a b c *c d e f g h i j k l m n o p r s *s t u v z *z
Three letters carry a diacritic: a caron (hacheck, check). Unfortunately (ISO Latin 1) character set does not contain these characters (but (ISO Latin 2) does), and so we have devised several ways of writing slovene words on ASCII terminals.
Other popular character encodings supporting Slovene characters are:
IBM Code Page 852 and Microsoft Code Page 1250 (Microsoft Windows Latin 2).
Scientific Endeavor in Slovenia
The Freising Text - the earliest known Slovene and Slavonic document in
the Latin script - was written around the year 1000. The humanist movement in
Slovenia began a few centuries later, at the end of the 14th and the beginning of
the 15th century. It gave rise to a whole range of great thinkers who were active in
European courts and universities, including: Tomaz Prelokar (see character set), a bishop
and tutor of the future Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I; Bernard Preger, Dean of the
University of Vienna and author of a very successful Latin textbook with German
annotation (about 30 editions); Matija Hvale, professor at the University of Vienna
and a proponent of the universal philosophy of nature; Andrej Perlah, Dean of the
University of Vienna and a scholar of encyclopaedic knowledge; Sigismund Herberstein,
the diplomat from Vipava who acquainted Europe in his travel book from Russia
(1st edition 1549) with that distant, little-known country. In 1531, Turkey was
described in a similar way by Benedikt Kuripecic from Gornji Grad. A more recent
representative of humanism in Slovenia was Dr. Sanctorio Sanctori, a native of Koper,
who worked in Italy at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century.
He introduced precise measurements - chiefly of body temperature - into medicine, and
with his research of the digestive system, he was also a forerunner of modern physiology.
Another milestone in Slovenian scientific history was the discovery of Mercury
in Idrija in 1490. Idrija became the second biggest mine of this metal in the world,
after Almaden in Spain. The subsequent 500-year extraction of Mercury in Idrija was a
powerful stimulus to the development of science, medicine and technology in Slovenia and
in the greater European continent. In the first half of the 16th century the famous
physician and alchemist Paracelsus visited Idrija. He became the first to use Mercury
systematically as a medicine. In the second half of the 18th century, Johann Anton Scopoli,
a well-known physician from the Tyrol, and Balthazar Hacquet, a physician and natural
scientist from Brittany, worked near the mine. Both of them described the mine in Idrija
and its geological, technological and ecological properties in their works and passed on
the knowledge of the peculiarities of Slovenia to Europe. Franc Anton Steinberg
scientifically described the operation of the mine as early as the first half of the 18th
century. The Idrian geodesist Jozef Mrak, who designed the well-known flood dams in 1772,
worked with Scopoli and Hacquet. In the second half of the 19th century,
Marko Vicenc Lipold combined science and technology in managing the mine by introducing a
modern geological approach to mining. The tradition was carried on after the Second World
War by Ivan Mlakar, the geologist, who, through a precise scientific approach, mastered
the extremely complicated Idrian deposit and set up the
internationally renowned and recognized Idrian Geological School.
In the 18th century, the majority of the most prominent Slovenians
worked abroad: Augustin Hallerstein from Menges became President of
the Mathematical Board, and astronomer and mandarin at the Chinese court in Peking;
the widely accomplished Ziga Popovic established oceanography as a science with his
book Essay on the Sea (1750); in 1752, the physician Anton Marko Plencic suggested that
microorganisms might be the cause of infectious diseases; Anton Jansa became Professor of
Apiculture at the Viennese Court - his complete treatise on apiculture was published
posthumously in 1775; the mathematician and ballistics expert Jurij Vega established
ballistics as a scientific discipline. His logarithmic tables were published between 1783
and 1797, and they remained the most commonly used technique for calculation until the
introduction of electronic computers. The mathematical approach to science influenced the
work of the philosopher Akantra Mislej, who produced a universal philosophical-mathematical
system in 1814.
The main figure in the progress made during the Enlightenment towards the end
of the 18th century in Slovenia was the entrepreneur, Baron Ziga Zois. As a patron and
inventor, he encouraged literary and scientific aspirations. Among other accomplishments,
in 1778, Zois funded the first ascent of Mount Triglav, at 2864 meters the highest Slovene
peak and the national symbol. He was also the key supporter of the first attempted flight
in a hot-air balloon in 1784. From his circle emerged Anton Tomaz Linhart, the first
Slovene dramatist and an early Slovene historian, and Jernej Kopitar, who in 1809 compiled
the first scientific Grammar of the Slovene Language. The surgeon Vincent Kern, a
contemporary, was the most respected man in his field in Vienna. He was especially
renowned for his success in treating post-operative infections, common in the pre-aseptic
era.
