JF Ptak Science Books

You-Are-There View from Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter, 1863

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Here's an unusual and somewhat startling point of view from the Civil War--the target of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, (probably for the attack of 7 April 1863).  I assume that this was first published in Harper's Weekly, though my copy is found in The Soldier in Our Civil War, Volume II, page 173, (1878) which is spilling over with reprints from Harper's.  There wasn't very much of Ironclad Weehawken that was above the water, most of its 200' and crew of about 70 being below the water line. This view is from an observation port on the turret of the ship, and  it looks like you're looking down a well because the iron armor of the turret was 11" thick.  The first attack that the Weehawken participated in was in April, 1863, though that was a pretty distinct failure; after repairs, the ship was in the Charleston theater for pretty much the rest of its career, which lasted until December 1864, when she sunk from what seems to be a problem developed by being overloaded with heavy ordnance. In any event, it is a very interesting you-are-there perspective, rare in my experience.

 

What Poison Gas Warnings Sounded Like, WWI

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2564

I posted this thinking that I had never heard the sound of a gas warning siren--or any other noise-making instrument--signifying the onset of a poison gas attack during WWI.  So I went poking around the web, looking for an audio recording of one.  I did find contemporary audio of an antique instrument--this was a dreadful sound, sounding somewhat like a high-pitched pulse-jet engine.  It is an awful sound (linked below) though I am sure that it did its job very effectively.  

I haven't yet found a contemporary recording, though I've got a notion that if no audio recording was made for training films and such that they may exist in movies.  

Sirens of course was one method of alerting troops to a gas attack--there were also bells of all shapes and sizes, and kettles, wooden clappers, rattles, empty shell cases, and other such things. 

Here's a compelling image of conflicting emotional input, this showing a kettle with a clanger attached by a wire:

 [Source: http://worldwartwozone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/8851-cloud-of-terror-gas-warfare/]

On Interior Views--Looking Someone Else's Inside, Out

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1996

I cannot think of another illustration by a scientist or philosopher who attempts to explain their own--literal, interior, physical--view of the world and then offer what this looks like to the reader from inside his own head, looking out through his own eye.  That's exactly what the (unnamed but very Escher-esque?) artist did for Ernst Mach, who is doing precisely that right here on page 15 of his influential book  Die Analyse der Empfindungen. (That's the  fourth German edition, also known in translation as The Analysis of Sensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical, published in Jena in 1903.) It is a very unusual point of perspective, seeing the world under someone else's eyebrow and over their moustache.
 In a sort-of-similar vein, there is another point of view that is extremely uncommon, another you-are-there perspective, though not interior to the person making the observation, but nearly so.  Here's an example, just found, and an early one, this imagined from the far side of one of Saturn's rings, looking back on the planet, and experiencing the distorition in perspective due to the closesness of the observer. 

Another image, this one showing the view directly from "the first or second satellite" of Saturn, looking back and across the planet's rings:

[Source:  Thomas Dick, Celestial Scenery, 1838, available in full at the Internet Archive, here.]

 

Looking Inside Out--Ernst Mach's pre-Escher Image

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1243

I cannot think of another illustration by a scientist or philosopher who attempts to explain their own--literal, interior,physical--view of the world and then offer what this looks like to the reader from inside his own head, looking out through his own eye.  That's exactly what Ernst Mach is doing right here on page 15 of his influential book Die Analyse der Empfindungen, the fourth German edition ("The Analysis of Sensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical")  (Jena, 1903)

There is nothing in this world for Mach that is not admissible to the human brain that is not empirically verifiable--that is, the world is nothing but awash in sensation and that sensation itself forms part of the experience of, well, experience. I've actually never been interested in the philosophy of science, and this is one of the reasons why.  Nevertheless I boldly break through my own prejudices to enjoy this phenomenally original image, drawn from the inside of Mach's working mind, looking out through his eye socket, over his mustache, under his eyebrow, around his nose, out across his body and then leaping into the rest of the world.  I think he does make his point about the essential nature of the observer. And much like the classic Steinberg New Yorker cartoon of the world view of the New Yorker (of course this includes only Manhattan), I know some number of people who have transposed their bodies much like Herr Mach into the Steinberg map--except that their worldview ends basically at the Hudson River (Mach's feet) with the rest of the world being the sliver out there beyond the river (Mach's window) until you go 359 degrees around the world to get back to the East River (and back inside Mach's noggin).  It is an unusual world view to have, but someone has to have it so that we can at least identify it so. 

