John Draper

British–American chemist (1811–1882)

Draper, who was born in St. Helens, Lancashire, was educated at University College, London, before he emigrated to America in 1833. He qualified in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1836. After a short period teaching in Virginia he moved to New York University (1838) where he taught chemistry and in 1841 helped to start the medical school of which he became president in 1850.

Most of his chemical work was done in the field of photochemistry. He was one of the first scientists to use Louis Daguerre's new invention (1837) of photography. He took the first photograph of the Moon in 1840 and in the same year took a photograph of his sister, Dorothy, which is the oldest surviving photographic study of the human face. In 1843 he obtained the first photographic plate of the solar spectrum. He was also one of the first to take photographs of specimens under a microscope. On the theoretical level Draper was one of the earliest to grasp that only those rays that are absorbed produce chemical change and that not all rays are equally powerful in their effect. He also, in a series of papers (1841–45), showed that the amount of chemical change is proportional to the intensity of the absorbed radiation multiplied by the time it has to act. Draper's work was continued and largely confirmed by the work of Robert Bunsen and Henry Roscoe in 1857. Draper's work also resulted in the development of actinometers (instruments to measure the intensity of light). He also wrote on a wide variety of other topics.

Draper's son Henry was an astronomer of note after whom the famous Harvard catalog of stellar spectra was named.

The Anglo-American scientist and historian John William Draper (1811-1882) pioneered in scientific applications of photography and popularized a "scientific" approach to social and intellectual history.

John William Draper was born near Liverpool, England, on May 5, 1811. He did premedical studies at University College, London. In 1832 Draper, his wife, mother, and sisters sailed to America.

Settling in Mecklenburg County, Va., Draper began scientific research in his own laboratory. He experimented in capillary attraction and published on a variety of scientific subjects. He completed his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1836, then returned to Virginia to become professor of chemistry and natural philosophy at Hampden-Sidney College. He contributed to British and American scholarly journals. In 1838 he was appointed professor of chemistry and botany at the University of the City of New York.

Draper's career as a research scientist flowered from 1839 to 1856. His earliest important project involved him in a race with Samuel F. B. Morse to be the first in America to apply the photographic technique of the French inventor Louis Daguerre to portraiture. In solving these problems Draper developed expansive notions about the uses of photography in scientific investigation. A brilliant experimentalist, he was especially important for outlining the scientific applications of photography. He pioneered in expanding beyond both extremes of the visible spectrum with photographic techniques and was a founder of the theory of photochemical absorption.

Draper helped establish the medical school of the University of the City of New York and became its president in 1850. His Human Physiology (1856) marked the end of his scientific career.

Draper's second career - in history and social analysis - grew out of his first. He believed in the possibility of progress through science and technology and wrote about history and society with the conviction that a "scientific" approach to society was desirable. His History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1863) traced the history of Western thought. Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America (1865) and a three-volume History of the American Civil War (1867-1870), the first serious history of the war, followed. His last major work, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874), was a condensation of his 1863 book.

Convinced that nature was the compulsive force behind history, Draper in his version of environmental determinism emphasized climate. Although his histories are seriously defective, he was a pioneer in the history of ideas. After his death on Jan. 4, 1882, Draper's reputation as a scientist diminished while his fame as a historian flourished.

Further Reading

Donald H. Fleming, John William Draper and the Religion of Science (1950), is an excellent biography. For background material see Nathan Reingold, ed., Science in Nineteenth-Century America (1964), and Howard S. Miller, Pursuit of Science in Nineteenth Century America (1969).

Quotes:

"Of the events of life we may have some control. but over the law of its progress none."

"Sympathy is never wasted except when you give it to yourself."

John T. Draper
Captain Crunch, Crunch and Crunchman or Mr. Crunshtastic
Born	1944 (1944)
Website www.webcrunchers.com/crunch/

For the scientist, see John William Draper

John Thomas Draper (born 1944), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman (after Cap'n Crunch, the mascot of a breakfast cereal), is a former phone phreak.

