Ada Lovelace: The First Computer Programmer

It's my pleasure to welcome back Francesca Blanch Serrat, in the esteemed company of Ada Lovelace!

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Ada Lovelace: the First Computer Programmer

Ada Lovelace was born a celebrity. The only legitimate daughter of the mad, bad and dangerous-to-know Lord Byron and his wife, Annabella Milbanke, came into the world on December 10, 1815. The child was baptised Augusta Ada— yes, like Augusta Leigh, Byron’s half-sister and alleged lover! Only a month and five days later, Lady Byron left her husband and moved, with Ada, to her parents’ house in Seaham. The reasons behind the separation soon became the favourite topic of conversation in England. Whether the supposed accusations of immoral behaviour had any grounds or not, it is not difficult to imagine how challenging —to say the least— living with England’s most dissolute and libidinous poet was. Lord Byron went from being the nation’s darling to being rebuffed by his society. Two months later, on April 25, Byron set for Belgium. He was never to return home, and he never saw his daughter again. Around that date he wrote the third canto of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, which contains this reference to Ada in its very first stanza: 

Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!

Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?

When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,

And then we parted, – not as now we part,

But with a hope. – Awaking with a start,

The waters heave around me; and on high

The winds lift up their voices: I depart,

Whither I know not; but the hour’s gone by

When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

Byron never saw Ada again, although from some of his letters and the stanza above we know he did think about her: “I have a great love for little Ada, and I look forward to her as the pillar of my old age, should I ever reach that desolate period, which I hope not.”, wrote the poet to his publisher John Murray. He sent Annabella a locket with his hair for their five-year-old daughter, and in exchange she sent him a portrait of the child. Ada grew up fatherless, with her mother, her grandmother, and a legion of tutors. Annabella took great pains to ensure that Ada received a carefully designed education and did not fall into poetic musings like her father. Annabella made sure her daughter followed a strict timetable: Music at 10, French Reading at 11:15, Arithmetic at 11:30, Work at 1:30, Music again at 3:15 and French Exercises at 4:30 (Ada’s school day in the year 1824; she was eight). The zeal with which Annabella supervised Ada’s education might seem curious from our perspective. However, Annabella herself had been instructed in several subjects, four languages, drawing and dancing; and she was a wealthy, educated woman with the money and time to focus all her energies on her daughter’s upbringing. The young Ada showed signs of genius —mathematical and with a tint of imagination— from an early age: In 1828 she designed the plans for a flying machine.

Ada’s childhood does not sound like a happy one: her mother was not especially warm, her education occupied a great deal of her time and she suffered from frequent illnesses. However, she enjoyed the privileges that come with money, and when she was ten, she was taken on a fifteen-month Grand Tour of the continent. When they came back, they moved to London. Because of her rank and education, she met the intellectual personalities of her age, and became good friends with some of them, such as Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday, Joanna Baillie and Mary Somerville. 

Ada Gordon married William King, who was later to become the Earl of Lovelace. They had three children. Ada loved horses and gambling. She attempted to create a mathematical model for bets, the failure of which led her to a considerable debt.

  She died of uterine cancer in 1852, aged 36, curiously at the same age her father passed away.

Lovelace and Babbage

Charles Babbage was Cambridge Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and founder of the Statistical Society. His life’s dream was to invent a colossal reliable mechanical calculator machine called the Difference Engine, a project that he never finished (it was finally built from his original plans in 2000 and can be found in the Science Museum in London). He is best known for the invention of the Analytical Engine, a precursor to the modern computer. 

It was June 1833, when eighteen-year old Ada met Charles Babbage. They became good friends and began exchanging letters and notes discussing mathematical issues, including, amongst others, the plans for the Analytical Engine. It was Babbage who coined the name “The Enchantress of Numbers” in reference to Ada. In 1843, Ada published a translation of Luigi Menabrea’s Sketch of the Analytical Engine —a French transcription of a lecture by Babbage— with her notes, remarkably longer than the paper. This section includes what it has become known as the first computer program, an algorithm detailing the instructions for the first computer programme, making Ada Lovelace the first computer programmer. This, along with her other contributions, led her  to be considered the founder of computing science.

