Category Archives: Science

Admiral Byrd’s Snow Cruiser

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The Snow Cruiser and its crew in Antarctica.

The Victorian Era corresponds well with an age of exploration–exploration of the Poles, as well as Africa and the Far East, not to mention the first ascension of many mountain peaks. And of course, it overlaps with the time frame in which much steampunk literature takes place.

Exploration of the Polar Regions started in the 1800s with the search for the Northwest Passage, and continued into the 20th century. The North Pole was overflown on  May 9, 1926 by the American Admiral Richard Byrd in a Fokker Tri-motor plane, although there is some dispute concerning the accuracy and precision of the sextants used and whether the plane could have flown the distance claimed. Nevertheless, a Norwegian expedition commanded by Roald Amundsen reached the pole three days later in the airship Norge cementing the achievement of this goal for good.

Admiral Byrd commanded several Antarctic expeditions over the decades from the 1930s to the 1950s. On his third expedition, Byrd delivered what he hoped would be an innovative vehicle, the Antarctic Snow Cruiser to the Little America base.  The vehicle was designed by Thomas Poulter, a veteran of Byrd’s previous expedition, and was built at the Pullman Company. Its dimensions were huge: 17 meters long and 61 meters wide. During its journey to Boston where it was to be loaded onto the ship to Antarctica, its size caused steering problems, not to mention traffic jams in the cities it passed through.

Cut-away view of the Snow Cruiser showing its capabilities.

The Snow Cruiser was designed to extend the range of exploration from the main base of Little America on the Ross Ice Shelf. The Snow Cruiser had living quarters for a crew of five and included sleeping areas, a galley, a machine shop, and a photographic darkroom. More exciting was the biplane that the Cruiser carried to increase its exploration range even further.

When the Snow Cruiser was unloaded from the Coast Gard Cutter North Star at Little America base, problems became evident. The immense weight of the vehicle was such that the ramp from the ship’s deck collapsed. The ten-foot diameter tires were designed to be treadless to prevent encrustation by snow. However, they provided little traction. The tires also sunk into the snow as much as 1-meter deep. Several modifications were tried to improve driving performance, and it was found that driving in reverse increased traction to some extent. However, the Snow Cruiser’s longest trek was only 148 km, accomplished completely in reverse. The biplane did perform some aerial surveys of the area near the Little America base, but not as much as originally expected.

A skeleton crew over-wintered in the Cruiser performing scientific observations. By the next spring, the US government was more concerned with the growing threat of war, and Antarctic exploration was halted. The Cruiser became buried in the snow and eventually the ice shelf where it stood broke away. While it is not known where exactly the Cruiser ended up, it is certain that it now lies on the seabed.

While the Snow Cruiser did not reach its potential, it is still a great example of innovation being harnessed for science, a feature that has continued from the Victorian Age, all the way up to the Apollo moon missions and Ingenuity, the robotic helicopter that just finished its mission flying around on Mars.

End of the Year Discounts on Smashwords

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From December 15 to the end of January 1, the four issues in the Airship Flamel Adventures Series will be discounted on Smashwords for half-price (or $1.74 for the electronic versions of these books.) And the Anteprologue to the first book in the series is available free!

The main character (our hero!) is Professor Nicodemus Boffin, who commands the airship Flamel, an airship which contains all manner of advanced technologies, much invented by the professor himself. The Flamel travels the world on an extended voyage of discovery. At times, however, Flamel and its crew are called upon to undertake “extraordinary duties” for Queen, Country, and Empire.

Click on the titles below to read more about this steampunk adventure series.

Enjoy!

Where Treasures Lie – Now Available!

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I am happy to announce that my latest novel in the Airship Flamel Adventures series is now available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions.

Here’s the synopsis:

Jonathan Boffin runs away from school one day and stows away on an airship in hopes of following his dream to become an airpirate. Captain MacNee takes him under his wing and employs him as a cabin boy while teaching him airmanship and piracy.

Years later, Jonathan, now Airpirate Captain Jonathan Blackguard plunders an ancient map from a prize ship. He quickly discovers that he lacks the skill in interpreting it. Only the large red X in the center of the map tempts him to continue seeking the secret of the map and the treasure that must lie where the X marks the spot. Eventually he concedes that only one person has both the intelligence and the integrity to help him decipher the secret of the map: his father, Professor Nicodemus Boffin, from whom Blackguard ran away from. But will his father put aside years of estrangement in hopes that working with his son will bring him around to his father’s point of view? And what will the treasure turn out to be?

