Around 1886 Albert Einstein began his school career in Munich. As well as his violin lessons, which he had from age six to age thirteen, he also had religious education at home where he was taught Judaism. Two years later he entered the Luitpold Gymnasium and after this his religious education was given at school. He studied mathematics, in particular the calculus, beginning around 1891.
In 1894 Einstein's family moved to Milan but Einstein remained in Munich. In 1895 Einstein failed an examination that would have allowed him to study for a diploma as an electrical engineer at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich. Einstein renounced German citizenship in 1896 and was to be stateless for a number of years. He did not even apply for Swiss citizenship until 1899, citizenship being granted in 1901.
Following the failing of the entrance exam to the ETH, Einstein attended secondary school at Aarau planning to use this route to enter the ETH in Zurich. While at Aarau he wrote an essay (for which was only given a little above half marks!) in which he wrote of his plans for the future, see [13]:-
If I were to have the good fortune to pass my examinations, I would go to Zurich. I would stay there for four years in order to study mathematics and physics. I imagine myself becoming a teacher in those branches of the natural sciences, choosing the theoretical part of them. Here are the reasons which lead me to this plan. Above all, it is my disposition for abstract and mathematical thought, and my lack of imagination and practical ability.
Indeed Einstein succeeded with his plan graduating in 1900 as a teacher of mathematics and physics. One of his friends at ETH was Marcel Grossmann who was in the same class as Einstein. Einstein tried to obtain a post, writing to Hurwitz who held out some hope of a position but nothing came of it. Three of Einstein's fellow students, including Grossmann, were appointed assistants at ETH in Zurich but clearly Einstein had not impressed enough and still in 1901 he was writing round universities in the hope of obtaining a job, but without success.
He did manage to avoid Swiss military service on the grounds that he had flat feet and varicose veins. By mid 1901 he had a temporary job as a teacher, teaching mathematics at the Technical High School in Winterthur. Around this time he wrote:-
I have given up the ambition to get to a university ...
Another temporary position teaching in a private school in Schaffhausen followed. Then Grossmann's father tried to help Einstein get a job by recommending him to the director of the patent office in Bern. Einstein was appointed as a technical expert third class.
Einstein worked in this patent office from 1902 to 1909, holding a temporary post when he was first appointed, but by 1904 the position was made permanent and in 1906 he was promoted to technical expert second class. While in the Bern patent office he completed an astonishing range of theoretical physics publications, written in his spare time without the benefit of close contact with scientific literature or colleagues.
Einstein earned a doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905 for a thesis On a new determination of molecular dimensions. He dedicated the thesis to Grossmann.
In the first of three papers, all written in 1905, Einstein examined the phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which electromagnetic energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in discrete quantities. The energy of these quanta was directly proportional to the frequency of the radiation. This seemed to contradict classical electromagnetic theory, based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics which assumed that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves which could contain any small amount of energy. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to describe the electromagnetic radiation of light.
Einstein's second 1905 paper proposed what is today called the special theory of relativity. He based his new theory on a reinterpretation of the classical principle of relativity, namely that the laws of physics had to have the same form in any frame of reference. As a second fundamental hypothesis, Einstein assumed that the speed of light remained constant in all frames of reference, as required by Maxwell's theory.
Later in 1905 Einstein showed how mass and energy were equivalent. Einstein was not the first to propose all the components of special theory of relativity. His contribution is unifying important parts of classical mechanics and Maxwell's electrodynamics.
The third of Einstein's papers of 1905 concerned statistical mechanics, a field of that had been studied by Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Gibbs.
After 1905 Einstein continued working in the areas described above. He made important contributions to quantum theory, but he sought to extend the special theory of relativity to phenomena involving acceleration. The key appeared in 1907 with the principle of equivalence, in which gravitational acceleration was held to be indistinguishable from acceleration caused by mechanical forces. Gravitational mass was therefore identical with inertial mass.
In 1908 Einstein became a lecturer at the University of Bern after submitting his Habilitation thesis Consequences for the constitution of radiation following from the energy distribution law of black bodies. The following year he become professor of physics at the University of Zurich, having resigned his lectureship at Bern and his job in the patent office in Bern.
By 1909 Einstein was recognised as a leading scientific thinker and in that year he resigned from the patent office. He was appointed a full professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1911. In fact 1911 was a very significant year for Einstein since he was able to make preliminary predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun, would appear to be bent slightly, in the direction of the Sun. This would be highly significant as it would lead to the first experimental evidence in favour of Einstein's theory.
About 1912, Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research, with the help of his mathematician friend Marcel Grossmann, by expressing his work in terms of the tensor calculus of Tullio Levi-Civita and Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro. Einstein called his new work the general theory of relativity. He moved from Prague to Zurich in 1912 to take up a chair at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich.
Einstein returned to Germany in 1914 but did not reapply for German citizenship. What he accepted was an impressive offer. It was a research position in the Prussian Academy of Sciences together with a chair (but no teaching duties) at the University of Berlin. He was also offered the directorship of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin which was about to be established.
After a number of false starts Einstein published, late in 1915, the definitive version of general theory. Just before publishing this work he lectured on general relativity at Göttingen and he wrote:-
To my great joy, I completely succeeded in convincing Hilbert and Klein.
In fact Hilbert submitted for publication, a week before Einstein completed his work, a paper which contains the correct field equations of general relativity.
When British eclipse expeditions in 1919 confirmed his predictions, Einstein was idolised by the popular press. The London Times ran the headline on 7 November 1919:-
Revolution in science - New theory of the Universe - Newtonian ideas overthrown.
In 1920 Einstein's lectures in Berlin were disrupted by demonstrations which, although officially denied, were almost certainly anti-Jewish. Certainly there were strong feelings expressed against his works during this period which Einstein replied to in the press quoting Lorentz, Planck and Eddington as supporting his theories and stating that certain Germans would have attacked them if he had been:-
... a German national with or without swastika instead of a Jew with liberal international convictions...
During 1921 Einstein made his first visit to the United States. His main reason was to raise funds for the planned Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However he received the Barnard Medal during his visit and lectured several times on relativity. He is reported to have commented to the chairman at the lecture he gave in a large hall at Princeton which was overflowing with people:-
I never realised that so many Americans were interested in tensor analysis.
Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 but not for relativity rather for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. In fact he was not present in December 1922 to receive the prize being on a voyage to Japan. Around this time he made many international visits. He had visited Paris earlier in 1922 and during 1923 he visited Palestine. After making his last major scientific discovery on the association of waves with matter in 1924 he made further visits in 1925, this time to South America.
Among further honours which Einstein received were the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1925 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1926.
Niels Bohr and Einstein were to carry on a debate on quantum theory which began at the Solvay Conference in 1927. Planck, Niels Bohr, de Broglie, Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac were at this conference, in addition to Einstein. Einstein had declined to give a paper at the conference and:-
... said hardly anything beyond presenting a very simple objection to the probability interpretation .... Then he fell back into silence ...
Indeed Einstein's life had been hectic and he was to pay the price in 1928 with a physical collapse brought on through overwork. However he made a full recovery despite having to take things easy throughout 1928.
By 1930 he was making international visits again, back to the United States. A third visit to the United States in 1932 was followed by the offer of a post at Princeton. The idea was that Einstein would spend seven months a year in Berlin, five months at Princeton. Einstein accepted and left Germany in December 1932 for the United States. The following month the Nazis came to power in Germany and Einstein was never to return there.
During 1933 Einstein travelled in Europe visiting Oxford, Glasgow, Brussels and Zurich. Offers of academic posts which he had found it so hard to get in 1901, were plentiful. He received offers from Jerusalem, Leiden, Oxford, Madrid and Paris.
What was intended only as a visit became a permanent arrangement by 1935 when he applied and was granted permanent residency in the United States. At Princeton his work attempted to unify the laws of physics. However he was attempting problems of great depth and he wrote:-
I have locked myself into quite hopeless scientific problems - the more so since, as an elderly man, I have remained estranged from the society here...
In 1940 Einstein became a citizen of the United States, but chose to retain his Swiss citizenship. He made many contributions to peace during his life. In 1944 he made a contribution to the war effort by hand writing his 1905 paper on special relativity and putting it up for auction. It raised six million dollars, the manuscript today being in the Library of Congress.
By 1949 Einstein was unwell. A spell in hospital helped him recover but he began to prepare for death by drawing up his will in 1950. He left his scientific papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a university which he had raised funds for on his first visit to the USA, served as a governor of the university from 1925 to 1928 but he had turned down the offer of a post in 1933 as he was very critical of its administration.
One more major event was to take place in his life. After the death of the first president of Israel in 1952, the Israeli government decided to offer the post of second president to Einstein. He refused but found the offer an embarrassment since it was hard for him to refuse without causing offence.
One week before his death Einstein signed his last letter. It was a letter to Bertrand Russell in which he agreed that his name should go on a manifesto urging all nations to give up nuclear weapons. It is fitting that one of his last acts was to argue, as he had done all his life, for international peace.
Einstein was cremated at Trenton, New Jersey at 4 pm on 18 April 1955 (the day of his death). His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed place.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Issac Newton
Isaac Newton's life can be divided into three quite distinct periods. The first is his boyhood days from 1643 up to his appointment to a chair in 1669. The second period from 1669 to 1687 was the highly productive period in which he was Lucasian professor at Cambridge. The third period (nearly as long as the other two combined) saw Newton as a highly paid government official in London with little further interest in mathematical research.
Isaac Newton was born in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Although by the calendar in use at the time of his birth he was born on Christmas Day 1642, we give the date of 4 January 1643 in this biography which is the "corrected" Gregorian calendar date bringing it into line with our present calendar. (The Gregorian calendar was not adopted in England until 1752.) Isaac Newton came from a family of farmers but never knew his father, also named Isaac Newton, who died in October 1642, three months before his son was born. Although Isaac's father owned property and animals which made him quite a wealthy man, he was completely uneducated and could not sign his own name.
You can see a picture of Woolsthorpe Manor as it is now.
Isaac's mother Hannah Ayscough remarried Barnabas Smith the minister of the church at North Witham, a nearby village, when Isaac was two years old. The young child was then left in the care of his grandmother Margery Ayscough at Woolsthorpe. Basically treated as an orphan, Isaac did not have a happy childhood. His grandfather James Ayscough was never mentioned by Isaac in later life and the fact that James left nothing to Isaac in his will, made when the boy was ten years old, suggests that there was no love lost between the two. There is no doubt that Isaac felt very bitter towards his mother and his step-father Barnabas Smith. When examining his sins at age nineteen, Isaac listed:-
Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.
Upon the death of his stepfather in 1653, Newton lived in an extended family consisting of his mother, his grandmother, one half-brother, and two half-sisters. From shortly after this time Isaac began attending the Free Grammar School in Grantham. Although this was only five miles from his home, Isaac lodged with the Clark family at Grantham. However he seems to have shown little promise in academic work. His school reports described him as 'idle' and 'inattentive'. His mother, by now a lady of reasonable wealth and property, thought that her eldest son was the right person to manage her affairs and her estate. Isaac was taken away from school but soon showed that he had no talent, or interest, in managing an estate.
An uncle, William Ayscough, decided that Isaac should prepare for entering university and, having persuaded his mother that this was the right thing to do, Isaac was allowed to return to the Free Grammar School in Grantham in 1660 to complete his school education. This time he lodged with Stokes, who was the headmaster of the school, and it would appear that, despite suggestions that he had previously shown no academic promise, Isaac must have convinced some of those around him that he had academic promise. Some evidence points to Stokes also persuading Isaac's mother to let him enter university, so it is likely that Isaac had shown more promise in his first spell at the school than the school reports suggest. Another piece of evidence comes from Isaac's list of sins referred to above. He lists one of his sins as:-
... setting my heart on money, learning, and pleasure more than Thee ...
which tells us that Isaac must have had a passion for learning.
We know nothing about what Isaac learnt in preparation for university, but Stokes was an able man and almost certainly gave Isaac private coaching and a good grounding. There is no evidence that he learnt any mathematics, but we cannot rule out Stokes introducing him to Euclid's Elements which he was well capable of teaching (although there is evidence mentioned below that Newton did not read Euclid before 1663). Anecdotes abound about a mechanical ability which Isaac displayed at the school and stories are told of his skill in making models of machines, in particular of clocks and windmills. However, when biographers seek information about famous people there is always a tendency for people to report what they think is expected of them, and these anecdotes may simply be made up later by those who felt that the most famous scientist in the world ought to have had these skills at school.
Newton entered his uncle's old College, Trinity College Cambridge, on 5 June 1661. He was older than most of his fellow students but, despite the fact that his mother was financially well off, he entered as a sizar. A sizar at Cambridge was a student who received an allowance toward college expenses in exchange for acting as a servant to other students. There is certainly some ambiguity in his position as a sizar, for he seems to have associated with "better class" students rather than other sizars. Westfall (see [23] or [24]) has suggested that Newton may have had Humphrey Babington, a distant relative who was a Fellow of Trinity, as his patron. This reasonable explanation would fit well with what is known and mean that his mother did not subject him unnecessarily to hardship as some of his biographers claim.
Newton's aim at Cambridge was a law degree. Instruction at Cambridge was dominated by the philosophy of Aristotle but some freedom of study was allowed in the third year of the course. Newton studied the philosophy of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, and in particular Boyle. The mechanics of the Copernican astronomy of Galileo attracted him and he also studied Kepler's Optics. He recorded his thoughts in a book which he entitled Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae (Certain Philosophical Questions). It is a fascinating account of how Newton's ideas were already forming around 1664. He headed the text with a Latin statement meaning "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth" showing himself a free thinker from an early stage.
How Newton was introduced to the most advanced mathematical texts of his day is slightly less clear. According to de Moivre, Newton's interest in mathematics began in the autumn of 1663 when he bought an astrology book at a fair in Cambridge and found that he could not understand the mathematics in it. Attempting to read a trigonometry book, he found that he lacked knowledge of geometry and so decided to read Barrow's edition of Euclid's Elements. The first few results were so easy that he almost gave up but he:-
... changed his mind when he read that parallelograms upon the same base and between the same parallels are equal.
Returning to the beginning, Newton read the whole book with a new respect. He then turned to Oughtred's Clavis Mathematica and Descartes' La Géométrie. The new algebra and analytical geometry of Viète was read by Newton from Frans van Schooten's edition of Viète's collected works published in 1646. Other major works of mathematics which he studied around this time was the newly published major work by van Schooten Geometria a Renato Des Cartes which appeared in two volumes in 1659-1661. The book contained important appendices by three of van Schooten disciples, Jan de Witt, Johan Hudde, and Hendrick van Heuraet. Newton also studied Wallis's Algebra and it appears that his first original mathematical work came from his study of this text. He read Wallis's method for finding a square of equal area to a parabola and a hyperbola which used indivisibles. Newton made notes on Wallis's treatment of series but also devised his own proofs of the theorems writing:-
Thus Wallis doth it, but it may be done thus ...
It would be easy to think that Newton's talent began to emerge on the arrival of Barrow to the Lucasian chair at Cambridge in 1663 when he became a Fellow at Trinity College. Certainly the date matches the beginnings of Newton's deep mathematical studies. However, it would appear that the 1663 date is merely a coincidence and that it was only some years later that Barrow recognised the mathematical genius among his students.
Despite some evidence that his progress had not been particularly good, Newton was elected a scholar on 28 April 1664 and received his bachelor's degree in April 1665. It would appear that his scientific genius had still not emerged, but it did so suddenly when the plague closed the University in the summer of 1665 and he had to return to Lincolnshire. There, in a period of less than two years, while Newton was still under 25 years old, he began revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy.
While Newton remained at home he laid the foundations for differential and integral calculus, several years before its independent discovery by Leibniz. The 'method of fluxions', as he termed it, was based on his crucial insight that the integration of a function is merely the inverse procedure to differentiating it. Taking differentiation as the basic operation, Newton produced simple analytical methods that unified many separate techniques previously developed to solve apparently unrelated problems such as finding areas, tangents, the lengths of curves and the maxima and minima of functions. Newton's De Methodis Serierum et Fluxionum was written in 1671 but Newton failed to get it published and it did not appear in print until John Colson produced an English translation in 1736.
When the University of Cambridge reopened after the plague in 1667, Newton put himself forward as a candidate for a fellowship. In October he was elected to a minor fellowship at Trinity College but, after being awarded his Master's Degree, he was elected to a major fellowship in July 1668 which allowed him to dine at the Fellows' Table. In July 1669 Barrow tried to ensure that Newton's mathematical achievements became known to the world. He sent Newton's text De Analysi to Collins in London writing:-
[Newton] brought me the other day some papers, wherein he set down methods of calculating the dimensions of magnitudes like that of Mr Mercator concerning the hyperbola, but very general; as also of resolving equations; which I suppose will please you; and I shall send you them by the next.
Collins corresponded with all the leading mathematicians of the day so Barrow's action should have led to quick recognition. Collins showed Brouncker, the President of the Royal Society, Newton's results (with the author's permission) but after this Newton requested that his manuscript be returned. Collins could not give a detailed account but de Sluze and Gregory learnt something of Newton's work through Collins. Barrow resigned the Lucasian chair in 1669 to devote himself to divinity, recommending that Newton (still only 27 years old) be appointed in his place. Shortly after this Newton visited London and twice met with Collins but, as he wrote to Gregory:-
... having no more acquaintance with him I did not think it becoming to urge him to communicate anything.
Newton's first work as Lucasian Professor was on optics and this was the topic of his first lecture course begun in January 1670. He had reached the conclusion during the two plague years that white light is not a simple entity. Every scientist since Aristotle had believed that white light was a basic single entity, but the chromatic aberration in a telescope lens convinced Newton otherwise. When he passed a thin beam of sunlight through a glass prism Newton noted the spectrum of colours that was formed.
He argued that white light is really a mixture of many different types of rays which are refracted at slightly different angles, and that each different type of ray produces a different spectral colour. Newton was led by this reasoning to the erroneous conclusion that telescopes using refracting lenses would always suffer chromatic aberration. He therefore proposed and constructed a reflecting telescope.
In 1672 Newton was elected a fellow of the Royal Society after donating a reflecting telescope. Also in 1672 Newton published his first scientific paper on light and colour in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The paper was generally well received but Hooke and Huygens objected to Newton's attempt to prove, by experiment alone, that light consists of the motion of small particles rather than waves. The reception that his publication received did nothing to improve Newton's attitude to making his results known to the world. He was always pulled in two directions, there was something in his nature which wanted fame and recognition yet another side of him feared criticism and the easiest way to avoid being criticised was to publish nothing. Certainly one could say that his reaction to criticism was irrational, and certainly his aim to humiliate Hooke in public because of his opinions was abnormal. However, perhaps because of Newton's already high reputation, his corpuscular theory reigned until the wave theory was revived in the 19th century.
Newton's relations with Hooke deteriorated further when, in 1675, Hooke claimed that Newton had stolen some of his optical results. Although the two men made their peace with an exchange of polite letters, Newton turned in on himself and away from the Royal Society which he associated with Hooke as one of its leaders. He delayed the publication of a full account of his optical researches until after the death of Hooke in 1703. Newton's Opticks appeared in 1704. It dealt with the theory of light and colour and with
1. investigations of the colours of thin sheets
2. 'Newton's rings' and
3. diffraction of light.
To explain some of his observations he had to use a wave theory of light in conjunction with his corpuscular theory.
Another argument, this time with the English Jesuits in Liège over his theory of colour, led to a violent exchange of letters, then in 1678 Newton appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown. His mother died in the following year and he withdrew further into his shell, mixing as little as possible with people for a number of years.
Newton's greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By 1666 Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. He had also discovered the law giving the centrifugal force on a body moving uniformly in a circular path. However he did not have a correct understanding of the mechanics of circular motion.
Newton's novel idea of 1666 was to imagine that the Earth's gravity influenced the Moon, counter- balancing its centrifugal force. From his law of centrifugal force and Kepler's third law of planetary motion, Newton deduced the inverse-square law.
In 1679 Newton corresponded with Hooke who had written to Newton claiming:-
... that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocall ...
M Nauenberg writes an account of the next events:-
After his 1679 correspondence with Hooke, Newton, by his own account, found a proof that Kepler's areal law was a consequence of centripetal forces, and he also showed that if the orbital curve is an ellipse under the action of central forces then the radial dependence of the force is inverse square with the distance from the centre.
This discovery showed the physical significance of Kepler's second law.
In 1684 Halley, tired of Hooke's boasting [M Nauenberg]:-
... asked Newton what orbit a body followed under an inverse square force, and Newton replied immediately that it would be an ellipse. However in De Motu.. he only gave a proof of the converse theorem that if the orbit is an ellipse the force is inverse square. The proof that inverse square forces imply conic section orbits is sketched in Cor. 1 to Prop. 13 in Book 1 of the second and third editions of the Principia, but not in the first edition.
Halley persuaded Newton to write a full treatment of his new physics and its application to astronomy. Over a year later (1687) Newton published the Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica or Principia as it is always known.
