Science & Technology

Francis J. Bremer introduces a true Renaissance man; Thomas Hariot, man of action and ideas.

Once Rowland Hill had launched the Penny Post, many British citizens, it was said, first learned to read that they might enjoy a letter. By Dee Moss.

D.E. Moss introduces a Cambridge scholar who was tutor to Princess Elizabeth, an observant traveller in Germany and the author of books on archery and education.

Douglas Hilt introduces the scholar, innovator and agricultural reformer, Pablo de Olavide, who brought to Spain the ideas of the French Enlightenment.

Barbara Kerr profiles a nineteenth-century country vicar who was a militant reformer in sewage and sanitation.

Towards the end of the twelfth century, writes Jim Bradbury, Greek Fire, which the Byzantines had long used, was first employed in Western Europe.

Windmills abounded in England from the twelfth century onwards. Terence Paul Smith describes how their bodies usually revolved on a vertical post so that the miller could face the sails into the wind.

Terence McLaughlin describes aeronautical experiments from gliders to powered machines.

During the 1850s, writes W. Bruce Lincoln, an intrepid Russian traveller penetrated hitherto almost unknown territory, making large collections of botanical and geographical specimens, and exploring twenty-three difficult mountain passes.

Father Ricci spent many years on his mission near Canton. Nora C. Buckley describes how, eventually, this Jesuit's skills in mathematics and astronomy were welcomed in Peking.