I just like the picture.   

Dunkerque to D-Day, from the Invasion of England to the Invasion of Europe

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1055

(Including a short tale of when Winston Churchill's nephew, John Spencer Churchill, wound up passed out on the back seat of my 1979 Chrysler New Yorker.)

This map pretty well tells the story of the perilous situation of Europe and England at the beginning of June, 1940.  It appeared in the Illustrated London News on the heals of Churchill's "Blood, Soil, Sweat and Tears" speech, and was a very frank presentation of the wearing of the war.  By this point in the war Nazi Germany had successfully invaded Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, sweeping across Europe in a broad westward movement, backing up British and French troops all the way to the sea at Dunkerque, where a monumental rescue operation ("Operation Dynamo") saved them.  (There was an enormous amount of materiel left there on the beach, a devastating loss for the British Expeditionary Force, nearly crippling it.) This was a bad time for the Allies, this part of the war coined by Winston Churchill in 18 June 1940 in the House of Commons by:  "The Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin". There was very little good that came of these few months for the U.K and the Allies, though four things do stand out: (1) as I just mentioned, the saving of 300,000+ troops at Dunkerque; (2) the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, (3) the coming of Winston Churchill  as Prime Minister of the U.K., and (4) the first deciphering of the Enigma at Bletchley.  Other than that, the situation was dim, and these invasion routes (published at t he very time that Germany was studying such a feat in its "Operation Sea Lion", or "Unternehmen Seelöwe").

The endgame at Dunkerque took place almost four years to the day of the invasion of Europe, when the intent (though not placement) all of these arrows were turned around for the Allied operation at the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944.. 

It came to pass in 1985 that some friends and I had drinks with John Spencer Churchill, a man who was at Dunkerque and who reported on it to his uncle Winston.  (A slightly longer story on this meeting with Mr. Churchill appears below.)  After much else I finally asked Mr. Churchill if there was any particular sound that he remembered from being at Dunkerque.  I do not recall his phrasing, but what he said was that the beach at Dunkerque was rocky, pebbly, and that the sound made by tens of thousands of boots on that shore was "disgusting".  He also said that the mixture of petrol, wind and grit burned the eyes and tasted bad.  It was of course fascinating to hear a first hand description, especially a memory of something so uncommon and visceral. It was unexpected to me, though now when i read about Dunkirque I can imagine its smell thanks to this encounter. 

First Address by Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.

You are There: Dive Bombing Pilot, 1936.

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 330

In my experience popular images prior to WWII that put the reader inside of the picture-- giving them the same view as the observing, principle member of the picture--are very uncommon.  Honestly, they just don’t happen very often, and I wish that I had paid more attention to them over the years before I realized they were as rare as they were. Such is the case with this extraordinary and action-packed picture in which the reader is hosted just behind and slightly above the head of the pilot of the aircraft dive-bombing the battleship.  It appears in The Illustrated London News for 7 November 1935, and it must have been captivating for the readers, being given the sense of closing in at great speed on the ship.  There are actually eight other smaller perspective images embedded in the image as well. The largest of these (at top) places the viewer directly inside the subject, giving them the feeling of how it looks like to the bombing officer of the aircraft as it approached the fleet. The other five images shows what the battleship looks like from different height from the inside of the aircraft.  Perhaps this doesn’t look like much to us today, but at the time, I can assure you, these images were exceptionally uncommon offerings of a personal perspective that few readers had ever experienced.