“Ada Lovelace Day” is celebrated internationally every October since 2009 with the aim to promote young girls’ interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and celebrate women’s contributions to STEM fields.

If you are interested in Ada’s life, there are some recent biographies out there, for instance James Essinger’s Ada’s Algorithm (Melville House 2013). However, if fiction is more your cup of tea, I strongly recommend Sydney Padua’s The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (Penguin Books, 2015) and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (Faber&Faber 1993). 

About the Author

Francesca Blanch Serrat is an MA candidate. She graduated in English Studies with a minor in Gender Studies from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Catalonia) in 2015. She spent a life changing, tea charged academic year in the University of Edinburgh in 2014. She is currently working on her MA dissertation on Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya. Her main focuses of interest are 18th century women writers and English and French Romanticism. She likes cats, Feminism, dead French revolutionaries, socks, and talking about Lord Byron with alarming familiarity. 

Twitter, Academia.edu, Blog

Written content of this post copyright © Francesca Blanch Serrat, 2016.

Song of the Sea Maid: An Interview with Rebecca Mascull

I am thrilled to welcome Rebecca Mascull to the salon today to chat about the inspiration, history and magic that has gone into her new novel, Song of the Sea Maid. 

Before we begin though, I must take a moment to let you know what a wonderful book Song of the Sea Maid is. 

Having adored Rebecca's debut, The Visitors, I can confirm that Song of the Sea Maid is more than a match for it. Beautifully evocative, the book really can transport you back in time and to another land; once you begin to follow the adventures of Dawnay, an educated foundling with a passion for science and travel, you will not want to return to the 21st century!

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1. What really grabbed me was the sense of period that you captured so well. I'd be really interested in your research methods and the way you immerse yourself in the sense of place when writing = there's almost a hint of method. I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts on how children like Dawnay might have fared in the 18th century had they not had the fortune to meet her benefactors.

It’s so heartening to hear that, Catherine, thank you. I do my best with research, but it never feels quite good enough! I always feel, I could’ve done that more or this better. Funnily enough, I was doing a talk to some creative writing students the other week and someone asked me about the ‘immersion’ technique and I’d never really thought of it that way. But it’s right – I did actually compare it to method acting, so I guess I do something along those lines, though I don’t dress up in big frocks and wigs and flounce around the house (though maybe I should…) 

My main immersion technique is two-fold: firstly, read about the era in as much depth as I can, before and during writing, so that I’m ‘living’ in the C18th in my head while I’m drafting. Also, I read books written during the period – this works very well for picking up the tone of voice of C18th prose – both fiction e.g. I read Smollett, Fielding, Richardson, Defoe, Swift as well as non-fiction, such as diaries, letters, memoirs and essays etc. A brilliant book for this was The Memoir of an C18th Footman, which gave me a brilliant insight into the lives of the ordinary bloke on the street. I loved his turn of phrase and got some great nuggets of lovely language from him, which I shamelessly pilfered for some of my characters. So, all this reading I do in a kind of intense, full-on period for several months, until I reach a kind of critical mass where I know I’m full up to the brim and ready to start drafting. The other kind of immersion I do is a picture wall. I have three cupboard doors in my study that I plaster with pictures from the period every time I write a novel. When I walk into the room before I start writing, I stand in front of the doors and stare at all the pictures and it helps me to block out the C21st and step back in time. 

As for children in the C18th, many who weren’t rich had a pretty rough time of it, yes. I remember reading somewhere that the main thing about the C18th was that life was cheap. Children and animals were beaten and abused, as were women and servants etc. The wealthy were picked off by disease the same as anyone else, and medicine was in its infancy. There’s a scene I really enjoyed writing where a group of scientists and officers discuss the causes of scurvy – there was so much ignorance about the body and how it worked, it’s quite shocking. So, life was hard for most people. I could’ve written about a rich girl, but I wanted to put plenty of obstacles in my character’s path and see how she fared. If you couldn’t secure funds from someone or somewhere, it would’ve been very tough indeed for an orphan girl from nowhere with nothing to become educated and travel. So, needs must.

