Nice to see as early as 1837 Charles Dickens doing his bit to comically debunk the efficacy of infinitesimal doses in medicine. Okay, he’s not quite talking about the bottles of total nothingness you can buy at the chemist and are an insult to reason today, but still interesting that similar ideas were an issue 175 years ago.
This passage from ‘The Mudfrog Pages‘, in the monthly magazine Bentley’s Miscellany, is a fictitious report from the first meeting of the ‘Mudfrog Society for the Advancement of Everything’, a satirical fun-poke at the recently founded British Association for the Advancement of Science :
” Professor Muff related a very extraordinary and convincing proof of the wonderful efficacy of the system of infinitesimal doses, which the section were doubtless aware was based upon the theory that the very minutest amount of any given drug, properly dispersed through the human frame, would be productive of precisely the same result as a very large dose administered in the usual manner. Thus, the fortieth part of a grain of calomel was supposed to be equal to a five-grain calomel pill, and so on in proportion throughout the whole range of medicine. He had tried the experiment in a curious manner upon a publican who had been brought into the hospital with a broken head, and was cured upon the infinitesimal system in the incredibly short space of three months. This man was a hard drinker. He (Professor Muff) had dispersed three drops of rum through a bucket of water, and requested the man to drink the whole. What was the result ? Before he had drunk a quart, he was in a state of beastly intoxication; and five other men were made dead drunk with the remainder. ” The President wished to know whether an infinitesimal dose of soda-water would have recovered them ? Professor Muff replied that the twenty-fifth part of a tea- spoonful, properly administered to each patient, would have sobered him immediately. The President remarked that this was a most important discovery, and he hoped the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen would patronize it immediately. ” A Member begged to be informed whether it would be possible to administer — say, the twentieth part of a grain of bread and cheese to all grown-up paupers, and the fortieth part to children, with the same satisfying effect as their present allowance. ” Professor Muff was willing to stake his professional reputation on the perfect adequacy of such a quantity of food to the support of human life — in workhouses; the addition of the fifteenth part of a grain of pudding twice a week would render it a high diet.”
Owning multiple copies of a book isn’t that unusual. There’s that extra copy for the bath, the duplicate Christmas present you don’t have the heart to return, or maybe you’ve just made home with someone with similar interests – and library: always a good idea. But no one has hundreds of copies of the same title – do they?
Sure they do. Meet the front end of the Huntington Library‘s 252 strong collection of Darwin’s Origin of Species – all 20 feet of them. I snapped this at the permanent ‘Beautiful Science’ exhibition last month, and have just gotten around to a bit of research:
And turning the corner, here are the rest of them:
Henry Edwards Huntington acquired much of his collection, now at San Marino, by buying up ready-made collections or even whole libraries. But some books he bought individually, including, in 1860s New York, an 1859 first edition of the Origin of Species in original cloth – for $22.79 (1). Checking Abebooks.com just now, I see you can pick up the same thing in the same city today for a cool $210,000 (Arader Gallery). Nice investment, Henry.
All the Origins at Huntington are different. Most of the variations are reprints of the early six editions published by John Murray between 1859 and 1872; and then there are all the various languages. The original six do vary in content though, with Darwin making material changes in response to readers’ comments.
Despite the title’s legendary status, the print runs of Murray’s Origin look modest by modern standards:
Scholars have argued over the Origin’s scientific content since, well, its origin – so it’s refreshing to find an analysis along a different tack, like Michele and Chris Kohler’s essay about the Origin of Species as a physical object (2).
The authors mention Huntington’s collection of Origins as one of the three largest, along with the Kohler Collection at the Natural History Museum London and the Thomas Fisher Library of the University of Toronto.
Their research also suggests that many more people may have read the first edition than the 1,250 figure suggests, with 500 copies going not to wealthy individuals (books like this were still a luxury for most people) but to Mudies Lending Library – the largest commercial library in the country. (btw, current Origin sales are a respectable 75,000 to 100,000 units per annum.)
There’s also a discussion on how the content was on occasion not so much lost, but subtley changed, in translation, as in the case of Heinrich Bronn’s first German edition.
The Kohlers’ analysis of price history shows a run-away escalation of first edition values in the 20th and 21st centuries: so from an average £36 in the mid-50’s, to still only £4000 in the 80’s, to a top price of £49,000 in 1999; that’s still a long way off the £100,000+ values being achieved today.
The collector demographic has necessarly changed in step: from pure scholars to business people; but perhaps those working in sci-tech related areas who want, and can afford, to be close to a piece of scientific history. Maybe that ownership requires a Henry Huntington income is a good thing – reflecting an increased awareness of the value of it’s intellectual message?
There again, maybe it’s all going the way of the art market, with rare books becoming a commodity currency. What do you think?
References
1. Henry Edwards Huntington, A Biography. James Ernest Thorpe, University of California Press, 1994
2. Essay by Michele and Chris Kohler in: The Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species, Ed. Michael Ruse, Robert J Richards, New York, 2008 (Archive.org .txt version here)
Blue Sky Metropolis Exhibition at Huntington Library (Photo:Tim Jones)
One of my favourite NASA clips shows the 1972 Apollo 17 lunar module blasting off, bringing home astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt – the last humans to set foot on the moon.
The film is presently looping, next to an R-18 rocket engine like the one used in the ascent, at the Huntington Library’s Blue Sky Metropolis exhibition – chronicaling a hundred years of Southern Californian aerospace.
