Buzz
A common belief, particularly among those who are not religious, is that science and religion are at odds. The Catholic Church's persecution of astronomer Galileo for his heliocentric theory serves as a notable example of how the Church, in some instances, restricted scientific exploration it saw as a threat to the faith.
However, these instances may be seen as exceptions. For much of its history, the Church actually promoted scientific thought. It is no coincidence that the scientific method—observation, experimentation, and mathematical formulation—emerged in Western Europe. The Church had fostered an environment that nurtured the Scientific Revolution. Even today, the Vatican oversees the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which includes some of the brightest minds in the scientific world, such as the late Stephen Hawking, who was a well-known atheist.
In reality, numerous scientists who played key roles in advancing scientific knowledge were Catholic priests. They never saw their scientific work as incompatible with their religious duties. The Church has given us an impressive array of scientist-priests and their remarkable achievements. Who hasn't heard of Gregor Mendel, the Augustinian monk known as the father of modern genetics? Or Father Georges Lemaître, who proposed the Big Bang theory?
Priests have also contributed significantly to the practical side of science, leaving behind inventions that have shaped our modern technological world. Below is a list of ten such inventions.
10. Automobile
Before figures like Benz, Daimler, and Maybach, there was Ferdinand Verbiest. If we define an “automobile” as a self-moving vehicle, not necessarily meant to carry passengers, then this Belgian Jesuit can be credited with its invention.
Born in 1623 in Pitthem, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, Ferdinand inherited his father Joos's passion for learning. A “singular prodigy” as a child, Ferdinand joined the Society of Jesus, where he studied philosophy, theology, mathematics, and astronomy. After earning his doctorate in 1655, the Jesuits sent him on a mission to China. Under the name Nan Huairen, Verbiest served as a diplomat, astronomer, cartographer, mathematician, and translator for the Chinese emperor.
In 1672, for Emperor Kangxi’s amusement, Verbiest designed his version of an automobile. Measuring only 26 inches (65 cm) long and incapable of carrying a human driver, it still incorporated all the principles of 'automobility.' A round boiler, heated by a fire underneath, produced steam which traveled through a pipe into an open steam turbine, propelling the rear wheels. Verbiest described this in his work Astronomia Europea, but no plans or drawings have been found. However, a team of mechanical engineers from Technischen Hochschule in Ingolstadt, Germany, recently recreated a model, proving the feasibility of Verbiest’s invention.
9. Hot Air Balloon
Most people would find a soap bubble floating in the warm air near a burning candle to be an ordinary sight. However, for Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão, this sparked curiosity about the varying densities of air and the idea that an object lighter than air could rise and fly. This was not the first sign of de Gusmão's scientific mindset. At 20, he invented a device that could lift water from a stream and carry it up a hill 328 feet (100 meters) high. Even after becoming a priest, Fr. Bartolomeu moved to Lisbon to study subjects like mathematical science, astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry, and philosophy at Coimbra University.
When Fr. Bartolomeu claimed to have invented a flying machine, King João V of Portugal invited him to demonstrate it at the royal court. On August 3, 1709, he launched a small paper balloon filled with heated air on the palace grounds, but it caught fire before it could lift off. A second attempt two days later succeeded, as did a third attempt three days afterward.
While Fr. Bartolomeu’s design couldn’t carry a human into the air, his concept of using hot air to create lighter-than-air craft was a major step forward in the history of human flight, setting the stage for the first manned flight in the Montgolfier balloon in 1783.
8. The 'Immortal' Battery
Guinness World Records describes it as 'the world’s most durable battery.' This extraordinary battery powers a bell at Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford University, which has been ringing (though inaudibly) nonstop since at least 1840, possibly even 15 years earlier. The battery is a dry pile, one of the earliest electric batteries ever created, invented by Italian priest Giuseppe Zamboni in 1812.
The Zamboni pile was made up of 2,000 tin foil discs affixed to paper that had been soaked in zinc sulfate, with the other side coated in manganese oxide. It wasn’t strictly ‘dry,’ as the moisture in the paper served as the conductor. Enough electromotive force could be generated by packing these discs into a glass tube. Zamboni used his batteries to create a device with a pendulum placed between two piles. Each pile alternately attracted the pendulum, producing a consistent back-and-forth motion that, according to legend, lasted for an entire century.
A similar principle may be behind the Oxford bell. However, scientists prefer to wait until the bell eventually stops ringing before dismantling it for analysis.
7. Induction Coil
Fr. Nicholas Callan pursued science not for fame, but for the pursuit of knowledge. This is why he is often overlooked as the inventor of the induction coil, a key component of modern transformers, which is usually attributed to Heinrich Ruhmkorff.
