Dr. John H. Lienhard, M.D. Anderson Professor of Mechanical Engineering and History
at the University of Houston, is creator and host
of KUHF Public Radio's Engines of Our Ingenuity, available to other other Public Radio
stations, as well. "The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about
the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them." Dr. Lienhard
uses the term "machines" loosely, however, so a number of these short episodes involve the Middle
Ages in general, and occasionally medieval women in particular. Each includes a brief bibliography.
-- Sherron Lux, Medievalist and Librarian
This page last updated August 2004
Everyday Life:
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General Medieval:
No. 10: "The Medieval
West" discusses connections between the American "Wild West" and the European Middle Ages.
Dr. Lienhard later reworked this episode as No. 1328.
No. 97: "Educating a Mason"
marvels at how medieval master-builders created those great cathedrals. Later, Dr. Lienhard revised
this episode as No. 1530
No. 115: "Guido da
Vigevano", 14th-century physician and engineer.
Episode No. 1562 is the revised version.
No. 123: "The Black
Death" talks about some consequences of the 14th-century Plague.
No. 228: "Stone Quarries"
looks at building cathedrals and other great buildings.
No. 258: "Bosch's Demons"
considers how Bosch drew on the folklore of his day as well as the pharmaceutical and medical
technology.
No. 378: "Women in the Academy"
concludes that, "When women were thwarted here, they emerged there."
No. 427: "Printer's Marks"
briefly examines the shorthand version of a printer's trademark.
No. 439: "Cathedral and
Pyramid" looks at how "Our finest works reflect commitment and ideals."
No. 458: "About Trebuchets"
is about guns, catapults, and human ingenuity.
No. 577: "A Dark Age"
shows Europe rising from the subsistence level on which it existed after the fall of Rome.
No. 593: "A Modern
Trebuchet" re-examines an important medieval engine of war.
No. 625: "The Crossbow"
looks at the weapon's history.
No. 628: "Printed Music"
examines the gradual evolution of the printing of musical notation.
No. 709: "The Iroquois and the
U.S. Government" demonstrates how heavily the United States Constitution borrows from Hiawatha's
League of Iroquois Nations, founded in North America during Europe's Middle Ages.
No. 736: "Scriptorium" contemplates the mass
production of books before the printing press.
In No. 785: "William Caxton", Dr. Lienhard
celebrates the first English printer.
No. 913: "C.S. Lewis and
Tolkien" looks at two 20th-century giants of medieval scholarship and fantasy writing.
No. 986: "Medieval Timelessness"
and how manuscript-books and medieval cathedrals -- and medieval music -- reflect that sense of
everything happening Here and Now in a kind of eternal Present, before mechanical clocks and more
frenzied lifestyles removed that sense of Time flowing naturally on.
No. 1037: "Rye Ergot and
Witches" looks at the connection between rye blight, the devil, the plague, and various outbreaks
of witch-hunting.
No. 1039: "An
Armor of Commentary" examines how the medium can become the message.
No. 1040: "Humanism and
Feminism" notes that the stronger female values of the Middle Ages gave way to slavery and
witch-burning as Europe re-discovered Classical Greece.
No. 1041: "Chinese Pharmacy"
shows how the West has continually re-invented the medical knowledge of China.
No. 1229: "Double-Entry
Bookkeeping" and its development throughout the High and Late Middle Ages -- "without which
all the money-fueled engines of the modern world would simply grind to a halt."
No. 1348: "Castel del Monte"
asks why a particular 13th-century castle was built, and provides a plan of the castle.
No. 1406: "Medieval Age
of Reason" and the 13th-century beginnings of the divide between the sacred and the
secular.
No. 1424:
"La Sylphide" shows the perhaps surprising connection among ballet, the 19th-century Romantic movement,
and medieval alchemy.
No. 1543: "Ceredi's Pump",
technology, and philosophy.
No. 1506: "The First Mechanical Clocks"
were invented sometime around the thirteenth century.
The eleventh through the early fifteenth centuries saw a great technology surge in the West, as
No. 1814: "Cultural Climate and Invention"
demonstrates.
In No. 1823: "Zero", Dr. Lienhard notes
the centrality of the medieval East and West in the formulation of a concept of nothing.
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Political & Social Movements:
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Rulers & Noblewomen:
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Women &/in Business, Math, & Medicine:
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Women &/in Religion:
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Writers, Musicians, Artists:
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Go HOME, or to one of
the other Women in the Middle Ages biblio-index pages:
INDEX
This page created September 2001 by Sherron Lux
Last UPDATED August 2004
sherronclg@hotmail.com
Thanks to
for graphics.