23.MICHAEL FARADAY(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

23. MICHAEL FARADAY 1791 - 1867.

This is the age of electricity. It is true that our era is sometimes called the space age and sometimes called the atomic age; however, space travel and atomic weapons, whatever their potential importance, have relatively little impact upon our everyday lives. But we use electrical devices constantly. In fact, it seems safe to say that no technological feature so completely permeates the modern world as does the use of electricity.

Many men have contributed to our mastery of electricity:Charles Augustine de Coulomb, Count Alessandro Volta, Hans Christian Oersted, and Andre Marie Ampere are among the most important. But towering far above the others are two great British scientists, Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. Though the work of the two men was in part complementary, they were in no sense collaborators, and each man's individual achievements entitle him to a high place on this list.

Michael Faraday was born in 1791, in Newing ton, England. He came from a poor family and was largely self educated. Apprenticed to a bookbinder and bookseller at the age of fourteen, he used the opportunity to read extensively. When he was

22.JAMES WATT(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

22. JAMES WATT 1736 - 1819.

The Scottish inventor James Watt, the man who is often described as the inventor of the steam engine, was the key figure of the Industrial Revolution.

Actually, Watt was not the first man to build a steam engine. Similar devices were described by Hero of Alexandria in the 1st century. In 1698, Thomas Savery patented a steam engine that was used for pumping water, and in 1712 an Englishman, Thomas Newcomen, patented a somewhat improved version. Still, the Newcomen engine had such a low efficiency that it was useful only for pumping water out of coal mines.

Watt himself became interested in the steam engine in 1764, while repairing a model of Newcomen's device. Watt, although he had received only one year's training as an instrument maker, had great inventive talent. The improvements which he made upon Newcomen's invention were so important that it is fair to consider Watt the inventor of the first practical steam engine.

Watt's first great improvement, which he patented in 1769,was the addition of a separate condensing chamber. He also insulated the steam cylinder, and in 1782 he invented the double acting engine. Together with some smaller improvements, these innovations resulted in an increase in the efficiency of the steam engine by a factor of four or more. In practice, this increase of efficiency meant the difference between a clever but not really very useful device, and an instrument of enormous industrial utility.

Watt also invented (in 1781) a set of gears for converting the reciprocal motion of the engine into a rotary motion. This device greatly increased the number of uses to which steam engines could be put. Watt also invented a centrifugal governor (1788), by which the speed of the engine could be automatically controlled; a pressure gauge (1790); a counter; an indicator; and a throttle valve, in addition to various other improvements.

Watt himself did not have a good head for business. However, in 1775 he formed a

21.CONSTANTINE THE GREAT(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

21.CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

c. 280-337.

Constantine the Great was the first Christian emperor of Rome. By his adoption of Christianity, and by his various policies encouraging its growth, he played a major role in transforming it from a persecuted sect into the dominant religion of Europe.

Constantine was born about 280, in the town of Naissus (present day N^g), in what is now Yugoslavia. His father was a high ranking army officer, and Constantine spent his younger days in Nico media, where the court of the Emperor Diocletian was situated.

Diocletian abdicated in 305, and Constantine's father, Constantius, became the ruler of the western half of the Roman Empire. When Constantius died the following year, Constantine was proclaimed emperor by his troops. Other generals, however, disputed his claim, and a series of civil wars followed. These ended in 312 when Constantine defeated his remaining rival, Max­entius, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, near Rome.

Constantine was now the undisputed ruler of the western half of the Empire; however, another general, Licinius, ruled the eastern

20.ANTOINE LAURENT LAVOISIER(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

20. ANTOINE LAURENT LAVOISIER 

1743 - 1794.

The great French scientist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was the most important figure in the development of chemistry. At the time of his birth, in Paris, in 1743, the science of chemistry lagged far behind physics, mathematics, and astronomy. Large numbers of individual facts had been discovered by chemists, but there was no adequate theoretical framework in which to fit these isolated bits of information. At that time, it was incorrectly believed that air and water were elementary substances. Worse still, there was a complete misunderstanding of the nature of fire. It was believed that all combustible materials contained a hypothetical substance called "phlogiston,^" and that during combustion the inflammable substance released its phlogiston into the air.

In the interval from 1754 to 1774, talented chemists such as Joseph Black, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, and others had isolated such important gases as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon

19.NICOLAUS COPERNICUS(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

19. NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
                      1473 - 1543.

The great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (Polish name: Mikolaj Kopernik), was born in 1473, in the city of Torun, on the Vistula River, in Poland. He came from a well-to-do family. As a young man, Copernicus studied at the University of Cracow, where he became interested in astronomy. In his mid-twenties he went to Italy, where he studied law and medicine at the Universities of Bologna and Padua, and later received a doctorate in canon law from the University of Ferrara. Copernicus spent most of his adult life on the staff of the cathedral at Frauen burg (Polish: Frombork), where he was a canon. Copernicus was never a professional astronomer, and the great work which has made him famous was accomplished in his spare time.

During his stay in Italy, Copernicus had become acquainted with the idea of the Greek philosopher, Aristarchus of Samos (third century B.c.), that the earth and the other planets revolved about the sun. Copernicus became convinced of the correctness of this heliocentric hypothesis, and when he was about forty he began to circulate among his friends a short, handwritten manuscript setting

18.AUGUSTUS CAESAR(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

18.AUGUSTUS CAESAR

63 B.C. - 14 A.D.

Augustus Caesar, the founder of the Roman Empire, is one of the great pivotal figures in history. He ended the civil wars that had disrupted the Roman Republic during the first century B.C., and he reorganized the Roman government so that internal peace and prosperity were maintained for two centuries.

Gaius Octavius (better known as Octavian; he did not receive the title "Augustus" until he was thirty-five years old) was born in 63 B.C. He was the grandnephew of Julius Caesar, who was the leading political figure of Rome during Octavian's youth. Julius Caesar, who had no legitimate sons of his own, liked the youth, and helped prepare him for a political career. However,when Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.c., Octavian was still only an eighteen-year-old student.

The death of Caesar set off a long and bitter struggle for power between various Roman military and political figures. At first, his rivals, who were all men of long experience in the rough arena of Roman politics, did not consider the youthful Octavian a serious threat. Indeed, the young man's only visible asset was that Julius Caesar had adopted him as his son. By making skillful use of this advantage, Octavian managed to win the support of some of

17.SHIH HUANG TI(THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY) History Of Sand.

17. SHIH HUANG TI 259 B.C. - 210 B.C.

The great Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti, who ruled from 238-210 B.C, united China by force of arms and instituted a set of sweeping reforms. Those reforms have been a major factor in the cultural unity that China has maintained ever since.

Shih Huang Ti (also known as Ch'in Shih Huang Ti) was born in 259 B.C. and died in 210 B.C. To understand his importance, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the historical background of his times. He was born in the final years of the Chou dynasty, which had been founded about 1100 B.C. Centuries before his time, however, the Chou monarchs had ceased to be effective rulers, and China had become divided into a large number of feudal states.

The various feudal lords were constantly at war with one