ComradeHuxley
Donor
The Sun never sets on the Empire, since we can always make a new one.
Sir Winston Churchill
Victoria: A Nuclear Century
- Thread starter ComradeHuxley
- Start date
The Sun never sets on the Empire, since we can always make a new one.
Sir Winston Churchill
ComradeHuxley
Donor
A little temporary RL distraction came in the way. Here is the rest of the first post.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
A Nuclear Century
Uranus Rises
"To see if, through Spirit powers and lips,
I might have all secrets at my fingertips.
And no longer, with rancid sweat, so,
Still have to speak what I cannot know:
That I may understand whatever
Binds the world’s innermost core together."
Goethe's Faust
The defining goals of alchemy are often given as the transmutation of common metals into noble ones like gold (known as chrysopoeia), the creation of remedy that would cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely (panacea), and the discovery of a universal solvent having the power to dissolve every other substance (Alkahest). At least one of them was accomplished, once the transition of alchemy into science had been completed. The other two goals were recognized as impossible to achieve. Science came as close as possible when its early heroes discovered stem cells and virus (panacea) and identified fluorine as the basis for the most viciously corrosive acids (Alkaest). None of those methods offered easy, clear cut solutions, no one great miracle occured. They were the work of man standing on the shoulder of giants, as Newton (a giant in his own right) correctly noted.
Now we will meet one of the giants of nuclear physics Martin Heinrich Klaproth. A German chemist, born in Wernigerode in the Harz Mountains on December 1, 1743. His story began with a small tragedy. His family was impoverished by a fire and he had to earn extra money for schooling by singing in the church choir. At the age of sixteen, Klaproth was apprenticed to an apothecary. He spent five years in that apprenticeship, followed by four years in the public laboratories at Quedlinburg and Hanover. In 1768, he joined Wedland's laboratory in Berlin as an assistant.
Klaproth became an assistant to Valentin Rose the Elder in 1770 a highly respected pharmacist and chemist of his time. When Rose died only a few months later, Klaproth assumed all the responsibilities of his position. He even acted as father to Rose's two sons. In 1787 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry to the Prussian Royal Artillery, and when the University of Berlin was founded in 1810 he was selected to be the professor of chemistry recommended for the position by Alexander von Humboldt. He died in Berlin on New Year's Day in 1817. Klaproth was the leading chemist of his time in Germany.
Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1)
So much for his general biography, but what distinguished him from many equally brilliant contemporary's with similar careers ?
It was the groundbreaking, yet lucky discovery of radioactivity, that happened during his time working in his experimental laboratory in Berlin, 1789. Klaproth was able to precipitate a yellow compound (likely sodium diuranate) by dissolving pitchblende in nitric acid and neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide.
Pitchlende got its name from pitch, because of its black color, and blende, a term used by German miners to denote minerals whose density suggested metal content, but whose exploitation was, at the time they were named, either impossible or not economically feasible. Today pitchblende is also commonly known as uraninite, a uranium-rich mineral/ore that contains oxides of uranium, lead, thorium, and rare earth elements.
Klaproth assumed the yellow substance was the oxide of a yet-undiscovered element and heated it with charcoal to obtain a black powder, which he thought was the newly discovered metal itself. In fact, that powder was still only an oxide of uranium. He named the newly discovered element after the planet Uranus. The planet was named after the primordial Greek god of the sky, which had been discovered eight years earlier by William Herschel.
Klaproth stored the newly discovered material in one of the cabinets of his laboratories until he would need it for further experiments. It was by pure chance that the cabinet also contained a photography plate, kept save from sunlight in the darkness. The plate itself was part of an line of investigation Klaproth had begun recently inspired by the work of Thomas Wedgwood.
Wedgwood was born into a long line of pottery manufacturers, grew up and was educated at Etruria and was instilled from his youth with a love for art. He also spent much of his short life associating with painters, sculptors, and poets, to whom he was able to be a patron after he inherited his father's wealth in 1795.
As a young adult, Wedgwood became interested in the best method of educating children, and spent time studying infants. From his observations, he concluded that most of the information that young brains absorbed came through the eyes, and were thus related to light and images. Ever since he was interested in the phenom that lay behind light and sight.
Wedgwood is the first person reliably documented to have used light-sensitive chemicals to capture silhouette images on durable media such as paper, and the first known to have attempted to photograph the image formed in a camera obscura.
In a letter from 1788 Johann Göttling wrote to Josiah Wedgwood: "Dear Sir, I thank you for your instructions as to the Silver Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some experiments...".
In his many experiments, possibly with advice on chemistry from his tutor Alexander Chisholm and members of the Lunar Society, Wedgwood used paper and white leather coated with silver nitrate. The leather proved to be more light-sensitive. His primary objective had been to capture real-world scenes with a camera obscura, but those attempts were unsuccessful. He did succeed in using exposure to direct sunlight to capture silhouette images of objects in contact with the treated surface, as well as the shadow images cast by sunlight passing through paintings on glass. In both cases, the sunlit areas rapidly darkened while the areas in shadow did not.
The Lunar Society of Birmingham was a dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures in the Midlands Enlightenment, including industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals, who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in Birmingham, England. At first called the Lunar Circle, "Lunar Society" became the formal name by 1775. The name arose because the society would meet during the full moon, as the extra light made the journey home easier and safer in the absence of street lighting. The members cheerfully referred to themselves as "lunarticks", a pun on lunatics. Venues included Erasmus Darwin's home in Lichfield, Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, and Great Barr Hall.
It was at such a meeting that Johann Friedrich August Göttling heard about Wedgwood's experiments. Göttling himself was another notable German chemist and follower of Lavoisier's teachings. He studied pharmacy at Langensalza under Johann Christian Wiegleb, and from 1775 worked at the Hofapotheke (court pharmacy) in Weimar under Provisor Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Bucholz.
It was Bucholz's influence that allowed him to meet Herzog Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach and most importantly his councilor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In Goethe's order he began a series of chemical experiments. Satisfied with his new protege's work Goethe encouraged Carl August to support Göttling financially, allowing him to enroll in the University of Göttingen, as well as to travel to the Netherlands and England. There he met Joseph Priestley and William Withering who invited him to the Lunar Society meetings.
Once he came back in 1788, he told Goethe about all the wonderful things he learned among them the art of making silver pictures. As a reward for his great service he was appointed Professor for Philosophy (and Lecturer on Chemistry) at the University of Jena. There with Goethe's support he established Chemistry as science in its own right, no longer subservient to Pharmacy and Medicine. Quickly the knowledge of photography spread among the small community of German chemist and inevitably reached a curious Klaproth.
Goethe's Faust
Now were back at the beginning. To Klaproth's surprise after examining the photographic plate that he had stored a few days ago, somehow had darkened without sunlight. Obviously his first idea wasn't that the uranium was responsible, since such effect had never been observed.
The only thing coming close to uranite were the so called "lapis solaris" which had been discovered around 1602 by Vincenzo Casciorola of Bologna in his quest for the philosopher stone. He discovered a translucent mineral in fields near Monte Paterna, some six kilometer from Bologna. These stones, when calcined acquired the property of glowing in the dark after exposure to sunlight. Casciorola called them "lapis solaris" as they appeared to store the light of the Sun. An account was later published by Fortunio Liceti Litheosphorus, sive de lapide Bononiensi lucem, Utino in 1640. This substance appears to have been barium sulphide.
It was made phosphorescent by being powdered very finely, calcined, then mixed with water or white of egg and fashioned into small tablets, which were again calcined at a high temperature in a furnace using bellows. It then was finally capable of phosphorescing after being exposed to sunlight. It was also called the "lapis illuminabilis" for its ability to glow in the dark.
Galileo Galilei himself described them in 1612. He explained the emission of light (phosphorescence) from the Bolognian stones, rather poetically "It must be explained how it happens that the light is conceived into the stone, and is given back after some time, as in childbirth."
Thus his first thought was that he had indeed discovered an new form of light, invisible to the human eye, that was somehow stored in the uranium sample. But no matter how long he left the material in the dark, it never lost its illuminating ability. In the end Klaproth had to accept the results of his experiments and conclude that uranium was radiating some form of highly penetrating, invisible sunlight that didn't need the sun as its source. This in turn sparked a whole new series of discoveries and inventions in its own right, that would transform the world forever.
Notes and Sources
(1) Modyfied version of the picture Marie Curie by Sabrina Zimmermann.
One main divergence (not the POD) of this timeline is that Göttling learns about Wedgwood's experiments and brings his new found knowledge back to Germany.
Die Entwicklung der Chemie- Experimentierkästen
Dr. Christoph Friedrich
A Short History of Fluorescence
by Beniamino Barbieri
Uranus Rises
"To see if, through Spirit powers and lips,
I might have all secrets at my fingertips.
And no longer, with rancid sweat, so,
Still have to speak what I cannot know:
That I may understand whatever
Binds the world’s innermost core together."
Goethe's Faust
The defining goals of alchemy are often given as the transmutation of common metals into noble ones like gold (known as chrysopoeia), the creation of remedy that would cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely (panacea), and the discovery of a universal solvent having the power to dissolve every other substance (Alkahest). At least one of them was accomplished, once the transition of alchemy into science had been completed. The other two goals were recognized as impossible to achieve. Science came as close as possible when its early heroes discovered stem cells and virus (panacea) and identified fluorine as the basis for the most viciously corrosive acids (Alkaest). None of those methods offered easy, clear cut solutions, no one great miracle occured. They were the work of man standing on the shoulder of giants, as Newton (a giant in his own right) correctly noted.
Now we will meet one of the giants of nuclear physics Martin Heinrich Klaproth. A German chemist, born in Wernigerode in the Harz Mountains on December 1, 1743. His story began with a small tragedy. His family was impoverished by a fire and he had to earn extra money for schooling by singing in the church choir. At the age of sixteen, Klaproth was apprenticed to an apothecary. He spent five years in that apprenticeship, followed by four years in the public laboratories at Quedlinburg and Hanover. In 1768, he joined Wedland's laboratory in Berlin as an assistant.
Klaproth became an assistant to Valentin Rose the Elder in 1770 a highly respected pharmacist and chemist of his time. When Rose died only a few months later, Klaproth assumed all the responsibilities of his position. He even acted as father to Rose's two sons. In 1787 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry to the Prussian Royal Artillery, and when the University of Berlin was founded in 1810 he was selected to be the professor of chemistry recommended for the position by Alexander von Humboldt. He died in Berlin on New Year's Day in 1817. Klaproth was the leading chemist of his time in Germany.
Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1)
So much for his general biography, but what distinguished him from many equally brilliant contemporary's with similar careers ?
It was the groundbreaking, yet lucky discovery of radioactivity, that happened during his time working in his experimental laboratory in Berlin, 1789. Klaproth was able to precipitate a yellow compound (likely sodium diuranate) by dissolving pitchblende in nitric acid and neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide.
