Who's your favourite genius (or geniuses)?

[TheFreaksShallInheritTheEarth]

Who are your favourite geniuses?

I'm a little bit obsessed with Nikola Tesla. He was mind-blowingly brilliant and such a visionary. Sadly, many of his inventions were destroyed or appropriated and the credit given to others (Marconi, Edison and Westinghouse I'm looking at you) and he died penniless.

Also Beethoven. He composed the best piece of music ever (his ninth symphony) when he was profoundly deaf!

Whose genius do you most admire? I'm particularly interested to read about less well known ones 🙂

I have a soft spot for Joseph Bazalgette. He had the vision to see how London would expand and doubled the size of his proposed sewers. They are an incredible feat of engineering. He was a remarkable man. A prodigious workaholic as well.

More brilliant women

Mary Elizabeth Anderson - invented the windscreen wiper we all take for granted on our cars. When we don't crash on the motorway when there's a sudden freak thunderstorm, we can thank Mary.

Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Magie invented a board game called The Landlord's Game which was nicked by a man and passed off as his own idea - Monopoly. He made a fortune from the royalties, Lizzie got nothing.

DH and I were in London yesterday, hopping on and off the Underground changing lines and knowing which direction we needed to go thanks to the tube map which is recognised worldwide and elegant in its simplicity- designed by an electrical draughtsman called Harry Beck in 1933. I memorised all the stations on the Piccadilly Line from Uxbridge to Cockfosters travelling to school on the tube.

I'm a great fan of Phyllis Pearsall who drafted the first A-Z which was published in 1936. Before that people had to rely on ordnance survey maps, which were useless.

She walked London for 18 hours a day over 3 years, frequently getting lost, but always mapping where she was. I often think of her when I'm tramping around unfamiliar bits of London.