RS-18 Lunar Module Engine on Display (Photo:Huntington Library Flickr)
There wouldn’t be much of an economy in the region if it wasn’t for aerospace – that, and the entertainment industry.
From the first fly-ins and air-meets of Wright Brothers’ style aeroplanes in 1910, to the birth of commercial aviation in the 1920s, to World War II fighter production and surveilance aircraft for the Cold War, to a still evolving space programme; this single-room display is an impressive distillation of the events, people, and motivations behind it all.
Blue Sky Metropolis Exhibition at the Huntington Library (Photo:Tim Jones)
Documented photographs dominate the display. I liked this shot of a flight hostess in 1929, framed serving tea in the doorway of a Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) passenger aircraft – something of a contrast to pilot Amelia Earhart leaning against the hanger doors of an aircraft factory.
TAT Hostess, 1929 (Photo: Huntington press release)Amelia Earhart at Lockheed, 1930s (Photo: Huntington press release)
Politics might not be the most noble motivation for the conquest of space, but the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Russians in 1957 sure pushed the pace. In 1958, under Eisenhower and with the passing of the National Aeronautics and Space Act, NASA was formed. Later that year, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Explorer 1 satellite (the horizonal object in the glass case above) shot into orbit in response to the Sputnik challenge.
The accompanying social commentary is also fascinating, and with family connections (on my wife’s side), we found the photographs of 50’s/60’s laboratory life – like JPL’s all-women ‘platoon’ of mechanical calculator operators lined up at their desks – especially interesting.
Tonight I joined the 2011 Darwin Lecture, with Sir David Attenborough speaking on ‘Alfred Russel Wallace and the Birds of Paradise’, organised and hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine in association with the Linnean Society of London.
Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)
Fresh back from a trip to Borneo – no less, the spritely 85-year-old was introduced by Professor Parveen Kumar, President of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Dr Vaughan Southgate, President of the Linnean Society.
Be it via the TV or lecture theatre, David Attenborough plays to full houses all the time, and this November evening was no exception.
His account of Wallace’s ocean voyage to the Malay Archipelago and pioneering observations of that unique group of theatrical show-offs: the Birds-of-paradise, made for an informative and fun evening – all the merrier thanks to a generous ration of film clips showing the birds’ unlikely courtship rituals.
But the real take-home for me was Attenborough’s poignant re-telling of the Wallace-Darwin story: How the two independently arrived at that world-changing idea for the origin of species – natural selection – whereby only the better-adapted offspring of animals survive and pass on their qualities to a new generation.
Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)Male Great Bird-of-paradise (Wikicommons)
Darwin had for years been working on his own version of natural selection from the comfortable surroundings of his home Down House, but had held back from publishing.
Then in 1858, Darwin receives a letter from Wallace, incapacitated with Malaria and holed-up in a shack on the Mollucas Islands of the Malay Archipelago. In it, he asks Darwin for an opinion on some ideas he’s had on the introduction of new species: ideas very similar to Darwin’s own.
Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)
Wallace’s communication is a bombshell. Yet for Darwin, the fear Wallace might publish first, pipping him at the post, is nothing compared to his horror of being branded a thief. So, after consultation with his scientific confidants, including Joseph Hooker but necessarily excluding the remote Wallace – Darwin’s camp decide a joint announcement of their common idea should be made at the Linnean Society in London, in the form of two short essays comprising Wallace’s note and a summary of Darwin’s work.
Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)
All goes to plan at the Linnean, and in due course Darwin publishes the full text of the ‘Origin of Species’ – with all the turbulent aftermath that comes with it. Wallace is comfortable with events, and pleased by the new associations he sees himself making in Darwin’s circle. He remains abroad, observing his beloved Birds-of-paradise .
Sir David Attenborough, Dr Vaughan Southgate (Photo:Tim Jones)
Darwin, Attenborough said, made known his view that Wallace was capable – had he enjoyed Darwin’s own means – of producing the ‘Origin’ himself. Wallace on the other hand was more than grateful that the painstaking task of collation, supporting work, and documentation demanded of the masterwork had fallen to Darwin. In the lingo of the day, they’d reached a gentlemanly solution with no ill feelings all round.
Sir David Attenborough. At the end of his lecture he received a framed memento of the event and an award from the Society for the History of Natural History. (Photo:Tim Jones)
Wallace produced much original work based on his observations of bird populations in the Malay Archipelago, which he captured in his book of the same name (The Malay Archipelago). Specifically, he identified the so-called ‘Wallace-Line‘ that runs between the islands of Bali and Lombok, separating two geographic regions whose animals Wallace found to be distinct and associated with either Australian or Asian origins. What he’d observed, without recognising it as such, was a product of moving land masses – or plate tectonics.
Related video:
David Attenborough talks about his fascination with birds of paradise (Nature Video)
Today is the birthday of the inventor of nitroglycerin: Ascanio Sobrero.
Ascanio Sobrero
Born on 12th October, 1812, the Italian chemist made the discovery while a student at Turin University, by treating glycerin with hot sulphuric and nitric acids.
The industrial and military successes of nitroglycerin are well known, particularly where it’s been used in stabilised forms as in Alfred Nobel’s patent dynamite. Less well known is the catalogue of horrific accidents that punctuate the early learning curve of this powerful explosive.
I stumbled upon the echo of one such tragedy while holidaying in Wales this summer. A lucky stumble too, as the plaque that records the Cwm-y-Glo explosion of 1869 is easy to miss: only locals and wandering hikers need apply.
