Latest news with #Bianconi
Irish Examiner
11-08-2025
- Irish Examiner
The unlikely story of Bianconi: the enterprising Italian who developed Ireland's first proper bus service
'Forty years ago a person going to Dublin from the interior should make almost as much preparation as some now make for America', commented topographer Rev. G. Hansbrow in 1835. Carlo Bianconi admitted to being 'the greatest dunce' at school. Instead of doing his homework, the boy with curly black hair preferred watching the slowly turning wheel of his father's silk-mill, and dreamed of owning 'much land' and 'many white horses'. Born in Tregolo, near Lake Como, on September 24, 1786, at the age of 16, he was apprenticed to art dealer Andrea Faroni. Treasuring in his luggage a blue peacock feather from girlfriend, Giovanna Vandroni, he was taken with three other lads to Dublin, and lodged in Temple Bar. Every Monday, Faroni would give him fourpence pocket money and send him out on the roads with a box (two feet long, one foot wide, eighteen inches deep, 100 pounds in weight) strapped to his back. It contained two pounds' worth of framed pictures he had to sell by Saturday, shouting 'Buy, buy!', and indicating prices on his fingers. Bianconi's ideas to improve travel 'grew out of my back', he said. Having completed his apprenticeship in 1806, he became his own boss in Carrick-on-Suir. That's when Julia Bourke, a Kilkenny girl he'd fallen in love with, encouraged him to pursue his childhood interest in carving and gilding. Next, he moved to Waterford, before buying a shop in Clonmel (1809), with a large display window for his framed pictures and looking glasses. 'Brian Coony', as he was known, was now wealthy enough to employ three gilders. Even though the distance by road from Carrick to Waterford to buy gold-leaf was only thirteen miles, he'd found that his journeys by boat had sometimes taken five hours. Irish postage stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of Charles Bianconi's birth, 1986 .png Scotsman John Anderson had introduced a mail coach service between Ireland's main towns in 1789, but it was expensive, and didn't have a regular timetable. Stiff road taxes meant only the rich could afford their own vehicle. Suddenly, after the Napoleonic Wars, a plentiful supply of strong horses came on the market. Bianconi bought some, and on July 6, 1815, started a one-horse, two-wheeled, six-passenger jaunting-car service between Clonmel and Cahir, a round trip of 18 miles. But most people were suspicious of any innovation, especially of 'travelling through the world sideways', and the initiative flopped. Instead of giving up, Bianconi bought a second car and arranged races with his original. It proved a masterstroke: passengers were thrilled, cars filled up. He quickly extended the service to Tipperary, Limerick, Cashel, Thurles, and in 1816 to Waterford. Ditching his picture business, he built a workshop and forges in Clonmel. Under the management of his assistant, Dan Hearn, a full range of vehicles was manufactured — from lightweight two-wheelers to carriages for 14 and 19 passengers. They drove voters to the Waterford election in 1826, earning Bianconi £1,000, and later secured him a Post Office contract to carry mail. By the mid-1830s, he owned around 100 carriages and 1,400 horses — reputedly knowing them all by name. His cars covered more than 3,000 miles of road across 23 counties, with routes stretching from Strabane to Skibbereen, Galway to Wexford. Tourists could explore magnificent Bantry Bay, the Lakes of Killarney, and the wilds of Connemara. With an average speed of 8-9 mph (including stops), any journey in Ireland could be completed in eight hours. At a modest penny-farthing per mile, all but the poor could afford to travel in them. A stickler for efficiency, Bianconi restricted horses to 16 pounds of hay a day, scanned every waybill personally, and employed spies to report on malpractices. Drivers were instructed to keep a seat vacant for any man carrying a sack or a woman with a child. Provided they were honest, they received sick pay and pensions, and were welcome to visit Bianconi at home to discuss problems while he relaxed in his bath before the fire. A 'long Bian' (M.J. O'Connell Charles Bianconi – A Biography, 1877, facing p.134) At 40, he had attained a 'respectable' position – indeed, the word 'Bian' had become a household name for 'bus' – and he could consider marrying. But on Valentine's Day 1827, his bride was neither Giovanna from Tregolo, nor Julia from Kilkenny, but 19-year-old Eliza Hayes, daughter of a wealthy Dublin stockbroker. There was no honeymoon – he was too busy rushing around on business. One of Bianconi's favourite sayings was: 'money melts but land holds'. As a naturalised British subject – even though he hated drinking tea – 'Charles' could buy property. Snapping up the Old Charter School on Waterford Road, he changed its name to Silver Spring and built a pond and terrace. His many guests included Daniel O'Connell ('The Liberator'), and teetotalist Father Theobald Mathew, who'd rescued him from a street fight in Thurles as a young lad. Immersing himself in Clonmel society, Bianconi became director of the local bank, oversaw public lighting, and as mayor (twice) he checked bakers didn't diddle customers with underweight loaves, and tried to curb drunkenness. During the Great Famine, he distributed polenta and macaroni from his house. Several schools and University College Dublin also benefited from his philanthropy. Longfield House, Boherlahan, Co. Tipperary, bought by Bianconi in 1846 ( In 1846, the enterprising Italian bought Longfield House, Boherlahan, for £22,000 (equivalent to £3 million today), and moved in with Eliza and their three children — Kate, Charley and Little Minnie. Set in 1,000 acres, Longfield had been his dream home since his days as a pedlar. He built an Italian garden with yew hedges, apricot trees, urns and statues from Como. Convinced it was his duty to look after tenants on his estate, he rebuilt their cottages with slate roofs. By 1860, he'd bought ten more Irish properties. Many years before, he'd vowed to go back to Italy. He did return, alone, on the death of his father in 1833, to find that Giovanna had married a duke; and again in 1851, hoping in vain that the milder climate would heal Kate's TB. But