Today there is a range of flippers to choose from, depending on what you want to use it for and if it wasn't for Franklin who knows when they would be invented? It is definitely a great tool even though it hasn't played a very big part in history neither played a big part for society. Thus it has, for those who has an interest for diving or swimming (in some extension), brought a big advantage. As it is mentioned above, you move a lot faster in the water. For those who dive, you can get deeper or swimming under water for longer. For swimmers on the other hand, they more or less just improve their speed. But imagine a scuba diver trying to swim around under water without fins? Not to mention how much more we’d probably damage the environment. We would also get tired much faster. Partly thanks to fins/flippers we can explore water in a bigger extension than a couple of hundred years back in time.

//Sandra

Watt was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, renowned for his improvements in steam engine technology.

The first working steam engine had been patented in 1698 and by the time of Watt's birth, Newcomen engines were pumping water from mines all over the country. In around 1764, Watt was given a model Newcomen engine to repair. He realised that it was hopelessly inefficient and began to work to improve the design. He designed a separate condensing chamber for the steam engine that prevented enormous losses of steam. His first patent in 1769 covered this device and other improvements on Newcomen's engine.

James Watt's improvements on the steam engine converted a machine of limited use, to one of efficiency and many applications. It was the foremost energy source in the emerging Industrial Revolution, and greatly multiplied its productive capacity. Watt was a creative genius who radically transformed the world from an agricultural society into an industrial one. These improvements allowed the steam engine to replace the water wheel and horses as the main sources of power for British industry.

Through Watt’s invention of the first practical steam engine improved the effectiveness of many industries, infrastructure(boat and train traffic). Watt’s improvement of the steam engine was a huge push forward for the industrial revolution and modernisation of the world.

He also developed the concept of horsepower. The international unit of power, the Watt, was named after him as gratitude.

In September 1783 one managed to for the first time in history lift a living creature, not physically able to fly itself, from the surface of earth. Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier, more known as the Montgolfier brothers, had by watching laundry getting dry over the fire discovered that small air pockets were formed in the fabric and made it fly towards the sky. They were the sons of paper manufacturer Pierre Montgolfier and had by that an infinite access to paper. This fact turned out to be quite vital in their future lives.

Joseph was the typical scientist. He was a bit of a loner and enjoyed spending time thinking and studying on his own. Etienne was, in opposite to his brother, a business minded person. He had been studying architecture in Paris during a couple of years and had learned a lot of valuable knowledge about constructions. Together I’d say they were the ultimate inventor. Joseph had been thinking and developing the theory about the hot air pockets in the clothes and investigated if the same phenomenon would occur in a balloon made of paper. With Etienne’s ability to construct and their free access to paper through the dead father’s manufacture the first hot air balloon was built. It was a big success and the brothers got eager to develop their balloon and make it bigger. This eventually led to a hot air balloon big enough to be able to carry a human being.

On the nineteenth of September the two brothers were invited to the castle Versailles to demonstrate their balloon. As an honour of the day the balloon had a blue colour in the same shade as the sky it would lift towards and decorated with golden stars, suns and signs of the zodiac.

Even though they were eager to feel air under their feet they were careful enough to not let a human being be the first one to try the balloon, since they did not know how our bodies would be affected physically. In the basket, specially put together for the purpose, they placed a sheep called Montauciel (which beautifully enough means “Climb to heaven”), a duck and a rooster. The sheep was estimated to have a similar physiology as humans and therefore it would be easier to see how humans would be affected. The duck and the rooster was expected to be unharmed by the investigation but was there mostly to try the air craft since they are birds that are not used to be as high up in altitude. So the three animals were the first living creatures to, by help of a human invention, leave the surface of earth. This was performed in front of a crowd of applauding nobles; among them King Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette.

It is easy to understand that the Montgolfier balloon was something spectacular. Humans have always been interested in how to make the impossible possible, to make humans fly and to be able to see the world from another perspective. The Montgolfier balloon was the first time it was actually possible, it opened up a lot of doors that had been closed until now.

I found it interesting that they actually used animals in the experiment. It is now very common to use animals in different types of tests and it is strongly discussed whether it is fair or not. Is it likely that animals would have been used in an investigation like this today? And is it true that humans always have been interested in how to be able to fly? And if it is true, why do you think we are? Do humans by nature want to be able to do everything even though we are not physically able to do so?