The Principia is recognised as the greatest scientific book ever written. Newton analysed the motion of bodies in resisting and non-resisting media under the action of centripetal forces. The results were applied to orbiting bodies, projectiles, pendulums, and free-fall near the Earth. He further demonstrated that the planets were attracted toward the Sun by a force varying as the inverse square of the distance and generalised that all heavenly bodies mutually attract one another.
Further generalisation led Newton to the law of universal gravitation:-
... all matter attracts all other matter with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Newton explained a wide range of previously unrelated phenomena: the eccentric orbits of comets, the tides and their variations, the precession of the Earth's axis, and motion of the Moon as perturbed by the gravity of the Sun. This work made Newton an international leader in scientific research. The Continental scientists certainly did not accept the idea of action at a distance and continued to believe in Descartes' vortex theory where forces work through contact. However this did not stop the universal admiration for Newton's technical expertise.
James II became king of Great Britain on 6 February 1685. He had become a convert to the Roman Catholic church in 1669 but when he came to the throne he had strong support from Anglicans as well as Catholics. However rebellions arose, which James put down but he began to distrust Protestants and began to appoint Roman Catholic officers to the army. He then went further, appointing only Catholics as judges and officers of state. Whenever a position at Oxford or Cambridge became vacant, the king appointed a Roman Catholic to fill it. Newton was a staunch Protestant and strongly opposed to what he saw as an attack on the University of Cambridge.
When the King tried to insist that a Benedictine monk be given a degree without taking any examinations or swearing the required oaths, Newton wrote to the Vice-Chancellor:-
Be courageous and steady to the Laws and you cannot fail.
The Vice-Chancellor took Newton's advice and was dismissed from his post. However Newton continued to argue the case strongly preparing documents to be used by the University in its defence. However William of Orange had been invited by many leaders to bring an army to England to defeat James. William landed in November 1688 and James, finding that Protestants had left his army, fled to France. The University of Cambridge elected Newton, now famous for his strong defence of the university, as one of their two members to the Convention Parliament on 15 January 1689. This Parliament declared that James had abdicated and in February 1689 offered the crown to William and Mary. Newton was at the height of his standing - seen as a leader of the university and one of the most eminent mathematicians in the world. However, his election to Parliament may have been the event which let him see that there was a life in London which might appeal to him more than the academic world in Cambridge.
After suffering a second nervous breakdown in 1693, Newton retired from research. The reasons for this breakdown have been discussed by his biographers and many theories have been proposed: chemical poisoning as a result of his alchemy experiments; frustration with his researches; the ending of a personal friendship with Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss-born mathematician resident in London; and problems resulting from his religious beliefs. Newton himself blamed lack of sleep but this was almost certainly a symptom of the illness rather than the cause of it. There seems little reason to suppose that the illness was anything other than depression, a mental illness he must have suffered from throughout most of his life, perhaps made worse by some of the events we have just listed.
Newton decided to leave Cambridge to take up a government position in London becoming Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696 and Master in 1699. However, he did not resign his positions at Cambridge until 1701. As Master of the Mint, adding the income from his estates, we see that Newton became a very rich man. For many people a position such as Master of the Mint would have been treated as simply a reward for their scientific achievements. Newton did not treat it as such and he made a strong contribution to the work of the Mint. He led it through the difficult period of recoinage and he was particularly active in measures to prevent counterfeiting of the coinage.
In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society and was re-elected each year until his death. He was knighted in 1705 by Queen Anne, the first scientist to be so honoured for his work. However the last portion of his life was not an easy one, dominated in many ways with the controversy with Leibniz over which had invented the calculus.
Given the rage that Newton had shown throughout his life when criticised, it is not surprising that he flew into an irrational temper directed against Leibniz. We have given details of this controversy in Leibniz's biography and refer the reader to that article for details. Perhaps all that is worth relating here is how Newton used his position as President of the Royal Society. In this capacity he appointed an "impartial" committee to decide whether he or Leibniz was the inventor of the calculus. He wrote the official report of the committee (although of course it did not appear under his name) which was published by the Royal Society, and he then wrote a review (again anonymously) which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Isaac Newton was born in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Although by the calendar in use at the time of his birth he was born on Christmas Day 1642, we give the date of 4 January 1643 in this biography which is the "corrected" Gregorian calendar date bringing it into line with our present calendar. (The Gregorian calendar was not adopted in England until 1752.) Isaac Newton came from a family of farmers but never knew his father, also named Isaac Newton, who died in October 1642, three months before his son was born. Although Isaac's father owned property and animals which made him quite a wealthy man, he was completely uneducated and could not sign his own name.
You can see a picture of Woolsthorpe Manor as it is now.
Isaac's mother Hannah Ayscough remarried Barnabas Smith the minister of the church at North Witham, a nearby village, when Isaac was two years old. The young child was then left in the care of his grandmother Margery Ayscough at Woolsthorpe. Basically treated as an orphan, Isaac did not have a happy childhood. His grandfather James Ayscough was never mentioned by Isaac in later life and the fact that James left nothing to Isaac in his will, made when the boy was ten years old, suggests that there was no love lost between the two. There is no doubt that Isaac felt very bitter towards his mother and his step-father Barnabas Smith. When examining his sins at age nineteen, Isaac listed:-
Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.
Upon the death of his stepfather in 1653, Newton lived in an extended family consisting of his mother, his grandmother, one half-brother, and two half-sisters. From shortly after this time Isaac began attending the Free Grammar School in Grantham. Although this was only five miles from his home, Isaac lodged with the Clark family at Grantham. However he seems to have shown little promise in academic work. His school reports described him as 'idle' and 'inattentive'. His mother, by now a lady of reasonable wealth and property, thought that her eldest son was the right person to manage her affairs and her estate. Isaac was taken away from school but soon showed that he had no talent, or interest, in managing an estate.
An uncle, William Ayscough, decided that Isaac should prepare for entering university and, having persuaded his mother that this was the right thing to do, Isaac was allowed to return to the Free Grammar School in Grantham in 1660 to complete his school education. This time he lodged with Stokes, who was the headmaster of the school, and it would appear that, despite suggestions that he had previously shown no academic promise, Isaac must have convinced some of those around him that he had academic promise. Some evidence points to Stokes also persuading Isaac's mother to let him enter university, so it is likely that Isaac had shown more promise in his first spell at the school than the school reports suggest. Another piece of evidence comes from Isaac's list of sins referred to above. He lists one of his sins as:-
... setting my heart on money, learning, and pleasure more than Thee ...
which tells us that Isaac must have had a passion for learning.
We know nothing about what Isaac learnt in preparation for university, but Stokes was an able man and almost certainly gave Isaac private coaching and a good grounding. There is no evidence that he learnt any mathematics, but we cannot rule out Stokes introducing him to Euclid's Elements which he was well capable of teaching (although there is evidence mentioned below that Newton did not read Euclid before 1663). Anecdotes abound about a mechanical ability which Isaac displayed at the school and stories are told of his skill in making models of machines, in particular of clocks and windmills. However, when biographers seek information about famous people there is always a tendency for people to report what they think is expected of them, and these anecdotes may simply be made up later by those who felt that the most famous scientist in the world ought to have had these skills at school.
Newton entered his uncle's old College, Trinity College Cambridge, on 5 June 1661. He was older than most of his fellow students but, despite the fact that his mother was financially well off, he entered as a sizar. A sizar at Cambridge was a student who received an allowance toward college expenses in exchange for acting as a servant to other students. There is certainly some ambiguity in his position as a sizar, for he seems to have associated with "better class" students rather than other sizars. Westfall (see [23] or [24]) has suggested that Newton may have had Humphrey Babington, a distant relative who was a Fellow of Trinity, as his patron. This reasonable explanation would fit well with what is known and mean that his mother did not subject him unnecessarily to hardship as some of his biographers claim.
Newton's aim at Cambridge was a law degree. Instruction at Cambridge was dominated by the philosophy of Aristotle but some freedom of study was allowed in the third year of the course. Newton studied the philosophy of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, and in particular Boyle. The mechanics of the Copernican astronomy of Galileo attracted him and he also studied Kepler's Optics. He recorded his thoughts in a book which he entitled Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae (Certain Philosophical Questions). It is a fascinating account of how Newton's ideas were already forming around 1664. He headed the text with a Latin statement meaning "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth" showing himself a free thinker from an early stage.
How Newton was introduced to the most advanced mathematical texts of his day is slightly less clear. According to de Moivre, Newton's interest in mathematics began in the autumn of 1663 when he bought an astrology book at a fair in Cambridge and found that he could not understand the mathematics in it. Attempting to read a trigonometry book, he found that he lacked knowledge of geometry and so decided to read Barrow's edition of Euclid's Elements. The first few results were so easy that he almost gave up but he:-
... changed his mind when he read that parallelograms upon the same base and between the same parallels are equal.
Returning to the beginning, Newton read the whole book with a new respect. He then turned to Oughtred's Clavis Mathematica and Descartes' La Géométrie. The new algebra and analytical geometry of Viète was read by Newton from Frans van Schooten's edition of Viète's collected works published in 1646. Other major works of mathematics which he studied around this time was the newly published major work by van Schooten Geometria a Renato Des Cartes which appeared in two volumes in 1659-1661. The book contained important appendices by three of van Schooten disciples, Jan de Witt, Johan Hudde, and Hendrick van Heuraet. Newton also studied Wallis's Algebra and it appears that his first original mathematical work came from his study of this text. He read Wallis's method for finding a square of equal area to a parabola and a hyperbola which used indivisibles. Newton made notes on Wallis's treatment of series but also devised his own proofs of the theorems writing:-
Thus Wallis doth it, but it may be done thus ...
It would be easy to think that Newton's talent began to emerge on the arrival of Barrow to the Lucasian chair at Cambridge in 1663 when he became a Fellow at Trinity College. Certainly the date matches the beginnings of Newton's deep mathematical studies. However, it would appear that the 1663 date is merely a coincidence and that it was only some years later that Barrow recognised the mathematical genius among his students.
Despite some evidence that his progress had not been particularly good, Newton was elected a scholar on 28 April 1664 and received his bachelor's degree in April 1665. It would appear that his scientific genius had still not emerged, but it did so suddenly when the plague closed the University in the summer of 1665 and he had to return to Lincolnshire. There, in a period of less than two years, while Newton was still under 25 years old, he began revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy.
While Newton remained at home he laid the foundations for differential and integral calculus, several years before its independent discovery by Leibniz. The 'method of fluxions', as he termed it, was based on his crucial insight that the integration of a function is merely the inverse procedure to differentiating it. Taking differentiation as the basic operation, Newton produced simple analytical methods that unified many separate techniques previously developed to solve apparently unrelated problems such as finding areas, tangents, the lengths of curves and the maxima and minima of functions. Newton's De Methodis Serierum et Fluxionum was written in 1671 but Newton failed to get it published and it did not appear in print until John Colson produced an English translation in 1736.
When the University of Cambridge reopened after the plague in 1667, Newton put himself forward as a candidate for a fellowship. In October he was elected to a minor fellowship at Trinity College but, after being awarded his Master's Degree, he was elected to a major fellowship in July 1668 which allowed him to dine at the Fellows' Table. In July 1669 Barrow tried to ensure that Newton's mathematical achievements became known to the world. He sent Newton's text De Analysi to Collins in London writing:-
[Newton] brought me the other day some papers, wherein he set down methods of calculating the dimensions of magnitudes like that of Mr Mercator concerning the hyperbola, but very general; as also of resolving equations; which I suppose will please you; and I shall send you them by the next.
Collins corresponded with all the leading mathematicians of the day so Barrow's action should have led to quick recognition. Collins showed Brouncker, the President of the Royal Society, Newton's results (with the author's permission) but after this Newton requested that his manuscript be returned. Collins could not give a detailed account but de Sluze and Gregory learnt something of Newton's work through Collins. Barrow resigned the Lucasian chair in 1669 to devote himself to divinity, recommending that Newton (still only 27 years old) be appointed in his place. Shortly after this Newton visited London and twice met with Collins but, as he wrote to Gregory:-
... having no more acquaintance with him I did not think it becoming to urge him to communicate anything.
Newton's first work as Lucasian Professor was on optics and this was the topic of his first lecture course begun in January 1670. He had reached the conclusion during the two plague years that white light is not a simple entity. Every scientist since Aristotle had believed that white light was a basic single entity, but the chromatic aberration in a telescope lens convinced Newton otherwise. When he passed a thin beam of sunlight through a glass prism Newton noted the spectrum of colours that was formed.
He argued that white light is really a mixture of many different types of rays which are refracted at slightly different angles, and that each different type of ray produces a different spectral colour. Newton was led by this reasoning to the erroneous conclusion that telescopes using refracting lenses would always suffer chromatic aberration. He therefore proposed and constructed a reflecting telescope.
In 1672 Newton was elected a fellow of the Royal Society after donating a reflecting telescope. Also in 1672 Newton published his first scientific paper on light and colour in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The paper was generally well received but Hooke and Huygens objected to Newton's attempt to prove, by experiment alone, that light consists of the motion of small particles rather than waves. The reception that his publication received did nothing to improve Newton's attitude to making his results known to the world. He was always pulled in two directions, there was something in his nature which wanted fame and recognition yet another side of him feared criticism and the easiest way to avoid being criticised was to publish nothing. Certainly one could say that his reaction to criticism was irrational, and certainly his aim to humiliate Hooke in public because of his opinions was abnormal. However, perhaps because of Newton's already high reputation, his corpuscular theory reigned until the wave theory was revived in the 19th century.
Newton's relations with Hooke deteriorated further when, in 1675, Hooke claimed that Newton had stolen some of his optical results. Although the two men made their peace with an exchange of polite letters, Newton turned in on himself and away from the Royal Society which he associated with Hooke as one of its leaders. He delayed the publication of a full account of his optical researches until after the death of Hooke in 1703. Newton's Opticks appeared in 1704. It dealt with the theory of light and colour and with
1. investigations of the colours of thin sheets
2. 'Newton's rings' and
3. diffraction of light.
To explain some of his observations he had to use a wave theory of light in conjunction with his corpuscular theory.
Another argument, this time with the English Jesuits in Liège over his theory of colour, led to a violent exchange of letters, then in 1678 Newton appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown. His mother died in the following year and he withdrew further into his shell, mixing as little as possible with people for a number of years.
Newton's greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By 1666 Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. He had also discovered the law giving the centrifugal force on a body moving uniformly in a circular path. However he did not have a correct understanding of the mechanics of circular motion.
Newton's novel idea of 1666 was to imagine that the Earth's gravity influenced the Moon, counter- balancing its centrifugal force. From his law of centrifugal force and Kepler's third law of planetary motion, Newton deduced the inverse-square law.
In 1679 Newton corresponded with Hooke who had written to Newton claiming:-
... that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocall ...
M Nauenberg writes an account of the next events:-
After his 1679 correspondence with Hooke, Newton, by his own account, found a proof that Kepler's areal law was a consequence of centripetal forces, and he also showed that if the orbital curve is an ellipse under the action of central forces then the radial dependence of the force is inverse square with the distance from the centre.
This discovery showed the physical significance of Kepler's second law.
In 1684 Halley, tired of Hooke's boasting [M Nauenberg]:-
... asked Newton what orbit a body followed under an inverse square force, and Newton replied immediately that it would be an ellipse. However in De Motu.. he only gave a proof of the converse theorem that if the orbit is an ellipse the force is inverse square. The proof that inverse square forces imply conic section orbits is sketched in Cor. 1 to Prop. 13 in Book 1 of the second and third editions of the Principia, but not in the first edition.
Halley persuaded Newton to write a full treatment of his new physics and its application to astronomy. Over a year later (1687) Newton published the Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica or Principia as it is always known.
The Principia is recognised as the greatest scientific book ever written. Newton analysed the motion of bodies in resisting and non-resisting media under the action of centripetal forces. The results were applied to orbiting bodies, projectiles, pendulums, and free-fall near the Earth. He further demonstrated that the planets were attracted toward the Sun by a force varying as the inverse square of the distance and generalised that all heavenly bodies mutually attract one another.
Further generalisation led Newton to the law of universal gravitation:-
... all matter attracts all other matter with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Newton explained a wide range of previously unrelated phenomena: the eccentric orbits of comets, the tides and their variations, the precession of the Earth's axis, and motion of the Moon as perturbed by the gravity of the Sun. This work made Newton an international leader in scientific research. The Continental scientists certainly did not accept the idea of action at a distance and continued to believe in Descartes' vortex theory where forces work through contact. However this did not stop the universal admiration for Newton's technical expertise.
James II became king of Great Britain on 6 February 1685. He had become a convert to the Roman Catholic church in 1669 but when he came to the throne he had strong support from Anglicans as well as Catholics. However rebellions arose, which James put down but he began to distrust Protestants and began to appoint Roman Catholic officers to the army. He then went further, appointing only Catholics as judges and officers of state. Whenever a position at Oxford or Cambridge became vacant, the king appointed a Roman Catholic to fill it. Newton was a staunch Protestant and strongly opposed to what he saw as an attack on the University of Cambridge.
When the King tried to insist that a Benedictine monk be given a degree without taking any examinations or swearing the required oaths, Newton wrote to the Vice-Chancellor:-
Be courageous and steady to the Laws and you cannot fail.
The Vice-Chancellor took Newton's advice and was dismissed from his post. However Newton continued to argue the case strongly preparing documents to be used by the University in its defence. However William of Orange had been invited by many leaders to bring an army to England to defeat James. William landed in November 1688 and James, finding that Protestants had left his army, fled to France. The University of Cambridge elected Newton, now famous for his strong defence of the university, as one of their two members to the Convention Parliament on 15 January 1689. This Parliament declared that James had abdicated and in February 1689 offered the crown to William and Mary. Newton was at the height of his standing - seen as a leader of the university and one of the most eminent mathematicians in the world. However, his election to Parliament may have been the event which let him see that there was a life in London which might appeal to him more than the academic world in Cambridge.
After suffering a second nervous breakdown in 1693, Newton retired from research. The reasons for this breakdown have been discussed by his biographers and many theories have been proposed: chemical poisoning as a result of his alchemy experiments; frustration with his researches; the ending of a personal friendship with Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss-born mathematician resident in London; and problems resulting from his religious beliefs. Newton himself blamed lack of sleep but this was almost certainly a symptom of the illness rather than the cause of it. There seems little reason to suppose that the illness was anything other than depression, a mental illness he must have suffered from throughout most of his life, perhaps made worse by some of the events we have just listed.
Newton decided to leave Cambridge to take up a government position in London becoming Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696 and Master in 1699. However, he did not resign his positions at Cambridge until 1701. As Master of the Mint, adding the income from his estates, we see that Newton became a very rich man. For many people a position such as Master of the Mint would have been treated as simply a reward for their scientific achievements. Newton did not treat it as such and he made a strong contribution to the work of the Mint. He led it through the difficult period of recoinage and he was particularly active in measures to prevent counterfeiting of the coinage.
In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society and was re-elected each year until his death. He was knighted in 1705 by Queen Anne, the first scientist to be so honoured for his work. However the last portion of his life was not an easy one, dominated in many ways with the controversy with Leibniz over which had invented the calculus.
Given the rage that Newton had shown throughout his life when criticised, it is not surprising that he flew into an irrational temper directed against Leibniz. We have given details of this controversy in Leibniz's biography and refer the reader to that article for details. Perhaps all that is worth relating here is how Newton used his position as President of the Royal Society. In this capacity he appointed an "impartial" committee to decide whether he or Leibniz was the inventor of the calculus. He wrote the official report of the committee (although of course it did not appear under his name) which was published by the Royal Society, and he then wrote a review (again anonymously) which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
James Watt
A Desire to Make Instruments
James Watt was born in 1736 in Greenock, Scotland. James was a thin, weakly child who suffered from migraines and toothaches. He enjoyed mathematics in grammar school, and also learned carpentry from his father. His father was a carpenter by training, and built anything from furniture to ships, but primarily worked in shipbuilding. Watt learned about the navigational aids on ships: quadrants, compasses, telescopes. By his midteens he knew he wanted to become an instrument maker. Watt's father had just lost a substantial investment due to a shipwreck, and he could see the benefits of another occupation, so was supportive of Watt's ambitions. Unfortunately, there were no opportunities for instrument training in Greenock.
In 1754 Watt went to Glasgow, Scotland and became acquainted with Robert Dick through a relative who worked at the University of Glasgow. Robert Dick, a University scientist, was impressed with Watt's basic skills at instrument making, but recognized the need for special training. Dick encouraged Watt to go to London for training. Watt spent two weeks in London looking for an apprenticeship opportunity. However the instrument makers protected their trade by rules of a body known as the Worshipful Company of Clock-makers. The only employment was for fully-trained instrument makers or trainees serving seven-year apprenticeships!