It’s unlikely David Roberts, Evan Jones, Robert Morris, Griffith Jones, and eleven year old John Jones had heard of Ascanio Sobrero. Likewise the villagers who collected those victims’ unidentifiable remains after Sobrero’s invention sent them flying in pieces onto the hillside and surrounding villages.
The two horse-drawn wagons at the centre of the disaster, each laden with a ton of nitroglycerin, or ‘powder oil’, were on the eight mile journey from Caernarvon, on the Welsh coast, to the Glyn Rhonwy slate quarry near Llanberis.
Glyn Rhonwy disused quarry near Llanberis, Tim Jones 2010
The cargo was destined to blast slate, but when it exploded prematurely just outside the small village where its minders had stopped for refreshment, it likely created the loudest man-made noise known up to that time. And despite Glyn Rhonwy being one of the first quarries to trial nitroglycerin1starting in 1866, they clearly hadn’t mastered the murderous sensitivity of its handling. The full report of the accident as it appeared in The Times newspaper is reproduced in reference 4 below – with all the gory details.
The political and economic impact of the Cwm-y-Glo explosion travelled well beyond Wales. One direct consequence was the introduction of the Nitro-glycerine Act (1869)(reproduced as ref(3) below): “An Act to prohibit for a limited period the importation, and to restrict and regulate the carriage of Nitro-glycerine“(2), which put severe controls on the explosive’s importation, transportation and use, and encouraged the market for safer alternatives like gun cotton (cellulose nitrate) and Nobel’s dynamite. Supposedly a temporary measure, during which time “there would be an opportunity given to scientific persons to inquire whether the compound known as nitro-glycerine was an innocent explosive or not.“(2), the restrictions lasted long enough to prompt heated debates around ideas of trade restriction and monopoly.
But the local impact was human, as the following ballad from the time shows. I’ve had a crack at translating the first few verses from the Welsh (with my father’s help!) – just to get the gist. The author, Abel Jones, seems to be catching the brutal reality of the event in true Victorian style. You can find the whole piece here. (And, if you’re able and up for it, feel free to translate the whole thing and put it in the comments!)
Rough english translation:
“A ballad about a terrible explosion that happened in 1869 at Cwm y glo.
Dear quarrymen and all rockworkers throughout Arfon and Meirionydd. Hear about this alarming and terrible accident that has made many hearts sad. There has been accident after accident in the quarries, with falling loose rocks from morning to noon. They tear the flesh and break the bones and people collect bodies in blankets and sheets. What heart does not melt at the sight of a mother unable to recognise her son or husband, the tears pouring from the children shouting: ‘Dad, where are you?’. And things are far worse with nitro-glycerine. We’ve had terrible disasters at Abergele, now we have one at Cwm y glo ”
The Nitro-Glycerine Accident. CARNARVON, Thursday.
The terrible accident we reported yesterday by telegraph has led to lamentable results. It seems that four tons of nitro-glycerine formed part of a cargo from Hamburg (Messrs. Noble and Co.), to Carnarvon, consigned to Messrs. De Winton and Co., for Messrs. Webb and Cragg, Glynrhonwy Slate Quarry, Llanberis, sole agents in Carnarvonshire for nitro-glycerine, used instead of ordinary powder for blasting rocks. The ship was moored in the river Menai, and a portion of the explosive oil having been placed in the Llanddwyn magazine, the rest was brought in lighters and placed on the quay in Carnarvon. About 1 o’clock noon, the hour appointed to cart that portion to the quarries, some of the vehicles did not arrive, and, after a delay of some hours, the two carters who have been killed under- took to remove a portion of the nitro-glycerine. These carts left about 4 on Wednesday afternoon, for Glyn-rhonwy Quarry, one of the numerous quarries lately opened on the south aspect of the Vale of LIanberis, and at the foot of Snowdon. A portion of the nitro-glycerine was to be removed today to the Dinorwic Quarry. The other three carts were left for the night in a closed coachhouse, near Bodenalgate, within a mile of Carnarvon, it being too late to re- move the oil to the Penrhyn slate quarries. These are now in the custody of the police. The two carts which caused the accident, were, it appears, in company, and were noticed within a few yards of each other just be- fore the explosion. The exact spot where the accident occurred is where the diversion of a new road lately made by the Llanberis and Carnarvon Railway joins the old road, about 400 yards beyond the centre of Cwm-y-glo village, five miles and a half from Carnarvon and 300 yards from Pont Rhyddalit, the bridge that spans the narrow water uniting the upper and lower lakes of Llanberis. At the time the accident occurred the quarrymen were returning along the road from their occupations to Cwm.y-glo village, when suddenly, without any warning, the quarrymen in front of the carts and those behind heard one long continuous explosion of terrific noise. This spot being surrounded by high mountains on three sides, the echo of the first explosion reverberated several times, as some of those that witnessed the accident informed us, and one mountain seemed to throw the noise with quick succession from one side of. the valley to the other over the lakes. The two lakes, especially the lower, were at once greatly agitated. Clouds of dust, stones, portions of the carts, and the walls around for two roods were either thrown to a great height or cast longitudinally either into the morass on one side or the rocks adjacent. A third of the circumference of a wheel was thrown 50 yards high and fell near a cottager’s garden on the sides of a rocky hill 300 yards off. Portions of flesh and bones (either human or those of the horses) were