Honeymoon

 

The first recorded data concerning the phenomenon of the "honeymoon' is found among the early writings of the Northern European countries. newly married couples were required - actually compelled - to drink from one full moon to the next full moon (about 30 days), a wine derived from fermented honey and water and called metheglin.

It was believed that a thirty day diet of metheglin furnished newlyweds with sufficient sweetness to carry out their marriage vows forever. Some of the newlyweds took their metheglin intake so seriously that they perished from it.

That was the fate of Attila, the great warrior, who imbibed so much honey at his wedding feast that he drank himself to death.

Ampere

 

Andre Marie Ampere (1775-1836), the French scientist, is one of three men (Volta and Watt) whose names are almost certain to be found in just about every house, office, shop, building  or factory; in fact, any place where electricity is used for lighting, heating, or running machines and appliances.

Ampere made a number of important discoveries in the field of magnetism and electricity ad his name has been given to the unit of electric current and abbreviated to amp.  He also formulated the, Ampere's Law which forms the basis of the study of electrodynamics. 

Braille

 

Louis Braille (1809-52) invented and gave his name to an alphabet and a system of reading and writing for the blind. Braille, a Frenchman, became a teacher of the blind at the age of nineteen and soon afterwards (in 1829) published his first book in Braille, in Paris.  He also used his skill as a musician (he played the organ in a Paris church) to adapt his system to the special needs of music.

Braille's system consisted basically of six raised points on a flat surface in various combination and was far superior to previous methods, which has concentrated in the main on the use of raised type.  Nowadays, Braille is used and taught in schools for the blind throughout the world and books and literature of all kinds are reproduced in Braille in considerable quantities.

But this great benefactor of mankind, who invented the system named after him, died at the early age of forty-three, long before Braille had become accepted or even recognised as the remarkable invention it undoubtedly is.  Moreover, Louis Braille never in fact saw any of his own books in Braille-he had been blind from the age of three. 

Beaufort Scale

 

Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857) was an English admiral and hydrographer who devised and gave his name to a scale of wind velocity, the Beaufort scale or Beaufort's scale. The scale ranges from nought or zero (eg. calm, or conditions in which smoke rises vertically) to twelve (hurricane force winds above seventy-five mph).

Beaufort devised his scale in 1805 ( the year of the Battle of Trafalgar) and became the official hydrographer to the Royal Navy in 1829. 

Bell's Palsy

 

Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) was an eminent Scottish surgeon who described and gave his name to Bell's Palsy, paralysis of the facial nerve.  The paralysis affects the muscles on one side of the face which is given a marked appearance of lopsidedness.  

Bell was the author of numerous publication on neurology and also gives his name jointly (with the French physiologist Francois Magendie) to the Bell-Magendie law concerning neurology.  

Bunsen Burner

 

Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-99) invented and gave his name to a burner for use in laboratories, the bunsen burner.

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Bunsen, a German was a professor at Heidelberg, where he established his reputation as one of the leading chemists of his day.  Much of his greatest work was accomplished in collaboration with the physicist Kirchoff and it was with Kirchoff, in 1860, that he discovered the elements caesium and ribidium. 

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It was some five years earlier, however, that Bunsen has discovered that a certain mixture of coal-gas and air could produce a smokeless flame of great heat.  He then proceeded discoveries and inventions, the bunsen burner remains the one which he is best remembered for - even (to many people) the only thing he is remembered for at all. 

Biro

 

László Biro was a Hungarian journalist who in 1938 invented the first practical ball-point pen, the biro.  Biro was obliged to leave Hungary with the rise of Narzism, preceding the Second World War and eventually settled in Argentina, where in 1943 he took out a patent for his invention. 

Biro's pen was first put to a really practical use by British Royal Air Force navigators who found they were able to use the biro at high altitudes, where conventional pens were unreliable or simply failed to function. A few years after the war, the ball-point became the most popular kind of pen on the market; but its original inventor had not the foresight to take out patents in other countries and the other men in those countries grew rich from the enormous sales.  

Boolean Algebra

 

George Boole (1815-64) was an English mathematician who devised and gave his name to a method of applying mathematics to logic, known as Boolean algebra.  

Boole elaborated his method in his book An investigation of the laws of thought on which are founded the mathematical theories of logic and probabilities and his work has influenced a number of eminent mathematician, including Bertrand Russell, as well as being important in computer studies.

Dewey Classification

 

Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) devised the library classification system known as Dewey Decimal Classification. many libraries all over the world, particularly public libraries, are classified by Dewey.

Dewey was a student at Amherst College, Massachusetts, when he devised his classification system and it was first adopted by the college library there. He became a founder of the American Library Association and the founder and first director of the New York State Library School.

Two other Americans devised library classification systems: Henry Evelyn Bliss and Charles Ammi Cutter, Bliss's Bibliographic Classification is used in some special libraries and Cutter's Expansive Classification is still used a little in the United States but hardly at all elsewhere.

Maverick

 

Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803-1870) was one of the leaders in the fight for Texan independence and like his famous contemporary, James Bowie, he is mostly remembered today through giving his name to a word in the English language. 

Maverick was the owner of a large cattle ranch, but he neglected to brand his cattle, which led to many of them being stolen.  From this the word maverick came into being to describe stray animal or anyone with one particular attachment to a place or a group of people.  And to maverick is to acquire something illegally.

  

Diesel

 

Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913) gave his name to a type of internal combustion engine which has become known as the Diesel engine. Diesel, a German who was born in Paris, patented his engine in 1892 and after five years, the firm of Krupp produced the first successful diesel.  
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Rubik Cube

 

Erno Rubik (1944- ), a Hungarian sculptor, designer and architectural engineer, was until recently little known outside his own community.  His invention of a toy-puzzle in the form of a pocket-sized cube, the Rubik cube has however made his name world famous and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York has honored his invention with a place in its permanent design collection.