Pitchlende got its name from pitch, because of its black color, and blende, a term used by German miners to denote minerals whose density suggested metal content, but whose exploitation was, at the time they were named, either impossible or not economically feasible. Today pitchblende is also commonly known as uraninite, a uranium-rich mineral/ore that contains oxides of uranium, lead, thorium, and rare earth elements.
Klaproth assumed the yellow substance was the oxide of a yet-undiscovered element and heated it with charcoal to obtain a black powder, which he thought was the newly discovered metal itself. In fact, that powder was still only an oxide of uranium. He named the newly discovered element after the planet Uranus. The planet was named after the primordial Greek god of the sky, which had been discovered eight years earlier by William Herschel.
Klaproth stored the newly discovered material in one of the cabinets of his laboratories until he would need it for further experiments. It was by pure chance that the cabinet also contained a photography plate, kept save from sunlight in the darkness. The plate itself was part of an line of investigation Klaproth had begun recently inspired by the work of Thomas Wedgwood.
Wedgwood was born into a long line of pottery manufacturers, grew up and was educated at Etruria and was instilled from his youth with a love for art. He also spent much of his short life associating with painters, sculptors, and poets, to whom he was able to be a patron after he inherited his father's wealth in 1795.
As a young adult, Wedgwood became interested in the best method of educating children, and spent time studying infants. From his observations, he concluded that most of the information that young brains absorbed came through the eyes, and were thus related to light and images. Ever since he was interested in the phenom that lay behind light and sight.
Wedgwood is the first person reliably documented to have used light-sensitive chemicals to capture silhouette images on durable media such as paper, and the first known to have attempted to photograph the image formed in a camera obscura.
In a letter from 1788 Johann Göttling wrote to Josiah Wedgwood: "Dear Sir, I thank you for your instructions as to the Silver Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some experiments...".
In his many experiments, possibly with advice on chemistry from his tutor Alexander Chisholm and members of the Lunar Society, Wedgwood used paper and white leather coated with silver nitrate. The leather proved to be more light-sensitive. His primary objective had been to capture real-world scenes with a camera obscura, but those attempts were unsuccessful. He did succeed in using exposure to direct sunlight to capture silhouette images of objects in contact with the treated surface, as well as the shadow images cast by sunlight passing through paintings on glass. In both cases, the sunlit areas rapidly darkened while the areas in shadow did not.
The Lunar Society of Birmingham was a dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures in the Midlands Enlightenment, including industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals, who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in Birmingham, England. At first called the Lunar Circle, "Lunar Society" became the formal name by 1775. The name arose because the society would meet during the full moon, as the extra light made the journey home easier and safer in the absence of street lighting. The members cheerfully referred to themselves as "lunarticks", a pun on lunatics. Venues included Erasmus Darwin's home in Lichfield, Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, and Great Barr Hall.
It was at such a meeting that Johann Friedrich August Göttling heard about Wedgwood's experiments. Göttling himself was another notable German chemist and follower of Lavoisier's teachings. He studied pharmacy at Langensalza under Johann Christian Wiegleb, and from 1775 worked at the Hofapotheke (court pharmacy) in Weimar under Provisor Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Bucholz.
It was Bucholz's influence that allowed him to meet Herzog Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach and most importantly his councilor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In Goethe's order he began a series of chemical experiments. Satisfied with his new protege's work Goethe encouraged Carl August to support Göttling financially, allowing him to enroll in the University of Göttingen, as well as to travel to the Netherlands and England. There he met Joseph Priestley and William Withering who invited him to the Lunar Society meetings.
Once he came back in 1788, he told Goethe about all the wonderful things he learned among them the art of making silver pictures. As a reward for his great service he was appointed Professor for Philosophy (and Lecturer on Chemistry) at the University of Jena. There with Goethe's support he established Chemistry as science in its own right, no longer subservient to Pharmacy and Medicine. Quickly the knowledge of photography spread among the small community of German chemist and inevitably reached a curious Klaproth.
Goethe's Faust
Now were back at the beginning. To Klaproth's surprise after examining the photographic plate that he had stored a few days ago, somehow had darkened without sunlight. Obviously his first idea wasn't that the uranium was responsible, since such effect had never been observed.
The only thing coming close to uranite were the so called "lapis solaris" which had been discovered around 1602 by Vincenzo Casciorola of Bologna in his quest for the philosopher stone. He discovered a translucent mineral in fields near Monte Paterna, some six kilometer from Bologna. These stones, when calcined acquired the property of glowing in the dark after exposure to sunlight. Casciorola called them "lapis solaris" as they appeared to store the light of the Sun. An account was later published by Fortunio Liceti Litheosphorus, sive de lapide Bononiensi lucem, Utino in 1640. This substance appears to have been barium sulphide.
It was made phosphorescent by being powdered very finely, calcined, then mixed with water or white of egg and fashioned into small tablets, which were again calcined at a high temperature in a furnace using bellows. It then was finally capable of phosphorescing after being exposed to sunlight. It was also called the "lapis illuminabilis" for its ability to glow in the dark.
Galileo Galilei himself described them in 1612. He explained the emission of light (phosphorescence) from the Bolognian stones, rather poetically "It must be explained how it happens that the light is conceived into the stone, and is given back after some time, as in childbirth."
Thus his first thought was that he had indeed discovered an new form of light, invisible to the human eye, that was somehow stored in the uranium sample. But no matter how long he left the material in the dark, it never lost its illuminating ability. In the end Klaproth had to accept the results of his experiments and conclude that uranium was radiating some form of highly penetrating, invisible sunlight that didn't need the sun as its source. This in turn sparked a whole new series of discoveries and inventions in its own right, that would transform the world forever.
Notes and Sources
(1) Modyfied version of the picture Marie Curie by Sabrina Zimmermann.
One main divergence (not the POD) of this timeline is that Göttling learns about Wedgwood's experiments and brings his new found knowledge back to Germany.
Die Entwicklung der Chemie- Experimentierkästen
Dr. Christoph Friedrich
A Short History of Fluorescence
by Beniamino Barbieri
Last edited:
ComradeHuxley
Donor
The next post is taken from another timeline of mine but it fits perfectly in the world I want to create here. Since I won't continue "The Dark Knights" this will be a way of preserving and expanding James Holman's story.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
The Blind Knight
All Beginnings are Difficult
James Holman was born in 1786 Essex, England as the fourth son of the apothecary John Holman. Known as the "Blind Traveler," the adventurer, author, social observer and teacher is today best known for his writings on his extensive travels as well as the invention of human echolocation.
Not only completely blind but suffering from debilitating pain and limited mobility, he undertook a series of solo journeys that were unprecedented in their extent of geography. In 1866, the journalist William Jerdan wrote that "From Marco Polo to Mungo Park, no three of the most famous travelers, grouped together, would exceed the extent and variety of countries traversed by our blind countryman." By no means an exaggeration.
The Holmans were a family of modest wealth and reputation. The fact that James earned his fortune by manual work meant however that the door to the high society were closed for him. Thus he used his money to set his children on different path all leading towards becoming gentlemen. Unfortunately for James, who was the most restless of them, his father chose the most sedentary career for him, that of a clergyman. Fortunately for James his teacher at the Alphington Academy, who did a great job by all accounts, nevertheless happened to be a fraud with a shady past. His own deeds would catch up with him and he was deported to Australia.
The teacher in question was Laurence Hynes Halloran, who became one of the fathers of the public education system in his new home. Holman would almost reunited with him many years later while visiting the continent but sadly Halloran had passed away one week before Holman's arrival.
He would certainly have thanked him for fleeing from Essex. Without a proper degree the only chance left for young James to earn a good education was getting into a naval school. Thus his years as naval cadet and officer began, opening up a world of adventure. Well that was the theory at least.
During this time despite the Napoleonic wars raging on, Holman himself never really saw much action. First he was stuck at the flagship of one of the most cautious and reluctant admirals the british navy ever saw, just to be transferred to North America were things remained mostly uneventful. This didn't prevent him ruining his health during years on the sea. As a young officer cadet he was most exposed to the elements. At the age of 25 he ended up with chronic rheumatism and a dead optical nerves rendering him completely blind (although his eyes looked at least intact). Not only that he barely missed his chance at military glory in the war of 1812.
The prospects of a blind man at the time were not exactly bright. Although a school for the blind had been established in Paris at the same year Holman was born and the idea had found adoption in England as well, things were less than rosy.
The education these schools offered wasn't sufficient in the least. The avowed purpose of the early residential schools for blind children was to prepare blind students for remunerative employment once they became adults.
Therefore, they were taught the "blind trades" - chair caning, basket weaving, rug weaving, etc.'so that they would be able to find work. However, those plans failed and the blind school graduates were not able to become self-supporting. It was not unusual to see them begging at the same one very steps of the institution they graduated from.
James Holman however was not one to let himself be defeated by dire circumstances. He applied for and an open position in the seven Naval Knights of Windsor. A membership meant a lifetime grant of care in Windsor Castle.
An excellent arrangement, if it hadn't been for the demand attached to it to attend church service twice daily and live a life of quietness and purity.
Thankfully the statues also required (religious) studying which Holman used convincingly as the reason to be granted a leaves of absence to study literature at the University of Edinburgh since the religious part was never written down explicitly. His real reason was to attend the lectures on medicine. In the end he earned himself all the qualification to open a medical practice although his disability obviously didn't allow for it to happen in Georgian Britain.
For reasons of health he was further allowed to travel to the Mediterranean sea, an opportunity he used to visit different parts of Europe and to climb up the Vesuvius. A tour so few able bodied man made that every time it was undertaken the King of Naples wanted to be notified about all of them.
But how was Holman able to take this journey all on his own ?
After he accepted his fate Holman decided not to follow any conventions blind people at the time followed. He did not wear a rag around his eyes, nor did he shrink from the gaze of others. When he ventured outdoors, he did so in full uniform, with as erect a bearing his rheumatism would allowed.
Holman began to use his ears not only to read people, but to read the landscape. In this he was unusual, for while sound is crucial to the orientation of all blind, it is rarely becomes the primary compensatory sense. Conventionally trained blind were thought to rely most heavily on the sense of touch.
The standard method then for negotiating streets and unfamiliar rooms was to directly detect the presence of obstacles through “sweeping” swinging a stick trough the space ahead in a back and forth arc. The canes of the blind were not true canes but often simple switches whittled from trees branches or reeds, bamboo. Most of them were fairly long to sternum or shoulder height.
Holman on the other side taught himself to navigate with an ordinary walking stick. It was approximately navel height, lathed out of hickory with an unadorned knob and metal ferrule to keep the tip from splitting. This was the standard strolling equipment of the gentlemen.
This may have been an effort to call as little attention to himself as possible, but it was a choice that fundamentally shaped his approach to the world. Such a stick was fatiguingly heavy for constant sweeping. It was also stiff rather than flexible, hitting an object didn't send a gentle pressure to the user, but a solid jolt. Its shortness created a very abrupt field of warning and Holman diminished that field further still by the way he held, balanced like a paintbrush in the crook of this thumb and forefinger, not thrusted in an overhand grip.
Deployed in a fashion, a walking stick is a good for limited sweeping purpose. But the metal ferrule could be easily bounced up and down, producing an authoritative series of taps. Holman was feeling his way through the streets but even more so he was hearing it.
