6 ms·

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci,

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. - Harry Lime, The Third Man

vmception 5y ago
And an international brand and perfect geopolitical positioning as if production is the coveted metric
collias 5y ago
The very conflict this article is about gave birth the the Red Cross.
- Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
  While General Dufour (who had commanded the Federal forces in the Sonderbund War) was one of the five-man founding committee, the event that precipitated the founding of the Red Cross was the visit of Henri Dunant to the battlefield at Solferino immediately after the battle. The Battle of Solferino (part of the Second War of Italian Independence, in which an alliance of France and Sardinia defeated Austria) took place 12 years after the Sonderbund War, in 1859. As far as I know Dunant had taken no part in the Sonderbund War- he was a student in Geneva at the time- and neither had anyone else on the committee apart from Dufour. In fact, two of them had been outside Switzerland at the time.
Archelaos 5y ago
Harry Lime was misinformed. The cuckoo clock is primarily a product from the Black Forest region of southern Germany. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock#%22Chalet%22_style,_the_Swiss_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock#%22Chalet%22_styl...
Bayart 5y ago
The Swiss were actively involved in those very wars in Italy as mercenaries, and that's also where their neutrality originates. At the same time and throughout the Early Modern period, Switzerland was rife withe religious zealotry going awry. It remained an impoverished agrarian country up until the 20th c.
- wwtrv 5y ago
  Until the mid 19th century rather. By 1900 it was already the second richest country per capita in Europe (only behind UK and only Belgium was slightly ahead as well throughout most of the 19th century). Then again almost all European countries could had been described as impoverished and agrarian back then…
panick21_ 5y ago
Northern Italy was an Urban rich region, its not suppressing that they had more intellectual output for 100s of years compared to Switzerland. Switzerland really only emerged in the mid to late 19th century. However the intellectual and scientific output since then on a per population bases can match the Italy.
kragen 5y ago
I'm going to restrict myself entirely to discoveries and inventions before 01900, just before a (German!) patent clerk in the Swiss patent office invented modern physics. The Swiss discovered graph theory, the Ice Age, the Law of Large Numbers and actually most of pre-Laplacian probability theory, cavitation, DNA, topology, ozone, the modern mathematical concept of "function", metal ion complexation by ligands, the endothelium, e, stevia and several thousand other plant and arthropod species, arguably logarithms, the molecular structure of cocaine, the nuclei of comets, classical beam theory and in particular the critical load of buckling beams, nitrocellulose (aka smokeless powder and celluloid), the laws of hydrodynamics, the origin of beeswax, convergent evolution (de Candolle), the composition of alcohol, the hyperbolic functions, dolomite, the Balmer formula for the spectrum of hydrogen, the atmospheric origin of plant carbon content, light-entrained circadian rhythms, the irrationality of π, the Lambert law for diffuse illumination, and the contagious nature of syphilis. They also did an enormous amount of careful work in the 17th through 19th centuries on cataloging and systematizing fossils, stratigraphy, geography, plant taxonomy, fossil animal taxonomy, etc., that underpins our modern understanding of the history of Earth and life. That work isn't so easily summarized in a list of discoveries, because it wasn't the discovery of one single species or mineral that led to the insights, but the accumulated weight of many thousands. They also invented Calvinism (to which Congregationalism, Puritanism, and Presbyterianism belong), invar, the Argand lamp (the main light source other than the fireplace in most European and American homes during the 19th century), Saussurian semiotics, most of current mathematical notation, jewel bearings, arguably Wagner's Ring cycle of operas, the transverse Mercator projection and actually most modern map projections, caissons, the cross-beat escapement, absinthe, solar ovens (Horace de Saussure), passivation of iron by pickling, the remontoire, the fuel cell, the rack-and-pinion railway, the internal-combustion-powered automobile (the de Rivaz engine, running on hydrogen, in 01808), the full metal jacket bullet, the first practical hygrometer, Rousseau's political philosophy, forensic facial reconstruction, the high-explosive artillery shell, the roller chain, malleable cast iron [edit: maybe not], the microtome, the tourbillon escapement, milk chocolate, and scientific medicine (post-Galenic, cleaning wounds and using drugs with knowledge of their lethal doses). And Jaquet-Droz's automaton called The Writer is perhaps the most astounding Swiss invention of all: an android containing a programmable pen plotter using a vector font, completed by 01774, 248 years ago. Maybe we should give them some credit for inventing modern democracy, too. Suck it, Leonardo.
SyzygistSix 5y ago
That and HR Geiger.
ornornor 5y ago
LSD, also. And many other things as listed further down.

vmception 5y ago

And an international brand and perfect geopolitical positioning as if production is the coveted metric

collias 5y ago

The very conflict this article is about gave birth the the Red Cross.

Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
While General Dufour (who had commanded the Federal forces in the Sonderbund War) was one of the five-man founding committee, the event that precipitated the founding of the Red Cross was the visit of Henri Dunant to the battlefield at Solferino immediately after the battle. The Battle of Solferino (part of the Second War of Italian Independence, in which an alliance of France and Sardinia defeated Austria) took place 12 years after the Sonderbund War, in 1859. As far as I know Dunant had taken no part in the Sonderbund War- he was a student in Geneva at the time- and neither had anyone else on the committee apart from Dufour. In fact, two of them had been outside Switzerland at the time.

Archelaos 5y ago

Harry Lime was misinformed. The cuckoo clock is primarily a product from the Black Forest region of southern Germany. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock#%22Chalet%22_style,_the_Swiss_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock#%22Chalet%22_styl...

Bayart 5y ago

The Swiss were actively involved in those very wars in Italy as mercenaries, and that's also where their neutrality originates. At the same time and throughout the Early Modern period, Switzerland was rife withe religious zealotry going awry. It remained an impoverished agrarian country up until the 20th c.

wwtrv 5y ago
Until the mid 19th century rather. By 1900 it was already the second richest country per capita in Europe (only behind UK and only Belgium was slightly ahead as well throughout most of the 19th century). Then again almost all European countries could had been described as impoverished and agrarian back then…

panick21_ 5y ago

Northern Italy was an Urban rich region, its not suppressing that they had more intellectual output for 100s of years compared to Switzerland. Switzerland really only emerged in the mid to late 19th century. However the intellectual and scientific output since then on a per population bases can match the Italy.

kragen 5y ago

I'm going to restrict myself entirely to discoveries and inventions before 01900, just before a (German!) patent clerk in the Swiss patent office invented modern physics. The Swiss discovered graph theory, the Ice Age, the Law of Large Numbers and actually most of pre-Laplacian probability theory, cavitation, DNA, topology, ozone, the modern mathematical concept of "function", metal ion complexation by ligands, the endothelium, e, stevia and several thousand other plant and arthropod species, arguably logarithms, the molecular structure of cocaine, the nuclei of comets, classical beam theory and in particular the critical load of buckling beams, nitrocellulose (aka smokeless powder and celluloid), the laws of hydrodynamics, the origin of beeswax, convergent evolution (de Candolle), the composition of alcohol, the hyperbolic functions, dolomite, the Balmer formula for the spectrum of hydrogen, the atmospheric origin of plant carbon content, light-entrained circadian rhythms, the irrationality of π, the Lambert law for diffuse illumination, and the contagious nature of syphilis. They also did an enormous amount of careful work in the 17th through 19th centuries on cataloging and systematizing fossils, stratigraphy, geography, plant taxonomy, fossil animal taxonomy, etc., that underpins our modern understanding of the history of Earth and life. That work isn't so easily summarized in a list of discoveries, because it wasn't the discovery of one single species or mineral that led to the insights, but the accumulated weight of many thousands. They also invented Calvinism (to which Congregationalism, Puritanism, and Presbyterianism belong), invar, the Argand lamp (the main light source other than the fireplace in most European and American homes during the 19th century), Saussurian semiotics, most of current mathematical notation, jewel bearings, arguably Wagner's Ring cycle of operas, the transverse Mercator projection and actually most modern map projections, caissons, the cross-beat escapement, absinthe, solar ovens (Horace de Saussure), passivation of iron by pickling, the remontoire, the fuel cell, the rack-and-pinion railway, the internal-combustion-powered automobile (the de Rivaz engine, running on hydrogen, in 01808), the full metal jacket bullet, the first practical hygrometer, Rousseau's political philosophy, forensic facial reconstruction, the high-explosive artillery shell, the roller chain, malleable cast iron [edit: maybe not], the microtome, the tourbillon escapement, milk chocolate, and scientific medicine (post-Galenic, cleaning wounds and using drugs with knowledge of their lethal doses). And Jaquet-Droz's automaton called The Writer is perhaps the most astounding Swiss invention of all: an android containing a programmable pen plotter using a vector font, completed by 01774, 248 years ago. Maybe we should give them some credit for inventing modern democracy, too. Suck it, Leonardo.

SyzygistSix 5y ago

That and HR Geiger.

ornornor 5y ago

LSD, also. And many other things as listed further down.