10. The invention of the airplane (1903)
The Wright brothers' invention
transformed travel and communication and greatly
influenced astronomy. Without the airplane and several of the other
events described above,
I would not be sitting in a hotel room in Sydney, Australia,
on a one-week round-the-world airplane trip that enabled me to
observe an annular eclipse
of the sun. Nor would I be keyboarding these words
into a portable computer, soon to upload them onto an international
telephone network
that will bring them to World Book offices within seconds.
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Jay M. Pasachoff
is the Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Hopkins Observatory at Williams College. His Top 10 list largely relates major world events to a number of important developments in astronomy. He points to the establishment of the Nobel Prizes as an event that helped spark public interest in science.
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