As opposed to my previous books, this story is told somewhat more from Jonathan’s point of view and features his disagreements with his father.  This book completes the three-story arc–The Secret Notebook of Michael Faraday, Mr. Darwin’s Dragon, and Where Treasures Lie, although To Rule the Skies takes place after this book. And I would not be too surprised if another book with the same characters crossing paths with a famous scientist or two at some point.

The book will be launched next weekend (April 7-9) at Clockwork Alchemy, the Bay Area’s steampunk con. I’ll be at the Author’s Alley along with a number of my fellow authors. I’ll be also giving two presentations–on Steampunk Architecture and on Victorian Scientists. Since the theme of the con this year is Villains and Heroes, I’ll be sorting things along those lines. And there were plenty of villainous scientists and engineers during the Victorian Era to keep things interesting.

Steampunk Cuisine, Part 1. Pressure Cookers

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I’ve been involved in Steampunk for over seven years, but it wasn’t until this year that I realized that there’s not much in the way of steampunk cuisine. I’m not sure exactly why this is– most steampunks I know certainly enjoy eating, and a good number enjoy cooking as well.

Sure there are plenty of steampunk beverages–tea, of course, as well as various libations of the alcoholic persuasion–rum, gin, absinthe–depending on how fancy you feel. But there is a dearth of steampunk-related foods.

I hope to remedy this deficiency.

Let’s start with what I consider the most steampunk piece of kitchen hardware–one that uses the mighty power of steam itself to cook your food. I am speaking, of course, of what was once known as the “pressure cooker” and is now branded as the Instant Pot. They consist of a pot with a sealed lid that when heated pressurizes the contents of the pot.

So how do these infernal devices work? At normal atmospheric pressure, water boils at 100C (212 F for you American non-scientists). However, remember the Ideal Gas Law from freshman chemistry (PV = nRT). Because the pressure cooker is sealed, the internal pressure (P) rises as the temperature increases and thus, the boiling point of the water in the cooker rises. So the water inside now boils at about 121C (250F). Higher temperature means faster cooking.

Of course, the higher pressure could mean a higher risk of explosion if the pressure cooker isn’t equipped with a pressure-relief valve or if it gets clogged with what’s being cooked. I can remember my mother cooking with a 1970s era pressure cooker and feeling a vague sense of imminent danger from the hissing, steaming device. Modern Instant Pots seem to be safer.

Vintage Pressure Cookers

The photos above show some vintage pressure cookers, and it should be obvious just how steampunk they look. The cooker’s lid is kept sealed by sturdy clamp bolts. The lid itself is festooned with pressure and temperature gauges as well as pressure relief valves to release excess steam and prevent unwanted explosions.

I haven’t jumped on the Instant Pot bandwagon. Perhaps the memories of my mother’s pressure cooker steaming away on the stove has hindered me. Still, my search for steampunk cooking continues unabated.

My next installment about Steampunk Cuisine will come next week. In the meantime, if you’ve got any good ideas for steampunk recipes, please leave them in the Comments section below.

Did you enjoy this blog post? Interested in more? My new FREE short story “Dreams Beyond Gold” is available HERE. It’s the tale of an airship rpirate captain who is looking to try his hand at more literary pursuits.

You will also be signed up to receive my periodic newsletter with information on my writing, as well as other interesting tidings. And I pledge: No Spam.

Flowers and Stars

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James Lick was one of those persons who, through hard work, intelligence, perseverance, and sometimes just good luck, managed to accomplish more than seems possible in one lifetime.  I find that many of these people seem to have lived during the Victorian Age, when opportunities were ripe, and a good dose of gumption could result in a dramatically improved situation.

Portrait of James Lick

James Lick was born in Pennsylvania in 1796 into fairly unexceptional circumstances; his father was a carpenter and young James followed suit.  He eventually learned the piano-making trade and after tuning his skills in New York, he shipped out to Buenos Aires which seemed to be a good market for pianos.

Unfortunately, Lick’s success was initially hampered by his inability to speak Spanish, as well as sporadic South American political unrest. He bounced around the continent for almost 30 years, his business becoming prosperous. Eventually, he tired of the social upheavals, leaving South America completely and ending up in San Francisco with his piano-making tools, $30,000 in gold and 600 pounds of chocolate to sell for a friend. The chocolate sold quickly, prompting Lick to send a letter back to his friend Domingo Ghirardelli advising him to move his chocolate business up to California.

