Seven Elements That Have Changed the World (34 page)

23.
A fire burns on the North Sea oil rig
Piper Alpha
after an explosion in July 1988 which killed more than 160 people.
Press Association.

24.
Portrait of John D. Rockefeller Sr., painted by artist John Singer Sargent in 1917.
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

25.
Doing business in Russia. The author (third left) says farewell to Putin (third right). Also shown is Mikhail Friedman (front right).
Author’s collection.

26.
Cars queuing at a petrol station on Woodford Avenue, London, during a petrol shortage, December 1973.
Getty Images.

27.
Burning oil wells in Kuwait, set afire during Gulf War, March 1991.
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

28.
The birth of the supermajors: at the New York Stock Exchange on the day of BP Amoco’s listing. From left to right: Dick Grasso (CEO of the NYSE), the author, Maria Bartiromo (CNBC journalist), Larry Fuller (co-chairman of BP Amoco) and Rodney Chase (deputy CEO of BP Amoco).
Author’s collection.

29.
A BP meeting in Venezuela, 1980. Note the author and his hair at front right, along with the cigars and wood panelling.
Author’s collection.

30.
The author with the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago at the time, Patrick Manning, January 2007.
W. Garth Murrell/PIPS Photography.

31.
LNG trains in Trinidad and Tobago, operated by Atlantic LNG and part-owned by BP.
Courtesy of BP plc.

32.
A fracking spread in Lancashire, where Britain’s most promising shale gas reserves are to be found.
Cuadrilla Resources Ltd.

33.
The author delivers his speech on addressing climate change at Stanford University, May 1997, watched by the then Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Nobel prize-winning economist Mike Spence.
BP and Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

34.
Solar panels with Al Gore (BP Solar, California, 1998).
Author’s collection.

35.
Discussing climate change in California with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, July 2006.
Author’s collection.

36.
The gold raft of El Dorado, on display in the Museo del Oro, Bogotá, Colombia.
Banco de la República
,
Bogotá – Gold Museum Collection.

37.
A poporo –
my own, purchased in the early 1990s.
Author’s collection.

38.
Brustolon’s engraving, c. 1768, of the inauguration of the Doge, based on a drawing by Canaletto.
Author’s collection.

39.
A Venetian ducat from the reign of Doge Andrea Gritti, 1523-1538. ©
The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

40.
A gold coin, suspected to have been minted during the reign of the fabulously rich King Croesus, ruler of the Lydians from approximately 560-547
BC
. ©
The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

41.
The Incan emperor Atahualpa (1497-1533) executed by the Spanish conquistadors by garrotte. Artist unknown, 1754.
Getty Images.

42.
Sutter’s Mill Nugget found by James Marshall began the California Gold Rush. The nugget is kept at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC.
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

43.
Chinese workers panning for gold in California. A man in a coolie hat digs as another man kneels and sifts, c. 1855.
Getty Images.

44.
Newton’s invention to stop clipping survives in the inscriptions on British £1 and £2 coins.
Author’s collection.

45.
Kennecott Utah Copper’s Bingham Canyon Mine, owned and operated by Rio Tinto.
Rio Tinto.

46.
A view of the Serra Pelada mine in Brazil. ©
Sebastião Salgado/NB Pictures.

47.
Silver smelting depicted in Prince Henry’s copy of Agricola’s
De re metallica
, 1556. ©
British Library Board.

48.
Virgin Cerro, anonymous, eighteenth century. Unframed painting is 140 cm x 107 cm, and is hung in the national mint of Potosí, Bolivia.
National Mint BCB Cultural Foundation
,
Potosí
,
Bolivia.

49.
Fox Talbot’s calotype: two men positioning a ladder up against a loft. Original Publication:
The Pencil of Nature – The Ladder
, 1844.
Getty Images.

50.
Daguerreotype made in 1838 by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre of a Paris boulevard, the first photograph to show a human being.
Topfoto.

51.
Illustration on Kodak Brownie camera box, c. 1910.
SSPL/Getty Images.

52.
View from the author’s home in Venice.
Author’s collection.

53.
The Singaporean Botanical Gardens, with my mother, 1953.
Author’s collection.

54.
South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong officer with a single pistol shot in the head in Saigon, 1 February 1968. Carrying a pistol and wearing civilian clothes, the Viet Cong guerrilla was captured near Quang Pafgoda, identified as an officer and taken to the police chief.
AP Photo/Eddie Adams/Press Association

55.
Jewish children, survivors of Auschwitz, behind a barbed-wire fence, Poland, February 1945. Photograph taken by a Russian photographer during the making of a film about the liberation of the camp. The children were dressed up by the Russians with clothing from adult prisoners.
Getty Images.