2. An easy one after that; what elements of the 18th century do you like/hate.

Well, as above, I’d say that the feeling that life was cheap was something quite shocking and frightening to me. The chaotic and cruel lives that people often led made me very sad to read about. There’s an image early on in the book of a cart full of paupers being taken through town in the middle of the night, moving them outside of the parish boundaries so that they could be dumped and the parish wouldn’t be liable for them. That sense of people as cattle, as things, is of course so miserable and depressing to a modern reader. The filth in the streets and the horrible incurable illnesses many got is also something that puts me off the period. However, there were some wonderful things about the C18th – the benefactors that sprang up, often self-made people like Coram, who simply wanted to do good. Also, I just love the look of it, the dresses and hats and wigs. The thought that everyone was wearing wigs, all the time, is just so nuts to me, it makes me laugh! And the age of sail, those beautiful ships, ah, so romantic to look at, but such a filthy hive of misery below decks quite often, sadly!

3. You balance the worlds of science and mythology perfectly; is this purely fictional for you, or do the questions raised in the book echo any of your own philosophy and beliefs? 

I’m really glad you asked about this, as it’s an element of the book that’s not been discussed much. I absolutely agree that this is an idea at the heart of this story. I’d say that some of the minor characters serve to highlight this tussle between science and mythology and religion, of course, that is something so characteristic of the C18th. For example, Matron is very superstitious, the Founder is deeply religious and Dawnay’s tutor Mr Applebee is very scientific. They all put forward their own ideas about how they see the world and Dawnay is influenced by them all in the way her thinking evolves. It was an age in which brilliant scientific discoveries and ideas were being bandied about – it was the Enlightenment, after all – and yet, at the same time, there was still a widespread belief in mythological creatures such as unicorns, dragons and mermaids. For that reason, it was such fun as a writer to explore that age and mix up all that science and religion and superstition, and watch Dawnay try to sail those waters and decide what she wants to believe in and what she rejects. As for me, I’d say I’m an agnostic about most things i.e. my general philosophy of life is, What do I know? I can’t tell you there is or is not a god, I can’t tell you what to believe. I’m pretty sure I don’t believe in God, but, as I say, What do I know? I also love churches and Bible stories and Christmas carols! I’m also a big fan of science – I just love it, despite not having a scientific brain. So, I like to have empirical proof of things, but concurrently, I’m a sucker for myths, legends, fairies, aliens, mermaids and all things fantastical! So, I’d probably fit quite nicely into the C18th…

4. It was wonderful to see Byng's tale in the novel, one that isn't so widely known now as perhaps it should be. War and current affairs were an important part of the book, but are contemporary events part of the "world creation" alluded to above? 

I first came across Admiral Byng’s story when reading Voltaire’s Candide (which I loved – what a crazy book!) One could write dozens of novels about the age of sail, of course, and many have! Horatio Hornblower and lovely stuff like that. My character was going on a sea journey so I needed to know about ships, but also she meets a sea captain, so of course, I wanted to explore the lives of sailors in the Royal Navy too. Not to give too much away, the world of sea battles was completely fascinating to me, how strategy was used and what was considered fair play or not. Poor Byng was caught up in that system and punished by it. I liked the challenge of placing my fictional characters within the backdrop of a factual landscape and watching them negotiate their way through it. It is a part of the ‘world creation’ I’m trying to achieve as a novelist, that my characters are living in the real C18th including real events, yet I want those events to be included because they are relevant to and affect my characters, and that the events are not there simply for their own sake. 

5. Lots has been said and written about the lot of women from all classes in the long 18th, but did you discover anything that surprised you about life for ladies in the era?

The thing that surprised me most was that women wore no knickers!! And when they menstruated, they just wiped it on their shifts! Vulnerable, perhaps, yet somewhat liberating too! I was really surprised and delighted to discover that women did travel alone on ships in that period. They had more freedom than one might imagine. I read a wonderful account of a woman who travelled alone towards Lisbon and was kidnapped by corsairs and taken to Morocco! It didn’t stop her, though, and she continued to travel. Many did. We just don’t hear about them. So, Dawnay’s journeys were quite pedestrian in comparison to some. I was also thrilled to discover that there were so many women scientists throughout history, if you bother to look for them. They don’t have statues built of them and we’re not really taught about them at school, apart from the odd exception, so again, Dawnay’s scientific career was unusual and yet not as exceptional as you might think. She had plenty of forebears. We just need to seek them out.

