ComradeHuxley
Donor
Yep, add Qian Xuesen into the mix and the joint Interkom Space Mission Planning Commitee is going to be interesting place to be.
A Martian stranded on Earth (Tesla Edition)
- Thread starter ComradeHuxley
- Start date
Yep, add Qian Xuesen into the mix and the joint Interkom Space Mission Planning Commitee is going to be interesting place to be.
Edison and the Concrete Boom: Mass Housing
ComradeHuxley
Donor
Edison and the Concrete Boom: Mass Housing
Long before Edison ever thought of going into the business of manufacturing cement he had very pronounced opinions of its value for building purposes. During a discussion on ancient buildings, he remarked: "Wood will rot, stone will chip and crumble, bricks disintegrate, but a cement and iron structure is apparently indestructible. Look at some of the old Roman baths. They are as solid as when they were built."
Thomas Edison with the model for his first (never) realized modern concrete building (1).
And as we stand now in awe of the achievements of the Roman Empire and its great architectural wonders, so will people marvel over Edison pioneer work in creating "city factories" and the kickstart he gave the general automated industry with his numerical controlled machines. However before his big triumph Edison, had to endure some quitet some hardship and costly failure the "Audio War" (2) and the "War of the Currents" only the most prominent among them.
Grinding Mountain to Dust
While walking along the sea-shore some may have noticed occasional streaks or patches of bluish-black sand, somewhat like gunpowder in appearance. It is carried up from the bed of the sea and deposited by the waves on the shore to a greater or lesser extent on many beaches. If a magnet be brought near to this "black sand" the particles will be immediately attracted to it, just as iron filings would be in such a case. As a matter of fact, these particles of black sand are grains of finely divided magnetic iron in a very pure state.
Now, if we should take a piece of magnetic iron ore in the form of a rock and grind it to powder the particles of iron could be separated from the ground-up mass by drawing them out with a magnet, just as they could be drawn out of a heap of sea-shore sand. If all the grains of iron were thus separated and put together, or concentrated, they would be called concentrates.
During the last century a great many experimenters besides Edison attempted to perfect various cheap methods of magnetically separating iron ores, but until he took up the work on a large scale no one seems to have realized the real meaning of the tremendous problems involved.
The beginning of this work on the part of Edison was his invention in 1880 of a peculiar form of magnetic separator. It consisted of a suspended V-shaped hopper with an adjustable slit along the pointed end. A long electromagnet was placed, edgewise, a little below the hopper, and a bin with a dividing partition in the center was placed on the floor below.
Crushed ore, or sand, was placed in the hopper. If there was no magnetism this fine material would flow down in a straight line past the magnet and fill the bin on one side of the partition. If, however, the magnet were active the particles of iron would be attracted out of the line of the falling material, but their weight would carry them beyond the magnet and they would fall to the other side of the partition. Thus, the material would be separated, the grains of iron going to one side and the grains of rock or sand to the other side.
This separator, as afterward modified, was the basis of a colossal enterprise conducted by Mr. Edison, as we shall presently relate. But first let us glance at an early experiment on the Atlantic sea-shore in 1881, as mentioned by him. He says:
"Some years ago I heard one day that down at Quogue, Long Island, there were immense deposits of black magnetic sand. This would be very valuable if the iron could be separated from the sand. So I went down to Quogue with one of my assistants and saw there for miles large beds of black sand on the beach in layers from one to six inches thick—hundreds of thousands of tons. My first thought was that it would be a very easy matter to concentrate this, and I found I could sell the stuff at a good price. I put up a small magnetic separating plant, but just as I got it started a tremendous storm came up, and every bit of that black sand went out to sea. During the twenty-eight years that have intervened it has never come back."
In the same year a similar separating plant was put up and worked on the Rhode Island shore by the writer under Mr. Edison's direction. More than one thousand tons of concentrated iron ore of fine quality were separated from sea-shore sand and sold. It was found, however, that it could not be successfully used on account of being so finely divided.
Magnetic separation of ores was allowed to rest for many years after this, so far as Edison was concerned. He was intensely busy on the electric light, electric railway, and other similar problems until 1888, and then undertook the perfecting and manufacturing of his improved phonograph, and other matters. Somewhere about 1890, however, he again took up the subject of ore-separation.
For some years previous to that time the Eastern iron-mills had been suffering because of the scarcity of low-priced high-grade ores. If low-grade ores could be crushed and the iron therein concentrated and sold at a reasonable price the furnaces would be benefited. Edison decided, after serious hours of deliberation, that if these low-grade ores were magnetically separated on a colossal scale at a low cost the furnace-men could be supplied with the much-desired high quality of iron ore at a price which would be practicable.
He appreciated the fact that it was a serious and gigantic problem, but was fully satisfied that he could solve it. He first planned a great magnetic survey of the East, with the object of locating large bodies of magnetic iron ore. This survey was the greatest and most comprehensive of the kind ever made. With a peculiarly sensitive magnetic needle to indicate the presence of magnetic ore in the earth, he sent out men who made a survey of twenty-five miles across country, all the way from lower Canada to North Carolina. Edison says:
"The amount of ore disclosed by this survey was simply fabulous. How much so may be judged from the fact that in the three thousand acres immediately surrounding the mills that I afterward established at Edison, New Jersey, there were over two hundred million tons of low-grade ore. I also secured sixteen thousand acres in which the deposit was proportionately as large. These few acres alone contained sufficient ore to supply the whole United States iron trade, including exports, for seventy years."
Given a mountain of rock containing only one-fifth to one-fourth magnetic iron, the broad problem confronting Edison resolved itself into three distinct parts—first, to tear down the mountain bodily and grind it to powder; second, to extract from this powder the particles of iron mingled in its mass; and third, to accomplish these results at a cost sufficiently low to give the product a commercial value.
From the start Edison realized that in order to carry out this program there would have to be automatic and continuous treatment of the material, and that he would have to make the fullest possible use of natural forces, such as gravity and momentum. The carrying out of these principles and ideas gave rise to some of the most brilliant engineering work that has ever been done by Edison. (...)
Everything was bright and promising, when there came a fatal blow. The discovery of rich Bessemer ore in the Mesaba range of mountains in Minnesota a few years before had been followed by the opening of the mines there about this time. As this rich ore could be sold for three dollars and fifty cents per ton, as against six dollars and fifty cents per ton for Edison's iron, his great enterprise had to be abandoned at the very moment it was succeding.
It was a sad blow to Edison's hopes. He had spent nine years of hard work and about two millions of his own money in the great work that had thus been brought to nought through no fault of his. The project had lain close to his heart and ambition, indeed he had put aside almost all other work and inventions for a while. For five of the nine years he had lived and worked steadily at Edison (the name of the place where the works were located), leaving there only on Saturday night to spend Sunday at his home in Orange, and returning to the plant by an early train on Monday morning. Life at Edison was of the simple kind—work, meals, and a few hours' sleep day by day, but Mr. Edison often says he never felt better than he did during those five years.
After careful investigations and calculations it was decided to close the plant. Mr. W. S. Mallory, his close associate during those years of the concentrating work, said: "...As to the state of Mr. Edison's mind when the final decision was reached to close down, if he was specially disappointed there was nothing in his manner to indicate it, his every thought being for the future."
In this attitude we find a true revelation of one conspicuous trait in Edison. No one ever cried less over spilled milk than he. He had spent a fortune and had devoted nine years of his life to the most intense thought and labor in the creation and development of this vast enterprise. He had made many remarkable inventions and had achieved a very great success, only to see the splendid results swept away in a moment. He did not sit down and bewail his lot, but with true philosophy and greatness of mind applied himself with characteristic energy to new work through which he might be able to open up a more promising future.
Portland Cement
With such convictions, and the vast fund of practical knowledge and experience he had gained in the crushing and handling of enormous masses of finely divided material, it is not surprising that he should have decided to engage in the manufacture of cement. He was fully aware of the fact that he was proposing to "butt into" an old-established industry, in which the principal manufacturers were concerns which had been in business for a long time. He knew there were great problems to be solved, both in manufacturing and selling the cement. These difficulties, however, only made the proposition more inviting to him.
Edison followed his usual course of reading up all the literature on the subject that he could find, and seeking information from all quarters. After thorough study he came to the conclusion that with his improved methods of handling finely crushed material, and with some new inventions and processes he had in mind, he could go into the cement business and succeed in making a finer quality of product. As we shall see later, he "made good ".
