JF Ptak Science Books

A Proposed Solution for Traffic Congestion, Los Angeles, 1939: Suspended Roadways and Monorails

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This Quick Post entry is a simple one, repeating an entry that I've made to the bookstore section of this blog--I'm doing so just to make the info available, as the booklet is interesting and rare, and possibly a unique.  It is a work by A(lphonse) Davino, of Los Angeles, who had evidently maintained a lifelong interest in advanced transportation systems for cities--in this case, Mr. Davino approached the city of Los Angeles with his system. From what I can see the Davino System was a series of suspended monorails and auto lanes that would be used in conjunction with existing roads to address the increasing metropolitan congestion. If nothing else, Mr. Davino's plans are really quite lovely.  Here's a blueprint for the mainstay structures of the plan:

Defining What "Flying" Is, or Was (1894)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2899    

What does “flight” mean, anyway? How much do you have to be off the ground for something to be “flying”? If the answer is “two feet off the ground for 500 feet”, then Hiram Maxim did indeed succeed in being the first to construct a heavier-than-air aircraft that “flew”. Perhaps this definition might be a little broad, or narrow, though it does make falling sound like flying, too.

In any event, that is what Mr. Maxim (1840-1916) did on 31 July 1894 with his enormous aeroplane as reported in the Scientific American of 15 September 1894 ("Maxim's Flying Machine").  He invested a good amount of money in the project funded by his tremendously successful “Hiram gun”, creating a number of aircraft before settling in on a great beast of a flying machine in 1894.

The image of the aircraft is a perspective looking up at it, as though it were in flight. It wasn't, though it was a semi-romantical thought and presentation. It had big numbers: 7000 pounds, 17.5' diameter propellers, 2 steam-powered 180hp engines, 120' long and 105' wide, and 8” cylinders with a 5” stroke. Big numbers.

One of the images that really struck me though was the steam chamber, which looks absolutely huge (though I can't find dimensions for it), but you can make it out on the aircraft's bow. For test runs 600 pounds of water were needed—2500 pound were needed to generate lift.

So back to the “flight” issue; Mr. Maxim was on board the 3-person-crew aircraft on the day of the test. The aircraft was tethered to an 1800' wooden rail to prevent it from actually taking off if it could...I think mainly because they were really just testing lift, as controlled flight was still yet another enormous issue. The aircraft did manage to achieve lift two feet above the rail, but the force was so great it ripped up the rail and crashed. (Mr. maxim found himself in a somewhat similar position to that of Frankenstein when overpowered by the monster which he himself had fabricated and endowed with life.") No one was hurt, though the aircraft was decimated. As the writer in the Sci Am stated, "the ride in this way was brought to a sudden stop, and it will be several months before it can be renewed". It isn't anything like the Wright's flight nine years later, though some do consider this Maxim experiment to constitute a “first flight”.

One thing is certain: it was a lovely and impressive thing that Maxim built--it wasn't elegant by any means, though it had a certain crushing charm to it.  

Here's a photo of the aircraft (with a person standing right there in front of it, for scale):

(Image source: ctie.monesh.edu.au/hargrave/maxim.html)

Light Bombs, 1913

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2897

In the earliest periods of the history of bombing it seems as though the among the first generations of "bombs" dropped from flying machines were "light" or light sources, as we can see in this pair of illustrations from the Illustrated London News for 30 August 1913. These weapons appeared almost two years after Lt. Giulio Gavotti dropped an actual explosive from his plane on 1 November 1911 in a battle of the Italo-Turkish War¹. Not that the exploding bombs weren't  heavy (they weren't) but that the feature of the weapon dropped in the 1913 case was capable of generating a penetrating or at least illuminating light.  We are told in the legend of the print that the light-bomb dropped from the dirigible was attached to a parachute which opened immediately, and from the height of 1500 ' at release the writer states that it would take the weapon three minutes to descend to the ground. (Of course the illuminated area would get together an tighter in descent, though it seems like there would be a good minute of so where there was some intelligence gathering possibilities.)

Even though this package wasn't exploding, it did provide the observers from above time to gather information on the position of the enemy and relay that data so it could be employed in tactical or strategic manners.  

