Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books

Floating Transoceanic Airports Network, 1930's

ITEM: Application of Seadrome Ocean Dock Corporation (a private corporation) for a Loan Under the Provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act, printed ca. 1933.  11x8 inches, 34pp.  WIth two original photographs one of teh floating airports, and a map.  This copy come from the White House Library, posted 1933. Printed wrappers.  Very nice copy.  $175

This short shelf-lived idea was that of Edward R. Armstrong (1880-1955), who in 1927  first published his plan for a series of ocean-moored 1200’x200’ floating platforms standing 100' above the waves for refueling and whatnot for transcontinental flights.  These five-acre stations—named the “Langley” in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley¹-- would be placed every 375 miles across the ocean.  Or perhaps there would be just five of these floating emplacements--the data changes. It doesn’t look like a very practical (or good) idea, but Armstrong received a $750,000 piece of development change from du Pont and GM, which was major dollars in 1929. 

 

Armstrong’s idea would get major play in the popular press from time-to-time, his project renamed “The Seadrome” and discussed as a series of floating islands.  Armstrong himself would organize the Seadrome Ocean Dock Corp. in the late 1930’s, his pretty but enormously impractical idea (reported by Time Magazine² in 1933 as little more than “a perennial gift to Sunday feature editors”)  finally grinding to a salty end with greater fuel capacity and efficiency in transatlantic aircraft. 

An even worse idea appeared in the pages of Science and Mechanics in 1936:

 
Notes:

1. A Time Magazine article published 28 October 1929 [a day before the market crashed!] about the Langley oddly states that Langley was the “designer of the plane which, except for accidents, might have flown before the Wrights' plane did in 1903”.  Tough potatoes. What the magazine didn’t state was that Langley, who was the president of the Smithsonian Institution at the time with access to major money and benefactors simply went about the flight problem incorrectly, and produced an airplane (or “aerodrome”, as he called it) that did not and would not fly. Not flying because of accidents means, well, not flying.  The Wrights’ approach to problem solving was elegant and beat Langley by miles.  Langley deserves credit for his other (many) achievements, but not for this aircraft.

 

This same article only references Armstrong as a “swarthy engineer" (the article is reprinted below).

The following document, Application of Seadrome Ocean Dock Corporation (a private corporation) for a Loan Under the Provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act (ca. 1933) asks the federal government for a loan of $30 million (depression) dollars to undertake the construction of the five  floating airport transoceanic network.  "It will require the work of approximately 10,000 men per month for a period of twenty-four to thirty months".  The labor figures did not nclude that necessary to produce all of the material necessary for the project ( for reasons unknown).  The palnes would have been to make it across the ocean in 18 to 36 hours.  

 

The members of the Seadrome Corporation estimated that the entire 30 million would be paid back by 1945,  and that the corporation would be completely debt-free.  Perhaps all of  this made sense when Armstrong first developed the plan in 1913; but even by 1933 it was becoming quite obvious that non-stop transoceanic flight was coming, and coming soon.  That would of course make an investment in the Seadrome project superfluous, like building an antique, though an unnecessary one. The first transatlantic non-stop flight was made by John Alcock and Arthur W. Brown in 1919--by the early 1950's jet aircraft would be making the trip with regularity, which means that  for most of the life of the completed Seadrome it would have been unnecessary.  I feel certain that the Seadrome--which was supposed to be paid off by 1945, though in 1933 there was no inkling on the part of the Corporation members who wrote the request for hte money that a war was looming and that there would have been almost no way for them to have been made at any time betweem 1939 and 1945--would never have been paid for. 

Future Steampunk in the Air-1930's/1940's Popular Science

ITEMS (as listed below), all from the 1930's/1950's, as described and illustrated, each 10x8 or 8x6.5 ", and original. Nice condition.  $25.

Ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1279

In a continuing thread on Steampunk themes I've organized some of my 1930's cover art into themes--first up were examples of waterborne-Steampunk, which is now followed by an airborne-Steampunk, and then by Steampunk Land and Steampunk WTH(?)   Steampunk as a general idea is a class of technology that is large, clanging, oily, greasy, heavy, shiny, smoky, and usually driven by steam power, (though other power sources can be applied)  Some make sense today, some don't--most of the machines addressed for a particular use have actually been implemented here in the not-too-distant future of the 1930's, and usually much more elegantly than could've been imagined then (obviously).  But I must say that given the times and the tools, these people did a great job, if not for the reason of the invention but for pushing the idea-ball forward.  