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The Victorian Television

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Before the mid-1800s, the typical household owned very few, if any, illustrations.  Newspapers had no pictures; Periodicals had none until the 1840s. Books contained only expensive engravings. Photography was still a science experiment.

However, once photography became main-stream, a revolution occurred that enabled three-dimensional images from around the world to be available in almost every Victorian parlor—the stereoview.

A British scientist, Charles Wheatstone, first developed three-dimensional viewing using an optical instrument that would be recognizable today as a stereoscope. Wheatstone started his work before photography was developed, and experimented by making pairs of hand-drawn images that produced the 3-D effect. Wheatstone also had the advantage of being able to “free view”, i.e., to see the 3-D effect without using an instrument. (Remember those “Magic Eye” books from the 1990s where you had to make your eyes go all weird to see the 3-D effect.)

The trick is to fool your eyes into perceiving that a pair of photographs taken from two different angles appears to be a single three-dimensional image with the ability to see objects close and far away properly maintained. As one stereoview advertisement claimed:

When you look at it through the wonderful lenses of our stereoscope, the figures stand out so plainly that you almost expect to see them move. It’s just like being there.

Early British Stereoscopes, table top and hand-held models.
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Starry Starry Night

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One stereotypical character of the Victorian Age is the “gentleman scientist”, men (and they were, with the exception of Lady Ada Lovelace, all men) with the financial wherewithal to putter around in their scientific pursuits without the need to actually work for a living.  Charles Darwin, Humphrey Davy, and Benjamin Franklin were all men of independent means and scientific interests.

Another was William Parsons.  Although less famous than the examples above, William Parsons was fortunate enough to inherit an earldom and a large estate in Ireland upon his father’s death. Now as the 3rd Earl of Rosse, he was free to concentrate on his astronomical pursuits.

Although Ireland may seem to have disadvantages as the site of an astronomical observatory—cloudy skies, moisture, and an elevation close to sea level come to mind—he had plenty of land there and plenty of money. So Lord Rosse started building increasingly larger telescopes at Birr Castle culminating in 1845 in a massive instrument with a 72-inch diameter mirror dubbed “The Leviathan of Parsonstown”. It was unlike any previous telescope, requiring massive machinery to move.  It wasn’t until 1918 when the 100-inch Mount Wilson telescope in California was built that a larger telescope was achieved.

The Leviathan of Parsonstown

Lord Rosse’s special interest was solving the nebula problem. Nebulae were faint fuzzy objects in the sky. One group of astronomers believed that they were gas clouds, while the opposition thought them clusters of stars which only appeared fuzzy when observed through telescopes of insufficient size.

And there was no telescope of more sufficient size than the Leviathan.  Observations were made.  Some nebulae were resolved into clusters of stars by the Leviathan’s colossal eye.  Others remained stubbornly fuzzy.  The issue was not resolved. (In fact, those objects in the sky called nebulae are two different things:  gas clouds, and galaxies filled with stars, but that wasn’t determined until even larger telescopes with cameras attached were developed.

And that last point is important.  When the Leviathan was built, photography was in its infancy, and astronomical photography even more so. Observations were recorded by making hand-drawn sketches. One of Lord Rosse’s most famous sketches was of the nebula numbered M-51 which he made in 1845. Lord Rosse drew a nebula with spiral arms and a second smaller nebula interacting with it.  The sketch was so much clearer than what had ever been seen before that it was widely reproduced and published in many popular astronomy books of the day throughout Europe.

Drawing by Lord Rosse of nebula M-51 (now called the Whirlpool Galaxy) through the 72-in Leviathan telescope.
The Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh, 1889

It does not take much imagination to recognize that Lord Rosse’s sketch of what we now know as the Whirlpool Galaxy greatly resembles the stellar swirls and eddies of Vincent van Gogh’s immortal painting “Starry Night”  Do we know for certain that van Gogh had seen Lord Ross’s sketch? No. Perhaps he did. Or perhaps his artistic vision could tap into the scientific discoveries being made during that time. The two men weren’t contemporaries—“Starry Night” was painted in 1889, forty-four years after Lord Rosse’s sketch—but the sketch was well known.

Perhaps, Lord Rosse and van Gogh approached the same subject from two different vantage points—science and art.  While “Starry Night” is now fixed for all time, progress on astronomical instruments and the observations they are able to make have continued.  Below is a photograph of the Whirlpool Galaxy taken by the Hubble Telescope.  While the abstract billows and curls of Lord Rosse’s sketch appear to us different than they did in 1845, the majesty of the this immense galaxy still provokes awe, just as van Gogh’s does.

M-51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope