by John Browne
55. Jewish children, survivors of Auschwitz, behind a barbed-wire fence, Poland, February 1945. Photograph taken by a Russian photographer during the making of a film about the liberation of the camp. The children were dressed up by the Russians with clothing from adult prisoners. Getty Images.
56. The author’s Persian silver boxes. Author’s collection.
57. From left to right: Vorochilov, Molotov, Stalin pose at the shore of the Moscow-Volga Canal, in 1937 in this manipulated picture. In the original picture Nikolai Yezhov was standing on the right. Yezhov was the senior figure in the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) under Joseph Stalin during the period of the Great Purge. After Yezhov was tried and executed his likeness was removed from this image. AFP/Getty Images.
58. The Hunt brothers are sworn in before a Congressional subcommittee investigating the collapse of the silver market, February 1980. Corbis.
URANIUM
59. Hiroshima’s A-Bomb dome, taken by the author on a visit in 2012. Author’s collection.
60. ‘Weakly Writhing’ by Tomomi Yamashina, who was sixteen at the time of the bomb and standing 3,600 metres from the hypocentre in front of the Hiroshima First Army Hospital. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum A-bomb Drawings by Survivors. Author’s collection.
61. Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer (left) with Major General Leslie Groves, by the remains of the tower from which an atom test bomb was ignited, at Los Alamos, California, 1943. Getty Images.
62. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II opens Calder Hall, 1956. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
63. Captain Atom – DC Comics.
64. The operational Blue Steel stand-off bomb carried Britain’s nuclear deterrent between 1964 and 1975. The Science Museum’s Blue Steel shown here is a test vehicle and is fitted with a Double Spectre rocket engine. The engine is being examined by a Science Museum curator prior to being photographed for a Science Museum book on the Black Arrow Rocket. SSPL/Getty Images.
65. This satellite view shows the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power plant after a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on 14 March 2011 in Futaba, Japan. DigitalGlobe/Getty Images.
66. Pakistan’s top scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan addresses a gathering after inaugurating the model of the country’s surface-to-surface Ghauri-II missile, in Islamabad, 28 May 1999. Usman Khan/AFP/Getty Images.
67. The author with Governor Yuzaki of Hiroshima, 2012. Author’s collection.
TITANIUM
68. SR-71B Blackbird aerial reconnaissance aircraft photographed over snow-capped mountains in 1995. Getty Images.
69. A titanium Project 705 Soviet submarine, designated Alfa class by NATO. Ministry of Defence.
70. Isaac Newton using a prism to break white light into spectrum with Cambridge roommate John Wickins. Engraving from 1874. Getty Images.
71. The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. Allan Baxter/Getty Images.
72. A view of Lake Tio overlooking the Tio ilmenite mine operated by Rio Tinto Fer et Titane (formerly QIT Fer et Titane). Quebec, Canada. Rio Tinto Fer et Titane.
SILICON
73. An image from a section on glassmaking in the author’s copy of Biringuccio’s De la Pirotechnia. Author’s collection.
74. The author’s glass elephants. Author’s collection.
75. Glass blowing in Murano, 2010. Author’s collection.
76. The Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, 2012. Author’s collection.
77. Glass petrol pump globes by Chance Brothers. With thanks to Michael Joseph.
78. Glaziers, painters and decorators posing in front of the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth House, early 1900s, following the completion of extensive storm damage repairs. Photographer and date unknown. © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.
79. A group photograph of some of those responsible for building the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, London. The two men on the beam (top) are iron-fitters. Getty Images.
80. William C. Miller, resident photographer and pioneer in astronomical photography, at the Mt Palomar Observatory. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
81. The picture depicts the 6.8 MW solar photovoltaic plant owned by Soemina Energeia S.r.l. (owned directly by AES Sole Italia S.r.l., the Italian subsidiary of AES Solar). It is located in the Municipality of Ciminna, province of Palermo, Italy. Reprinted with permission of Antonio Nastri and AES Solar.
82. Pages 11 and 12 from Da Vinci’s notebook. The notebook was not originally a bound volume, but was put together after Leonardo’s death from loose papers of various types and sizes. It can be found in the British Library catalogued as Arundel 263n ff.86 v-87. © British Library Board.
83. An operator with an IBM 1130. Courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation.
84. Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain’s point-contact transistor from 1947. Public announcement of the transistor was made on 1 July 1948 by Bell Laboratories. In 1956, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain shared the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the transistor effect Reprinted with permission from Alcatel-Lucent USA Inc.
85. A 22nm transistor, 2011. © Intel Corporation.
86. Gordon Moore and Andy Grove, 1990. © Intel Corporation.
87. The author with Mario Paniccia, the man behind silicon photonics, in May 2012. Author’s collection.
88. An electron microscope image of individual carbon atoms in a sheet of graphene, the thinnest and strongest material known to science. MCT/Getty Images.
