious and inexact hand-engraving or drawing on lithographic stones. They are, in essence, the oldest photocopies. One example of the print of the man with a horse and two examples of the print of the woman with the spinning wheel are known to have survived. The former is in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and the latter two are in a private collection in the United States.

Niépce's correspondence with his brother Claude has preserved the fact that his first real success in using bitumen to create a permanent photograph of the image in a camera obscura came in 1824. That photograph, made on the surface of a lithographic stone, was later effaced. In 1826 or 1827 he again photographed the same scene, the view from a window in his house, on a sheet of bitumen-coated pewter. The result has survived and is now the oldest known camera photograph still in existence. The historic image had seemingly been lost early in the 20th century, but photographic historian Helmut Gernsheim succeeded in tracking it down in 1952.
[..]
In 1829,^[18] Niépce entered into a partnership with Louis Daguerre, who was also seeking a means of creating permanent photographic images with a camera. Together, they developed the physautotype, an improved process that used lavender oil distillate as the photosensitive substance. The partnership lasted until Niépce’s death in 1833, after which Daguerre continued to experiment, eventually working out a process that little resembled Niépce's.^[19] He named it the "daguerréotype", after himself. In 1839 he managed to get the government of France to purchase his invention on behalf of the people of France. The French government agreed to award Daguerre a yearly stipend of 6,000 Francs for the rest of his life, and to give the estate of Niépce 4,000 Francs yearly. This arrangement rankled Niépce's son, who claimed Daguerre was reaping all the benefits of his father's work. In some ways, he was right—for many years, Niépce received little credit for his contribution. Later historians have reclaimed Niépce from relative obscurity, and it is now generally recognized that his "heliography" was the first successful example of what we now call "photography":^[15] the creation of a reasonably light-fast and permanent image by the action of light on a light-sensitive surface and subsequent processing.

Although initially ignored amid the excitement caused by the introduction of the daguerreotype and far too insensitive to be practical for making photographs with a camera, the utility of Niépce's original process for its primary purpose was eventually realized. From the 1850s until well into the 20th century, a thin coating of bitumen was widely used as a slow but very effective and economical photoresist for making printing plates.

Pyréolophore:
The Pyréolophore, probably the world's first internal combustion engine that was actually built, was invented and patented by the Niépce brothers in 1807. This engine ran on controlled dust explosions of Lycopodium powder and was installed on a boat that ran on the river Saône. Ten years later, the brothers were the first in the world to make an engine work with a fuel injection system.^[20]

Marly machine:
In 1807 the imperial government opened a competition for a hydraulic machine to replace the original Marly machine (located in Marly-le-Roi) that delivered water to the Palace of Versailles from the Seine river. The machine was built in Bougival in 1684, from where it pumped water a distance of one kilometer and raised it 150 meters. The Niépce brothers conceived a new hydrostatic principle for the machine and improved it once more in 1809. The machine had undergone changes in many of its parts, including more precise pistons, creating far less resistance. They tested it many times, and the result was that with a stream drop of 4 feet 4 inches, it lifted water 11 feet. But in December 1809 they got a message that they had waited too long and the Emperor had taken on himself the decision to ask the engineer Perier (1742–1818) to build a steam engine to operate the pumps at Marly.^[21]

Vélocipède:
In 1818 Niépce became interested in the ancestor of the bicycle, a Laufmaschine invented by Karl von Drais in 1817. He built himself a model and called it the vélocipède (fast foot) and caused quite a sensation on the local country roads. Niépce improved his machine with an adjustable saddle and it is now exhibited at the Niépce Museum. In a letter to his brother Nicéphore contemplated motorizing his machine.^[22]

Death

Nicéphore Niépce died of a stroke on 5 July 1833, financially ruined by the semi-delirious spending of Claude such that his grave in the cemetery of Saint-Loup de Varennes was financed by the municipality. The cemetery is near the family house where he had experimented and had made the world's first photographic image.^[7]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic%C3%A9phore_Ni%C3%A9pce

While the President of the USA and many others in the USA make use of Nicephores famous invention (more accurately the descedants of it) in and point it at themselves - the narcissistic 'selfie' - other people are using the invention and pointing it at the universe.  These people, the ones pointing it at other things, are the ones who are furnishing us with wonderful images of quite literally the universe and it's contents.  Take this photo for instance, captured using nothing more than a camera and a telescope:

Horsehead Nebula - Through My Telescope
(Source: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/horsehead-nebula--through-my-telescope-christian-sasse.html)

This is the way that we should be using our eyes and cameras: to look out into the world rather than into the mirror.  After all, we all know what happened to Narcissus who got captivated by his own reflection in the water.  That could happen to those who obsess over the 'selfie' once too often.


