Abstract
The next in our sequence of time periods is the span of approximately 1000 years known (in Western culture) as the Dark Ages. This epoch spanned the fifth to fifteenth centuries of the Common Era, beginning approximately with the sacking of Rome—and the fall of the Western Roman Empire—in 476 ce, and ending with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire centred on Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), in 1453 ce.
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Notes
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Also known as the Byzantine Empire, or Byzantium.
- 2.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, coincidentally, was the romantic partner of Henrietta Vansittart, whom we shall encounter in a later chapter. Vansittart invented the Lowe-Vansittart propeller in 1869 and conducted an affair with Bulwer-Lytton over a number of years.
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The Muslim Moors invaded Spain from Africa, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, with an army under the command of Tariq ibn-Ziyad.
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Image Credit: Gerrit Dou, Geleerde die zijn pen snijdt (Scholar cutting his pen), 1630–1635, The Leiden Collection, Public Domain.
- 5.
Capillary action is the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces, like the inside of a feather, without the aid of any external forces (e.g. gravity). It is the mechanism by which oil is drawn up into the wick of a lamp (hence why the term wicking is also used), or water can be drawn up into a strip of paper.
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Now it is easy to see that the solution could be a screw-driver, but it could also be your fingers, a coin, a credit-card, a knife, a piece of string, and so on.
- 7.
The field of biomimetics, or biomimicry, involves imitating structures, systems and methods found in nature for the purpose of solving human problems. See the book The Shark’s Paintbrush (2013), by Jay Harman.
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Eleanor was Queen Consort of France from 1137 to 1152, after marrying Louis VII. When her marriage to Louis was annulled, she then married the Duke of Normandy, who became Henry II of England, from 1154 to 1189.
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From the Latin for unknown language.
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From Lingua Ignota per simplicem hominem Hildegardem prolata, by Hildegard of Bingen, circa 1200. Image Credit: Public Domain.
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For an excellent account of code breaking during the Napoleonic era, read Mark Urban’s book The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Code. This is the story of Englishman George Scovell, who was in charge of the Duke of Wellington’s efforts to break and read French military and diplomatic ciphers during the Peninsular War in the years preceding the Battle of Waterloo.
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Image Credit: Henry Evers (1874), A Handbook of Applied Mechanics, William Collins & Sons, London, Fig. 58, p. 153. Public Domain.
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Salisbury Cathedral, about 150 km South-West of London, claims to have the world’s oldest functioning mechanical clock. It was used to control the striking of bells to signal Mass.
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Cropley, D.H. (2020). The Dark Ages (476–1453 ce): Medieval Creativity. In: Femina Problematis Solvendis—Problem solving Woman. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3967-1_5
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