Born in 1799 in County Louth, Ireland, and educated at the Catholic college in Maynooth, Callan was deeply intrigued by physics, especially electricity and magnetism. His passion was further sparked when he met two great pioneers of the field, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta, during his time in Rome for his doctorate in divinity. In 1827, Callan returned to Maynooth, where he divided his time between teaching physics, writing religious texts, and conducting scientific experiments.
Without proper equipment in his basement lab, Callan would often administer harmless electric shocks to unsuspecting students as a way to measure the strength of the voltage. On one occasion, this experiment rendered the future Archbishop of Dublin unconscious. In another instance, he gathered a team of strongmen to compete in a tug-of-war, using an electromagnet powered by a battery he created by connecting 577 smaller batteries, the largest of their kind at that time.
In 1837, during his experiments, Fr. Callan discovered the principle of mutual induction, producing over 60,000 volts of electricity, the highest voltage ever recorded at that time. Through this, he invented the induction coil. Without the induction coil, many of the 19th century's scientific breakthroughs, including the discovery of radio waves, x-rays, and the electron, would not have been possible.
In 1853, Callan patented a method for galvanizing iron to prevent rust. The following year, he invented the Maynooth fluid cell battery, which used cast iron instead of the costly platinum, making batteries more accessible to researchers. He may have been one of the first individuals to operate an electric vehicle—a small trolley with an electric motor that he used to navigate around his lab.
6. Electric Motor and Dynamo
In 1821, Michael Faraday demonstrated that electromagnetism could be converted into mechanical energy, creating the first rudimentary electric motor. Faraday also showed that the process could work in reverse, with mechanical energy being transformed into electricity, leading to the creation of the first dynamo.
The Hungarian Benedictine priest and physicist Anyos Jedlik was captivated by the connections between electrical, magnetic, and mechanical forces, which led him to begin experimenting with electric motors as early as 1827. Jedlik enhanced Faraday’s motor by replacing its permanent magnet with a rotor, stator, and commutator, the essential components of modern DC motors. Although Faraday’s motor had no practical use, Jedlik’s invention demonstrated electricity’s potential for performing work.
In 1861, Fr. Anyos developed a 'unipolar inductor,' based on the principles of the Faraday dynamo, six years before Werner Siemens and Charles Wheatstone revealed their 'dynamo-electric principle.' Jedlik’s key innovation involved using two opposing electromagnets to generate a magnetic field around the rotor, which led to the principle of self-excitation. However, Jedlik kept his invention confidential, which allowed Siemens and Wheatstone to take credit for the discovery.
5. Internal Combustion Engine
The invention of the internal combustion engine is frequently attributed to either the French-Belgian engineer Etienne Lenoir in 1859 or the German engineer Nicolaus Otto in 1861, since their engines were the first to achieve commercial success. However, the very first functioning model was actually created in 1856 by the Italian Fr. Eugenio Barsanti.
Barsanti was a member of the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, known as the Piarists, the oldest Catholic religious order focused on education. While teaching at the Collegio San Michele in Volterra, Fr. Eugenio had the idea of using the explosive power of combustible gases to move pistons in an engine. He collaborated with engineer Felice Matteucci to bring this concept to life, resulting in a two-cylinder, 5-horsepower motor. This was followed in 1858 by a two-piston engine designed to power factory machinery or even replace steam engines in ships.
Barsanti and Matteucci had begun talks with a factory in Liege, Belgium, with the goal of mass-producing their engine. However, tragedy struck when Fr. Eugenio contracted typhoid fever and passed away on April 16, 1864. Lacking the necessary business acumen to promote their invention, Matteucci found himself outmaneuvered by Otto, despite claiming that Otto’s engine closely resembled theirs. Defeated by Otto’s sharp business sense, Matteucci withdrew from the endeavor and returned to his work as a hydraulic engineer.
4. Fax Machine
Giovanni Caselli, surrounded by an array of strange contraptions, could easily be mistaken for a mad scientist rather than a priest. A native of Siena, Italy, he placed his passion for physics above his religious duties.
While teaching at the University of Florence, Caselli became absorbed in solving the challenge of transmitting images and pictures via wires. In the 1840s, the Scotsman Alexander Bain had crafted a basic device for this, but did not fully develop the idea. A key obstacle was synchronizing the transmitter and receiver, which Bain, a clockmaker, ironically struggled to resolve.
To solve the synchronization issue, Fr. Caselli introduced a regulating clock, a key improvement. Additionally, he employed ordinary ink to reproduce the image, a step forward from Bain’s method of scratching the image onto a metal plate. Caselli’s pantelegraph—a combination of 'pantograph' (a device for copying text and images) and 'telegraph'—could scale images up or down and transmit multiple messages over a single wire. This remarkable device, the precursor to the modern fax machine, stood over 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall and was filled with pendulums, batteries, and wires.