This study of the cement proposition took place during the first few months of his experimenting on a new storage battery. In the mean time Mr. Mallory had been busy arranging for the formation of a company with the necessary money to commence and carry on the business. One day he went to the laboratory and told Mr. Edison that everything was ready and that it was now time to engage engineers to lay out the works.
To this Edison replied that he intended to do that himself, and invited Mr. Mallory to go with him to one of the draughting-rooms upstairs. Here Edison placed a sheet of paper on a draughting-table and immediately began to draw out a plan of the proposed works. He continued all day and away into the evening, when he finished; thus completing within twenty-four hours the full lay-out of the entire plant as it was subsequently installed. If the plant were to be rebuilt to-day no vital change would be necessary.
It will be granted that this was a remarkable engineering feat, for Edison was then a new-comer in the cement business. But in that one day's planning everything was considered and provided for, including crushing, mixing, weighing, grinding, drying, screening, sizing, burning, packing, storing, and other processes.
From one end to the other the cement plant is about half a mile long, and through the various buildings there passes, automatically, each day a vast quantity of material under treatment. In practice this results in the production of more than two and a quarter million pounds of finished cement every twenty-four hours. Not only was all this provided for in that one day's designing, but also smaller details, such, for instance, as the carrying of all steam, water and air pipes and electrical conductors in a large subway extending from one end of the plant to the other; also a system by which the ten thousand bearings in the plant are oiled automatically, requiring the services of only two men for the entire work.
Following this general outline plan of the whole plant by Edison himself there came the preparation of the detail plans by his engineers. As the manufacture of cement also involves the breaking and grinding of rocks, the scheme, of course, included using the giant rolls and other crushing, drying, and screening machinery invented by him for the iron-concentrating work, as mentioned in our last chapter.
Although the older cement manufacturers predicted utter failure, they have since recognized the success of Edison's improvements, and it is now being used quite generally in the trade. We cannot enter into all the details of the numerous inventions and improvements that Edison has introduced into his cement plant during the last eight or nine years. It is sufficient to say that by his persistent and energetic labors during that period he has raised his plant from the position of a new-comer to the rank of the fifth largest producer of cement in this country. Edison's achievements have made a deep impression on the cement industry.
Grosvenor Atterbury and Pre Cast Housing
Encouraged by his previous accomplishments Mr. Edision made a bold annoucenemt in in an after-dinner speech 1906 , in front of New York City high society. Concrete homes, he said, would revolutionize American life. They would be fireproof, insect-proof and easy to clean. Everything from shingles to bathtubs to picture frames would be cast of concrete, in a process that would took just a few hours. Extra stories could be added with a simple adjustment of the molding forms. Best of all, the $1,200-dollar houses would be cheap enough for even the poorest slum-dwellers to afford. Edison intends this house for the workingman, and in its design has insisted on its being ornamental as well as substantial.
As he expressed it: "We will give the working man and his family ornamentation in their house. They deserve it, and besides, it costs no more after the pattern is made to give decorative effects than it would to make everything plain. The walls can be pre-tinted in attractive colors and will never need to be repainted as well."
Grosvenor Atterbury and some buildings of Ilium, NY (In OTL Forest Hill Gardens, Queens NY)
Edison conceived the idea of pouring a complete concrete house in a few hours. He made a long series of experiments for producing a free-flowing combination of the necessary materials, and at length found one that satisfied him that his idea was feasible, although experts said it could not be done. His first draft of the plan was to provide two sets of iron molds, one inside the other, with an open space between. These molds would be made in small pieces and set up by being bolted together. When erected, the concrete mixture would be poured, in from the top in a continuous stream until the space between the molds would be filled.
The pouring would be done in about six hours, after which the molds would be left in position about four days in order that the concrete may harden. When the molds woulde be removed there would remain standing an entire house, complete from cellar to roof, with walls, floors, stairways, bath and laundry tubs, all in one solid piece. As it seems natural for most of these visionary projects the early prototypes proved to be disastrous. Instead of simple molds, the houses required nickel-plated iron forms containing more than two thousand parts and weighing nearly half a million pounds. A builder had to buy at least $175,000 in equipment before pouring a single house.
Mr. Edisons bad fortune turned however around when he had a faithful meeting with the architect of his new summer residence, Grosvenor Atterbury. Aside from being an rewon architect of luxurty buildings he was also an urban planner and writer. Atterbury was born in 1869, and his interest in architecture was piqued in 1887 by Sugar Loaf, the country house his parents built in Shinnecock Hills, hard by the emerging swelldom of Southampton. He was about 19 when Stanford White designed the long series of rolling bays, sheltered by a deep shingled roof, and he soon apprenticed with White’s firm, McKim, Mead & White, following that with study in Paris. He set out on his own in 1895. Atterbury quickly developed a country house practice, especially on Long Island.
In 1897, the sugar manufacturer Henry Havemeyer gave the neophyte a dream commission, to lay out an entire waterfront summer community oriented around artificial canals in Islip, N.Y. Town and country houses were the stock in trade for Gilded Age architects, and what sets Atterbury apart from most is his continued interest in housing and other social issues. Atterbury became convinced that creating humane housing was going to cost money, too much money unless building costs themselves were lowered by scientific research. He described his philosophy after finishing his work at the opening cermony of Edison's model city Ilium, New York:
"While any town, whatever its birth and family history, may aspire to set such a high standard of living that it may be called in a general sense -model-, the word is now taking a new and special meaning, following the beginning of organized attempts to apply scientific, aesthetic, and economic principles and methods to the problem of housing civilized humanity. Now, the conditions that have at last brought this about are largely economic.
As in the case of the increase in the cost of living--or the high cost of high living, as it has been aptly put--the high cost of model housing is due not only to higher standards, but to the cumulative profits of production and distribution common to any retail business.
The individual can escape the penalties of the situation only by going without or by combining for collective action, by means of which the profits of the speculator--the middleman in this instance--can be largely eliminated. Such combined action must be, I think, the most distinctive feature of a model town; and therefore its theoretic definition should be based on the essential element of collectivism. Practically stated, this means collective purchase, design, development, and control."
Atterbury had begun experimenting with precast concrete panels for the construction for houses as early as 1904, two years before Edison had annouced his own plans. After discussing his "concrete quagmire", Edision realized that Atterbury provided him the missing piece of the puzzle. He was comissioned to oversee the construction of the Illium Works Factory which would be used to showcase how an entire city could be mass produced much like cars were by the Ford Motor Company.
For this project Atterbury developed and refined his innovative construction method. Each house in Illium was built from approximately 170 standardized precast concrete panels, fabricated off-site and assembled by crane. The system was sophisticated even by modern standards: panels were cast with integral hollow insulation chambers; casting formwork incorporated an internal sleeve, allowing molds to be "broken" before concrete had completely set; and panels were moved to the site in only two operations (formwork to truck and truck to crane). The whole factory was highly automated, uilizing technology like a sophisicated conveyor belt system Mr. Edision had devised for his iron sand mill and concrete factories.
Introducing mass produced housing to the world would have been a more than statifactory end of any great innovators story, but for Mr. Edision it was only the beginning of something even greater.
Notes and Sources
(1) He actually build those type of houses shown on the picture and they were an utter failure.
(2) Mechanical Sound Recording vs. Magnetic Wire Recording
New York Times: Designing for High and Low.
William H. Meadowcroft: The Boy's life of Edison.
Suburban Steel: The Magnificent Failure of the Lustron Corporation, 1945-1951.
Grosvenor Atterbury: Model Towns in America.
Long before Edison ever thought of going into the business of manufacturing cement he had very pronounced opinions of its value for building purposes. During a discussion on ancient buildings, he remarked: "Wood will rot, stone will chip and crumble, bricks disintegrate, but a cement and iron structure is apparently indestructible. Look at some of the old Roman baths. They are as solid as when they were built."
Thomas Edison with the model for his first (never) realized modern concrete building (1).
And as we stand now in awe of the achievements of the Roman Empire and its great architectural wonders, so will people marvel over Edison pioneer work in creating "city factories" and the kickstart he gave the general automated industry with his numerical controlled machines. However before his big triumph Edison, had to endure some quitet some hardship and costly failure the "Audio War" (2) and the "War of the Currents" only the most prominent among them.
Grinding Mountain to Dust
While walking along the sea-shore some may have noticed occasional streaks or patches of bluish-black sand, somewhat like gunpowder in appearance. It is carried up from the bed of the sea and deposited by the waves on the shore to a greater or lesser extent on many beaches. If a magnet be brought near to this "black sand" the particles will be immediately attracted to it, just as iron filings would be in such a case. As a matter of fact, these particles of black sand are grains of finely divided magnetic iron in a very pure state.