Notes:

1. Lt. Gavotti (1882-1939) actually dropped four four-pound grenades from a height of 600' from his Etrich Taube monoplane in action against the Ottoman Turks in Libya. This was the first instance of bombing from a heavier-than-air aircraft, bombs being dropped from balloons for several decades already by the turn of the century. Dropping bombs from balloons was deemed an illegal act of war and outlawed in the Hague Convention of 1899--but as the Wright flight was still a few years away at that point there was no provision established for bombing from aircraft that didn't yet exist.  There were other instances of bombing from aircraft before the start of WWI, with the first instance during the Great War occurring when German Zeppelins bombed the city center of Antwerp a few weeks after the war began on 24 August 1914. The Brits launched an aeroplane attack  against two Zep bases in Cologne and Dusseldorf in response, and, well, and so on, raids and bombs becoming more sophisticated, cities becoming targets, and the race to destruction became developed. 

Images are expandable.

 

Delightful Maps of the IRT, NYC, 1923.

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I've just found this delightful little publication beautifully extolling the possible advertising advantages of the Interborough Subway and Elevated Lines of New York City, Artemas Ward's New York's Rapid Transit Traffic in the Graphic, from 1923. It really does present the numbers and highlights them with some unusual and bright maps of the subway system. This was the IRT (the Interborough Rapid Transit system), which was a private concern that operated from 1903 until 1940, when it was purchased by NYC.  This subway system in general was, well, entirely different from the one that I traveled 1968-1974 or so, back when you could barely see through the car windows because they were so heavily coated with graffiti...Anyway, I've  reproduced  most  of  it  below as there are no copies of the pamphlet in any library according to WorldCat.    The design of the first one--with the giant "Broadway"--is terrific.                                                             

A Lovely, Interesting, and Semi-Outsider Piece of Logi (Radio, Wireless, and TV Ciphers, Codes, Language (1936-1937)

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Carlo Spartari created some interesting if not enigmatic approaches to transmitting thoughts and information via radio back in the mid 1930's. The first example of his work—nowadays I think mostly forgotten and I imagine pretty obscure—is his book on a new radio language entitled: Spartari Radio Language, Sirela: Spatari Radio Language: A Word-of-mouth Code Easily Understood by Listeners of Many Nationalities Without Need of Memorizing for Use in International Radio Broadcasting, which was evidently self-published in 1937. (“SIRELA” I assume would stand for something like “Spartari International Radio Elementary Language” or something along these lines.

Taken out of context and working with the text as a visual element, these works seem to me to have more than a heavy touch of an Outsider artistic quality. I find them to be sort of beautiful in their own complex ways:

If nothing else it is easily the tallest book (18”) on radio codes and ciphers that I have seen, Carlo Spartari invented a rather clever and interesting radio language. It was based upon the seven musical notes of the diatonic scale--DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, and SI—which took no translation to understand, and the notes of course are pronounced in about the same way, everywhere,   as la  Italiano. On the one hand it seems to me to be whimsical, and on the other, it seems brilliant. That's the problem sometimes with challenging new ideas—they can be excellent almost as easily as they can be meshugina.

This work was accompanied by another, the Spatari International and National Criminal Identification Code, which are basically two very compacted sheets entirely filled with a cipher capable of describing a rather wide variety of appearances of a person with a relatively short number of words. If time was an element in a criminal pursuit, then the Spartari code could perhaps have proved invaluable to law enforcement folks, whereby a lot of data can be transmitted in a short, alpha-abbreviated message via radio or wireless. There are codes to describe the following characteristics of the person of interest: name, alias, nationality, build (“fat/fat and short/fat and tall”), weight, eye color, hair, scars (and their various forms and locations), moles, tattoos, birthmarks, malformations, teeth, hair/beard. Fingerprints, relatives, g\hat style, shoes, tie, and suit, all of which can be described in some detail in the code.

That said, they are using radio here, so, it might be almost as easy to just say what it was needed to be said rather than worry about a time-saving cipher. It really seems like this would be more valuable used in conjunction with the third part of this publication, which is Spatari Television Code for Facsimile Transmission. Certainly in this instance where time and space were critical then the abbreviations and associated ciphers used by Spartari would do well in fax transmission more so than spoken language.

“Back in 1905 a young musician was so impressed by the fact that the language of music is universal, that he decided to develop a language based on music. The result is the Spatari Radio Language, an ingenious system of speech based on the notes of the musical scale, capable of being understood by anyone, regardless of his native language, and requiring no study of grammar, vocabulary or syntax. The entire language consists of only the seven notes DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, and SI, and the symbol BO. Capable of being combined into nearly a million different words or groups, these symbols can be pronounced on sight, and easily written down as soon as heard. The "secret" of the language is that each group of symbols represents an entire thought, or sentence. It is not intended that anyone memorize the symbols, as they can be written down as heard, and found quickly in the Spatari dictionary later.”--World Radio History online, Radex

Also see Jerome S. Berg, On the Short Waves, 1923-1945: Broadcast Listening in the Pioneer Days of Radio.