The best analogy to describe how Holman perceived the world might be the following. Imagine you are caught in the middle of a moonless, pitch black night and the only tool you have with you are two flints. Now you strike them together repeatedly to generate sparks. Those are only brief flashes of light but if you concentrate enough they may be sufficient to avoid most obstacles.
Instead of sparks it were short burst of noise, generated by the tip of his cane Holman used, in addition to all the other information one could gather simply listening to other sources of sound. A carriage sounded differently than a cart or wagon, even a woman's footsteps sounded differently than a man's. Often a profession of at least a social class, could be discerned by their choice of footwear. This meant that the nice, blind gentlemen could greet pass-byers in polite fashion even if he didn't recognize them by their voices.
Notes and Sources
This is the completely OTL account of James Holman's life (With the exception of the "teacher" part). Almost all the information as well as parts of the text are form the book:
A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler
Jason Roberts
I very much enjoyed it and realy recommend reading it.
All Beginnings are Difficult
James Holman was born in 1786 Essex, England as the fourth son of the apothecary John Holman. Known as the "Blind Traveler," the adventurer, author, social observer and teacher is today best known for his writings on his extensive travels as well as the invention of human echolocation.
Not only completely blind but suffering from debilitating pain and limited mobility, he undertook a series of solo journeys that were unprecedented in their extent of geography. In 1866, the journalist William Jerdan wrote that "From Marco Polo to Mungo Park, no three of the most famous travelers, grouped together, would exceed the extent and variety of countries traversed by our blind countryman." By no means an exaggeration.
The Holmans were a family of modest wealth and reputation. The fact that James earned his fortune by manual work meant however that the door to the high society were closed for him. Thus he used his money to set his children on different path all leading towards becoming gentlemen. Unfortunately for James, who was the most restless of them, his father chose the most sedentary career for him, that of a clergyman. Fortunately for James his teacher at the Alphington Academy, who did a great job by all accounts, nevertheless happened to be a fraud with a shady past. His own deeds would catch up with him and he was deported to Australia.
The teacher in question was Laurence Hynes Halloran, who became one of the fathers of the public education system in his new home. Holman would almost reunited with him many years later while visiting the continent but sadly Halloran had passed away one week before Holman's arrival.
He would certainly have thanked him for fleeing from Essex. Without a proper degree the only chance left for young James to earn a good education was getting into a naval school. Thus his years as naval cadet and officer began, opening up a world of adventure. Well that was the theory at least.
During this time despite the Napoleonic wars raging on, Holman himself never really saw much action. First he was stuck at the flagship of one of the most cautious and reluctant admirals the british navy ever saw, just to be transferred to North America were things remained mostly uneventful. This didn't prevent him ruining his health during years on the sea. As a young officer cadet he was most exposed to the elements. At the age of 25 he ended up with chronic rheumatism and a dead optical nerves rendering him completely blind (although his eyes looked at least intact). Not only that he barely missed his chance at military glory in the war of 1812.
The prospects of a blind man at the time were not exactly bright. Although a school for the blind had been established in Paris at the same year Holman was born and the idea had found adoption in England as well, things were less than rosy.
The education these schools offered wasn't sufficient in the least. The avowed purpose of the early residential schools for blind children was to prepare blind students for remunerative employment once they became adults.
Therefore, they were taught the "blind trades" - chair caning, basket weaving, rug weaving, etc.'so that they would be able to find work. However, those plans failed and the blind school graduates were not able to become self-supporting. It was not unusual to see them begging at the same one very steps of the institution they graduated from.
James Holman however was not one to let himself be defeated by dire circumstances. He applied for and an open position in the seven Naval Knights of Windsor. A membership meant a lifetime grant of care in Windsor Castle.
An excellent arrangement, if it hadn't been for the demand attached to it to attend church service twice daily and live a life of quietness and purity.
Thankfully the statues also required (religious) studying which Holman used convincingly as the reason to be granted a leaves of absence to study literature at the University of Edinburgh since the religious part was never written down explicitly. His real reason was to attend the lectures on medicine. In the end he earned himself all the qualification to open a medical practice although his disability obviously didn't allow for it to happen in Georgian Britain.
For reasons of health he was further allowed to travel to the Mediterranean sea, an opportunity he used to visit different parts of Europe and to climb up the Vesuvius. A tour so few able bodied man made that every time it was undertaken the King of Naples wanted to be notified about all of them.
But how was Holman able to take this journey all on his own ?
After he accepted his fate Holman decided not to follow any conventions blind people at the time followed. He did not wear a rag around his eyes, nor did he shrink from the gaze of others. When he ventured outdoors, he did so in full uniform, with as erect a bearing his rheumatism would allowed.
Holman began to use his ears not only to read people, but to read the landscape. In this he was unusual, for while sound is crucial to the orientation of all blind, it is rarely becomes the primary compensatory sense. Conventionally trained blind were thought to rely most heavily on the sense of touch.
The standard method then for negotiating streets and unfamiliar rooms was to directly detect the presence of obstacles through “sweeping” swinging a stick trough the space ahead in a back and forth arc. The canes of the blind were not true canes but often simple switches whittled from trees branches or reeds, bamboo. Most of them were fairly long to sternum or shoulder height.
Holman on the other side taught himself to navigate with an ordinary walking stick. It was approximately navel height, lathed out of hickory with an unadorned knob and metal ferrule to keep the tip from splitting. This was the standard strolling equipment of the gentlemen.
This may have been an effort to call as little attention to himself as possible, but it was a choice that fundamentally shaped his approach to the world. Such a stick was fatiguingly heavy for constant sweeping. It was also stiff rather than flexible, hitting an object didn't send a gentle pressure to the user, but a solid jolt. Its shortness created a very abrupt field of warning and Holman diminished that field further still by the way he held, balanced like a paintbrush in the crook of this thumb and forefinger, not thrusted in an overhand grip.
Deployed in a fashion, a walking stick is a good for limited sweeping purpose. But the metal ferrule could be easily bounced up and down, producing an authoritative series of taps. Holman was feeling his way through the streets but even more so he was hearing it.
The best analogy to describe how Holman perceived the world might be the following. Imagine you are caught in the middle of a moonless, pitch black night and the only tool you have with you are two flints. Now you strike them together repeatedly to generate sparks. Those are only brief flashes of light but if you concentrate enough they may be sufficient to avoid most obstacles.
Instead of sparks it were short burst of noise, generated by the tip of his cane Holman used, in addition to all the other information one could gather simply listening to other sources of sound. A carriage sounded differently than a cart or wagon, even a woman's footsteps sounded differently than a man's. Often a profession of at least a social class, could be discerned by their choice of footwear. This meant that the nice, blind gentlemen could greet pass-byers in polite fashion even if he didn't recognize them by their voices.
Notes and Sources
This is the completely OTL account of James Holman's life (With the exception of the "teacher" part). Almost all the information as well as parts of the text are form the book:
A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler
Jason Roberts
I very much enjoyed it and realy recommend reading it.
Last edited:
ComradeHuxley
Donor
If everything works out as planned this timeline will "end" with Queen Victoria's funeral. "End" because it might turn into the prequel for my final version of A Martian Stranded on Earth. Oh, and please don't worry about the flood of updates. This is all just to get the timeline started.
Last edited:
ComradeHuxley
Donor
A Nuclear Century II
Love Thy Neighbor
Yes, these people say it is only a matter of the multiplication tables, not of the spirit of rebellion and doubt. But it is not the multiplication tables. It is an alarming unrest that has come over the world. It is the unrest of their own minds, which they transfer to the immovable earth. They cry out: The figures force our hands! But where do these figures come from? Everyone knows they come from doubt. These people doubt everything. Is our human community to be built on doubt and no longer on faith? -You are my master, but I doubt whether that is a good arrangement.- -This is your house and your wife, but I doubt whether they should not be mine.-[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, sans-serif]
[/FONT]Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo
Once again this story begins with one of the lesser known members of the Lunar Society Abraham Bennet.
Abraham Bennet was a clergyman and electrical experimenter who invented the gold-leaf electroscope and the doubler of electricity. He used a mechanical revolving version of the latter to devise a concept of 'adhesive electricity', which had an important influence on Volta in the formulation of his contact theory of electromotivity.
Bennet managed to balance his clerical position, obtained by patronage, with the friendship and assistance of the local philosophical community, which included Erasmus Darwin, White Watson and the members of the Lunar Philosophical Society. On the other side of the spectrum his patrons included members of the reactionary feudal elite like Joseph Banks, George Adams and the Wirksworth squires as well as the Gell family.
The Lunar members helped him to publish his research and supported his nomination as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1789. The relative harmony of the philosophical community which temporarily united provinces and metropolis, however soon was shattered by the political turbulence of the revolutionary era.
The delicate balancing act that allowed Bennet to claim support from the conservative establishment as well as from progressive intellectuals like Priestley and Darwin became more and more difficult. In the wake of these tensions Bennet’s research activity foundered due to ill health and political division.
Soon after the french revolution broke out a public debate began, also known as the “Revolution Controversy” which lasted from 1789 through 1795. At its worst it lead to the “Priestley Riots” (also known as the Birmingham Riots of 1791) which took place from 14 July to 17 July 1791 in Birmingham, England.
The rioters' main targets were religious Dissenters, most notably the politically and theologically controversial Joseph Priestley. The riots started with an attack on Birmingham's Royal Hotel – the site of a banquet organized in sympathy with the French Revolution. Then, beginning with Priestley's church and home, the rioters attacked or burned four Dissenting chapels, twenty-seven houses, and several businesses. The rioters also burned the houses of men associated with Dissenters, such as members of the Lunar Society. Local Birmingham officials as mentioned above seem to have been involved in the planning of the riots, and they were later reluctant to prosecute any ringleaders.
Most of his important work had been published when he retreat into privacy and obscurity but one one last discovery he made was almost forgotten. It was all about his famous invention of the gold-leaf electroscope. Various phenomena had always betrayed the existence of electric charge produced in different ways, such as rubbing wool on glass.
Threads and pieces of leaf brass had been used in the early 18th century because they would diverge if electrified. The first real electrometer was invented by John Canton and used a pair of pith balls hung on fine linen threads. On the air being electrified in a room, the balls would diverge.
The invention of the Leyden jar showed that electricity could be “stored” and perhaps the strength of the charge estimated. The jar consisted of a bottle partly filled with water that contained a metal rod projecting through the neck. Foil was placed inside and outside the bottle to prevent damage to the leaves. If the rod was connected to the prime conductor of a static generating machine and then the jar taken away, it was found that the charge could be kept and transported.
Bennet’s electroscope was based on another instrument made by his friend Tiberius Cavallo. Instead of threads or pith balls, Cavallo used silver wire terminated by pieces of cork contained in a glass bottle and held in place by a glass tube. A wire ran from the tube to the large brass cap and strips of tin-foil (earthed) allowed the electricity to be “conveyed off” when the corks touched.
