SciHi Blog

Charles Babbage – The Father of the Computer who hated Street Music

Charles Babbage – The Father of the Computer who hated Street Music

On October 18, 1871, Charles Babbage, mathematician, inventor and early computer scientist passed away. We think, everybody should know about Charles Babbage and his seminal work on the first mechanical universal computer, the Analytical Engine. Although the Analytical Engine never was build during his lifetime, due to the lack of according fine mechanics in the 19th century, Babbage sketched out everything necessary to construct and to program a universal computer. “The whole…
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Much More Powerful Than Expected – Kepler’s Supernova

Much More Powerful Than Expected – Kepler’s Supernova

On October 17, 1604, the famous German astronomer Johannes Kepler [5] started his observations of the 1604 supernova, named after him as Kepler’s Supernova or Kepler’s Star. Special about this ‘new’ star was it being the very last observed supernova in our own galaxy, the Milky way. First Sightings The supernova was first observed on 9 October 1604 by Ilario Altobelli in Verona and Raffaello Gualterotti in Florence, a few days before Kepler…
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Oscar Wilde – One of the Most Iconic Figures of Victorian Society

Oscar Wilde – One of the Most Iconic Figures of Victorian Society

On October 16, 1854, the famous Irish poet and writer Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde aka Oscar Wilde was born. He is considered to be one of the most iconic figures from late Victorian society. Enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of society, his wit, humour and intelligence shines through his plays and writings. However, because of his sexual orientation for a long time his name was synonymous with scandal and intrigue.…
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God is Dead – The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

God is Dead – The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

On October 15th, 1844, Friedrich Nietzsche was born. The German philosopher, cultural critic, and classical philologist lived and worked socially isolated for the most time and faced mainly criticism until his mental breakdown in 1889. He is best known for his concept of the ‘Übermensch‘ as well as the ‘death of God‘ and now counts as one of the most discussed and appreciated philosophers of all times. “There are no facts, only interpretations.”…
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Winnie-the-Pooh – The Cute Bear With Mental Disorders

Winnie-the-Pooh – The Cute Bear With Mental Disorders

On October 14, 1926, the children‘s book Winnie-the-Pooh was first published by the author A. A. Milne. The book was followed by several stories of the cute yellow bear and his friends and quickly became famous. Disney adopted Winnie Pooh in 1961 and the show is still running on television today, making thousands of children as happy as 86 years ago. “Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to…
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The Knights Templar and their Most Inglorious End

The Knights Templar and their Most Inglorious End

On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the Knights Templar grandmaster Jacques de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested under the accusation of various heredities. It is said that this very date sometimes spuriously is linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, because it was the beginning of the end of the powerful Knights Templar. The Origins of the Knights…
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C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success – Dennis Ritchie

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success – Dennis Ritchie

On October 12, 2011, computer scientist Dennis Ritchie, who designed the UNIX operating system as well as the C programming language, passed away. Thanks to his contributions, computing made a huge leap forward and enabled real-time processing and multi-threading. Dennis Ritchie was born on September 9, 1941, in Bronxville, New York as son of Alistair E. Ritchie, a longtime Bell Labs scientist working on switching circuit theory. Dennis Ritchie graduated from Harvard…
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The Leyden Jar Introducing the Age of Electricity

The Leyden Jar Introducing the Age of Electricity

On October 11, 1745, German cleric Ewald Georg von Kleist (and independently of him Dutch scientist Pieter van Musschenbroek from the city of Leiden, Netherlands) invented a predecessor of today’s battery, the Leyden Jar. The jar worked in principle like a capacitor for the storage of electrical energy and was used to conduct many early experiments in electricity. Its discovery was of fundamental importance in the study of electricity. In the times before its invention, researchers…
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Windscale – the World’s First Major Nuclear Accident

Windscale – the World’s First Major Nuclear Accident

On October 10, 1957, the world’s first major nuclear accident took place. The Windscale fire happened in Cumbria, U.K. and was Great Britain‘s worst nuclear accident in history. Great Britain and the Bomb After World War II, the British refused to just look at how the United States and the Soviet Union raced each other in who can work with nuclear power at first and most important, who is able to launch…
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Dialogues Are Overestimated – The Great Film Maker Jacques Tati

Dialogues Are Overestimated – The Great Film Maker Jacques Tati

On October 9, 1908 Jacques Tatischeff, better known as cinematographer, actor, and comedian Jacques Tati was born as the son of Russian father Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff,  director of Cadres Van Hoof, a prestigious picture framing company, and Dutch mother Marcelle Claire Van Hoof, in the little French village Le Pecq, Yvelines. I saw his short film “The school of postmen” when I was a kid and ever since I was fascinated by the kind of sophisticated…
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