Chronica (34 page)

Anderson, Mary, 1859-1940 AD
. American and British stage actress, performed in
Pygmalion
,
Galatea
,
Romeo and Juliet
, and
The Winter's Tale
. Author of memoirs
A Few Memories
(1896) and
A Few More Memories
(1936). May have played the role of Hypatia in the 1900 play of the same name. The credit is listed as Mary Aynderson, but there is no actress in any other historical record from that time with that spelling.

Appleton, William Henry
, 
1814-1899 AD
. 
Became head of the publishing company, D. Appleton & Co – later referred to as "Appleton's" – when his father Daniel retired in 1844. Published Lewis Carroll, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and leading nineteenth-century scientists and philosophers in America.  Offices in Manhattan.  Owned the Wave Hill house in Riverdale, New York, overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades, 1866-1899.  Huxley was among his guests at the house.  Theodore Roosevelt's family rented Wave Hill (when he was a boy in the summers of 1870 and 1871), as did Mark Twain (1901-1903) (see below for Twain).

Aristotle, 384-322 BC. 
Plato's student, Alexander the Great's teacher, one of the two titans (along with Plato) of Western philosophy. He emphasized the importance of observation and empirical evidence (in contrast to Plato's focus on ideas), and is therein one of the founders of the scientific method. Influential essays attributed to Aristotle span dozens of seminal topics including politics, biology, logic, education, poetry, and ethics in as many as 140 works, some or all of which are thought be lecture notes compiled by his students. Only a third to a half of these survive. We know about the lost works because they are mentioned in other sources. His view that the observations of the naked eye are more reliable than those made via instruments was used by the Church in its opposition to Galileo's telescopic observations (see below for Galileo).

Astor, John Jacob, IV, "Jack", 1864-1912 AD
. Businessman, investor, author, scion of one of the wealthiest families in America. Wrote the science fiction novel,
A Journey in Other Worlds
(1894). Built the Astoria Hotel on 5
^th
Avenue and 33
^rd
Street in New York City in 1897, adjacent to the Waldorf Hotel constructed by his cousin in 1893. The two were connected by a corridor, and became known as the Waldorf-Astoria, which was torn down at the end of the 1920s and re-situated in its current location on Park Avenue. The Empire State Building was constructed on the hotel's original site in 1931. Astor left his first wife in 1909 and married an 18-year old woman, 29 years his junior. The press was unkind to him well before this, and referred to him as "Jack Ass". Astor and his wife were aboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage to America in 1912; Astor's wife, pregnant, was saved; Astor went down. His bravery and dignity in those moments have been noted and dramatized in books and movies about the Titanic. Chelsea Clinton got married at Ferncliff, originally Astor's estate, in Rhinebeck, NY in 2010.

Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine), 354-430 AD. 
Arguably the greatest Christian thinker and philosopher, responsible for much of the Church's fundamental theology, which he presented at a time – the decline of the Roman empire – crucial for the Church's survival and growth into the future. Married ancient pagan philosophy with Christian teaching, in particular Plato's realm of ideal forms – the ultimate source of truth and beauty, never fully perceivable by humans – with the holy "City of God". 

Barberini, Maffeo, 1568-1644 AD
. Cardinal and Papal Legate, 1606-1623; Pope Urban VIII, 1623-1644. A patron of the arts and science – including, at first, Galileo's work (see below for Galileo) – Pope Urban VIII nonetheless called Galileo to Rome in 1633 to stand before the Inquisitor, where Galileo and his Copernican, heliocentric model of the solar system, supported by Galileo's telescopic observations, were put on trial. The resulting sentence found Galileo "suspect of heresy," subject to formal imprisonment (changed the next day to house arrest, where Galileo was confined for the rest of his life), and prohibited his publications. His books already published and in many influential hands – due to the printing press – nonetheless continued to disseminate his ideas, and the Scientific Revolution ensued. In 1992, Pope John Paul II admitted that the Church had committed errors in its treatment of Galileo.

