03-09-2012, 01:39 PM | #11 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
Charles Babbage may well have believed himself to have such abilities.
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03-09-2012, 02:42 PM | #12 |
Banned
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
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03-09-2012, 08:22 PM | #13 |
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
Charles Fraser-Smith Q Mk I .
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03-09-2012, 10:10 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
Archimedes - he at least had plans for a steam cannon and he developed the archimedian screw for water transport (Coincidentally the unnamed engineer who also separately developed the archimedian screw to water the hanging gardens likely deserves this as well).
I would actually remove Edison from the list- He was largely responsible for refining already existing products, and turning invention into a business; he has thousands of patents to his name, but he employed dozens of inventors who turned over all rights to him; Basically he was the Steve Jobs of his day- he made existing things work right enough for others to use, but he did not make new things (on the other hand if you allow him you should say that Steve Jobs was a cinematic gadgeteer, he could pick up a useless piece of technology, work his magic on a redesign/new UI and all but turn it into gold). If your allowing those that develop world changing scientific theroy on the list (still inventions): Issac Newton Albert Einstein Robert Oppenheimer Stephen Hawking Oppenheimer deserves special mention because the Manhattan project did something that by GURPS invention terms should have taken 10+ years, and got it done in 4; even when you take superior labs and virtually unlimited budget into account. I think that of all examples he may be the best one to fit the cinematic gadgeteer, he WAS able to lead a project to a fantastically complex prototype and did so in a period of time that was bordering on the supernatural. |
03-09-2012, 11:17 PM | #15 | |||
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
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What about then, from the same era, Edward Teller and Werner von Braun?
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03-09-2012, 11:56 PM | #16 | |
Computer Scientist
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
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03-10-2012, 05:20 AM | #17 | ||
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
Quote:
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03-10-2012, 07:03 AM | #18 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
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Teller was more of a dis-organiser: he was not a good team worker at all, but he was very determined to build the H-bomb, and pretty good at selling the idea. However, as an inventor, he was poor. He spent years pursuing the "classical super-bomb", an idea which didn't and can't work. Ulam had a completely different idea about how to do the job, and Teller took that up. |
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03-10-2012, 09:34 AM | #19 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
Georg Friedrich Lichtenberg was mostly a physics lecturer at a German university in the 18th Century, but he liked building gadgets to use to demonstrate principles of physics, including an enoromous electrophorus, a hand-cranked machine for generating static electricity. He discovered principles used in modern Xerographic copiers and used it to record tree-like, branching discharge patterns that became known as "Lichtenberg figures" in his honor.
He was also a hunchbacked woman-chaser and noted bon vivant. |
03-12-2012, 08:26 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Re: Gadgeteer: List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers
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And Babbage Engines are one thing that almost universally show up in steampunk settings, so he fits the possible-founder-of-an-alternate-tech-path criterion.
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alternate history, alternate timelines, gadgeteer, techno-fantasy |
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