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Richard Pockrich (inventor)
Richard Pockrich, Poekrich (c. 1695 – 1759), or Puckeridge,Willi Apel, Apel, Willi (1969). Harvard Dictionary of Music', p.347. Harvard. . was an Irish musician, and was the inventor of the glass harp (also known as the "Angelic organ") in 1741. Life He was born at his family's estate Derrylusk at Aghnamallagh, County Monaghan, Ireland. His father, also named Richard Pockrich (MP), Richard (c.1666–1719), was the member of Parliament for Monaghan Borough (Parliament of Ireland constituency), Monaghan and had commanded troops in the Williamite battles. The paternal descent was of an English family from Surrey. Some notices indicate that Poekrich was the name of the family, and this was the spelling he gave on his works. He is reported to have been aged 25 when his father died (1720?), so a probable year of birth has been fixed to 1695. Poekrich received a substantial inheritance, valued at a figure between £1,000 (Newburgh) and £4,000 (Pilkington). Variations of his name inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ODNB
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives. First series Hoping to emulate national biographical collections published elsewhere in Europe, such as the '' Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (1875), in 1882 the publisher George Smith (1824–1901), of Smith, Elder & Co., planned a universal dictionary that would include biographical entries on individuals from world history. He approached Leslie Stephen, then editor of the ''Cornhill Magazine'', owned by Smith, to become the editor. Stephen persuaded Smith that the work should focus only on subjects from the United Kingdom and its present and former colonies. An early working title was the ''Biographia Britannica'', the name of an earlier eightee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blood Transfusion
Blood transfusion is the process of transferring blood products into a person's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used for various medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood. Early transfusions used whole blood, but modern medical practice commonly uses only components of the blood, such as red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, clotting factors and platelets. Red blood cells (RBC) contain hemoglobin, and supply the cells of the body with oxygen. White blood cells are not commonly used during transfusion, but they are part of the immune system, and also fight infections. Plasma is the "yellowish" liquid part of blood, which acts as a buffer, and contains proteins and important substances needed for the body's overall health. Platelets are involved in blood clotting, preventing the body from bleeding. Before these components were known, doctors believed that blood was homogeneous. Because of this scientific misunderstanding, many patients died b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David James O'Donoghue
David James O'Donoghue (22 July 1866 – 27 June 1917) was an Irish biographer and editor. Early life David James O'Donoghue was born in 1866 in Chelsea, London, to Irish parents, and grew up in the Hans Town area of Chelsea. He was the son of John O'Donoghue, a bricklayer from Kilworth, Co. Cork, and Bridget Griffin, who was from Co. Tipperary. He was the third of nine children, and had four brothers, Thomas, John, James, and Edmund, and four sisters, Mary, Ellen, Katherine, and Agnes. He was first an upholsterer's apprentice from the age of sixteen, before becoming a journalist and author. Career He attended a Catholic school and furthered his own education at the British Museum. He began his journalistic work by writing for the Dublin papers upon subjects relating to Irish music, art, and literature. A founder-member of the Irish Literary Society in London, he was also vice president of the National Literary Society, Dublin, and the compiler of a biographical dictionary, ''Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Joke
The Black Joke, sometimes spelled Black Joak, was a bawdy song heard in London around 1730. William Hogarth referenced the song in the Tavern Scene of A Rake's Progress. Grose's dictionary of the vulgar tongue notes that the refrain of the song was ''"Her black joke and belly so white"'', with black joke referring to female genitalia. Historical fiction writer Patrick O'Brian, in ''Master and Commander'' (the first of his 21-novel Napoleonic War series, originally published in 1969) referenced the ditty being sung aboard a sloop, the Sophie, that—in this fictional account—was in the service of the Royal Navy in 1800. The lyrics and tune apparently gave rise to variations from 1730 onwards, such as the ''White Joak'' and so forth. The tune was later known as ''The Sprig of Shillelagh''. Thomas Moore (1779–1852) wrote the song "Sublime was the warning which Liberty spoke" to the tune. Muzio Clementi wrote "Black Joke for keyboard in C maj" with 21 variations in 1777 (published ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hammered Dulcimer
The hammered dulcimer (also called the hammer dulcimer) is a percussion-stringed instrument which consists of strings typically stretched over a trapezoidal resonant sound board. The hammered dulcimer is set before the musician, who in more traditional styles may sit cross-legged on the floor, or in a more modern style may stand or sit at a wooden support with legs. The player holds a small spoon-shaped mallet hammer in each hand to strike the strings. The Graeco-Roman ''dulcimer'' ("sweet song") derives from the Latin ''dulcis'' (sweet) and the Greek ''melos'' (song). The dulcimer, in which the strings are beaten with small hammers, originated from the psaltery, in which the strings are plucked. Hammered dulcimers and other similar instruments are traditionally played in Iraq, India, Iran, Southwest Asia, China, Korea, and parts of Southeast Asia, Central Europe (Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland (particularly Appenzell), Austria and Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Ford