Now, if we should take a piece of magnetic iron ore in the form of a rock and grind it to powder the particles of iron could be separated from the ground-up mass by drawing them out with a magnet, just as they could be drawn out of a heap of sea-shore sand. If all the grains of iron were thus separated and put together, or concentrated, they would be called concentrates.
During the last century a great many experimenters besides Edison attempted to perfect various cheap methods of magnetically separating iron ores, but until he took up the work on a large scale no one seems to have realized the real meaning of the tremendous problems involved.
The beginning of this work on the part of Edison was his invention in 1880 of a peculiar form of magnetic separator. It consisted of a suspended V-shaped hopper with an adjustable slit along the pointed end. A long electromagnet was placed, edgewise, a little below the hopper, and a bin with a dividing partition in the center was placed on the floor below.
Crushed ore, or sand, was placed in the hopper. If there was no magnetism this fine material would flow down in a straight line past the magnet and fill the bin on one side of the partition. If, however, the magnet were active the particles of iron would be attracted out of the line of the falling material, but their weight would carry them beyond the magnet and they would fall to the other side of the partition. Thus, the material would be separated, the grains of iron going to one side and the grains of rock or sand to the other side.
This separator, as afterward modified, was the basis of a colossal enterprise conducted by Mr. Edison, as we shall presently relate. But first let us glance at an early experiment on the Atlantic sea-shore in 1881, as mentioned by him. He says:
"Some years ago I heard one day that down at Quogue, Long Island, there were immense deposits of black magnetic sand. This would be very valuable if the iron could be separated from the sand. So I went down to Quogue with one of my assistants and saw there for miles large beds of black sand on the beach in layers from one to six inches thick—hundreds of thousands of tons. My first thought was that it would be a very easy matter to concentrate this, and I found I could sell the stuff at a good price. I put up a small magnetic separating plant, but just as I got it started a tremendous storm came up, and every bit of that black sand went out to sea. During the twenty-eight years that have intervened it has never come back."
In the same year a similar separating plant was put up and worked on the Rhode Island shore by the writer under Mr. Edison's direction. More than one thousand tons of concentrated iron ore of fine quality were separated from sea-shore sand and sold. It was found, however, that it could not be successfully used on account of being so finely divided.
Magnetic separation of ores was allowed to rest for many years after this, so far as Edison was concerned. He was intensely busy on the electric light, electric railway, and other similar problems until 1888, and then undertook the perfecting and manufacturing of his improved phonograph, and other matters. Somewhere about 1890, however, he again took up the subject of ore-separation.
For some years previous to that time the Eastern iron-mills had been suffering because of the scarcity of low-priced high-grade ores. If low-grade ores could be crushed and the iron therein concentrated and sold at a reasonable price the furnaces would be benefited. Edison decided, after serious hours of deliberation, that if these low-grade ores were magnetically separated on a colossal scale at a low cost the furnace-men could be supplied with the much-desired high quality of iron ore at a price which would be practicable.
He appreciated the fact that it was a serious and gigantic problem, but was fully satisfied that he could solve it. He first planned a great magnetic survey of the East, with the object of locating large bodies of magnetic iron ore. This survey was the greatest and most comprehensive of the kind ever made. With a peculiarly sensitive magnetic needle to indicate the presence of magnetic ore in the earth, he sent out men who made a survey of twenty-five miles across country, all the way from lower Canada to North Carolina. Edison says:
"The amount of ore disclosed by this survey was simply fabulous. How much so may be judged from the fact that in the three thousand acres immediately surrounding the mills that I afterward established at Edison, New Jersey, there were over two hundred million tons of low-grade ore. I also secured sixteen thousand acres in which the deposit was proportionately as large. These few acres alone contained sufficient ore to supply the whole United States iron trade, including exports, for seventy years."
Given a mountain of rock containing only one-fifth to one-fourth magnetic iron, the broad problem confronting Edison resolved itself into three distinct parts—first, to tear down the mountain bodily and grind it to powder; second, to extract from this powder the particles of iron mingled in its mass; and third, to accomplish these results at a cost sufficiently low to give the product a commercial value.
From the start Edison realized that in order to carry out this program there would have to be automatic and continuous treatment of the material, and that he would have to make the fullest possible use of natural forces, such as gravity and momentum. The carrying out of these principles and ideas gave rise to some of the most brilliant engineering work that has ever been done by Edison. (...)
Everything was bright and promising, when there came a fatal blow. The discovery of rich Bessemer ore in the Mesaba range of mountains in Minnesota a few years before had been followed by the opening of the mines there about this time. As this rich ore could be sold for three dollars and fifty cents per ton, as against six dollars and fifty cents per ton for Edison's iron, his great enterprise had to be abandoned at the very moment it was succeding.
It was a sad blow to Edison's hopes. He had spent nine years of hard work and about two millions of his own money in the great work that had thus been brought to nought through no fault of his. The project had lain close to his heart and ambition, indeed he had put aside almost all other work and inventions for a while. For five of the nine years he had lived and worked steadily at Edison (the name of the place where the works were located), leaving there only on Saturday night to spend Sunday at his home in Orange, and returning to the plant by an early train on Monday morning. Life at Edison was of the simple kind—work, meals, and a few hours' sleep day by day, but Mr. Edison often says he never felt better than he did during those five years.
After careful investigations and calculations it was decided to close the plant. Mr. W. S. Mallory, his close associate during those years of the concentrating work, said: "...As to the state of Mr. Edison's mind when the final decision was reached to close down, if he was specially disappointed there was nothing in his manner to indicate it, his every thought being for the future."
In this attitude we find a true revelation of one conspicuous trait in Edison. No one ever cried less over spilled milk than he. He had spent a fortune and had devoted nine years of his life to the most intense thought and labor in the creation and development of this vast enterprise. He had made many remarkable inventions and had achieved a very great success, only to see the splendid results swept away in a moment. He did not sit down and bewail his lot, but with true philosophy and greatness of mind applied himself with characteristic energy to new work through which he might be able to open up a more promising future.
Portland Cement
With such convictions, and the vast fund of practical knowledge and experience he had gained in the crushing and handling of enormous masses of finely divided material, it is not surprising that he should have decided to engage in the manufacture of cement. He was fully aware of the fact that he was proposing to "butt into" an old-established industry, in which the principal manufacturers were concerns which had been in business for a long time. He knew there were great problems to be solved, both in manufacturing and selling the cement. These difficulties, however, only made the proposition more inviting to him.
Edison followed his usual course of reading up all the literature on the subject that he could find, and seeking information from all quarters. After thorough study he came to the conclusion that with his improved methods of handling finely crushed material, and with some new inventions and processes he had in mind, he could go into the cement business and succeed in making a finer quality of product. As we shall see later, he "made good ".
This study of the cement proposition took place during the first few months of his experimenting on a new storage battery. In the mean time Mr. Mallory had been busy arranging for the formation of a company with the necessary money to commence and carry on the business. One day he went to the laboratory and told Mr. Edison that everything was ready and that it was now time to engage engineers to lay out the works.
To this Edison replied that he intended to do that himself, and invited Mr. Mallory to go with him to one of the draughting-rooms upstairs. Here Edison placed a sheet of paper on a draughting-table and immediately began to draw out a plan of the proposed works. He continued all day and away into the evening, when he finished; thus completing within twenty-four hours the full lay-out of the entire plant as it was subsequently installed. If the plant were to be rebuilt to-day no vital change would be necessary.
It will be granted that this was a remarkable engineering feat, for Edison was then a new-comer in the cement business. But in that one day's planning everything was considered and provided for, including crushing, mixing, weighing, grinding, drying, screening, sizing, burning, packing, storing, and other processes.
From one end to the other the cement plant is about half a mile long, and through the various buildings there passes, automatically, each day a vast quantity of material under treatment. In practice this results in the production of more than two and a quarter million pounds of finished cement every twenty-four hours. Not only was all this provided for in that one day's designing, but also smaller details, such, for instance, as the carrying of all steam, water and air pipes and electrical conductors in a large subway extending from one end of the plant to the other; also a system by which the ten thousand bearings in the plant are oiled automatically, requiring the services of only two men for the entire work.
Following this general outline plan of the whole plant by Edison himself there came the preparation of the detail plans by his engineers. As the manufacture of cement also involves the breaking and grinding of rocks, the scheme, of course, included using the giant rolls and other crushing, drying, and screening machinery invented by him for the iron-concentrating work, as mentioned in our last chapter.
Although the older cement manufacturers predicted utter failure, they have since recognized the success of Edison's improvements, and it is now being used quite generally in the trade. We cannot enter into all the details of the numerous inventions and improvements that Edison has introduced into his cement plant during the last eight or nine years. It is sufficient to say that by his persistent and energetic labors during that period he has raised his plant from the position of a new-comer to the rank of the fifth largest producer of cement in this country. Edison's achievements have made a deep impression on the cement industry.
Grosvenor Atterbury and Pre Cast Housing
Encouraged by his previous accomplishments Mr. Edision made a bold annoucenemt in in an after-dinner speech 1906 , in front of New York City high society. Concrete homes, he said, would revolutionize American life. They would be fireproof, insect-proof and easy to clean. Everything from shingles to bathtubs to picture frames would be cast of concrete, in a process that would took just a few hours. Extra stories could be added with a simple adjustment of the molding forms. Best of all, the $1,200-dollar houses would be cheap enough for even the poorest slum-dwellers to afford. Edison intends this house for the workingman, and in its design has insisted on its being ornamental as well as substantial.
As he expressed it: "We will give the working man and his family ornamentation in their house. They deserve it, and besides, it costs no more after the pattern is made to give decorative effects than it would to make everything plain. The walls can be pre-tinted in attractive colors and will never need to be repainted as well."
Grosvenor Atterbury and some buildings of Ilium, NY (In OTL Forest Hill Gardens, Queens NY)
Edison conceived the idea of pouring a complete concrete house in a few hours. He made a long series of experiments for producing a free-flowing combination of the necessary materials, and at length found one that satisfied him that his idea was feasible, although experts said it could not be done. His first draft of the plan was to provide two sets of iron molds, one inside the other, with an open space between. These molds would be made in small pieces and set up by being bolted together. When erected, the concrete mixture would be poured, in from the top in a continuous stream until the space between the molds would be filled.
The pouring would be done in about six hours, after which the molds would be left in position about four days in order that the concrete may harden. When the molds woulde be removed there would remain standing an entire house, complete from cellar to roof, with walls, floors, stairways, bath and laundry tubs, all in one solid piece. As it seems natural for most of these visionary projects the early prototypes proved to be disastrous. Instead of simple molds, the houses required nickel-plated iron forms containing more than two thousand parts and weighing nearly half a million pounds. A builder had to buy at least $175,000 in equipment before pouring a single house.
Mr. Edisons bad fortune turned however around when he had a faithful meeting with the architect of his new summer residence, Grosvenor Atterbury. Aside from being an rewon architect of luxurty buildings he was also an urban planner and writer. Atterbury was born in 1869, and his interest in architecture was piqued in 1887 by Sugar Loaf, the country house his parents built in Shinnecock Hills, hard by the emerging swelldom of Southampton. He was about 19 when Stanford White designed the long series of rolling bays, sheltered by a deep shingled roof, and he soon apprenticed with White’s firm, McKim, Mead & White, following that with study in Paris. He set out on his own in 1895. Atterbury quickly developed a country house practice, especially on Long Island.
In 1897, the sugar manufacturer Henry Havemeyer gave the neophyte a dream commission, to lay out an entire waterfront summer community oriented around artificial canals in Islip, N.Y. Town and country houses were the stock in trade for Gilded Age architects, and what sets Atterbury apart from most is his continued interest in housing and other social issues. Atterbury became convinced that creating humane housing was going to cost money, too much money unless building costs themselves were lowered by scientific research. He described his philosophy after finishing his work at the opening cermony of Edison's model city Ilium, New York:
"While any town, whatever its birth and family history, may aspire to set such a high standard of living that it may be called in a general sense -model-, the word is now taking a new and special meaning, following the beginning of organized attempts to apply scientific, aesthetic, and economic principles and methods to the problem of housing civilized humanity. Now, the conditions that have at last brought this about are largely economic.
As in the case of the increase in the cost of living--or the high cost of high living, as it has been aptly put--the high cost of model housing is due not only to higher standards, but to the cumulative profits of production and distribution common to any retail business.
The individual can escape the penalties of the situation only by going without or by combining for collective action, by means of which the profits of the speculator--the middleman in this instance--can be largely eliminated. Such combined action must be, I think, the most distinctive feature of a model town; and therefore its theoretic definition should be based on the essential element of collectivism. Practically stated, this means collective purchase, design, development, and control."
Atterbury had begun experimenting with precast concrete panels for the construction for houses as early as 1904, two years before Edison had annouced his own plans. After discussing his "concrete quagmire", Edision realized that Atterbury provided him the missing piece of the puzzle. He was comissioned to oversee the construction of the Illium Works Factory which would be used to showcase how an entire city could be mass produced much like cars were by the Ford Motor Company.
For this project Atterbury developed and refined his innovative construction method. Each house in Illium was built from approximately 170 standardized precast concrete panels, fabricated off-site and assembled by crane. The system was sophisticated even by modern standards: panels were cast with integral hollow insulation chambers; casting formwork incorporated an internal sleeve, allowing molds to be "broken" before concrete had completely set; and panels were moved to the site in only two operations (formwork to truck and truck to crane). The whole factory was highly automated, uilizing technology like a sophisicated conveyor belt system Mr. Edision had devised for his iron sand mill and concrete factories.
Introducing mass produced housing to the world would have been a more than statifactory end of any great innovators story, but for Mr. Edision it was only the beginning of something even greater.
Notes and Sources
(1) He actually build those type of houses shown on the picture and they were an utter failure.
(2) Mechanical Sound Recording vs. Magnetic Wire Recording
New York Times: Designing for High and Low.
William H. Meadowcroft: The Boy's life of Edison.
Suburban Steel: The Magnificent Failure of the Lustron Corporation, 1945-1951.
Grosvenor Atterbury: Model Towns in America.
Last edited:
The Final Frontier: Radium Toys
ComradeHuxley
Donor
The Final Frontier: Radium Toys
The Radium Rocket
At the end of the 19th century, Marie Curie discovered radium salts and it was brought to the U.S. in 1902 by William J. Hammer. In WWI a glowing paint (of Hammer’s invention) called Undark was made from radium and helped American soldiers to see their clocks and dials in the dark. The Radium Craze was sparked by the work that scientists like Curie and Hammer had done with doctors showcasing the compound’s cancer-reducing and heath-boosting effects. Without full knowledge of the harm it could cause, companies raced to cash in on the fad. Cigarettes, face cream, health appliances, water storage containers, crackers, and many more items besides were spiked with radioactive materials and marketed as innovative and good-for-you products. Even products that contained no radium or radioactive substances were sold with radium in the name, said to have implied a luminous or brightening quality among consumers.
One of the people influenced by this new trend was the American rocket engineer Robert Hutchings Goddard. Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Nahum Danford Goddard (1859–1928) and Fannie Louise Hoyt (1864–1920). Robert was their only child to survive. His family had roots in New England dating to the late 1600s, and Robert had that region's qualities of determination and mechanical ability. With a curiosity about nature, he studied the heavens using a telescope from his father and observed the birds flying. A country boy, he loved the outdoors and became an excellent marksman with a rifle.With the introduction of electric power in American cities in the 1880s, the young Goddard became interested in science — specifically, engineering and technology. When his father showed him how to generate static electricity on the family's carpet, the five-year-old's imagination was sparked. Robert experimented, believing he could jump higher if the zinc from a battery could be charged by scuffing his feet on the gravel walk. But, holding the zinc, he could jump no higher than usual.
Goddard's Early Life
Goddard halted the experiments after a warning from his mother that if he succeeded, he could "go sailing away and might not be able to come back." He experimented with chemicals and created a cloud of smoke and an explosion in the house. Goddard's father further encouraged Robert's scientific interest by providing him with a telescope, a microscope, and a subscription to Scientific American.[17]:10 Robert developed a fascination with flight, first with kites and then with balloons. He became a thorough diarist and documenter of his work — a skill that would greatly benefit his later career. These interests merged at age 16, when Goddard attempted to construct a balloon out of aluminum, shaping the raw metal in his home workshop, and filling it with hydrogen. After nearly five weeks of methodical, documented efforts, he finally abandoned the project, remarking, "... balloon will not go up.... Aluminum is too heavy. Failior crowns enterprise." However, the lesson of this failure did not restrain Goddard's growing determination and confidence in his work
He became interested in space when he read H. G. Wells' science fiction classic The War of the Worlds when he was 16 years old. His dedication to pursuing space flight became fixed on October 19, 1899. The 17-year-old Goddard climbed a cherry tree to cut off dead limbs. He was transfixed by the sky, and his imagination grew. He later wrote: "On this day I climbed a tall cherry tree at the back of the barn … and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet. I have several photographs of the tree, taken since, with the little ladder I made to climb it, leaning against it. It seemed to me then that a weight whirling around a horizontal shaft, moving more rapidly above than below, could furnish lift by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path. I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended. Existence at last seemed very purposive."