John Morgan, an instrument maker in the heart of London, did not always follow the rules, and agreed to take Watt as an apprentice on the conditions of little pay! Morgan recognized the capabilities of Watt, and agreed to shorten the apprenticeship to a period of one year. Watt took the offer in 1755. Within two months, Watt's abilities surpassed those of Morgan's official apprentice, who had been there two years. Watt was eager to cram several years of training into one, and worked 10 hour days in the cold workshop. After hours, he worked for a small amount of cash, and his father sent him a little, but he maintained long hours on little food, and his health declined. During this time, Britain was at war with France, and the military would force into service any able-bodied man. Watt avoided the streets for this reason, which may have affected his health further. Watt finished his apprenticeship year successfully, but his health collapsed almost immediately afterwards.
Watt returned to Glasgow in 1756, now a trained instrument maker. His University of Glasgow acquaintances learned of his return, and gave him some work. Watt set up his shop, but found that other instrument makers shunned his credentials and training. He was an outsider in Glasgow, after being trained in London. The University professors recognized his abilities, and did not need to abide by the traditions of the instrument makers. They arranged for permission to set up a shop for Watt on University grounds and created the position "Mathematical Instrument Maker to the University".
Even with the new position, Watt still had trouble finding enough work since the other instrument makers were somewhat hostile. He started making musical instruments to avoid competition. His musical instruments were improvements over existing models and business began to grow. In 1758, an architect gave him backing to open a new shop in the heart of Glasgow. His business and reputation grew steadily and by 1763 he had apprentices of his own, but he was not out of debt.
The job that changed history
Watt always had work from the University scientists, so he maintained through the years his shop on the University property. Professor John Anderson was the older brother of a grammar school companion, Andrew. One day in 1763, Professor John Anderson brought Watt a new problem. The University had a lab-scale model of the Newcomen pump to investigate why the full-scale pumps required so much steam. The model suffered a problem. It would stall after a few strokes. Watt recognized that the flaw was due to an undersized boiler that couldn't provide enough steam to reheat the cylinder after a few strokes. (See Newcomen pump details).
During troubleshooting of the lab-scale model, Watt discovered the main reason the full-sized engines consumed such vast quantities of steam. However, implementation of the solution did not come easily. The Newcomen pumps required such vast quantities of steam since they were cooled during every stroke, then reheated. Watt needed a way to condense the steam without cooling the cylinder. Watt turned over the problem in his head for months and performed many experiments. He learned much about steam properties, and independently discovered latent heat of vaporization in his experiments. He also tabulated the vapor pressure of water at various temperatures before the work of Clapeyron. One of his University friends was Professor Black, who had discovered latent heat previously and had been lecturing on it without Watt's knowledge. They shared many interesting conversations after Watt told Professor Black of his "discovery". The concept for the breakthrough to improve the Newcomen engine came in May of 1765, over two years after Watt began to study the engine. Watt later described the moment of inspiration:
"I had gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon, early in 1765. I had entered the green by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam and injection-water if I used a jet as in Newcomen's engine. Two ways of doing this occurred to me. First, the water might be run off by a descending pipe, if an offlet could be got at the depth of thirty-five or thirty-six feet, and any air might be extracted by a small pump. The second was to make the pump large enough to extract both water and air. . . . I had not walked farther than the golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind."
With a separate condenser, the condensation process could take place constantly and the steam cylinder could be pulled to a vacuum while remaining hot. The vapor would rush into the condenser.
Watt would not work on the Sunday, as was the custom of the day. He controlled his impatience, but first thing Monday morning he was in his shop. He crafted a makeshift piston and condenser using a brass syringe. He filled the syringe with steam. He pumped the air out of his makeshift condenser, and cooled it. It worked! (Read more details on Watt's experiment).
Watt was 29 in 1765 when he discovered his idea would work. Yet it would be 11 years before he saw his invention in practice! He was modest, goodhearted, and shy. He once wrote to his business partner, Boulton, many years later, "I would rather face a loaded cannon than settle a disputed account or make a bargain." He also understood the significance of his development. "I can think of nothing but this engine", he said.
The waiting
Watt's University friends introduced him to John Roebuck, a industrialist who held leases on coal deposits. Roebuck agreed to back the development of a full-scale engine after he saw the model work. Watt devoted much time to troubleshooting and developing a full-scale model. Roebuck did not employ machinists with the experience that Watt's project required. Watt himself was a first rate instrument maker, but he was ill-suited to manage the work crew to operate the pump. Over the next four years, Watt was consumed with making an engine work. The experiments were slow and costly. The greatest difficulty was maintaining the seal on the large piston. In the Newcomen engine, the piston and cylinder were made up cast iron, and the fit was of very poor quality. However, since the entire cylinder was to be cooled, the piston was sealed by maintaining water on top of the piston in the open cylinder. Any leakage in the Newcomen engine simply sucked some water into the cylinder without defeating the driving force for the movement. Such a solution was unacceptable with Watt's design where the piston was to be maintained hot.
Although a full-scale working engine was constructed at Roebuck's coal mine, the effort was taxing on energy as well as finances. Andrew Carnegie writes in his biography of Watt:
The monster new engine, upon which so much depended, was ready for trial at last in September, 1769. About six months had been spent in its construction. Its success was indifferent. Watt had declared it to be a "clumsy job." The new pipe-condenser did not work well, the cylinder was almost useless, having been badly cast, and the old difficulty in keeping the piston-packing tight remained. Many things were tried for packing-cork, oiled rags, old hats (felt probably), paper, horse dung, etc., etc. Still the steam escaped, even after a thorough overhauling. The second experiment also failed. So great is the gap between the small toy model and the practical work-performing giant, a rock upon which many sanguine theoretical inventors have been wrecked! Had Watt been one of that class, he could never have succeeded. Here we have another proof of the soundness of the contention that Watt, the mechanic, was almost as important as Watt the inventor. (Carnegie, Andrew James Watt, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, May, 1905.)
Roebuck was supportive of Watt and encouraged him to keep working on the pump. Watt was able to get a large engine to work well enough to apply for a patent, and Roebuck financed the engine patent that was granted in 1769. In exchange, Roebuck agreed to pay off all of Watt debts for his instrument shops but would take two-thirds of the money the invention made. Watt found this agreement acceptable because the large experiments were slow and costly. The invention was far from being ready for production. Then, Roebuck did another thing that helped Watt. He indirectly introduced Watt to Matthew Boulton of Birmingham, England. This last introduction was the one that helped the invention create the steam engine revolution -- but the revolution didn't come easily or fast!
Boulton recognized that the engine had potential applications for much more than pumping water! Boulton was an industrialist with an extraordinary vision to have all craftsmen work in a common building -- a "manufactory" (later shorted to "factory"). Previously, craftsmen had all maintained individual shops. Further, Boulton had the desire to furnish the manufactory with the best equipment and finest craftsmen. Boulton was certain that he could sell the engine.
Unfortunately, Boulton could not work out a deal with Roebuck who had majority control of the patent. Disheartened and in need of cash himself, Watt left the instrument making business in 1771, and took up surveying. In March 1773, Roebuck was in desperate need of cash. Boulton acquired Roebuck's rights to the engine in 1773, four years after the engine was patented, and nine years after Watt first discovered the separate condenser. Boulton was convinced the problems could be solved.
A Perfect Partnership
Boulton and Watt's personalities complemented each other and they got along well. Boulton's assembly of accomplished craftsmen provided the much-needed expertise that Watt had lacked in his collaboration with Roebuck. As soon as Watt finished his obligations for surveying, he moved to Birmingham to join Boulton's shop. Watt maintained work on the engine as well as other tasks. In November, 1774 he wrote to his father,
"The business I am here about has turned out rather successful; that is to say, the fire engine I have invented is now going, and answers much better than any other that has yet been made."
His letter was a modest statement of his true enthusiasm, for his concepts were developing into a fantastic engine. Boulton's desire to hire the best craftsmen had enabled the success.
Success at Last
In March 1776 the Bentley Mining Company started their newest piece of equipment, a Boulton-Watt engine. The Bentley Mining Company had taken a substantial risk by abandoning a half-built Newcomen engine and replacing it with the Boulton-Watt engine. The day the engine started a newspaper reporter was present:
"From the first Moment of its setting to Work, it made about 14 to 15 Strokes per Minute, and emptied the Engine Pit (which is about 90 Feet deep and stood 57 Feet high in Water) in less than an hour". From "Aris's Birmingham Gazette, March 11, 1776.
(Technical note: water can be drawn by suction less than 33 feet, so the pumps were placed within that distance of the bottom.)
This Bentley Mining Company engine used a cylinder crafted by the best ironmaster in Britain, John Wilkinson, who had recently developed a technique for boring cylinders (cannons) and had adopted the technique to the steam cylinder of the Boulton-Watt engine. The valves, piping, and fittings were manufactured at the Soho Manufactory - a factory 2 miles from Birmingham partnered by Boulton and Watt. The new engine used 1/4 of the steam that the Newcomen engines had required! (See Watt Engine)
The new Boulton-Watt engine was a great success. Watt became very busy maintaining business at Cornwall mines and setting up new pumps for the mines in the Cornwall region.
More than Pumps
Boulton recognized the potential of the device for doing much more than pumping water. He also recognized the limited market for the device to drive pumps. In June 1781 he wrote to Watt:
"The people in London, Manchester and Birmingham are steam mill mad. I don't mean to hurry you, but I think in the course of a month or two, we should determine to take out a patent for certain methods of producing rotative motion…There is no other Cornwall to be found, and the most likely line for the consumption of our engines is the application of them to mills which is certainly an extensive field" (Sproule, Ann James Watt, Exley Publications, Herts, UK, 1992)
Watt answered this call, too. At age 45, Watt developed his next great invention -- a method to convert reciprocating motion of the piston to rotating motion. The invention was the sun and planet gear system. This invention was better than a crankshaft which was already patented (an idea Watt said was stolen from him). The sun and planet gear system permitted the rotative wheel to turn more than once per stroke of the piston! Since the piston moved slowly, this was an major improvement! An engine patented in 1782 by Boulton and Watt had another major improvement -- the steam cylinder used valves above and below the piston to connect independently to the boiler or the condenser; the piston performed work on both the upward and downward stroke! This evened out the stroking of the piston, performing equal work on each movement. Watt had another great improvement on this engine. He had devised a mechanism to match the rocking motion of the beam (which traces an arc) with the linear motion of the piston. This was known as the "parallel motion" device, and was necessary to enable the piston to push the beam on the upward stroke; the chains used in the previous single-acting engines didn't transfer work on the upward stroke. He once told his son that this was the invention of which he was most proud.(See Double-acting Engine)
In 1782 a sawmill ordered an engine that was to replace 12 horses. Watt used data from a sawmill to determine that a horse could lift 33,000 pounds the distance of one foot in one minute -- and thus developed the units of hp.
Other major contributions developed by Watt include the steam throttling valve and the mechanism to connect the throttle to the engine governor. Used together, these devices regulated steam flow into the piston and kept a constant engine speed.
By 1800, 84 British cotton mills used Boulton and Watt engines. So did wool mills and flour mills! In his later years, Watt enjoyed the success and fame he deserved.
Today, it is appropriate to recognize Watt's contributions when we used the British (and American Engineering) units for power, hp, and the SI units for power, the Watt.
Author's note: I have found minor variations in the wording of quotes attributed to Watt by the various biographers, but for all the citations given here, the meaning is identical. The wording given here was provided by one of the biographers.
Dates in the history of steam engines and James Watt
1698 Thomas Savery patent
1712 Thomas Newcomen patent
1736 Watt born
1755 Watt trained in London
1763 Watt discovers problem with Newcomen engine
1765 Watt discovers external condenser
1769 Roebuck and Watt patent the engine
1774 Boulton acquires Roebuck's patent rights. Watt moves to Birmingham
1776 The first Boulton and Watt engine is commercially applied
1781-2 Patents for sun and planet gears, and the double-acting engine
1800 Engine patent runs out. Watt retires at 64, healthy, happy, and famous
1819 James Watt dies, age 83
James Watt was born in 1736 in Greenock, Scotland. James was a thin, weakly child who suffered from migraines and toothaches. He enjoyed mathematics in grammar school, and also learned carpentry from his father. His father was a carpenter by training, and built anything from furniture to ships, but primarily worked in shipbuilding. Watt learned about the navigational aids on ships: quadrants, compasses, telescopes. By his midteens he knew he wanted to become an instrument maker. Watt's father had just lost a substantial investment due to a shipwreck, and he could see the benefits of another occupation, so was supportive of Watt's ambitions. Unfortunately, there were no opportunities for instrument training in Greenock.
In 1754 Watt went to Glasgow, Scotland and became acquainted with Robert Dick through a relative who worked at the University of Glasgow. Robert Dick, a University scientist, was impressed with Watt's basic skills at instrument making, but recognized the need for special training. Dick encouraged Watt to go to London for training. Watt spent two weeks in London looking for an apprenticeship opportunity. However the instrument makers protected their trade by rules of a body known as the Worshipful Company of Clock-makers. The only employment was for fully-trained instrument makers or trainees serving seven-year apprenticeships!
John Morgan, an instrument maker in the heart of London, did not always follow the rules, and agreed to take Watt as an apprentice on the conditions of little pay! Morgan recognized the capabilities of Watt, and agreed to shorten the apprenticeship to a period of one year. Watt took the offer in 1755. Within two months, Watt's abilities surpassed those of Morgan's official apprentice, who had been there two years. Watt was eager to cram several years of training into one, and worked 10 hour days in the cold workshop. After hours, he worked for a small amount of cash, and his father sent him a little, but he maintained long hours on little food, and his health declined. During this time, Britain was at war with France, and the military would force into service any able-bodied man. Watt avoided the streets for this reason, which may have affected his health further. Watt finished his apprenticeship year successfully, but his health collapsed almost immediately afterwards.
Watt returned to Glasgow in 1756, now a trained instrument maker. His University of Glasgow acquaintances learned of his return, and gave him some work. Watt set up his shop, but found that other instrument makers shunned his credentials and training. He was an outsider in Glasgow, after being trained in London. The University professors recognized his abilities, and did not need to abide by the traditions of the instrument makers. They arranged for permission to set up a shop for Watt on University grounds and created the position "Mathematical Instrument Maker to the University".
Even with the new position, Watt still had trouble finding enough work since the other instrument makers were somewhat hostile. He started making musical instruments to avoid competition. His musical instruments were improvements over existing models and business began to grow. In 1758, an architect gave him backing to open a new shop in the heart of Glasgow. His business and reputation grew steadily and by 1763 he had apprentices of his own, but he was not out of debt.
The job that changed history
Watt always had work from the University scientists, so he maintained through the years his shop on the University property. Professor John Anderson was the older brother of a grammar school companion, Andrew. One day in 1763, Professor John Anderson brought Watt a new problem. The University had a lab-scale model of the Newcomen pump to investigate why the full-scale pumps required so much steam. The model suffered a problem. It would stall after a few strokes. Watt recognized that the flaw was due to an undersized boiler that couldn't provide enough steam to reheat the cylinder after a few strokes. (See Newcomen pump details).
During troubleshooting of the lab-scale model, Watt discovered the main reason the full-sized engines consumed such vast quantities of steam. However, implementation of the solution did not come easily. The Newcomen pumps required such vast quantities of steam since they were cooled during every stroke, then reheated. Watt needed a way to condense the steam without cooling the cylinder. Watt turned over the problem in his head for months and performed many experiments. He learned much about steam properties, and independently discovered latent heat of vaporization in his experiments. He also tabulated the vapor pressure of water at various temperatures before the work of Clapeyron. One of his University friends was Professor Black, who had discovered latent heat previously and had been lecturing on it without Watt's knowledge. They shared many interesting conversations after Watt told Professor Black of his "discovery". The concept for the breakthrough to improve the Newcomen engine came in May of 1765, over two years after Watt began to study the engine. Watt later described the moment of inspiration:
"I had gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon, early in 1765. I had entered the green by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street and had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam and injection-water if I used a jet as in Newcomen's engine. Two ways of doing this occurred to me. First, the water might be run off by a descending pipe, if an offlet could be got at the depth of thirty-five or thirty-six feet, and any air might be extracted by a small pump. The second was to make the pump large enough to extract both water and air. . . . I had not walked farther than the golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind."
With a separate condenser, the condensation process could take place constantly and the steam cylinder could be pulled to a vacuum while remaining hot. The vapor would rush into the condenser.
Watt would not work on the Sunday, as was the custom of the day. He controlled his impatience, but first thing Monday morning he was in his shop. He crafted a makeshift piston and condenser using a brass syringe. He filled the syringe with steam. He pumped the air out of his makeshift condenser, and cooled it. It worked! (Read more details on Watt's experiment).
Watt was 29 in 1765 when he discovered his idea would work. Yet it would be 11 years before he saw his invention in practice! He was modest, goodhearted, and shy. He once wrote to his business partner, Boulton, many years later, "I would rather face a loaded cannon than settle a disputed account or make a bargain." He also understood the significance of his development. "I can think of nothing but this engine", he said.
The waiting
Watt's University friends introduced him to John Roebuck, a industrialist who held leases on coal deposits. Roebuck agreed to back the development of a full-scale engine after he saw the model work. Watt devoted much time to troubleshooting and developing a full-scale model. Roebuck did not employ machinists with the experience that Watt's project required. Watt himself was a first rate instrument maker, but he was ill-suited to manage the work crew to operate the pump. Over the next four years, Watt was consumed with making an engine work. The experiments were slow and costly. The greatest difficulty was maintaining the seal on the large piston. In the Newcomen engine, the piston and cylinder were made up cast iron, and the fit was of very poor quality. However, since the entire cylinder was to be cooled, the piston was sealed by maintaining water on top of the piston in the open cylinder. Any leakage in the Newcomen engine simply sucked some water into the cylinder without defeating the driving force for the movement. Such a solution was unacceptable with Watt's design where the piston was to be maintained hot.
Although a full-scale working engine was constructed at Roebuck's coal mine, the effort was taxing on energy as well as finances. Andrew Carnegie writes in his biography of Watt:
The monster new engine, upon which so much depended, was ready for trial at last in September, 1769. About six months had been spent in its construction. Its success was indifferent. Watt had declared it to be a "clumsy job." The new pipe-condenser did not work well, the cylinder was almost useless, having been badly cast, and the old difficulty in keeping the piston-packing tight remained. Many things were tried for packing-cork, oiled rags, old hats (felt probably), paper, horse dung, etc., etc. Still the steam escaped, even after a thorough overhauling. The second experiment also failed. So great is the gap between the small toy model and the practical work-performing giant, a rock upon which many sanguine theoretical inventors have been wrecked! Had Watt been one of that class, he could never have succeeded. Here we have another proof of the soundness of the contention that Watt, the mechanic, was almost as important as Watt the inventor. (Carnegie, Andrew James Watt, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, May, 1905.)
Roebuck was supportive of Watt and encouraged him to keep working on the pump. Watt was able to get a large engine to work well enough to apply for a patent, and Roebuck financed the engine patent that was granted in 1769. In exchange, Roebuck agreed to pay off all of Watt debts for his instrument shops but would take two-thirds of the money the invention made. Watt found this agreement acceptable because the large experiments were slow and costly. The invention was far from being ready for production. Then, Roebuck did another thing that helped Watt. He indirectly introduced Watt to Matthew Boulton of Birmingham, England. This last introduction was the one that helped the invention create the steam engine revolution -- but the revolution didn't come easily or fast!
Boulton recognized that the engine had potential applications for much more than pumping water! Boulton was an industrialist with an extraordinary vision to have all craftsmen work in a common building -- a "manufactory" (later shorted to "factory"). Previously, craftsmen had all maintained individual shops. Further, Boulton had the desire to furnish the manufactory with the best equipment and finest craftsmen. Boulton was certain that he could sell the engine.
Unfortunately, Boulton could not work out a deal with Roebuck who had majority control of the patent. Disheartened and in need of cash himself, Watt left the instrument making business in 1771, and took up surveying. In March 1773, Roebuck was in desperate need of cash. Boulton acquired Roebuck's rights to the engine in 1773, four years after the engine was patented, and nine years after Watt first discovered the separate condenser. Boulton was convinced the problems could be solved.
A Perfect Partnership
Boulton and Watt's personalities complemented each other and they got along well. Boulton's assembly of accomplished craftsmen provided the much-needed expertise that Watt had lacked in his collaboration with Roebuck. As soon as Watt finished his obligations for surveying, he moved to Birmingham to join Boulton's shop. Watt maintained work on the engine as well as other tasks. In November, 1774 he wrote to his father,
"The business I am here about has turned out rather successful; that is to say, the fire engine I have invented is now going, and answers much better than any other that has yet been made."
His letter was a modest statement of his true enthusiasm, for his concepts were developing into a fantastic engine. Boulton's desire to hire the best craftsmen had enabled the success.
