Science & Technology

Human Robots and Computer Art

Since the myths of creation were composed, writes John Cohen, men have tried to emulate the gods. Is the twentieth-century computer capable of the daemonic urge?

Longitude and the Sea Clock

John F. Bailey describes how all early navigators, until the mid-eighteenth century, were baffled by the problem of longitude in finding their ships’ position.

Life at Henry VII's Court

M.J. Tucker describes how, although he may have looked rather like a medieval miser, Henry VII attracted to his Court some of the best minds of the Renaissance

The Keelmen of Tyneside

From the fourteenth century until the building of the railways, writes D.J. Rowe, the Newcastle keelmen were indispensable and pugnacious carriers between collieries and sea-going ships.

Natural Philosophy in James Howell

Meyrick Carre introduces James Howell; an enquiring disciple of the new astronomers who enlivened the British seventeenth-century scene, and ended his life as historiographer-royal to Charles II.

John Wesley and the Age of Reason

Stuart Andrews describes how the founder of Methodism shared the encyclopaedic concern with science that characterizes the eighteenth century.