[End.]

Men of Yore: Howard Hughes

This is another in a series of posts about men from history who have either achieved great things in one form or another by pushing boundaries: either in themselves or in society or science or exploration of some form. Boundary pushing and growth is what men do, it's their nature: to grow and push outwards. We, as men, are the frontiers men, the first to discover/uncover new territory, in a metaphysical sense (i.e. including both material and the immaterial) that is later colonised and 'civilised' by the rest of humanity.

Howard Hughes (Source)

Hughes, Howard (24 Dec. 1905-5 Apr. 1976), aviator, manufacturer, and film producer, was born Howard Robard Hughes, Jr., in Houston, Texas, the son of Howard Robard Hughes, Sr., a mining engineer, and Allene Gano. Hughes was three years old when his father devised a drilling bit that revolutionized oil drilling, resulting in a great profit for his tool company. While his parents were gregarious socialites, Hughes as a boy was quiet and introspective, showing little interest in school other than a leaning toward mathematics and an ability to build things with wires and scraps of metal. Greatly attached to his devoted mother, he stood in awe of his personable father. Those who came to know him years later claim that Hughes never considered himself his equal. At the age of fourteen, Hughes was enrolled in the Fessenden School in West Newton, Massachusetts. During a vacation at home his mother denied him a motorcycle, believing it to be unsafe. He then turned his bicycle into a motorized vehicle by using parts from a car starter and batteries. On another occasion, when his father promised him he could have his choice of present, Hughes chose a ride in a flying boat. With that he discovered the joy of aviation, a joy that soon became obsessive.

The Hughes drilling bit had a profound effect on the American oil industry. Spending more and more of their time in California, Hughes's parents sent him to the Thacher School in Ojai, some seventy miles northwest of Los Angeles, in September 1921. Hughes's uncle Rupert Hughes was a leading scenarist in Hollywood, and through him the family became acquainted with the upper strata of Hollywood society. Tragedy struck in the spring of 1922 when his mother died after surgery. Father and son returned to Houston, where Hughes, Sr., was stricken with a fatal heart attack while conducting a sales meeting in 1924. The loss of his parents in the prime of their lives had a profound effect on the lonely, withdrawn Hughes. At the age of eighteen Hughes began to be a hypochondriac, fearful of death and panicky about germs. A student at the Rice Institute in Houston at the time, he decided to end his education and enter the world of business. Not content with inheriting 75 percent of his father's business assets, he bought out the other 25 percent dispersed among relatives. The agreements with his relatives were bitterly arrived at and caused a permanent rift, one that seemed to bother Hughes very little. He declared that in order to take command it was necessary to be tough with people, and it was an attitude from which he never wavered.

With no liking for the administrative side of business, Hughes hired men who knew how to operate with little direction from him. His judgment was sound and the company prospered, leaving him to indulge his fascination with a Houston socialite, Ella Rice, whom he married in 1925. They settled in Los Angeles, where Hughes set about becoming a film producer.

Hughes was a man impossible to advise. He did whatever he wanted. His first film, Swell Hogan, was so bad that it was never released, but he did better with his next, Everybody's Acting (1926), and with Two Arabian Knights (1927), directed by Lewis Milestone and starring William Boyd. It brought Milestone an Academy Award for best comedy director. Hughes's next films, The Mating Call and The Racket (both 1928), did well enough to inspire him to undertake an epic about aviation in World War I--Hell's Angels, which was two and a half years in production. Hughes spent lavishly buying airplanes and hiring pilots, virtually operating his own little air force in the San Fernando Valley. The cost ran to $4 million, an astonishing sum for its time, and Hughes ended up with 300 times as much footage as the film needed. Released in the summer of 1930, during a time of national depression, the film was well received but took a long time to recover its costs.

