I recently spent a very pleasant five days with a group of very intelligent American students aged 18 to 20. My role was ostensibly to let them benefit from my experience and learn about Industrial Archaeology but as usual we strayed occasionally and I found myself trying to warn them about some of the pitfalls of life, particularly in their studies. I suppose my main warning is never to take any 'fact' at face value, question it and make up your own mind. If you want a recent example, think of the mythical £350million a day the EU was supposed to cost us. Just because it is written in letters three feet high on the side of a bus doesn't mean it is true!
My personal crap detector springs to life whenever I see a superlative, something is the 'oldest' or 'biggest' and definite statements like So and So invented the …... I'm afraid that many second rate historians are guilty of this. Take the old question; “Who invented the steam engine?” Forget the usual answers, a very early example of using steam to produce rotary motion was the Aeolipile of Hero of Alexandria who lived from 10 to 70BC. It was used by the priests in the temple to open doors and was presented as religious magic. Further, it was a steam turbine and used the same principle that Whittle and others used in the early modern jet engine. It was a genuine heat engine converting thermal energy to useful rotary motion and so has a strong claim to being the 'first'. (As far as we know!)
Most people would agree that Johannes Gutenberg was the inventor of printing using moveable type in 1439. If you have a word with the Chinese you'll find that they were using that technology far earlier. You'll find this syndrome in almost every statement about who was first, they are almost always wrong! One of my favourites that goes down well with my American students is “Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1794 and revolutionised the United States cotton industry' which incidentally opening the floodgates to cotton through Liverpool that founded our own industry. We know now that actually he only improved on what was already in use and modern research is throwing up clues which suggest it was Mrs Whitney who identified the crucial improvements. She was on a sticky wicket, how could a woman be credited with such an important invention!
So my message is don't take anything on trust, examine it and make up your own minds. We live in an age governed by statements issued to the media and more and more people are beginning to realise that these are often 'economical with the truth'. There is an old and useful rule for historians, 'The only completely accurate statements in newspapers are the advertisements and the hatched, matched and despatched'. This means of course that you must question what I say also!
thankyou Stanley.