Beijing, May 21 (Reporter Ren Siyu) In 1821, Michael Faraday made the first electric motor model in history, and in the following two hundred years, the information revolution and network revolution profoundly changed people's lives.
Recently, sponsored by the Science Museum of Tsinghua University and the Department of History of Science of Tsinghua University and co-organized by Beijing Times Ruijie Cultural Development Co., Ltd., the "Traces of Optoelectronics - Handwriting exhibition of information technology pioneers" was opened, exhibiting a total of 49 representative figures in the history of information technology development letters, manuscripts, signature books, notes, signature photos, etc., the audience can have the opportunity to witness the handwriting of these famous scientists who have appeared in textbooks.
"Traces of Optoelectronics - Handprint Exhibition of Information Technology Pioneers". Photo by Ren Siyu of China News Network
History of information technology development
Walking into the "Traces of Photoelectricity" exhibition, the eyes will first be attracted by a huge genealogical map of people.
Faraday, Joseph Henry, Morse, Bell, Marconi, Edison, The Lumiere Brothers, Shannon, Shockley, Chuze, Heidi Lamar, Kilby, Martin Cooper, Winton Surf, Bill Gates, Berners Lee... Pioneers have used creativity and action to light up information, and their technological inventions still have an impact today.
"We are now in an information age, there is no doubt that we are now taking out our mobile phone every day is some WeChat reminders, some newly arrived emails, I wonder how the information age is caused? It's impossible for us to bypass some creative, but also some of the executive characters. Liu Niankai, co-curator and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University, said.
"Traces of Optoelectronics - Handprint Exhibition of Information Technology Pioneers". Photo by Ren Siyu of China News Network.
Cheng Hao, co-curator, celebrity handwriting collector and co-founder of Xiyuan Collection, introduced that the exhibition exhibited a total of 49 collections of 10 types of handwriting carriers, including rare topics such as stock vouchers, interview outlines, and memorandums, and most of them were domestic debuts. Of the 49 pioneers shortlisted for the exhibition, four have won the Nobel Prize in Physics and 20 have been inducted into the American Inventors Hall of Fame.
This exhibition focuses on the background stories of important milestones and key figures in the fourth and fifth information revolutions, and integrates the driving role of social factors in the era of scientists' lives, so that the audience can more intuitively understand the background of the birth of these scientific research and technological applications.
Che Zhihong, director of the Beijing Century-Old World Telephone Museum, said of the exhibition, "In fact, let the children, including the citizens, know how science and technology came about, who the founders are, and what is the context of their development, so that it is very helpful for everyone to learn and recognize the future direction." ”
"See words and see things as you see people"
The exhibition divides the development of the field of optoelectronics in modern times into two parts through a timeline, the first part is from the American "father of the telegraph" Morse to the Lumière brothers in France, and the second part is the Shannon era.
At the opening ceremony, the "Epsiology Collection" donated a blockbuster exhibit of the exhibition, claude Shannon's autographed personal collection, and Columbia University Press's 1944 publication of "The Individual and Its Society: The Psychodynamics of Primitive Social Organization" to the Science Museum of Tsinghua University.
Source: Courtesy of the organizer.
Following the timeline of the exhibition, the audience can see the great changes of the times in the past two hundred years: Bell invented the telephone, making instant communication thousands of miles away possible; Marconi broke away from the barriers of wires and used the ubiquitous electromagnetic waves in the air to unveil the curtain of wireless communication; Edison's phonograph allowed sound to be preserved; Lumiere brothers' films made history come alive...
Liu Chao, co-founder of Xiyuan Collection, introduced that this exhibition brings together 180 milestone events and 49 iconic pioneers in the history of information technology development, based on the history of the industry, character experiences and the context of collection stories, and the handwriting as physical evidence reflecting private history, the vivid supplementary role of the correct history cannot be ignored.
Huang Yidong, deputy director of the Academic Committee of Tsinghua University and professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering, said after seeing the exhibition, "Like Faraday, who is very familiar with Faraday, the first wireless transmission experiment made by Magneto, Morse code, and Marconi, which is very familiar to us, has been expressed in the exhibition. The development of electronic information technology is profoundly changing our human society. These pioneers are milestone figures in the development of the history of electronic information, and the content of the exhibition has gone beyond a simple handwriting exhibition, in fact, a microcosm of the history of the development of electronic information. ”
In addition to the handwriting of scientific and technological pioneers, there are also some prototypes of equipment for experimentation. Huang Yidong said that he was very excited to see the handwritten handwritten works of idol worship in his youth in the exhibition hall. "It is particularly shocking, seeing words and things like seeing people, and there is a sacred feeling of crossing history to face great people!"
The "temperature" in celebrity handwriting
Unlike traditional artifact displays, many of the collections of celebrity handwritings are making their debuts in the "Traces of Light" exhibition. Liu Chao, the visual coordinator of the exhibition and co-founder of the Western Yuan Collection, gave the example of the handwriting of Thomas Edison, the "King of Invention", and in a meeting minutes of Edison's battery company in 1926, under Edison's flowing signature, everyone also found the signature of his son Charles Edison.
Years later, Charles Edison succeeded as the company's new chairman, and in the later minutes of the meeting, his signature would be on the first line, while his father had retreated, and behind the handwriting, it reflected the inheritance of two generations.
In these letters and memos, scientists' humanistic thinking about science and technology and the future is also recorded. In 1930, the French photographer, inventor, and inventor of the "photo fax machine" Édouard Belan wrote in a memorandum: "Yesterday's impossibility is likely to become possible tomorrow, but will continuous technological progress lead to greater human happiness?" That's my biggest concern. ”
In some handwriting, the daily chores and lives of scientists are also recorded. For example, Gustav Eiffel, the designer of the "Eiffel Tower," exchanged test reports with doctors, and NBC founder David Shanov wrote a letter thanking him to a conductor, "I feel as good as I am this morning, especially after a night on your train." Hats off to your way and your service! ”。
"We may go to a scientific exhibition and pay attention to some scientific inventions, but we can see the emotions and temperatures of scientists as a person in these handwriting." Liu Niankai said.
"Handwriting is actually a form of information that is disappearing, especially paper carriers." Cheng Hao, co-curator, celebrity handwriting collector and co-founder of Xiyuan Collection, said that at present, ancient scientific and technological achievements such as telegraph and telephone are still applied in work and life, but the handwriting of paper carriers is slowly dying out with the informatization, digitization, networking and intelligence of human society.
It is reported that the "Traces of Optoelectronics - Information Technology Pioneer Handwriting Exhibition" will be exhibited until August 31. (End)
Source: China News Network