Among the costs was Hughes's marriage. Ella Rice Hughes returned to Houston, claiming it was impossible to be married to a man who was obsessed with his work and seldom home. Hughes then fell in love with actress Billie Dove and starred her in his next two films, The Age for Love and Cock of the Air, both made in 1931. Neither was successful, nor was the romance with Dove, which proved to be the first in a long line of affairs with actresses. Hughes returned to World War I aviation with Sky Devils (1931), starring Spencer Tracy, but it failed to come close to the merits of Hell's Angels. He did far better with The Front Page (1931) and Scarface (1932), both considered minor classics.

Hughes announced that his next film would be about zeppelins, but those who ran the Hughes Tool Company bore down on him to avoid sinking money in another film epic. He took their advice even more than they expected and turned his back on the picture business. In 1933 he founded the Hughes Aircraft Company in Glendale, California. Nine years later he relocated it to Culver City, where it grew into one of the most profitable aircraft production companies in the world.

Hughes's personal triumph as an aviator began early in 1934 when he received a trophy at the All-American Air Meet in Miami, flying a Boeing pursuit plane he had bought from the U.S. Army and turned into a racer. In September 1935 he set a new land speed record in a car he had designed, and the following January he set a new transcontinental speed record, flying from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in nine hours and twenty-seven minutes. His aerial adventures made him a popular figure in the press and on the airways, especially in 1938 when, with a remodeled twin-engine Lockheed 14 and a crew of four he flew around the world in three days, nineteen hours, and twenty-eight minutes. In May 1939 Hughes acquired stock in what later became Trans World Airlines, placing him in commercial aviation, and in the fall of that year his company began designs for new kinds of military aircraft in the event of America's possible involvement in war.

In the 1940s Hughes set up another film production company. He announced he would make a film about Billy the Kid, using unknown actors for the parts of Billy and his girlfriend. For the latter he chose nineteen-year-old Jane Russell, clearly because of her well-developed bust, a factor that caused the picture, The Outlaw (1943), to become a cause célèbre in film censorship. Hughes himself directed the film. After first being banned by the censors, Hughes finally received approval to show it, but he shrewdly allowed two years to go by, allowing public curiosity to build. Rightly condemned as a ludicrously bad film, The Outlaw nevertheless made millions for Hughes.

Much else happened during the years The Outlaw was in production. In 1943 he joined forces with shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser and won a government contract to build three huge flying boats. Only one was completed, the famous Spruce Goose. The government contract for the flying boats was canceled when it became obvious they could not be completed in time for use in the war. Other contracts for planes were also canceled.

Always unusual in his habits and behavior, Hughes became ever more eccentric. He nonetheless possessed amazing luck in surviving accidents. On 7 July 1946, while on a test flight of his XF-11, the engines malfunctioned. He crashed in Beverly Hills, and the plane exploded and burned. Hughes was dragged from the wreckage with a crushed chest, collapsed lung, and broken ribs. It was doubted he would live. However, he recovered in a month and was soon flying again. Few knew that in order to tolerate his pain he had become addicted to codeine.

Despite his pain and the problems in running an aircraft corporation, Hughes again turned to the movie business, possibly because of the profits and the publicity stirred up by The Outlaw. He signed contracts with two famous Hollywood figures, Harold Lloyd and Preston Sturges, to produce the comedy Mad Wednesday (1947), but it was a flop. Then, being in love with 22-year-old Faith Domergue, he starred her in the costumed drama Vendetta (1948). Even Hughes realized it was bad and shelved it for two years.

Concurrent with these films Hughes had other problems, one being his compulsion to rebuild the XF-11 and prove it airworthy, which he did on a flight on 5 April 1947. Four months later he testified before the Senate War Investigating Committee, which had probed into his work as a defense contractor. Hughes had made enemies in the fiercely competitive war years, and he had not been as successful as he had hoped. Hughes Aircraft had not become the giant he had planned--that would come later, in the Space Age. Building the massive Spruce Goose brought charges it was not airworthy, which he then disproved by flying it for a few minutes above the waters of Long Beach Harbor on 2 November 1947.

Obsessive-compulsive by nature, Hughes was not a man who could accept defeat. In 1948 he bought the RKO Studios in Hollywood. He owned and managed it for five years, while maintaining his office at the Goldwyn Studios and only once setting foot on RKO property. Few of the films made during these years were financial winners, and every producer, director, and writer for RKO complained about never getting to see Hughes to discuss their problems. Eventually he said, "I need RKO like I need the plague," and he sold the studio for $25 million, $6 million of which were his after the stockholders and lawyers had been paid off.

Hughes's interests in other enterprises, especially aviation, grew during the RKO years, and his wealth amassed by the millions. It was at this time that he founded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Florida, stating his concern about germs and disease. He said he wanted the institute to inherit most of his wealth and accomplish something good in his name. Always a loner, he became ever more reclusive, eventually seeing almost no one other than his closest business executives. In 1957 he married actress Jean Peters, but the marriage was unconventional, with its partners seldom living together. They divorced in 1971.

Whatever his failures in marriage or in making films, Hughes's success in building jetliners and military aircraft burgeoned. However, the strain of all these endeavors caught up with him in 1958, and he suffered a nervous breakdown. He was constantly at odds with the government over his taxes, eventually leaving California and settling in Nevada. In 1967 he bought the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, to make it his home and the headquarters of his Nevada enterprises. He sold TWA in 1966 for $566 million. Four years later he bought Air West.

In November 1970 Hughes moved to the Britannia Beach Hotel on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, again to avoid taxes. He never returned to the United States; the last six years of his life were those of an itinerant exile, moving from one luxurious hotel to another. He became a total recluse, living behind closed curtains. He moved to Managua, Nicaragua; from there on to Vancouver; London; Freeport in the Bahamas; and finally Acapulco, Mexico. In 1972 he sold Hughes Tool Company for $150 million. The assets of his Summa Corporation, under which all of his businesses were governed, were valued at $2 billion. Despite his wealth, Hughes gave the appearance of a man living in abject poverty. In his last years he refused medical treatment and did not eat properly. He became an emaciated wreck, weighing only ninety-four pounds at the time of his death. He denied his aides the right to tend him, until he finally lapsed into unconsciousness. They then flew him to Houston, but he was dead by the time the plane landed. Howard Hughes had died in an airplane in flight, and it was in the air, and only in the air, that he felt at home. Childless, Hughes left to the world his properties and a name that has become ever more of a legend.

Source: http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-01809.html

While European history may have it's fair share of eccentric aristocrats, the USA is not short of them either as is shown by the ingenuity and eccentricity of Howard Hughes.  Born into wealthy family Howard Hughes didn't sit back and merely live the life of a rich socialite - drinking socialising and going to soirees - instead he made us of the resources he had available to do whatever he wanted; whatever his Will was he did.  And we can all see that Will in the various enterprises he engaged in over his life time.  He worked in fields ranging from cinematography to aviation to medical science to gambling institutions.  While he can certainly be accused of being eccentric (his personal habits seem to indicate OCD) he certainly can't be accused of being timid.  Indeed he was a forthright character who took risks and butted heads with those who got in his way.  And those are traits that we can and should seek to emulate, as another biography wrote:

Hughes became a popular public figure because his image represented the traditional American qualities of individuality, daring, and imagination. 

(Source: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Hughes-Howard.html#ixzz3Re7K76GD)

[End.]

Men of Yore: Centenary Special

The Men of Yore series has been running for around 100 posts (two years!) so in honour of it's centenary we have a collection of motion pictures from the late 1800s and early 1900s, the time when motion picture technology was in it's infancy.

These videos allow us to see life as it was a mere five generations ago, and to see the industrial age in real life (as best as we can) instead of reading it from text or still photos. Which allows for a more personal experience: feeling in the midst of it rather than analysing it from afar like a cold historian might do.  This is a privilege that not only allows us to see life 'back then' (the past is really no different from the present, it just happened a while ago).  It also allows us to see the people who inhabited and constructed the modern world that we have inherited and benefit from.  Many of those people are average John Doe's like thee and me, it's interesting to observe their body language and mannerisms, much of which appears to be confident, masculine and yet also relaxed.

And remember that this is just a small collection of the many videos that are out there. To find more simply go to youtube and enter 'victorian era' in the search box and you'll be presented with many more films of various lengths.  The videos below are all very short, around five minutes or less, it means that you're not going to waste your time watching hour long documentaries.

1896-1900: Victorian era footage from around the world.  (~6 minutes long)

Lost film footage of 1904 London.  (~1 minute long)

Berlin in 1900 in colour. (~5 minutes long)

Earliest surviving film and sound recording 1888.  (~3 minutes long).

