Category Archives: History

The Darker Side of (some) Scientists

February 27, 2012 Tim Jones 3 Comments

I guess at times we all put up a mask in public. We might even have a bit of a dark side kept under wraps most of the time. But there’s something extra-disturbing when our heroes show a side to them we never knew, especially when it’s at odds with the comfortable stereotype they’ve come to represent.

Take doctors for example: helpful, trustworthy folk, blessed with skills in beneficent care and correcting surgery. Yet Lars Tharp, talking about Hogarth and medicine at the Foundling Museum yesterday, reminded me of at least one medical man with a shadow over him, and a dark side literally demarcated by the geography of his home.

rewardofcruelty — Hogarth’s Reward of Cruelty. Anatomising a criminal, 18th century style

Those who have read Wendy Moore’s biography The Knife Man will know I’m talking about John Hunter – traditionally tagged with the strap-line ‘Father of Modern Surgery’ – as he doubtless was.

That was almost an accolade he could celebrate in his own lifetime, within the genteel and elegantly decorated reception rooms of his Leicester Square mansion. Yet the learning behind Hunter’s reputation wasn’t gained in his salon, but in the less well publicised back rooms and tiered operating theatre, fed by grisly subjects for anatomy arriving all too timely through the back entrance on shabby Castle Street.

Hunter had cleverly bought the house onto which his Leicester Square residence backed, and built his museum and operating theatre between the two – creating separate worlds.

Not surprisingly, scholars credit Hunter’s situation as the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Jekyl and Hyde.

Incidentally, Hunter was also in his day the top expert on venereal disease, and it’s thought likely he intentionally infected himself with syphilis via his penis for the sake of research. So despite his unconventional sourcing strategy for bodies, at least he wasn’t selfish.

Tharp mentioned Hunter only in passing, but a further remark he made puts me in mind of another scientist with a dark side – Isaac Newton, no less.

The Newton we imagine sitting under a tree, watching apples drop, benevolently ruminating his prisms and calculus, is a far cry from the Master of the Mint Isaac Newton, who doggedly pursued forgers and clippers (they cut bits of valuable metal off coins to sell) to a horrifying death at the Tyburn gallows. (There’s an excellent account of Newton’s life at the mint in Thomas Levenson’s Newton and the Counterfeiter).

Tharp’s case didn’t implicate Newton personally, but dealt with the particularly harrowing story of a mother found guilty of clipping and awaiting execution at Newgate, pleading with the Foundling Hospital to take care of her child.

Burnt at the stake for clipping coins - Elizabeth Wright — Another clipping offender (The Newgate Calendar)

Her child was saved, but she went on to be burned at the stake all the same; think about that next time you deface the coin of the realm steadying a wonky table leg with a 2p piece (do your own research as to the true present-day hazard of this heinous sin).

So what other scientists’ dark secrets have come out through history to muddy their fantasy image.

There’s Einstein: a nice old guy who wouldn’t harm a fly, right? Wrong – at least as far as his family were concerned. Einstein cheated on his wife, set out unreasonable conditions for their marriage to continue, and paid little attention to his children. And while we accept Einstein was human like the rest of us, that’s somehow more information than we want to hear.

There’s often a conflict in the minds of scientists who choose to do war work: like building bombs, weapon systems, or other enablers of physical destruction; and there’s still a debate around the social responsibility scientists should bear for the outcomes of their work (although I sense it’s more settled that scientists should indeed feel that obligation). Closer to home, as a humble chemical engineer in peacetime 1980s Britain, I lacked the opportunity or temptation to get conflicted in that way, but, for sure, the most interesting and rewarding jobs for my physics and electronics buddies were defence related. I guess Robert Oppenheimer, reluctantly self-styled Destroyer of Worlds and leader of the atomic bomb Manhattan Project, is the text-book example in this category, although if there’s one guy truly qualified for the E-word on that team it’s probably giddy hydrogen bomb fan Edward Teller.

Fritz Haber is another example. The Haber process for making ammonia was hugely useful and constructive in the manufacture of fertiliser. But Haber’s dark association with poison gas manufacture for Germany in the first world war – captured in Tony Harrison’s play Square Rounds – caused his vilification to this day.

