by Tucker Koch, Contributing Writer
Man, I swear I don’t mean to make half of these pseudo-biographies on historical figures. Now, with that aside, let’s talk about the British mathematician Charles Howard Hilton. He was born in 1856 with his father being one, Mr. James Hinton; Famous for being in a shocking amount of renditions of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ story and being a vocal advocate for polyamory. Now, a word of advice, don’t look either of those up; If you don’t know, then it is for the bet. I’m just going to throw out an actual quote his father said and had documented, “Christ was the saviour of Men but I am the saviour of Women and I don’t envy him a bit.” Either way, he grew up in a peculiar family, and thus probably led him down the path he chose in life. I’m getting ahead of myself though.
He got married in 1880 to one Ms. Mary Ellen Boole had 4 children, one of which later went on to invent the jungle gym. Then in 1883, he got married again to one Ms. Maud Florence Weldon and had two more kids. Now, besides the sheer amount of kids this man produced in the span of a handful of years, you might have noticed something. He never got divorced. He was later convicted of bigamy later that year and spent three days in prison, losing his current job of teaching at a British college in the process.
He then moved to Japan in 1887 and was the headmaster at the Victoria Public School for 6 years before moving to the US and teaching mathematics at Princeton University. Somehow, this man was still able to hold prestigious positions. At Princeton University, he invented and tested out the world’s first pitching machines. Now, what do you think the first pitching machine used to propel the baseball forwards? Did you guess gunpowder? Because this thing was essentially a modified blunderbuss that you could put rubber coated iron blades in front of in order to let it throw curveballs. On its first test run, it struck out 8 out of the 13 batters on the Princeton baseball team. I’m betting you having a literal gun fire a baseball at you might throw off your game, just a hunch. Side note, but after Hilton died in 1907, the pitching machine was thrown out on the grounds of instilling fear in the batters. Yeah, I don’t blame them.
Now he invented the pitching machine in 1897, but I neglected to mention his theory that he is more famous from 1880. Now, you see, Hilton was also an author and wrote some scholarly articles in his time. One of these articles being “What is the Fourth Dimension”. The man invented the concept of the fourth dimension. *It doesn’t stop there though, in another book he wrote in 1888, he invented and essentially coined the term ‘Tesseract’ as a way to portray the fourth dimension in a way that our brains could understand; Complete with a visual diagram. The funny blue box from the Thor Marvel movies was inspired by this man’s works. Before I move on to the next section, I would just like to note the series of articles and books he wrote about this concept he called ‘Scientific Romances’. Simple three dimensional people aren’t enough for this man anymore, he is going for theoretical objects now.
His work inspired and basically re-invigorated spiritualist groups looking for a higher dimension to ascend to, and finding his works as proof that one does indeed exist. The man also basically kickstarted the science fiction genre as well, due to introducing and popularizing the idea of multiple dimensions existing to the wider public. With all that being said, this man’s legacy is nothing to scoff at, but he also was a bit of a nut job at the same time. With all that being said; This has been Tucker Koch, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this.