Bennet's gold leaf electroscope developed in 1787 was a more sensitive version of the instrument than pith ball or Cavallo's electroscopes. It consists of a vertical metal rod, usually brass, from the end of which hang two parallel strips of thin flexible gold leaf. A disk or ball terminal is attached to the top of the rod, where the charge to be tested is applied.
To protect the gold leaves from drafts of air they were enclosed in a glass bottle, open at the bottom and mounted over a conductive base. When the metal terminal was touched with a charged object, the gold leaves spread apart in a 'V'. This is because some of the charge on the object is conducted through the terminal and metal rod to the leaves. Since they receive the same sign charge they repel each other and thus diverge. If the terminal is grounded by touching it with a finger, the charge is transferred through the human body into the earth and the gold leaves close together.
So far all these things were known. A few month before the riots happened a box had been shipped to Birmingham from Germany. At the time pitchblende from the Johanngeorgenstadt in the Empire of Austria-Hungary was the only known source of uranium in the world. Göttling remembering the friendships he made, used his connections to arrange a shipment to England.
There some samples landed in the hands of Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus Darwin was a close friend of Bennet and had in fact been responsible for Bennet's interest in electrical measurements as part of an investigation into the link between electricity and weather. Bennet then had worked assiduously to establish his expertise in electricity, achieving a reputation sufficient to take part in a meeting with the aforementioned Cavallo, as well as William Nicholson and Volta in London in 1782.
So it was no surprise that Darwin lend Bennet part of the Uranium sample so that he may investigate the mysterious radiation by himself. Since pretty much nothing was known about the new phenomenon any guess was as good as any other. So Bennet prepared his electroscope to see if uranium might be naturally charged as well. To his surprise the mere presence of the mineral sample seemed to lead to a sudden discharge of the gold foil. He first had charged it the usual way to see if everything was working correctly. Once again the new wonder material was good for a surprise.
After repeating the experiment over and over again, he confirmed to himself that, yes indeed instead of charging the electroscope the uranium was somehow discharging or “remote earthing” it (1). Unfortunately this discovery happened during the troubles and it seemed that it somehow would get lost but thankfully a, quiet, shy figure happened to have good ears and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Henry Cavendish.
Notes and Sources
(1) In OTL on 9 March 1896 Henri Becquerel announced that the rays emitted by the double sulphate of uranium and potassium were capable of discharging an gold leaf electroscope after passing through a 2-millimetre-thick aluminum plate.
How Röngten and Becquerel Rays are Linked with the Discoveries of Polonium and Radium.
Andrzej K. Wróblewski
Detecting measuring ionizing radiation – a short history.
F.N Flakus
Love Thy Neighbor
Yes, these people say it is only a matter of the multiplication tables, not of the spirit of rebellion and doubt. But it is not the multiplication tables. It is an alarming unrest that has come over the world. It is the unrest of their own minds, which they transfer to the immovable earth. They cry out: The figures force our hands! But where do these figures come from? Everyone knows they come from doubt. These people doubt everything. Is our human community to be built on doubt and no longer on faith? -You are my master, but I doubt whether that is a good arrangement.- -This is your house and your wife, but I doubt whether they should not be mine.-[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, sans-serif]
[/FONT]Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo
Once again this story begins with one of the lesser known members of the Lunar Society Abraham Bennet.
Abraham Bennet was a clergyman and electrical experimenter who invented the gold-leaf electroscope and the doubler of electricity. He used a mechanical revolving version of the latter to devise a concept of 'adhesive electricity', which had an important influence on Volta in the formulation of his contact theory of electromotivity.
Bennet managed to balance his clerical position, obtained by patronage, with the friendship and assistance of the local philosophical community, which included Erasmus Darwin, White Watson and the members of the Lunar Philosophical Society. On the other side of the spectrum his patrons included members of the reactionary feudal elite like Joseph Banks, George Adams and the Wirksworth squires as well as the Gell family.
The Lunar members helped him to publish his research and supported his nomination as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1789. The relative harmony of the philosophical community which temporarily united provinces and metropolis, however soon was shattered by the political turbulence of the revolutionary era.
The delicate balancing act that allowed Bennet to claim support from the conservative establishment as well as from progressive intellectuals like Priestley and Darwin became more and more difficult. In the wake of these tensions Bennet’s research activity foundered due to ill health and political division.
Soon after the french revolution broke out a public debate began, also known as the “Revolution Controversy” which lasted from 1789 through 1795. At its worst it lead to the “Priestley Riots” (also known as the Birmingham Riots of 1791) which took place from 14 July to 17 July 1791 in Birmingham, England.
The rioters' main targets were religious Dissenters, most notably the politically and theologically controversial Joseph Priestley. The riots started with an attack on Birmingham's Royal Hotel – the site of a banquet organized in sympathy with the French Revolution. Then, beginning with Priestley's church and home, the rioters attacked or burned four Dissenting chapels, twenty-seven houses, and several businesses. The rioters also burned the houses of men associated with Dissenters, such as members of the Lunar Society. Local Birmingham officials as mentioned above seem to have been involved in the planning of the riots, and they were later reluctant to prosecute any ringleaders.
Most of his important work had been published when he retreat into privacy and obscurity but one one last discovery he made was almost forgotten. It was all about his famous invention of the gold-leaf electroscope. Various phenomena had always betrayed the existence of electric charge produced in different ways, such as rubbing wool on glass.
Threads and pieces of leaf brass had been used in the early 18th century because they would diverge if electrified. The first real electrometer was invented by John Canton and used a pair of pith balls hung on fine linen threads. On the air being electrified in a room, the balls would diverge.
The invention of the Leyden jar showed that electricity could be “stored” and perhaps the strength of the charge estimated. The jar consisted of a bottle partly filled with water that contained a metal rod projecting through the neck. Foil was placed inside and outside the bottle to prevent damage to the leaves. If the rod was connected to the prime conductor of a static generating machine and then the jar taken away, it was found that the charge could be kept and transported.
Bennet’s electroscope was based on another instrument made by his friend Tiberius Cavallo. Instead of threads or pith balls, Cavallo used silver wire terminated by pieces of cork contained in a glass bottle and held in place by a glass tube. A wire ran from the tube to the large brass cap and strips of tin-foil (earthed) allowed the electricity to be “conveyed off” when the corks touched.
Bennet's gold leaf electroscope developed in 1787 was a more sensitive version of the instrument than pith ball or Cavallo's electroscopes. It consists of a vertical metal rod, usually brass, from the end of which hang two parallel strips of thin flexible gold leaf. A disk or ball terminal is attached to the top of the rod, where the charge to be tested is applied.
To protect the gold leaves from drafts of air they were enclosed in a glass bottle, open at the bottom and mounted over a conductive base. When the metal terminal was touched with a charged object, the gold leaves spread apart in a 'V'. This is because some of the charge on the object is conducted through the terminal and metal rod to the leaves. Since they receive the same sign charge they repel each other and thus diverge. If the terminal is grounded by touching it with a finger, the charge is transferred through the human body into the earth and the gold leaves close together.
So far all these things were known. A few month before the riots happened a box had been shipped to Birmingham from Germany. At the time pitchblende from the Johanngeorgenstadt in the Empire of Austria-Hungary was the only known source of uranium in the world. Göttling remembering the friendships he made, used his connections to arrange a shipment to England.
There some samples landed in the hands of Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus Darwin was a close friend of Bennet and had in fact been responsible for Bennet's interest in electrical measurements as part of an investigation into the link between electricity and weather. Bennet then had worked assiduously to establish his expertise in electricity, achieving a reputation sufficient to take part in a meeting with the aforementioned Cavallo, as well as William Nicholson and Volta in London in 1782.
So it was no surprise that Darwin lend Bennet part of the Uranium sample so that he may investigate the mysterious radiation by himself. Since pretty much nothing was known about the new phenomenon any guess was as good as any other. So Bennet prepared his electroscope to see if uranium might be naturally charged as well. To his surprise the mere presence of the mineral sample seemed to lead to a sudden discharge of the gold foil. He first had charged it the usual way to see if everything was working correctly. Once again the new wonder material was good for a surprise.
After repeating the experiment over and over again, he confirmed to himself that, yes indeed instead of charging the electroscope the uranium was somehow discharging or “remote earthing” it (1). Unfortunately this discovery happened during the troubles and it seemed that it somehow would get lost but thankfully a, quiet, shy figure happened to have good ears and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Henry Cavendish.
Notes and Sources
(1) In OTL on 9 March 1896 Henri Becquerel announced that the rays emitted by the double sulphate of uranium and potassium were capable of discharging an gold leaf electroscope after passing through a 2-millimetre-thick aluminum plate.
How Röngten and Becquerel Rays are Linked with the Discoveries of Polonium and Radium.
Andrzej K. Wróblewski
Detecting measuring ionizing radiation – a short history.
F.N Flakus
Last edited:
You've got my attention, and it's great to see that you'll be continuing Holman's story, even if in a different way.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
Yes, I really felt bad for abandoning "his" timeline but I just manage to properly handle one timeline at a time. I hope by turning this into some sort of mega timeline that includes all the things I always wanted to write about I will be able to solve that particular problem.
J.D.Ward
Donor
It sounds convincing so far, but can any real understanding of atomic energy bypass the contributions of Dalton (for atomic theory), Faraday and Maxwell (for the theory and practical applications of electromagnetism) ?
Until the supporting knowledge is available, "mineral electricity" (OTL radioactivity) would be a laboratory curiosity.
However, I am very interested to see where you take this.
Until the supporting knowledge is available, "mineral electricity" (OTL radioactivity) would be a laboratory curiosity.
However, I am very interested to see where you take this.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
Indeed, we won't see Napoleon nuking Wellinton at Waterloo, however given enough time, good emperical experimental work and the right/wrong theories and interesting stuff can happen. I hope to finish the chapter dealing with Cavendish's discoveries soon. After that I will considerably slow things down a bit.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
The Blind Knight II
Good Intentions
"L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs / Hell is full of good wishes and desires”
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Holman used his permission to visit the Mediterranean sea as an excuse to go on a Grand Tour from 1819 to 1821. He journeyed through France, Italy, Switzerland, the parts of Germany bordering on the Rhine, Belgium and the Netherlands. On his return he published The Narrative of a Journey through France, etc. (London, 1822). Right after he finished his book he set out again in 1822 with the incredible design of making the circuit of the world from west to east, something which at the time was almost unheard of by a lone traveler, blind or not.
He traveled through Russia as far east as the Mongolian frontier of Irkutsk. There he was suspected by the Czar of being a spy who might publicize the extensive activities of the Russian American Company should he travel further east, and was conducted back forcibly to the frontiers of Poland. He returned home by Austria, Saxony, Prussia and Hanover, when he then published Travels through Russia, Siberia, etc. (London, 1825).
All of these activities brought Holman fame but also considerable frustration. Royalties from his books were forthcoming, enough to live a comfortable life in London but not enough to pursue his dream. It was gratifying to ride the Windsor coach into London and mingle with esteemed company at the Royal Society's headquarters at the Strand (A building he was familiar with, since it also housed the Navy board.) Yet each visit increased his restlessness more instead of soothing it.