It’s an imperfect comparison, but as a scientist whose work ultimately saved millions of lives – through the food produced using ammonia fertilisers, but at the cost of lives lost to gas and explosives, Haber shares some common ground with surgeon William Hunter. How much faster did surgery move along because society, with a bit of convenient blind eye turning, allowed Hunter access to the bodies he needed? (Related to this idea, I’ve most recently been intrigued as to where we’d be had some of the more questionable early twentieth century work on brain surgery not gone ahead – as it for sure wouldn’t today.)

What this comes down to is that scientists are just people after all: some pretty nice, some about alright, and some pretty rotten.

On a brighter note, having multiple facets to your sparkling intellect can also be a good thing.

Astronomer William Herschel’s (1738-1822) tale of confliction is a relatively happy one that I think made his life more fulfilling.

Herschel discovered Uranus and built fabulous ground-breaking telescopes. But he was also a professional organist and competent composer, whose first love – and bread and butter for much of his life – was music.

And it stayed with him; Herschel’s cheery ‘Echo Catch’ was performed at the pleasure gardens in Bath only a year before he discovered the mysterious seventh planet. For other good stuff Herschel got up to, see this earlier post.

I’m sure there are loads more examples of scientists whose dark side has come to light through some sordid revelation. But these are the ones who sprang to mind; maybe I’ll add more later. Feel free to volunteer candidates – especially if they’re still living.

Right! Two in morning. Now where did I put my cape and sword-stick.

References & further reading

1. The Knife Man, Wendy Moore, Bantam Press 2005

2. Newton and the Counterfeiter, Thomas Levenson, Faber & Faber, 2009

3. The Other Side of Albert Einstein, Physics World, 2005

4. Square Rounds, Tony Harrison, Faber & Faber, 2003

5. The Georgian Star. Michael Lemonick, Atlas, 2008

6. Article on Fritz Haber here at Smithsonian.com

Chemistry, Fun, History, sociology

Monkey Brand Comes Clean

February 1, 2012 Tim Jones 1 Comment

Like any normal person, I decorate my bathroom with Victorian engravings of anthropomorphised monkeys.

Monkey Brand Soap adverts from The Graphic 1897 and The Illustrated London News 1901. Monkey Brand aficionados might note that between the two pics ownership changed from Benjamin Brookes to Lever Brothers – an early incarnation of the giant Unilever business we know and love today. (Photos of original prints in Tim Jones’s collection)

These two depict the kind of half ape / half-monkey used by Benjamin Brooke and Lever Brothers to promote Monkey Brand soap, a super-popular cleaning product at the turn of the twentieth century.

An intriguing strap line at the bottom of these simian vignettes catches the eye, and, in those contemplative loo moments, piques an interest for further research. It’s a fleeting urge, seconds later flushed from thought – the cycle repeating with each visit. That’s how I know Monkey Brand “WON’T WASH CLOTHES“.

‘Won’t Wash Clothes’ Monkey Brand Advert (Photo of original print in Tim Jones’s collection)

Spotting these blocks of the real thing at the Museum of London prompted further research.

Monkey Brand Soap at the Museum of London (Photo: Tim Jones)

Of more interest than the technical side of Monkey Brand is the way social and cultural historians, public relations types, and advertising scholars have tried to understand the what, why, and wherefore of a marketing strategy underpinned by these pseudo-human creatures.

Monkey Brand Advert ‘The Graphic’ Christmas Number 1897 (Photo of original print in Tim Jones’s collection)

The gist of these socio-cultural analyses is that the monkey was used (consciously and unconsciously) as symbolic commentary on issues around race, gender and class: representing an idea of change in the Victorian mind that went beyond the obvious clean-dirty associations.

The tens of different Monkey Brand ads produced at this time are a semiotician’s dream. For more on this aspect, check out this post at the ‘Notes on the arts and visual culture blog’, and this essay (pdf file) ‘Soft Soaping Empire’.

