[X] My Assistant

[Bob Shaw]

Strangely, in the UK Sir Henry Bessemer is credited with the creation of the first 'practical' steel-making process (meaning suited to mass production - steel was made for centuries before that).

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jan/bessemer.html

He must have passed by Newton's house and Oxford many a time!

Charles Fort once observed that, when 'steam engine time' came around, *everybody* started inventing the things at the same time. In rocketry terms, there were Goddard, the Peenemunde guys, and the Comrades over at GIRD...

Bob Shaw

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

It seems that the guies at Buffon's forges were doing only cast iron, not steel, for lack of a conversion method. But they produced a huge amount of cast iron, to the epoch standards. There was still visible a 900kg pig iron ingot strangely shaped, the shape of a shuttle, but with a triangular section. Perhaps it was used as a ballast for small ships.

As for steel, there was empirical recipes known for centuries, but at the scale of manual smithing. for instance damaskined knives were to be forged and re-forged up to... 80 times. This made the cost of a thing like a sword very hight, like a luxury car, when today it would cost only some euros.

In the 19th century there was already a mass production of iron, but it had to be puddled (hammered lengthily) to expell the excess carbon particules. This process is explained in Jules verne's "The Begum's Millions". Large bridges and buildings like the Eiffel tower are made of puddled iron, not of steel.

[ljk4-1]

I am sure there are those who will respond with "So what, it's the
science and the discoveries he made that matters", but I remember
what a shame it was to find out that Newton may have been a genius
intellectually, but his personality was anything but sterling.

Newton's vindictiveness towards anyone who opposed his ideas was
quite sad. It bothers me far more than the discovery that he was
quite superstitious, but I put that aspect of his life as being a part
of the era he lived in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_newton

What a contrast to the calming images of his home in the English
countryside.

I know, all scientists are human and geniuses seem to have an
especially hard time balancing smarts with emotions and social
manners.

But some day, perhaps there will be an intellectual and emotional
genius, one whose personal behavior will entice others to the fields
rather than turn them off and invite more stereotypes.

[djellison]

Superstition and things of that nature were HUGE during Newtons time - for instance people would draw a 5 fingered hand on the wall - because anyone who HAD 5 fingers was declared a witch and a witch could just knock on your door and demand accomodation...just inside the door at Woolesthorpe is scratching on the wall of a 5 fingered hand so if such an event were to transpire they could say "sorry - already got one staying here, look - that's her hand"

To have dismissed superstition and even the belief that God was all powerfull and all controlling in the late 1600's would have been considered very very strange indeed. The plague would have played a major part in life in Britain during the pivotal period of Newtons life and superstition, alchemy, witchcraft etc were rife in that period.

Lest we forget, Galileo (who's life story is of course highly exagerated w.r.t. house arrests and torture and the like) died just lest than a year before the birth of Newton, and I have no doubt that Newton would have felt a need to 'coform' to the 'system' for fear of being silenced, arrested or worse.

It's a common symptom of intellectual brilliance - strangeness.

Just because he wasn't a model citizen, hit achievments are not to be underestimated - and his heavy mercury doses because of his alchemy work could well explain much of his behaviour.

Doug

[Bob Shaw]

For a fascinating, but dizzying, take on Newton and his peers read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle of historical novels. As you might expect (if you know his earlier work) it's intellectually brilliant, and far from the usual 'bodice-ripper' standards of such period pieces. Hard work, but worth the effort!

Bob Shaw

[ljk4-1]

Superstition and things of that nature were HUGE during Newtons time - for instance people would draw a 5 fingered hand on the wall - because anyone who HAD 5 fingers was declared a witch and a witch could just knock on your door and demand accomodation...just inside the door at Woolesthorpe is scratching on the wall of a 5 fingered hand so if such an event were to transpire they could say "sorry - already got one staying here, look - that's her hand"

Did you really mean 4 or 6 fingers?

I know superstition and religion played no small role in Newton's time
and place. And when I see how many people are still affected by such
things in the early 21st Century, I shiver at the thought as to how rare
Newton and the Royal Academy were.