collected indiscriminately from a radius of 50 yards and placed in cloths. A foot, a chin covered with beard, and a man’s heart were found together about eight yards from the spot. The Cwm-y-glo Railway Station (the nearest building to the scene of the accident), an inn lately finished, close by, and several (fortunately) unfinished houses a little further off, as well as a chapel, present a desolate sight. The roofs nearest the accident are perforated by falling stones, and window- frames have been blown in and destroyed. The massive doors of the goods department of the railway station are shattered, and windows all round within a radius of two miles present marks of the explosion. Scores of men were thrown down. Those known to be killed are -David Roberts, 35. a native of Denbigh, married, carter; Evan Jones, 22, Tyddyn Llywdyn, Carnarvon, unmarried (son of a widow, partially dependent on her son), carter; Robert Roberts, 26, quarryman (who had only returned from America a few weeks since); a quarryman who was supposed to be passing at the time,.and another whose name we could not ascertain resident at Cwm-y-glo. About 12 persons have been seriously hurt and as many slightly injured. A leg and in two other instances arms have already been amputated, and two boys-Owen John Roberts and Griffith Pritchard have suffered internal injuries by being thrown down. The greatest distress exists, and even this morning the police were engaged searching the neighbourhood of the accident picking up very small portions of flesh and bone. Such was the terrible power of the oil that the spot where each cart is supposed to have been at the time of the accident is marked by two deep perfectly circular holes, of the same size, each measuring 7ft. 6in. in diameter and 7ft. deep, and a horse-length apart. The stones appear to have been subjected to a terrible rotatory motion, and the holes are in the shape of an inverted cone. Our correspondent, who was at the time of the accident sitting at a friend’s table in Bangor, ten miles off, experienced a shock and heard the rattling of windows at five minutes before 6, about the time fixed by those who witnessed the, accident. The shock was experienced more or less for many miles around.
Grandson Charles and Grandfather Erasmus Darwin had at least one thing in common besides their illustrious name: they both took delight in figuring out how the world works – which isn’t to say they always followed the same interests.
Charles, we know, focused on the natural world – often in great, great, detail. Erasmus, less fixated but still very much the naturalist, engaged also with just about every aspect of science, technology and the trials and tribulations of the human condition you can imagine.
As happy in the botanical garden as the coachmaker’s yard or canal digger’s trench – it was all the same to him, many are the fields where Erasmus Darwin’s substantive contributions, too often unsung, resonate to the present day.
And while Charles was doubtless adventurous in mind and deed – he did afterall make the voyage of the Beagle – Erasmus, in the broader sense I would argue, ‘got out more’.
No surprise then, one evening in 1756, to find a 24 years young Erasmus Darwin at the epicentre of London society and entertainment: the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall. Less surprising still to find him back at his Nottingham lodgings pre-occupied with reverse-engineering the Gardens’ then prize crowd-pulling spectacle: the artificial waterfall, or Cascade – more of which later.
Vauxhall Gardens in 1751 (five yrs before Erasmus’s visit) Samuel Wale (Wikicommons)
The twelve acre Vauxhall Gardens operated from 1661 to 1859, and enjoyed a fantastically diverse clientele. Anyone who was anyone – or aspired to be – had to show their face: from Kings and Queens to honest tradesmen, to a dependable spattering of pick-pockets and prostitutes.
Entertainments at Vauxhall (Photo:Tim Jones. Exhibit at Museum of London)
All mixed shoulder to shoulder, intent on enjoying music, dancing, or one of the many laid-on spectacles: illuminations, fireworks, circus acts, mechanical wonders, balloon rides, battle recreations and panoramas celebrating the fetes of great explorers. Top of the list for many would be a romantic diversion with a favoured beau or belle under the tree-covered walkways.
Incidentally, if you’re wondering what prompted this post – digging around in a pleasure garden – it’s down to my latest reading: a new History of Vauxhall Gardens, by David Coke and Alan Borg1: a beautifully presented, comprehensive, and accessible read. Check out the book’s website here and write-ups in the Guardian here and here
I’ve suffered from amateur social historian syndrome since arriving in London eleven years ago – it’s hard to avoid when the place drips with the stuff; but the Vauxhall interest is closer to home – literally; my old flat on the Vauxhall Bridge Road overlooked the former Gardens’ site. Now home to a plain-vanilla grassed park, the only reminder of former glories is the yearly bonfire night sputter of fireworks launched by good-natured, if boisterous, locals. (On which theme, check out this earlier post).
Echo of past glories. View from my flat in 2003: fireworks rising from the former site of Vauxhall Gardens (Photo: Tim Jones)
Reading the new history though, I was intrigued by how few famous scientists (natural philosophers in their day) or technical folk are associated with the Gardens, either as self-reporting visitors or through third-party narratives .
Maybe the great and the good of the scientific establishment eschewed egalitarian Vauxhall in favour of the more exclusive (and expensive) Ranelagh Gardens across the river in Chelsea? At least there was a stone bust of Isaac Newton on permanent display at Vauxhall.
Anyhow, it’s entirely possible a trawl through the personal letters of individuals, where they’re catalogued, would turn up further references.
For my part, I checked out Erasmus’s letters – and he didn’t disappoint.