Success at Last
In March 1776 the Bentley Mining Company started their newest piece of equipment, a Boulton-Watt engine. The Bentley Mining Company had taken a substantial risk by abandoning a half-built Newcomen engine and replacing it with the Boulton-Watt engine. The day the engine started a newspaper reporter was present:
"From the first Moment of its setting to Work, it made about 14 to 15 Strokes per Minute, and emptied the Engine Pit (which is about 90 Feet deep and stood 57 Feet high in Water) in less than an hour". From "Aris's Birmingham Gazette, March 11, 1776.
(Technical note: water can be drawn by suction less than 33 feet, so the pumps were placed within that distance of the bottom.)
This Bentley Mining Company engine used a cylinder crafted by the best ironmaster in Britain, John Wilkinson, who had recently developed a technique for boring cylinders (cannons) and had adopted the technique to the steam cylinder of the Boulton-Watt engine. The valves, piping, and fittings were manufactured at the Soho Manufactory - a factory 2 miles from Birmingham partnered by Boulton and Watt. The new engine used 1/4 of the steam that the Newcomen engines had required! (See Watt Engine)
The new Boulton-Watt engine was a great success. Watt became very busy maintaining business at Cornwall mines and setting up new pumps for the mines in the Cornwall region.
More than Pumps
Boulton recognized the potential of the device for doing much more than pumping water. He also recognized the limited market for the device to drive pumps. In June 1781 he wrote to Watt:
"The people in London, Manchester and Birmingham are steam mill mad. I don't mean to hurry you, but I think in the course of a month or two, we should determine to take out a patent for certain methods of producing rotative motion…There is no other Cornwall to be found, and the most likely line for the consumption of our engines is the application of them to mills which is certainly an extensive field" (Sproule, Ann James Watt, Exley Publications, Herts, UK, 1992)
Watt answered this call, too. At age 45, Watt developed his next great invention -- a method to convert reciprocating motion of the piston to rotating motion. The invention was the sun and planet gear system. This invention was better than a crankshaft which was already patented (an idea Watt said was stolen from him). The sun and planet gear system permitted the rotative wheel to turn more than once per stroke of the piston! Since the piston moved slowly, this was an major improvement! An engine patented in 1782 by Boulton and Watt had another major improvement -- the steam cylinder used valves above and below the piston to connect independently to the boiler or the condenser; the piston performed work on both the upward and downward stroke! This evened out the stroking of the piston, performing equal work on each movement. Watt had another great improvement on this engine. He had devised a mechanism to match the rocking motion of the beam (which traces an arc) with the linear motion of the piston. This was known as the "parallel motion" device, and was necessary to enable the piston to push the beam on the upward stroke; the chains used in the previous single-acting engines didn't transfer work on the upward stroke. He once told his son that this was the invention of which he was most proud.(See Double-acting Engine)
In 1782 a sawmill ordered an engine that was to replace 12 horses. Watt used data from a sawmill to determine that a horse could lift 33,000 pounds the distance of one foot in one minute -- and thus developed the units of hp.
Other major contributions developed by Watt include the steam throttling valve and the mechanism to connect the throttle to the engine governor. Used together, these devices regulated steam flow into the piston and kept a constant engine speed.
By 1800, 84 British cotton mills used Boulton and Watt engines. So did wool mills and flour mills! In his later years, Watt enjoyed the success and fame he deserved.
Today, it is appropriate to recognize Watt's contributions when we used the British (and American Engineering) units for power, hp, and the SI units for power, the Watt.
Author's note: I have found minor variations in the wording of quotes attributed to Watt by the various biographers, but for all the citations given here, the meaning is identical. The wording given here was provided by one of the biographers.
Dates in the history of steam engines and James Watt
1698 Thomas Savery patent
1712 Thomas Newcomen patent
1736 Watt born
1755 Watt trained in London
1763 Watt discovers problem with Newcomen engine
1765 Watt discovers external condenser
1769 Roebuck and Watt patent the engine
1774 Boulton acquires Roebuck's patent rights. Watt moves to Birmingham
1776 The first Boulton and Watt engine is commercially applied
1781-2 Patents for sun and planet gears, and the double-acting engine
1800 Engine patent runs out. Watt retires at 64, healthy, happy, and famous
1819 James Watt dies, age 83
Thomas Alva Edison
"... Thomas Edison was more responsible than any one else for creating the modern world .... No one did more too shape the physical/cultural makeup of present day civilization.... Accordingly, he was the most influential figure of the millennium...." The Heroes Of The Age: Electricity And Man
Surprisingly, little "Al" Edison, who was the last of seven children in his family, did not learn to talk until he was almost four years of age. Immediately thereafter, he began pleading with every adult he met to explain the workings of just about everything he encountered. If they said they didn't know, he would look them straight in the eye with his deeply set and vibrant blue-green eyes and ask them "Why?"
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Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison was not born into poverty in a backwater mid-western town. Actually, he was born -on Feb. 11, 1847 - to middle-class parents in the bustling port of Milan, Ohio, a community that - next to Odessa, Russia - was the largest wheat shipping center in the world. In 1854, his family moved to the vibrant city of Port Huron, Michigan, which ultimately surpassed the commercial preeminence of both Milan and Odessa....
At age seven - after spending 12 weeks in a noisy one-room schoolhouse with 38 other students of all ages - Tom's overworked and short tempered teacher finally lost his patience with the child's persistent questioning and seemingly self centered behavior. Noting that Tom's forehead was unusually broad and his head was considerably larger than average, he made no secret of his belief that the hyperactive youngster's brains were "addled" or scrambled.
If modern psychology had existed back then, Tom would have probably been deemed a victim of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and proscribed a hefty dose of the "miracle drug" Ritalin. Instead, when his beloved mother - whom he recalled "was the making of me... [because] she was always so true and so sure of me... And always made me feel I had someone to live for and must not disappoint." - became aware of the situation, she promptly withdrew him from school and began to "home-teach" him. Not surprisingly, she was convinced her son's slightly unusual demeanor and physical appearance were merely outward signs of his remarkable intelligence.
A descendant of the distinguished Elliot family of New England, New York born Nancy Edison was the devout and attractive daughter of a highly respected Presbyterian minister and an accomplished educator in her own right. After the above incident, she commenced teaching her favorite son the "Three Rs" and the Bible. Meanwhile, his rather "worldly" and roguish father, Samuel, encouraged him to read the great classics, giving him a ten cents reward for each one he completed.
It wasn't long thereafter that the serious minded youngster developed a deep interest in world history and English literature. Interestingly, many years later, Tom's abiding fondness for Shakespeare's plays lead him to briefly consider becoming an actor. However, because of his high-pitched voice and his extreme shyness before every audience - except those he was trying to influence into helping him finance an invention - he soon gave up the idea.
Tom especially enjoyed reading and reciting poetry. His life-long favorite was Gray's Elegy In A Country Churchyard. Indeed, his favorite lines - which he endlessly chanted to himself and any within hearing distance - came from its 9th stanza: “The boast of heraldry of pomp and power, All that beauty all that wealth ere gave, Alike await the inevitable hour. The path to glory leads but to the grave.”
At age 11, Tom's parents tried to appease his ever more voracious appetite for knowledge by teaching him how to use the resources of the local library. This skill became the foundation of many factors that gradually caused him to prefer learning via independent self instruction.
Starting with the last book on the bottom shelf, Tom set out to systematically read every book in the stacks. Wisely, however, his parents promptly guided him into towards being more selective in what he read.... By age 12, Tom had not only completed Gibbon's Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Sears' History Of The World, and Burton's Anatomy Of Melancholy, he had devoured The World Dictionary of Science and a number of works on Practical Chemistry.
Unfortunately, in spite of their noble efforts, Tom's dedicated parents eventually found themselves incapable of addressing his ever increasing interest in the Sciences. For example, when he began to question them about concepts dealing with Physics - such as those contained in Isaac Newton's great "Principia" - they were utterly stymied. Accordingly, they scraped enough money together to hire a clever tutor to help their precocious son in trying to understand Newton's complex mathematical principles and unique style....
Unfortunately, this experience had some negative affects on the highly impressionable boy. He was so disillusioned by how Newton's sensational theories were written in classical aristocratic terms -which he felt were unnecessarily confusing to the average person -he overreacted and developed a hearty dislike for all such "high-tone" language and mathematics....
On the other hand, the simple beauty of Newton's physical laws did not escape him. In fact, they very much helped him sharpen his own free wheeling style of clear thinking, proving all things to himself through his own method of objective examination and experimentation." Tom's response to the Principia also enhanced his propensity towards gleaning insights from the writings and activities of other great men and women of wisdom, never forgetting that even they might be entrenched in preconceived dogma and mired down in associated error....
All the while he was cultivated a strong sense of perseverance, readily expending whatever amount of perspiration needed to overcome challenges. This was a characteristic that he later noted was contrary to the way most people respond to stress and strain on their body.... The key upshot of this attribute was that his unique mental, and physical, stamina stood him in good stead when he took on the incredible rigors of a being a successful inventor in the late 19th Century....
Oddly, a factor that shaped Tom's personality in both a negative and a positive way was his poor hearing.... Even though this condition -and the fact that he had only three months of formal schooling - prevented him from taking advantage of the benefits of a secondary education in contemporary mathematics, physics, and engineering, he never let it interfere with finding ways of compensating.... More precisely, it was this his highly individualistic style of acquiring knowledge that eventually led him to question scores of the prevailing theories on the workings of electricity..... Approaching this complex field like a "lone eagle," he used his kaleidoscopic mind and his legendary memory, dexterity, and patience to perform whatever experiments were necessary to come up with his own related theories... As many of his contemporaries continued to indulge the popular electrical pontifications of the day, he was ever sharpening his now ingrained style of dispassionate and bold analysis.... "I accept almost nothing dealing with electricity without thoroughly testing it first." he often declared. Not surprisingly, by arming his brains with this perspective, he soon established a firm foothold in the world of practical electrical science And of course, at the dawn of the "Age Of Electric Light And Power," nothing could have better served his ultimate destiny in the field of invention...
Returning to the story of his youth, by age 12, Tom had already become an "adult." He had not only talked his parents into letting him go to work selling newspapers, snacks, and candy on the local railroad, he had started an entirely separate business selling fruits and vegetables.....
And at age 14 -during the time of the famous pre-Civil War debates between Lincoln and Douglas -he exploited his access to the associated news releases that were being teletyped into the station each day and published them in his own little newspaper. Focusing upon such newsworthy "scoops," he quickly enticed over 300 commuters to subscribe to his splendid little paper: the Weekly Herald.... Interestingly, because this was the first such publication ever to be type-set, printed, and sold on a train, an English journal now gave him his first exposure to international notoriety when it related this story in 1860.
After his hero, Abraham Lincoln, was nominated for president, Tom not only distributed campaign literature on his behalf, he peddled flattering photographs of "the great emancipator." (Interestingly, some 25 years later, Tom's associated feelings about abolition caused him to select Brockton, Massachusetts as the first place to model the first standardized central power system, described elsewhere on the Brockton web site.)
At its peak, Tom's mini-publishing venture netted him more than ten dollars per day. Because this was considerably more than enough to provide for his own support, he had a good deal of extra income, most of which went towards outfitting the chemical laboratory he had set up in the basement of his home. But hen his usually patient and tolerant mother finally complained about the odors and danger of all the "poisons" he was amassing, he transferred most of them to a locked room in the basement and put the remainder in his locker room on the train.
One day, while traversing a bumpy section of track, the train lurched, causing a stick of phosphorous to roll onto the floor and ignite. Within moments, the baggage car caught fire. The conductor was so angry, he severely chastised the boy and struck him with a powerful blow on the side of his head. Purportedly, this may have aggravated some of the loss of hearing he may have inherited and from a later bout he had with scarlet fever. In any case, the station master penalized him by restricting him to peddling his newspaper to venues in railroad stations along the track ....
Remarkably, years later and not long after he had acquired the means to have an operation that "would have likely restored his hearing," he flatly refused to act upon the option.... His rationale was that he was afraid he "would have difficulty re-learning how to channel his thinking in an ever more noisy world." Whatever the cause for this defect, by the time Tom was 14 years of age, it was virtually impossible for him to acquire knowledge in a typical educational setting. Amazingly, however, he never seemed to fret a whole lot over the matter. Naturally inclined towards accepting his fate in life - and promptly adapting to whatever he was convinced was out of his control -he always reacted by committing himself to compensating via alternative methods....
Ultimately, Tom became totally deaf in his left ear, and approximately 80% deaf in his right ear. Poignantly, he once stated that the worst thing about this condition was that he was unable to enjoy the beautiful sounds of singing birds. Indeed, he loved the creatures so much, he later amassed an aviary containing over 5,000 of them. One day while he was on the train, the stationmaster's very young son happened to wander onto the tracks in front of an oncoming boxcar. Tom leaped to action. Luckily - as they tumbled away from its oncoming wheels - they ended up being only slightly injured.
Now, one of the most significant events in Tom's life occurred when - as a reward for his heroism - the child's grateful father taught him how to master the use of Morse code and the telegraph. In the "age of telegraphy," this was akin to being introduced to learning how to use a state-of-the-art computer.
By age 15, Tom had pretty much mastered the basics of this fascinating new career and obtained a job as a replacement for one of the thousands of "brass pounders" (telegraph operators) who had gone off to serve in the Civil War. He now had a golden opportunity to enhance his speed and efficiency in sending and receiving code and performing experiments designed to improve this device....
Once the Civil War ended, to his mother's great dismay, Tom decided - that it was time to "seek his fortune." So, over the next few years, he meandered throughout the Central States, supporting himself as a "tramp operator.
At age 16, after working in a variety of telegraph offices, where he performed numerous "moonlight" experiments, he finally came up with his first authentic invention. Called an "automatic repeater," it transmitted telegraph signals between unmanned stations, allowing virtually anyone to easily and accurately translate code at their own speed and convenience. Curiously, he never patented the initial version of this idea.
In 1868 - after making a name for himself amongst fellow telegraphers for being a rather flamboyant and quick witted character who enjoyed playing "mostly harmless" practical jokes - he returned home one day ragged and penniless. Sadly, he found his parents in an even worse predicament.... First, his beloved mother was beginning to show signs of insanity "which was probably aggravated by the strains of an often difficult life." Making matters worse, his rather impulsive father had just quit his job and the local bank was about to foreclose on the family homestead.
Tom promptly came to grips with the pathos of this situation and - perhaps for the first time in his life - also resolved to come to grips with a number of his own immature shortcomings. After a good deal of soul searching, he finally decided that the best thing he could do would be to get right back out on his own and try to make some serious money....
Shortly thereafter, Tom accepted the suggestion of a fellow "lightening slinger" named Billy Adams to come East and apply for a permanent job as a telegrapher with the relatively prestigious Western Union Company in Boston. His willingness to travel over a thousand miles from home was at least partly influenced by the fact that he had been given a free rail ticket by the local street railway company for some repairs he had done for them. The most important factor, however, was the fact that Boston was considered to be "the hub of the scientific, educational, and cultural universe at this time...."
Throughout the mid-19th century, New England had many features that were analogous to today's Silicon Valley in California. However, instead of being a haven for the thousands of young "tekkies" - who communicate with each other in computerese and internet code of today - it was the home of scores of young telegraphers who anxiously stayed abreast of the emerging age of electricity and the telephone etc. by conversing with via Morse code.
During these latter days of the "age of the telegraph," Tom toiled 12 hours a day and six days a week for Western Union. Meanwhile, he continued "moonlighting" on his own projects and, within six months, had applied for and received his very first patent. A beautifully constructed electric vote-recording machine, this first "legitimate" invention he was to come up with turned out to be a disaster.
When he tried to market it to members of the Massachusetts Legislature, they thoroughly denigrated it, claiming "its speed in tallying votes would disrupt the delicate political status-quo." The specific issue was that - during times of stress - political groups regularly relied upon the brief delays that were provided by the process of manually counting votes to influence and hopefully change the opinions of their colleagues.... "This is exactly what we do not want" a seasoned politician scolded him, adding that "Your invention would not only destroy the only hope the minority would have in influencing legislation, it would deliver them over - bound hand and foot - to the majority."
Although Tom was very much disappointed by this turn of events, he immediately grasped the implications. Even though his remarkable invention allowed each voter to instantly cast his vote from his seat - exactly as it was supposed to do - he realized his idea was so far ahead of its time it was completely devoid of any immediate sales appeal.
Because of his continuing desperate need for money, Tom now made a critically significant adjustment in his, heretofore, relatively naive outlook on the world of business and marketing.... From now on, he vowed, he would "never waste time inventing things that people would not want to buy."
It is important to add here that it was during Tom's 17 month stint in Boston that he was first exposed to lectures at Boston Tech (which was founded in 1861 and became the Mass. Institute of Technology in 1916) and the ideas of several associates on the state-of-the-art of "multiplexing" telegraph signals. This theory and related experimental quests involved the transmission of electrical impulses at different frequencies over telegraph wires, producing horn-like simulations of the human voice and even crude images (the first internet?) via an instrument called the harmonic telegraph.
Not surprisingly, Alexander Graham Bell, who was also living in Boston at the time, was equally fascinated by this exciting new aspect of communication science. And no wonder. The principles surrounding it ultimately led to the invention of the first articulating telephone, the first fax machine, the first microphone, etc.
During this epiphany, Edison also became very well acquainted with Benjamin Bredding. Bredding's family obligations combined with his business naivte prevented him from persuing his dreams. The same age as Bell and Edison, this 21 year old genius would soon provide critically important assistance to Bell in perfecting long distance telephony, the first reciprocating telephone, and the magneto phone. A crack electrician, Bredding, with Watson's assistance, later set up the world's first two-way long distance telephone apparatus for his close friend Alexander Graham Bell, who at the time "knew almost nothing about electricity."
Copyrighted - never before published - tintype of Bredding and Bell in October of 1876 on the day they successfully communicated across Boston's Charles River in the world's first long distance two-way telephone conversation. i.e., "The world's first practical telephone conversation."
Bredding had originally worked for the well known promoter, George B. Stearns, who - with Bredding's help - had beaten everyone to the punch when he obtained the first patent for a duplex telegraph line. A device that exploits the fact that electromagnetism and the number and direction of wire windings associated with a connection between telegraph keys can influence the current that flows between them, and greatly facilitate two-way telegraphic communication, it powerfully intrigued Edison....
Stearns, finally sold the patent for this highly significant cost-cutting invention to Western Union for $750,000. Bredding (and Edison, of course) wound up getting absolutely nothing from the venture. In the meantime, however, Bredding provided his pal, Tom Edison, with his first detailed introduction and understanding of the state-of-the-art of the harmonograph and the multiplex transmitter....
Unlike Edison, Bredding was an extremely modest individual with little taste for aggrandizement and self promotion... The pathetic upshot of all this was that - while the caprice associated with the rough and tumble world of patenting inventions in the mid-19th century ultimately crushed Bredding's innately mild and somewhat naive spirit and his extraordinary potential - it merely spurred the tough-minded Edison on to not only improve the duplex transmitter, but to later patent the world's first quadruplex transmitter....
Deeply in debt and about to be fired by Western Union for "not concentrating on his primary responsibilities and doing too much moonlighting," Edison now borrowed $35.00 from his fellow telegrapher and "night owl" pal, Benjamin Bredding, to purchase a steamship ticket to the "more commercially oriented city of New York."
During the third week after arriving in "the big apple" Tom (seen above) was purportedly "on the verge of starving to death." At this precipitous juncture, one of the most amazing coincidences in the annals of technological history now began to unfold. Immediately after having begged a cup of tea from a street vendor, Tom began to meander through some of the offices in New |York's financial district. Observing that the manager of a local brokerage firm was in a panic, he eventually determined that a critically important stock-ticker in his office had just broken down....
Noting that no one in the crowd that had gathered around the defective machine seemed to have a clue on how to fix it, he elbowed his way into the scene and grasped a momentary opportunity to have a go at addressing what was wrong himself.... Luckily, since he had been sleeping in the basement of the building for a few days - and doing quite a bit of snooping around - he already had a pretty good idea of what the device was supposed to do.
After spending a few seconds confirming exactly how the stock ticker was intended to work in the first place, Tom reached down and manipulated a loose spring back to where it belonged. To everyone's amazement, except Tom's, the device began to run perfectly.
The office manager was so ecstatic, he made an on-the-spot decision to hire Edison to make all such repairs for the busy company for a salary of $300.00 per month.... This was not only more than what his pal Benjamin Bredding was making back in Boston but twice the going rate for a top electrician in New York City. Later in life, Edison recalled that the incident was more euphoric than anything he ever experienced in his life because it made him feel as though he had been "suddenly delivered out of abject poverty and into prosperity."
Success at last!
It should come as no surprise that, during his free time, Edison soon resumed his habit of "moonlighting" with the telegraph, the quadruplex transmitter, the stock-ticker, etc. Shortly thereafter, he was absolutely astonished - in fact he nearly fainted - when a corporation paid him $40,000 for all of his rights to the latter device.
Convinced that no bank would honor the large check he was given for it, which was the first "real" money he had ever received for an invention, young Edison walked around for hours in a stupor, staring at it in amazement. Fearful that someone would steal it, he laid the cash out on his bed and stayed up all night, counting it over and over in disbelief. The next day a wise friend told him to deposit it in a bank forthwith and to just forget about it for a while.
