DAWN (Pakistan)
International:
Russians rewriting history of
science
By Nick Allen
MOSCOW: Move over Marconi, radio was a Russian invention. As were television, the aeroplane, anaesthetic and a host of other things that are more commonly attributed to Western scientists.
That's at least what Russian reference books and museums tell us and what millions of people learned under the old Soviet education system, which tended to overlook work by foreigners in a given field.
A Russian emigre to the United States, Vladimir Zvorykin, is still honoured as the "father of television" for his construction in 1923 of an iconoscope, or primitive television camera.
Yet there is scant reference to other scientists of the time who were instrumental in creating television as we know it today, like American Philo Farnsworth and Briton John Logie Baird.
"The radio was invented by a Russian, Alexander Popov," Moscow road worker Nikolai replied, his eyes flashing defiantly. Any other claimants to the achievement are "imposters", he says.
The Wright brothers are globally credited with making the first human flight in 1903. But the Moscow Aviation Institute honours Alexander Mozhaisky as having built the first plane in 1882. Unfortunately there is no firm documentation of a successful flight by the Russian's aircraft. Anecdotal evidence suggests it crashed.
In general, giving credit for many specific inventions is a can of worms. International sources say that Russian Alexander Lodygin made a graphite filament lightbulb in 1872, several years before Briton Joseph Swan and American Thomas Edison wrestled for the rights and international fame for one made with a carbon filament.
Yet patriots elsewhere might brand the Russian the upstart. Some accounts say German watchmaker Heinrich Gobel of New York made a light using a carbonized bamboo filament inside glass in 1854. Two years later, a French engineer reportedly patented his own design for an incandescent lamp with a platinum filament for coalmine workers.
Now though, Russia's science community is much more open to debate. New editions of encyclopaedia increasingly avoid attributing inventions to one person alone, while museums that until recently enshrined Russian pre-eminence are cautiously revisiting history. -DPA
