February 24, 2018 Saturday
Bedtime Story
The Ever Changing Political Boundaries
What this technique of Gutenberg
facilitated was the mass production of letterpunches which could then be set on
a face and these when coated with special oil-based inks were made to press
against a paper, a page of a book would be ready.
It may sound a rather tedious process to
all of us who now work on the word processors of computers and are armed with LaserJet
printers, but this was a huge leap from the past when the books were either
copied out by hand on scrolls or printed from hand carved wooden blocks, an
even more laborious process.
But even as printing presses grew all
across Europe, books were still not common objects, certainly no where as
common as we are used to.
So when Jacob Bernoulli along with his
younger brother Johann set out to learn calculus in 1684, they had to get their
hands on some material to study it.
Back then there was no book available on
calculus as there are tens of thousands today.
In fact, the only source of material to
study calculus was the paper published by Gottfried Leibniz in the science
journal Acta Eruditorum that in Latin stands for Reports or Acts of the
Scholars.
It was the first scientific journal of what
we now know as Germany but then was probably the Holy Roman Empire.
Boundaries of European nation states and
previous to that of even the mighty empires had always been extremely fluid
constantly changing and meandering depending on the might of one army and fall
of the other.
That is the reason why unless one takes great
effort to be very accurate historically, one is liable to get the location of political
boundaries in which the cities are located wrong.
This holds true for almost any city in the
world and not just Europe, say my own homeland.
What we now call Chennai as the capital
city of the state of Tamil Nadu was not so long ago went by the name of Madras
and at the time of independence there was no such entity called Tamil Nadu.
That area broadly was known as Madras
Presidency or Madras Province that was an administrative subdivision of British
India.
You will be surprised to know that this
started when a joint-stock company that was formed to pursue trade with “East
Indies” purchased a piece of land in South India that was then called the
village of Madraspatnam.
So before 1639, there was nothing known as
Madras Presidency; all that existed was perhaps a lazy sea-side village of
Madraspatnam which probably was uninhabited.
Within a year, the smart Englishmen had it
fortified quiet literally and established its first fortress in India under the
name of Fort St. George which was go on to become precursor of the province of
Madras Presidency.
At its geographical peak, the presidency
included the whole of modern Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and parts of Kerala,
Orissa, Karnataka and even some parts of Lakshadweep.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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