IMAGE GALLERY
1. All eyes on Sir William Bragg. Nature explained. To children and grown-ups alike, 29 December 1931.
2. A master and his masterpiece: Agricola’s De re metallica (1556), Prince Henry’s annotated copy.
IRON
3. Ironclads fight it out. US Civil War, 1862.
4. No warfare is fought without iron (and men made of iron). Krupp addressing Hitler and Mussolini. Krupp Factory, Essen, 1937.
5. The mighty Thunder Horse astride its transport.
6. The Bessemer process in action. Forging steel in Carnegie’s steel works, 1886.
7. Bessemer lives on today: pig iron is poured into a Bessemer Converter. ThyssenKrupp, 2012.
8. Bessemer and Carnegie caught in a corner of the Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining, London, 2012.
9. Henry Clay Frick painted with possessions.
10. Financed by steel but made without it: Carnegie Hall in the year of its opening, 1891.
11. A thousand years old and on sticks: the 19-foot tall Iron Lion of Cangzhou.
12. An engineering feat of the day: the Flatiron building. Stieglitz’s iconic photograph, 1902-3.
13. Ruffling skirts on a postcard, 1907.
CARBON
14. Carbon spectacular! Watched from a gondola. Festa del Redentore, Venice.
15. The site of the blowout: Rig 20 at Naft Safid, Iran, 1951.
16. Symbols of London. Smoked out, 1958.
17. Man-made pollution hangs over a man-made lake. Kunming Lake, Beijing, 2008.
18. The carbon connection. Henry Ford, the inventor of his generation, flanked by me and his great-grandson, Bill.
19. Oil collection in the sixteenth century: Agricola’s bituminous spring. From Prince Henry’s copy of De re metallica.
20. Exploring oil on stilts: Oily Rocks (Azerbaijan) on a 1971 postage stamp.
21. A real seascape cut up by an unreal town: Oily Rocks from the air.
22. The Exxon Valdez disaster. Broken up in 2012, the ship no longer exists.
23. A platform engulfed in flames: Occidental Petroleum’s Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea, 1988.
24. J.D. Rockefeller keeps an eye on things from the boardroom wall.
25. From Russia with memory: my farewell to Vladimir Putin, 2007.
26. Drive-in movie? No such fun. Pumped-up panic in London, 1973.
27. A war engulfed in flames: burning oil wells in Operation Desert Storm, Kuwait
, 1991.
28. BP + Amoco = Big Player. The birth of a Supermajor in the largest-ever industrial merger, 1998.
29. BP and PDVSA before Chavez in Venezuela: big negotiations. Big table. Big hair (me on the right-hand side). It was 1980!
30. Matters of state: visiting Patrick Manning, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, 2007.
31. Putting gas on the right track: LNG trains in Trinidad.
32. Fracking a future of shale gas. In the midst of Lancashire’s countryside.
33. Breaking Petroleum: the speech that broke ranks with Big Oil by addressing climate change, Stanford, 1997.
34. Solar, solar on the wall. Al Gore inspected them all, California, 1998.
35. ‘Hasta la vista, climate change’: terminating discussions with Tony Blair and Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2006.
GOLD
36. A myth forever kept afloat: the riches of El Dorado illustrated by its golden raft (Museo del Oro in Bogotá, Colombia).
37. A gold poporo (South American storage jar) from my own collection.
38. Get gold! The Doge gives away gold on his inauguration. Brustolon’s engraving (c. 1768) from a drawing by Canaletto.
39. Gold lasts! A Venetian ducat, the world’s longest-lasting gold coin.
40. As rich as Croesus. Coinage of gold (and a phrase) inspired by a king.
41. Greed for gold: conquistadors execute Inca Emperor Atahualpa (sixteenth century).
42. A nugget that triggered a gold rush: Marshall’s original nugget.
43. Found in California. Panned by Chinese workers. Gold rush, c. 1855.
44. Flip it, but don’t clip it. Newton’s invention lives on today.
45. And the biggest man-made hole on earth is … Bingham Canyon gold and copper mine, Utah.
46. A farmer spotting a golden nugget in the mud was the origin of this gaping hole. Sierra Pelada gold mine, Brazil.
SILVER
47. Silver smelting in the sixteenth century: in Agricola’s De re metallica.
48. Watching over a silver mountain: Madonna in Potosí
49. The British calotype (1844) …
50. … and the French Daguerreotype (1838), the first photograph to show a human being.
51. Say cheese: the beginnings of popular photography (c. 1910)
52. My attempt at a misty Venice from my window.
53. A five-year-old takes a shot at photography. My mother impatiently posing for my Brownie Box, Singapore, 1953.
54. ‘Still photographers are the most powerful weapon in the world’: a defining image of the Vietnam War, February 1968.