Goddard's interest in aerodynamics led him to study some of Samuel Langley's scientific papers in the periodical Smithsonian. In these papers, Langley wrote that birds flap their wings with different force on each side to turn in the air. Inspired by these articles, the teenage Goddard watched swallows and chimney swifts from the porch of his home, noting how subtly the birds moved their wings to control their flight. He noted how remarkably the birds controlled their flight with their tail feathers, which he called the birds' equivalent of ailerons. He took exception to some of Langley's conclusions, and in 1901 wrote a letter to St. Nicholas magazine with his own ideas. The editor of St. Nicholas declined to publish Goddard's letter, remarking that birds fly with a certain amount of intelligence and that "machines will not act with such intelligence." Goddard disagreed, believing that a man could control a flying machine with his own intelligence.
Around this time, Goddard read Newton's Principia Mathematica, and found that Newton's Third Law of Motion applied to motion in space. He wrote later about his own tests of the Law:
"I began to realize that there might be something after all to Newton's Laws. The Third Law was accordingly tested, both with devices suspended by rubber bands and by devices on floats, in the little brook back of the barn, and the said law was verified conclusively. It made me realize that if a way to navigate space were to be discovered, or invented, it would be the result of a knowledge of physics and mathematics."
After reading an english copy of Tsiolkovsky's "Investigating Space with Rocket Devices" that had gained widespread populartiy after beeing published in Le Temps to honor Jule Verne's 75th birthday, that he wasn't alone with his vision, indeed others already partially paved the way before him.
Atomic Tin Rocket Toy with Radium Core [1]
(Atomic) Rockets Galore
The high school student summed up his ideas on space travel in a proposed article, "The Navigation of Space", which he submitted to the Popular Science News. The journal's editor returned it, saying that they could not use it "in the near future." While still an undergraduate, Goddard wrote a paper proposing a method for balancing aeroplanes using gyro-stabilization. He submitted the idea to Scientific American, which published the paper in 1907. Goddard later wrote in his diaries that he believed his paper was the first proposal of a way to automatically stabilize aircraft in flight.His proposal came around the same time as other scientists were making breakthroughs in developing functional gyroscopes.
In the same year he also published an article on his thoughts about potential alternate rocket propupulsion engines, most promintly the heavly promoted radium:
"It is evident, from the calculations made regarding the use of solar energy in space, that the most extreme speeds will be produced by solar, rather than by chemical energy.... If it is possible to obtain infra-atomic energy, the matter of transportation would be comparatively simple, and a large body could be sent from the solar system... Further, atomic disintegration may open the way for the creation of what might be called artificial atoms, in which energy might be stored by many high speed particles. This tremendous amount of energy could be liberated when these artificial atoms were broken up, or the particles were removed gradually. [2]" He went even further by trying to apply the Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation as the base of his calculations to figure out how much energy a block of radium would have to release to become uselful.This in turn inspired some enterprising toy maker into the creation of minature rocket models "powered" by radium. While this might certainly had some bad health effects on ingenous youngsters, it also inspired a whole generation to reach the star via atomic power.
Notes and Sources
dustyoldthing.com/deadly-radium-craze
www.qsl.net - EARLY HISTORY
wikipedia - Robert H. Goddard
Goddard, Robert, "On the Possibility of Navigating Interplanetary Space," unpublished manuscript, 3 October 1907, in The Papers of Robert H. Goddard, (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1970), volume 1, page 22.
[1] Basically this tin toy stays the same. However it includes a glowing radium painted stick as the atomic powered motor core. There is also a supplement description added to the the contraption that explains how this whole thing is supposed to work. Nothing too fancy but it gives kids the right ideas.
[2] An OTL diary entry by Goddard that wasn’t published by him. Thus Robert Esnault-Pelterie became the first man to suggest radium as a possible rocket fuel in 1912.
The Radium Rocket
At the end of the 19th century, Marie Curie discovered radium salts and it was brought to the U.S. in 1902 by William J. Hammer. In WWI a glowing paint (of Hammer’s invention) called Undark was made from radium and helped American soldiers to see their clocks and dials in the dark. The Radium Craze was sparked by the work that scientists like Curie and Hammer had done with doctors showcasing the compound’s cancer-reducing and heath-boosting effects. Without full knowledge of the harm it could cause, companies raced to cash in on the fad. Cigarettes, face cream, health appliances, water storage containers, crackers, and many more items besides were spiked with radioactive materials and marketed as innovative and good-for-you products. Even products that contained no radium or radioactive substances were sold with radium in the name, said to have implied a luminous or brightening quality among consumers.
One of the people influenced by this new trend was the American rocket engineer Robert Hutchings Goddard. Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Nahum Danford Goddard (1859–1928) and Fannie Louise Hoyt (1864–1920). Robert was their only child to survive. His family had roots in New England dating to the late 1600s, and Robert had that region's qualities of determination and mechanical ability. With a curiosity about nature, he studied the heavens using a telescope from his father and observed the birds flying. A country boy, he loved the outdoors and became an excellent marksman with a rifle.With the introduction of electric power in American cities in the 1880s, the young Goddard became interested in science — specifically, engineering and technology. When his father showed him how to generate static electricity on the family's carpet, the five-year-old's imagination was sparked. Robert experimented, believing he could jump higher if the zinc from a battery could be charged by scuffing his feet on the gravel walk. But, holding the zinc, he could jump no higher than usual.
Goddard's Early Life
Goddard halted the experiments after a warning from his mother that if he succeeded, he could "go sailing away and might not be able to come back." He experimented with chemicals and created a cloud of smoke and an explosion in the house. Goddard's father further encouraged Robert's scientific interest by providing him with a telescope, a microscope, and a subscription to Scientific American.[17]:10 Robert developed a fascination with flight, first with kites and then with balloons. He became a thorough diarist and documenter of his work — a skill that would greatly benefit his later career. These interests merged at age 16, when Goddard attempted to construct a balloon out of aluminum, shaping the raw metal in his home workshop, and filling it with hydrogen. After nearly five weeks of methodical, documented efforts, he finally abandoned the project, remarking, "... balloon will not go up.... Aluminum is too heavy. Failior crowns enterprise." However, the lesson of this failure did not restrain Goddard's growing determination and confidence in his work
He became interested in space when he read H. G. Wells' science fiction classic The War of the Worlds when he was 16 years old. His dedication to pursuing space flight became fixed on October 19, 1899. The 17-year-old Goddard climbed a cherry tree to cut off dead limbs. He was transfixed by the sky, and his imagination grew. He later wrote: "On this day I climbed a tall cherry tree at the back of the barn … and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet. I have several photographs of the tree, taken since, with the little ladder I made to climb it, leaning against it. It seemed to me then that a weight whirling around a horizontal shaft, moving more rapidly above than below, could furnish lift by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path. I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended. Existence at last seemed very purposive."
Goddard's interest in aerodynamics led him to study some of Samuel Langley's scientific papers in the periodical Smithsonian. In these papers, Langley wrote that birds flap their wings with different force on each side to turn in the air. Inspired by these articles, the teenage Goddard watched swallows and chimney swifts from the porch of his home, noting how subtly the birds moved their wings to control their flight. He noted how remarkably the birds controlled their flight with their tail feathers, which he called the birds' equivalent of ailerons. He took exception to some of Langley's conclusions, and in 1901 wrote a letter to St. Nicholas magazine with his own ideas. The editor of St. Nicholas declined to publish Goddard's letter, remarking that birds fly with a certain amount of intelligence and that "machines will not act with such intelligence." Goddard disagreed, believing that a man could control a flying machine with his own intelligence.
Around this time, Goddard read Newton's Principia Mathematica, and found that Newton's Third Law of Motion applied to motion in space. He wrote later about his own tests of the Law:
"I began to realize that there might be something after all to Newton's Laws. The Third Law was accordingly tested, both with devices suspended by rubber bands and by devices on floats, in the little brook back of the barn, and the said law was verified conclusively. It made me realize that if a way to navigate space were to be discovered, or invented, it would be the result of a knowledge of physics and mathematics."
