A&G Minds That Made The Future

Rounding out my favorite inserts from the 2011 Topps Allen & Ginters set is not from the minis category but is one that I am glad Topps chose to add to the release. The Minds That Made The Future set at 40 cards is the largest non-baseball insert set (not counting the 50 States Relic set) but is also the most informative set by far.

Because the list is extremely long and it would take some seriously long and detailed research to cover them all I decided to just list them and hit on a couple that are important to me or contain some interesting facts.

MMF1 Leonardo da Vinci MMF2 Alexander G. Bell MMF3 Eli Whitney MMF4 Nicolaus Copernicus MMF5 Johannes Gutenberg MMF6 George W. Carver MMF7 Samuel Morse MMF8 Granville Woods MMF9 Elisha Otis MMF10 Alessandro Volta

MMF11 Tycho Brahe MMF12 Gregor Mendel MMF13 Carl Linnaeus MMF14 Johannus Kepler MMF15 Isaac Newton MMF16 Marie Curie MMF17 Carl Friedrich Gauss MMF18 Sigmund Freud MMF19 Bernhard Riemann MMF20 Leonhard Euler

MMF21 Robert Fulton MMF22 Ada Lovelace MMF23 Florence Nightingale MMF24 Nikola Tesla MMF25 Galileo Galilei MMF26 Charles Darwin MMF27 Louis Pasteur MMF28 Guglielmo Marconi MMF29 Antoine Lavoisier MMF30 Michael Faraday

MMF31 Dmitri Mendeleev MMF32 Robert Koch MMF33 Euclid MMF34 Archimedes MMF35 Jagadish Chandra Bose MMF36 Aristotle MMF37 John Deere MMF38 George Eastman MMF39 Samuel Colt MMF40 Benjamin Franklin

Leonardo da Vinci- I was fortunate enough to study his art in college, he was advance well beyond his years and is most connected to the European Renaissance artistic movement more than any other artist. He did everything with a scientific approach; he took detailed notes and kept all of his anatomy studies in journals for future reference. Only a few of his paintings remain but a number of his journals have been found detailing his life’s work.

He was known for being a procrastinator, often leaving paintings and other art projects unfinished. Did you know that he would take completed paintings and re-use them by painting over them to try new paints or styles, which would ruin the original painting? See, art school prepared me for an awesome game of Trivial Pursuit.

Samuel Morse-  .... . / .-- .- ... / .- -. / .. -. ...- . -. - --- .-.

 Sorry, I could not help myself there. This dude was a conspiracist that felt other countries were attempting to stymie America’s freedom. He hated immigrants and Catholics, was a racist and an anti-Semite. Strange how those little tid-bits do not make it in to the history books.

Tycho Brahe- He was an astronomer during a time when if your belief did not jive with everyone else you could be tortured or killed but a more interesting fact? His nose was cut off in a duel and he wore a fake nose the remainder of his life made out of copper but on occasion he may have worn a silver or gold nose.

Benjamin Franklin- What da Vinci was to the European Renaissance Franklin was to America’s history. He was a politician but also an inventor and an amazing writer who was able to see the world through other’s eyes. Look up Richard Saunders (Poor Richard), Silence Dogood, Miss Busy Body, Anthony Afterwit or Alice Addertongue and you will get an idea how his mind worked.

 I only pulled the Leonardo da Vinci card from this set, the one card that I really wanted, and it is difficult to find more then a handful of cards sold in a lot together so I definitely will not be building this set.