55. Auschwitz, 1945. A name and a horror no one must ever forget.
56. Personal memories preserved in Persian silver boxes.
57. The camera never lies. But does it? The case of the Vanishing Commissar.
58. The Hunt brothers: the last of the great silver moguls, 1980.
URANIUM
59. The A-bomb dome dominates Hiroshima today: a legacy of an event that changed the world forever.
60. A survivor of Hiroshima remembers. He was sixteen when the bomb was dropped.
61. The fathers of nuclear horror: Oppenheimer and Groves by the remains of an atom bomb test, 1943.
62. Atoms for peace. HM Queen Elizabeth II opens Calder Hall nuclear power plant in 1956.
63. Captain Atom saves the world – again.
64. ‘We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.’ UK’s nuclear deterrent, Blue Steel.
65. Fukushima: the beginning of the end, 2011.
66. Nuclear scientist Abdel Qadeer Khan at the inauguration of Pakistan’s Ghauri-II missile, 1999.
67. ‘These are people, not pieces of paper’ – Governor of Hiroshima, Hidehiko Yuzaki, 2012.
TITANIUM
68. Fit for any sky: Lockheed’s supersonic spy plane Blackbird, 1995.
69. Titan of the seas: a titanium Project 705 Soviet submarine.
70. A spectrum: Isaac Newton and John Wickins, Cambridge, c. 1754.
71. Titanium in art and architecture – the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.
72. Mining titanium in the midst of a beautiful lakescape. Rio Tinto’s ilmenite mine, Lake Tio, Quebec.
SILICON
73. Glassmaking in Venice as depicted by Biringuccio in 1540 in the first printed book on metallurgy.
74. Breaking out of the herd: four of my glass elephants. Careful. They break! (2012)
75. Glass blowing in Murano. (2010)
76. A virtual infinity: the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 2012.
77. Glass petrol pump lights: silicon meets carbon.
78. Paxton’s magnificent Great Conservatory at Chatsworth. A dry-run for the mighty Crystal Palace.
79. A mighty palace made not for royalty but to showcase technology: the Crystal Palace. The two men on top are iron-fitters, London, 1851.
80. ‘If they had seen what we see.’ Mt Palomar Observatory, 1959.
81. Sun in Palermo. Solar photovoltaic plant of AES Solar Italia.
82. Foresight of a genius. Insight of his works: Leonardo Da Vinci’s solar machine.
83. Computing in 1965. Overwhelming in power and size: the IBM 1130.
84. Fit for a museum of modern art: the first transistor of Nobel Prize-winning Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain.
85. An Intel 22nm transistor. More than six million of these would fit into this full stop.
86. No Apple and Windows without Moore and Grove: the fathers of the modern silicon chip.
87. The big man behind silicon photonics: Mario Paniccia.
88. A Microscopic view of a futuristic material: graphene.
NOTES
Preface
1. EVERY ATOM CONSISTS OF a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons, which is orbited by electrons. Atoms of the same element have the same number of protons in the nucleus. As you move from left to right along the ‘periods’ of the periodic table, the number of protons in the nucleus increases by one with each step. So, too, does the number of electrons, which is the same as the number of protons, and which orbit the nucleus in larger and larger ‘shells’ as their number increases. Elements in the same columns, or ‘groups’, of the periodic table have similar chemical properties because of similarities in the arrangement of electrons, neutrons and protons.
2. Fossil fuels are produced from dead plants and animals when subjected to intense heat and pressure over a long period of time.
The Essence of Everything
1. W. H. Bragg, Concerning the Nature of Things (London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd, 1925).
2. By directing x-rays at regular crystal structures, the Braggs were able to determine their atomic structure from the angles and intensities at which these x-rays were reflected. The Braggs won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work.
3. Bragg, Concerning the Nature of Things, p. 6. John Dalton, the English chemist and physicist, hypothesised the existence of atoms of different elements distinguished by their weight. In his theory, presented to the Royal Institution in 1803, these atoms could not be divided, created or destroyed but could be combined or rearranged in simple ratios to form compounds. Later in the nineteenth century, Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, noticed a pattern in the chemical properties of the known elements. The weights of elements with similar properties increased regularly. This periodicity led Mendeleev, in 1869, to arrange the elements in rows or columns according to atomic weight; he would start a new row or column when the chemical behaviour began to repeat. By leaving gaps in the table when no known element would fit, Mendeleev was able to use his periodic table to predict the properties of undiscovered elements.
4. Ibid., pp. 186-7.
5. John Browne, Beyond Business (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010), Chapter 10.
6. Ibid., Chapter 9.
7. Ibid., Chapter 6.
8. The ‘Great Leap Forward’ was coined by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997), p. 39.
9. In The
Meaning of It All, Feynman writes that science has value because it provides the power to do something. He asks: ‘Shall we throw away the key and never have a way to enter the gates of heaven? Or shall we struggle with the problem of which is the best way to use the key? That is, of course, a very serious question, but I think that we cannot deny the value of the key to the gates of heaven.’ (London: Penguin Books, 1998), pp. 6-7.
IRON
1. Report of flag officer Franklin Buchanan, C. S. Navy. Naval Hospital, Norfolk, VA, 27 March 1862, in Mills, Charles, Echoes of the Civil War: Key Documents of the Great Conflict (BookSurge Publishing, 2002), p. 118.