After reading an english copy of Tsiolkovsky's "Investigating Space with Rocket Devices" that had gained widespread populartiy after beeing published in Le Temps to honor Jule Verne's 75th birthday, that he wasn't alone with his vision, indeed others already partially paved the way before him.
Atomic Tin Rocket Toy with Radium Core [1]
(Atomic) Rockets Galore
The high school student summed up his ideas on space travel in a proposed article, "The Navigation of Space", which he submitted to the Popular Science News. The journal's editor returned it, saying that they could not use it "in the near future." While still an undergraduate, Goddard wrote a paper proposing a method for balancing aeroplanes using gyro-stabilization. He submitted the idea to Scientific American, which published the paper in 1907. Goddard later wrote in his diaries that he believed his paper was the first proposal of a way to automatically stabilize aircraft in flight.His proposal came around the same time as other scientists were making breakthroughs in developing functional gyroscopes.
In the same year he also published an article on his thoughts about potential alternate rocket propupulsion engines, most promintly the heavly promoted radium:
"It is evident, from the calculations made regarding the use of solar energy in space, that the most extreme speeds will be produced by solar, rather than by chemical energy.... If it is possible to obtain infra-atomic energy, the matter of transportation would be comparatively simple, and a large body could be sent from the solar system... Further, atomic disintegration may open the way for the creation of what might be called artificial atoms, in which energy might be stored by many high speed particles. This tremendous amount of energy could be liberated when these artificial atoms were broken up, or the particles were removed gradually. [2]" He went even further by trying to apply the Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation as the base of his calculations to figure out how much energy a block of radium would have to release to become uselful.This in turn inspired some enterprising toy maker into the creation of minature rocket models "powered" by radium. While this might certainly had some bad health effects on ingenous youngsters, it also inspired a whole generation to reach the star via atomic power.
Notes and Sources
dustyoldthing.com/deadly-radium-craze
www.qsl.net - EARLY HISTORY
wikipedia - Robert H. Goddard
Goddard, Robert, "On the Possibility of Navigating Interplanetary Space," unpublished manuscript, 3 October 1907, in The Papers of Robert H. Goddard, (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1970), volume 1, page 22.
[1] Basically this tin toy stays the same. However it includes a glowing radium painted stick as the atomic powered motor core. There is also a supplement description added to the the contraption that explains how this whole thing is supposed to work. Nothing too fancy but it gives kids the right ideas.
[2] An OTL diary entry by Goddard that wasn’t published by him. Thus Robert Esnault-Pelterie became the first man to suggest radium as a possible rocket fuel in 1912.
Last edited:
A Scientific Prohibition: Soma Sumarum
ComradeHuxley
Donor
A Scientific Prohibition: Soma Sumarum
“The potatoe, son is god’s greatest gift, it feed the Russian stomach….and the Russian soul, nastrovje!”
Uncle Ilya's Little Brewery
Russia and Vodka
Statistically, Russians were not particularly heavy drinkers: For instance, France consumed five times as much alcohol as Russia; Italy, three times as much. However, Russians drank mostly vodka and did it with a vengeance: not that often but in shocking quantities.During the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, widespread drinking among conscripts created problems during mobilization, and the number of soldiers with alcohol-induced mental disorders was considerable. Ahead of the new war, the tsar traveled across several Russian provinces. "With great grief, he witnessed sad pictures of infirmity, family poverty and neglected businesses, the inevitable consequences of life that is other than sober," wrote historian Sergei Oldenburg at the time.
In early 1914, the tsar sent a rescript to the Ministry of Finance with an instruction to "improve the economic well being of the people, notwithstanding financial losses,” since budget revenues should be coming not from the sale of something that destroys "the spiritual and economic powers" of the people but from other, healthier sources. That was a truly radical step, as revenues from vodka sales made up no less than one third of the state budget. Yet, when putting together the budget for 1915 and in spite of the fact that Russia was at war, the State Duma totally excluded vodka revenues. British politician David Lloyd George described it as "the single greatest act of national heroism.” The very possibility of such a move testifies to the enormous economic potential that Russia had at the time.
Enforcing the Prohibition
Even domestic animals have become more cheerful?
Right after prohibition came into effect, statistical research was conducted to study its effects. The fascinating findings were published in works by psychiatrist Ivan Vvedensky, prominent physician Alexander Mendelson and others. According to them, there was a dramatic drop in crime, mental hospitals had hardly any patients left, and village life was miraculously transformed. Peasants were not only upgrading their farms, buying samovars and sewing machines but were also depositing spare money with saving banks. Many of those polled said they were ready to pay additional taxes for as long as the sale of alcohol remained banned. "Even domestic animals have become more cheerful," one of the respondents said. Some unexpected problems arose: Medical schools complained of lack of corpses for anatomy lessons. There used to be many suicides, the bodies of which ended up at medical schools, however, the number of suicides dropped once there was no more drinking.
The authors of those studies acknowledged that prohibition had some negative effects too. Chief among them was a rise in the making of home-distilled vodka in villages and in the consumption of surrogates (denatured alcohol, polish, varnish) in towns - though it was believed that it was only hopeless drunks who could drink hooch and polish as substitutes for vodka. Lack of alcohol created certain problems in everyday life too. Alcohol-free weddings did manage to gain some popularity, as people liked the fact that they cost less. However, a Russian funeral without vodka is inconceivable. There were also fears that boredom and lack of vodka might push some people toward gambling and depravity. However, against the backdrop of a rising well being and prosperity, those minor negative effects were of no consequence, the authors of the brochures concluded.
Varnish, riots and cocaine
Yet, not everything was quite so rosy. In August 1914 alone, some 230 former drinking saloons across Russia were smashed as people demanded vodka. In some of those incidents, police had to open fire on the rioters. The governor of Perm appealed to the tsar to allow sale of alcohol for at least two hours a day "in order to avoid bloody clashes.” Mobilization did not go quite as smoothly as expected: Conscripts stormed closed wine warehouses in towns, troops were sent in to disperse them, and there were hundreds of casualties.
During the revolution, wine riots became a regular occurrence. Bolsheviks had to pour the whole of the Winter Palace’s wine cellar (with bottles worth thousands of gold rubles) and other precious wine collections down the drains to prevent them from being seized by soldiers, who would have drunk themselves senseless. Since vodka distilleries had to be shut down, nearly 300,000 people ended up out of work and the state had to pay them compensation from the budget.
In reality, consumption of vodka surrogates in towns skyrocketed, with production of polish and varnish increasing tenfold. Private memoirs dating from the years before the revolution paint a picture not of happy sobriety but of mass drinking in villages. Hooch was made from almost everything: sawdust, shavings, mangel beets and other fodder crops. Strong alcohol was sold only at expensive restaurants, further breeding discontent among those who could not afford it.In addition, the war and prohibition caused a massive rise in drug addiction, especially in St. Petersburg. Earlier, cocaine and heroin had been sold in drugstores, however, at about the same time many substances were classed as dangerous narcotics and were banned. However, as early as 1915, traffickers managed to establish opium supplies from Greece and Persia, while cocaine was brought over from Europe. It was cocaine that became inseparable from the image not only of the decadent St. Petersburg youth but also of the Bolshevik commissar in his leather jacket.
Sergey Sergeevich Korsakov and scientific heroism
Things looked very bleak until Nikolai A. Semashko the founder and first head of the Hokopusanopro (1) was approached by Sergei Korsakov. Korsakov had an ingenous idea, if you could not outright stop people from using alcohol subsitutes, offer a better one. Korsakov was born in 1854 in a large village in central Russia. On finishing school––the Moscow gymnasium––at the age of 16, he enrolled in the medical faculty of Moscow University. By 1875 he was a physician at the Moscow Preobrazhenskij mental hospital and 1 year later he joined the department of nervous and mental diseases, headed by Aleksey Yakovlevich Kozhevnikov. Korsakov became his closest and most talented pupil.
During his professional career, Korsakov frequently travelled abroad in order to familiarize himself with the psychiatric service in Europe. His first trip was in 1885 to Vienna, where he visited Theodor Meynert. In 1889 he went to Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy. He visited Westphal in the Berlin Charité, Flechsig in Leipzig, and Magnan in Paris. In 1892 he paid a visit to Krafft-Ebing in Vienna and in 1894 to Kraepelin in Heidelberg. These visits helped Korsakov to establish close contacts with leading European neurologists and psychiatrists.