Got to love the Victorians

From the scientific perspective, Monkey Brand ‘Won’t Wash Clothes’ because it was loaded with an abrasive mineral – probably pumice (volcanic ash) – which would almost certainly put a hole through your favourite bib and tucker. Pumice contains shock-cooled glassy particles, making the soap abrasive.

While mostly used on dirty grates and rusty bicycles, there’s a hint of an endorsement for use as an occasional toothpaste, although this story from 1908, of an old lady wearing a hole through her denture plate, suggests that’s not such a good idea.

You can still get something along the lines of Monkey Brand today, this LAVA soap; ;with ‘Pumice Power’: “The hand cleaner of choice for do-it-yourselfers, coal miners, and oil rig workers“.

Fun, History, History of Science, Medicine

Charles Dickens’s Mudfrog Homeopathy

January 17, 2012 Tim Jones Leave a comment

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.”

assoc-advancement-science — By John Leech, Punch, 1846

References

The Mudfrog Papers http://www.archive.org/stream/mudfogpapersetcn00dickrich/mudfogpapersetcn00dickrich_djvu.txt

Books, evolution, History of Science, Uncategorized

Darwin’s Many Origins

January 13, 2012 Tim Jones 1 Comment

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:

1st Edition (1859) 1,250

2nd Edition (1860) 3,000

3rd Edition (1861) 2,000

4th Edition (1866) 1,500

5th Edition (1869) 2,000

6th Edition (1872) 3,000

which goes some way to explain their value today – although the first editions command disproportionately very much more than any of the others. (For a comprehensive bibliography of all Darwin’s works see Freeman, R. B. 1977. The works of Charles Darwin: an annotated bibliographical handlist. 2d ed. Dawson: Folkstone. and accompanying database at Darwin Online.)

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)

Aviation, History, History of Science, Museums, Nostalgia, space, Visits

A Century of Southern California Aerospace

December 15, 2011 Tim Jones Leave a comment

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.

blue_tathostess — TAT Hostess, 1929 (Photo: Huntington press release)

blue_ameliaearhart — 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.

(A recent scholarly analysis of NASA history can be had for free in NASA 50th Anniversary Proceedings, NASA’s first 50 Years:Historical Perspectives. For cultural insights on the era, see my posts Home Chemistry in the Golden Age of American Science and Buck Rogers – a Copper Clad Lesson from History) )

The exhibition isn’t just about NASA though. For more info, check out the website or visit till the 9th January 2012.

biology, Book reviews, events, History, psychology, sociology

Steven Pinker in conversation with A.C.Grayling at the Wellcome Collection

November 5, 2011 Tim Jones Leave a comment

I’m conscious the blog has a science-celeb Picture Posty feel of late; but remember: (a) there have been an unusual number of cool events in London the past couple of weeks, (b) you like this stuff :-P, (c) someone’s got to do it.

Steven Pinker at the Wellcome Collection (Photo:Tim Jones)

More importantly, you need to know tonight’s conversation with Anthony Grayling and Steven Pinker at the Wellcome Collection was quite excellent, and it’s well worth catching the BBC World Service broadcast of the event on Christmas Eve and again on Christmas Day: details here.

A.C.Grayling at the Wellcome Collection (Photo:Tim Jones)

The Pinker canon of academic and popular science writing covers broad ground: from the ‘Stuff of Thought‘s analysis of language and the (amazingly dull sounding but actually very interesting) irregular verbs, through the controversial nature-nurture territory of the ‘Blank Slate‘, to pontification on the (relative) demise of global violence in the recent ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature‘.

Tonight, Grayling steered the Canadian psychologist through the whole smash in about 80 minutes, including a good twenty minutes or more of intelligent audience questions. The proceedings were introduced as part of the ‘Exchanges at the Frontier’ series by Wellcome’s lead on public programmes Ken Arnold, and Charlie Taylor for the BBC.