An ABC of Bombing, 1940

ITEM:  After the Air Raid, an A,B,C, of Information,by the Bute County Council,  was published around 1940.  Fine condition.  $45

I’ve written on this blog on some odd alphabets, and I’m certainly aware of some unusual alphabet books (like the alphabet of acronyms for some of FDR’s social creations and an alphabet book for socially conscience city planning ca. 1940), and there are endless alphabet books for young people learning how to read, but I don’t remember ever seeing an ABC book for bombing.  Actually, its ABCs for after the bombing:

After the Air Raid, an A,B,C, of Information,by the Bute County Council,  was published around 1940.  This was printed in the town of Rothesay (by the “Rothesay Express”), which of course places publication in Scotland (though the Bute that I know is a county in North Carolina, 275 miles from where I sit–an old, 1760's-founded county, up near the border of Virginia, closing in on the coat...its not-for-nothing that they call my part of the state “the Southern Highlands”, what with the huge influx of Scots/Irish coming into this area in the 18th 19th centuries).  It’s a curious publication, not the least of which is the unlikely place of its origin. 

Another curious thing is that no other copy of this slight publication shows up in WorldCat/First Search–not only that, but there are precious few publications that are found in the 1940-1950 era with “after” and “air raid” in their titles. (The few I found are below.)

The six-page pamphlet manages to cover 15 letters of the alphabet, plus a question mark at the end, for questions.

The entries are very economical, tidy, and well written:

“Money.
If you are in need as a result of enemy action, you should explain your circumstances to the Assistance Board Officer who, if satisfied with your case, will help you.”

“Orphans
Notification should be sent to the Information Centre of any children who have become orphans as a result of air raids.”

“Tools
You may obtain a grant to replace tools which are essential to your work, apply to Employment Exchange for assistance.”   

Very matter-of-fact.  I should think that if you needed to consult a work like this after having been bombed, that you’d want your information compact and direct.

Finding Unseen Things In and From the Air

ITEMS: Each item 13x10 inches tall, and original, from The Illustrated London News, as described below.  Each $35

Finding the hard-to-find, the invisible, the "hidden", is an essential aspect of, well, mostly everything.  Whether it is Newton separating light with a prism to find its constituents, or Hooke investigating the formerly quasi-real microscopical world to reveal worlds within worlds, or Galileo using his telescope to quash the ideas of the unaided-eye visible night sky as an unaltering perfection of creation, or Roentgen seeing through his wife's skin, or Fraunhoefer finding the complex spectrum, or Henry Draper determining a chemical constituent of the sun, or the invention of the zero or negative numbers or subtraction, of finding Black Holes or other planets or the remnants of the Big Bang, or (Kandinsky) finding the nonrepresentational aspect of art, or Duchamp finding in an upturned urinal that art had no boundaries...the list goes on and on.

One aspect of this "finding something in nothing" business that is interesting to look at because it is so local and discernible--and recent--is in air navigation and detection.  And I'll do this using a series of excellent illustrations from The Illustrated London News, all of which are from the 1927-1938 period.

The first is relatively simple, at least simple from here in the year 2010, which shows four pilots being briefed on weather conditions with a aerial chart for conditions along intercontinental routes.  The placement of these symbols represented a vast improvement over the earlier systems of readying pilots for what weather ay ahead, if indeed there were any communications at all.  This represents an early look at a codification of conditions and expectations for air travelers--a display of new and important data in 1927. 

Next is a brilliant device for assisting pilots to land in foggy and dark conditions--actually on how to find the ground safely.  In 1927 (again) a RADAR-like system was put into place on aircraft that involved receiving the signals of an ac-pulsed buried electrical cable that surrounded an airport.  The receiver (seen here on the flight panel of the pilot in an open-air cockpit) would be read to reveal proximity of the airport, the pilot making wider and then closer spirals in descent until his was basically within the buried airport cables and thus able to land.

Prior to WWII RADAR¹ was somewhat functional but still in development, and as we see in this set of 16 July 1938 illustrations, the key methods for finding enemy aircraft at night (in order to shoot it down of course) was an audio-visual method, using "sound-locators" to find the approaching bombers and then spotlights to illuminate and track them to their destruction.  

These images represent some idea of the state of the art of being able to find things--like the ground at night or approaching enemy aircraft--in the 1927-1938 period, all of which would be drastically changed in just the next two years.

NOTES

1. RADAR was coming very close to being developed in the early 1930's--and in 1935 the process of experimentation and implementation was at a peak.  The development of this new technology was an international property, though perhaps no one owned it more in this period than the British, with Watson Watt giving his experimental ideas on RADAR to the Air Ministry on 12 February 1935 in a secret report titled "The Detection of Aircraft by Radio Methods". Int his years alone there was feverish work being done by  Rudolf Kühnhold (Scientific Director at the 'Kriegsmarine  Nachrichtenmittel-Versuchsanstalt) who in 1933-1935 estanlished a RADAR-hunting company called Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische und Mechanische Apparate, or "GEMA"; there was also elements of the Royal Navy, Telefunken, Standard Elektrik Lorenz, Philips Company's  (of Eindhoven, Netherlands) Natuurkundig Laboratorium, the Research Office of Nippon Electric Company, and even in the Soviet Union (until the key figures involved were murdered in Stalin's purges--this one distinguished from others and referred to now as The Great Purge-- of 1937), the French Compagnie Générale de Télégraphie Sans Fil (CSF), and  the Italian Regio Instituto Electrotecnico e delle Comunicazioni (RIEC, Royal Institute for Electro-technics and Communications) to name a few.  The United States of course had been long working on the project, at least since 1922 at the NRL, with considerable private (and federally funded) work done by RCA