With regular members briefings, a collection of maps, and an exhibition room displaying artifacts from the Royal Society sponsored expeditions, there was no better place to keep up to date on the latest geographic, ethnographic and technological discoveries.
Then there were also the troubles with Windsor. In his latest book, Holman had to admit that his trip to Russia had been on false pretense. It was not an idle, short visit to meet friends in Saint Petersburg, followed by an impulsive excursion to Siberia, but a journey planned from the beginning.
The confession necessary for the narrative of his book didn't sit well with the Visitors of Travers College, the trustees of the Naval Knights. They were beginning to regret their choice of Holman. A Naval Knight was by definition “aged or infirm” but a young man mustering the strength to gallivant across the a third of the globe seemed to meet neither criteria. He was far from being the first Knight to stray away form the prescribed life of cloistered devotion but he was the first one to be so public about it.
They informed him that he should henceforth embrace only his duty of praying in Saint George's chapel and would not be granted any more leaves of absence, with the exception of medical grounds. If Holman was going to launch another circuit of the world, it would need some willing and capable co-conspirators.
Fortunately, his adventures had opened him the doors to the Raleigh Club (named in honor of Sir Walter Raleigh) one of the most exclusive institutions in the world. Captain Sir Arthur de Capell Broke had conceived “the idea of forming an agreeable dining club, composed entirely of traveler” and used his money and influence to gather an impressive collection of members around him.
Fernando Po
De Capell Brok, who had also been one of Holman's sponsors for the membership in the Royal Society, was eager to gain him as one of the charter member. One of the people he met at their gatherings was Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen who had mapped the entire east African coast from the Cape to the Horn of Africa between 1821 and 1826 in the sloop Leven and in company with the brig Barracouta. When they returned in 1826, they brought with them 300 new charts, covering some 30,000 miles of coastline.
The costs had been steep however. Over half the original crew had been killed by tropical diseases. It should not be the last time Own would lose men to Africa.
As one of his crew member later observed the charts “may be said to have been drawn and colored with the drops of blood”. Nevertheless Owen's work made him a hero for the British Empire.
This did not lead him to forget his humble origins as a bastard (in the old sense) who's natural talents and wit had benefited from the hard work of his crew. As he wrote later: “The African survey stands due to the officers who served under me, unparalleled in the Annals of the World.”
After coming back Owen had just started his friendship with Holman, when he received orders for a second expedition to Africa, this time not to survey but to settle it. Parliament had authorized a new permanent presence in the strategically significant Gulf of Guinea.
This self contained settlement was to be build from the scratch, intentionally at a distance from any other European presence and in fact removed from the African continent itself. It would be on an island 32 km offshore, a location totally isolated from any, even African, civilizations.
The Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó in 1472 named it Formosa Flora (Beautiful Flower), but in 1494 it was renamed after its discoverer Fernão do Pó.. At the time the island was officially claimed by Spain but they had de facto abandoned it forty-six years ago.
Owen was order to lead the expedition to Fernando Po to oversee the carving of settlements out of raw jungle and to serve as governor once he was finished. It was a huge responsibility and not exactly one he wished for.
Nevertheless he recognized that he was the best person for the job and was completely behind the political motives of the mission. His survey of the continent had meant years of firsthand exposure to the slave trade. That familiarity had converted him into an ardent abolitionist.
Fernando Po was intended as the headquarters for a pitched battle against slavery. Owen would command not only a colony but a small fleet, devoted to hunting down slaving ships, taking them into custody and liberating their cargo.
Almost nothing was known of Fernando Po, but in 1821 a British geographer had declared it “the only proper station on the African coast, for our cruiser to watch and cut up the slave route”. That same year the Royal Navy gave Parliament the opinion that the setting would be simple “a very trifling establishment.”
Owen wasted no time putting his own stamp on the the mission. His flagship the HMS Eden was stocked with the most advanced instrument of its time. He also insisted to include his friend Holman as part of the crew, functioning as a chronicler of the journey.
The reason Holman was allowed to go was that he convinced the Visitors that this trip would be good for his health. Something that was at first glance preposterous. The island lay in the center of the “White Man's Grave”, a portion of the African coastline that was five times more likely to kill sailors stationed there than any other place in the world.
But luckily for Holman a recent article in the Quarterly Review described Fernando Po as a little paradise. “A refreshing breeze constantly blows over the island from the Atlantic; it has plenty of good anchorage in more places than one and abundance in clear water.”
It was the report of “refreshing breeze” that had convinced the Parliament to green light the expedition in the first place. Malaria means literally “bad air”, reflecting the then still prevalent idea that the disease was caused by miasmic gas emanating form the swamps and jungle.
Even if they were suspicious of Holman's reasons, they were reassured by geography. Few ships ventured in the area, and as the starting point for a circumnavigation of the world it seemed even less practice than Siberia.
They did once again underestimate Holman's will to fight against all odds. And this time they were worse then ever.
On the first glance things looked good. Accompanied by the cargo vessel Diadem, the Eden sailed away on August 1 1827, fully loaded with everything necessary imagined to create an instant colony. Sixteen complete houses, prefabricated and dissembled. A team of British carpenters to erect them and supervise the building of even more structures from native woods (it was presumed that the liberated slaves would be happy to assist).
Tons of seed for planting crops. Herds of sheep and cattle ruminated on the open deck, the rolling of open sea made them docile. The horses and donkey on the other hand were slung up in heavy weather in canvas restraints hoisted and swaying in the salt air.
They were optimistic, looking forward to their new home. These men were destined to make history, and they would. In the Annals of the Royal Navy, the Eden mission would be recorded as the deadliest expedition of all time.
Notes and Sources
This is still a completely OTL account of James Holman's life. Again almost all the information as well as parts of the text are form the book:
A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler by Jason Roberts
Good Intentions
"L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs / Hell is full of good wishes and desires”
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Holman used his permission to visit the Mediterranean sea as an excuse to go on a Grand Tour from 1819 to 1821. He journeyed through France, Italy, Switzerland, the parts of Germany bordering on the Rhine, Belgium and the Netherlands. On his return he published The Narrative of a Journey through France, etc. (London, 1822). Right after he finished his book he set out again in 1822 with the incredible design of making the circuit of the world from west to east, something which at the time was almost unheard of by a lone traveler, blind or not.
He traveled through Russia as far east as the Mongolian frontier of Irkutsk. There he was suspected by the Czar of being a spy who might publicize the extensive activities of the Russian American Company should he travel further east, and was conducted back forcibly to the frontiers of Poland. He returned home by Austria, Saxony, Prussia and Hanover, when he then published Travels through Russia, Siberia, etc. (London, 1825).
All of these activities brought Holman fame but also considerable frustration. Royalties from his books were forthcoming, enough to live a comfortable life in London but not enough to pursue his dream. It was gratifying to ride the Windsor coach into London and mingle with esteemed company at the Royal Society's headquarters at the Strand (A building he was familiar with, since it also housed the Navy board.) Yet each visit increased his restlessness more instead of soothing it.
With regular members briefings, a collection of maps, and an exhibition room displaying artifacts from the Royal Society sponsored expeditions, there was no better place to keep up to date on the latest geographic, ethnographic and technological discoveries.
Then there were also the troubles with Windsor. In his latest book, Holman had to admit that his trip to Russia had been on false pretense. It was not an idle, short visit to meet friends in Saint Petersburg, followed by an impulsive excursion to Siberia, but a journey planned from the beginning.
The confession necessary for the narrative of his book didn't sit well with the Visitors of Travers College, the trustees of the Naval Knights. They were beginning to regret their choice of Holman. A Naval Knight was by definition “aged or infirm” but a young man mustering the strength to gallivant across the a third of the globe seemed to meet neither criteria. He was far from being the first Knight to stray away form the prescribed life of cloistered devotion but he was the first one to be so public about it.
They informed him that he should henceforth embrace only his duty of praying in Saint George's chapel and would not be granted any more leaves of absence, with the exception of medical grounds. If Holman was going to launch another circuit of the world, it would need some willing and capable co-conspirators.
Fortunately, his adventures had opened him the doors to the Raleigh Club (named in honor of Sir Walter Raleigh) one of the most exclusive institutions in the world. Captain Sir Arthur de Capell Broke had conceived “the idea of forming an agreeable dining club, composed entirely of traveler” and used his money and influence to gather an impressive collection of members around him.
Fernando Po
De Capell Brok, who had also been one of Holman's sponsors for the membership in the Royal Society, was eager to gain him as one of the charter member. One of the people he met at their gatherings was Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen who had mapped the entire east African coast from the Cape to the Horn of Africa between 1821 and 1826 in the sloop Leven and in company with the brig Barracouta. When they returned in 1826, they brought with them 300 new charts, covering some 30,000 miles of coastline.
The costs had been steep however. Over half the original crew had been killed by tropical diseases. It should not be the last time Own would lose men to Africa.
As one of his crew member later observed the charts “may be said to have been drawn and colored with the drops of blood”. Nevertheless Owen's work made him a hero for the British Empire.
This did not lead him to forget his humble origins as a bastard (in the old sense) who's natural talents and wit had benefited from the hard work of his crew. As he wrote later: “The African survey stands due to the officers who served under me, unparalleled in the Annals of the World.”
After coming back Owen had just started his friendship with Holman, when he received orders for a second expedition to Africa, this time not to survey but to settle it. Parliament had authorized a new permanent presence in the strategically significant Gulf of Guinea.
This self contained settlement was to be build from the scratch, intentionally at a distance from any other European presence and in fact removed from the African continent itself. It would be on an island 32 km offshore, a location totally isolated from any, even African, civilizations.
The Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó in 1472 named it Formosa Flora (Beautiful Flower), but in 1494 it was renamed after its discoverer Fernão do Pó.. At the time the island was officially claimed by Spain but they had de facto abandoned it forty-six years ago.
Owen was order to lead the expedition to Fernando Po to oversee the carving of settlements out of raw jungle and to serve as governor once he was finished. It was a huge responsibility and not exactly one he wished for.
Nevertheless he recognized that he was the best person for the job and was completely behind the political motives of the mission. His survey of the continent had meant years of firsthand exposure to the slave trade. That familiarity had converted him into an ardent abolitionist.
Fernando Po was intended as the headquarters for a pitched battle against slavery. Owen would command not only a colony but a small fleet, devoted to hunting down slaving ships, taking them into custody and liberating their cargo.
Almost nothing was known of Fernando Po, but in 1821 a British geographer had declared it “the only proper station on the African coast, for our cruiser to watch and cut up the slave route”. That same year the Royal Navy gave Parliament the opinion that the setting would be simple “a very trifling establishment.”
Owen wasted no time putting his own stamp on the the mission. His flagship the HMS Eden was stocked with the most advanced instrument of its time. He also insisted to include his friend Holman as part of the crew, functioning as a chronicler of the journey.
The reason Holman was allowed to go was that he convinced the Visitors that this trip would be good for his health. Something that was at first glance preposterous. The island lay in the center of the “White Man's Grave”, a portion of the African coastline that was five times more likely to kill sailors stationed there than any other place in the world.