Victoria Gunnerek

Benjamin Franklin was frustrated that he had to constantly switch his pairs of glasses, depending on what he was trying to focus on. He longed for the ability to see both near and far with a single frame. In order to accomplish this, Benjamin had the lenses of two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in one sole frame. Today, millions of individuals take advantage of Franklin's bifocals, giving people a convenient way in which to correct their vision for both distance and reading.

Eyes are the most used organs of our body; one simply cannot work without looking. We are so used to keeping our eyes open even when we are daydreaming or gazing aimlessly in empty space that we do not know how to function without them. In this age of television, computers and video games where the main stress is on eyes we just forget that we are overusing them. And this is where the importance of bifocals comes into relevance. With the aid of these artificial vision enhancing lenses we can see the way we want to, far and near.

But the combination of two types of lenses which would enable far and near sightedness, the Bifocals was invented by the famous American statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin in 1700’s. Bifocals are the lenses or glasses which help people correct their far sightedness and short sightedness. These work in the same way as spectacle lens.

I think it is the best invention, not wordily, but it has helped so many people. In some case the bifocals are the struggle for survival.

//Anna

The spinning jenny is an invention from the industrial revolution. 1764 was the year that James Hargreaves came up with the smart idea of the spinning jenny, which facilitated the handling of large quantities of harvested cotton. We don’t really know what the name; “spinning jenny” came from. One theory is that James Hargreaves daughter was named Jenny and he named the machine after her. The other theory is that it is a distortion from “engine”.

James Hargreaves was born in Oswaldtwistle, England in 1720 and was a carpenter and weaver. He didn’t have an education so he couldn’t even read or write. I think that it was good of James Hargreaves that he made the spinning jenny. It proves that people that don’t have an education can be good at other things. The spinning jenny has been a very important invention in those days. It helped the people to spin threads and make yarn.

It made producing yarn faster than before. This led to a negative thing; many people lost their jobs and became poor, but it wasn’t just negative, the production of yarn just needed a few persons and it produced faster and become more popular.

I think that the spinning jenny was both good and bad, good because the producing of yarn became faster, and bad that many people became poor.

What if the machines end up doing everything for us? How many would have a job then? Would it be more homeless persons then, because they don’t have any money? What do you think?

I think that more people would be poor, and they those who had a job would become rich. It might be more differences in the society.

//Marielle

During the enlightenment new inventions came that contributed to the industrial revolution . For example: the spinning Jenny, the water frame and and an improved steam engine. This revolution lead to both positive and negative things both when it happened and today.

A negative aspect both today and in the 18^th century is of course the negative impact it had on the environment. Coal was used much in the factories and for transportation and that made the industrial ares and the air very dirty. The same today, factories are still not environmentally friendly and it has hurt our nature.

The work conditions under the industrial revolution where really bad. People, lived in small houses in cramped streets around the factories. They worked long hours, they didn't get a high salary and child labor was not unusual. The owners of the factory wanted, of course,  a high profit as possible. Today it is the same, we as buyers want to buy our gods for as little money as possible. Then the factory owner has to give his/hers employers a low salary or have machines that does the work, and then many people will be unemployed and that is not good either. The problems with the work conditions has luckily changed today in the Western world. In other parts of the world like China, Taiwan and Bangladesh the problem still exists.

We have gotten a more comfortable life with new products. No man can produce everything that he needs on his own today. We need, if we are suppose to maintain the life we live now, help from others. Without factories and the industrial revolution we wouldn't have all the things we have today, but you can question if it is worth it when you know the harm it cause  on the environment and on the factory workers.

By: Kajsa

The lightning rod was invented by Benjamin Franklin in the Americas in 1749. Benjamin Franklin was fascinated by storms and he loved to study them. The lightning rod is a conductor mounted on top of a building and it makes the electricity from the lightning go straight to the ground through a wire instead of into the building. This makes the building safe and it will not be destroyed by the lightning. The reason why the conductor is placed on top of the building is because it is the highest point and the lightning always tries to find the highest point.

Except from saving buildings, the lightning rod also save a lot of people from being hurt by it, which I think is very good. If there is no lightning rod and the lightning hit the building, the people in it can be hurt because it can start a fire and so on. You will also feel much safer inside your house if you have a lightning rod.