Clips of films taken in New York City dating from 1898 to 1906.  (~2 minutes long).

And there we have it, the world as it stood four or so generations ago.  Who know where we'll be in five generations time, or what the world will look like.  It really depends on what the men who live in now it decide to do, what their Will is, what brings them Joy.  That's what makes the future possible, and indeed makes the future: Willful Joy.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Not politicians, not generals, not economists, but Willful Joy.  The Joy that men get by expressing their Will, in whatever way they wish to.


[End.]

Men of Yore: Alexander Bell

This is another in a series of posts about men from history who have either achieved great things in one form or another by pushing boundaries: either in themselves or in society or science or exploration of some form. Boundary pushing and growth is what men do, it's their nature: to grow and push outwards. We, as men, are the frontiers men, the first to discover/uncover new territory, in a metaphysical sense (i.e. including both material and the immaterial) that is later colonised and 'civilised' by the rest of humanity.

Alexander Bell

Early Life

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The second son of Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds Bell, he was named for his paternal grandfather. The middle name “Graham” was added when he was 10 years old. He had two brothers, Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell, both of whom died from tuberculosis.

During his youth, Alexander Graham Bell experienced strong influences that had a profound effect on his later life. Bell’s hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland, was known as the “Athens of the North,” for its rich culture of arts and science. His grandfather and father were experts on the mechanics of voice and elocution. Alexander’s mother, who was nearly deaf, became an accomplished pianist and inspired him to undertake big challenges.

Eliza home schooled Alexander and instilled an infinite curiosity of the world around him. He received one year of formal education in a private school and two years at Edinburgh’s Royal High School. Though a mediocre student, he displayed an uncommon ability to solve problems. At age 12, while playing with a friend in a grain mill, he noticed the slow process of husking the wheat grain. He went home and built a devise with rotating paddles and nail brushes that easily removed the husks from the grain.

Early Attempts to Follow His Passion

Young Alexander was groomed early to carry on in the family business, but his headstrong nature conflicted with his father’s overbearing manner. Seeking a way out, Alexander volunteered to care for his grandfather when he fell ill in 1862. The elder Bell encouraged young Alexander and instilled an appreciation for learning and intellectual pursuits. By age 16, Alexander had joined his father in his work with the deaf and soon assumed full charge of his father’s London operations.

On one of his trips to America, Alexander’s father discovered its healthier environment and decided to move the family there. At first, Alexander resisted, for he was establishing himself in London, but eventually relented after both his brothers had succumbed to tuberculosis. In July, 1870, the family settled in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. There, Alexander set up a workshop to continue his study of the human voice.

Passion for Shaping the Future

In 1871, Alexander Graham Bell moved to Boston and began work on a device that would allow for the telegraph transmission of several messages set to different frequencies. He found financial backing through local investors Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Hubbard. Between 1873 and 1874, Bell spent long days and nights trying to perfect the harmonic telegraph. During his experiments, he became interested in another idea, transmitting the human voice over wires. The diversion frustrated Bell’s benefactors and Thomas Watson, a skilled electrician, was hired to refocus Bell on the harmonic telegraph. But Watson soon became enamored with Bell’s idea of voice transmission and the two created a great partnership with Bell being the idea man and Watson having the expertise to bring Bell’s ideas to reality.

Through 1874 and 1875, Bell and Watson labored on both the harmonic telegraph and a voice transmitting device. Though at first frustrated by the diversion, Bell’s investors soon saw the value of voice transmission and filed a patent on the idea. For now the concept was protected, but the device still had to be developed. On March 10, 1876, Bell and Watson were successful. Legend has it that Bell knocked over a container of transmitting fluid and shouted, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!” The more likely explanation was Bell heard a noise over the wire and called to Watson. In any case, Watson heard Bell’s voice through the wire and thus, he received the first telephone call.

With this success, Alexander Graham Bell began to promote the telephone in a series of public demonstrations. At the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, in 1876, Bell demonstrated the telephone to the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro, who exclaimed, “My God, it talks!” Other demonstrations followed, each at a greater distance than the last. The Bell Telephone Company was organized on July 9, 1877. With each new success, Alexander Graham Bell was moving out of the shadow of his father.