But luckily for Holman a recent article in the Quarterly Review described Fernando Po as a little paradise. “A refreshing breeze constantly blows over the island from the Atlantic; it has plenty of good anchorage in more places than one and abundance in clear water.”
It was the report of “refreshing breeze” that had convinced the Parliament to green light the expedition in the first place. Malaria means literally “bad air”, reflecting the then still prevalent idea that the disease was caused by miasmic gas emanating form the swamps and jungle.
Even if they were suspicious of Holman's reasons, they were reassured by geography. Few ships ventured in the area, and as the starting point for a circumnavigation of the world it seemed even less practice than Siberia.
They did once again underestimate Holman's will to fight against all odds. And this time they were worse then ever.
On the first glance things looked good. Accompanied by the cargo vessel Diadem, the Eden sailed away on August 1 1827, fully loaded with everything necessary imagined to create an instant colony. Sixteen complete houses, prefabricated and dissembled. A team of British carpenters to erect them and supervise the building of even more structures from native woods (it was presumed that the liberated slaves would be happy to assist).
Tons of seed for planting crops. Herds of sheep and cattle ruminated on the open deck, the rolling of open sea made them docile. The horses and donkey on the other hand were slung up in heavy weather in canvas restraints hoisted and swaying in the salt air.
They were optimistic, looking forward to their new home. These men were destined to make history, and they would. In the Annals of the Royal Navy, the Eden mission would be recorded as the deadliest expedition of all time.
Notes and Sources
This is still a completely OTL account of James Holman's life. Again almost all the information as well as parts of the text are form the book:
A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler by Jason Roberts
Last edited:
ComradeHuxley, this is remarkable...
...I am nominating you for the Cordite Medal for Inspired Ideas. If four others nominate you, CMII can be added to your sig.
To involve somebody disabled in a TL is most remarkable. Well done!
...I am nominating you for the Cordite Medal for Inspired Ideas. If four others nominate you, CMII can be added to your sig.
To involve somebody disabled in a TL is most remarkable. Well done!
This is looking very, very promising. An exciting left field idea and plenty of juicy details about fun things like chemistry and blind travel writing. Happily subscribed and I'll second that nomination.
P.S. - as someone ashamedly ignorant of the sciences this all very educational to boot, ta for that!
P.S. - as someone ashamedly ignorant of the sciences this all very educational to boot, ta for that!
ComradeHuxley
Donor
Wow, thanks a lot guys for the support. After this upadte I will start cleaning up some of the posts. I really wanted to get these primary story updates out to see if my (admittedly a little far out) idea of nuclear steam punk works.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
A Nuclear Century III
The Philosopher Stone
And yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman where of Aesop makes the fable, that when he died he told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried under the ground in his vineyard: and they digged over the ground, gold they found none, but by reason of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the year following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of man's life.
Sir Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning
The shy "Lunatick" mentioned last time, Henry Cavendish lived very much up to the Lunar Society's nickname for its members. He was an English scientist who made pioneering investigations in chemistry and used a torsion balance experiment, devised by John Michell, to make the first accurate measurements of the mean density of the Earth and the strength of the gravitational constant and also almost as eccentric as he was brilliant.
Cavendish noticed that Michell's apparatus would be sensitive to temperature differences and induced air currents so he made modifications by isolating the apparatus in a separate room with external controls and telescopes for making observations.
He also carried out pioneering work on electricity, but much of his work was not published in his lifetime, and only became widely known when Cavendish’s papers were edited and published by James Clerk Maxwell in 1879. However he did publish his findings in regard to the phenomenon of "The Restoration of Spend Phlogiston trough Uranium Rays”.
Cavendish could afford not to publish his results, because he did not have to make a living out of science. Born on 10 October, 1731, at Nice, in France, Cavendish was the son of Lord Charles Cavendish, and grandson of the both 2nd Duke of Devonshire (on his father’s side) and the Duke of Kent (on his mother’s side). His father, himself a Fellow of the Royal Society, was administrator of the British Museum. Henry Cavendish studied at Cambridge University from 1749 to 1753, but left without taking a degree (not particularly unusual in those days), and studied in Paris for a year before settling in London. He lived off his private fortune, and devoted his time to the study of science. Apart from his scientific contacts, he was reclusive, and published little, although he used some of his money to found a library, open to the public, located well away from his home. He was once described as “the richest of the wise, and the wisest of the rich.”
Among his unpublished discoveries, Cavendish anticipated Ohm’s Law and much of the work of Michael Faraday and Charles Coulomb. He also showed that gases could be weighed, and that air is a mixture of gases, not a pure substance. One of the great English scientists of the second half of the eighteenth century, Cavendish, among other things, discovered hydrogen gas. But for a long time not many people knew just how clever he was, because as well as being almost unbelievably rich, so that he could do whatever he liked, Cavendish was also incredibly shy, and he didn’t bother to tell the world about most of his amazing discoveries for most of his live. But he did write down accurate notes of all of his experiments, which were discovered after he died.
His father was only the fourth out of five brothers and six sisters, so he didn’t inherit a title himself; but he was certainly aristocratic, and he inherited a lot of money. Henry’s father, Charles Cavendish, had married his mother, Anne de Grey, in 1729. Anne was only 22, and she was ill almost for the rest of her short life, with what seems to have been tuberculosis. Henry was born in Nice, in 1731, where his parents had gone to escape from the English winter, and his brother Frederick was born in England in 1733. Before the end of that year, their mother was dead. Charles Cavendish never remarried, so Henry never really had a mother, which may partly explain why he grew up to be such a peculiar man.
In 1738, Charles Cavendish sold his country estate and moved to London with his two sons, in the year Henry had his seventh birthday. Both boys went to school in London, then on to Peterhouse (a Cambridge college, but never called Peterhouse College). After Henry had left Peterhouse in 1753, Frederick fell from an upstairs window and suffered a head injury which caused permanent brain damage. He was well enough to manage a fairly normal life, with the help of servants, but after the accident he could not do anything very intellectual.
But Henry was clever enough for at least two ordinary people. He went on the usual Grand Tour with his brother, then settled down at the family house in Great Marlborough Street to be a scientist. He wasn’t interested in anything else at all, and although he received an allowance from his father of £500 a year, he hardly spent any of it. He only ever owned one suit of clothes at a time, which he wore every day until it was worn out. Then he bought another in exactly the same style, even though this got more and more old-fashioned as time passed.
Later on, after his father died in 1783, when Henry was 52, and he had a huge fortune, Cavendish carried on just the same. He ate mutton every day, and one day when he was expecting some scientific friends for dinner (he only had scientific friends), his housekeeper asked him what to serve. “A leg of mutton,” he replied. She said this would not be enough. “Well then,” he said, “get two.”
One day, his bank manager called round. He was worried because Henry had £80,000 in his current account. This was a vast fortune when a fashionable gentleman could live comfortably on £500 a year, but Cavendish was so rich he had forgotten about it. The banker asked Cavendish if he would like to invest the money more profitably. Cavendish was so angry at having been bothered about the money that he told the bank manager to go away at once, or he would close the account.
Rather nervously, the manager asked if Cavendish might like to invest just half the money. To shut him up, Cavendish said the banker could do what he liked with the £40,000 as long as he went away at once. The honest banker put the money into safe investments, where it made a profit and made Henry Cavendish even richer.
When he died, in 1810, Cavendish was worth almost exactly a million pounds. This would be equivalent to about a billion pounds today. He left all the money to relatives, and one of their descendants, William Cavendish, the seventh Duke of Devonshire, used some of the fortune to establish the “British Nuclear Radiation Company”. It was mostly meant to cash on the well known health effects of nuclear radiation but its research laboratory was responsible for some key discoveries leading to the modern nuclear energy technology as well. The only thing Henry Cavendish however spent money on was houses, to give himself space for his scientific work, and laboratory equipment to put in the space. After his father died, he rented out the house in Great Marlborough Street, and bought one at Clapham Common, which was then a quiet, leafy area just outside the bustle of London.
Cavendish only ever went out on scientific business. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1760. He hadn’t done any real science then, but in those days rich people who were interested in science were welcome as Fellows even if they hadn’t actually done much science. Cavendish often went to their meetings. But even there he was so shy that if he was late he would wait quietly outside the door until somebody else came along, so that he wouldn’t have to go into the room on his own. He also went to dinner with other Fellows, who had a dining club that met regularly.
Most of the time, Cavendish only communicated with his servants by writing notes to them, and several people who knew him have written how if he came across a woman he did not know he would cover his eyes with his hand and run away. But in the summer he would travel round Britain in a coach, visiting other scientists and studying geology.
The reason Cavendish was regarded as “the wisest of the rich” was thanks to his work in chemistry. This was because he did publish a lot of papers on this work, although he didn’t publish all of it. At the time, nobody knew about most of his other work, even though it was just as important. For example, in electricity we now know that Cavendish was the first person to discover what is known as Ohm’s Law, but he never told anybody, so Ohm had to discover it again later.
In the 1760s, Cavendish started experimenting with gases, carefully following Black’s example by measuring and weighing everything as he went along. He found that the gas given off when acids react with metals is different from ordinary air, and from Black’s fixed air. It burned very easily, and Cavendish called it “inflammable air;” we call it hydrogen. Indeed, the gas burned so vigorously that Cavendish soon decided that it must be pure phlogiston. He also studied Black’s fixed air and the properties of Priestley’s fizzy mineral water. But in 1767, probably because he read Priestley’s book on electricity, he dropped his chemical experiments, and turned his attention to electricity. Hardly any of this work was published at the time, which was a great loss to science. Among other things, Cavendish proved that electricity obeys an inverse square law. This is now known as Coulomb’s Law, because Coulomb was the first person to publish it. Cavendish also measured the strength of the electric force very accurately.
Then, in the 1780s Cavendish went back to chemistry. He’d got interested in the way that air seems to be lost when things burn in it. For example, if a lighted candle is stood on a little island in a bowl of water, with a glass jar over the top, as he candle burns the level of water rises. This is because the volume of air is shrinking. About a fifth of the air disappears in this way before the candle goes out. We say that this is because one fifth of the air is oxygen, and the oxygen gets used up in burning.
Cavendish still tried to explain what was going on in terms of phlogiston, even though Priestley had already discovered oxygen and found that it makes up about a fifth of ordinary air. The explanation got horribly complicated and is exceedingly difficult to understand. Nevertheless a little detour into phlogiston theory might be in order.
This obsolete scientific theory postulated that a fire-like element called phlogiston, contained within combustible bodies, is released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek phlogistón (burning up), from phlóx (flame). It was first stated in 1667 by Johann Joachim Becher. The theory attempted to explain burning processes such as combustion and rusting, which are now collectively known as oxidation.
Phlogisticated substances are substances that contain phlogiston and dephlogisticate when burned. In general, substances that burned in air were said to be rich in phlogiston; the fact that combustion soon ceased in an enclosed space was taken as clear-cut evidence that air had the capacity to absorb only a finite amount of phlogiston. When air had become completely phlogisticated it would no longer serve to support combustion of any material, nor would a metal heated in it yield a calx; nor could phlogisticated air support life. Breathing was thought to take phlogiston out of the body.