A good book describing Newton and his era:

The Newtonian Moment: Science and the Making of Modern Culture by
Mordechai Feingold:

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/scibio/newtoni3.htm

http://www.huntington.org/Information/news...onReleaseII.pdf

The recent Nova program on Newton's other work:

http://www.pbs.org/nova/newton/

And to keep this amongst the unmanned space probes, among the 118
images on the Voyager Interstellar Record is the famous drawing of
cannonballs being shot around Earth at different speeds (with the last
ones going into orbit) taken from an 1711 edition of Newton's System of
the World.

The image here:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/images/image111.gif

[djellison]

No - I meant 5 fingers....i.e. a hand with 5 fingers and 1 thumb.

Doug

[ljk4-1]

No - I meant 5 fingers....i.e. a hand with 5 fingers and 1 thumb.

Doug

Oh - I just hate seeing the thumb so discriminated against, considering
how similar it looks to the fingers and how important it is for hitch-hiking
and such.

And imagine how much ruder this world would be if we could only give
someone the fingers up?

[ljk4-1]

Next on NOVA: "Newton's Dark Secrets"

http://www.pbs.org/nova/newton

Broadcast: June 20, 2006 (Repeat)

(NOVA airs Tuesdays on PBS at 8 p.m. Check your local listings as
dates and times may vary.)

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Next on NOVA: "Newton's Dark Secrets"

http://www.pbs.org/nova/newton

Broadcast: June 20, 2006 (Repeat)

(NOVA airs Tuesdays on PBS at 8 p.m. Check your local listings as
dates and times may vary.)

I just saw that, it was very interesting. We do love to drag out people's dirty laundry, but there is no denying that Newton was also an astounding genius. I read the first 50 pages of Principia once, and found his proofs about Kepler's laws and about gravity from spherical bodies to be elegant and clear. Then I skimmed around and could not believe how advanced his thinking was. I was a graduate student in physics at the time, having read Goldstein's book on Classical Mechanics. The last problem in Newton's book is a calculation of the obliqueness of the Earth from perturbations in the orbit of the Moon. That is a very sophisticated problem. And then remember that Newton was not building on a long history of classical mechanics, he was starting from scratch with F=ma on page 1 (er, whatever page)!

It is a very rare thinker who can originate so much, and not just make small improvements on previous ideas. He said he was standing on the shoulders of giants, but most scientists only stand on the toes of giants.

Another show that impressed me was the Cosmos episode about Kepler. Kepler had a very magical theory about the orbits of the planets, and their relationship to platonic solids. He spent years trying to fit Tycho's measurements to this theory, but it wouldn't work. He finally realized that the orbits were elliptical, which seemed very imperfect to him, but he checked it over and over, and finally published that result.

Now there is another rare lesson in human nature, someone who gives up a cherished theory and accepts the facts. Kepler is the very opposite of the scientific Crank, who would invent one fantastic and improbable excuse on top of another to prove that he is right. I have huge respect for Kepler.

Forcing something to be true reminds me of a Soviet joke: an intelligence test was given to army soldiers, involving the fitting of pegs of various shapes into holes of various shapes. The conclusion was that Russian soldiers are either very dumb or very strong.

[ljk4-1]

At least Newton's "dirty laundry" is something of signifgance to our
understanding of the man and his work, rather than the usual trash
regarding some transient "celebrity".

BTW, maybe we should start planning to be off Earth and maybe
even out of the solar system before 2060 - just in case.

Right on the money about Kepler, made all the more amazing by the
fact that he was operating in an era where sticking to one's dogma despite
the evidence was the norm. He even once had a correspondence with
Galileo about whether there was life on the Moon or not. Kepler thought
there was, but Galileo didn't. Kepler eventually came around to agree
with Galileo. Oddly enough, Kepler did not think there were planets
around other stars with life.

Regarding the Russian joke, there was something similar on one of the
original Jetsons cartoon episodes. George and his boss were drafted
into the military, where they were examined and tested along a conveyor
belt by a series of robots and computers. One big, dumb guy in the line
with them had to do the round peg in the square hole test. When he got
angry at being unable to put a round peg in a square hole, he smashed
the test with his fists to make it work. The computer immediately
responded with "Officer material! Officer material!" and promotes
the guy on the spot.