Coming back to the artificial waterfall or cascade for a moment. Installed in 1752, Coke & Borg say of it:
To add to its theatricality, the Cascade was concealed behind a curtain which was drawn back at a particular time in the evening, as night fell, to reveal a three-dimensional illuminated scene of a landscape with a precipitous waterfall; the illusion was created with sheets of tin fixed to moving belts, turned by a team of Tyer’s [the owner] lamplighters; when it was running, the noise and spectacle must have been terrific 1.
Then I found this letter from Erasmus, dated 9th Septemebr 1756, describing his interpretation of the operation of the spectacle to his friend Albert Reimarus, drawing and all:
Erasmus’s drawing of the artifiicial waterfall or cascade at Vauxhall Gardens (Picture credit: The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, Cambridge University Press, 2007, Letter 56-6)
“The artificial Water-fall at Vaux Hall I apprehend is done by pieces of Tin, loosely fix’d on the Circumferences of two Wheels. It was the Motion not being perform’d at Bottom in a parabolic Curve that first made me discover it’s not being natural. The Velocity at Top is not so great to my rememberance as at the Bottom half of the fall, as I suspect the top Wheel is less than the lower one; a Shade is put where the Wheels join. At Bottom are many less Wheels I conjecture. Now the Velocity of the fall from a to b not being encreased was another thing that shock’d my Eye. What you mean when you say “let the Water fall over a Parabola etc”, I don’t understand.“
Photo:Tim Jones. Exhibit at Museum of London.
I’m taking expressions like “The Velocity at Top is not so great to my remembrance….” as evidence Erasmus actually visited the Gardens himself in the summer of 1756, possibly accompanied by Reimarus.
For Erasmus, the waterfall ‘game’ was given away by the shape of the flow – something other than parabolic, and not moving at the expected relative speeds.
In fairness to the designer (the concept likely derived from Francis Hayman’s theatrical stagecraft), that exposing the spectacle as anything other than natural required such analysis seems high praise indeed! Incidentally, Coke & Borg maintain no visual representation of the cascade exists, so this might be as close as we get.
(As an aside, there’s also evidence Erasmus’s sister Susannah (Sukey) visited the Gardens. In a letter of 12th June 1759 to his wife Mary (Polly), Erasmus accuses his sister of exagerating the number of people attending, 30,000, saying that number would not fit3 (although audiences of 12,000 are known to have gathered). There’s also a much later association with Charles Darwin, that appears in the correspondence4; not that he visited the Gardens but, as a twelve year old boy, having watched one of Vauxhall’s favourite performers, a ventriloquist named Mr Alexandre, did imitations of animal calls – interesting eh?)
We should take care when talking about Erasmus in this period not to visualise him along the lines of the podgy, red-cheeked albeit aimiable 38 year old captured by Joseph Wright and hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. In 1756, Erasmus was 24 years old, single (he married Mary/Polly Howard the following year), and largely unknown; he’d only two months earlier unpacked his bags in Nottingham to start his first medical practice.
So this is before he moved to Lichfield, and way before the invitation to become the King’s physician, his rivalry with Samuel Johnson (of dictionary fame and a regular at Vauxhall Gardens to the degree he appears in contemporary prints), or his adulation as England’s best loved poet. Moreover, the brief spell Erasmus spent in Nottingham is sparsley covered in the literature, with no mention in the standard biographies of trips to London or the Gardens. There’s just the one letter as far as I can tell.
In conclusion, it’s nice to see Erasmus’s early credentials as both engineer and bon viveur reinforced in the one story (however much, as a fan, that assessment might be tainted by confirmation bias :-)).
In their longevity, Vauxhall Gardens represent a unique microcosm, a laboratory for the study of change in societal norms, fashion, culture, politics and contemporary opinion. Coke’s and Borg’s analysis refreshes our insight on these, and placing Erasmus Darwin at the scene adds to our understanding of his early life.
Update 4/9/11
Twitter friends have suggested Samuel Pepys as an example of a ‘scientist’ known to have visited Vauxhall. He for sure counts as one of the establishment great and the good, and was a president of the Royal Society to boot. Coke and Borg do talk about Pepys, who wrote at some length about Vauxhall Gardens in his famous diaries. I’m afraid I associate Pepys so strongly with the Gardens, and for all his other interests and achievements – not just in science, that I completely forgot to mention him – poor chap. Still, he’s one guy, and it would be interesting to see if any of the other famous scientific names of the day including Newton, Wren, or, as Rebekah Higgitt (@beckyfh) suggested via twitter, Edmund Halley or Joseph Banks made mention of Vauxhall experiences in their letters. I must say, if I had my bust up there in all its glory like Newton did, I’d be checking up on it every friday night.
The fantastic weather in Oxford yesterday meant museum visits took a back seat to a good punting session on the Cherwell (a violation of physics in its own right with me at the helm).
Oxford
But we did get a half hour in the Museum of the History of Science , where I snapped this papier mache box lid, a great early example of newspapers not letting facts get in the way of a good story. For what they lacked in hacking scandals in 1835, they made up for in hoaxing, in stories like the one to which this exhibit relates: The Great Moon Hoax.
The picture is a satirical sketch of the astronomer Sir John Herschel, in a scene based on a series of reports by Richard Adams Locke for the New York Sun in 1835, supposedly describing observations made by Herschel at his South Africa observatory.
From the New York Sun 1835 (Wikicommons)
You can read up on the detail at the museum of hoaxes), but in this rendition, which is new to me, I particularly like the weird equipment combo Herschel’s minions are wielding around him: some sort of camera obscura / microscope mash-up by the looks of things. Maybe those instruments were more familiar than telescopes? Or, more likely, the journo just let his imagination get the better of him. Either way, I guess it’s still the little winged moon-men that steal the show.