56.
The author’s Persian silver boxes.
Author’s collection.

57.
From left to right: Vorochilov, Molotov, Stalin pose at the shore of the Moscow-Volga Canal, in 1937 in this manipulated picture. In the original picture Nikolai Yezhov was standing on the right. Yezhov was the senior figure in the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) under Joseph Stalin during the period of the Great Purge. After Yezhov was tried and executed his likeness was removed from this image.
AFP/Getty Images.

58.
The Hunt brothers are sworn in before a Congressional subcommittee investigating the collapse of the silver market, February 1980.
Corbis.

59.
Hiroshima’s A-Bomb dome, taken by the author on a visit in 2012.
Author’s collection.

60.
‘Weakly Writhing’ by Tomomi Yamashina, who was sixteen at the time of the bomb and standing 3,600 metres from the hypocentre in front of the Hiroshima
First Army Hospital. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum A-bomb Drawings by Survivors.
Author’s collection.

61.
Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer (left) with Major General Leslie Groves, by the remains of the tower from which an atom test bomb was ignited, at Los Alamos, California, 1943.
Getty Images.

62.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II opens Calder Hall, 1956.
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

63.
Captain Atom –
DC Comics.

64.
The operational Blue Steel stand-off bomb carried Britain’s nuclear deterrent between 1964 and 1975. The Science Museum’s Blue Steel shown here is a test vehicle and is fitted with a Double Spectre rocket engine. The engine is being examined by a Science Museum curator prior to being photographed for a Science Museum book on the Black Arrow Rocket.
SSPL/Getty Images.

65.
This satellite view shows the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power plant after a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on 14 March 2011 in Futaba, Japan.
DigitalGlobe/Getty Images.

66.
Pakistan’s top scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan addresses a gathering after inaugurating the model of the country’s surface-to-surface Ghauri-II missile, in Islamabad, 28 May 1999.
Usman Khan/AFP/Getty Images.

67.
The author with Governor Yuzaki of Hiroshima, 2012.
Author’s collection.

68.
SR-71B Blackbird aerial reconnaissance aircraft photographed over snow-capped mountains in 1995.
Getty Images.

69.
A titanium Project 705 Soviet submarine, designated Alfa class by NATO.
Ministry of Defence.

70.
Isaac Newton using a prism to break white light into spectrum with Cambridge roommate John Wickins. Engraving from 1874.
Getty Images.

71.
The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain.
Allan Baxter/Getty Images.

72.
A view of Lake Tio overlooking the Tio ilmenite mine operated by Rio Tinto Fer et Titane (formerly QIT Fer et Titane). Quebec, Canada.
Rio Tinto Fer et Titane.

73.
An image from a section on glassmaking in the author’s copy of Biringuccio’s
De la Pirotechnia. Author’s collection.

74.
The author’s glass elephants.
Author’s collection.

75.
Glass blowing in Murano, 2010.
Author’s collection.

76.
The Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, 2012.
Author’s collection.

77.
Glass petrol pump globes by Chance Brothers.
With thanks to Michael Joseph.

78.
Glaziers, painters and decorators posing in front of the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth House, early 1900s, following the completion of extensive storm damage repairs. Photographer and date unknown. ©
Devonshire Collection
,
Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.

79.
A group photograph of some of those responsible for building the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, London. The two men on the beam (top) are iron-fitters.
Getty Images.

80.
William C. Miller, resident photographer and pioneer in astronomical photography, at the Mt Palomar Observatory.
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

81.
The picture depicts the 6.8 MW solar photovoltaic plant owned by Soemina Energeia S.r.l. (owned directly by AES Sole Italia S.r.l., the Italian subsidiary of AES Solar). It is located in the Municipality of Ciminna, province of Palermo, Italy.
Reprinted with permission of Antonio Nastri and AES Solar.

82.
Pages 11 and 12 from Da Vinci’s notebook. The notebook was not originally a bound volume, but was put together after Leonardo’s death from loose papers of various types and sizes. It can be found in the British Library catalogued as Arundel 263n ff.86 v-87. ©
British Library Board.

83.
An operator with an IBM 1130.
Courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation.

84.
Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain’s point-contact transistor from 1947. Public announcement of the transistor was made on 1 July 1948 by Bell Laboratories. In 1956, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain shared the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the transistor effect
Reprinted with permission from Alcatel-Lucent USA Inc.

85.
A 22nm transistor, 2011. ©
Intel Corporation.

86.
Gordon Moore and Andy Grove, 1990. ©
Intel Corporation.

87.
The author with Mario Paniccia, the man behind silicon photonics, in May 2012.
Author’s collection.

88.
An electron microscope image of individual carbon atoms in a sheet of graphene, the thinnest and strongest material known to science.
MCT/Getty Images.

1.
All eyes on Sir William Bragg. Nature explained. To children and grown-ups alike, 29 December 1931.

2.
A master and his masterpiece: Agricola’s
De re metallica
(1556), Prince Henry’s annotated copy.