A few weeks later, Edison wrote a series of poignant letters back home to his father: "How is mother getting along?... I am now in a position to give you some cash... Write and say how much....Give mother anything she wants...." Interestingly, It was at this time that he also repaid Bredding the $35.00 he had borrowed earlier.
Over the next three years, Edison's progress in creating successful inventions for industry really took off.... For example, in 1874 - with the money he received from the sale of an electrical engineering firm that held several of his patents - he opened his first complete testing and development laboratory in Newark, New Jersey.
At age 29, he commenced work on the carbon transmitter, which ultimately made Alexander Graham Bell's amazing new "articulating" telephone (which by today's standards sounded more like someone trying to talk through a kazoo than a telephone) audible enough for practical use. Interestingly, at one point during this intense period, Edison was as close to inventing the telephone as Bell was to inventing the phonograph. Nevertheless, shortly after Edison moved his laboratory to Menlo Park, N.J. in 1876, he invented - in 1877 - the first phonograph.
In 1879, extremely disappointed by the fact that Bell had beaten him in the race to patent the first authentic transmission of the human voice, Edison now "one upped" all of his competition by inventing the first commercially practical incandescent electric light bulb...
And if that wasn't enough to forever seal his unequaled importance in technological history, he came up with an invention that - in terms of its collective affect upon mankind - has had more impact than any other. In 1883 and 1884, while beating a path from his research lab to the patent office, he introduced the world's first economically viable system of centrally generating and distributing electric light, heat, and power. (See "Greatest Achievement?") Powerfully, instrumental in impacting upon the world we know today, even his harshest critics grant that it was a Herculean achievement that only he was capable of bringing about at this specific point in history.
By 1887, Edison was recognized for having set up the world's first full fledged research and development center in West Orange, New Jersey. An amazing enterprise, its significance is as much misunderstood as his work in developing the first practical centralized power system. Regardless, within a year, this fantastic operation was the largest scientific testing laboratory in the world.
In 1890, Edison immersed himself in developing the first Vitascope, which would lead to the first silent motion pictures.
And, by 1892, his Edison General Electric Co. had fully merged with another firm to become the great General Electric Corporation, in which he was a major stockholder.
At the turn-of-the-century, Edison invented the first practical dictaphone, mimeograph, and storage battery. After creating the "kinetiscope" and the first silent film in 1904, he went on to introduce The Great Train Robbery in 1903, which was a ten minute clip that was his first attempt to blend audio with silent moving images to produce "talking pictures."
By now, Edison was being hailed world-wide as The wizard of Menlo Park, The father of the electrical age," and The greatest inventor who ever lived." Naturally, when World War I began, he was asked by the U. S. Government to focus his genius upon creating defensive devices for submarines and ships. During this time, he also perfected a number of important inventions relating to the enhanced use of rubber, concrete, and ethanol.
By the 1920s Edison was internationally revered. However, even though he was personally acquainted with scores of very important people of his era, he cultivated very few close friendships. And due to the continuing demands of his career, there were still relatively long periods when he spent a shockingly small amount of time with his family.
It wasn't until his health began to fail, in the late 1920s, that Edison finally began to slow down and, so to speak, "smell the flowers." Up until obtaining his last (1,093rd) patent at age 83, he worked mostly at home where, though increasingly frail, he enjoyed greeting former associates and famous people such as Charles Lindberg, Marie Curie, Henry Ford, and President Herbert Hoover etc. He also enjoyed reading the mail of admirers and puttering around, when able, in his office and home laboratory.
Thomas Edison died At 9 P.M. On Oct. 18th, 1931 in New Jersey. He was 84 years of age. Shortly before passing away, he awoke from a coma and quietly whispered to his very religious and faithful wife Mina, who had been keeping a vigil all night by his side: "It is very beautiful over there..."
Recognizing that his death marked the end of an era in the progress of civilization, countless individuals, communities, and corporations throughout the world dimmed their lights and, or, briefly turned off their electric power in his honor on the evening of the day he was laid to rest at his beautiful estate at Glenmont, New Jersey. Most realized that, even though he was far from being a flawless human being and may not have really had the avuncular personality that was so often ascribed to him by myth makers, he was an essentially good man with a powerful mission.... Driven by a superhuman desire to fulfill the promise of research and invent things to serve mankind, no one did more to help realize our Puritan founders dream of creating a country that - at its best - would be viewed by the rest of the world as "a shining city upon a hill."
ADDENDUM
Because of the peculiar voids that Edison often evinced in areas such as cognition, speech, grammar, etc., a number of medical authorities have argued that he may have been plagued by a fundamental learning disability that went well beyond mere deafness.... A few of have conjectured that this mysterious ailment - along with his lack of a formal education - may account for why he always seemed to "think so differently" compared to others of his time: "Always tenaciously clinging to those unique methods of analysis and experimentation with which he alone seemed to feel so comfortable...."
Whatever the impetus for his unique personality and traits, his incredible ability to come up with a meaningful new patent every two weeks throughout his working career "added more to the collective wealth of the world - and had more impact upon shaping modern civilization - than the accomplishments of any figure since Gutenberg...." Accordingly, most serious science and technology historians grant that he was indeed "The most influential figure of our millennium."
Notes: In 1929, Edison's close friend, Henry Ford, completed the task of moving Edison's original Menlo Park laboratory to the Greenfield Village museum in Dearborn, Mich. In 1962 his existing laboratory and home in West Orange, N.J. were designated as National Historic Sites.
Surprisingly, little "Al" Edison, who was the last of seven children in his family, did not learn to talk until he was almost four years of age. Immediately thereafter, he began pleading with every adult he met to explain the workings of just about everything he encountered. If they said they didn't know, he would look them straight in the eye with his deeply set and vibrant blue-green eyes and ask them "Why?"
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Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison was not born into poverty in a backwater mid-western town. Actually, he was born -on Feb. 11, 1847 - to middle-class parents in the bustling port of Milan, Ohio, a community that - next to Odessa, Russia - was the largest wheat shipping center in the world. In 1854, his family moved to the vibrant city of Port Huron, Michigan, which ultimately surpassed the commercial preeminence of both Milan and Odessa....
At age seven - after spending 12 weeks in a noisy one-room schoolhouse with 38 other students of all ages - Tom's overworked and short tempered teacher finally lost his patience with the child's persistent questioning and seemingly self centered behavior. Noting that Tom's forehead was unusually broad and his head was considerably larger than average, he made no secret of his belief that the hyperactive youngster's brains were "addled" or scrambled.
If modern psychology had existed back then, Tom would have probably been deemed a victim of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and proscribed a hefty dose of the "miracle drug" Ritalin. Instead, when his beloved mother - whom he recalled "was the making of me... [because] she was always so true and so sure of me... And always made me feel I had someone to live for and must not disappoint." - became aware of the situation, she promptly withdrew him from school and began to "home-teach" him. Not surprisingly, she was convinced her son's slightly unusual demeanor and physical appearance were merely outward signs of his remarkable intelligence.
A descendant of the distinguished Elliot family of New England, New York born Nancy Edison was the devout and attractive daughter of a highly respected Presbyterian minister and an accomplished educator in her own right. After the above incident, she commenced teaching her favorite son the "Three Rs" and the Bible. Meanwhile, his rather "worldly" and roguish father, Samuel, encouraged him to read the great classics, giving him a ten cents reward for each one he completed.
It wasn't long thereafter that the serious minded youngster developed a deep interest in world history and English literature. Interestingly, many years later, Tom's abiding fondness for Shakespeare's plays lead him to briefly consider becoming an actor. However, because of his high-pitched voice and his extreme shyness before every audience - except those he was trying to influence into helping him finance an invention - he soon gave up the idea.
Tom especially enjoyed reading and reciting poetry. His life-long favorite was Gray's Elegy In A Country Churchyard. Indeed, his favorite lines - which he endlessly chanted to himself and any within hearing distance - came from its 9th stanza: “The boast of heraldry of pomp and power, All that beauty all that wealth ere gave, Alike await the inevitable hour. The path to glory leads but to the grave.”
At age 11, Tom's parents tried to appease his ever more voracious appetite for knowledge by teaching him how to use the resources of the local library. This skill became the foundation of many factors that gradually caused him to prefer learning via independent self instruction.
Starting with the last book on the bottom shelf, Tom set out to systematically read every book in the stacks. Wisely, however, his parents promptly guided him into towards being more selective in what he read.... By age 12, Tom had not only completed Gibbon's Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Sears' History Of The World, and Burton's Anatomy Of Melancholy, he had devoured The World Dictionary of Science and a number of works on Practical Chemistry.
Unfortunately, in spite of their noble efforts, Tom's dedicated parents eventually found themselves incapable of addressing his ever increasing interest in the Sciences. For example, when he began to question them about concepts dealing with Physics - such as those contained in Isaac Newton's great "Principia" - they were utterly stymied. Accordingly, they scraped enough money together to hire a clever tutor to help their precocious son in trying to understand Newton's complex mathematical principles and unique style....
Unfortunately, this experience had some negative affects on the highly impressionable boy. He was so disillusioned by how Newton's sensational theories were written in classical aristocratic terms -which he felt were unnecessarily confusing to the average person -he overreacted and developed a hearty dislike for all such "high-tone" language and mathematics....
On the other hand, the simple beauty of Newton's physical laws did not escape him. In fact, they very much helped him sharpen his own free wheeling style of clear thinking, proving all things to himself through his own method of objective examination and experimentation." Tom's response to the Principia also enhanced his propensity towards gleaning insights from the writings and activities of other great men and women of wisdom, never forgetting that even they might be entrenched in preconceived dogma and mired down in associated error....
All the while he was cultivated a strong sense of perseverance, readily expending whatever amount of perspiration needed to overcome challenges. This was a characteristic that he later noted was contrary to the way most people respond to stress and strain on their body.... The key upshot of this attribute was that his unique mental, and physical, stamina stood him in good stead when he took on the incredible rigors of a being a successful inventor in the late 19th Century....
Oddly, a factor that shaped Tom's personality in both a negative and a positive way was his poor hearing.... Even though this condition -and the fact that he had only three months of formal schooling - prevented him from taking advantage of the benefits of a secondary education in contemporary mathematics, physics, and engineering, he never let it interfere with finding ways of compensating.... More precisely, it was this his highly individualistic style of acquiring knowledge that eventually led him to question scores of the prevailing theories on the workings of electricity..... Approaching this complex field like a "lone eagle," he used his kaleidoscopic mind and his legendary memory, dexterity, and patience to perform whatever experiments were necessary to come up with his own related theories... As many of his contemporaries continued to indulge the popular electrical pontifications of the day, he was ever sharpening his now ingrained style of dispassionate and bold analysis.... "I accept almost nothing dealing with electricity without thoroughly testing it first." he often declared. Not surprisingly, by arming his brains with this perspective, he soon established a firm foothold in the world of practical electrical science And of course, at the dawn of the "Age Of Electric Light And Power," nothing could have better served his ultimate destiny in the field of invention...
Returning to the story of his youth, by age 12, Tom had already become an "adult." He had not only talked his parents into letting him go to work selling newspapers, snacks, and candy on the local railroad, he had started an entirely separate business selling fruits and vegetables.....
And at age 14 -during the time of the famous pre-Civil War debates between Lincoln and Douglas -he exploited his access to the associated news releases that were being teletyped into the station each day and published them in his own little newspaper. Focusing upon such newsworthy "scoops," he quickly enticed over 300 commuters to subscribe to his splendid little paper: the Weekly Herald.... Interestingly, because this was the first such publication ever to be type-set, printed, and sold on a train, an English journal now gave him his first exposure to international notoriety when it related this story in 1860.
After his hero, Abraham Lincoln, was nominated for president, Tom not only distributed campaign literature on his behalf, he peddled flattering photographs of "the great emancipator." (Interestingly, some 25 years later, Tom's associated feelings about abolition caused him to select Brockton, Massachusetts as the first place to model the first standardized central power system, described elsewhere on the Brockton web site.)
At its peak, Tom's mini-publishing venture netted him more than ten dollars per day. Because this was considerably more than enough to provide for his own support, he had a good deal of extra income, most of which went towards outfitting the chemical laboratory he had set up in the basement of his home. But hen his usually patient and tolerant mother finally complained about the odors and danger of all the "poisons" he was amassing, he transferred most of them to a locked room in the basement and put the remainder in his locker room on the train.
One day, while traversing a bumpy section of track, the train lurched, causing a stick of phosphorous to roll onto the floor and ignite. Within moments, the baggage car caught fire. The conductor was so angry, he severely chastised the boy and struck him with a powerful blow on the side of his head. Purportedly, this may have aggravated some of the loss of hearing he may have inherited and from a later bout he had with scarlet fever. In any case, the station master penalized him by restricting him to peddling his newspaper to venues in railroad stations along the track ....
Remarkably, years later and not long after he had acquired the means to have an operation that "would have likely restored his hearing," he flatly refused to act upon the option.... His rationale was that he was afraid he "would have difficulty re-learning how to channel his thinking in an ever more noisy world." Whatever the cause for this defect, by the time Tom was 14 years of age, it was virtually impossible for him to acquire knowledge in a typical educational setting. Amazingly, however, he never seemed to fret a whole lot over the matter. Naturally inclined towards accepting his fate in life - and promptly adapting to whatever he was convinced was out of his control -he always reacted by committing himself to compensating via alternative methods....
Ultimately, Tom became totally deaf in his left ear, and approximately 80% deaf in his right ear. Poignantly, he once stated that the worst thing about this condition was that he was unable to enjoy the beautiful sounds of singing birds. Indeed, he loved the creatures so much, he later amassed an aviary containing over 5,000 of them. One day while he was on the train, the stationmaster's very young son happened to wander onto the tracks in front of an oncoming boxcar. Tom leaped to action. Luckily - as they tumbled away from its oncoming wheels - they ended up being only slightly injured.
Now, one of the most significant events in Tom's life occurred when - as a reward for his heroism - the child's grateful father taught him how to master the use of Morse code and the telegraph. In the "age of telegraphy," this was akin to being introduced to learning how to use a state-of-the-art computer.
By age 15, Tom had pretty much mastered the basics of this fascinating new career and obtained a job as a replacement for one of the thousands of "brass pounders" (telegraph operators) who had gone off to serve in the Civil War. He now had a golden opportunity to enhance his speed and efficiency in sending and receiving code and performing experiments designed to improve this device....
Once the Civil War ended, to his mother's great dismay, Tom decided - that it was time to "seek his fortune." So, over the next few years, he meandered throughout the Central States, supporting himself as a "tramp operator.
At age 16, after working in a variety of telegraph offices, where he performed numerous "moonlight" experiments, he finally came up with his first authentic invention. Called an "automatic repeater," it transmitted telegraph signals between unmanned stations, allowing virtually anyone to easily and accurately translate code at their own speed and convenience. Curiously, he never patented the initial version of this idea.
In 1868 - after making a name for himself amongst fellow telegraphers for being a rather flamboyant and quick witted character who enjoyed playing "mostly harmless" practical jokes - he returned home one day ragged and penniless. Sadly, he found his parents in an even worse predicament.... First, his beloved mother was beginning to show signs of insanity "which was probably aggravated by the strains of an often difficult life." Making matters worse, his rather impulsive father had just quit his job and the local bank was about to foreclose on the family homestead.
Tom promptly came to grips with the pathos of this situation and - perhaps for the first time in his life - also resolved to come to grips with a number of his own immature shortcomings. After a good deal of soul searching, he finally decided that the best thing he could do would be to get right back out on his own and try to make some serious money....
Shortly thereafter, Tom accepted the suggestion of a fellow "lightening slinger" named Billy Adams to come East and apply for a permanent job as a telegrapher with the relatively prestigious Western Union Company in Boston. His willingness to travel over a thousand miles from home was at least partly influenced by the fact that he had been given a free rail ticket by the local street railway company for some repairs he had done for them. The most important factor, however, was the fact that Boston was considered to be "the hub of the scientific, educational, and cultural universe at this time...."
Throughout the mid-19th century, New England had many features that were analogous to today's Silicon Valley in California. However, instead of being a haven for the thousands of young "tekkies" - who communicate with each other in computerese and internet code of today - it was the home of scores of young telegraphers who anxiously stayed abreast of the emerging age of electricity and the telephone etc. by conversing with via Morse code.
During these latter days of the "age of the telegraph," Tom toiled 12 hours a day and six days a week for Western Union. Meanwhile, he continued "moonlighting" on his own projects and, within six months, had applied for and received his very first patent. A beautifully constructed electric vote-recording machine, this first "legitimate" invention he was to come up with turned out to be a disaster.
When he tried to market it to members of the Massachusetts Legislature, they thoroughly denigrated it, claiming "its speed in tallying votes would disrupt the delicate political status-quo." The specific issue was that - during times of stress - political groups regularly relied upon the brief delays that were provided by the process of manually counting votes to influence and hopefully change the opinions of their colleagues.... "This is exactly what we do not want" a seasoned politician scolded him, adding that "Your invention would not only destroy the only hope the minority would have in influencing legislation, it would deliver them over - bound hand and foot - to the majority."
Although Tom was very much disappointed by this turn of events, he immediately grasped the implications. Even though his remarkable invention allowed each voter to instantly cast his vote from his seat - exactly as it was supposed to do - he realized his idea was so far ahead of its time it was completely devoid of any immediate sales appeal.
Because of his continuing desperate need for money, Tom now made a critically significant adjustment in his, heretofore, relatively naive outlook on the world of business and marketing.... From now on, he vowed, he would "never waste time inventing things that people would not want to buy."
It is important to add here that it was during Tom's 17 month stint in Boston that he was first exposed to lectures at Boston Tech (which was founded in 1861 and became the Mass. Institute of Technology in 1916) and the ideas of several associates on the state-of-the-art of "multiplexing" telegraph signals. This theory and related experimental quests involved the transmission of electrical impulses at different frequencies over telegraph wires, producing horn-like simulations of the human voice and even crude images (the first internet?) via an instrument called the harmonic telegraph.
Not surprisingly, Alexander Graham Bell, who was also living in Boston at the time, was equally fascinated by this exciting new aspect of communication science. And no wonder. The principles surrounding it ultimately led to the invention of the first articulating telephone, the first fax machine, the first microphone, etc.
During this epiphany, Edison also became very well acquainted with Benjamin Bredding. Bredding's family obligations combined with his business naivte prevented him from persuing his dreams. The same age as Bell and Edison, this 21 year old genius would soon provide critically important assistance to Bell in perfecting long distance telephony, the first reciprocating telephone, and the magneto phone. A crack electrician, Bredding, with Watson's assistance, later set up the world's first two-way long distance telephone apparatus for his close friend Alexander Graham Bell, who at the time "knew almost nothing about electricity."
Copyrighted - never before published - tintype of Bredding and Bell in October of 1876 on the day they successfully communicated across Boston's Charles River in the world's first long distance two-way telephone conversation. i.e., "The world's first practical telephone conversation."
Bredding had originally worked for the well known promoter, George B. Stearns, who - with Bredding's help - had beaten everyone to the punch when he obtained the first patent for a duplex telegraph line. A device that exploits the fact that electromagnetism and the number and direction of wire windings associated with a connection between telegraph keys can influence the current that flows between them, and greatly facilitate two-way telegraphic communication, it powerfully intrigued Edison....
Stearns, finally sold the patent for this highly significant cost-cutting invention to Western Union for $750,000. Bredding (and Edison, of course) wound up getting absolutely nothing from the venture. In the meantime, however, Bredding provided his pal, Tom Edison, with his first detailed introduction and understanding of the state-of-the-art of the harmonograph and the multiplex transmitter....
Unlike Edison, Bredding was an extremely modest individual with little taste for aggrandizement and self promotion... The pathetic upshot of all this was that - while the caprice associated with the rough and tumble world of patenting inventions in the mid-19th century ultimately crushed Bredding's innately mild and somewhat naive spirit and his extraordinary potential - it merely spurred the tough-minded Edison on to not only improve the duplex transmitter, but to later patent the world's first quadruplex transmitter....
Deeply in debt and about to be fired by Western Union for "not concentrating on his primary responsibilities and doing too much moonlighting," Edison now borrowed $35.00 from his fellow telegrapher and "night owl" pal, Benjamin Bredding, to purchase a steamship ticket to the "more commercially oriented city of New York."
During the third week after arriving in "the big apple" Tom (seen above) was purportedly "on the verge of starving to death." At this precipitous juncture, one of the most amazing coincidences in the annals of technological history now began to unfold. Immediately after having begged a cup of tea from a street vendor, Tom began to meander through some of the offices in New |York's financial district. Observing that the manager of a local brokerage firm was in a panic, he eventually determined that a critically important stock-ticker in his office had just broken down....