The exhibit put me in mind of two lectures on a similar tack I enjoyed in the Royal Society’s History of Science series. You might like to check them out:
‘Fleas, lice, and an elephant on the moon’ by Dr Felicity Henderson (Sept 24 2010)
‘The Telescope at 400: a Satirical Journey’ by Richard Dunn (April 24 2009)
(both can be found by tracking down to the correct dates at the Royal Society podcast/vidcast page here).
On a winding stretch of the A5 road from North Wales to London – around Betys-y-coed and Llangollen – mountain scenery combined with the challenge of balancing speed, driver satisfaction, and passenger nausea makes the journey almost enjoyable. On the other hand, the interminably boring alternations of dual-carriageway and roundabouts that follow – between Oswestry and Shrewsbury – are a recipe for brain death.
Except, that is, one day last week, returning prematurely from a weather-killed ‘Welsh Break’, my mind buzzed over two critical questions the whole trip: What would our broken tent cost to fix? And why did the grooves on that boulder point to the North East?
Well spotted that woman at the back; this is a post where I obsess about a rock.
Boulder and Snowdon
Location in Wales
Location relative to Llanberis
The boulder in question sits about a half mile down the old Rhyd Ddu road outside Llanberis in Snowdonia. Its top surface is covered with North East-facing parallel grooves.
And that’s puzzling, because it looks like a moraine boulder dropped by a glacier, in an area where – having walked these valleys for years – I always assumed the ice had flowed towards the North West, away from Snowdon. Seeing as though the scrape marks left by glaciers – which is almost certainly what these are – align with the direction of glacial flow, something is amiss.
At this point, lest I raise galactic doubt and uncertainty beyond already dangerous levels, as Douglas Adams might say, rest assured this is all sorted – after a fashion but in a reasonably scientific way – by the end of the post. I also got a new tent pole: £15 – thanks for asking.
South Sea Wales
The relevant history starts around 400 million years ago with successive phases of volcanism, weathering, and glaciation (plus some folding and other geological processes). When the oceanic plate of Iapetus undercut the adjacent tectonic plate of Avalonian – all in the Southern Hemisphere back then – the resulting subduction generated enough heat for volcanoes to punch through Avalonia and form the upland region we now call Snowdonia1.
Source: Wikicommons
Subduction Zone (Source:IAN Symbol Libraries)
The ensuing millenia saw wind, rain, and rivers transform the resulting mountain range from Himalayan grandeur to the more modest heights we see today; yet some of the most dramatic re-modelling was reserved for only the last 20,000 years or so. And it was caused by ice.
20,000 years ago we were at the peak of a major ice-age that buried the whole region under 1.4 km of ice, with just the tops of the highest mountains poking out. Moving under gravity, glaciers of rock-bearing ice flowed down the river valleys, gouging out the Llanberis, Nant Ffrancon, and other steep-walled passes, cutting through hard volcanic rock in a series of breaches, and scooping out rounded recesses, or cwms (known as corries in Scotland).
Llanberis Pass on the right, Cwm Brwynog to the left
View down Llanberis Pass from Llanberis
Chunks of rock, liberated by repeated melting and expansion of ice, or plucked out by other rocks, joined the glacier and travelled as an abrasive slurry beneath the ice – scoring anything in their path, before being released as ‘moraine’ when the glacier descended to a warmer altitude or the general climate warmed up sufficiently for the ice to melt.
Boulders falling on the surface of the glacier were likewise dumped, sometimes in incongruous isolation, their angular forms undamaged – like this one just off the Snowdon Ranger Path:
Moraine boulder east of Snowdon near Snowdon Ranger Path / Llyn Ffynnon-y-gwas
A Popular Destination
Did Darwin or Huxley pause at this one?
No shortage of historical figures are associated with glaciation and its geographical consequences, including: Louis Agassiz, Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel-Wallace, John Tyndall and Thomas Henry Huxley. Agassiz observed glaciers in Switzerland, and in 1840 was the first to suggest similar processes had operated in the upland areas of Britain (an assertion on which he was closely supported by William Buckland and Charles Lyell.)
Charles Darwin knew the region well2:
“I cannot imagine a more instructive and interesting lesson for any one who wishes (as I did) to learn the effects produced by the passage of glaciers, than to ascend a mountain like one of those south of the upper lake of Llanberis, constituted of the same kind of rock and similarly stratified, from top to bottom. The lower portions consist entirely of convex domes or bosses of naked rock generally smoothed, but with their steep faces often deeply scored in nearly horizontal lines, and with their summits occasionally crowned by perched boulders of foreign rock.”
The glacial boulders of North Wales, with their strange grooving, made a particular impression on Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discover with Charles Darwin of evolution; commenting in his paper Ice Marks in North Wales3:
“..it frequently happens that grooves or scratches are made upon the rocks by the hard materials imbedded in the bottom or sides of the glacier. Owing to the enormous weight and slow motion of glaciers, they move with great steadiness, and thus the markings on rock-surfaces are almost straight lines parallel to each other, and show the direction in which the glacier moved.”
and:
“Nothing is more striking than to trace for the first time over miles of country these mysterious lines, ruled upon the hardest rocks, and always pointing in the same direction.”
Suddenly I feel less alone in my fascination.