I think that the lightning rod is a very important invention because it has saved many lives and also buildings. It has also made people safer inside their houses. What do you think? Is the lightning rod an important invention or is it just waste of money and unnecessary to have one?

// Alexandra

The original Spinning Jenny

Spinning jenny was the first spinning wheel using a multi-spool spinning frame. It was invented by James Hargreaves in northern England. This invention made it easier to produce yarn, with one worker being able to work eight spools at once, this eventually grew into 120 spools at once. Hargreaves invented spinning jenny in the mid 18^th century and it is said to be named after his daughter Jenny, others say that it is named “Jenny” because only women worked with the spinning wheels. The thing is that James Hargreaves had many daughters but none of them was named Jenny.

Many people obviously lost their jobs because of this device. They didn’t need that many people working and it took a lot less time to produce yarn, so the price fell, this of course led to protest. This happens all the time, today we have machines doing everything for us, and the question is where is the world heading? People don’t milk cows anymore, everybody uses a calculator to count maths and what’s next? This is all to make our lives easier but how easy will it get? I wish the world should just stop as it is, because it is not eco-friendly to manufacture everything.

Some things are developing in the right direction (for example eco-clothes) but a lot is still causing people to lose their jobs and the world to pollute. If we just keep developing things then the scientists and inventors will be the only ones having jobs because we will have machines doing everything else. Maybe this is an exaggeration but it can’t do us any good, can it?

Kimia Rezaei

The mechanical calculator was invented 1642 by the French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal. The calculator was an adding machine, which could perform additions, subtractions, multiplication and division. It was called Pascal’s calculator or the Pascaline. Pascal made the calculator to ease his father’s calculations and recalculations of taxes owned and paid. As the Pascaline was very expensive it became more like a toy and a status symbol for rich people (sounds a bit like the iPad today doesn’t it?).

The adding machine was commonly used as office equipment until approximately 1985. It was then phased out in favour of the computers. The machine has rarely been seen during the 21^th century.

Even if there are smarter calculators etc. today, I can imagine how nice it would be to have a Pascaline during the enlightenment. Everything must have gone so much faster. Evan if calculating easy things it is much easier to have a calculator, to be really sure of calculating correctly. On offices etc. where you work with numbers all day long something mechanically must have been great. I at least think that all kind of math would be harder and more boring if we had no kinds of calculators. Because then it would take so long time, and it would be easier to make small mistakes.

About Blaise Pascal’s adding machine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_calculator

I bet that most of you thought that the windshield wipers were invented by a man, but you are mistaken. The windshield wipers was invented by Mary Anderson, born in Greene County, Alabama. Anderson came up with the idea windshield wipers during a trip to New York City, when she noticed that the streetcar drivers had to open the windows of their cars when it rained in order to see. So as a solution, Anderson invented a swinging arm device with a rubber blade that was operated by the driver from within the vehicle using a lever. Pretty smart right? I think so. But how did they work, well they were operated by hand. Either the driver or a passenger had to work a crank to make the wipers go back and forth. Anderson was awarded a 17-year patent in 1903. Many people were wary of the windshield wipers invention, thinking it would distract the driver. After being rejected so many times she just decided to put it to the side.

I think that her invention was genius. It most have been quite difficult seeing the road when it was raining plus they had the windows open thinking it was easier. I don't see how they thought that. That's like driving blind. But they eventually did agree to put windshield wipers on cars, in the 1920's.

//Ronja

Have you ever heard about a disease called smallpox? I would not be surprised to find out you did not. It was officially declared eradicated in 1979. It was the first disease completely defeated by humans. How did this happen? Well, let me explain everything from the beginning!

According to the dictionary smallpox is a ‘highly contagious viral disease characterized by high fever, severe prostration, and a pinkish rash’. It was one of the most deadly viruses in the history. Smallpox killed millions of people all over the world, and those who managed to defeat the disease were often left with pockmarks on their faces. Others would go blind. The virus attacked mostly children and infants, however it was dangerous for adults as well.