On July 11, 1877, Alexander Graham Bell married Mable Hubbard, a former student and the daughter of Gardiner Hubbard, his initial financial backer. Over the course of the next year, Alexander and Mable traveled to Europe demonstrating the telephone. Upon their return to the United States, Bell was summoned to Washington D.C. to defend his telephone patent from law suits by others claiming they had invented the telephone or had conceived of the idea before Bell.

Over the next 18 years, the Bell Company faced over 550 court challenges, including several that went to the Supreme Court, but none were successful. Even during the patent battles, the company grew. Between 1877, and 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Improvements were made on the device including the addition of a microphone, invented by Thomas Edison, which eliminated the need to shout into the telephone to be heard.

Pursuing His Passion in His Final Years

By all accounts, Alexander Graham Bell was not a businessman and by 1880 began to turn business matters over to Hubbard and others so he could pursue a wide range of inventions and intellectual pursuits. In 1880, he established the Volta Laboratory, an experimental facility devoted to scientific discovery. He also continued his work with the deaf, establishing the American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890.

In the remaining years of his life Bell worked on a number of projects. He devoted a lot of time to exploring flight, starting with the tetrahedral kite in 1890s. In 1907, Bell formed the Aerial Experiment Association with Glenn Curtiss and several other associates. The group developed several flying machines, including the Silver Dart. The Silver Dart was the first powered machine flow in Canada. He later worked on hydrofoils and set a world record for speed for this type of boat.

In January 1915, Bell was invited to make the first transcontinental phone call. From New York, he spoke with his former associate Thomas Watson in San Francisco.

Bell died peacefully with his wife by his side in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada, on August 2, 1922. The entire telephone system was shut down for one minute in tribute to his life.

Source: http://www.biography.com/#!/people/alexander-graham-bell-9205497#early-life

 

 

Communication networks are not given much consideration in modern times, except for the odd occasion when they are blocked up (like a clogged artery), or broken (like a downed electricity cable), or overloaded (like a road traffic jam), or inadequate to meet our needs (like an old fashioned railway network), yet the civilisation that we live in would not be possible without them.  These communication networks are as essential for technological civilisation as the communication networks in our human bodies are essential for us:

• Without the nervous system transporting information around our bodies we (individually) would not know a thing about the outside world (the peripheral nervous system transports data from the sense organs to the central nervous system, spine & brain, for us to process), without the communication network transporting information around civilisation we (collectively) would not know a thing about the outside world (imagine a world without the internet, phone lines, or mail routes).
• Without the circulatory system transporting nutrients around our body we simply would not be able to live (an arm without fresh blood quickly turns gangrenous), without the communication network (roads, rail, rivers etc) transporting goods around civilisation we would not be able to live.

Think of an isolated settlement in Alaska, the Australian outback or Siberia, and how dependent that settlement is on roads in order to have goods and information delivered to it; then imagine that settlement lost its communication network in a freak accident, it wouldn't last long would it?  That's how essential communication networks are for civilisation.

With this in mind it's a lot easier to appreciate the efforts of men who have dedicated their lives to improving the communication networks of civilisation, men like Graham Bell.

The result of innovations in communication networks, like the telephone, is that they have enabled civilisation to become more advanced.  They are comparable to the evolutionary leaps in biological communication networks that have allowed biological organisms to become more advanced.  Without men like Bell we would be like mere simple single-celled organisms, nothing more than amoebas bumbling around oblivious to outside world and unable to interact with it in any meaningful way.  But instead we are complex multi-celled organisms that are capable of both perceiving the outside world and interacting with it in any way that we choose.  That is what we should be thankful for: increased self-awareness and freedoms.

Obviously is preferable to be a complex organism than a simple one because it means that we have more control over our own destiny than less control.  The same principle applies to civilization as to the human body.  This is why we owe a great deal to men like these because they allow our civilization to advance, like evolution has allowed our human body to advance.


[End.]

Men of Yore: Carl Wilhelm Scheele

This is another in a series of posts about men from history who have either achieved great things in one form or another by pushing boundaries: either in themselves or in society or science or exploration of some form. Boundary pushing and growth is what men do, it's their nature: to grow and push outwards. We, as men, are the frontiers men, the first to discover/uncover new territory, in a metaphysical sense (i.e. including both material and the immaterial) that is later colonised and 'civilised' by the rest of humanity.