What is important here is that Cavendish carried out experiments in which oxygen (dephlogisticated air, to him) and hydrogen (pure phlogiston, he thought) were exploded together in a metal container, using an electric spark. Apart from making a satisfying bang, the experiment at last started chemists, although not Cavendish, thinking along the right lines about oxygen, and what happens when things burn. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water. Cavendish found that his two gases always joined together in the same proportions to make water. He weighed everything carefully before and after each experiment, so he found that the weight of water produced was exactly the same as the weight of gas lost. Putting the numbers in, he found that 423 measures of “phlogiston” combine exactly with 208 measures of “dephlogisticated air” to make pure water with no gas left over.
This was a key moment in chemistry because it showed that water is a compound substance. It is somehow made by two other substances joining together, not any old how but joining together always in exactly the same proportions. Actually 2:1 exactly, we now know, for hydrogen and oxygen combining to make water.
This was the first step towards understanding how atoms combine to make molecules. Cavendish couldn’t take the step properly because he was stuck with the idea of phlogiston. But his discovery was immediately picked up and developed in France, by Antoine Lavoisier. In 1785 Cavendish was able to remove both oxygen and nitrogen gases from air and was left with a tiny amount of unreactive gas, argon. However he didn't pursue this line of thought any further. It does however highlight his skill at rigorous quantitative experiments. He used calibrated equipment, obtained reproducible results, repeated those experiments and averaged the results, and always tried to allow for sources of error.
While Lavoisier and others took his insight into the nature of air forward, Cavendish carried on experimenting, going to scientific meetings and dinners, and publishing some, but not all, of his discoveries. Somewhere around 1790 he overheard Bennet and his observation made with the gold leaf electrometer and uranium.
In order to probably study the mineral's capabilities he ordered a box of pitchblende from a mine in Joachmistahl. Money was never a particular concern to him, and scientific curiosity trumpeted everything else.
The first step he took was to device a way to measure the strength of the radiation emitted by the samples by modifying Bennet's equipment. An electrostatic charge was placed upon two gold foil leaves, causing them to repel. As radiation strikes the meter the foil leaves lose their charge and start to droop.
This droop could be measured and a rate could be established. The weight of its leaves permanently established the instruments calibration, when built as specified with a properly sized scale. Once the preparations were made, he found that indeed the amount of uranium was proportional to the radiation measured but he also found that pitchblende was more radioactive than it should be given the uranium it contained. He correctly assumed that it was probably containing another (or more) radioactive elements.
Klaproth came to the same conclusion but on a different way. After finding uranium he naturally wondered if there were other radioactive elements. The first place he went to look at was the remaining pitchblende. There was no established theory explaining radioactivity but it sounded intuitive to him that whatever unknown factor responsible for the radioactivity might also lead to the existence of other types of these minerals.
Nature seemed to prove him right. The uranium free pitchblende was measurably radioactive. He still had to use a photo plate since Cavendish didn't publish his findings much later and Bennet had gone into internal exile (1).
Over the next decade and under tremendous difficulty Klaproth managed to fulfill his personal magnum opus, to isolate two new elements, Arminium (2) and the highly radioactive radium which only occurred in trace amounts. We will take a closer look at his work at a later point, but we will keep in mind that he found that the very rare, seemingly immensely useful element Arminium had the bad habit of turning into lead, which promoted him to comment that he found the “Stein der Narren/The Fool Stone.”
As for Cavendish his continued systematic studies of the various chemical compounds indicated that the strength of the radiation depend only on the amount of uranium not on their composition. As later chemist found, chemical compounds of the same element generally have very different chemical and physical properties.
In Cavendish's case one uranium compound was a dark powder, another a transparent yellow crystal, but what was decisive for the radiation they gave off was only the amount of uranium they contained. thus future generations of researcher had to accept that the ability to radiate did not depend on the arrangement of the atoms in a molecule and subsequently must be linked to the interior of the atom itself.
Now that the basics for his experiment had been secured he could begin his investigation into the uranium rays on the gold leaf electromter. The first intriguing discovery he made was that the radiation was effecting the air and not the gold leaves themselves. This was possible thanks to the use of a sophisticated vacuum pump. Once he established that the rays were affecting the air Cavendish wanted to see how and if their physical properties changed. This lead to some fascinating discoveries but none of them was as important as the following.
Cavendish left a glass filled with nitrogen (known to him as burnt air or dephlogisticated air) and a sample of radioactive material alone over a consiberable time. He wanted to see if and how many lasting changes may have happened. To his surprise he found that the rays somehow had restored the phlogistic property as he gained the same basic results as in his earlier hydrogen/oxygen experiment (only in a much smaller scale.)
Cavendish the skeptic man he was, rigorously repeated the experiment and only after his health began failing in the winter of 1909 did he publish the results of his experiment. It was the only thing he felt enough about not to take with him into his grave.
Others scientist immediately understood the importance of his discovery, not in term of the obsolete phlogiston theory but the newly emerging atomic theory of Dalton. What he had done was more than incredible, Cavendish had realized the ancient dream of alchemist the transmutation of elements. Sure he had “only” turned nitrogen into air and hydrogen but nevertheless clearly everyone with an working mind could see the dawn of the new nuclear age. What actually happened was that alpha particles a form of radiation released by radioactive decay were allowed to pass through nitrogen gas, when one struck a nitrogen nucleus, a hydrogen nucleus was ejected, and an oxygen nucleus formed. Cavendish lived to be 78 and died quietly at home in 1810 before seeing the new world himself.
Notes and Sources
(1) In OTL 1898, two months before Marie Curie, Gerhard Carl Schmidt who used a photographic method similar to that of Becquerel discovered that thorium is radioactive. "Über die von den Thorverbindungen und einigen anderen Substanzen ausgehende Strahlung” (On the radiation emitted by thorium compounds and some other substances).
Marie Curie also wrote that "Uranium, thorium, polonium, radium, and their compounds make the air a conductor of electricity and act photographically on sensitive plates. In these respects, polonium and radium are considerably more active than uranium and thorium. On photographic plates one obtains good impressions with radium and polonium in a half-minute's exposure; several hours are needed to obtain the same result with uranium and thorium."
So a primitve photographic dosimeter should have worked for Klaproth. After cheking all alvailable sources to me it seems there was no Thorium in the known German uranium mines, so we will have to wait a bit until its found.
(2) In OTL the element is called Polonium. Here it is named after the German national hero Arminius/Hermann.
Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium
by Nanny Fröman
The KFM, A Homemade Yet Accurate and Dependable Fallout Meter.
by Cresson H. Kearny
An unsing hero of science. (actual title)
by john gribbin science
Rutherford, Ernest (1871–1937)
by David Darling
The Philosopher Stone
And yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman where of Aesop makes the fable, that when he died he told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried under the ground in his vineyard: and they digged over the ground, gold they found none, but by reason of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the year following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of man's life.
Sir Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning
The shy "Lunatick" mentioned last time, Henry Cavendish lived very much up to the Lunar Society's nickname for its members. He was an English scientist who made pioneering investigations in chemistry and used a torsion balance experiment, devised by John Michell, to make the first accurate measurements of the mean density of the Earth and the strength of the gravitational constant and also almost as eccentric as he was brilliant.
Cavendish noticed that Michell's apparatus would be sensitive to temperature differences and induced air currents so he made modifications by isolating the apparatus in a separate room with external controls and telescopes for making observations.
He also carried out pioneering work on electricity, but much of his work was not published in his lifetime, and only became widely known when Cavendish’s papers were edited and published by James Clerk Maxwell in 1879. However he did publish his findings in regard to the phenomenon of "The Restoration of Spend Phlogiston trough Uranium Rays”.
Cavendish could afford not to publish his results, because he did not have to make a living out of science. Born on 10 October, 1731, at Nice, in France, Cavendish was the son of Lord Charles Cavendish, and grandson of the both 2nd Duke of Devonshire (on his father’s side) and the Duke of Kent (on his mother’s side). His father, himself a Fellow of the Royal Society, was administrator of the British Museum. Henry Cavendish studied at Cambridge University from 1749 to 1753, but left without taking a degree (not particularly unusual in those days), and studied in Paris for a year before settling in London. He lived off his private fortune, and devoted his time to the study of science. Apart from his scientific contacts, he was reclusive, and published little, although he used some of his money to found a library, open to the public, located well away from his home. He was once described as “the richest of the wise, and the wisest of the rich.”
Among his unpublished discoveries, Cavendish anticipated Ohm’s Law and much of the work of Michael Faraday and Charles Coulomb. He also showed that gases could be weighed, and that air is a mixture of gases, not a pure substance. One of the great English scientists of the second half of the eighteenth century, Cavendish, among other things, discovered hydrogen gas. But for a long time not many people knew just how clever he was, because as well as being almost unbelievably rich, so that he could do whatever he liked, Cavendish was also incredibly shy, and he didn’t bother to tell the world about most of his amazing discoveries for most of his live. But he did write down accurate notes of all of his experiments, which were discovered after he died.
His father was only the fourth out of five brothers and six sisters, so he didn’t inherit a title himself; but he was certainly aristocratic, and he inherited a lot of money. Henry’s father, Charles Cavendish, had married his mother, Anne de Grey, in 1729. Anne was only 22, and she was ill almost for the rest of her short life, with what seems to have been tuberculosis. Henry was born in Nice, in 1731, where his parents had gone to escape from the English winter, and his brother Frederick was born in England in 1733. Before the end of that year, their mother was dead. Charles Cavendish never remarried, so Henry never really had a mother, which may partly explain why he grew up to be such a peculiar man.
In 1738, Charles Cavendish sold his country estate and moved to London with his two sons, in the year Henry had his seventh birthday. Both boys went to school in London, then on to Peterhouse (a Cambridge college, but never called Peterhouse College). After Henry had left Peterhouse in 1753, Frederick fell from an upstairs window and suffered a head injury which caused permanent brain damage. He was well enough to manage a fairly normal life, with the help of servants, but after the accident he could not do anything very intellectual.
But Henry was clever enough for at least two ordinary people. He went on the usual Grand Tour with his brother, then settled down at the family house in Great Marlborough Street to be a scientist. He wasn’t interested in anything else at all, and although he received an allowance from his father of £500 a year, he hardly spent any of it. He only ever owned one suit of clothes at a time, which he wore every day until it was worn out. Then he bought another in exactly the same style, even though this got more and more old-fashioned as time passed.
Later on, after his father died in 1783, when Henry was 52, and he had a huge fortune, Cavendish carried on just the same. He ate mutton every day, and one day when he was expecting some scientific friends for dinner (he only had scientific friends), his housekeeper asked him what to serve. “A leg of mutton,” he replied. She said this would not be enough. “Well then,” he said, “get two.”