Contents 1 Background 2 Software developer 3 Legends 4 References 5 External links

Background

Draper was the son of a U.S. Air Force engineer; he described his father as distant in an interview published on the front page of the Jan 13-14, 2007 issue of The Wall Street Journal. Draper himself entered the Air Force in 1964, and while stationed in Alaska helped his fellow servicemen make free phone calls home by devising access to a local telephone switchboard. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1968 and did military-related work for several employers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He adopted the counterculture of the times and operated a pirate radio station out of a Volkswagen van. Draper is infamous for his, generally, poor hygiene and dental record ^[1].

Cap'n Crunch Bosun whistle CA 1971.

== Phreaking

Software developer

Draper wrote EasyWriter, the first word processor for the Apple II, in 1979. According to The Wall Street Journal, he hand-wrote the code while serving nights in the Alameda County Jail, then entered the code later into a computer. However, another account had him writing the code as he served his four-month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc, California.

Draper's own webpage, and personal communication with him, furnishes a more realistic version[2] of the coding of EasyWriter. Draper was in prison, in California, at the time, but under a 'work furlough' program. This meant that while he had to spend every night in prison, he spent each day working a regular job, outside prison.This job was at Receiving Studios, a small band practice studio, and while there he had access to a computer, where he coded EasyWriter. He did take copies of the code 'home' to prison overnight to work on it.

Draper later ported EasyWriter to the IBM PC, beating Bill Gates on the bid for the IBM contract. Draper's company, Capn' Software, posted less than $1 million revenue over six years, and he subsequently sued his software's distributor, Bill Baker, over an unauthorized version of EasyWriter that Baker released. In the 1980s, Draper worked for Autodesk, but was laid off. His eccentric behavior sometimes led to difficulties with potential clients. Shortly after Apple released Macintosh, he taught an online course in Mac programming. Currently he writes computer security software, is senior developer of KanTalk!^[2] VoIP software for teen singer/software model Kandice Melonakos,^[3] and host of an internet show, Crunch TV.

Draper is Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for media delivery company En2go, that delivers music, video and other digital content to desktops.^[4]

Legends

One oft-repeated story featuring Captain Crunch goes as follows: Draper picked up a public phone, then proceeded to "phreak" his call around the world. At no charge, he routed a call through different phone switches in countries such as Japan, Russia and England. Once he had set the call to go through dozens of countries, he dialed the number of the public phone next to him. A few minutes later, the phone next to him rang. Draper spoke into the first phone, and, after quite a few seconds, he heard his own voice very faintly on the other phone. Draper also claimed that he and a friend once managed to place a direct call to the White House and spoke directly with someone who sounded like Richard Nixon; Draper's friend told the man about a toilet paper shortage in Los Angeles.^[5] Draper was also a member of the Homebrew Computer Club.^[6]

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ http://www.voipcentral.org/entry/pop-singer-kandice-melonakos-launching-her-own-voip/
3. ^ http://www.voipcentral.org/entry/interview-with-kandice-melonakos/
4. ^ Stories of Apple | Captain Crunch on Apple - An interview with John Draper
5. ^ Rhoads, Chris (2007). The Twilight Years of Cap'n Crunch. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB116863379291775523-lMyQjAxMDE3NjE4MzYxMzMzWj.html
6. ^ Wozniak, S. G. (2006), iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-06143-4.

External links

• John Draper's homepage
• The Twilight Years of Cap'n Crunch - WSJ.com
• Esquire Blue Box article October 1971
• Digitales Woodstock - DER SPIEGEL 34/1997 vom 18.08.1997, Seite 166
• involvement with Bill SF and BART Card duplication - Phrack Magazine
• "Captain Crunch" at the Rotten Library
• CrunchTV.net
• Kandice Music
• En2go.com John Draper is currently CTO
• The Origins of Phreaking - An article from Blacklisted! 411 Magazine by Gary D. Robson
• Interview with John Draper (circa 1995)
• Interview with John Draper on UK Hacker Voice Radio - (January 2006)
• John Draper's work at Autodesk and BART Card duplication (Digibarn May 2006)
• Discovery_Channel_-_The_History_Of_Hacking_Documentary, Interview with John Draper
• Stories of Apple: Captain Crunch on Apple - An interview with John Draper

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