The beginning of the 19th century in Slovenia was marked by the introduction
of steam power. In 1818, the first steamship sailed from Trieste to Venice. In 1819, the
first industrial steam engine was set up in Trieste, followed by the first steam engine in
Ljubljana in 1835. Soon after, steam power was used for the first time in the Idrija mine.
Josef Ressel, an inventor of Czech-German origin, developed his idea for a ship's screw
propeller while he was working in Ljubljana; he patented it in 1827 and in Trieste
two years later, he became the first in the world to use it in civil navigation. The
introduction of steam power reached its peak in Slovenia in 1849 and 1857, when the
railway line from Vienna reached Ljubljana and Trieste respectively.
Other events of importance included the opening of the Museum of the
Province of Carniola in 1831. Among the inventors, Janez Puhar excelled in 1842 with
his glass plate photography. In 1830, Frederik Baraga, a missionary who later became a
bishop, started working among the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians in Canada. He was an
important researcher of ethnology and linguistics and the author of the first grammar of
one of the Indian languages. In 1850, another Slovenian missionary, Ignacij Knoblehar,
named Abuna Soliman, advanced 4100 km along the White Nile from the Nile Delta, reaching
farther than any other contemporary explorer. In the period between 1852 and 1875, Franc
Miklosic wrote his masterpiece, an extensive Comparative Grammar of Slavic Languages. In
1886 the same author published his dictionary of Slavic languages. In 1853, Peter Kozler
tried to define the ethnic borders of the Slovene counties for the first time. In 1854,
the Viennese geographer Adolf Schmidl established speleology as a new world science with
his work on the Slovene Karst caves.
Franc Wels, a Slovenian engineer, developed the world's first flying wing,
basing his design on the shape of a plant seed; using this aircraft, in 1906 he completed
the first powerless flights in Austria-Hungary. At the end of 1909, Edvard Rusjan was the
first to fly a power-plane in Slovenia and this region of Europe. In 1911, Ivan Slokar was
granted a patent for the invention of a powered aircraft with two revolving rotors instead
of wings. Such aircraft, however, only became technically feasible 25 years later.
In 1914, Julij Nardin, a professor of physics at the Idrija Technical High School,
worked on a patent application of his idea for a two-stage rocket. In the sea, the
rocket would become a self-propelled torpedo. It would operate using a program printed
on a perforated strip. Thus Nardin was one of the first to introduce cybernetics to
Slovenia. Dagobert Mueller successfully tested his construction of a hovercraft in 1916
(literature cites the year 1955 as the year of this invention). At that time, a physician,
Fritz Pregl, who worked in Graz, developed a microanalysis technique for organic chemistry,
for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1923, becoming the only Slovene scientist to
receive the award.
In 1938, just prior to World War II, the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and
Arts was founded in Ljubljana. The first president was an expert in the Slovene language,
Rajko Nahtigal. Today, the Academy has 64 regular members and the president is France
Bernik, a well-known expert in comparative literature and literary theory. A major part
of the Academy's scientific program is carried out by its Research Center, comprising 14
institutes. Many of the institutes have been named after some of the most renowned experts
in their field. The Institute of the Slovene Language is named after Fran Ramovs, the
greatest authority on the history of the Slovene language. The Institute of History is
named after Milko Kos, who dedicated his central work to the questions of the origin,
migration and adaptation of the Slovenes to Slovenia. The Institute of Art History is
named after one of Slovenia's greatest historians, France Stele. The Institute of
Geography is named after Anton Melik, whose extensive work Slovenia is still unequaled.
The Paleontological Institute bears the name of its founder, geologist and paleontologist
Ivan Rakovec. The Institute of Biology is named after Jovan Hadzi, the proponent of the
theory of the evolution of lower metazoa.
There are a number of prominent experts in many other professions. The
psychologist Anton Trstenjak is an expert of broad profile, ranging from pastoral
psychology to experimental and clinical psychology, and to the psychology of creativity.
Many distinguished scientists are committed to the study of Slovenian literature and language, the latter field being most thoroughly dealt with recently by Joze Toporisic. In the field of historic sciences, a lively polemic has developed with Bogo Grafenauer's demand for a revision of the established interpretation of Slovenian history, and in particular the interpretation of the origins of the Slovenes. In theology, attention is focused on the treatise on the ethics of human decision-making by Joze Krasovec, who holds four doctoral degrees. Aleksander Bajt is engaged in economic forecasting, for which he has laid the scientific foundations. A very important task which demands our immediate attention is scientific development planning, since the overall development of mankind and its subsets - nations - depend to an ever greater extent on such planning. For this reason, efforts in Slovenia to achieve an overview of the (past and present) development of science, to master the methods of scientific forecasting and planning, in short, to establish the scientific study of science, have been
strengthened lately.