The pantelegraph made such an impression on Emperor Napoleon III that he ordered a fax service to link Paris and Lyons, which was successfully launched on May 16, 1865. Two years later, a similar connection to Marseilles was established. It's important to note that this all happened a full decade before Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in 1876.
In addition to the fax machine, Caselli's inventive mind gave rise to several other creations, including the cinemograph (a device used to measure the speed of trains), a nautical electric torpedo, and a hydromagnetic rudder. He passed away in Florence in 1891.
3. Wireless Audio Transmission
While Guglielmo Marconi is celebrated for his invention of the wireless telegraph, the Brazilian inventor who achieved what Marconi did for Morse code with the human voice remains largely overlooked. Roberto Landell de Moura deserves recognition as the true pioneer of radio broadcasting and wireless telephony.
Landell was a curious child, devouring books on a wide range of subjects such as biology, physics, and astronomy. Despite his intense interest in science, under his family's influence, he pursued a religious path and studied for the priesthood. Nevertheless, his fascination with science never waned, and he continued studying physics and chemistry at the Gregorian University in Rome. It was during a journey back to Brazil in 1886 that Landell realized the potential for transmitting the human voice over long distances through the air.
In 1895, Marconi introduced his wireless telegraph, while Landell was still trying to secure the financial backing for his own groundbreaking project. Unfortunately, the Church did not support his efforts, as many believed he was diverting from his religious duties. Nonetheless, Landell was able to borrow $4,000 (the equivalent of $100,000 today) from a merchant in New York, a loan that burdened him for many years.
On July 16, 1899, Father Landell began broadcasting from Santana College, situated north of Sao Paulo, to Bandeiras Bridge, which was 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away. As he excitedly exclaimed, 'Play the National Anthem,' the marvel of science transmitted the sounds to the receiver in the very first public demonstration of his device. It included a spark-gap generator with a Ruhmkorff coil and two metallic spheres that generated the radio waves. To modulate the carrier wave, Landell invented a diaphragm coupled with electrical contacts within a resonant chamber, which he called a 'phonetic switch.' This modulation process is now known as amplitude modulation (AM).
Despite patenting his wave transmitter in both the U.S. and Brazil in 1901, Father Landell found no investors for his invention. His patent eventually expired, and he faded into obscurity, passing away unrecognized in 1928. His invention, now in the public domain, served as a foundation for other scientists working in the field of radio.
2. Bulletproof Vest
In 1893, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison I was tragically shot and killed by a deranged assassin in his own home. The popular mayor's death deeply saddened many, but none were more affected than Casimir Zeglen, a Polish immigrant and parish priest at St. Stanislaus, the largest Polish church in the U.S. Determined to prevent such tragedies in the future, Zeglen set out to invent a bulletproof vest.
Before the assassination, Zeglen had already begun testing materials that could stop bullets while being lighter than traditional metal plates. Among the substances he experimented with were steel shavings, moss, and hair, but none of them proved effective. A doctor named George Goodfellow found that silk reduced a bullet's ability to penetrate, though he never followed up on his discovery. Zeglen continued the work and began developing with silk.
On March 16, 1897, Fr. Casimir, wearing a silk bulletproof vest, stood face to face with a man wielding a loaded revolver in a Chicago public square. The man fired several shots at the priest in front of witnesses, including the mayor. Though the priest staggered under the impact, he was unharmed. The vest worked! However, Zeglen was fortunate to survive; his hand-sewn silk vest was not properly made to withstand bullets.
By 1913, the increasing power of bullets made silk bulletproof vests obsolete. Nonetheless, Zeglen's legacy lives on in the concept that fabric can provide bulletproof protection. This idea paved the way for the creation of stronger protective armor using more durable synthetic materials.
1. Barocyclonometer
Father Jose Maria Algue, a Spanish Jesuit ordained in 1888, delved into astronomy, seismography, and meteorology at the University of Barcelona starting in 1890. He later moved to the Philippines to work under Father Federico Faura, the founder of the Observatory of Manila. Following Faura’s death in 1897, Algue took over as the observatory’s director and remained in the position even after the Philippines transitioned from Spanish to American rule.
Algue shared his expertise with the Americans and worked part-time for the U.S. Weather Bureau. The region's tropical typhoons posed a significant threat to U.S. ships conducting surveys and mapping the new colony. In 1897, Algue invented the barocyclometer, a device that undoubtedly saved countless lives before the advent of satellite tracking. It combined a fluidless barometer and a cyclonometer. The barometer would issue a warning of an impending cyclone by detecting changes in atmospheric pressure, while the cyclonometer enabled the captain to calculate the storm's location and trajectory using mathematical formulas and tables.
Algue later modified the barocyclometer for use in the North Atlantic, and by 1914, the U.S. Navy had adopted it to avoid the region's intense hurricanes. The priest also invented the nephoscope, a tool for tracking the movement of clouds, and a microseismograph capable of detecting microquakes caused by storms at sea.