His thesis “About alcoholic paralysis” gained him his medical doctorate in 1887. In the same year, the first Clinic for Nervous and Mental Diseases was founded in Moscow University, with Kozhevnikov at its head. Working closely with Kozhevnikov, as assistant professor, Korsakov was in charge of theoretical and practical training in psychiatry; he gave his first lecture in autumn 1888. For Korsakov, and for Russian psychiatry, the subsequent years were a time of great development and diverse activity. Kozhevnikov considered, however, that clinical neurology as an independent specialty should be separated, not only from internal medicine, but also from psychiatry. He was, therefore, simultaneously building a second, new Clinic for nervous diseases. With the permission of the Moscow University Medical faculty, he transferred the control over the first clinic to Korsakov, one of his best pupils, and in 1890 it became exclusively a clinic for psychiatric patients. This was a historical moment of separation between neurological and psychiatric disciplines in Moscow, whereas elsewhere in Europe and even in Russia, e.g. St. Petersburg, the two disciplines would continue to be practised together for a long time.
Korsakov actively participated in promoting the rights of the mentally ill. In fact, he headed both the Moscow University Psychiatric Clinic and a private institution, the oldest private clinic for the mentally ill in Moscow, founded in 1830. The regimen in the clinic was more flexible and more humane than in public asylums. Korsakov went further than anyone else in avoiding restraints, removing bars and abolishing straight-jackets and isolation cells. Korsakov promoted a humane approach to the mentally ill not only in Russia, but also internationally. Thanks to his energy and enthusiasm, this no-restraint approach to the care of the mentally ill was implemented in Russia rather quickly
Magic Shrooms the Wonder Cure?
All these action would already guarantee him a place in history but Korsakov went one step further. Confronted with many cases of more or less severe melancholia (depression), Korsakov began looking into the potential of chemically and plant based medicine to alleviate the effects. The first candidate was a traditional herbal medical plant Rhodiola rosea In Russia and Scandinavia, R. rosea has been used for centuries to cope with the cold Siberian climate and stressful life. Another even more promising candidate was Hypericum perforatum, known as perforate St John's-wort. However his experimental studies with actual patients were proven rather inconclusive in the end.
During his research into psychoactive plants, he also stumbled among the curious anecdote first recorded in the London Medical and Physical Journal. The article titled "Mr. E. Brande, on a poisonous species of Agaric" told the story of the titular Dr. Everard Brande had encountered. A man had served Psilocybe semilanceata mushrooms that he had picked for breakfast in London's Green Park to his family. Dr. Brande who treated them recalled how the youngest child "was attacked with fits of immoderate laughter, nor could the threats of his father or mother refrain him.”
This piked his curiosity and so soon enough he arranged the controlled consumption of the mushrooms in question. If these herbal tools were able to profoundly influence a healthy, strong rational human mind like his, maybe they could be strong enough to shake those suffering from melancholia, out of their misery too. It all made sense, even lay man could understand the principle behind the idea. Both drugs enforced euphoria/laughter/happiness regardless of the recipients actual mood, so it should even have an effect on those who were caught in a constant downwards spiral. Finally Korsakov noted to his satisfaction that he had indeed found the right lever and angle to lift the (mental) world, the first scientific treatment for depression.
However as much as it has become a cliché by now, the most important part of his research was less the end result of his own endeavours but the journey itself. In fact he had contacted many of his colleagues and written journal article about the potentials of mood altering drugs. The most frustrating aspect of using a natural remedy Korsakov noted was the unpredictable of the dosage the active component as well as it’s chemical composition.
The Discovery of Soma
Aleksander Mikhaylovich Zaitsev was the son of a tea and sugar merchant, who had decided that his son should follow him into the mercantile trades. However, at the urging of his maternal uncle, the physicist Lyapunov, Zaitsev was allowed to enroll at University of Kazan to study economics. At this time, Russia was experimenting with the cameral system, meaning that every student graduating in law and economics from a Russian university had to take two years of chemistry. Zaitsev was thus introduced to Aleksandr Mikhailovich Butlerov.
Early on, Zaitsev began working with Butlerov, who clearly saw in him an excellent laboratory chemist, and whose later actions showed that he felt that Zaitsev was an asset to Russian organic chemistry. On the death of his father, Zaitsev took his diplom in 1862, and immediately went to western Europe to further his chemical studies, studying with Hermann Kolbe at Marburg, and with Charles Adolphe Wurtz in Paris. This went directly against the accepted norms of the day, which had the student complete the kandidat degree (approximately equivalent to today's doctor of philosophy's degree), and then spend two or three years in study abroad (a komandirovka) before returning to Russia as a salaried laboratory assistant studying for the doctorate. In 1876 he was the first man to ever synthezize gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid and subsequently the first to (accidentally) spike his own drink. He found the nausea accompanying the euphoric effects of the new compound so overwhelmingly unpleasant that he rather preferred to forget the whole ordeal. However many years later, after reading an journal article by Korsakov lamenting the lack of a good synthetic euphoria inducing drug agent, he recalled the incident and contacted Korsakov……..
Notes and Sources
(1) Homaj Komisariato pri Publika Sano Protekto /The People's Commissar for Public Health Protection
Sobering effect: What happened when Russia banned booze (2014) by Mikhail Butov
Sergey Sergeevich Korsakov (1854–1900) by Alla Vein
Mason, Stuart (2012): Your brain on 'shrooms: fMRI elucidates neural correlates of psilocybin psychedelic state.
Saytzeff, Alexander (1874). "Über die Reduction des Succinylchlorids". Liebigs Annalen der Chemie. 171 (2): 258–290
wikipedia, GHB, Saytzeff etc.
“The potatoe, son is god’s greatest gift, it feed the Russian stomach….and the Russian soul, nastrovje!”
Uncle Ilya's Little Brewery
Russia and Vodka
Statistically, Russians were not particularly heavy drinkers: For instance, France consumed five times as much alcohol as Russia; Italy, three times as much. However, Russians drank mostly vodka and did it with a vengeance: not that often but in shocking quantities.During the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, widespread drinking among conscripts created problems during mobilization, and the number of soldiers with alcohol-induced mental disorders was considerable. Ahead of the new war, the tsar traveled across several Russian provinces. "With great grief, he witnessed sad pictures of infirmity, family poverty and neglected businesses, the inevitable consequences of life that is other than sober," wrote historian Sergei Oldenburg at the time.
In early 1914, the tsar sent a rescript to the Ministry of Finance with an instruction to "improve the economic well being of the people, notwithstanding financial losses,” since budget revenues should be coming not from the sale of something that destroys "the spiritual and economic powers" of the people but from other, healthier sources. That was a truly radical step, as revenues from vodka sales made up no less than one third of the state budget. Yet, when putting together the budget for 1915 and in spite of the fact that Russia was at war, the State Duma totally excluded vodka revenues. British politician David Lloyd George described it as "the single greatest act of national heroism.” The very possibility of such a move testifies to the enormous economic potential that Russia had at the time.
Enforcing the Prohibition
Even domestic animals have become more cheerful?
Right after prohibition came into effect, statistical research was conducted to study its effects. The fascinating findings were published in works by psychiatrist Ivan Vvedensky, prominent physician Alexander Mendelson and others. According to them, there was a dramatic drop in crime, mental hospitals had hardly any patients left, and village life was miraculously transformed. Peasants were not only upgrading their farms, buying samovars and sewing machines but were also depositing spare money with saving banks. Many of those polled said they were ready to pay additional taxes for as long as the sale of alcohol remained banned. "Even domestic animals have become more cheerful," one of the respondents said. Some unexpected problems arose: Medical schools complained of lack of corpses for anatomy lessons. There used to be many suicides, the bodies of which ended up at medical schools, however, the number of suicides dropped once there was no more drinking.
The authors of those studies acknowledged that prohibition had some negative effects too. Chief among them was a rise in the making of home-distilled vodka in villages and in the consumption of surrogates (denatured alcohol, polish, varnish) in towns - though it was believed that it was only hopeless drunks who could drink hooch and polish as substitutes for vodka. Lack of alcohol created certain problems in everyday life too. Alcohol-free weddings did manage to gain some popularity, as people liked the fact that they cost less. However, a Russian funeral without vodka is inconceivable. There were also fears that boredom and lack of vodka might push some people toward gambling and depravity. However, against the backdrop of a rising well being and prosperity, those minor negative effects were of no consequence, the authors of the brochures concluded.