In his hugely popular textbook on physical geography – Physiography4 – Thomas Huxley describes how glaciers flow over exposed bedrock to produce characteristic Roches Moutonnees formations (sheep-backs), complete with parallel striations:
But back now to the North West / North East question; a closer look at the Ordnance Survey and Google 3D map projections suggests an answer.
For directly to the South West of our boulder is a more local gouging of the hills in the form of Cwm Dwythwch and its attendant lake – Llyn Dwythwch, suggesting the area was subject to local glaciation running perpendicular to the main ice-flow from Snowdon. Indeed, the feature is discussed in a paper from the 1950s describing the glaciation as a distinct event, separated from the main ice-flows by 10,000 years in the last period of UK glaciation – the ‘Loch Lomond Advance’. The cwm certainly aligns with our boulder (pink X marks the spot):
Things are even clearer in glorious Google 3D, North at top:
or looking toward Snowdon:
In Late Glacial Cwm Glaciers in Wales5, Brian Seddon references Cwm Dwythwch and 32 other cwms or cirques in the region arguing they developed from snow and ice preferentially deposited on the sun-sheltered North and North Eastern faces of hillsides, assisted by snow-drifting induced by South Westerly prevailing winds (like we have today). Seddon recorded the moraine fields of 33 such cirques, plotting their altitude(circles) and aspect(radii) to illustrate the dominance of North/North East facing cwms. He placed the lowest extent of moraines in the Snowdon Group, containing Cwm Dwythwch, at 275 metres, which is above, but not far off, our boulder’s height at 240 metres. Maybe he didn’t count every individual boulder at the boundary? That Snowdonia was formed by a mix of ice-cap and localised glaciation is now widely accepted6,7.
Moraine altitude, aspect, direction in Seddon's Snowdon Group' After Seddon (Ref.5)
All of which, in conclusion, suggests our boulder most likely started life as a volcanic outcrop at the top of Cwm Dwthwch, was carried to its present position by a glacier in a secondary period of low temperatures and glaciation around 10,000 years ago, and picked up abrasions as it was overrun or carried in the North Easterly underflow.
All that with three qualifiers: (a) it’s not 100% certain the boulder is not actually an outcrop of bedrock (need to take a closer look next visit!); in which case it’s fair to assume it was simply overrun by the glacier; and (b) it’s possible the boulder was carried down from Snowdon in the first glacial episode and subsequently overrun by the secondary glacier (again, more research); or even (c) the boulder was scarred in the first episode and somehow got spun around 90 degrees just to fool us.
Clearly no rest for the rigorous – or obsessive weekend geographers – it would seem.
p.s. If any seasoned geologists out there want to put me right / out of my misery, please feel free :-).
Basecamp with pre-broken tent
References / Sources
1. Rock Trails, Snowdonia: A Hillwalker’s Guide to the Geology and Scenery. Gannon, Paul. Pesda Press, 2008
2. Notes on the Effects produced by the Ancient Glaciers of Caernarvonshire, and on the Boulders transported by Floating Ice, Charles Darwin, The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 1842, p.362.
4. Physiography: An Introduction to the Study of Nature. T.H.Huxley, Macmillan, 1878, p.162.
5. Late Glacial Cwm Glaciers in Wales. Brian Seddon, Journal of Glaciology, 1957. In International Glaciological Journal, Volume 3, Issue 22 pp.94-96
6. The last glaciers (Loch Lomond Advance) in Snowdonia, North Wales. Gray JM 1982. Geological. Journal 17: 111-133.
7. Allometric development of glacial cirque form: Geological, relief and regional effects on the cirques of Wales, Ian S. Evans, Geomorphology Issues 3-4, 1986
8. The Early History of Glacial Theory in British Geology. Bert Hansen, Journal of Glaciology, Vol 9, No.55, 1970.
Galileo Galilei’s scrape with the Roman Catholic Church is well known.
His suggestion that the Earth spins on its axis and orbits around the Sun was an afront to scripture that got him branded as a heretic and almost burnt at the stake. How he first became aware of the full peril of his situation is less well known: on a rooftop in Rome, eavesdropping whilst taking a pee behind a bush.
Maybe that’s how it happened, maybe not – either way, the Earth won’t stop turning.
But it’s through these touches of imaginative license: sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, on occasion disturbingly vivid, that Stuart Clark breathes life into the characters of his first novel, The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth.
The title comes from an episode in the book, where Galileo explains the hopelessness of trying to understand the universe without the correct language – mathematics; to do so is to “wander about lost in the dark labyrinth of the sky.” But don’t panic, it’s an equationless drama.
In this first part of a trilogy that reaches from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, we follow the lives of the astronomers Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) as they challenge the religiously inspired orthodoxy of the times: an Earth-centered universe with the Sun and planets orbiting around in perfect circles – just as God intended.
Each astronomer has special skills and his own ideas about the cosmos:
Tycho, the meticulous naked-eye observer, happy for the Sun to orbit the Earth, yet convinced the other planets revolve around the Sun.
Galileo, arguably the father of evidence-based thinking, points his telescope skyward to see mountains on the moon, satellites around Jupiter, moon-like phases on Venus and Mercury, and spots on the Sun (Clark reminds us Galileo didn’t actually invent the telescope) – each observation a blow to the accepted model of the universe and Aristotle’s concept of a perfect heaven.