.
Whipping ahead into WWII a very significant "battle of the beams" began between the U.K. and Germany, especially during the Battle of Britain, involving countermeasures, espionage, propaganda and false-positives in regards to the use and development of radio-based tracking and detection--the U.K. particularly making use of this technology in a wide-spread air defence system.  But it was in the United States in 1940 (and really by the U.S. Navy) that RADAR got its name (for RAdio Detection And Ranging) as well as its great impetus for development and deployment.

WWII Aircraft Cross Sections

ITEM:  Series of WWII aviation cross sections, all 1940-1944, all 13x10 inches. 

I'm sharing some of the collectrion here of the published work of George.H. Davis (1881-1963), the prolific and vastly accomplished artist for The Illustrated London News. His work with that magazine for the forty or so years that I am familiar with is superb, and his great strengths can be found in rendering technical cross sections and infographics.  He had a great sense of design and a very fine hand, and so far as I can tell he displayed an excellent control of his subject, thousands and thousands of times (2,500 times, according to Mr. Davis).

Here are some fabulous examples of technological cross sections of WWII aircraft by Davis--the drawings are just superb, and you can easily get lost in them, following the geogrpahy of engineering detail from one logical place to the next.

Blohm u. Voss BV141 $75

This is the Blohm u. Voss "BV 141"a very unusual-looking aircraft, and it appeared in The Illustrated London News for 23 May 1942, and it gives an excellent view of what the editors called "a lop-sided freak".  Perhaps the editors of the ILN wanted to educate its readers on the plane since it was supposed to be widely employed on the Russian Front, though it looks like only 38 were ever built (and none survive today). Actually, the plane, designed by Dr. Richard Vogt (1894-1979),  was a high-flying three-seater  surveillance aircraft capable of 220 mph at 17,000 feet, powered by a single 1000 hp Bramo Fafnir 9-cylinder radial engine.  The idea for the design was to give the pilot and co-pilot a very wide field of view--and by this, I'm guessing that the field of view most affected and aided by this would be straight down. The rear gunner also had an enormous field of view. 

As it turns out Vogt survived the war and spent his Golden Years in the U.S., seven of them (1960-1966) with Boeing to evaluate hydrofoils and vertical liftoff systems:  he had built other odd planes during his career, and carried them with them into near-retirement, making this sort of design his metier.

"The Mustang--Fastest Army Co-operation in the World", appearing in The Illustrated London News for 12 December 1942.  $75

 The Spitfire: $75

 

Strange Things in the Sky Department: Aircraft,1919

ITEM (1): "Launcing an Aeroplane..."  Illustrated London News, 1919.  13x10 inches.  Fine.  $45

ITEM (2):  "The Clapham Junction..."  Illustrated London News, 1919.  10x13 inches.  Fine.  $45

Full descriptions below.

I've written earlier in this blog about odd things found in the sky, some of which is imagined  (holes, extra Earths, blank Heavens, disembodied hands/feet/eyes/ears,proto-human empty aliens,  rat) and some of which were/are possibily real (like this fabulous aircraft with an escape pod for women, located here). [Both of these images are available from our blog bookstore, here.]

These images present incredible, indelible ideas to us here in 2010, images of creations that look more like created steampunk for a retro-futurist novel than something real.  But they were actually state-of-the-art techno advances for their times, decent ideas, solutions for knotty problems that had no better answers than those presented. 

Airwar over Gallipoli--New, Massive Aeroplane-delivered Bombs, 1915

JF Ptak Science Books

Weekly issue of  27 November 1915 for The Illustrated London News. 14x10", 24pp, illsutrated with photos throughout, plus ads.  Complete issue for the week, removed from larger bound volume.  Nice condition.  $35

War Images “Almost as Tall as a Man!  Great Bomb Used by the Allies Airmen at Gallipoli”, as seen on the front cover of The Illustrated London News for 27 November 1915. The campaign at Gallipoli was more than half done, more than half-way closer to the finish, which found the Allies retreating in the midst of high misery, gallant action, and broad death and destruction, with more than 390,000 soldiers from both sides being killed or wounded during the 10 months of the campaign. It was a miserable experience–hot in the summer, coldint he winter, with frostbite, rotting corpses, dysentery, bad food, poor sanitation, supply difficulty, and ultimately a costly stalemate which was supposed to have ended up in an Allied route to Russia. 


The use of bombs by aircraft was still in its infancy at this point, the idea coming into use just a few years before the beginning of the war in 1914–the practice was quickly adapted. This image shows the development of an enormous bomb, though its details and destruction force “are left to the imagination of the reader”
See: Airwar over Gallipoli/Dardenelles