Carl Wilhelm Scheele

 

Carl Wilhelm Scheele (9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) was a Swedish Pomeranian pharmaceutical chemist. Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" because he made a number of chemical discoveries before others who are generally given the credit. For example, Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hydrogen, and chlorine before Humphry Davy, among others. Scheele discovered organic acids tartaric, oxalic, uric, lactic, and citric, as well as hydrofluoric, hydrocyanic, and arsenic acids.^[1] He preferred speaking German to Swedish his whole life, and German was commonly spoken among Swedish pharmacists.^[2]


Early Life
Scheele was born in Stralsund, in western Pomerania, which was at the time part of Sweden. Scheele's father Joachim (or Johann) Christian Scheele, was a grain dealer and brewer from a respected German family. His mother was Margaretha Eleanore Warnekros.

Friends of his parents taught him the art of reading prescriptions and the meaning of chemical and pharmaceutical signs.^[3] Then in 1757, at age fourteen, Carl was sent to Gothenburg as an apprentice pharmacist^[2] with another family friend and apothecary, Martin Andreas Bauch. He retained this position for eight years. During this time he ran experiments late into the night and read the works of Nicolas Lemery, Caspar Neumann, Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel and Georg Ernst Stahl (the champion of the phlogiston theory). Much of his later theoretical speculations were based upon Stahl.^[3]

In 1765 he worked under the progressive and well informed apothecary, C. M. Kjellström in Malmö, and became acquainted with Anders Jahan Retzius, a lecturer at the University of Lund and later a professor of chemistry at Stockholm. Scheele arrived in Stockholm some time between 1767 and 1769 and worked as a pharmacist. During this period, he discovered tartaric acid, and with his friend Retzius, studied the relation of quicklime to calcium carbonate. While in the capital, he also became acquainted with many luminaries, such as Abraham Bäck, Peter Jonas Bergius, Bengt Bergius and Carl Friedreich von Schultzenheim.

In the fall of 1770 he became director of the laboratory of the great pharmacy of Locke, at Uppsala (about 40 miles north of Stockholm). The laboratory supplied chemicals to professor of chemistry Torbern Bergman, and a friendship developed after Scheele analyzed a reaction which Bergman and his assistant Johan Gottlieb Gahn could not resolve. The reaction was between melted saltpetre and acetic acid, producing a red vapor. Further study of this reaction later led to Scheele's discovery of oxygen (see "The theory of phlogiston" below). Based upon this friendship and respect, Scheele was given free use of Bergman's laboratory, both men profiting from their working relationship. In 1774 Scheele was nominated by Peter Jonas Bergius to be a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and was elected February 4, 1775. In 1775 he also managed a pharmacy for a short time in Köping, and between the end of 1776 and the beginning of 1777, established his own business there.

On October 29, 1777, he took his seat for the first and only time at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, and on November 11 he passed the examination as apothecary before the Royal Medical College, with highest honors. After his return to Köping he devoted himself, outside of his business, to scientific researches resulting in a long series of important papers.^[3]


The Discovery of Oxygen
By the time he was a teenager, Scheele had learned the dominant theory of gases in the 1770s, the phlogiston theory. Phlogiston, classified as "matter of fire", was supposed to be released from any burning material, and when it was exhausted, combustion would stop. When Scheele discovered oxygen, he called it "fire air" because it supported combustion, but he explained oxygen using phlogistical terms because he did not believe that his discovery disproved the phlogiston theory.

Before Scheele made his discovery of oxygen, he studied air. Air was thought to be an element that made up the environment in which chemical reactions took place but did not interfere with the reactions. Scheele's investigation of air enabled him to conclude that air was a mixture of "fire air" and "foul air;" in other words, a mixture of two gases. He performed numerous experiments in which he burned substances such as saltpeter (potassium nitrate), manganese dioxide, heavy metal nitrates, silver carbonate and mercuric oxide. In all of these experiments, he isolated gas with the same properties: his "fire air," which he believed combined with phlogiston in materials to be released during heat-releasing reactions.

However, his first publication, Chemische Abhandlung von der Luft und dem Feuer, was delivered to the printer Swederus in 1775, but not published until 1777, at which time both Joseph Priestley and Lavoisier had already published their experimental data and conclusions concerning oxygen and the phlogiston theory. The first English edition, Chemical Observation and Experiments on Air and Fire was published in 1780, with an introduction "Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire".^[4]
[..]