One day, his bank manager called round. He was worried because Henry had £80,000 in his current account. This was a vast fortune when a fashionable gentleman could live comfortably on £500 a year, but Cavendish was so rich he had forgotten about it. The banker asked Cavendish if he would like to invest the money more profitably. Cavendish was so angry at having been bothered about the money that he told the bank manager to go away at once, or he would close the account.
Rather nervously, the manager asked if Cavendish might like to invest just half the money. To shut him up, Cavendish said the banker could do what he liked with the £40,000 as long as he went away at once. The honest banker put the money into safe investments, where it made a profit and made Henry Cavendish even richer.
When he died, in 1810, Cavendish was worth almost exactly a million pounds. This would be equivalent to about a billion pounds today. He left all the money to relatives, and one of their descendants, William Cavendish, the seventh Duke of Devonshire, used some of the fortune to establish the “British Nuclear Radiation Company”. It was mostly meant to cash on the well known health effects of nuclear radiation but its research laboratory was responsible for some key discoveries leading to the modern nuclear energy technology as well. The only thing Henry Cavendish however spent money on was houses, to give himself space for his scientific work, and laboratory equipment to put in the space. After his father died, he rented out the house in Great Marlborough Street, and bought one at Clapham Common, which was then a quiet, leafy area just outside the bustle of London.
Cavendish only ever went out on scientific business. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1760. He hadn’t done any real science then, but in those days rich people who were interested in science were welcome as Fellows even if they hadn’t actually done much science. Cavendish often went to their meetings. But even there he was so shy that if he was late he would wait quietly outside the door until somebody else came along, so that he wouldn’t have to go into the room on his own. He also went to dinner with other Fellows, who had a dining club that met regularly.
Most of the time, Cavendish only communicated with his servants by writing notes to them, and several people who knew him have written how if he came across a woman he did not know he would cover his eyes with his hand and run away. But in the summer he would travel round Britain in a coach, visiting other scientists and studying geology.
The reason Cavendish was regarded as “the wisest of the rich” was thanks to his work in chemistry. This was because he did publish a lot of papers on this work, although he didn’t publish all of it. At the time, nobody knew about most of his other work, even though it was just as important. For example, in electricity we now know that Cavendish was the first person to discover what is known as Ohm’s Law, but he never told anybody, so Ohm had to discover it again later.
In the 1760s, Cavendish started experimenting with gases, carefully following Black’s example by measuring and weighing everything as he went along. He found that the gas given off when acids react with metals is different from ordinary air, and from Black’s fixed air. It burned very easily, and Cavendish called it “inflammable air;” we call it hydrogen. Indeed, the gas burned so vigorously that Cavendish soon decided that it must be pure phlogiston. He also studied Black’s fixed air and the properties of Priestley’s fizzy mineral water. But in 1767, probably because he read Priestley’s book on electricity, he dropped his chemical experiments, and turned his attention to electricity. Hardly any of this work was published at the time, which was a great loss to science. Among other things, Cavendish proved that electricity obeys an inverse square law. This is now known as Coulomb’s Law, because Coulomb was the first person to publish it. Cavendish also measured the strength of the electric force very accurately.
Then, in the 1780s Cavendish went back to chemistry. He’d got interested in the way that air seems to be lost when things burn in it. For example, if a lighted candle is stood on a little island in a bowl of water, with a glass jar over the top, as he candle burns the level of water rises. This is because the volume of air is shrinking. About a fifth of the air disappears in this way before the candle goes out. We say that this is because one fifth of the air is oxygen, and the oxygen gets used up in burning.
Cavendish still tried to explain what was going on in terms of phlogiston, even though Priestley had already discovered oxygen and found that it makes up about a fifth of ordinary air. The explanation got horribly complicated and is exceedingly difficult to understand. Nevertheless a little detour into phlogiston theory might be in order.
This obsolete scientific theory postulated that a fire-like element called phlogiston, contained within combustible bodies, is released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek phlogistón (burning up), from phlóx (flame). It was first stated in 1667 by Johann Joachim Becher. The theory attempted to explain burning processes such as combustion and rusting, which are now collectively known as oxidation.
Phlogisticated substances are substances that contain phlogiston and dephlogisticate when burned. In general, substances that burned in air were said to be rich in phlogiston; the fact that combustion soon ceased in an enclosed space was taken as clear-cut evidence that air had the capacity to absorb only a finite amount of phlogiston. When air had become completely phlogisticated it would no longer serve to support combustion of any material, nor would a metal heated in it yield a calx; nor could phlogisticated air support life. Breathing was thought to take phlogiston out of the body.
What is important here is that Cavendish carried out experiments in which oxygen (dephlogisticated air, to him) and hydrogen (pure phlogiston, he thought) were exploded together in a metal container, using an electric spark. Apart from making a satisfying bang, the experiment at last started chemists, although not Cavendish, thinking along the right lines about oxygen, and what happens when things burn. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water. Cavendish found that his two gases always joined together in the same proportions to make water. He weighed everything carefully before and after each experiment, so he found that the weight of water produced was exactly the same as the weight of gas lost. Putting the numbers in, he found that 423 measures of “phlogiston” combine exactly with 208 measures of “dephlogisticated air” to make pure water with no gas left over.
This was a key moment in chemistry because it showed that water is a compound substance. It is somehow made by two other substances joining together, not any old how but joining together always in exactly the same proportions. Actually 2:1 exactly, we now know, for hydrogen and oxygen combining to make water.
This was the first step towards understanding how atoms combine to make molecules. Cavendish couldn’t take the step properly because he was stuck with the idea of phlogiston. But his discovery was immediately picked up and developed in France, by Antoine Lavoisier. In 1785 Cavendish was able to remove both oxygen and nitrogen gases from air and was left with a tiny amount of unreactive gas, argon. However he didn't pursue this line of thought any further. It does however highlight his skill at rigorous quantitative experiments. He used calibrated equipment, obtained reproducible results, repeated those experiments and averaged the results, and always tried to allow for sources of error.
While Lavoisier and others took his insight into the nature of air forward, Cavendish carried on experimenting, going to scientific meetings and dinners, and publishing some, but not all, of his discoveries. Somewhere around 1790 he overheard Bennet and his observation made with the gold leaf electrometer and uranium.
In order to probably study the mineral's capabilities he ordered a box of pitchblende from a mine in Joachmistahl. Money was never a particular concern to him, and scientific curiosity trumpeted everything else.
The first step he took was to device a way to measure the strength of the radiation emitted by the samples by modifying Bennet's equipment. An electrostatic charge was placed upon two gold foil leaves, causing them to repel. As radiation strikes the meter the foil leaves lose their charge and start to droop.
This droop could be measured and a rate could be established. The weight of its leaves permanently established the instruments calibration, when built as specified with a properly sized scale. Once the preparations were made, he found that indeed the amount of uranium was proportional to the radiation measured but he also found that pitchblende was more radioactive than it should be given the uranium it contained. He correctly assumed that it was probably containing another (or more) radioactive elements.
Klaproth came to the same conclusion but on a different way. After finding uranium he naturally wondered if there were other radioactive elements. The first place he went to look at was the remaining pitchblende. There was no established theory explaining radioactivity but it sounded intuitive to him that whatever unknown factor responsible for the radioactivity might also lead to the existence of other types of these minerals.
Nature seemed to prove him right. The uranium free pitchblende was measurably radioactive. He still had to use a photo plate since Cavendish didn't publish his findings much later and Bennet had gone into internal exile (1).
Over the next decade and under tremendous difficulty Klaproth managed to fulfill his personal magnum opus, to isolate two new elements, Arminium (2) and the highly radioactive radium which only occurred in trace amounts. We will take a closer look at his work at a later point, but we will keep in mind that he found that the very rare, seemingly immensely useful element Arminium had the bad habit of turning into lead, which promoted him to comment that he found the “Stein der Narren/The Fool Stone.”
As for Cavendish his continued systematic studies of the various chemical compounds indicated that the strength of the radiation depend only on the amount of uranium not on their composition. As later chemist found, chemical compounds of the same element generally have very different chemical and physical properties.
In Cavendish's case one uranium compound was a dark powder, another a transparent yellow crystal, but what was decisive for the radiation they gave off was only the amount of uranium they contained. thus future generations of researcher had to accept that the ability to radiate did not depend on the arrangement of the atoms in a molecule and subsequently must be linked to the interior of the atom itself.
Now that the basics for his experiment had been secured he could begin his investigation into the uranium rays on the gold leaf electromter. The first intriguing discovery he made was that the radiation was effecting the air and not the gold leaves themselves. This was possible thanks to the use of a sophisticated vacuum pump. Once he established that the rays were affecting the air Cavendish wanted to see how and if their physical properties changed. This lead to some fascinating discoveries but none of them was as important as the following.
Cavendish left a glass filled with nitrogen (known to him as burnt air or dephlogisticated air) and a sample of radioactive material alone over a consiberable time. He wanted to see if and how many lasting changes may have happened. To his surprise he found that the rays somehow had restored the phlogistic property as he gained the same basic results as in his earlier hydrogen/oxygen experiment (only in a much smaller scale.)
Cavendish the skeptic man he was, rigorously repeated the experiment and only after his health began failing in the winter of 1909 did he publish the results of his experiment. It was the only thing he felt enough about not to take with him into his grave.
Others scientist immediately understood the importance of his discovery, not in term of the obsolete phlogiston theory but the newly emerging atomic theory of Dalton. What he had done was more than incredible, Cavendish had realized the ancient dream of alchemist the transmutation of elements. Sure he had “only” turned nitrogen into air and hydrogen but nevertheless clearly everyone with an working mind could see the dawn of the new nuclear age. What actually happened was that alpha particles a form of radiation released by radioactive decay were allowed to pass through nitrogen gas, when one struck a nitrogen nucleus, a hydrogen nucleus was ejected, and an oxygen nucleus formed. Cavendish lived to be 78 and died quietly at home in 1810 before seeing the new world himself.
Notes and Sources
(1) In OTL 1898, two months before Marie Curie, Gerhard Carl Schmidt who used a photographic method similar to that of Becquerel discovered that thorium is radioactive. "Über die von den Thorverbindungen und einigen anderen Substanzen ausgehende Strahlung” (On the radiation emitted by thorium compounds and some other substances).
Marie Curie also wrote that "Uranium, thorium, polonium, radium, and their compounds make the air a conductor of electricity and act photographically on sensitive plates. In these respects, polonium and radium are considerably more active than uranium and thorium. On photographic plates one obtains good impressions with radium and polonium in a half-minute's exposure; several hours are needed to obtain the same result with uranium and thorium."
So a primitve photographic dosimeter should have worked for Klaproth. After cheking all alvailable sources to me it seems there was no Thorium in the known German uranium mines, so we will have to wait a bit until its found.
(2) In OTL the element is called Polonium. Here it is named after the German national hero Arminius/Hermann.
Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium
by Nanny Fröman
The KFM, A Homemade Yet Accurate and Dependable Fallout Meter.
by Cresson H. Kearny
An unsing hero of science. (actual title)
by john gribbin science
Rutherford, Ernest (1871–1937)
by David Darling
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