zeros to heroes: tall tales or the truth of tiny life?
TRANSCRIPT
38 | NewScientist | 11 September 2010
AnimalculesEARLY in the autumn of 1674, Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society in London, received an extraordinary letter. Sent by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (pictured, left), a draper from Delft in the Netherlands, it contained an unlikely sounding claim.
Using a microscope of his own invention, van Leeuwenhoek had seen tiny creatures, invisible to the naked eye, living in lake water. Some of these “animalcules” were so small, he later estimated, that 30 million of them would still be smaller than a grain of sand.
Royal Society fellows were sceptical. Even with his most powerful instruments, the celebrated English microscopist Robert Hooke had never observed anything like the little creatures.
In fact, the Dutchman had developed far superior lenses to Hooke’s, and had discovered bacteria and protozoans. By producing ever smaller and more curved lenses – using a
technique that he kept secret – van Leeuwenhoek was able to magnify objects up to 500 times. As well as discovering microorganisms, he was the first to see red blood cells.
In 1677, van Leeuwenhoek sent the Society further animalcule observations. Hooke eventually improved his own microscopes to the point where he, too, could see the tiny creatures. Three years later van Leeuwenhoek was made a fellow.
It was not until 1890, more than 160 years after van Leeuwenhoek’s death, that bacteria were linked with disease. “Reading van Leeuwenhoek’s letters, you very much get the impression of somebody dazzled by what he was finding,” says Lesley Robinson, curator of the archives at Delft University’s school of microbiology. “He thought he’d found a whole new world – but he certainly never picked up on the connection with illness.” James Mitchell Crow
DURING the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists and the public all believed that it was not only impossible to fly using an artificial wing, but an act of folly to suggest that you could. This did not discourage the English gentleman scientist George Cayley, even though his contemporaries – including his own son – were embarrassed by his efforts.
In 1799, Cayley engraved a silver disc with one side bearing a design for the world’s first aeroplane and the other illustrating the earliest published description of the aerodynamic forces on a wing that enable a plane to fly. His three-part treatise Aerial Navigation, published in 1809 and 1810, was greeted with scepticism by his contemporaries.
But Cayley “didn’t give a rat’s ass” about what they all thought, according to Richard Dyde of York University in Ontario, Canada, author of The Man Who Discovered Flight – and with good reason. He had completed a series of experiments to
back up his theories and “was convinced that everyone else was wrong”. Cayley constructed increasingly sophisticated model flying machines, culminating in a full-scale glider, which was flown in 1853 by his grandson, George.
This pioneering work would prove
inspirational to Orville and Wilbur Wright, who made the first controlled and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 50 years later. Their success was crucially dependent on the recent invention of the internal combustion engine – a device which Cayley, having realised its pivotal importance, had spent many fruitless years trying to develop. Roger Highfield
Flying machines
George Cayley, one of the most important figures in the history of aeronautics
” Cayley had completed his experiments and was convinced that everyone else was wrong”
SHEI
LA T
ERRY
/ SC
IEN
CE P
HO
TO L
IBR
ARY
PORT
RA
IT O
f A
NTO
N V
AN
LEE
uw
ENH
OEk
(CO
LOu
R LI
THO
) BY
SEId
LER
, NEd
M. (
20TH
CEN
TuRY
) NAT
ION
AL
GEO
GRA
PHIC
IMAG
E CO
LLEC
TIO
N/B
RId
GEM
AN
100911_F_Unlikely_Sci_Idea.indd 38 1/9/10 17:07:21