Fable

This may be the cleverest person ever to have lived with an IQ of 250-300 (Einstein’s was 160). He could read the New York Times when he was 18 months old and went to Harvard when he was 11 – the youngest person ever to go there. He was a mathematical prodigy and linguist – speaking 25 languages.When he was ...

There was once a scientist, whose obituary was published before he died. One of the phrases in the obituary called him a ‘merchant of death’. Horrified by this, he decided he had to do something to be remembered in a different light. Whereupon he founded an institution which has established him ever since as a revered benefactor of humanity. Moral: ...

There was once a scientist who was offered the Presidency of Israel. This was his reply. “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal ...

If you ever pass this house at Hampton Court Reflect upon it that this man once lived there He is one of our greatest scientists  who had clapped eyes on Napoleon Bonaparte, rejected honours and changed our understanding of  the world. Moral: Greatness of mind can come with nobility of spirit.

There was once an American genius who had the unusual distinction of being expelled from Harvard twice. He invented many things and tended to give them the same name. Here is car which he invented: and here is a house he designed Both house and car were called by the same name. He was awarded the US Presidential Medal of ...

33 years ago two scientists made this proposal to management aimed at facilitating access to data in a complex organisation: ‘This proposal concerns the management of general information about accelerators and experiments. It discusses the problems of loss of information about complex evolving systems and derives a solution based on a distributed hypertext system.” It changed the world Moral: Ideas ...

137 years ago, after a series of botched judicial hangings, the Governor of New York set up a commission to look at alternative means of execution. A New York dentist, mindful of the central tool of his trade, suggested a method which was officially adopted as the state’s preferred method of execution in 1888 and which was first used for ...

21 years ago the tallest elevator in the world was built. Here it is:   The lift  takes passengers up 326 metres (1070 feet) in two minutes. The elevator’s shafts and tunnels were carved from a quartz sandstone column. 154 metres of the lift are embedded into the column, and the remaining 172 metres are set into exposed steel and ...

This barrier was built to stop flooding. The 78 moveable linked gates sit beneath the surface when the water levels are normal, allowing the gates to fill with water. When the water level rises, the water is pumped out of the gates and replaced with air, so the gates rise to the surface and form a barrier capable of stopping ...

In 1986 US computer companies were finding that only about 10% of the memories they used were coming from US sources. It  was decided to set up a domestic memory company which would raise $500 million from the computer industry to get into production. All of a sudden memory prices dropped, supplies were abundant and the US computer companies decided ...