| THE
EUREKA EFFECT |
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I |
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II |
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III |
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IV |
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V |
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VI |
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VII |
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III. Uranus
and Invention
Astrologers associate the planet Uranus with scientific invention. To test this connection, a list of notable invention-moments was collected, from the invention of the barometer in 1648 to the superconductor in 1987. To be included, the moment when they first worked had to be clearly located. It was not sufficient to locate merely, a first public demonstration.
Both invention and eureka moments are moments of innovation and success, and have in common a sense of triumph and excitement. In other respects however they are very different. Invention moments are more public, being the time when some new apparatus or technique was first made to work, and they are easier to locate in time than eureka moments. More of the latter have been found, 36 as compared to 23. In marked contrast with the more subjective eureka experience, volumes have been composed on invention-moments, chronicling the onward sweep of technology.
Was an excess of major Uranus aspects present at these historic moments? Use of an aspect-hypothesis involving Uranus has the advantage that this planet does not move appreciably from day to day, and so one can happily use dates where no time-of-day information exists, as is the case for almost half of these moments. As with the Eureka study, we are here scoring aspect frequencies.
Selecting the Moments
Technological Invention-moments are distinctive, such as when the image of a face was first seen on a television screen, when a human voice was first heard down a telephone wire, or when a beam of coherent light first shone forth from a ruby crystal as with the 'laser'. Other, non-technological Invention-moments include Lister using carbolic acid as an antiseptic, or Jenner first giving a child immunity to smallpox by a vaccination. These moments are the seed-beginnings where a new invention first appears, and it is reasonable to surmise that they should have some astrological correlation.
The 'Biographical Dictionary of Scientists: Engineers and Inventors' (BDS) was the primary reference and its guidance was followed on who was the inventor. This effectively meant taking the name publicly associated with a given invnetion: eg, Marconi not Loomis, for the radio, Watson-Watt not Kuhnold, for radar, Whittle not Ohain for the jet plane, and so forth. A second useful reference was 'Inventions that Changed the World', a Reader's Digest puublication, which combined a fine historical sense with a disposition to cite dates where relevant.
Where biographies existed of the inventor, they were consulted to find a time when the invention first worked. The BDS reference, together with Asimov's 'Biographical Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology', include all but five of our inventors. Omitted were the first two on our list, the Frenchmen Perier and d'Alibard, and the last two, Leith and Chu,whose post-1960 inventions were too recent for these works, and Dr Lyons' construction of the first atomic clock. The Reader's Digest opus included the hologram invention by Leith and the atomic clock by Lyons.
In his book, 'Connections' about scientific innovations, James Burke says that barometer was shown to respond to air pressure on the morning of 19 September, 1648, when it was taken up a mountain in France: 'Everyone was elated. The barometer had been invented' (p.75). We accepted this as an I-moment for the barometer, as the earlier moment when Torricelli first set one up is unrecorded.
The use of anaesthesia in medicine is generally associated with Thomas Morton of Massachusets, though some years earlier a Dr Crawford Long in Georgia had operated successfully on a patient unconscious under ether. Citizens objected and caused him to stop the practice, such that this pioneering work by Dr Crawford remained unknown until long after anaesthesia had become generally accepted. That earlier date (given in 'The Shell Book of Firsts') is not here used.
Sometimes there is no definite date when the new apparatus first worked, but merely a succession of improved models. The invention of the steam locomotive and the internal combustion engine are examples. The same could be said of the helicopter, but the BDS states: 'On the 14th September, 1939, Sikorsky piloted his helicopter a few feet in the air.' Thus, we used this date. Once Sikorsky had developed his model, the early, hardly workable prototypes were soon forgotten and it is his name that posterity associates with the helicopter.
The list as compiled includes those invention where a moment of first working can be ascertained, and where the invention expressed a new scientific principle. Excluded were innovations which did not have this significance, such as the first zip fastener, razor blade or street bollard. On two occasions moments were scored but then removed when more detailed information revealed them to be mere public demonstrations: there was a first demonstration of neon light by Georges Claude on 3 December 1910, at the Paris Motor Show; then a possible date when Morse first demonstrated the electric telegraph, but further inquiries showed this to be unfounded.
