Talk:Ferdinand Verbiest

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A fact from Ferdinand Verbiest appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 23 March 2008.
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[edit] Did You Know...? (23 March 2008)

This was top of the Main Page DYK list on Easter Sunday (afternoon). I think FV would have been pleased with the timing!

Ferdinand Verbiest

EdJogg (talk) 00:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Additional Resources

[edit] General

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
  • Fairfield University page - very good stuff, also suggests that the painting IS of Verbiest, with Chinese features. Plenty of scope for DYKs from here. Now included as ref, but formatting needs work!
  • US-based Chinese (history) site -- absolute goldmine! , including big section on astronomy. This page is about Verbiest and includes a painting (origin unspecified) with photos/descriptions of his instruments on subsequent pages...(better than photos on Commons, unfortunately)
  • Blog by Jerry Everard about a visit to the Observatory museum. Good starting point for the article upgrade.

[edit] Car-specific

Pages that mention his steam 'car'...(difficult to isolate from the Wikipedia mirrors).

Note that Googling "verbiest car -wikipedia" is more productive than including 'steam':

  • Five Cool Hybrids To Consider In 2008 (Part 1), by James Raia, states: "Verbiest was a renowned astronomer. But he also spent more than a decade developing a four-wheeled vehicle that could be powered by steam or horse. It was the first hybrid and it was short-lived." -- was this the same as the 'toy', or something different?
  • The Wheels of Invention...Keep on Rolling -- (casual style) article covering development of wheeled transport. Includes suggestion that Verbiest's 'car' was "...kept at China's beautiful Winter Palace until recently, when it mysteriously disappeared. According to written reports, this little car could chug along at a fairly brisk pace, but when the water ran out so did the ride."
Original refs used on other pages

The timeline entry is of limited worth, when compared to other refs found subsequently.
The worth of the book reference is unknown.

Not just Verbiest's car...

EdJogg (talk) 16:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How big was the 'car'?

Added 5th Feb 2008 was an amendment to show that the model was 61cm long. The next edit added the following 'reference', although it was not inserted in-line:

  • Williams, Guy R. The World Of Model Cars, 1976, Rainbird Reference Books Limited

I have remove these from the text as they were added by an anon editor (who has not edited another article) and I have been unable to corroborate them on-line. They have been retained here for future use, and re-instatement if verification is possible.

EdJogg (talk) 14:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] contradictory caption

Verbiest, depicted in the guise of a Chinese priest-astronomer. (Painting by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1675 (British Museum))

The above appears in the caption of Image:Chinese astronomer 1675.jpg but the artist's article states he lived from 1797 to April 14, 1861. Is the date or the artist wrongly attributed? -84user (talk) 13:00, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

In fact the given cite "Fairfield University: "Fr. Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J." (confirming that Verbiest is the character portrayed in the painting)" does not confirm anything to me as there are no images, no mention of 1675, no mention of Utagawa. Has the wrong citation been used here? Maybe I missed it, if so, please could a precise quote from that cite be added to the ref? -84user (talk) 13:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit conflict] The caption is taken from the description of the image at Commons, which in turn is (apparently) sourced from a caption in an OUP book. Incidentally, it is a featured picture at Commons and was a candidate for Picture of the Year in 2006....so you would have thought someone might have questioned this before!!
Once this is resolved, the original description must be updated.
EdJogg (talk) 13:15, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
The cite quotes: ...his portrait is shown with Chinese features in a famous Japanese print.... When originally cited, the article DID contain images (I can't see them now either.) If you search for images of Verbiest on-line, you will see this image appearing frequently, with more or less description of what it actually shows. As far as I was concerned, the cited page was sufficient to confirm the link between the person in the picure and Verbiest. The article has not attempted to cite who painted the picture, or when, although there is clearly some confusion about it and it is the duty of this article to put the record straight... Anyone have a suitable reference?
EdJogg (talk) 13:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Try http://www.scholarsresource.com/browse/work/2144596467 for a link between artist and painting. (Found by googling ' "British Museum" Verbiest'.) It doesn't mention '1675', although I would guess that is the date portrayed, rather than the date the painting was created.
EdJogg (talk) 13:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

That was quick, I was probably the edit conflict source. I replaced the fairfield cite with your scholarsresource one, and removed the 1675. I now see the 1675 was trying to describe the time period.

I looked at the http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/scientists/verbiest.htm using Internet Archive and older versions also fail to show images. However when you change the "GIF" to "gif" in that page, these images are seen, only not this one. It seems (from this internet archive list ) fairfield must have changed their images between 2006-08-30 and now (maybe to the Utagawa image back in March?), but there are no archives of the "gif" images, only the "GIF" images.

Now, the Wu Yong article states it is of Wu Yong, but no source. -84user (talk) 13:57, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I have now added the same cite to the Wu Yong caption but added a fact tag to the Wu Yong claim. The Japanese wikipedia Wu Yong article (I cannot read it but I follow the internal wikilinks) seems to show the painting is by Utagawa and "of" Verbiest in the style of how "Wu Yong" is depicted. Unless the Japanese editors simply translated the english one. -84user (talk) 14:22, 21 May 2008 (UTC) (fixed my Utagawa Kuniyoshi typos -84user (talk) 15:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC))

That is probably the best approach.
Interestingly, the Wu Yong article does nothing to suggest why the character is surrounded by astronomical instruments ... EdJogg (talk) 00:27, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


I am not quite sure if the this painting is the right one of Ferdinand Verbiest. Although I don't read Japanese, I can surly read the Chinese on the painting which says that it is a portait of Wu Yong and also tells who he is. I am quite sure there is no mentioning of Ferdinand Verbiest, even within the Japanese characters. If it is Ferdinand Verbiest, there must be a story behind it...

Since Wu Yong is a legendary figure in Chinese folk history, a sort of a wise man, a genius who knows everything from astronomy to geography, I am not surprised at all that he is surrounded by astronomical instruments, and it's actually quite adequate... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.7.204.161 (talk) 04:15, 3 June 2008 (UTC)