6. I'd love to hear your thoughts on anyone you may have found who might echo any of Dawnay's story; I feel as though *I* know Dawnay too, so vividly drawn was she.

Thank you so much, that’s wonderful to hear. Dawnay really was her own person. She just kind of hijacked me and told her own story. But she was partly based on a variety of reading I did about women scientists. The main two that influenced me in Dawnay’s creation were Émilie du Châtelet and Sophie Germain, though there were snippets of many other scientists I read about, including male ones such as Richard Feynman. Du Châtelet was a genius, a mathematician and scientist, a translator of Newton and all-round free spirit. She lived with her lover Voltaire and defied convention in so many ways. She also loved wearing nice frocks and loads of jewellery! I loved her defiance, her life lived as she wanted it. I read a story about Germain, that when she was a young girl she was determined to learn mathematics, but her parents didn’t approve. So she did it in her room and her parents stopped lighting her fire, so that she’d stay in bed, then they found her one morning wrapped in blankets asleep at her desk! She wasn’t allowed to go to lectures, because she was female, so she wrote letters to some great mathematicians of her day and learnt from them that way. I loved her absolute determination and pure self-knowledge, that she knew maths was the thing for her and nothing else would do and nothing would stop her! That’s Dawnay to a tee. Though I’m not a scientific person at all, there is a little bit of me in Dawnay, and that’s her stubbornness. There have been points in my life where someone in some kind of authority has said No to me, No, you can’t do that, I’m afraid. And I’ve always tried to find a way round it. Many times I’ve failed, but sometimes I’ve simply asked the question, Why not? And that can open up so many possibilities…

Synopsis

In the 18th century, Dawnay Price is an anomaly.  An educated foundling, a woman of science in a time when such things are unheard of, she overcomes her origins to become a natural philosopher.

Against the conventions of the day, and the alarm of her male contemporaries, she sets sail to Portugal to develop her theories.  There she makes some startling discoveries – not only in an ancient cave whose secrets hint as a previously undiscovered civilization, but also in her own heart.  The siren call of science is powerful, but as war approaches she finds herself pulled in another direction by feelings she cannot control.

Buy the Book

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1473604370

Amazon.com:http://amzn.com/B00OGLKJZU

About the Author

Rebecca Mascull lives by the sea in the east of England with her partner Simon and their daughter Poppy.  She has previously worked in education and has a Masters in Writing.  Song of the Sea Maid is her second novel.

Meet Rebecca Online

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Ad Astra

Suzanne Adair is my guest to discuss the matter of astronomy and her new release, Deadly Occupation!

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My latest mystery, Deadly Occupation, is set in Wilmington, North Carolina, January 1781. The American Revolution there has entered its seventh grueling year of conflict between Crown forces and those residents who want independence from King George III. In chapter two, a nerdy, telescope building astronomer named Carlisle is beside himself with glee after having discovered an object in the sky that’s either a comet or a planet. My detective, Michael Stoddard, is a practical man who doesn’t share Carlisle’s enthusiasm or nocturnal hours.

The character of Carlisle is loosely inspired by astronomer William Herschel, who is credited for finding the planet Uranus. Carlisle is my nod to the state of astronomy and science in the eighteenth century. As such, Carlisle represents an element that fascinates me about this century: the abundance of scientific discoveries made in the Western world during that time. These discoveries happened during a period when certain religious institutions and governments were more permissive of intellectual freedom than they’d been in previous centuries.

Today, Westerners take that intellectual freedom for granted. However astronomers didn’t always have it so easy. Nicolaus Copernicus, who proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system, had his astronomy equipment destroyed in 1520 by the Teutonic Order. In 1615, the Roman Inquisition investigated Galileo Galilei over his support of the heliocentric system, then forced him to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.

