Three Essential Lives... that ended miserably

[Childress]

THE PAPER MAKER



Cai Lun, the inventor of paper, is little known outside of China his name rarely appears in standard Western history textbooks. Until recently, many scholars believed he was an apocryphal figure. However, research makes it clear that Cai Lun was a real man, an official in the Chinese imperial court who, at the dawn of the 2nd century, presented the Emperor with samples of paper. Cai Lun’s name appears in the official history of the Han dynasty and the relevant entry documenting his invention is unambiguous. We’re told he was a eunuch.



-In 105AD Cai Lun submitted to the emperor a process for making paper out of the inner bark of mulberry trees, bamboo, and remnants of hemp, rags of cloth, and fishing nets. He mixed them with water, pounded them with a wooden tool, and then poured this mixture onto a flat piece of coarsely woven cloth, letting the water drain through, and leaving only a thin, matted sheet of fibers on the cloth.-
-New World Encyclopedia

Prior to the introduction of paper in China, most books were made of bamboo or silk. In the West, books were written on parchment processed from animal skins replacing papyrus used by the ancients. All four media were cumbersome to use and expensive to manufacture. The paper revolution enabled China, which had been less advanced in comparison to Western Europe, to leap ahead culturally and scientifically.

During the succeeding centuries, as Europe dithered in the Dark Ages, the Chinese brought forth the compass, gunpowder and block printing. Muslims learned Cai Lun’s technique in the 700s by capturing a Chinese paper trader following a winning battle on the frontier. Once the West finally acquired the secret of papermaking five hundred years later it narrowed the technology gap. However, as late as the 13th century, Marco Polo reported that China was far more prosperous than Europe.

Cai Lun’s invention made him wealthy and the grateful emperor awarded him an aristocratic title. That promotion proved fatal; following the latter’s demise, he joined the losing side in the ensuing dynastic struggle. Chinese records tell us that upon reading the writing on the wall Cai Lun took a bath then dressed in his finest silk robes and drank poison.

THE PRINTER

Johann Gutenberg is credited with the invention of printing by combining moveable type and an efficient press in such a way that a large variety of written material could be printed with speed and accuracy. Moveable type had been invented centuries before in China and Korea but Gutenberg vastly improved the entire process marrying all the components including suitable ink, a durable metal alloy for the type, and an efficient press. Above all, he developed all the elements of printing into an effective and reliable system of mass production, a complete manufacturing process.

The crucial ingredient, paper, had spread to the West by Gutenberg’s day. However moveable type was rarely used in the Orient and Gutenberg developed his proprietary technique independently.


-The Gutenberg Bible

The so-called Gutenberg Bible, printed in Mainz, appeared in 1454. We know it came from Gutenberg’s atelier based on the typeface but his name never figures on his work, in retrospect a careless omission on his part.

Some idea of Gutenberg’s impact on history can be gained by comparing the subsequent development of China and Europe. At the time of his birth, the two lands were about equally developed technologically. But after Gutenberg’s invention, Europe progressed rapidly spreading knowledge while China, where block printing continued, remained comparatively sterile.

Though a mechanical genius Gutenberg was never much of a businessman; it appears he was chronically short of money. Struggling to keep his project alive he partnered with a feisty goldsmith and lawyer named Johann Fust who loaned Gutenberg the funds he needed to continue. However, Fust began losing patience; he pestered Gutenberg claiming that he was doing nothing but blowing money. At last, Fust brought suit against him in court, and the judge ruled in his favour. Everything in the world that Gutenberg possessed, even his tools, came into Fust's possession- including the original, unsigned Gutenberg Bible.

Johann Gutenberg died in Mainz, Germany. Pathetically the creator of the (arguably) most important invention in human history lived out most of his later years in dire poverty until the Archbishop of Mainz granted the printer a meagre pension just before his death in 1468. Gutenberg was buried in a Franciscan church, which was demolished and replaced with another church, which was also subsequently demolished. The location of his final resting place remains unknown.