In Living Black & White: T.V., 1944

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2887

I didn't expect such a good photo-essay of the Du Mont labs and assembly facilities after the very odd first few pages of the manufacturer's 1944 brochure. It started the history of the cathode ray tube at Genesis and then had a couple of pages of cartoonish timelines, but then settled into the turf and surf of their business. Well, nearly so, anyway--there were a few odd bits with the introduction of a sort of scary-looking "Alex Electron" showing how television images were made, otherwise this was an engaging assembly-line view of television manufacturing.  

It did have this gloriously colorful display, including a look at the television of the future:

It did prompt me to check out the history of the word "television" for its first and early appearances in the OED,  and there I found the following:

• 1900   Cent. Mag. June   Through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face.

• 1900   Electrician 31 Sept. 822/2   At the afternoon sitting on Friday, M. C. Perskyi read a communication on ‘Television’, describing a number of apparatus based on the magnetic properties of selenium.

• 1926   Glasgow Herald 20 Dec. 11/8   Mr. John L. Baird, a native of Helensburgh,..recently invented an apparatus which makes television possible.

• 1930   J. Buckingham Matter & Radiation 122   We have heard so much about Television lately that we are apt to forget that no portion of the apparatus used is novel to scientists.
  

• 1948   N. Wiener Cybernetics 10   Television was destined to be more useful to engineering by the introduction of such new techniques than as an independent industry.

• 1957   Technology Mar. 9/2   The solution of the major problems in colour television, the public introduction of which is now more a question of economics than of technical difficulty.

The Biggest Big Wheels (1896)

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Even Scientific American--the 1896 source of this small article on this big bike--was impressed with the virtuoso nature of bigness in this invention, stating in the open paragraph that "in this age of big things one is always prepared for the construction of a mammoth engines, ships, buildings..." but this practice was "invaded by the bicycle world". The trike was "colossal--no other word can describer it--" at 17' long, powered by eight people (four per rear wheel), with a 6'-diameter front wheel and 11'-diameter (!) rear wheels (with 1/2-inch diameter spokes)  and weighed in at 3000 pounds. It was a beast. The function evidently did not follow form, as there was no discernible use for it except to be displayed during parades and other social events. 

An Audio Internet for Six (1888)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2838

This device isn't so much a six-person internet as it is...well, it isn't that at all. It was however one of the first times where a group of people could share a recorded piece on their own earphones, though.  This was Thomas Edison's new photograph of 1888:

Thomas Edison--who in a furious few years in the mid 1870’s--invented the light bulb and the phonograph  (the later coming as a direct byproduct on work done on the telephone and telegraph)..He celebrates his phonograph in the North American Review (May 1878)  and then lists what he saw as the readymade faits acomplis of the phonograph, the first of which was weirdly/spectacularly worded:   “1. The captivity of all manner of sound-waves heretofore designated as fugitive, and their permanent retention.”  Do you hear a soundtrack with that description?  I did.  He proceeded with less fanfare: “2. Their reproduction with all their original characteristics at will, without the presence or consent of the original source, and after the lapse of any period of time. 3. The transmission of such captive sounds through the ordinary channels of commercial intercourse and trade in material form, for purposes of communication or as merchantable goods. 4. Indefinite multiplication and preservation of such sounds, without regard to the existence or non-existence of the original source. 5. The captivation of sounds, with or without the knowledge or consent of the source of their origin.

 

Edison then goes on to list what he saw as distinct “possibilities” for the use of the phonograph in the not-too-distant future. There are ten major prospects, the “bookish” aspect and the first major assault on the way we read is listed fourth (though he wasn’t necessarily weighting his list in any way).  Some of the others in this list (all of which cam to fruition) include: 1.Dictation and letter writing—using the phonograph to record letters and correspondence, which was baldly aimed at the business and corporate trade as the machine was relatively difficult to operate and expensive. 2  Phonographic “books”. I noticed that that Edison did not change the word “book” in any way, even though the book is no longer there with the application of the phonograph, just the read and spoken words.  “Books may be read by the charitably-inclined professional reader, or by such readers especially employed for that purpose, and the record of such book used in the asylums of the blind, hospitals, the sick-chamber, or even with great profit and amusement by the lady or gentleman whose eyes and hands may be otherwise employed; or, again, because of the greater enjoyment to be had from a book when read by an elocutionist than when read by the average reader.” 3. Family records. “For the purpose of preserving the sayings, the voices, and the last words of the dying member of the family [emphasis mine] as of great men the phonograph will unquestionably outrank the photograph.”4. Toys:  “A doll which may speak, sing, cry, or laugh, may be safely promised our children for the Christmas holidays ensuing. Every species of animal or mechanical toy such as locomotives, etc. may be supplied with their natural and characteristic sounds.”