And Kepler, obsessed with geometry, turns a rigorous mathematical eye to his compatriots’ data to derive a model of eliptical planetary motion that, relativistic effects aside, is valid to this day.
On the journey, we share starry rooftop nights with Tycho and his armillary spheres and sextants; and with Galileo and his telescope. We encounter scientific concepts, painlessly embedded in the story, from stellar parallax to Kepler’s defining relationship for a planet’s distance and period round the Sun.
We meet the landmark publications that captured these ideas: Kepler’s discussion of perfect polygons Mysterium cosmographicum, his treatise on Mars: the Astronomia nova, and the Rudolphine Tables of star positions; Galileo’s telescope observations in Sidereus Nuncius and his more troublesome endorsement of Copernican ideas in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
The whole is delivered through a pacey narrative that switches back and forth through time and space. One moment we’re in Rome, then Prague, then Florence, then Rome again. Thus Clark weaves his factually-based interplay of lives and ideas.
As in any drama, characters are developed in contexts that resonate with our personal experience: relationships, families, squabbles, births, marriages and deaths – as far as that’s possible 400 years on. Is that illusory? Can we ever really see from behind 16th century eyes? No, we can’t. But how else to share Kepler’s wonder as he steps out onto the observatory roof, or taste Tycho’s not-so-scientific bon vivre lifestyle and lordly pride, or feel Galileo’s chill dread as he anticipates what a rabid Inquisition has in store?
And that, in a nutshell, is Clark’s proposition.
It’s one where he’s shown due respect for the underlying history, reflected perhaps in a favouring of credible human vignettes over elaborate manufactured sub-plots. So, lots of expansion on the meetings, schemes, and conflicts that must have taken place but would never be recorded – scenes that can be directed and embellished to divert and entertain without compromising the main account.
In this regard, it’s a very different book to, say, Edward Rutherfurd’s London, where the main story lines are totally fictional. Clark’s work comes over as based on historical record and scientific fact. It’s important, as historians of science in particular can, understandably, take issue with inaccurate or controversial portrayals; I’m thinking of a recent defence of Nevil Maskelyne, the 18th century Astronomer Royal, demonised in the film version of Dava Sobel’s Longitude.
The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth begins in Rome, where a defiant Giordano Bruno, comfortable only with his conscience, waits in a cell to be burnt at the stake for heresy.
Johannes Kepler, an outcast Lutheran, arrives in Bohemian Prague to join the service of Tycho Brahe, and get a first sniff of the observational data he’ll one day build into a planetary model. He also hears about one Galileo Galilei of Padua, and the wonderful discoveries he’s made with his telescope (before long Kepler will have one of his own).
And all the time the Roman Catholic Church is watching, keeping tabs on these dangerous individuals, their troubling independence and inconvenient appeal to evidence. Kepler is spyed on – his mail intercepted. Galileo, at first encouraged by the Pope, is told in no uncertain terms to leave theological interpretation to the Church; but his thoughts are already committed to print. Thus the slippery slide to persecution, recantation, and repression is joined.
The plot moves between the bloody war-torn streets of Prague and the red robed intrigue of Vatican corridors. Current events in Reformation Europe are dominated by the struggle between an increasingly Jesuit-influenced Catholic Church and a rising tide of Lutherism. And our astronomers are in the thick of it.
Far from being godless atheists, they aim to explain God’s works – not undo them. Yet a Catholic Galileo and a Lutheran Kepler still each grapple to rationalise their ideas to themselves and to a world of dogmatic orthodoxy. A world where political, theological, and philosophical considerations hold sway over rationalism; where solidarity of belief and allegiance to the group is prized over individual will, conscience, or even physical proof; where mathematical descriptions are acceptable as professional tricks, but will never define truth; where witchcraft is a burning issue, and astronomy is inseparably tied up with the superstition of astrology.
Indeed, Kepler makes a good living drawing up horoscopes for wealthy patrons and courtly sponsors – a trade he revisits as the need arises (Clark actually credit’s him with a rather modern pragmatism on these issues).
Reformation Europe is also a great background for some of Clark’s more vivid visualisations, reminiscent of a Terry Gilliam movie in their medievalism. I love the “gobs of some thick unguent” Kepler spies clinging at the margins of Tycho’s prosthetic nose when they first meet, and the mood-setting ‘unpleasant tang of tallow’ in Kepler’s study.
Life is dirty, smelly, and not a little dangerous.
On the downside, I occasionally lose track in the switching interplay of events and locations, feeling the need to draw little timeline diagrams – lest I get totally lost in the labyrinth. And oblivious to any description or other literary signposting, I only ever thought of our heros as bearded old men. I’ll call it William Shakespeare syndrome- there just aren’t enough ‘before they were famous’ portraits out there.
But none of that detracted from The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth as a thoroughly entertaining and recommended read.
In capturing that essential excitement of the night sky, unchanged over the centuries, Clark has created a work accessible to all comers, and one that astronomers and history fans in particular will doubtless lap up.
I look forward to meeting Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble in future installments.
I’ve just started playing with Dipity timelines, and as it’s Thomas ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ Huxley’s birthday today, 4th May, here’s a work-in-progress showing some of the events in his life.
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Nice to see as early as 1837 Charles Dickens doing his bit to comically debunk the efficacy of infinitesimal doses in medicine. Okay, he’s not quite talking about the bottles of total nothingness you can buy at the chemist and are an insult to reason today, but still interesting that similar ideas were an issue 175 years ago.