While Gutenberg went without financial reward for creating the process that revolutionized the world, history recognizes him as holding this honour. Without his printing press, the Protestant Reformation would likely never to have had occurred.

THE CHEMIST



-Antoine Lavoisier and his wife, Marie-Anne 

The French scientist, Antoine Lavoisier, is generally considered the most significant figure in the development of chemistry. Born into a prosperous bourgeois family in 1743, young Antoine completed a law degree in accordance with his family wishes. But he never practised; his true calling was in science. On the basis of his early researches, he was elected- at the tender age of 25- to the Academy of Sciences, France’s most prestigious scientific society.

During his era, water and air were wrongly believed to be elementary substances and that combustible materials contained a substance called ‘phlogiston’. It was Lavoisier that managed to put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly and get chemical theory started on the correct path.

Denying the existence of phlogiston, he proved that the process of combustion consisted of the chemical combination of the burning substance with oxygen. Also, air was not an elementary substance either but a chemical compound of oxygen and nitrogen. Many leading scientists refused to accept Lavoisier’s theories but his book, The Elements of Chemistry, silenced most of the doubters. It was published in 1789, a significant year.



-Lavoisier’s laboratory

Having shown that water and air were not chemical elements Lavoisier included in his book a list of those substances that he believed to be elementary. Our modern periodic table is essentially an enlarged version of his list. His creation of a uniform system of nomenclature enabled chemists throughout the world to clearly communicate their discoveries with each other.

In the same year of his election to the Academy, in order to finance his scientific research, Lavoisier bought into the Ferme Générale the private corporation that collected taxes for the Crown. It was essentially a racket, there being no limit to the taxes collected except what the tax collectors could gouge from the populace. The Crown got its share, but everything above that was pure profit. Lavoisier grew rich but the Ferme was bitterly resented by the rising middle-class.

Several years later he married Marie-Anne Paulze, the 14-year old daughter of another ‘tax farmer’. A brilliant woman, Madame Lavoisier learned English in order to translate the work of British chemists including Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish for her husband.

Lavoisier though a political liberal who had worked for many reforms was, as a perceived aristocrat, vulnerable to the revolutionary fervour of the times and he made two mistakes that eventually sealed his fate. He performed a flashy public experiment in Paris demonstrating that a diamond is made from carbon by burning one in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. It didn’t go over well. Given the food scarcity that existed during the early days of the Revolution, it was taken as an unforgivable extravagance.


-Jean-Paul Marat

Still, he might have survived were it not for the fact that he had acquired a famous enemy, Jean-Paul Marat, a physically repulsive and frustrated scientist who rose to become one of the most prominent members on the increasingly sanguinary Revolutionary Tribunal.

Years before, Marat applied for membership in the French Academy and was rejected, with Lavoisier being a major factor in his dismissal. It seems that Lavoisier had publicly ridiculed Marat’s ‘animal magnetism’ theory. Humiliated, the fiery demagogue never forgave him becoming an indefatigable force in the chemist’s destruction.


-Lavoisier en route to the guillotine

Flogged on by Marat, the Revolutionary government grew increasingly suspicious of Lavoisier. Eventually, he was arrested along with twenty-seven other members of the Ferme Générale. Revolutionary justice may not have been too accurate, but it was certainly speedy. On a single day (May 8, 1794) all of them were tried, convicted and guillotined.

At the trial an appeal was made to spare Lavoisier, citing his services to country and science. The judge rejected the plea with the curt remark that, ‘The Republic has no need of geniuses’. Closer to the truth was the remark of the great mathematician Lagrange: ‘It took but a moment to sever that head, though a hundred years may not produce another like it’.

GUILLOTINE SIDEBAR

 

Edited September 21, 2018 by Childress

[John Kettler]

Childress,

What a wonderful and informative post! Learned a great deal from reading it. Now, let's see how well I retain it.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

[Childress]

Thanks, JK, long time no see. This was one of my non-political articles submitted on Channel  Z. Don't know what happened to the font here.  

I felt that a mere list of famous people lacked a certain je ne sais quoi; the Tragic Element was mandatory.