Wanting a bit more prim space, Elihu Leominster and I are contemplating adding a second lot to the Oakwood Laboratories holdings in Wheatstone Waterways. The plot next store to our shop is open following the departure of Captain Red Llewellyn’s treehouse.
While I intend to add a modest home, it occured to me we also might also add a memorial park. With that in mind, I would like to elicit nominations from the citizenry of New Babbage for inclusion in the “New Babbage Municipal Pantheon of Inventors and Ingenious Artistans”.
My thought is to have a semi-traditional monument and reflecting pool, with a wall of honor inscribed with names. I may wish to separate the names into categories: science, literature, fine arts, engineering, etc.
Following are some obvious choices (and personal favorites):
- Nikola Tesla
- Thomas Alva Edison
- Charles Babbage
- Charles Wheatstone
- Isembard Kingdom Brunel
- Leonardo
- Athanasius Kircher
- Herbert George Wells
- Jules Gabriel Verne
- Lady Ada Lovelace
- Johannes Gutenberg
- Joseph-Michel Montgolfier
- Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier
- Tycho Brahe
- Lyman Frank Baum
- Michael Faraday
- Henry Maudslay
- Isaac Newton
- Karl Benz
- Gottlieb Daimler
- Robert Fulton
- Benjamin Franklin
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- Samuel Longhorn Clemens
- William Blake
- Florence Nightengale
- Edgar Allen Poe
- Howard Phillips Lovecraft
- Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson
- Edward J.M.D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
- Arthur Rackham
- William Morris
- George MacDonald
- James Matthew Barrie
I could go on… but I want to hear what you think.
I nominate Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus.
John Moses Browning
Big smile. Good choice. I have had the honor of firing 2 of his designs, the M1911 and the M2.
John Harrison
Longitude was a good movie.
It really was. I enjoyed it, as a student of navigation and cartography.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Samuel Morse
Henry Bessemer
NarcÃs Monturiol i Estarriol
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/08/submarines-1.html
I see Isambard Kingdom Brunel is already on the list.
Is there a timeframe we should constrain ourselves to? No one after the 1880’s, for example?
That is always a sticky question in New Babbage, isn’t it? I was thinking of an arbitrary cutoff of the year 1900 in our real-life timeline. In a realm where time travel exists, and we’ve been destroyed and remade in recent memory, I tend to think of Babbage as being like Mieville’s Bas Lag world; which is to say we connect with other realms, cities and sims in a tenuous manner, which is best not to pin down to firmly. Let us assume a 1900 cutoff, with some flexibility depending on the individual.
In that case, I nominate:
I have a likeness of Curie on the wall in my house, had a putative Hypatia, but we do not have a reliable phizz for her of which I am aware. She is next to Florence Nightingale, who should also qualify.
I guess Maat-ka-re Hatshepsut is too much?
You overlooked a whole bunch of Scottish inventors and engineers from the Industrial age…
John Loudon MacAdam (Macadamised roads, the forerunner to “TarMac”)
David Dunbar-Buick (Overhead valve “pushrod” engine)
Thomas Telford (Modern canal design)
James Watt (Condensing steam engine)
Robert Wilson (The screw propellor)
James Naysmyth (Steam hammer/Pneumatic Hammer)
James Young (Worlds first oil refinery and process of extracting oarrafin from coal)
Sir John Leslie (Pyroscope and Atometer)
William Cullen (Refrigerator)
John Jameson (Triple distilled whiskey)
John Boyd Dunlop (The pneumatic tyre)
Sir James Dewer (The Dewer Flask…basis of modern day “Thermos” flasks)
Thats theones off of the top of my head which happened before 1900…Wikipedia probably has a whole lot more :)
Since we seem to have a dearth of naval personnel on the list, I’m nominating John Ericsson, the designer of the Monitor.
And just to appease Jed, I’d also like to nominate Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling and Sir Hiram Maxim.
Has anyone called Winchester yet?
I never much liked Winchester. But I do like Winchester.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxLAzuGtPpI&feature=related
Forget Winchester, he sold shirtwaists. Benjamin Tyler Henry is the one you want. Since we started talking guns, and since I did avoid the obvious one (that boy from Hartford) I would also add Rollin White and Hiram Berdan.
the wright brothers?
Samuel Pierpont Langley or how about Otto Lilienthal?
Wright Brothers? pffttttttttttttt…. Richard Pearse!
Samuel Franklin Cody
Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin,
James Clerk Maxwell
well we have Mark Twain .. I would love love to see a bit of Edgar Allen Poe ;) in Babbage!
“Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Edgar Allan Poe”
For my own part, I have never had a thought
Which I could not set down in words
With even more distinctness that which I conceived it.
There is however a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy
Which are not thoughts and to which as yet
I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language.
These fancies arise in the soul,
Alas how rarely, only at epochs
Of most intense tranquillity
When the bodily and mental health are in perfection.
And those mere points of time
When the confines of the waking world
Blend with the world of dreams.
And so I captured this fancy
Where all that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
*grins at each one us have a different suggestion*
how noble er.. *brave* of you to ask :) ..