The History of Video Games

A Discovery channel feature: The History of Computer Games

Isaac Newton's Dark Secret: The Scientist who Tried to Produce the Philosopher's Stone

Too many conspiracy theories lately. Too much of the Knights Templar and Free Masons and all that. Some of the stories may be true - but who's to tell? We'll never actually know - exactly as we won't know if the landing of the moon was fake.

Still, if someone says that Issac Newton had a few dark secrets up his sleeve, I might check it out.

A page of Newton's notebook has been decoded - or say the site claims: "[The Notebook is] more like an enigma wrapped in a mystery riddled with a number of misleading clues". The page consists of some very cryptic text - related to Alchemy, of all things. You can take a look at the page, in an interactive window, with notes and explanations.

Historian Bill Newman says that "If you look at the experimental notebooks that he kept for about 30 years, it really is impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was trying to produce the philosophers' stone. But I don't think he was doing it to gain monetary wealth".

The philosophers' stone was thought to be an agent of universal transmutation. It also was viewed as an agent that could "cure" metals of their impurities and cure human beings of their illnesses.