..............INVENTIONS: DAYS WHEN THEY FIRST WORKED (n=36)
| YEAR | DATE | TIME | COUNTRY | INVENTOR | INVENTION |
| 1648 | Sept 19 | 11.30am | France | Francois Perier | BAROMETER |
| 1752 | May 10 | 2pm | Paris | D'Alibard | LIGHTNING COND. |
| 1783 | June 4 | 2pm | Annnonay | J. Montgolfier | BALLOON |
| 1796 | May14 | Bath UK | Edward Jenner | VACCINATION | |
| 1821 | Dec 25 | London | Michael Faraday | ELECTRIC MOTOR | |
| 1831 | Aug 29 | " | " | TRANSFORMER | |
| 1831 | Oct 17 | " | " | SOLENOID | |
| 1846 | Oct 28 | " | " | DYNAMO | |
| 1846 | Oct 16 | 11am | Massachuset | Wiliam Morton | ANAESTHETIC |
| 1851 | Jan 8 | 2am | France | Jean Foucault | FOUCAULT PEND. |
| 1876 | Mar 10 | 7pm | Boston | Alexander Bell | TELEPHONE |
| 1877 | Dec 6 | New Jersey | Thomas Edison | PHONOGRAPH | |
| 1879 | Oct 23 | 1.30am | " | " | ELECTRIC LIGHT |
| 1896 | Jan 17 | Vienna | X - RAYS | ||
| 1897 | May 10 | 7pm | Cardiff | Guglio Marconi | RADIO STATION |
| 1903 | Dec 17 | 10.40pm | N.Carolina | Wright Bros | POWERED FLIGHT |
| 1922 | Jan 11 | 3pm | Toronto | Frederic Banting | INSULIN |
| 1925 | Oct 2 | London | John Logie Baird | TELEVISION | |
| 1926 | Mar 16 | 2.30pm | US Mass. | Robert Goddard | ROCKET |
| 1932 | Apr 13 | Cambridge | E. Walton | PARTICLE ACCELER. | |
| 1935 | Feb 25 | 5pm | UK | R. Watson-Watt | RADAR |
| 1939 | Sept 14 | Connecticut | Igor Sikorsky | HELICOPTER | |
| 1940 | May 25 | 6pm | Oxford | Florey& Chain | PENICILLIN |
| 1941 | May 15 | 7.35pm | Midlands | Frank Whittle | JET PLANE |
| 1942 | Dec 2 | 3.20pm | Chicago | Enrico Fermi | NUCLEAR REACTOR |
| 1945 | July 16 | 12am | New Mexic | J. Oppenheimer | ATOM BOMB |
| 1947 | Dec 16 | New York | William Shockley | TRANSISTOR | |
| 1948 | June 21 | 12am | Manchester | F. Williams | COMPUTER |
| 1948 | Aug 12 | Washington | Harold Lyons | ATOMIC CLOCK | |
| 1952 | Nov 1 | 7.15am | Elugelab | Edward Teller | THERMONUC. DEV. |
| 1957 | Oct 4 | 9amGMT | Caspian Sea | - | SPUTNIK |
| 1959 | May 30 | Cowes | C. Cockerell | HOVERCRAFT | |
| 1960 | May 15 | 10.30am | Malibu | Theodor Maiman | LASER |
| 1963 | Dec 4 | Massachuset | Emmet Leith | HOLOGRAM | |
| 1987 | Jan 29 | 5pm | Houston | Ching-Wu Chu | SUPERCONDUCTOR |
| 1990 | Sep14 | 12.52pm | Washing.DC | Bethesda Hosp. | GENE THERAPY |
Local time has been given where known. This list of 36 was published in 1992 as 'Invention-moments and Aspects to Uranus' by Mike O'Neil and N.K. (in the UK's Astrological Journal) then in 'Inventor's World' (1996, a monthly journal), and in 'The Eureka Effect' by M.O. and N.K. (1996).
America - Land of Invention
Of the 36 Invention-moments in the Table, the largest number are American: 14, as compared to 13 from the UK and 4 from France. There were also 25 'lost' I-moments (I-moments whose dates are lost), and including these makes a total of 60 I-moments: then the score changes to 23 from the UK, 18 in the US, 9 French and 5 German. Including merely those which occurred in the last 150 years, ie since 1850, then again a large majority were American.
Four Invention-moments were scored for Michael Faraday: over the years 1821-31 he created an electric motor, a transformer, a solenoid and then a dynamo! These weren't of much practical use: the first useful dynamo was made in 1832 by the Frenchman H.Pixii, and 'the earliest electric motor to run successfully' was in 1835, by T.Davenport in the United States. Alas, both dates are lost.
Radio may have been a gradual development, but there was a distinctive moment for 'the first wireless telegraph station' that Marconi operated. On the 11 May, 1897, he sent a Morse code message across the Bristol channel and became a celebrity the next day; a month later the Marconi Wireless telegraph and Signal Company had been established. 'On...May 10, 1897, Marconi's method was used for the first time.' Also, the first computer programme was fed into a computer - as opposed to a mere calculating machine - in Manchester University on 21 June, 1948. From one of the persons who was present on that day in Manchester (Professor Kilburn), the time of running the programme was ascertained as having been just before lunch.
Contrast with Eureka
Moments
Eureka moments generally get a better press. Pencillin was first grown in a usable form in Oxford in 1940 - by Florey and Chain - an Invention-moment - two decades after its discovery in a famous Eureka-moment by Alexander Fleming. Roentgen discovered X-rays in November, 1895, then a mere month later it was first used clinically, on 28 December, 1895, to examine a gunshot wound, which date gets into our invention list.
Only once did we find an I-moment accompanied by a eureka experience: on 29 August, 1831, when Faraday constructed the first electric transformer, which was also the day (as recorded under his statue outside the Institute of Engineers in London) when he discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction. Szilard had the idea for a chain reaction in an E-moment in 1933, and this was first put into practice when Fermi started up a nuclear pile, in an E-moment of 1942. Gabor had the idea for the hologram in 1947 and Leith made it in 1963.
The Aspects
We tested the hypothesis, that there would be an excess of major Uranus aspects, in the group of 36 I-moments. The Moon was included, even though the time of day for these events was often unknown. We assumed that a time of 2 pm was likely to be accurate to within ±4 hours, which corresponds to ±2° of the Moon's movement. This I-moment group was found to have a 23% excess of septiles, a 44% excess of trines, and a 61% excess of major Uranus aspects (conj. opp. + trine).
This bar chart shows the planetary frequencies of major aspects in the 36 invention moments
©
2003 Research Group for the Critical Study of Astrology