Ireland, not Italy, was now his home. When the railways arrived, Bianconi shocked a protest meeting of coach and canal boat owners in Dublin by announcing it was as foolish to try preventing 'railway mania' as attempting to stem the Liffey. Instead, he purchased shares in railways, tweaked his routes to feed the trains, and shifted his cars to Sligo and Galway, where no locomotive had yet reached. However, year by year, railways crept up on him, and he realized that the future of the Bians was to provide transport to and from train stations, which they did until the motorcar. Even in his late seventies, Bianconi continued to lead an active public life as deputy lieutenant of Tipperary. But on 7 October 1865, everything changed when his cart overturned, fracturing his thigh. Calling it a day, he sold the business to his employees, and the coach workshop was converted into Hearn's Hotel. From now on, he travelled by railway — and in a wheelchair. 'Proud of his hard-won success', he asked Minnie, his only surviving child, to write his biography. Carlo Bianconi died on 22 September 1875, following a stroke. As he lay dying, the story goes that his horses came to fetch him. A greatly respected and popular man, his funeral procession stretched over half a mile to the family mausoleum he'd built at Longfield House. In honour of the bicentenary of Bianconi's birth in 1986, Clonmel was twinned with Tregolo. Via Clonmel, Tregolo, twin of Tipperary's county town Bianconi would be dismayed to hear that the patchy state of Ireland's rural bus services is making headlines today, 150 years after his death. Wonder what solutions he'd come up with?
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A New Theory Says Gravity May Come From Entropy—Which Could Lead to a Unified Theory of Physics
A new theory suggests that gravity could possibly be the result of entropy. If true, this would mean that everything in the universe would fall apart if it all remained unchanged. This theory tries to reconcile Einstein's theory of general relativity (which sees gravity as a warping of spacetime) with quantum theory (which views the universe as being made of extremely small objects that can exist in particle or wave form). It is possible that the theory could also allow for gravitational fields to be made of dark matter, which continues to elude us. Entropy. The word itself should cause insomnia. It means that matter and energy will degrade—ultimately leading to chaos in the universe—if things are left alone. So why is a new theory suggesting that gravity could possibly emerge from entropy? Yup, you read that right: quantum relative entropy may determine the action of gravity. This is what physicist and mathematician Ginestra Bianconi from Queen Mary University of London proposes in a new theory. There's just one issue—for this to work, two theories that have forever been at odds with each other need to harmonize. The idea of quantum relative entropy mashes up the clashing concepts of general relativity and quantum theory. Einstein's theory of general relativity sees gravity as the curvature or warping of spacetime by an object, with more massive objects having a greater effect on the spacetime surrounding them. For example, the Sun is 330,000 times the mass of the Earth. As a result, our planet is orbiting within the huge distortion in spacetime that the Sun's enormous presence has caused, like a quarter rolling around one of those oversized funnels. Quantum theory, on the other hand, views the universe as being made of extremely small objects (think subatomic particles) that act as both particles and waves. Particles are minuscule pieces of matter, while waves are disturbances that transfer energy. According to quantum mechanics, the universe is described on micro and nano scales. Relativity is the opposite, in the sense that it describes matter on cosmic scales. Finding a way to connect general relativity and quantum mechanics has proved to be an enduring headache for scientists. To that end, enter Bianconi's theory. She posits that spacetime is actually a quantum operator, meaning that it acts on quantum states to turn them into different types of quantum states. Quantum entropy quantifies (no pun intended) how much disorder or unpredictability is in the state of something, which helps distinguish between two quantum states. Bianconi, in her work, found that she could use it to describe how spacetime and matter interact. 'Gravity is derived from an entropic action coupling matter fields with geometry [of spacetime],' she said in a study recently published in Physical Review D. By allowing quantum entropy to describe differences between matter and spacetime, Bianconi's theory modifies general relativity by first giving the fabric of spacetime low energy and a small curvature, and then by predicting a small cosmological constant (which explains how much and how fast the universe is expanding). The new theory also incorporates a G-field, or gravitational field. G-fields are vector fields—which means they have both magnitude and direction—that explain how space is influenced by an object. Bianconi uses the G-field as what is known as a Lagrangian multiplier, which finds the maximum and minimum of a function. Waves, which are one of the two quantum states, are described by a wave function. Finding the maximum and minimum of a wave function with a G-field could reconcile quantum theory with general relativity. If the clash between the theories is finally resolved, you end up with quantum gravity, which would exist in particle and wave form. That said, gravity existing in particle form raises another question. Dark matter is made of particles, but the nature of those particles remains an enigma, since they have never been directly observed. Bianconi thinks that, if gravity can exist as particles, the G-field might offer an explanation for dark matter. 'This work proposes that quantum gravity has an entropic origin and suggests that the G-field might be a candidate for dark matter,' she said in a press release. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done before this idea is anywhere near confirmed. But, there's a chance that chaos brings about gravity, which in turn might, in one form, possibly be dark matter. Mind blown. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