Watch out for the broadcast; but as usual here’s a few facts, quotes, stuff-that-I-remember-or-jotted-down, mindless ramblings, as a taster:

The first part of the conversation was about language. Discussing a generic mental model of how we use metaphor in day-to-day speech, Pinker used the example of ‘grasping an idea’, ‘getting across’ an idea, to ‘unpack’ an idea – asking us to take the underlying metaphor as a little marble in a box. The box here is language, we communicate by sending the box, we open the box, the marble inside is the meaning. (Re communication and meaning, also check out my post on James Gleick’s The Information re Claude Shannon, and follow your nose from there.)

Steven Pinker and A.C.Grayling in conversation at the Wellcome Collection (Photo:Tim Jones)

On another tack, Pinker linked our tendency for profanity – swearing – to the emotional parts of our brain (rather than the rational/cognitive) and activation of the ancient mammalian ‘rage circuit’ – as likely to be triggered by stubbing our toe or sitting on a cat (in which case from the cat’s perspective). The cat yowls to startle an attacker; our evolutionary hangover induces a good old-fashioned “F***!” (In deference to the BBC he didn’t say it quite like that).

A round of audience questions on language: “Gentleman in the russet tee-shirt” (in the nicest possible way, Grayling is very good at this), and we’re on to subtlties of the mind. Pinker elaborates his Blank Slate quote “The conscious mind – the self or soul – is a spin doctor, not the commander-in-chief” with reference to how we lie to ourselves (we do), as a means of sounding more convincing when we lie to others: a kind of practice for consistency. (Pinker referred to Robert Triver’s on this theme, who’s views are expanded here in the Guardian.)

Answering a related audience question on the necessity of language for introspection (e.g. in babies with no language yet), Pinker referenced the ‘default network’: simply put, what your brain is doing when you’re not really thinking on anything in particular. This seems pretty key, that we can think unconsciously and experience concepts without language. And while I take Pinker’s point that children must have some non-language dependent cognitive ability to be able to adopt a language in the first place, I suspect there’s a lot we don’t know.

Moving to his latest focus – violence – Pinker contrasts our violent impulses (e.g. predation, rage) with a counter-tendency for self-control: the infrastructure for his latest book’s broader thesis of inner demons versus better angels. The ensuing discussion on murder, ideological violence and sadism (an acquired taste, like chili peppers) is probably best left for your Christmas Eve listening.

So what happens when the better angels pull ahead of the pesky demons?

Pinker says we get a general decline in violence. One that he can illustrate with statistics of murder rates, wars, attrocities – you name it – it’s declined; not necessarily in absolute terms, but on a pro-rata basis for a given population (in the book Pinker explains why this might be a sensible way of measuring things).

Graphs aside though, with all the turbulence in the world today (economic and otherwise), the thrust of the wind-up Q&A was around how permanent this new low-violence regime might be. Encouragingly – just what we’ll need at Christmas – Pinker suggests Greece won’t in fact be going to war with Germany anytime soon [despite everything], and, likewise, the USA and China will be cool (think: “they make all our stuff, we owe them too much”).

So. For the most part. We can. Relax.

(p.s. I asked my own question on how the observed virtuous developments in culture and human nature might somehow express (or have been expressed) in our biology, whether through genetics or epigenetics, and got a good answer from Pinker. They’re bound to broadcast that bit, but if they don’t I’ll expand in a future post). Update: [they did here]

animals, biology, events, History of Science, nature, Ornithology

David Attenborough – Darwin Lecture 2011, ‘Alfred Russel Wallace and the Birds of Paradise’

November 3, 2011 Tim Jones 12 Comments

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.

David Attenborough at the Darwin Lecture 2011 — 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.

David Attenborough at the Darwin Lecture 2011 Photo by Tim Jones — Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)

400px-Paradisaea_apoda_-Bali_Bird_Park-7 — 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.

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 .

David Attenborough and Vaughan Southgate at the Darwin Lecture 2011 Photo by Tim Jones — 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.

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.

Ascanio Sobrero, Nitroglycerin, and a Big Noise in a Small Village

October 13, 2011 Tim Jones 3 Comments

Today is the birthday of the inventor of nitroglycerin: 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.

Plaque commemorating the explosion ©Tim Jones

Road into Cwm-y-glo. The building on the left is where the inn mentioned in the reports stood ©Tim Jones

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.