Herschel

In 1781, William Herschel was living in England, with King George III his monarch. Herschel was one of several astronomers to observe Uranus. At first, he thought he’d found a comet, but meticulous observation and recording of the object’s motion soon convinced him that it was a primary planet. Like my fictitious astronomer, Herschel was a busy fellow. In addition to his discovery of Uranus, he observed and catalogued double stars, comets, nebulae, star clusters, and moons around Saturn and Uranus. He discovered infrared radiation, coined the term “asteroid,” and voiced his belief that there was life on other worlds. He came close to figuring out the effect of the eleven-year sunspot cycle on agriculture.

Of course, Herschel had the wealth to dabble and dream his way to many of these discoveries. However had he been born in the previous century, or in a place where the culture wasn’t as permissive as Georgian England, that wealth would have counted for less. His beliefs would likely have put him in hot water with the Church, as his astronomer predecessors had been. He might have had to disguise or curtail his discoveries, or study only what the state approved.

So here’s to the eighteenth century Western world’s freedom to explore the sciences!

Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astronomy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel

About the Author

Award-winning novelist Suzanne Adair lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her mysteries transport readers to the Southern theater of the American Revolution, where she brings historic towns, battles, and people to life. She fuels her creativity with Revolutionary War reenacting and visits to historic sites. When she’s not writing, she enjoys cooking, dancing, hiking, and spending time with her family.

Social media links:

Web site and blog: http://www.SuzanneAdair.com

Quarterly electronic newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/Suzanne-Adair-News

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Suzanne.Adair.Author

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Suzanne_Adair

Buy links for Deadly Occupation:
Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1048353039
Kindle US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016FJNWA4
Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B016FJNWA4
Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deadly-occupation-suzanne-adair/1122780410
Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/deadly-occupation
Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0988912937

Written content of this post copyright © Suzanne Adair, 2015.

Astronomy vs. Astrology: Science vs. Superstition in the 18th Century

It's a pleasure to welcome Monica Hall to the blog once again with a post on astronomy versus astrology... 

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ASTRONOMY vs. ASTROLOGY

Science vs. Superstition in the 18th Century

The 18th century is acknowledged to be the beginning of ‘big’ science in many areas – chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics etc. It was also an era of improving optics thanks originally to Newton’s reflecting telescope.  Great minds included Edmund Halley (1656-1742), who followed in the footsteps of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), and devoted much effort to coordinating the extraordinary opportunity for astronomers to observe two transits of Venus during the 18th century, in 1761 and 1769, which he never saw.  Halley had calculated the dates of these event in 1716, and warned fellow scientists that it would not happen again for a century, so they had plenty of time to plan for this unmissable opportunity to calculate the size of the solar system.  This was definitely big science, at a time when accurate map-making here on earth was in its infancy.  It took over 200 worldwide observers of the transits to provide the data from both events to calculate the distance from Venus to the Sun, and then to extrapolate the size of the solar system from Kepler’s calculations of the orbits of the other planets.  This was a huge achievement, and their accuracy was not exceeded until the 20thC, and then not by so much.  

Used as we now are to stupendous distances in space and time, it is difficult to imagine how astounding these calculations were.  And to compound the mystery was the Milky Way, also an object of intense observation and curiosity in the 18th century.  The works of William Herschel (1738-1822) and Thomas Wright (1711-1786) convinced other scientists that it was a flattened disc comprising untold suns similar to ours, the stars in the galaxy.  Below is Herschel’s ‘Universe’ (Milky Way) with our sun at the centre-left, naturally, but Wright spotted faint nebulae much farther away which he (correctly) thought were other galaxies.  Cue religious tremors.

The rather odd notion that our lives might be influenced by the stars has persisted, it seems, since time immemorial.  Without very much knowledge about such things as radiation or gravity, even during the exploding Enlightenment, people thought that the Heavens exerted a power, which it obviously does, but hardly extending to whether it is a good day to wage war, ask your boss for a raise, or invest in the South Sea Bubble (burst 1720).

Prognostication has always been good business, from the Oracles onwards that we actually know about, but surely long before that.  Croesus allegedly consulted the Delphic Oracle before waging war on the Persians, and was told that a great empire would fall (the Oracle was taking no chances, as usual).  Croesus optimistically assumed it would be the opposition’s empire, but sadly it was his.  One would think this might have put a crimp in the Oracle’s reputation, but everybody just blamed Croesus.  