Professor Rubik originally designed his cube to give his students at Budapest's School for Commercial Artists a better understanding of three-dimensional problems but solving the puzzles it presents now occupies the minds of millions of Rubik cube addicts, from young children to academics.  

Today there have been books published on the solution to Rubik's cube and countless of reproduction of the cube itself. 

Fallopian Tubes

 

Gabriello Fallopio or Gabriel Fallopius (1523-1562), was the Italian anatomist who is credited with discovering the function of the tubes or oviducts leading from the ovary to the womb and named after him as the Fallopian tubes.  

From recent experiments, a technique has been developed known as embryo transfer, which enables a woman with a malfunction of her Fallopian tubes to give birth to a baby previously denied to her. The egg is taken from the mother for fertilisation with the father's sperm and is eventually re-implanted in the mother's womb, effectively 'by passing' the natural function of the Fallopian tubes.  

Down Syndrome

 

John Langdon-Down (1828-96) was an English doctor who described and gave his name to Down's Syndrome, or mongolism.  This is a genetic defect of mental development, commonly identified with certain physical characteristics of the people of Magnolia, the Mongols (or Tungus), such as round, flattish face and half-hooded or seemingly slanted eyes.  

While mongolism is congenital, recent research has done much to establish its causes.  

OHM's Law

George Simon Ohm (1787-1854) gave his name to the unit of electrical resistance, the ohm and the law of electric current, Ohm's Law. Ohm, a German, linked his name with those of Ampere, and Volta, in formulating his famous law, which states that electric current is directly proportional to electromotive force and inversely to resistance; or expressed in the familiar equation: electromotive force (in volts) = current (in amperes) x resistance (in ohms).

Despite Ohm's great contribution to electrodynamics, you will rarely see his name on a piece of electrical equipment, along with Ampere, Volta and Watt.  The resistor (or resistance), a device used in electrical circuits, is marked in ohms, but by means of a color code (black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey and white representing the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 respectively.)  

Fuchsia

 

Leonhard Fuchs (1501-66) was the German naturalist and botanist who gave his name to the genus of South American flowering shrubs, Fuchsia. 

Fuchs was a professor of medicine at the University of Tubingen  in Germany and compiled a book of medicinal plants, which became a standard work.  The fuchsia was named in his honor in 1703.

Euclidean Geometry

 

Euclid was a Greek mathematician of the third century BC but little more is known in his life.  His name has become immortalised, however, through his Elements, his great work on elementary geometry in thirteen books.

It can be said that Euclid's name is synonymous with geometry and Euclidean geometry has certainly provided the basis for the teaching of that branch of mathematics for generations.  

Celsius Thermometer

 

Anders Celsius (1701-44) invented and gave his name to the Celsius thermometer, also known as the centigrade thermometer.  The scale on the Celsius thermometer is a simplification of the earlier Fahrenheit scale, showing the freezing point of water at zero and the boiling-point at 100 degrees.
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Celsius was born at Uppsala, in Sweden and became a professor at Uppsala University. He was a leading astronomer of his time (he built the observatory at Uppsala) and one of the first to advocate the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in Sweden.   

Richter Scale

 

Charles Francis Richter (1900-85) invented and gave his name to a scale or measuring the intensity of earthquakes, the Richter Scale.

Dr Richter, an American, was professor of seismology at the California Institute of technology, Pasadena and it was there that he worked with another seismologist, the German born Dr Beno Gutenberg (189-1960), in developing a method of calculating the magnitude of earthquakes. The Richter Scale is in fact also known as the Gutenberg-Richter Scale.

Earthquakes has been mentioned in some of the earliest records of civilisation, but there was little or no attempt made to study the subject scientifically until the last century and instruments were not used in a coordinated way on a world-wide basis until the 1920s.  With Richter's method it is now possible to assess the intensity of an earthquake at any distance.  Modern methods of detection and analysis cannot of course, prevent earthquakes, though in some cases warnings can be given and measures accordingly taken to lessen their effect on people and property. 

Morse Code

 

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872) would probably be remembered as a painter, had he not invented the famous dot-and-dash code named after him. Born in Charlestown Massachusetts, he came to London as a young man and exhibited at the Royal Academy and returning to America  he established himself as a quite successful portrait painter. 

In 1826 he founded and became the first president of the National Academy of Design but after a few years, his interest in the electric telegraph led him away from painting and in 1838, the first message by "Morse" telegraph was successfully transmitted.  Morse was involved in a great deal of litigation but was eventually successful in obtaining the rights to his invention.

A knife as a present

 

Any sharp cutting or piercing instrument, like a knife, scissors or pins and needles can easily do damage, but their danger is multiplied if in occult belief they are empowered by black magic.  

How easily thus at the very least, a knife given as a present could cut friendship. To end any such potential evil, the recipient of the gift presents the giver with a small coin. This subtly changes a free gift into token purchase, thereby defusing a possibly aggressive weapon.

Leave no stone unturned

When the boss wants the job well done, he will tack onto his orders the phrase “leave no stone unturned.” 

By this he means that no effort should be spared in completing the work.  This expression has been with us since the days of the Oracle at Delphi in Greek mythology. You will recall that the oracle knew the answers to everything, because its source of wisdom was its prophetic communication with the gods. 

The tale was told by Euripides that one day, when consulted about the whereabouts of a treasure hidden by a vanquished general who had fled, the Oracle counseled that the way to find the treasure was to “leave no stone unturned.