Smallpox most probably originated in ancient Egypt or India. It spread around the world, leaving its deadly traces in every country. In XVIII century something changed. An English doctor, Edward Jenner, noticed that women who worked with cows did not get smallpox. He discovered that it was because they all developed cowpox, a less serious disease. He decided to test his theory, that cowpox made human body immune to smallpox. He injected cowpox to an eight-year-old boy. The disease progressed quite softly. After some time, when the boy became healthy again, Jenner tried to inject him smallpox. It turned out he failed: the boy’s body became immune to this virus. This way the first vaccine was created (from Latin name of cow - vacca).

I strongly believe that this was one of the greatest discoveries in medicine. It probably saved millions or maybe even billions of people. I can not even imagine what kind of tragedy for the human kind it would be, if these vaccines were never developed. Edward Jenner was not the first person to reveal some sort of cure for smallpox, but it was his remedy that was the most efficient. And now, hundreds of years later I think it can honestly be said, that the extermination of smallpox was possible thanks to Edward Jenner’s findings!

/Kamila

Interesting facts:

Smallpox killed Queen Mary II of England, Emperor Joseph I of Austria, King Luis I of Spain, Tsar Peter II of Russia, Queen Ulrika Elenora of Sweden, and King Louis XV of France.

Scars on Stalin’s face were caused by smallpox. He had gone through it when he was still a little boy.

Before his death, Edward Jenner proved that birds do not fall asleep during winter, but they leave to other, warmer countries. (It wasn’t obvious at the time!)

The last person  infected by smallpox was recorded in Somalia in 1977.

LINKS:

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/index.asp

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/

//Kamila

The telescope was invented in the early 1700^th century and was first found in Holland. Galileo Galilei was not the person who invented the telescope but he was the one who introduced it to the modern society. It helped him to prove that in our solar system all the planets orbit the sun (heliocentric) instead of the planets orbiting around the earth (geocentric).

What importance did the telescope have during the 1700^th century? How important is it today? Is it more or less important than during the 1700^th century? Has it changed much since it was first invented?

As stated earlier the telescope had very much importance for Galileo in order to prove his thoughts about the heliocentric solar system. It also enabled further studies of our solar system. With the telescope Galileo found that the surface of the moon was not smooth but very rough with many craters and mountains. This finding meant that he could disprove Aristotle’s theory of a completely smooth moon.

Today the telescopes are very important since we strive to get more and more knowledge of other galaxies and solar systems. I would say that it is of more importance today since now we can see so much further away than before. Previously one could see the moon clear with a telescope, but now we can see into other galaxies. The telescope has also changed from when it was first invented, the lenses which were used to capture images are now replaced by mirrors which are used to increase the length of vision. For example we have Hubble, which is up in space and can be used to see very great distances.

/Daniel S Wong

In Europe the number of universities was constant during the 18^th century. In Europe there were about 105 universities and colleges by the year 1700. In North America there were 44 universities among them were the newly founded Harvard and Yale. The number of students and universities remained the same during the enlightenment except for Britain, were the numbers increased during the enlightenment. The students were mostly men from wealthy families who were looking for a career with in medicine, law or the church.

The universities themselves were there to educate future physicians, lawyers and members of the clergy. Before the 18^th century, science courses were taught almost exclusively through formal lectures.  In the first decades of the 18^th century the structures of the courses were about to change, when physical demonstrations were added to the lectures. The experiments that took place ranged from swinging a bucket with water on the end of a rope demonstrating that the centrifugal force would keep the water in the bucket, to experiments using an air-pump.

During the French revolution, all colleges and universities in France were abolished and reformed in 1808 under the single institution of the Univerité imperiale. The Univerité divided the arts and sciences into separate faculties, something that had never happened before in Europe.

The French universities tended to serve a downplayed role in the development of science during the enlightenment. That role was dominated by academies as the French Academy of Sciences. The contribution of Britain was mixed. On the one hand the University of Cambridge began teaching Newtonianism but failed to become a central force behind the advancement of science. On the other end Scottish universities had strong medical faculties and became centres of scientific development.

While the number of universities did not dramatically increase during the enlightenment, new private and public institutions added to the provision of education. Most of the institutions educated in mathematics which made them popular for merchants, military and naval officers and engineers. Universities on the other hand stuck to the old ways and emphasized the classics, Greek and Latin.

//Oscar

The guillotine is a device used for executions by decapitation. It consists of frame and from that frame a blade I suspended. The blade will separate the head from the body in a quick way. I have to say that if I were to be executed I would have chosen the guillotine rather than hanging. This “tool” was mostly used in France during the French revolution, but in several countries they continued to use it even after the revolution.