The progress of the Enlightenment during the 18th century did put a crimp into belief in astrology.  It was still very popular, however, as it had been in previous centuries, despite Church disapproval and associations with witchcraft and, weirdly, the credulous had to be educated; they had to be literate in order to read the Almanacs and pamphlets.   One such writer was John Partridge who was born the son of a shoemaker in Covent Garden, but who educated himself to the degree necessary to study medicine in Holland.  He also believed in astrology, and wrote assiduously of the need to return to the Ptolemaic system of interpretation, instead of the Arabic, and broadcast his views.  This sort of conflict between science and what we would call superstition was not uncommon in the 17th/18th centuries.  Newton, himself, apparently spent an inordinate time on alchemy, and rather less on gravity, optics, and mathematics.  

Others, however, were rather more sceptical.  Jonathon Swift (1667-1745) sharpened his satirical quill and created the fictional ‘astrologer’ Isaac Bickerstaff Esq., which was a direct attack upon Partridge, but not quite why you might expect.  Swift was devout, whereas Partridge was not, so both these educated men attacked each other’s supernatural beliefs.  Swift’s most successful spoof was Bickerstaff’s prediction of the death of Partridge by a ‘raging fever’, which dogged the latter until his actual death.

Here, five Foot deep, lies on his Back,
A Cobler, Starmonger, and Quack;
Who to the Stars in pure Good–will,
Does to his best look upward still.
Weep all you Customers that use
His Pills, his Almanacks, or Shoes;

Before Swift, in the 17th century, an unknown genius created Poor Robin’s Prophecies.  This was a savage satire on almanacs and religion, lampooning astrological forecasts by predicting the totally obvious, and creating bogus saints’ days.  It sounds fun.  It is alleged to have lost its sharpest satirical edge by the early 18th century, but nonetheless gained an international reputation for parody, being published in the USA as well as here, and lasting until 1776.  An appreciative commentator remarked that the Prophesies were enough, for men and women of sense, to ‘break their twatling-strings’.  Sadly, we do not seem to know what these were.  I, for one, want to.  

But before you come over all 21st century, read this extract from the Independent (24.10.05) about one of our world’s most successful astrologers, Jonathan Cainer.

He claims a vast army of "at least 12 million people" who devour his planetary musings in various forms - syndicated newspaper columns, books, phonelines and the net. Small wonder then that his worldwide businesses turn over £2m annually and employ 30 staff. There's little doubt why newspapers fight for his services. "Horoscopes," he says, "have turned out to sell papers, just like the cartoon, the sudoku or crosswords. They are a little bit of reader glue. And a good astrologer will do two things for a newspaper: bring in new people and keep the ones you've already got because it becomes a matter of familiarity."

But the last words on this subject should be from one who was there at the time, and not avidly reading an Almanac to discover what the stars held in terms of romance, finances and fate, but a true scientist. 



It is said that Kepler’s belief in astrology informed his entire scientific career, so one cannot simply write off such beliefs as mere superstition.  They were understandable in their time but, more importantly, became a springboard of curiosity from which we have so benefited.






References

Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989) 
Wardhaugh, B. (2012), Poor Robin’s Prophecies:  A curious Almanac, and the everyday mathematics of Georgian Britain, OUP


About the Author

Retired after a working life in business and management, Monica thankfully pursues her interest in both philosophy and the history of our Industrial Revolution.


Written content of this post copyright © Monica Hall, 2015.

A Watercolour Meteor

Paul Sandby RA (Nottingham, England, birthdate unknown, baptised 1731 – London, England, 9th November 1809) 

Hailing from my own homeland of Nottingham, English artist Paul Sanby was a mapmaker who turned his skills to watercolour and landscape. Later one of the founder members of the Royal Academy, Sandby and his brother, Thomas, the Deputy Ranger of Windsor Great Park, were both highly talented chaps. It is Paul who commands my attention today, with his 1783 work, The Meteor of August 18, 1783, as seen from the East Angle of the North Terrace, Windsor Castle.

Sandby spent many long and happy days at Windsor in the company of his brother and he happened to be at the Castle on the fateful night of 18th August 1783, when a meteor sped across the heavens. The event caused enormous excitement across the nation and things were no different at Windsor where just after 9.15pm, Sandby watched in wonder alongside a group of friends that included Tiberius Cavallo, an Italian philosopher who would later write his own account of the meteor.