Edison continued, writing on the phonograph’s application for the study of elocution, speaking clocks, language preservation (as in documentation of the proper way of speaking a certain language, something that would’ve come in handy in the spike of disappearing languages at the end of the 19th century), telephone recorders and pedagogical lessons.

There was a lull in activity on the phonograph for Mr. Edison between the machine's invention and 1888—this was the first major iteration/improvement the man made on his machine in nearly 10 years. The most significant reach was replacing the surface of the recording foil cylinder with wax, which was more reliable. In any event, in this picture (published in Scientific American Supplement in March 1888, we see the new instrument, equipped as it was for six private listeners.

Floating Mines of the Air (1939)

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 This thrilling nail-biter from the near future appeared in Popular Mechanics for December 1939.  What we are seeing floated here (sorry/terrible) was a system of relatively primitive helium-filled air mines to guard against enemy attack from the air.  There was no doubt the (fighting) end of the European and British part of WWII there would be a very major role played by aircraft. Bombing had already been introduced on a larger scale with German practice and assistance to Franco in Spain, and of course there was plenty of evidence for air power in the crushing of Poland just a few months earlier beginning 1 September and ending 26 days later--a victory and a defeat that shocked the military world. So much of the world had entered into war in the first two weeks of September 1939, and of course the U.S.  reacted with predictable strong sentiments for isolationism.

I remember a headline--can't place where--reading it, years ago, announcing that the Olympic Games for 1940--that were to be held in Soviet-attacked Finland--were cancelled.

There was a simple idea behind the aerial minefield--take 5' diameter balloons, fill them with helium, attach a 40' line to it on one end with a bomb with 4 lbs of high explosive on the other; send them aloft, and then wait for a plane to hook one of the lines with a wing or tail or something. These were to be sent aloft by the hundreds if not thousands. Maybe this could work, I dunno--but what comes to mind is what happens with the hundreds of balloons that didn't have something run into it?  They bomb would explode on contact, so at some point, they're all going to come down... There'd that, plus what if fighter planes came in before the bombers (once the Germans were close enough that is) and simply shot down the balloons? I imagine that they'd be used over rural areas where there could be some absorption of hundreds of falling failing bombs. Anyway, this idea seems a little problematic.    

A Double Dose of Dirigibles

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There's nothing quite so satisfying as seeing a representation of quantitative data where the graphical displays are flying.  "One Dreadnought Buys 52 Dirigibles and 235 Aeroplanes" is a full-page diagram appearing in the 3 June 1911 issue of the Illustrated London News , making a very strong point that in the new age of aviation the 2 million pounds it would cost to produce one battleship could also (or rather) buy a lot of aircraft. 

You may notice that the ship is flying a U.S. flag--this is because the graphic appear a month or so earlier in the U. S. publication Scientific American, and the ILN is simply reprinting the info  In any event the image enumerates U.S. and international aircraft, making for a lovely representation of a broad range of airplanes filling up the same sky. 

An Early Design for a Convict-Powered Revolving Turret on a Ship (1871)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2878

This image (from the Illustrated London News for April 26 1871) shows a plan of the top floor of a revolving battery designed by M. Baltard in 1831.  This idea is probably ancient, though it really only had major technological legs by the 19th century. Even though Baltard is given some fair credit for the modern rediscovery of the revolving turret--and in this short article he is given premier status--there were earlier engineers at work before him.  For example, in the earliest part of the 19th century Col. John Stevens designed a saucer-shaped floating battery that was supposed to be able to fire in any direction; T.R. Timbly--slightly after Baltard--applied in the U.S. Patent Office in June 1843 for a device he called a "metallic revolving fort".  Then came the great John Ericsson--very long on accomplishments but very short now in modern memory, he is also one of those memorialized men in marble in DC for whom people have almost no modern recognition--who in 1854 produced an "impregnable battery revolving cupola", which led to his great innovation on the Monitor.  And as we recall, the Monitor's defeat of the Merrimack in Hampton Roads in 1861 spelled the coming end of the wooden ship of the line--metal ships with mounted revolving turrets fore and aft would prove entirely too far superior to the 19th century wooden ship.

