The number of books about JTR...

[Mayerling]

Just for the record, this is one of the best ideas I've ever read.

I'd make a list of the terminally forgettable ones (like the man who invented the safety pin - I once did know his name), but then they'd be more than terminally forgettable!

[Mayerling]

Would a book in English on King Alexander and Queen Draga sell, though, Jeff? I've only heard of them because I have an interest in history and in European royalty. Publishers are very cautious nowadays! They are very obscure even if they were put to death in a very gruesome way, perhaps a book on the whole Serbian/ Yugoslavian royal families might be better.

It might because it was the opening salvo of the Serbian nationalist movement of the beginning of the 20th Century that led to Gavrillo Princip killing Archduke Ferdinand and Countess Sophie at Sarajevo. Same group of Serbian military conspirators. The idea of a book on the Serbian/Yugoslav royal families (with sections on Montenegro's and Croatia's leaders in World War II) would be of some interest. but keep in mind that the deaths of Alexandra and his wife were in a blood feud with the rival royal family which placed the crown on King Peter and his son King Alexander of Yugoslavia (an unfortunate name, by the way, as Alexander of Yugoslavia would be assassinated in 1934 as his Serbian predecessor was in 1903).

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Crikey,he would be a great subject for a movie.

He modified rotary engines for helicopters/autogyros,demonstrating a helicopter for the military in 1922.

The HMV logo shows one of his gramophone designs.

When I was in the sixth grade we were assigned to read up on inventors, and I found a book in the public school library on American inventors. That is where I learned about Berliner. He's like Armstrong (creator of FM) or Farnsworth (American inventor of television), or John an Robert Stevens (early rivals of Fulton in the development of steamboats and of Peter Cooper of American railroads - and creators of the still existing Stevens Institute in New Jersey for studying engineering).

All these fellows helped build modern technology, but because of publicity became less known than their rivals like Fulton, Robert Stevenson, or Morse or Bell (both of the latter better known than their predecessors Wheatstone and Cooke in the field of telegraphy, and Meucci and Elisha Gray in the field of telephones). Even Stevenson's success with "the Rocket" overshadowed his predecessor Richart Trevethick. How many recall Trevethick's work with railroad devices for coal mines. And Fulton hid the work of John Fitch and James Rumsey.

Fulton is a perfect example of this. He married into the Livingston Family, very powerful in New York State, and they helped bankroll his "North River Steamboat of Clermont" (the actual title of the boat) in 1807. In fact they used their clout to build an early monopoly that became the central feature of the famous U.S. Supreme Court case of "Gibbon v. Ogden" (1823), where Ogden's ownership of the monopoly rights were broken by the Supreme Court under John Marshall (my college, Drew University, has as it's administrative office the still standing mansion of Edward Gibbon to handle the college affairs. Some of the original furnishings are still there).

Jeff