Noting that no one in the crowd that had gathered around the defective machine seemed to have a clue on how to fix it, he elbowed his way into the scene and grasped a momentary opportunity to have a go at addressing what was wrong himself.... Luckily, since he had been sleeping in the basement of the building for a few days - and doing quite a bit of snooping around - he already had a pretty good idea of what the device was supposed to do.
After spending a few seconds confirming exactly how the stock ticker was intended to work in the first place, Tom reached down and manipulated a loose spring back to where it belonged. To everyone's amazement, except Tom's, the device began to run perfectly.
The office manager was so ecstatic, he made an on-the-spot decision to hire Edison to make all such repairs for the busy company for a salary of $300.00 per month.... This was not only more than what his pal Benjamin Bredding was making back in Boston but twice the going rate for a top electrician in New York City. Later in life, Edison recalled that the incident was more euphoric than anything he ever experienced in his life because it made him feel as though he had been "suddenly delivered out of abject poverty and into prosperity."
Success at last!
It should come as no surprise that, during his free time, Edison soon resumed his habit of "moonlighting" with the telegraph, the quadruplex transmitter, the stock-ticker, etc. Shortly thereafter, he was absolutely astonished - in fact he nearly fainted - when a corporation paid him $40,000 for all of his rights to the latter device.
Convinced that no bank would honor the large check he was given for it, which was the first "real" money he had ever received for an invention, young Edison walked around for hours in a stupor, staring at it in amazement. Fearful that someone would steal it, he laid the cash out on his bed and stayed up all night, counting it over and over in disbelief. The next day a wise friend told him to deposit it in a bank forthwith and to just forget about it for a while.
A few weeks later, Edison wrote a series of poignant letters back home to his father: "How is mother getting along?... I am now in a position to give you some cash... Write and say how much....Give mother anything she wants...." Interestingly, It was at this time that he also repaid Bredding the $35.00 he had borrowed earlier.
Over the next three years, Edison's progress in creating successful inventions for industry really took off.... For example, in 1874 - with the money he received from the sale of an electrical engineering firm that held several of his patents - he opened his first complete testing and development laboratory in Newark, New Jersey.
At age 29, he commenced work on the carbon transmitter, which ultimately made Alexander Graham Bell's amazing new "articulating" telephone (which by today's standards sounded more like someone trying to talk through a kazoo than a telephone) audible enough for practical use. Interestingly, at one point during this intense period, Edison was as close to inventing the telephone as Bell was to inventing the phonograph. Nevertheless, shortly after Edison moved his laboratory to Menlo Park, N.J. in 1876, he invented - in 1877 - the first phonograph.
In 1879, extremely disappointed by the fact that Bell had beaten him in the race to patent the first authentic transmission of the human voice, Edison now "one upped" all of his competition by inventing the first commercially practical incandescent electric light bulb...
And if that wasn't enough to forever seal his unequaled importance in technological history, he came up with an invention that - in terms of its collective affect upon mankind - has had more impact than any other. In 1883 and 1884, while beating a path from his research lab to the patent office, he introduced the world's first economically viable system of centrally generating and distributing electric light, heat, and power. (See "Greatest Achievement?") Powerfully, instrumental in impacting upon the world we know today, even his harshest critics grant that it was a Herculean achievement that only he was capable of bringing about at this specific point in history.
By 1887, Edison was recognized for having set up the world's first full fledged research and development center in West Orange, New Jersey. An amazing enterprise, its significance is as much misunderstood as his work in developing the first practical centralized power system. Regardless, within a year, this fantastic operation was the largest scientific testing laboratory in the world.
In 1890, Edison immersed himself in developing the first Vitascope, which would lead to the first silent motion pictures.
And, by 1892, his Edison General Electric Co. had fully merged with another firm to become the great General Electric Corporation, in which he was a major stockholder.
At the turn-of-the-century, Edison invented the first practical dictaphone, mimeograph, and storage battery. After creating the "kinetiscope" and the first silent film in 1904, he went on to introduce The Great Train Robbery in 1903, which was a ten minute clip that was his first attempt to blend audio with silent moving images to produce "talking pictures."
By now, Edison was being hailed world-wide as The wizard of Menlo Park, The father of the electrical age," and The greatest inventor who ever lived." Naturally, when World War I began, he was asked by the U. S. Government to focus his genius upon creating defensive devices for submarines and ships. During this time, he also perfected a number of important inventions relating to the enhanced use of rubber, concrete, and ethanol.
By the 1920s Edison was internationally revered. However, even though he was personally acquainted with scores of very important people of his era, he cultivated very few close friendships. And due to the continuing demands of his career, there were still relatively long periods when he spent a shockingly small amount of time with his family.
It wasn't until his health began to fail, in the late 1920s, that Edison finally began to slow down and, so to speak, "smell the flowers." Up until obtaining his last (1,093rd) patent at age 83, he worked mostly at home where, though increasingly frail, he enjoyed greeting former associates and famous people such as Charles Lindberg, Marie Curie, Henry Ford, and President Herbert Hoover etc. He also enjoyed reading the mail of admirers and puttering around, when able, in his office and home laboratory.
Thomas Edison died At 9 P.M. On Oct. 18th, 1931 in New Jersey. He was 84 years of age. Shortly before passing away, he awoke from a coma and quietly whispered to his very religious and faithful wife Mina, who had been keeping a vigil all night by his side: "It is very beautiful over there..."
Recognizing that his death marked the end of an era in the progress of civilization, countless individuals, communities, and corporations throughout the world dimmed their lights and, or, briefly turned off their electric power in his honor on the evening of the day he was laid to rest at his beautiful estate at Glenmont, New Jersey. Most realized that, even though he was far from being a flawless human being and may not have really had the avuncular personality that was so often ascribed to him by myth makers, he was an essentially good man with a powerful mission.... Driven by a superhuman desire to fulfill the promise of research and invent things to serve mankind, no one did more to help realize our Puritan founders dream of creating a country that - at its best - would be viewed by the rest of the world as "a shining city upon a hill."
ADDENDUM
Because of the peculiar voids that Edison often evinced in areas such as cognition, speech, grammar, etc., a number of medical authorities have argued that he may have been plagued by a fundamental learning disability that went well beyond mere deafness.... A few of have conjectured that this mysterious ailment - along with his lack of a formal education - may account for why he always seemed to "think so differently" compared to others of his time: "Always tenaciously clinging to those unique methods of analysis and experimentation with which he alone seemed to feel so comfortable...."
Whatever the impetus for his unique personality and traits, his incredible ability to come up with a meaningful new patent every two weeks throughout his working career "added more to the collective wealth of the world - and had more impact upon shaping modern civilization - than the accomplishments of any figure since Gutenberg...." Accordingly, most serious science and technology historians grant that he was indeed "The most influential figure of our millennium."
Notes: In 1929, Edison's close friend, Henry Ford, completed the task of moving Edison's original Menlo Park laboratory to the Greenfield Village museum in Dearborn, Mich. In 1962 his existing laboratory and home in West Orange, N.J. were designated as National Historic Sites.
Arnold Swarznegar
With an almost unpronounceable surname and a thick Austrian accent, who would have ever believed that a brash, quick talking bodybuilder from a small European village would become one of Hollywoods biggest stars, marry into the prestigious Kennedy family, amass a fortune via shrewd investments and one day be the Governor of California!
The amazing story of uber-star Arnold Schwarzenegger is a true "rags to riches" story of the penniless immigrant making it in the land of opportunity, the United States of America. Arnold was born on July 30th, 1947 in the town of Thal, Austria and from a young age he took a keen interest in physical fitness and bodybuilding, going on to compete in several minor contests in Europe. However, it was when he emigrated to the United States in 1968 at the tender age of 21 that his star began to rise. Up until the early 1970's, bodybuilding had been viewed as a rather oddball sport, or even a mis-understood "freak show" by the general public, however two entrepreneurial Canadian brothers Ben Weider and Joe Weider set about broadening the appeal of "pumping iron" and getting the sport respect, and what better poster boy could they have to lead the charge, then the incredible "Austrian Oak", Arnold Schwarzenegger. Over roughly the next decade, beginning in 1970, Schwarzenegger dominated the sport of competitive bodybuilding winning five Mr. Universe titles and seven Mr. Olympia titles and with it he made himself a major sports icon, he generated a new international audience for bodybuilding, gym memberships worldwide swelled by the tens of thousands and the Weider sports business empire flourished beyond belief and reached out to all corners of the globe.
However, Schwarzenegger's horizons were bigger than just the landscape of bodybuilding and he debuted on screen as "Arnold Strong" in the low budget Hercules in New York (1970), then director Bob Rafelson cast Arnold in Stay Hungry (1976) alongside Jeff Bridges and Sally Field, for which Arnold won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture". The mesmerizing Pumping Iron (1977) covering the 1975 Mr Olympia contest in South Africa has since gone on to become one of the key sports documentaries of the 20th century, plus Arnold landed other acting roles in the comedy The Villain (1979) opposite Kirk Douglas, and he portrayed Mickey Hargitay in the well received TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980) (TV). But, what Arnold really needed was a super hero / warrior style role in a lavish production that utilized his chiseled physique, and gave him room to show off his growing acting talents and quirky humor.
Conan the Barbarian (1982) was just that role. Inspired by the Robert E. Howard short stories of the "Hyborean Age" and directed by gung ho director John Milius, and with a largely unknown cast, save Max von Sydow and James Earl Jones, "Conan" was a smash hit worldwide and an inferior, although still enjoyable sequel titled _Conan the Destroyer (1984) quickly followed. If "Conan" was the kick start to Arnold's movie career, then his next role was to put the pedal to the floor and accelerate his star status into overdrive. Director James Cameron had until that time only previously directed one earlier feature film titled Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981), - which stank of rotten fish from start to finish - however Cameron had penned a fast paced, science fiction themed film script that called for an actor to play an unstoppable, ruthless predator - The Terminator (1984). Made on a relatively modest budget, the high voltage action / science fiction thriller The Terminator (1984) was incredibly successful worldwide, and began one of the most profitable film franchises in history. The dead pan phrase "I'll be back" quickly became part of popular culture across the globe. Schwarzenegger was in vogue with action movie fans, and the next few years were to see Arnold reap box office gold in roles portraying tough, no-nonsense individuals who used their fists, guns and witty one liners to get the job done. The testosterone laden Commando (1985), Raw Deal (1986), Predator (1987), The Running Man (1987) and Red Heat (1988) were all box office hits and Arnold could seemingly could no wrong when it came to picking winning scripts. The tongue in cheek comedy Twins (1988/I) with co-star Danny DeVito was a smash and won Arnold new fans who saw a more comedic side to the muscle bound actor once described by Australian author / TV host Clive James as "a condom stuffed with walnuts".
The spectacular Total Recall (1990) and "feel good" Kindergarten Cop (1990) were both solid box office performers for Arnold, plus he was about to return to familiar territory with director James Cameron in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The second time around for the futuristic robot, the production budget had grown from the initial film's $6.5 million to an alleged $100 million for the sequel, and it clearly showed as the stunning sequel bristled with amazing special effects, bone crunching chases & stunt sequences, plus state of the art computer generated imagery. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was arguably the zenith of Arnolds film career to date and he was voted "International Star of the Decade" by the National Association of Theatre Owners. Remarkably, his next film Last Action Hero (1993) brought Arnold back to Earth with a hard thud as the self-satirizing, but confusing plot line of a young boy entering into a mythical Hollywood action film confused movie fans even more and they stayed away in droves making the film an initial financial disaster. Arnold turned back to good friend, director James Cameron and the chemistry was definitely still there as the "James Bond" style spy thriller True Lies (1994) co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold was the surprise hit of 1994 !
Following the broad audience appeal of True Lies (1994), Schwarzenegger decided to lean towards more family themed entertainment with Junior (1994) and 'Jingle All the Way (1996)_, but he still found time to satisfy his hard core fan base with Eraser (1996), as the chilling "Mr. Freeze" in Batman & Robin (1997) and battling dark forces in the supernatural action of End of Days (1999). The science fiction / conspiracy tale _6th Day, The (2000) played to only mediocre fan interest, and Collateral Damage (2002) had it's theatrical release held over for nearly a year after the tragic events of Sept 11th 2001, but it still only received a lukewarm reception. It was time again to resurrect Arnold's most successful franchise, and in 2003, Schwarzenegger pulled on the biker leathers for the third time for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Unfortunately, directorial duties passed from James Cameron to Jonathan Mostow and the deletion of the character of "Sarah Connor" aka Linda Hamilton and a change in the actor playing "John Connor" - Nick Stahl took over from Edward Furlong - making the third entry in the "Terminator" series the weakest to date.
Schwarzenegger contributed cameo roles to The Rundown (2003), Around the World in 80 Days (2004) and The Kid & I (2005) and took political office in 2003 as the Governor of California, effectively suspending his film career for the foreseeable future.
Schwarzenegger married TV journalist 'Maria Shriver' in April, 1986 and the couple have four children.
Spouse
Maria Shriver (26 April 1986 - present) 4 children
Trade Mark
Frequent movie line: "I'll be back."
Often has his character say comedic one liners that puncuate the action.
Many of his films have his characters doing feats of strength to match his muscular look, eg Commando (1985) where he is first seen in the film carrying a whole tree trunk on his shoulder.
Frequently has some type of action scene in bathrooms. (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), True Lies (1994) and Kindergarten Cop (1990).
Trivia
October 1997: Ranked #20 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
9/27/97: Fourth child, a boy, born.
April 1997: Underwent heart surgery to correct a congenital heart valve condition.
Called by the Guinness Book of World Records, "the most perfectly developed man in the history of the world."
Noted fan of cigar smoking.
His voice in Hercules in New York (1970) was dubbed.
Was part-owner of Planet Hollywood and Schatzi restaurants.
Advocate for the Republican party.
He reprised his Terminator character for the theme park attraction T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996), a short film which uses an enhanced 3-D process that makes the film really appear to jump out at the audience.
His production company is Oak Productions.
1983: Became a US citizen.
His wife Maria Shriver is a niece of the late President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy.
1979: Graduated from University of Wisconsin-Superior with a major in international marketing of fitness and business administration.
2000: Sold off his Planet Hollywood stock and is no longer a part owner of the chain.
The soccer stadium in Graz, Austria (his home town) is named after him.
Was considered for the title role in the 1970s TV series "The Incredible Hulk" (1978), but was reportedly deemed not tall enough. His former bodybuilding competitor, Lou Ferrigno, ultimately won the part.
After leaving Austria for the first time, he came to England to work, earning under £30 a week.
1996: Received an Honorary Doctorate from his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Superior, in recognition of his charitable works.
Son-in-law of Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver.
At his bodybuilding peak his chest was 57", waist 34", biceps 22", thighs 28½", calves 20", and his competition weight was 235 lbs (260 lbs off-season).
September 2001: He and Warner Bros. agreed to postpone the release of Collateral Damage (2002) indefinitely in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks on America. The plot centers around a firefighter who lost his family in a terrorist bomb attack.
9/7/01: Sues International Game Technology for the unauthorized use of his voice and likeness in slot machine games. His lawyer told the press he was seeking $20 million in damages, which is the amount he believes he would have received had he approved the use.
Childhood friends stated that he often said his goals in life were to move to America, become an actor, and marry a Kennedy. He accomplished all three.
Underwent a genioplasty -- a procedure in which his jaw has been moved back so that it no longer juts out.
Was the first private citizen in the U.S. to own a Humvee (High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle).
May 2002: Lobbied to promote anti-juvenile delinquency initiative on California ballot that would commit the state to allocate $400 million for extracurricular activities and tutoring for students, kindergarten through ninth grade.
June 2002: Received an honorary doctorate from Chapman University in Orange, CA.
Franco Columbu was best man at Arnold's wedding.
1/29/03: Underwent surgery for a torn rotator cuff as a result of an injury on the set of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Was in a sling for three to four weeks, but it was not expected to delay the completion of the movie.
2003: Ranked #9 in Star TV's Top 10 Box Office Stars of the 1990s.
The character Rainier Wolfecastle in "The Simpsons" (1989) is based on him.
Won Mr. Olympia title seven times (1970-1975, 1980).
James Cameron orginally wanted him for the role of Kyle Reese in The Terminator (1984), but when Arnold walked into the restaurant to meet Cameron about the role, Cameron took one look at him and said "You're a machine!" and that's why he got the role of The Terminator.
8/6/03: Announced his candidacy for the Governorship of California on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (1992).
Suffered a back injury (among other various assorted injuries) while filming Conan the Barbarian (1982) when the dogs who were chasing him jumped him from behind and he fell down the rock he was climbing to escape them.
In Demolition Man (1993), Sandra Bullock's character Lenina Huxley is telling Sylvester Stallone's character John Spartan about the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library, explaining that, based on the sheer popularity of Schwarzenegger's movies, a Constitutional amendment was passed in order for Schwarzenegger to run for President, which, according to Huxley, he did. In 2003, ten years after this film's release, Schwarzenegger ran for the office of Governor of California, and won the election on 7 October 2003. While Schwarzenegger is not eligible to run for the presidency by present laws (as a naturalized citizen, not a native-born citizen as required by the Constitution), most past presidents have been governors of their respective home states. Some members of Congress are currently considering an amendment to the Constitution to allow foreign-born US citizens to be allowed to run for the Presidency, specifically with Schwarzenegger in mind, although other members of Congress are strongly opposed to the idea.
Had one elder brother, Meinhard (1946-1971).
His mother was Aurelia Jadrny (1922 - 2 August 1998) and his father was Gustav Schwarzenegger (Graz, 1907 - 1973), married in Murzsteg, 20 October 1945. His mother's surname is Czech.
10/7/03: Was elected Governor of California as a Republican.
Turned down the role of John McClane in Die Hard (1988). The role went to Bruce Willis instead.
TV Guide selected Arnold Schwarzenegger's announcement on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (1992) to run for Governor of California as the greatest TV moment of 2003.
Said that filming the climatic fight at the end of Predator (1987) was made difficult by the fact that the late Kevin Peter Hall, who played the Predator, couldn't see through his mask.
Has the record for winning the most major bodybuilding events in history, 13 (1 Mr. Junior Western Europe, 7 Mr. Olympias, and 5 Mr. Universes).
After he had started lifting weights as a teenager, he noticed that his body was becoming disproportionate. His arms, shoulders and chest were developing nicely, but his calves and lower legs weren't coming along as he wanted. To motivate himself to work harder on his calves, he cut off all of his pants (trousers) at the knee. Walking around like that, people would look at (and maybe even laugh at) the big man with 'chicken' legs. It worked.
His father, Gustav Schwarzenegger, nicknamed him "Cinderella" as a child and his older brother, Meinhard, constantly picked on him growing up. Both men were killed while driving under the influence.
Is one of only two actors to appear in all three of the 'Terminator' films (The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)). The other is Earl Boen, who played psychiatrist Dr. Peter Silberman in all three films.
Only the second governor in California's history to be born in a foreign country. John Downey, the 7th Governor of California, was born in Ireland and served from 1860-1862.
Has his look-alike puppet in the French show "Guignols de l'info, Les" (1988).
Went AWOL from the Austrian army to enter his first bodybuilding contest.
Stumped for President George W. Bush the weekend before his re-election in Ohio, as Schwarzenegger has always had a strong relationship with Ohio.
He was voted the 53rd Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Has played a character who died in only four of his films: The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), End of Days (1999) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003).
Was considered for the role of the gentle giant Fezzik in the 1970s when William Goldman's book "The Princess Bride" was first proposed to be made into a film (The Princess Bride (1987)).
Had his first romantic scene in a movie with actress Sandahl Bergman, in Conan the Barbarian (1982).
Is good friends with fellow bodybuilder Sven-Ole Thorsen who, ironically, portrayed "Thorgrim," one of his leading foes, in Conan the Barbarian (1982).
Turned down a request to reprise his Conan character in Kull the Conqueror (1997) (originally titled "Conan the Conqueror"). Also, he was supposed to play Conan in Red Sonja (1985), though ultimately, a new character was created who was essentially Conan in everything but name.
Is the only person to receive Razzie nominations for Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Screen Couple (with himself cloned) in the same year. All for the same movie, The 6th Day (2000).
In German, the word "schwarzen" means "black," and "egger" means "ploughman." So "Schwarzenegger" is "Black Ploughman."
His life strangely mirrors the life of Conan from Conan the Barbarian (1982). Conan was born in a small village and grew up to be a physically powerful man, due to years of slavery. After winning great fame as a gladiator, he is given to wine and women, but later rejects this hedonistic lifestyle and goes on to perform great heroic feats and eventually is crowned king. Arnold was born in a small Austrian town and took up weightlifting as he got older. After achieving success as a bodybuilder, he indulged in drug abuse and womanizing, but he later rejected this and went on to become a vocal supporter of social causes, and was eventually elected governor of California.
Performed many of his own stunts in his films, owing largely to the fact that it was hard to find stunt doubles who matched his size. Billy D. Lucas, Joel Kramer and Peter Kent eventually became his personal stunt doubles and close friends.
His famous line "I'll be back", which originated from The Terminator (1984), was originally written as "I'll come back".