Anne or Ann Ford, (Mrs Philip Thicknesse, 22 February 1737 – 20 January 1824) was an 18th-century English musician and singer, famous in her time for a scandal that attended her struggle to perform in public. Life and music Some aspects of Anne Ford's life are typical of talented and gifted women in the traditional class society of 18th-century England. She gained more education than most as she had a knowledge of five foreign languages and played several fretted string instruments, including the lute-like English guitar and the viola da gamba, comparable to a modern cello. This gave her a chance to perform with others giving Sunday concerts at her house, although her father, Thomas Ford, refused to allow her to perform publicly. She also was a singer with a beautiful voice by her early twenties, but her earliest attempts to appear in public venues were unsuccessful; her father went so far as to have her arrested twice to prevent her escaping his control. Eventually she made ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gluck
Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period (music), classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire, he gained prominence at the House of Habsburg, Habsburg court at Vienna. There he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' and ''Alceste (Gluck), Alceste'', he broke the stranglehold that Metastasio, Metastasian ''opera seria'' had enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck introduced more drama by using orchestral recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas have half the length of a typical baroque opera. Future composers like Mozart, Schubert, Berlioz and Wagner revered Gluck very highly. The strong influence of French opera encouraged ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Battista Beccaria
Giovanni Battista Beccaria (; 3 October 1716 – 27 May 1781), Italian physicist, was born at Mondovì, and entered the religious Order of the Pious Schools or Piarists, in 1732, where he studied, and afterward taught, grammar and rhetoric. At the same time, he applied himself with success to mathematics. He became professor of experimental physics, first at Palermo and then at Rome, and was appointed to a similar position at Turin in 1748. He was afterwards made tutor to the young princes de Chablais and de Carignan, and continued to reside principally at Turin during the remainder of his life. In May 1755 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and published several papers on electrical subjects in the '' Phil. Trans.''. In 1759, King Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia, who had invited him to Turin, employed him to measure the degree of meridian arc in Piedmont. Beccaria did much, in the way both of experiment and exposition, to spread a knowledge of the elect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the first United States Postmaster General. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his studies of electricity, and for charting and naming the current still known as the Gulf Stream. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among others. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. Isaacson, 2004, p. Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Handel
George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (; baptised , ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. Handel received his training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712, where he spent the bulk of his career and became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition and by composers of the Italian Baroque. In turn, Handel's music forms one of the peaks of the "high baroque" style, bringing Italian opera to its highest development, creating the genres of English oratorio and organ concerto, and introducing a new style into English church music. He is consistently recognized as one of the greatest composers of his age. Handel started three commercial opera companies to supply the English nobility with Italian opera. In 1737, he had a physical break ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Hussey Delaval
Edward Hussey Delaval (born 1729; died 14 August 1814 in Westminster) was a British scholar and natural philosopher. Life He was the third son of Francis Blake Delaval and his wife Rhoda Apreece. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, admitted in 1747; he graduated B.A. in 1750, M.A. in 1754, and became a Fellow there in 1755. There also he knew the poet Thomas Gray. Delaval inherited both Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland and Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire, but preferred to live in London. He died at the age of 85 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Works Delaval shared the 1766 Copley Medal where he was cited for his research on metals and glass. His interest in glass included its use in music. His performances on musical glasses became well-known, and may have inspired Benjamin Franklin's glass harmonica. Family Delaval married Sarah Scott (1751–1829), daughter of George Scott of Methley; they had a daughter Sarah Hussey Gunman née Delaval (c1780–1825) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theophilus Cibber
Theophilus Cibber (25 or 26 November 1703 – October 1758) was an English actor, playwright, author, and son of the actor-manager Colley Cibber. He began acting at an early age, and followed his father into theatrical management. In 1727, Alexander Pope satirized Theophilus Cibber in his ''Dunciad'' as a youth who "thrusts his person full into your face" (III 132). On the stage, he was famous for playing Pistol in '' Henry IV, Part 2'', and some of the comic roles his father had played when younger, but unsympathetic critics accused him of overemphasis.Barker, p. 166 His private life later led Theophilus into bad reputation and scandal. He died in a shipwreck while bound for Ireland and a season in Dublin. Early life and career Theophilus Cibber was born during the Great Storm of 1703 and began acting in the Drury Lane Theatre at the age of 16 in 1721.Barker, p. 165 As a young man, Cibber was a notorious rake, and associated with young men of a similar mind and reputation, such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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