Scheele's Other Discoveries
In addition to his joint recognition for the discovery of oxygen, Scheele is argued to have been the first to discover other chemical elements such as barium (1774),^[5] manganese (1774),^[6] molybdenum (1778),^[7] and tungsten (1781),^[8] as well as several chemical compounds, including citric acid,^[9] lactic acid,^[10] glycerol,^[11] hydrogen cyanide (also known, in aqueous solution, as prussic acid),^[12] hydrogen fluoride,^[13] and hydrogen sulfide (1777).^[14] In addition, he discovered a process similar to pasteurization, along with a means of mass-producing phosphorus (1769), leading Sweden to become one of the world's leading producers of matches.

 

Scheele made one other very important scientific discovery in 1774, arguably more revolutionary than his isolation of oxygen. He identified lime, silica, and iron in a specimen of pyrolusite (impure manganese dioxide) given to him by his friend, Johann Gottlieb Gahn, but could not identify an additional component (this was the manganese, which Scheele recognized was present as a new element, but could not isolate). When he treated the pyrolusite with hydrochloric acid over a warm sand bath, a yellow-green gas with a strong odor was produced.^[15] He found that the gas sank to the bottom of an open bottle and was denser than ordinary air. He also noted that the gas was not soluble in water. It turned corks a yellow color and removed all color from wet, blue litmus paper and some flowers. He called this gas with bleaching abilities, "dephlogisticated muriatic acid" (dephlogisticated hydrochloric acid, or oxidized hydrochloric acid). Eventually, Sir Humphry Davy named the gas chlorine.

Chlorine's bleaching properties were eventually turned into an industry by Berzelius, and became the foundation of a second industry of disinfection and deodorization of putrified tissue and wounds (including wounds in living humans) in the hands of Labarraque, by 1824.


Later Life
In the fall of 1785, Scheele began to suffer from symptoms described as kidney disease. In early 1786, he also contracted a disease of the skin, which, combined with kidney problems, so enfeebled him that he could foresee an early death. With this in mind, he married the widow of his predecessor,^[3] Pohl, two days before he died, so that he could pass undisputed title to his pharmacy and his possessions to her.

While Scheele's experiments generated substances which have long since been found to be hazardous, the compounds and elements he used to start his experiments were dangerous to begin with, especially heavy metals. Scheele had a bad habit of sniffing and tasting any new substances he discovered.^[16] Cumulative exposure to arsenic, mercury, lead, their compounds, and perhaps hydrofluoric acid which he had discovered, and other substances took their toll on Scheele, who died at the early age of 43, on 21 May 1786, at his home in Köping. Doctors said that he died of mercury poisoning .

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Wilhelm_Scheele

While Carl Scheeles discoveries may seem like irrelevant tinkerings of white-coated scientists in laboratories, tinkerings that are of no consequence to average John Does like thee & me, this could not be further from the truth. The truth is that Carl Scheeles discoveries have had innumerable positive impacts to the average man-on-the-street in ways that 19th century sci-fi writers couldn't even conceive of.

Take Scheeles discovery of oxygen for starters, it may seem like nothing important, and in a sense it is nothing to write home about (after all it's just a chemical element, one of 118 that we know of) but engineers and scientists have done marvelous things with that rudimentary element that we all benefit from in the most obscure ways.  The discovery of oxygen means that Goddard and other rocketeers could send ships and subsequently satellites into outer space.  Satellites means satellite technology: advanced tele-communications, watching b-movies on satellite TV late in the evening, viewing geo-sat images of famous landmarks on the internet, using a sat-phone to call a friend up while in trekking the Australian outback, using a GPS system to get you safely to your friends house, all practical technologies that wouldn't have happened were it for the discovery of oxygen by Scheele.  Who could've foreseen that satellites and intra-stellar travel would be made possible thanks to the discovery of a Swedish chemist who insisted on speaking German all his life?!

And remember that oxygen was just one of his discoveries!

Scientists, true scientists, are more than eccentric characters tinkering around with test tubes and bunsen burners contributing nothing to society.  True scientists give engineers, technicians, designers, inventors and other builders new building blocks (like oygen) with which to make new inventions, which in turn make the world a better place for all of us.  And that benefits us all, whether we're scientists or not.


[End.]