Initially refused to star in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) because James Cameron, who created the character and directed the first two films, would not be directing the third installment. Arnold tried to persuade Cameron to do the third film but Cameron declined and, feeling that the Terminator character was as much Arnold's as it was his own, Cameron advised Arnold to just do the third film and ask for a lot of money.
While filming the behind the scenes documentary for the special edition DVD of Conan the Barbarian (1982), the microphone hit him in the head at the end of the interview, to which he immediately joked "You see, I can't even do an interview about Conan without getting hurt".
2004: Addressed the Republican National Convention.
The etymology for Arnold is "Eagle Power."
Grew up in a house that had no phone, no fridge and no toilet.
1985: Was engaged to Brigitte Nielsen.
Was the spokesperson for Japanese DirecTV, a competitor to Quentin Tarantino's endorsed local satellite TV operator SkyperfecTV.
Was considered for the title role in Flash Gordon (1980). The part eventually went to Sam J. Jones instead, because producer Dino De Laurentiis felt Schwarzenegger's German accent was ill-suited for this role. DeLaurentiis (in his heavy Italian accent) told Schwarzenegger, "You have an accent! I cannot use you for Flash Gordon! No! Flash Gordon has no accent! I cannot use you! No!" Ironically, Jones had to temporarily get rid of his own Texas accent for said role.
While filming Predator (1987) he became close friends with co- star Jesse Ventura, who was also later elected a state governor (Minnesota).
John Milius originally intended him to do the narration of Conan the Barbarian (1982) but the studio didn't trust his accent, so the narration was performed by Mako instead, who played the wizard.
Withdrew from the city of Graz the right to use his name in association with its soccer stadium and returned his "Ehrenring" (ring of honor) after some politicians in the town had started a campaign against Schwarzenegger due to his refusal to stop the execution of convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams (20 December 2005).
The Green Party of Austria has resolved to strip Schwarzenegger of his Austrian citizenship due to his support for the death penalty.
12/12/05: As governor, he refused to grant clemency to convicted quadruple murderer and former gang leader Stanley Tookie Williams, who had been on Death Row for 24 years.
November 2005: He was soundly defeated on all four propositions of his "special election", which cost the state of California an estimated $45 million. Schwarzenegger accepted personal responsibility for the defeat, and appointed a Democrat as his new Chief of Staff.
Second actor to be elected Governor of California. The first was Ronald Reagan.
December 2001: Broke six ribs in a motorcycle crash.
February 2005: He and his 12-year-old son Patrick were injured in a traffic accident when a car ran into Arnold's motorcycle. Patrick was in a sidecar. Arnold received 15 stitches.
He has been nominated for a Razzie Award as Worst Actor eight times during his career, and in 2004 received a special award for being the "Worst Razzie Loser of Our First 25 Years."
His performance as The Terminator in the "Terminator" films is ranked #40 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
Was asked to reprise his "Dutch" character from the first Predator (1987) film for the sequel, but he declined because he didn't like the script. He chose to do Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) instead.
Children - Katherine Eunice (b. 1989), Christina Maria Aurelia (b. 1991), Patrick Schwarzenegger (b. 1993) and Christopher Sargent (b. 1997).
Was asked to appear in a sequel to his 1985 film Commando (1985) but declined.
He keeps the sword he used in Conan the Barbarian (1982) in the Governor's office in California.
Is a huge fan of professional wrestling.
11/7/06: Easily re-elected as Governor of California.
He is the first member of the Kennedy family to become a state Governor.
12/23/06: Broke his right femur while skiing in Sun Valley, ID.
Although German is his native language, all his movies have been dubbed into German by Thomas Danneberg for the German-speaking market because his strong Austrian accent doesn't fit with the type of roles he plays.
1992: He joined President George Bush in New Hampshire and asked voters to "send a message to Pat Buchanan: Hasta la vista, baby".
Related to actor George Wyner, who is also a close friend.
Early in his career he appeared as a contestant on "The Dating Game" (1965).
Was considered for the role of Judge Dredd in Judge Dredd (1995) in the early development stages. The part went to fellow Planet Hollywood founder Sylvester Stallone.
In his childhood considered John Wayne his idol and role model. As Governor of California, he issued a proclamation making 26 May 2007 "John Wayne Day" in the state.
Producer Joel Silver wanted Schwarzenegger to play "Doctor Manhattan" in a film adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen (2009) at one point.
Acted with another future governor, Jesse Ventura, of Minnesota, in Predator (1987).
Had stitches in his hand from the taking-off-airplane-to-tarmac stunt he performed for Commando (1985).
Late October 2007: Personally flew to Malibu, CA, to survey the damage done by wildfires before any other politician, including the President.
Personal Quotes
I was always interested in proportion and perfection. When I was 15 I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. When I stared at myself naked, I realized that to be perfectly proportioned I would need 20-inch arms to match the rest of me.
[Interview in "Starlog" magazine in 1991, explaining his reluctance to do sequels to most of his successful films from the '80s] There's so little time to do all the things I want to do that I can't see any reason to get bogged down in sequels.
Everything I have ever done in my life has always stayed. I've just added to it . . . but I will not change. Because when you are successful and you change, you are an idiot.
I know that if you leave dishes in the sink, they get sticky and hard to wash the next day.
I would rather be Governor of California than own Austria.
I love the Hong Kong style of action movies, but that only looks good for small guys. The reason why the whole style was developed over there was because those guys were very puny guys - they're not powerful-looking guys, they're also not powerful guys. There's no weightlifting champion coming out of Hong Kong - maybe in the bantam division or the lightweight division or something like that, but normally you don't have really strong men coming out of there . . . they had to learn a technique that small people can do that are as effective as the big guy's strength. So that's where the martial arts came from.
In the beginning I was selfish. It was all about, "How do I build Arnold? How can I win the most Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympic contests? How can I get into the movies and get into business?" I was thinking about myself . . . As I've grown up, got older, maybe wiser, I think your life is judged not by how much you have taken but by how much you give back.
[during his campaign for California governor, about his history of "misbehavior"] Where I did make mistakes, or maybe go overboard sometimes . . . I regret that. This is a different Arnold.
[on his fight scenes with the female T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)] How many times do you get away with this - to take a woman, grab her upside down and bury her face in a toilet bowl? The thing is you can do it, because, in the end, I didn't do it to a woman - she's a machine. We could get away with it without being crucified by who knows what group.
[on his decision to run for governor of California] It was the most difficult decision in my life - except the one in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.
[after being pelted with an egg at a political rally] This guy owes me bacon now . . . you can't have egg without bacon.
[responding to criticism during a televised debate] I just realized I have the perfect part for you in "Terminator 4."
[victory speech after having won election as Governor of California] I will not fail, I will not disappoint you, I will not let you down.
The worst I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.
There's a lot of people who want me to get out of acting and want me to run for governor. I think it's mostly movie critics.
You have to remember something: Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn.
I took more abuse in Predator (1987) than I did in Conan the Barbarian (1982). I fell down that waterfall [40 feet] and swam in this ice-cold water for days and for weeks was covered in mud. It was freezing in the Mexican jungle. They had these heat lamps on all the time, but they were no good. If you stayed in front of the lamps, the mud dried. Then, you had to take it off and put new mud on again. It was a no-win situation. The location was tough. Never on flat ground. Always on a hill. We stood all day long on a hill, one leg down, one leg up. It was terrible.
[referring to Democrats at a political rally in Ontario, California, in 2004] If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, "I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers" . . . if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men.
[at the 3004 Republican National Convention] Speaking of acting, one of my movies was called True Lies (1994). It's what the Democrats should have called their convention.
President [George Bush] knows you can't reason with people that are blinded by hate. But let me tell you something: Their hate is no match for our decency, their hate is no match for the leadership and the resolve of George Bush.
[Talking about his Conan the Barbarian (1982) director]: John Milius used to call himself the dog trainer. Guess who were the dogs?
[From an interview about his reaction to reading the original The Terminator (1984) screenplay] I have read a lot of action adventure scripts, and this definitely was one of the best. I knew that I wanted to play the part of the Terminator as soon as I started reading.
[About being taken seriously] I don't care. The important thing to me is that I'm doing work that people enjoy out there, that the movie makes good money, that the studio makes the money back, and that I'm having a great time at what I'm doing. I don't even consider myself serious. So how do I expect people to take me serious? I think this whole Hollywood thing has to be taken much looser . . . it's just entertainment.
"There were various stepping-stones in my career. One of them was Conan the Barbarian (1982), because it was the first time I did a film with that kind of budget and I had the title role. The next big stepping-stone was The Terminator (1984). With "The Terminator", I think people became aware of the fact that I didn't really have to take my shirt off or run around and expose my muscles in order to sell tickets. After I did "The Terminator" and we had seen it be more successful than the Conan films, people then sent me a variety of different kinds of scripts - all in the action-adventure genre, but they were not muscle movies or Viking movies or pirate movies or anything like that.
[Talking about playing the Terminator] I had to act like a cyborg, which meant I couldn't show any kind of human fear or reaction to the fire, explosions, or gunfire that was going off around me. That can be difficult when you're walking through a door with its frame on fire, trying to reload a gun, and at the same time thinking in the back of your mind that people have accidents doing these kinds of stunts and that it might be my turn.
[About more sequels to The Terminator (1984)] I don't necessarily want to leave the magic of the Terminator movies behind, and who says we have to? According to what we know about the future, there were hundreds of Terminators built. The story of the Terminator could go on forever.
[From an interview expressing concern over making Conan the Destroyer (1984) less brutal than its predecessor, Conan the Barbarian (1982)] I think it's a mistake. I know Sylvester Stallone made an extra $20 million because he got a PG rating for Rocky III (1982), but it's a matter of how much you want to stay within the character's reality. Can you slaughter people and never see blood? Is it possible? You must have battles. That's part of life, war, and the world of Conan.
[Talking about director Richard Fleischer] The first day Fleischer came to see me work out, he told me, "Arnold, could you put on some more muscles?" I couldn't believe it! It turned out that Fleischer thought [John Milius'] decision to keep Conan clothed throughout the first film was a mistake. Fleischer believes that people want to see my body much more often than they did the first time around, so they will. I spend most of my time in Conan the Destroyer (1984) fighting off people while I'm dressed in a loincloth.
[About the dog accident while making Conan the Barbarian (1982)] One of them hit me too soon. It caught me off guard and I went right over the ledge. I fell ten feet and landed on my back. I was covered with scratches and bruises. It was probably a pretty good beginning for this movie, though. It set the tone for the whole time we were there. This was going to be fun . . . but dangerous.
[Talking about director John Milius] "There never would have been a Conan movie without him.
[on Warren Beatty] There are some people who are close to him that say he is just starving for attention, and that's the way he gets attention. Other people said, "Look, he's not working and he just feels like he should maybe get involved in politics". Instead, I just think that maybe he is jealous that I did jump in. I find it silly, because I respect his work.
Well, I think because a lot of people don't know why I'm a Republican, I came first of all from a socialistic country which is Austria and when I came over here in 1968 with the presidential elections coming up in November, I came over in October, I heard a lot of the press conferences from both of the candidates, [Hubert H. Humphrey] and [Richard Nixon], and Humphrey was talking about more government is the solution, protectionism, and everything he said about government involvement sounded to me more like Austrian socialism. Then when I heard Nixon talk about it, he said open up the borders, the consumers should be represented there ultimately and strengthen the military and get the government off our backs. I said to myself, "What is this guy's party affiliation?" I didn't know anything at that point. So I asked my friend, "What is Nixon?" He's a Republican. And I said, "I am a Republican". That's how I became a Republican."
[On refusing to grant clemency to condemned killer Stanley Tookie Williams] After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency. The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict, or the decisions of the courts in this case.
[After undergoing heart surgery in 1997] We made, actually, history, because it was the first time ever that doctors could prove that a lifelong Republican has a heart.
As a kid - as a kid I saw socialist - the socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left. Now don't misunderstand me: I love Austria and I love the Austrian people. But I always knew that America was the place for me. In school, when the teacher would talk about America, I would daydream about coming here. I would daydream about living here. I would sit there and watch for hours American movies, transfixed by my heroes, like John Wayne. Everything about America seemed so big to me, so open, so possible.
I have no sexual standards in my head that say this is good or this is bad. Homosexual - that only means to me that he enjoys sex with a man and I enjoy sex with a woman. It's all legitimate to me.
I didn't think about money. I thought about the fame, about just being the greatest. I was dreaming about being some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus.
I'm 6'2". I've heard rumors that I'm really much shorter in real life - like 5'6" or something like that - which is ridiculous. I can assure you this is not the case. People look up to me, and not just because I do a lot of work in the community. I mean, most people really look up to me.
California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming. We won't wait for the federal government. We will move forward because we know it's the right thing to do. We will lead on this issue and we will get other western states involved. I think there's not great leadership from the federal government when it comes to protecting the environment.
Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.
[in a 1987 interview] I have to give the audiences what they enjoy seeing while I try to bring in a little something new, with different movies, different time periods and all those things. But what's important is to entertain the people -- everything else means nothing.
Salary
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) $30,000,000
Collateral Damage (2002) $25,000,000
The 6th Day (2000) $25,000,000
End of Days (1999) $25,000,000
Batman & Robin (1997) $25,000,000
Jingle All the Way (1996) $20,000,000
Eraser (1996) $20,000,000
Junior (1994) $15,000,000
True Lies (1994) $15,000,000
Last Action Hero (1993) $15,000,000
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) $15,000,000
Kindergarten Cop (1990) $12,000,000
The Terminator (1984) $75,000
Conan the Barbarian (1982) $250,000
Hercules in New York (1970) $12,000
Where Are They Now
(October 2003) Is now the Republican Governor-elect of California
(August 2003) Running for Governor of California on the Republican ticket.
(December 2003) Refused to take the salary for Governor of California. Uses private jet at his own expense.
(2006) Release of the book, "Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger" by Laurence Leamer.
(December 2006) (around Christmas) Broke his leg when skiing with his family in Sun Valley, Idaho, USA.
(November 2003) (17 November 2003) Sworn in as Governor of California.
The amazing story of uber-star Arnold Schwarzenegger is a true "rags to riches" story of the penniless immigrant making it in the land of opportunity, the United States of America. Arnold was born on July 30th, 1947 in the town of Thal, Austria and from a young age he took a keen interest in physical fitness and bodybuilding, going on to compete in several minor contests in Europe. However, it was when he emigrated to the United States in 1968 at the tender age of 21 that his star began to rise. Up until the early 1970's, bodybuilding had been viewed as a rather oddball sport, or even a mis-understood "freak show" by the general public, however two entrepreneurial Canadian brothers Ben Weider and Joe Weider set about broadening the appeal of "pumping iron" and getting the sport respect, and what better poster boy could they have to lead the charge, then the incredible "Austrian Oak", Arnold Schwarzenegger. Over roughly the next decade, beginning in 1970, Schwarzenegger dominated the sport of competitive bodybuilding winning five Mr. Universe titles and seven Mr. Olympia titles and with it he made himself a major sports icon, he generated a new international audience for bodybuilding, gym memberships worldwide swelled by the tens of thousands and the Weider sports business empire flourished beyond belief and reached out to all corners of the globe.
However, Schwarzenegger's horizons were bigger than just the landscape of bodybuilding and he debuted on screen as "Arnold Strong" in the low budget Hercules in New York (1970), then director Bob Rafelson cast Arnold in Stay Hungry (1976) alongside Jeff Bridges and Sally Field, for which Arnold won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture". The mesmerizing Pumping Iron (1977) covering the 1975 Mr Olympia contest in South Africa has since gone on to become one of the key sports documentaries of the 20th century, plus Arnold landed other acting roles in the comedy The Villain (1979) opposite Kirk Douglas, and he portrayed Mickey Hargitay in the well received TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980) (TV). But, what Arnold really needed was a super hero / warrior style role in a lavish production that utilized his chiseled physique, and gave him room to show off his growing acting talents and quirky humor.
Conan the Barbarian (1982) was just that role. Inspired by the Robert E. Howard short stories of the "Hyborean Age" and directed by gung ho director John Milius, and with a largely unknown cast, save Max von Sydow and James Earl Jones, "Conan" was a smash hit worldwide and an inferior, although still enjoyable sequel titled _Conan the Destroyer (1984) quickly followed. If "Conan" was the kick start to Arnold's movie career, then his next role was to put the pedal to the floor and accelerate his star status into overdrive. Director James Cameron had until that time only previously directed one earlier feature film titled Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981), - which stank of rotten fish from start to finish - however Cameron had penned a fast paced, science fiction themed film script that called for an actor to play an unstoppable, ruthless predator - The Terminator (1984). Made on a relatively modest budget, the high voltage action / science fiction thriller The Terminator (1984) was incredibly successful worldwide, and began one of the most profitable film franchises in history. The dead pan phrase "I'll be back" quickly became part of popular culture across the globe. Schwarzenegger was in vogue with action movie fans, and the next few years were to see Arnold reap box office gold in roles portraying tough, no-nonsense individuals who used their fists, guns and witty one liners to get the job done. The testosterone laden Commando (1985), Raw Deal (1986), Predator (1987), The Running Man (1987) and Red Heat (1988) were all box office hits and Arnold could seemingly could no wrong when it came to picking winning scripts. The tongue in cheek comedy Twins (1988/I) with co-star Danny DeVito was a smash and won Arnold new fans who saw a more comedic side to the muscle bound actor once described by Australian author / TV host Clive James as "a condom stuffed with walnuts".
The spectacular Total Recall (1990) and "feel good" Kindergarten Cop (1990) were both solid box office performers for Arnold, plus he was about to return to familiar territory with director James Cameron in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The second time around for the futuristic robot, the production budget had grown from the initial film's $6.5 million to an alleged $100 million for the sequel, and it clearly showed as the stunning sequel bristled with amazing special effects, bone crunching chases & stunt sequences, plus state of the art computer generated imagery. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was arguably the zenith of Arnolds film career to date and he was voted "International Star of the Decade" by the National Association of Theatre Owners. Remarkably, his next film Last Action Hero (1993) brought Arnold back to Earth with a hard thud as the self-satirizing, but confusing plot line of a young boy entering into a mythical Hollywood action film confused movie fans even more and they stayed away in droves making the film an initial financial disaster. Arnold turned back to good friend, director James Cameron and the chemistry was definitely still there as the "James Bond" style spy thriller True Lies (1994) co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold was the surprise hit of 1994 !
Following the broad audience appeal of True Lies (1994), Schwarzenegger decided to lean towards more family themed entertainment with Junior (1994) and 'Jingle All the Way (1996)_, but he still found time to satisfy his hard core fan base with Eraser (1996), as the chilling "Mr. Freeze" in Batman & Robin (1997) and battling dark forces in the supernatural action of End of Days (1999). The science fiction / conspiracy tale _6th Day, The (2000) played to only mediocre fan interest, and Collateral Damage (2002) had it's theatrical release held over for nearly a year after the tragic events of Sept 11th 2001, but it still only received a lukewarm reception. It was time again to resurrect Arnold's most successful franchise, and in 2003, Schwarzenegger pulled on the biker leathers for the third time for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Unfortunately, directorial duties passed from James Cameron to Jonathan Mostow and the deletion of the character of "Sarah Connor" aka Linda Hamilton and a change in the actor playing "John Connor" - Nick Stahl took over from Edward Furlong - making the third entry in the "Terminator" series the weakest to date.
Schwarzenegger contributed cameo roles to The Rundown (2003), Around the World in 80 Days (2004) and The Kid & I (2005) and took political office in 2003 as the Governor of California, effectively suspending his film career for the foreseeable future.
Schwarzenegger married TV journalist 'Maria Shriver' in April, 1986 and the couple have four children.
Spouse
Maria Shriver (26 April 1986 - present) 4 children
Trade Mark
Frequent movie line: "I'll be back."
Often has his character say comedic one liners that puncuate the action.
Many of his films have his characters doing feats of strength to match his muscular look, eg Commando (1985) where he is first seen in the film carrying a whole tree trunk on his shoulder.
Frequently has some type of action scene in bathrooms. (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), True Lies (1994) and Kindergarten Cop (1990).
Trivia
October 1997: Ranked #20 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
9/27/97: Fourth child, a boy, born.
April 1997: Underwent heart surgery to correct a congenital heart valve condition.
Called by the Guinness Book of World Records, "the most perfectly developed man in the history of the world."
Noted fan of cigar smoking.
His voice in Hercules in New York (1970) was dubbed.
Was part-owner of Planet Hollywood and Schatzi restaurants.
Advocate for the Republican party.
He reprised his Terminator character for the theme park attraction T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996), a short film which uses an enhanced 3-D process that makes the film really appear to jump out at the audience.
His production company is Oak Productions.
1983: Became a US citizen.
His wife Maria Shriver is a niece of the late President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy.
1979: Graduated from University of Wisconsin-Superior with a major in international marketing of fitness and business administration.
2000: Sold off his Planet Hollywood stock and is no longer a part owner of the chain.
