Science & Technology

During the Cold War, 224 nuclear weapons were denotated at Novaya Zemlya in the Soviet Union’s remote Arctic north. Only with the collapse of the USSR in 1989 did the true scale become known.

Meyrick H. Carré studies the reasons that led Francis Bacon, the distinguished philosopher and man of letters, to become in his political career a vehement upholder of absolute royal authority.

Meyrick H. Carré introduces an Irishman who personified the genius of experimental inquiry and did much to influence the Enlightenment in England.

T.H. McGuffe describes the history of fire-arms, from the fourteenth century onwards, considering their uses and effectiveness  in war, in sport, and for display.

David Layton looks at the influences on Isaac Newtown and analyses the deep effects of his monumental work on both domestic and continental intellectual currents.

In the second part of his series, Charles Seltman focuses on the life of Pythagoras in Italy and how he became one of the greatest thinkers and most remarkable men in history.

The scientist and natural philosopher John Tyndall was known to the public through his lectures and newspaper debates. But, say Miguel DeArce and Norman MacMillan, one of Tyndall’s most famous public speeches, his Belfast Address of 1874, plagiarised the thinking of others.

Jonathan Conlin considers a 1990 article on the past, present and future of history broadcasting, whose pessimistic forecasts have not quite come to pass.

Just over a thousand years ago Chinese printers completed the publication of the Confucian Classics—an event as important in the history of civilization as the printing of the Gutenberg Bible. By Adrian L. Julian.

Ann Dewar looks back at the Parliamentary debate over the introduction of Daylight Saving Hours, tabled in 1916 by Sir Henry Norman.