Sandby's own account of the event was a pictorial one and he produced this wonderfully evocative watercolour. For me the beauty of the work is in its simplicity. The fine surroundings of Windsor are reduced to a wall and terrace on which half a dozen people stand, dwarfed by the heavens above. In the moonlight they throw long shadows yet their attention and ours is caught by the bright meteor that streaks across the centre of the canvas. One can only imagine the excitement of witnessing such an unexpected astronomical event and I think Sandby has perfectly captured the scale of the heavens in comparison to Windsor and his companions; they stand and watch in awe, as so many others must have on that warm summer night.

Jean-Philippe Baratier, Child Scholar

Jean-Philippe Baratier (Schwabach, Germany, 19th January 1721 –  Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, 5th October 1740)

Jean-Philippe Baratier attended by Minerva by Antoine Pesne, 1735

We have met scholars on these pages before and each is remarkable in their own way but for those who reach academic excellence at a very young age, we reserve a special welcome. Just like  the Infant Scholar of Lübeck, our guest today was a child genius who achieved enormous success and recognition yet was not destined to live through his teens.

Jean-Philippe Baratier was born the son of a Huguenot minister, François Baratier, and in his early years he enjoyed a home education so comprehensive that, by the age of five, he was able to speak Latin, Dutch, French and Greek, whilst he was well on the way to mastering Hebrew. Clearly his endeavours were successful because his Latin and French translations of the Hebrew Bible appear in 1729, when Baratier was just eight years old. Although his health was frail, his mental powers were robust and inexhaustible and he strove to found new challenges and works to be completed.

He translated multiple pieces from Hebrew into French and won the undying respect and admiration of no less than the star of our own Gallimaufry, Samuel Johnson, and Voltaire, who lauded his remarkable skills. From theology to mathematics, antiquity to literature, there seemed to be no field in which Baratier did not excel. Graduating with a Master of Arts at the age of fourteen, the boy's fierce intellect appeared to know no bounds and he was made a life member of the Berlin Royal Academy, where he embarked on studies of nautical longitude. 

However, this in depth work was not enough for the young scholar and he took on a number of projects that were wide in scope and mentally draining. Eventually the pressure of his commitments became too much and his frail constitution collapsed, with the young man dead of an unknown illness at just nineteen years of age.

Eise Jeltes Eisinga and the Drawing Room Planetarium

Eise Jeltes Eisinga (Dronrijp, The Netherlands, 21st February 1744 – Franeker, The Netherlands, 27th August 1828) 

Eise Eisinga by Willem Bartel van der Kooi, 1827

The salon where I write my tales of the long 18th century is the place where I feel happiest; it is here, surrounded by the things most precious to me, that I am at my most productive, creative and settled. It is far from minimalist and full of things that bring the 18th century to life, whether pictures, books or little items of interest.

Another man who turned his home into a most personal place was my guest today, Eise Jeltes Eisinga. Employed in the wool industry, Eisinga's true passion was for astronomy and since childhood he was fascinated in the heavens, publishing his first book on the subject at the age of just 17. He harboured grand dreams of being the proud master of his own planetarium and, in 1774, decided to make this a reality.

Astronomers across Europe were keenly waiting for a conjunction of the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter that was due in May 1774. However, Reverend Eelco Alta, from Boazum in Netherlands predicted that this conjunction, due on 8th May, would mark the end of the world. In his own book he predicted that the planets and the moon would crash into one another and force the earth straight into the sun, resulting in a fiery demise for the planet and all life on it. Many who read the book took it as fact and soon people were just a little panicked that they were headed for Armageddon. 

Sure that the Reverend and his readers were mistaken, Eisinga set about constructing the Eise Eisinga Planetarium in his home in Franeker. Although he missed the conjunction by some time, he eventually completed construction in 1781. As soon as it was finished, the planetarium was out of date as Uranus was discovered soon after and there was no space remaining on the ceiling in which to paint this newly discovered planet! 