The soccer stadium in Graz, Austria (his home town) is named after him.
Was considered for the title role in the 1970s TV series "The Incredible Hulk" (1978), but was reportedly deemed not tall enough. His former bodybuilding competitor, Lou Ferrigno, ultimately won the part.
After leaving Austria for the first time, he came to England to work, earning under £30 a week.
1996: Received an Honorary Doctorate from his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Superior, in recognition of his charitable works.
Son-in-law of Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver.
At his bodybuilding peak his chest was 57", waist 34", biceps 22", thighs 28½", calves 20", and his competition weight was 235 lbs (260 lbs off-season).
September 2001: He and Warner Bros. agreed to postpone the release of Collateral Damage (2002) indefinitely in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks on America. The plot centers around a firefighter who lost his family in a terrorist bomb attack.
9/7/01: Sues International Game Technology for the unauthorized use of his voice and likeness in slot machine games. His lawyer told the press he was seeking $20 million in damages, which is the amount he believes he would have received had he approved the use.
Childhood friends stated that he often said his goals in life were to move to America, become an actor, and marry a Kennedy. He accomplished all three.
Underwent a genioplasty -- a procedure in which his jaw has been moved back so that it no longer juts out.
Was the first private citizen in the U.S. to own a Humvee (High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle).
May 2002: Lobbied to promote anti-juvenile delinquency initiative on California ballot that would commit the state to allocate $400 million for extracurricular activities and tutoring for students, kindergarten through ninth grade.
June 2002: Received an honorary doctorate from Chapman University in Orange, CA.
Franco Columbu was best man at Arnold's wedding.
1/29/03: Underwent surgery for a torn rotator cuff as a result of an injury on the set of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Was in a sling for three to four weeks, but it was not expected to delay the completion of the movie.
2003: Ranked #9 in Star TV's Top 10 Box Office Stars of the 1990s.
The character Rainier Wolfecastle in "The Simpsons" (1989) is based on him.
Won Mr. Olympia title seven times (1970-1975, 1980).
James Cameron orginally wanted him for the role of Kyle Reese in The Terminator (1984), but when Arnold walked into the restaurant to meet Cameron about the role, Cameron took one look at him and said "You're a machine!" and that's why he got the role of The Terminator.
8/6/03: Announced his candidacy for the Governorship of California on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (1992).
Suffered a back injury (among other various assorted injuries) while filming Conan the Barbarian (1982) when the dogs who were chasing him jumped him from behind and he fell down the rock he was climbing to escape them.
In Demolition Man (1993), Sandra Bullock's character Lenina Huxley is telling Sylvester Stallone's character John Spartan about the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library, explaining that, based on the sheer popularity of Schwarzenegger's movies, a Constitutional amendment was passed in order for Schwarzenegger to run for President, which, according to Huxley, he did. In 2003, ten years after this film's release, Schwarzenegger ran for the office of Governor of California, and won the election on 7 October 2003. While Schwarzenegger is not eligible to run for the presidency by present laws (as a naturalized citizen, not a native-born citizen as required by the Constitution), most past presidents have been governors of their respective home states. Some members of Congress are currently considering an amendment to the Constitution to allow foreign-born US citizens to be allowed to run for the Presidency, specifically with Schwarzenegger in mind, although other members of Congress are strongly opposed to the idea.
Had one elder brother, Meinhard (1946-1971).
His mother was Aurelia Jadrny (1922 - 2 August 1998) and his father was Gustav Schwarzenegger (Graz, 1907 - 1973), married in Murzsteg, 20 October 1945. His mother's surname is Czech.
10/7/03: Was elected Governor of California as a Republican.
Turned down the role of John McClane in Die Hard (1988). The role went to Bruce Willis instead.
TV Guide selected Arnold Schwarzenegger's announcement on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (1992) to run for Governor of California as the greatest TV moment of 2003.
Said that filming the climatic fight at the end of Predator (1987) was made difficult by the fact that the late Kevin Peter Hall, who played the Predator, couldn't see through his mask.
Has the record for winning the most major bodybuilding events in history, 13 (1 Mr. Junior Western Europe, 7 Mr. Olympias, and 5 Mr. Universes).
After he had started lifting weights as a teenager, he noticed that his body was becoming disproportionate. His arms, shoulders and chest were developing nicely, but his calves and lower legs weren't coming along as he wanted. To motivate himself to work harder on his calves, he cut off all of his pants (trousers) at the knee. Walking around like that, people would look at (and maybe even laugh at) the big man with 'chicken' legs. It worked.
His father, Gustav Schwarzenegger, nicknamed him "Cinderella" as a child and his older brother, Meinhard, constantly picked on him growing up. Both men were killed while driving under the influence.
Is one of only two actors to appear in all three of the 'Terminator' films (The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)). The other is Earl Boen, who played psychiatrist Dr. Peter Silberman in all three films.
Only the second governor in California's history to be born in a foreign country. John Downey, the 7th Governor of California, was born in Ireland and served from 1860-1862.
Has his look-alike puppet in the French show "Guignols de l'info, Les" (1988).
Went AWOL from the Austrian army to enter his first bodybuilding contest.
Stumped for President George W. Bush the weekend before his re-election in Ohio, as Schwarzenegger has always had a strong relationship with Ohio.
He was voted the 53rd Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Has played a character who died in only four of his films: The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), End of Days (1999) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003).
Was considered for the role of the gentle giant Fezzik in the 1970s when William Goldman's book "The Princess Bride" was first proposed to be made into a film (The Princess Bride (1987)).
Had his first romantic scene in a movie with actress Sandahl Bergman, in Conan the Barbarian (1982).
Is good friends with fellow bodybuilder Sven-Ole Thorsen who, ironically, portrayed "Thorgrim," one of his leading foes, in Conan the Barbarian (1982).
Turned down a request to reprise his Conan character in Kull the Conqueror (1997) (originally titled "Conan the Conqueror"). Also, he was supposed to play Conan in Red Sonja (1985), though ultimately, a new character was created who was essentially Conan in everything but name.
Is the only person to receive Razzie nominations for Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Screen Couple (with himself cloned) in the same year. All for the same movie, The 6th Day (2000).
In German, the word "schwarzen" means "black," and "egger" means "ploughman." So "Schwarzenegger" is "Black Ploughman."
His life strangely mirrors the life of Conan from Conan the Barbarian (1982). Conan was born in a small village and grew up to be a physically powerful man, due to years of slavery. After winning great fame as a gladiator, he is given to wine and women, but later rejects this hedonistic lifestyle and goes on to perform great heroic feats and eventually is crowned king. Arnold was born in a small Austrian town and took up weightlifting as he got older. After achieving success as a bodybuilder, he indulged in drug abuse and womanizing, but he later rejected this and went on to become a vocal supporter of social causes, and was eventually elected governor of California.
Performed many of his own stunts in his films, owing largely to the fact that it was hard to find stunt doubles who matched his size. Billy D. Lucas, Joel Kramer and Peter Kent eventually became his personal stunt doubles and close friends.
His famous line "I'll be back", which originated from The Terminator (1984), was originally written as "I'll come back".
Initially refused to star in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) because James Cameron, who created the character and directed the first two films, would not be directing the third installment. Arnold tried to persuade Cameron to do the third film but Cameron declined and, feeling that the Terminator character was as much Arnold's as it was his own, Cameron advised Arnold to just do the third film and ask for a lot of money.
While filming the behind the scenes documentary for the special edition DVD of Conan the Barbarian (1982), the microphone hit him in the head at the end of the interview, to which he immediately joked "You see, I can't even do an interview about Conan without getting hurt".
2004: Addressed the Republican National Convention.
The etymology for Arnold is "Eagle Power."
Grew up in a house that had no phone, no fridge and no toilet.
1985: Was engaged to Brigitte Nielsen.
Was the spokesperson for Japanese DirecTV, a competitor to Quentin Tarantino's endorsed local satellite TV operator SkyperfecTV.
Was considered for the title role in Flash Gordon (1980). The part eventually went to Sam J. Jones instead, because producer Dino De Laurentiis felt Schwarzenegger's German accent was ill-suited for this role. DeLaurentiis (in his heavy Italian accent) told Schwarzenegger, "You have an accent! I cannot use you for Flash Gordon! No! Flash Gordon has no accent! I cannot use you! No!" Ironically, Jones had to temporarily get rid of his own Texas accent for said role.
While filming Predator (1987) he became close friends with co- star Jesse Ventura, who was also later elected a state governor (Minnesota).
John Milius originally intended him to do the narration of Conan the Barbarian (1982) but the studio didn't trust his accent, so the narration was performed by Mako instead, who played the wizard.
Withdrew from the city of Graz the right to use his name in association with its soccer stadium and returned his "Ehrenring" (ring of honor) after some politicians in the town had started a campaign against Schwarzenegger due to his refusal to stop the execution of convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams (20 December 2005).
The Green Party of Austria has resolved to strip Schwarzenegger of his Austrian citizenship due to his support for the death penalty.
12/12/05: As governor, he refused to grant clemency to convicted quadruple murderer and former gang leader Stanley Tookie Williams, who had been on Death Row for 24 years.
November 2005: He was soundly defeated on all four propositions of his "special election", which cost the state of California an estimated $45 million. Schwarzenegger accepted personal responsibility for the defeat, and appointed a Democrat as his new Chief of Staff.
Second actor to be elected Governor of California. The first was Ronald Reagan.
December 2001: Broke six ribs in a motorcycle crash.
February 2005: He and his 12-year-old son Patrick were injured in a traffic accident when a car ran into Arnold's motorcycle. Patrick was in a sidecar. Arnold received 15 stitches.
He has been nominated for a Razzie Award as Worst Actor eight times during his career, and in 2004 received a special award for being the "Worst Razzie Loser of Our First 25 Years."
His performance as The Terminator in the "Terminator" films is ranked #40 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
Was asked to reprise his "Dutch" character from the first Predator (1987) film for the sequel, but he declined because he didn't like the script. He chose to do Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) instead.
Children - Katherine Eunice (b. 1989), Christina Maria Aurelia (b. 1991), Patrick Schwarzenegger (b. 1993) and Christopher Sargent (b. 1997).
Was asked to appear in a sequel to his 1985 film Commando (1985) but declined.
He keeps the sword he used in Conan the Barbarian (1982) in the Governor's office in California.
Is a huge fan of professional wrestling.
11/7/06: Easily re-elected as Governor of California.
He is the first member of the Kennedy family to become a state Governor.
12/23/06: Broke his right femur while skiing in Sun Valley, ID.
Although German is his native language, all his movies have been dubbed into German by Thomas Danneberg for the German-speaking market because his strong Austrian accent doesn't fit with the type of roles he plays.
1992: He joined President George Bush in New Hampshire and asked voters to "send a message to Pat Buchanan: Hasta la vista, baby".
Related to actor George Wyner, who is also a close friend.
Early in his career he appeared as a contestant on "The Dating Game" (1965).
Was considered for the role of Judge Dredd in Judge Dredd (1995) in the early development stages. The part went to fellow Planet Hollywood founder Sylvester Stallone.
In his childhood considered John Wayne his idol and role model. As Governor of California, he issued a proclamation making 26 May 2007 "John Wayne Day" in the state.
Producer Joel Silver wanted Schwarzenegger to play "Doctor Manhattan" in a film adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen (2009) at one point.
Acted with another future governor, Jesse Ventura, of Minnesota, in Predator (1987).
Had stitches in his hand from the taking-off-airplane-to-tarmac stunt he performed for Commando (1985).
Late October 2007: Personally flew to Malibu, CA, to survey the damage done by wildfires before any other politician, including the President.
Personal Quotes
I was always interested in proportion and perfection. When I was 15 I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. When I stared at myself naked, I realized that to be perfectly proportioned I would need 20-inch arms to match the rest of me.
[Interview in "Starlog" magazine in 1991, explaining his reluctance to do sequels to most of his successful films from the '80s] There's so little time to do all the things I want to do that I can't see any reason to get bogged down in sequels.
Everything I have ever done in my life has always stayed. I've just added to it . . . but I will not change. Because when you are successful and you change, you are an idiot.
I know that if you leave dishes in the sink, they get sticky and hard to wash the next day.
I would rather be Governor of California than own Austria.
I love the Hong Kong style of action movies, but that only looks good for small guys. The reason why the whole style was developed over there was because those guys were very puny guys - they're not powerful-looking guys, they're also not powerful guys. There's no weightlifting champion coming out of Hong Kong - maybe in the bantam division or the lightweight division or something like that, but normally you don't have really strong men coming out of there . . . they had to learn a technique that small people can do that are as effective as the big guy's strength. So that's where the martial arts came from.
In the beginning I was selfish. It was all about, "How do I build Arnold? How can I win the most Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympic contests? How can I get into the movies and get into business?" I was thinking about myself . . . As I've grown up, got older, maybe wiser, I think your life is judged not by how much you have taken but by how much you give back.
[during his campaign for California governor, about his history of "misbehavior"] Where I did make mistakes, or maybe go overboard sometimes . . . I regret that. This is a different Arnold.
[on his fight scenes with the female T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)] How many times do you get away with this - to take a woman, grab her upside down and bury her face in a toilet bowl? The thing is you can do it, because, in the end, I didn't do it to a woman - she's a machine. We could get away with it without being crucified by who knows what group.
[on his decision to run for governor of California] It was the most difficult decision in my life - except the one in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.
[after being pelted with an egg at a political rally] This guy owes me bacon now . . . you can't have egg without bacon.
[responding to criticism during a televised debate] I just realized I have the perfect part for you in "Terminator 4."
[victory speech after having won election as Governor of California] I will not fail, I will not disappoint you, I will not let you down.
The worst I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.
There's a lot of people who want me to get out of acting and want me to run for governor. I think it's mostly movie critics.
You have to remember something: Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn.
I took more abuse in Predator (1987) than I did in Conan the Barbarian (1982). I fell down that waterfall [40 feet] and swam in this ice-cold water for days and for weeks was covered in mud. It was freezing in the Mexican jungle. They had these heat lamps on all the time, but they were no good. If you stayed in front of the lamps, the mud dried. Then, you had to take it off and put new mud on again. It was a no-win situation. The location was tough. Never on flat ground. Always on a hill. We stood all day long on a hill, one leg down, one leg up. It was terrible.
[referring to Democrats at a political rally in Ontario, California, in 2004] If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, "I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers" . . . if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men.
[at the 3004 Republican National Convention] Speaking of acting, one of my movies was called True Lies (1994). It's what the Democrats should have called their convention.
President [George Bush] knows you can't reason with people that are blinded by hate. But let me tell you something: Their hate is no match for our decency, their hate is no match for the leadership and the resolve of George Bush.
[Talking about his Conan the Barbarian (1982) director]: John Milius used to call himself the dog trainer. Guess who were the dogs?
[From an interview about his reaction to reading the original The Terminator (1984) screenplay] I have read a lot of action adventure scripts, and this definitely was one of the best. I knew that I wanted to play the part of the Terminator as soon as I started reading.
[About being taken seriously] I don't care. The important thing to me is that I'm doing work that people enjoy out there, that the movie makes good money, that the studio makes the money back, and that I'm having a great time at what I'm doing. I don't even consider myself serious. So how do I expect people to take me serious? I think this whole Hollywood thing has to be taken much looser . . . it's just entertainment.
"There were various stepping-stones in my career. One of them was Conan the Barbarian (1982), because it was the first time I did a film with that kind of budget and I had the title role. The next big stepping-stone was The Terminator (1984). With "The Terminator", I think people became aware of the fact that I didn't really have to take my shirt off or run around and expose my muscles in order to sell tickets. After I did "The Terminator" and we had seen it be more successful than the Conan films, people then sent me a variety of different kinds of scripts - all in the action-adventure genre, but they were not muscle movies or Viking movies or pirate movies or anything like that.
[Talking about playing the Terminator] I had to act like a cyborg, which meant I couldn't show any kind of human fear or reaction to the fire, explosions, or gunfire that was going off around me. That can be difficult when you're walking through a door with its frame on fire, trying to reload a gun, and at the same time thinking in the back of your mind that people have accidents doing these kinds of stunts and that it might be my turn.
[About more sequels to The Terminator (1984)] I don't necessarily want to leave the magic of the Terminator movies behind, and who says we have to? According to what we know about the future, there were hundreds of Terminators built. The story of the Terminator could go on forever.
[From an interview expressing concern over making Conan the Destroyer (1984) less brutal than its predecessor, Conan the Barbarian (1982)] I think it's a mistake. I know Sylvester Stallone made an extra $20 million because he got a PG rating for Rocky III (1982), but it's a matter of how much you want to stay within the character's reality. Can you slaughter people and never see blood? Is it possible? You must have battles. That's part of life, war, and the world of Conan.
[Talking about director Richard Fleischer] The first day Fleischer came to see me work out, he told me, "Arnold, could you put on some more muscles?" I couldn't believe it! It turned out that Fleischer thought [John Milius'] decision to keep Conan clothed throughout the first film was a mistake. Fleischer believes that people want to see my body much more often than they did the first time around, so they will. I spend most of my time in Conan the Destroyer (1984) fighting off people while I'm dressed in a loincloth.
[About the dog accident while making Conan the Barbarian (1982)] One of them hit me too soon. It caught me off guard and I went right over the ledge. I fell ten feet and landed on my back. I was covered with scratches and bruises. It was probably a pretty good beginning for this movie, though. It set the tone for the whole time we were there. This was going to be fun . . . but dangerous.
[Talking about director John Milius] "There never would have been a Conan movie without him.
[on Warren Beatty] There are some people who are close to him that say he is just starving for attention, and that's the way he gets attention. Other people said, "Look, he's not working and he just feels like he should maybe get involved in politics". Instead, I just think that maybe he is jealous that I did jump in. I find it silly, because I respect his work.
Well, I think because a lot of people don't know why I'm a Republican, I came first of all from a socialistic country which is Austria and when I came over here in 1968 with the presidential elections coming up in November, I came over in October, I heard a lot of the press conferences from both of the candidates, [Hubert H. Humphrey] and [Richard Nixon], and Humphrey was talking about more government is the solution, protectionism, and everything he said about government involvement sounded to me more like Austrian socialism. Then when I heard Nixon talk about it, he said open up the borders, the consumers should be represented there ultimately and strengthen the military and get the government off our backs. I said to myself, "What is this guy's party affiliation?" I didn't know anything at that point. So I asked my friend, "What is Nixon?" He's a Republican. And I said, "I am a Republican". That's how I became a Republican."
[On refusing to grant clemency to condemned killer Stanley Tookie Williams] After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency. The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict, or the decisions of the courts in this case.
[After undergoing heart surgery in 1997] We made, actually, history, because it was the first time ever that doctors could prove that a lifelong Republican has a heart.
As a kid - as a kid I saw socialist - the socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left. Now don't misunderstand me: I love Austria and I love the Austrian people. But I always knew that America was the place for me. In school, when the teacher would talk about America, I would daydream about coming here. I would daydream about living here. I would sit there and watch for hours American movies, transfixed by my heroes, like John Wayne. Everything about America seemed so big to me, so open, so possible.
I have no sexual standards in my head that say this is good or this is bad. Homosexual - that only means to me that he enjoys sex with a man and I enjoy sex with a woman. It's all legitimate to me.
I didn't think about money. I thought about the fame, about just being the greatest. I was dreaming about being some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus.
I'm 6'2". I've heard rumors that I'm really much shorter in real life - like 5'6" or something like that - which is ridiculous. I can assure you this is not the case. People look up to me, and not just because I do a lot of work in the community. I mean, most people really look up to me.
California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming. We won't wait for the federal government. We will move forward because we know it's the right thing to do. We will lead on this issue and we will get other western states involved. I think there's not great leadership from the federal government when it comes to protecting the environment.
Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.
[in a 1987 interview] I have to give the audiences what they enjoy seeing while I try to bring in a little something new, with different movies, different time periods and all those things. But what's important is to entertain the people -- everything else means nothing.
Salary
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) $30,000,000
Collateral Damage (2002) $25,000,000
The 6th Day (2000) $25,000,000
End of Days (1999) $25,000,000
Batman & Robin (1997) $25,000,000
Jingle All the Way (1996) $20,000,000
Eraser (1996) $20,000,000
Junior (1994) $15,000,000
True Lies (1994) $15,000,000
Last Action Hero (1993) $15,000,000
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) $15,000,000
Kindergarten Cop (1990) $12,000,000
The Terminator (1984) $75,000
Conan the Barbarian (1982) $250,000
Hercules in New York (1970) $12,000
Where Are They Now
(October 2003) Is now the Republican Governor-elect of California
(August 2003) Running for Governor of California on the Republican ticket.
(December 2003) Refused to take the salary for Governor of California. Uses private jet at his own expense.
(2006) Release of the book, "Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger" by Laurence Leamer.
(December 2006) (around Christmas) Broke his leg when skiing with his family in Sun Valley, Idaho, USA.
(November 2003) (17 November 2003) Sworn in as Governor of California.
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