What du you think about death penalty today?

This is a list of how many people that was executed in the year of 2010 (From Wikipedia).

If you take a closer look at the list you will see that all of them are dictatorships, heavy dictatorships, all of them except USA. So, why is the USA so high placed on the list? If they should be a symbol for western democracy, why is it even legal? The punishment was abolished for a few years but was reintroduced in 1976 and since then almost 1100 people has been executed. What do you think about this? I think it is morally wrong. Let us say that we have a murderer, he is sentenced to death and they kill him. What have they just done? The answer is easy, they have just killed a people. If murder is illegal why is death penalty legal? Is not that kind of the same thing?

// Hedvig

We think that the binoculars are very useful and good. With the binoculars we can see thing  that never had a chance to bee seen before. Scientists have by the telescope discovered amazing things about our planet and space.  What do you think about the binocular? Is it good that Galileo Galilei invented the binocular?

/ Linnéa, Jerica, Felicia.

This was once said by an American businessman, Bernard Baruch, who lived until 1965. As several millions of apples have fallen to the ground from the beginning of time, Newton was the first one who actually wondered why things fall. He began working within the area and came up with his famous three laws. These three laws are still the basics in our days, and they are some of the most important discoveries within science throughout history.

For me it clearly shows that it doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how much you know about science. To discover something new that no one has seen before, your curiosity is your best tool. I think that is why Newton was so successful. The picture I have of him is that he always wanted to discover new things, learn just a little bit more every day. He himself has said he was not much smarter then anyone else, he was just more eager to learn. I guess this is not the whole truth, of course he was very clever, but it still shows that you need more than brain to make it work.

To be successful within science you need four major factors. First, of course you need to have some good genes, you need to be smart. Second up, you have to have pre-knowledge about the subject you’re into. Then you need curiosity and creativity. Without these it is hard to make any discoveries. You must be curious to be able to come up with a question you want to solve, you need to be smart and have pre-knowledge to understand what you are working about, and you must be creative to figure out a lab, a way to solve it. I feel that these are crucial factors, but if anyone else has any other opinions feel free to discuss it.

To me Newton is the greatest scientist ever. Being a scientist today is not comparable, because now you have the basic laws, and you have electricity. A man named Fredrik Härén was talking about knowledge on the Day of Knowledge in Sweden 2007, and his idea was that ideas=p(k+i). P stands for persons, k is for knowledge already existing and i stands for the information we have. This means that more and more ideas come along as new discoveries are made and the population on the Earth is growing. And it is true! 20 years ago there was no internet or computers, and very few people had a cell phone. But as the population grew, and more and more knowledge and information came along, idea after idea was born. That makes Newton’s discoveries even greater, as they did not have much pre-knowledge back then.

What do you think? Is there any greater than Newton? Or any greater discoveries throughout history?

If you want to see the performance of Fredrik Härén, you can click the links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0jDJ-wsMYI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohHNONAbheE

/Sebastian Carlshamre

This time it is about Carl Linnaeus as a scientist.
Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist that put the species in "families".
He had described over 7,300 species.

He made a lot of expeditions in Sweden and northern Germany.
He is one of the most well known scientists from Sweden from the enlightenment.

The plant sexuality is one of his leading works that describe how plants have "sex".
This means that flowers are boys or girls, they have stamens and pistils.
This attracted the attention of Olof Rudbeck in May 1730, he selected Linnaeus to begin giving lectures at the University even though Linnaeus was only a second year student. The lectures were very popular, and Linnaeus could often find himself addressing an audience of 300 persons.
he also lived with Olof Celsius the man behind the thermometer that shows the temperature in Celsius that are based after the freeze and boil point of water.

Systema Naurae is one of the books Linnaeus wrote, in this book he wrote about the animal and plant kingdom, well they aren't so correct any longer like the giraffe is related to the leopard and that isn't so truly.
Systema Naturae are on three volumes and contains over 7,000 species.

i think this was very useful for the botanist around Europe because it was one different reality then the one the church had shown the people for many years.

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists of all time, if not the greatest. His laws regarding how things move changed the way we see the world.