However, Eisinga's planetarium is still a remarkable achievement and King William I of the Netherlands certainly thought so; visiting the planetarium in 1818, he immediately decided to buy it for the nation and it remains in working order to this day!

A Fatal Experiment: The Death of Georg Wilhelm Richmann

Georg Wilhelm Richmann  (Pernau, Estonia, 22nd July 1711 – St Petersburg, Russia, 6th August 1753)

To Estonia today for the tale of a Baltic German gentleman of learning whose professional fascination with electricity proved to be the death of him. Georg Wilhelm Richmann was a pioneering physicist who conducted experiments on natural electricity and, as you can probably guess, met a sticky end thanks to it!

Death of Georg Wilhelm Richmann from Les Grand Inventions by Louis F Gueir, 1863

One summer day, Richmann was involved in a meeting at the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in St Petersburg when he heard the sound of distant thunder. At his home he had a device named an electrical gnomon, with which he measured the strength of atmospheric electricity and in every storm he made and recorded readings using this item. Keen to employ the device in this particular storm he excused himself and rushed home to begin his experiments.

Whilst closely examining an electroscope, a bolt of ball lightning struck the device and travelled straight into the physicist's head. The electricity rushed through Richmann and left via his foot, blowing a hole in his shoe and sending him flying across the room. The gnomon was destroyed and the physicist was killed instantly, the first scientist to die whilst experimenting with electricity.

Paul Möhring: From Kings to Birds to Botany

Paul Heinrich Gerhard Möhring (aka Paul Mohr; Jever, Germany, 21st July 1710 -  Jever, Germany, 28th October 1792)

1782

Today we take a trip to Germany to meet a man who enjoyed a successful career across a wide range of scientific interests. From medicine to natural science, he was driven by an inherent curiosity for the world in which he lived and enjoyed great success in a range of fields.

Möhring was born to a pastor, Gottfried Victor Möhring, and his wife, Sophia Catherine Töpken. He was a fiercely intelligent young man and excelled as a student of medicine in Wittenberg, where he impressed his academic tutors with his skill and approach to his studies. He graduated in 1733 and returned to his hometown, where he took up a successful career as a doctor whilst indulging his passion for natural science, building up an extensive body of correspondence with other botanists and scientists of the era.

A decade after his graduation, Möhring was awarded the role of physician to Prince Johann Ludwig II of Anhalt-Zerbst and built on this professional success with a domestic one, marrying his sweetheart, Juliane Damm, who would be mother to his four children, one of whom followed his father as court physician.

Throughout his long life, Möhring worked tirelessly as a writer of scientific works. His most influential and famous book was the 1752 publication, Avium Genera, which was his attempt to classify birds into four classes. He continued publishing and corresponding with fellow naturalists until his death, immortalised to this day in the plant name, Moehringia.

A Ballooning Tragedy for France

We have made several balloon flights here at the salon, sailing high above Europe in the company of some aviation pioneers of the glorious Georgian age and today we return to the clouds for a fateful, unhappy day in the history of ballooning.

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier was a teacher and ballooning enthusiast who had achieved fame when he made the first manned free balloon flight in 1783. Riding high on this success, his next plan was even more audacious: a cross-Channel flight. A new balloon powered by hot air and hydrogen was required and after test flights throughout 1784, de Rozier was ready to take to the skies once more.

Deaths of balloonists Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and Pierre Romain 

Well aware that this was a risky venture, De Rozier grew more anxious as the day approached but was grateful for the presence of Pierre-Jules Romain, his experienced co-pilot. Early on 15th June 1785, the pair lifted off from Boulogne-sur-Mer in a richly decorated balloon, hoping for fair winds, good weather and a trouble-free flight.

Unfavourable winds forced them further and further from the coast and modern investigations have concluded that a static spark ignited the heavily gilded hydrogen bag, causing the balloon to deflate. It crashed down to earth in a cloud of flame before eyewitnesses including de Rozier's young fiancée, Susan Dyer, just half an hour after its ascent. Both passengers in the balloon were killed and France was plunged into mourning for these first, high profile ballooning fatalities. A week later Dyer was found dead after apparently taking her own life and the men were memorialised throughout the nation, with an obelisk marking the spot at which they died.