Bellarmine, Robert, 1542-1621 AD
. Cardinal, 1599; canonized 1930. As Cardinal Inquisitor, Bellarmine was one of the judges who sentenced Giordano Bruno (see below for Bruno) to be burned at the stake in 1600 for his "heresy" that the sun was just one of many stars with planets. In 1616, Bellarmine pressured Galileo to cease his support of the Copernican view of the solar system, which held, contrary to Ptolemaic and Church doctrine, that the Earth moved around a stationary sun (see below for Galileo). In 1623, Galileo resumed his development and presentation of Copernican theory.

Biden, Joseph Robinette, Jr., "Joe", 1942 AD -
. 47
^th
Vice President of the United States of America (2009-present), a strong supporter of railroad travel. Nicknamed "Amtrak Joe" for the 7,000+ train trips he made between Wilmington Station and Washington, DC while U. S. Senator from Delaware. Wilmington Station was renamed the Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Railroad Station in his honor in 2011.

Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600 AD
. Franciscan friar, whose views that the sun was a star – along with other stars in the universe which likely had planets – and divinity resided not in an anthropomorphic deity but the Universe itself as a whole (pantheism), led to him being burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Inquisition.

Dickson, William Kennedy, 1860-1935 AD
. Inventor and pioneering filmmaker. Built the kinetoscope motion picture player for Thomas Edison (see below for Edison), publicly displayed for the first time in 1893, on the basis of Edison's 1888 and 1889 preliminary patents. Also invented the kinetograph motion picture camera and perfected celluloid as a medium of film. Produced
Fred Ott's Sneeze
(5 seconds), the first motion picture copyrighted in the United States, for the Edison Manufacturing Company in 1894. Later, in England, Dickson produced the
What the Butler Saw
series, an early example of soft-core pornography.

Dvořák, Antonin Leopold, 1841-1904 AD
. Czech composer, best known today for his Symphony No.9 in E Minor,
From the New World
– aka the
New World Symphony
– commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in 1893 and written while Dvořák lived at 327 East 17th Street in New York City. The symphony was immediately popular and frequently performed
at The National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. The song "Goin' Home" was adapted
from the symphony with lyrics added by Dvořák's student William Arms Fisher in 1922, and was recorded numerous times in the 20
^th
century, most famously by Paul Robeson. Neil Armstrong brought a copy of the symphony along with him on the first human visit to the Moon in 1969.
 

Edison, Thomas Alva, 1847-1931 AD
. One of the most prolific inventors in all of human history and certainly the most prolific American inventor, not only in the number of inventions (1,093 US patents), but in inventions which transformed human life. These include the phonograph, a motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, easy-to-use electric light bulb. Edison was also an intrepid businessman, and pioneered ways of commercializing and mass distributing his inventions in corporate America. You could say he was the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of his day, combined into one. Nonetheless, Edison initially missed the ultimate uses of some of his inventions, at first thinking of the phonograph as a recorder of telephone conversation (not a recorder of music) and motion pictures as providing visual images for sound recordings (rather than, in effect, bringing short stories and novels to the screen).

Ford, Henry, 1863-1947 AD
. Revolutionized life and society by manufacturing, mass producing, and distributing the first affordable automobile in 1908. The Model T sold for $825 – equivalent to a little more than $20,000 today – and its price fell every year. He didn't invent but pioneered and perfected the assembly line manufacturing technique. Ford made his first automobiles – the very first was the Ford Quadricycle in 1896 – while in the employ of the Edison Illuminating Company as Chief Engineer (see above for Edison). Ford left Edison's company in August 1899 to go out on his own, but the two remained steadfast friends for life.

Galileo, Galilei, 1564-1642 AD
. Astronomer and philosopher of science, his telescopic observations and treatises in support of the Copernican heliocentric model of the solar system were one of the watersheds and indeed the establishing event of the Scientific Revolution. Galileo pulled back under pressure from Cardinal Bellarmine (see above for Bellarmine) and the Inquisition in 1615. But he published his
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
and its stinging critique of Ptolemaic astronomy in 1632, for which he was put on trial in Rome, under the auspices of Pope Urban VIII (see above for Barberini). Galileo recanted under the implied threat of torture and worse. But the Church could not call back the mass-produced printed copies of his book already in many learned places in Europe, and his theory and championing of scientific method ultimately won the day.
 

Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria
, 
150 BC??-250 AD?? 
The years of his birth and death are debatable – Heron pops up throughout a 400-year span of ancient history.  He was a prolific inventor of devices that embodied principles and techniques that were 2,000 years ahead of their mass application in the Industrial Age.  These included a toy that ran on steam power (the aeolipile) and an automated theater that utilized "phantom mirror" and persistence-of-vision effects that are the basis of our motion pictures.  Many of his treatises on other inventions, and mathematics, exist just in fragments, or are known only via reference to them by later Greek, Roman, and Arabic writers. His 
Metrica
, considered his most important mathematic work, was discovered in Istanbul in 1896.

Hypatia, 355/370?-415 AD
. Daughter of Theon, who was an astronomer, mathematician, and one of the last members of the Museum in Alexandria.  Hypatia likely assisted her father in his new edition of Euclid's 
Elements
 
and his commentaries on Ptolemy's 
Almagest
, but she was considered a brilliant philosopher and mathematician in her own right, and led the Neoplatonist school in Alexandria.  Renowned not only for her intellect, but her beauty and eloquence, Hypatia attracted many students and admirers. Hypatia was pagan, however, and her charm and accomplishments infuriated certain Christian fanatics, who brutally murdered and mutilated her.  The death is thought to mark the end of Alexandria as an intellectual center of the ancient world; it was followed by an exodus of scholars.  Charles Kingsley's 1853 novel 
Hypatia
 
made her a heroine of the Victorian era, and she is today regarded as the first woman to have made a significant contribution in mathematics.  (Kingsley is today better known for his 1863 urban fantasy, 
The Water-Babies
.)

Jowett, Benjamin, 1817-1893 AD
. 
Translator of 
The Dialogues of Plato
, in four volumes, with extensive analyses and introductions, first edition, 1871 – still the standard English translation – as well as translations of Aristotle's 
Politics
. Declining health prevented him from completing a series of essays about the 
Politics
. 
He was for 28 years a tutor, and then for 23 years Master, at Balliol College, Oxford.

Morgan, John Pierpont, "J. P.", 1837-1913 AD
. Leading financier in the first decade of the 20
^th
century in America, the "Progressive Era". Arranged for the creation of General Electric, merging Edison General Electric (see above for Edison) and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. Bankrolled Nikola Tesla's attempt to develop radio at Wardenclyffe Tower in 1900 (see below for Tesla), but withdrew support in 1903 due to the success of Marconi with less expensive equipment.

Porter, Edwin Stanton, 1870-1941 AD
. The most important filmmaker in the United States in the first decade of the 20
^th
century. Joined Edison's Manufacturing Company (see above for Edison) in 1899, soon became its head movie director, and produced nearly 300 films between then and 1915, including
The Great Train Robbery
(1903), which was pathbreaking in its splicing together of simultaneously occurring action shots from different places and use of close-ups.
The Great Train Robbery
was highly popular and established motion pictures as viable commercial entertainment.

Ptolemy, Claudius, 90-168 AD. 
His 
Almagest 
and related astronomical studies provided an intricate and mathematically detailed, geocentric (Earth at the center of universe) mapping of the "epicycles" of the Sun, the Moon, and the five known planets at the time (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn - Earth was not considered a planet). Ptolemy's model held sway until the Copernican heliocentric (Sun at the center) model developed by Copernicus (1473-1543 AD) and supported by Galileo (see above for Galileo) and his telescopic observations. The Church strongly opposed this model and continued its opposition until the 20th century. The accuracy of Ptolemy's lunar equations, notwithstanding its incorrect geocentric premise, has been noted, though flaws in his lunar model were corrected by Copernicus.

Régnaul, Jean-Baptiste, 1754-1829 AD. 
French allegorical and historical painter, best known for his 
L'Éducation d'Achille
 
(1782), 
Déscente de Croix
 
(1789), and 
Socrate arrachant Alcibiade des bras de la Volupté
 
(1791). The title of the last is frequently rendered in English as 
Socrates dragging Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sin
, or 
Socrates dragging Alcibiades from the Embrace of S.,
 
and currently hangs in the Louvre
.