He was born in 1642 in England, not long after the death of another great scientist Galileo Galilei. Newton was very interested in Galileo’s ideas, which he to a big part shared. Newton entered the show at the peak of the Scientific Revolution, and Newton followed great brains as Nicholas Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and the already mentioned Galilei and he combined their ideas with ideas of his own into one big, unified picture of how the universe works. Newton’s big discovery is gravity. Legend has it that it started with an apple falling down from a tree. Newton then started to think about this and came up with three laws. The three laws explain the way objects move. They are often referred to as Newton’s Laws.

His big discovery was as mentioned gravity, he started to think that it maybe not only included objects at earth, but also objects in space. Maybe that is why the Earth moves around the sun and the Moon do the same around the Earth. Newton understood that mathematics was the key to understand this phenomenon, and as the mathematic genius he was he calculated the force needed for keeping the Moon move around the Earth, and then compared it to the force that made the apple fall down. After some more calculations he discovered that the forces were the same. It is gravity that keeps the moon moving around the Earth.

Newton’s calculations explained how the planets stay in their orbits around the sun, and that way he developed the theories of earlier scientists as Copernicus and Galilei. The way the planets move around the sun is the same way as with the Moon, it the huge gravitational force of the sun that keeps the planets moving. He also showed that gravity was affected by the object’s mass and the distance.

The way Newton managed to explain and make us understand the universe is why I see him as one of the greatest scientists of all time, playing in the same league as other brilliant minds as Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, and Charles Darwin.  What do you think? How important was Newton's discoveries for the world that we live in today, or do the legacy of Pasteur or Darwin or Nikola Tesla affect the world more? What can be said is that Newton's discoveries have helped the scientists of today to make their own theories, just as the likes of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler helped Newton.

So what do you think of Sir Isaac Newton and his science? Do you find it interesting or is it just boring physics?

If you want to learn more about Newton or the other scientists mentioned check these links out!

http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/newton/

http://techblogbiz.blogspot.com/2006/10/10-great-scientists-of-world.html

/Andreas Larsson

” I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people” – Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton, his findings is called the main event of the scientific revolution Isaac Newton is most famous for he’s mathematic calculation of the gravity, not how it worked!. The Philiosophie Naturalis Principa Mathematicas is said to be the most important book in modern Europe history.  The first copy of the book was first published on the 5 of July, 1687. It was written in Latin and made a big impression on other scientist who changed their way of thinking because they realized the importance of it.

In the first part of the book the reader is explained how the findings he did about the three laws of motion. The first one, “everybody continues in the state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it’s compelled to change that state by force impressed upon it. Second, the change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed, and it’s made in the direction of the straight line in which the force is impressed. Third and last, to every action there is always opposed and equal reaction.

It was not just the findings about the gravity concluded in the Philiosophie Naturalis Principa Mathematicas. Newton also explained how the tides of the ocean worked. It was the gravitational force from the sun and the moon which affected it.

The earth was flat they thought, and beyond the horizon there is a precipice to the unknown that the space was offering. But this wasn’t true. Newton showed that the earth was round by he’s calculations.

The finding Sir Isaac Newton did was before his time. They way of thinking was change dramatically. But what if Newton wouldn’t come up with these findings. How would the view of the gravity and the earth look like then?  I think most likely that someone else had come up with it but not as early as Newton did, due to the fact that he was so before his time.

//Calle

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was a French doctor and he was the man who gave name to the guillotine. The guillotine was a killer machine.  It was introduced during the French revolution and a lot of people were executed with it. For example; both king Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were executed with the guillotine. It was during a debate 1789 that Joseph-Ignace Guillotin gave the suggestion that every man should be executed in the same way, rich and poor. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was against death penalty so therefore he thought that at least the ones that should be executed should be that in a fast and relative painless way.  Many people believe that dr. Guillotin was executed with his own invention, but that is just a rumour and it is not true.

I think that the guillotine is and was a smart invention. It was a fast way to kill a lot of people and since the guillotine always came at the same place it wasn’t any problem, as it had been earlier, with the executioners missing their targets. But I think that it’s a pity that the good idea that Guillotin had when he wanted the death penalty to be put to an end instead made it easier to kill even more people. Maybe some of the innocent people during the French revolution could have been saved if it wasn’t for this killing machine, which killed a lot of people during those years. But since it worked for the purpose it had, to give people a less painful dead, I have to say that it was a good invention.

/ Ebba Jakobsson van Stam