View Cwm y Glo Explosion Plaque in a larger map

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 ”

And the original Welsh:

CAN AM Y

DDAMWAIN ARSWYDUS

Hoff chwarelwyr a’r holl greigwyr

Drwy Arfon a Meirionydd sydd

Clywch alarnad am hyll ddamwain

Filain wnaeth ryw fronau’n brudd

Y mae damwain ar ol damwain

Mewn chwarelau’n fynych iawn

Drwy gwymp darnau hyll crogedig

O greig gwympart fore’ a’ nawn

Darnio’r cnawd malurio’r esgyrn,

A’u hel i gynfas gafodd llu,

A pha galon ddeil heb doddi

Wrth draethu am y modd a fu

Y fam yn methu ag adnabod

Ei hanwyl fab neu phriod hi,

Hwythau’r plant a’u dagrau’a hidl,

Yn gwaeddi ‘nhad pa le’r wyt ti ?

Y mae’r pylor wedi peru

I aml ddamwain erchyll fod,

Mae’r Nitro-glycerine ddefnyddir,

N gwneud arswydus drymach ned,

Mae’n offeryn cryf a nerthol,

A ddefnyddir at ein gwaith,

Ond peryglus yw i ddynion

Llu gadd drwyddo greulon graith

Ger Abergele bu g’lau asdra

Na bu cyftelyb i’r fath dro,

A chawn eto hyll drychineb

A fu gerllau i Cwm y glo

References

(1) Alfred Nobel in Scotland John E Dolan, Nobelprize.org

(2) New Statesman, Commons Debates 1873, The Nitro-Glycerine Act (1869)

ref(3)

Nitro-glycerine Act 1869

4. A report of the accident in The Times

The Times, July 2, 1869

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.

Other sources

BBC News ‘Cwm-y-Glo Blast’ Martin Kressman

Gathering the Jewels (Welsh heritage website)

Biography, Book reviews, Engineering, History, History of Science

Unweaving the Waterfall – Erasmus Darwin at Vauxhall Gardens

September 2, 2011 Tim Jones 1 Comment

vauxhallpenandink_1 — Vauxhall Gardens (artwork Tim Jones)

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.

Vauxhall Gardens by David Coke and Alan Borg

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 terrific¹.

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.

Of related interest on Zoonomian: The Other Darwin Genius

References

1) Vauxhall Gardens A History, Coke, David., Borg, Alan., Yale, 2011

2) King-Hele, Desmond (Ed.), The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, Cambridge, 2007, [56-6] p.35

3) King-Hele, Desmond (Ed.), The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, Cambridge, 2007, [59-1] p.47

4) Darwin Correspondence Database,
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry1 accessed on Thu Sep 01 2011 15:56:18 GMT+0100 (BST)

Other Sources

King-Hele, Desmond, Erasmus Darwin 1731-1802, Macmillan, 1963

King-Hele, Desmond, The Essential Writings of Erasmus Darwin, MacGibbon & Kee, 1968

King-Hele, Desmond, Erasmus Darwin A Life of Unequalled Achievement, Giles de la Mare, 1999

astronomy, Fun, History, History of Science, media, Museums

The Moon Hoaxing Scandal of 1835

July 11, 2011 Tim Jones Leave a comment

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).

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.

800px-Great-Moon-Hoax-1835-New-York-Sun-lithograph-298px — 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).

Communicate Science

Category Archives: History

The Darker Side of (some) Scientists

Monkey Brand Comes Clean

Charles Dickens’s Mudfrog Homeopathy

Darwin’s Many Origins

A Century of Southern California Aerospace

Steven Pinker in conversation with A.C.Grayling at the Wellcome Collection

David Attenborough – Darwin Lecture 2011, ‘Alfred Russel Wallace and the Birds of Paradise’

Ascanio Sobrero, Nitroglycerin, and a Big Noise in a Small Village

ref(3)

Unweaving the Waterfall – Erasmus Darwin at Vauxhall Gardens

The Moon Hoaxing Scandal of 1835

Zoonomian Blog