![]() ![]() The Dukes of Brunswick (he served three) gave him ample time to pursue his own interests. Yet, after a sojourn in Paris where he was unable to obtain permanent employment, he settled in the provincial town of Hanover as courtier and librarian to the House of Brunswick (Braunschweig in German). In London, he presented a calculating machine at the Royal Society and was granted an honorary fellowship. For example, he attempted to persuade Louis XIV to invade Egypt. Travelling widely, Leibniz became busy with political questions of the day. Declining a professorship, he spent his 20s undertaking scientific studies and writing. By the age of 20 he was a Doctor of Law at the University of Altdorf. He studied law and philosophy, and published his first dissertation, ‘Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui’, in 1663. ![]() What characterises the following geniuses is not that they were necessarily the first – or the only – thinkers working on a problem, but that the many problems they ironed out were particularly rewarding. Obviously if Watt had never existed, it is ridiculous to presume the steam engine and industrial revolution would never have happened. Thomas Newcomen constructed a prototype, which Watt improved upon by reducing waste and heat loss sources. By the early 1700s, every sub-element of the modern steam engine had been invented and practically applied. It was a group effort over generations, from the 1606 discovery that heated water confined to a bombshell would explode the shell, to the first use of a piston in the steam engine in 1678. If there are enough competent minds attacking the same problem, invention is inevitable – it is often cumulative and, in that sense, collective.Ĭonsider the steam engine. Lesser known examples include the almost independent discovery of the planet Neptune by Leverrier and Adams, oxygen by Scheele and Priestley in 1774, while four different astronomers are credited with the discovery of sunspots (Galileo, Fabricius, Scheiner and Harriott), all in 1611. Newton and Leibniz invented calculus, Wallace and Darwin found the theory of natural selection at the same time, and Alexander Graham Bell put in a patent for the telephone on the same day as Elisha Gray. Many major discoveries have been made repeatedly by different inventors working without knowledge of each other’s research. ![]()
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