Science & Technology

Since the 19th century, attitudes to drugs have been in constant flux, argues Victoria Harris, owing as much to fashion as to science.

The invention of the telephone, the early years of the steamboat and other great Scottish firsts.

The Flemish cartographer was born on March 5th, 1512.

Alex Keller tells the story of how an unlikely friendship between a Dutch doctor and a young Italian nobleman led to the establishment of the first scientific society, which lent crucial support to the radical ideas of Galileo Galilei.

Constructing the Victoria Embankment on the north bank of the River Thames in London: an image analysed by Roger Hudson.

John Herschel Glenn Jr was the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20th 1962.

The designer of the Colt revolver, the most celebrated killing machine in the history of the Wild West, died on January 10th 1862, aged 47.

Jean-Andre Prager demonstrates the wide-ranging impact of Darwinism. This essay was the winner of the Julia Wood Prize for 2011.

Jad Adams looks back to a time when, wracked by industrial decline, a nation embraced the world’s first supersonic airliner.

The Apple founder, who died on 5th October, attributed much of his success to a historically-based course he took in calligraphy.