As I See It: Biology and Technology–the Uneasy Union
August 14, 2006 Victor Rozek
Legend has it that the King of France had a problem. Too many people to kill and too little time. So he commissions a fellow named Joseph-Ignace to invent an expedient way of dispatching the assorted criminals, heretics, and revolutionaries who are deemed enemies of the state. Joseph-Ignace sets to work and, using a Scottish apparatus as a model, creates a device originally called the Louison (no doubt a sardonic tribute to Louis XVI), and presents it to the King. But, alas, Louis is busy with affairs of state and the contraption is moved to some neglected corner of Versailles |