Cell vs. Cell: Photoelectric Cell and Shooting a Prisoner for Escaping their Cell (1930)

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The photoelectric cell was a mature invention (appearing in 1883) when it became armed and lethal in 1930.  Popular Mechanics published this photo (explained with only a caption and a paragraph) in its July 1930 issue. We see that should a prisoner make a dash up and over the prison wall, they interrupt the "electric eye" sentry which we read (1) fires a pistol positioned along the wall and (2) sounds an alarm, simultaneously.  It seems as though the alarm system could be reconstituted at the base of the wall, sounding an alarm before the prisoner got to the wall (let alone up and over it), rather than shooting as the alarm sounds.  The consequences of this idea--which I suspect was never implemented--were, well, rather extreme.

Non-Silhouette Silhouettes and Dirigible Mooring Masts (1930)

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Just a very quick entry here on some interesting and arresting images relating to flight, all from the July-December 1930 volume of Popular Mechanics. The first is a full-page illustration for October (1930) showing an improved method for anchoring dirigibles--in this case, for demonstration purposes, it is His Majesty's Airship airship R-100, which was over 700' long and moved along at about 80 mph, and was less than a year old. Unfortunately, this protocol for moving though the air was nearly exhausted--it was fateful for this note on the mooring masts appeared in October as this was the month of the R-101 disaster, which effectively brought the end of the R-100, which was scrapped soon afterwards.  

• "Sketch of Latest Type pf Mooring Mast for Dirigibles, Showing the Lights, Tackle and Winches Used in Bringing a Big Airship to Anchor: Note the Ground lights That Indicate the Direction of Wind ..." 

The other image of aviation interest is a chart of airplane types and how to identify them in silhouette--except that they are not in silhouette. Still it is a handy chat, and I reproduce it here:

A Great Road Locomotive (1873)

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I found this fine illustration in an 1873 volume of the Journal of the Franklin Institute, a "road locomotive", the first one produced by the firm Aveling & Porter, who, we are told, "had previously done no real work". This certainly looks like real work to me.  The specifications found in the article paint an even larger picture than the picture of the machine does it credit. The boiler, for example, is 8' long, meaning that the machine overall is about 11' long; the boiler's diameter is 30", which makes the vehicle about 10' tall. The big wheel is big: 60" in diameter (supporting a 10' height) and very heavy, weighing 450 pounds.  The overall weight on this beast is 11,648 lbs.

Source: Thurston, R.H. "Traction Engines or Road Locomotives. The Past, the Present and the Future of Steam on the Common Road".  Journal of the Franklin Institute, volume 95, 1873, pp 17-43.  

An Early, Instantaneous, 3-D Modeling Device (1836)

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In the “Spirit of Discovery” section of the British weekly magazine The Mirrour of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction for 22 October 1836 is a short notice on the “physiognotype”, “a machine for taking casts, lately invented by a gentleman in Paris” [The patent application for this device seems to be the work of Richard Rettford, UK patent # 6732, 1834.] We’re accustomed to these devices now as they’ve been for sale in toy shops for decades—but in 1836 it was a real breakthrough for making instantaneous three-dimensional models of small things.  In 1836 there really wasn’t any simple way of producing a direct, proportional model like this in 3-D except for encasing it in plaster and then casting from that mold.  Two-dimensional modeling was easier, and there were numerous devices constructed for this purpose as people pursued the still-hot rage of physiognomic forecasting, with simpler means (like shadow portraits) being hundreds of years earlier.  (Photography remember is still three years away from being announced and another few years from being sort of accessible to middle-class folks.) 

This device was simple and cool, and it worked.  It was basically a board with a mesh of tiny holes drilled into it through which were placed knitting needles (it looks as though it was 12” around or so and four inches deep), bound in wood, with the enclosure encased by a bladder of warm water (“to ensure that the needles moved with the greatest facility”)—this last bit was really a good idea.  You were left with a “brush of needles”, very densely packed, and very easily disturbed.  The author writes that the process took about two seconds, didn’t hurt at all, and caused “a sensation that cannot well be described”.  (Though he did state that if the instrument wasn’t warmed by the water the process would’ve felt like putting your face in the snow…does that mean it felt like putting your face in warm snow?) 

I’ve tried, briefly, to see where this invention went, but it seems not to have advanced far beyond the reach of quack medical practioners and magicians.  It seems as though something like this could’ve been useful in the machine shop for modeling (replacement) parts without having to take the machine itself apart to do it.  I guess that it could’ve been used by haberdashers, cobblers, and all sorts of other craftspeople and small manufacturers, but it seems as though it actually wasn’t.  It looks like a dandy piece of thinking, to me.