Varnish, riots and cocaine
Yet, not everything was quite so rosy. In August 1914 alone, some 230 former drinking saloons across Russia were smashed as people demanded vodka. In some of those incidents, police had to open fire on the rioters. The governor of Perm appealed to the tsar to allow sale of alcohol for at least two hours a day "in order to avoid bloody clashes.” Mobilization did not go quite as smoothly as expected: Conscripts stormed closed wine warehouses in towns, troops were sent in to disperse them, and there were hundreds of casualties.
During the revolution, wine riots became a regular occurrence. Bolsheviks had to pour the whole of the Winter Palace’s wine cellar (with bottles worth thousands of gold rubles) and other precious wine collections down the drains to prevent them from being seized by soldiers, who would have drunk themselves senseless. Since vodka distilleries had to be shut down, nearly 300,000 people ended up out of work and the state had to pay them compensation from the budget.
In reality, consumption of vodka surrogates in towns skyrocketed, with production of polish and varnish increasing tenfold. Private memoirs dating from the years before the revolution paint a picture not of happy sobriety but of mass drinking in villages. Hooch was made from almost everything: sawdust, shavings, mangel beets and other fodder crops. Strong alcohol was sold only at expensive restaurants, further breeding discontent among those who could not afford it.In addition, the war and prohibition caused a massive rise in drug addiction, especially in St. Petersburg. Earlier, cocaine and heroin had been sold in drugstores, however, at about the same time many substances were classed as dangerous narcotics and were banned. However, as early as 1915, traffickers managed to establish opium supplies from Greece and Persia, while cocaine was brought over from Europe. It was cocaine that became inseparable from the image not only of the decadent St. Petersburg youth but also of the Bolshevik commissar in his leather jacket.
Sergey Sergeevich Korsakov and scientific heroism
Things looked very bleak until Nikolai A. Semashko the founder and first head of the Hokopusanopro (1) was approached by Sergei Korsakov. Korsakov had an ingenous idea, if you could not outright stop people from using alcohol subsitutes, offer a better one. Korsakov was born in 1854 in a large village in central Russia. On finishing school––the Moscow gymnasium––at the age of 16, he enrolled in the medical faculty of Moscow University. By 1875 he was a physician at the Moscow Preobrazhenskij mental hospital and 1 year later he joined the department of nervous and mental diseases, headed by Aleksey Yakovlevich Kozhevnikov. Korsakov became his closest and most talented pupil.
During his professional career, Korsakov frequently travelled abroad in order to familiarize himself with the psychiatric service in Europe. His first trip was in 1885 to Vienna, where he visited Theodor Meynert. In 1889 he went to Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy. He visited Westphal in the Berlin Charité, Flechsig in Leipzig, and Magnan in Paris. In 1892 he paid a visit to Krafft-Ebing in Vienna and in 1894 to Kraepelin in Heidelberg. These visits helped Korsakov to establish close contacts with leading European neurologists and psychiatrists.
His thesis “About alcoholic paralysis” gained him his medical doctorate in 1887. In the same year, the first Clinic for Nervous and Mental Diseases was founded in Moscow University, with Kozhevnikov at its head. Working closely with Kozhevnikov, as assistant professor, Korsakov was in charge of theoretical and practical training in psychiatry; he gave his first lecture in autumn 1888. For Korsakov, and for Russian psychiatry, the subsequent years were a time of great development and diverse activity. Kozhevnikov considered, however, that clinical neurology as an independent specialty should be separated, not only from internal medicine, but also from psychiatry. He was, therefore, simultaneously building a second, new Clinic for nervous diseases. With the permission of the Moscow University Medical faculty, he transferred the control over the first clinic to Korsakov, one of his best pupils, and in 1890 it became exclusively a clinic for psychiatric patients. This was a historical moment of separation between neurological and psychiatric disciplines in Moscow, whereas elsewhere in Europe and even in Russia, e.g. St. Petersburg, the two disciplines would continue to be practised together for a long time.
Korsakov actively participated in promoting the rights of the mentally ill. In fact, he headed both the Moscow University Psychiatric Clinic and a private institution, the oldest private clinic for the mentally ill in Moscow, founded in 1830. The regimen in the clinic was more flexible and more humane than in public asylums. Korsakov went further than anyone else in avoiding restraints, removing bars and abolishing straight-jackets and isolation cells. Korsakov promoted a humane approach to the mentally ill not only in Russia, but also internationally. Thanks to his energy and enthusiasm, this no-restraint approach to the care of the mentally ill was implemented in Russia rather quickly
Magic Shrooms the Wonder Cure?
All these action would already guarantee him a place in history but Korsakov went one step further. Confronted with many cases of more or less severe melancholia (depression), Korsakov began looking into the potential of chemically and plant based medicine to alleviate the effects. The first candidate was a traditional herbal medical plant Rhodiola rosea In Russia and Scandinavia, R. rosea has been used for centuries to cope with the cold Siberian climate and stressful life. Another even more promising candidate was Hypericum perforatum, known as perforate St John's-wort. However his experimental studies with actual patients were proven rather inconclusive in the end.
During his research into psychoactive plants, he also stumbled among the curious anecdote first recorded in the London Medical and Physical Journal. The article titled "Mr. E. Brande, on a poisonous species of Agaric" told the story of the titular Dr. Everard Brande had encountered. A man had served Psilocybe semilanceata mushrooms that he had picked for breakfast in London's Green Park to his family. Dr. Brande who treated them recalled how the youngest child "was attacked with fits of immoderate laughter, nor could the threats of his father or mother refrain him.”
This piked his curiosity and so soon enough he arranged the controlled consumption of the mushrooms in question. If these herbal tools were able to profoundly influence a healthy, strong rational human mind like his, maybe they could be strong enough to shake those suffering from melancholia, out of their misery too. It all made sense, even lay man could understand the principle behind the idea. Both drugs enforced euphoria/laughter/happiness regardless of the recipients actual mood, so it should even have an effect on those who were caught in a constant downwards spiral. Finally Korsakov noted to his satisfaction that he had indeed found the right lever and angle to lift the (mental) world, the first scientific treatment for depression.
However as much as it has become a cliché by now, the most important part of his research was less the end result of his own endeavours but the journey itself. In fact he had contacted many of his colleagues and written journal article about the potentials of mood altering drugs. The most frustrating aspect of using a natural remedy Korsakov noted was the unpredictable of the dosage the active component as well as it’s chemical composition.
The Discovery of Soma
Aleksander Mikhaylovich Zaitsev was the son of a tea and sugar merchant, who had decided that his son should follow him into the mercantile trades. However, at the urging of his maternal uncle, the physicist Lyapunov, Zaitsev was allowed to enroll at University of Kazan to study economics. At this time, Russia was experimenting with the cameral system, meaning that every student graduating in law and economics from a Russian university had to take two years of chemistry. Zaitsev was thus introduced to Aleksandr Mikhailovich Butlerov.
Early on, Zaitsev began working with Butlerov, who clearly saw in him an excellent laboratory chemist, and whose later actions showed that he felt that Zaitsev was an asset to Russian organic chemistry. On the death of his father, Zaitsev took his diplom in 1862, and immediately went to western Europe to further his chemical studies, studying with Hermann Kolbe at Marburg, and with Charles Adolphe Wurtz in Paris. This went directly against the accepted norms of the day, which had the student complete the kandidat degree (approximately equivalent to today's doctor of philosophy's degree), and then spend two or three years in study abroad (a komandirovka) before returning to Russia as a salaried laboratory assistant studying for the doctorate. In 1876 he was the first man to ever synthezize gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid and subsequently the first to (accidentally) spike his own drink. He found the nausea accompanying the euphoric effects of the new compound so overwhelmingly unpleasant that he rather preferred to forget the whole ordeal. However many years later, after reading an journal article by Korsakov lamenting the lack of a good synthetic euphoria inducing drug agent, he recalled the incident and contacted Korsakov……..
Notes and Sources
(1) Homaj Komisariato pri Publika Sano Protekto /The People's Commissar for Public Health Protection
Sobering effect: What happened when Russia banned booze (2014) by Mikhail Butov
Sergey Sergeevich Korsakov (1854–1900) by Alla Vein
Mason, Stuart (2012): Your brain on 'shrooms: fMRI elucidates neural correlates of psilocybin psychedelic state.
Saytzeff, Alexander (1874). "Über die Reduction des Succinylchlorids". Liebigs Annalen der Chemie. 171 (2): 258–290
wikipedia, GHB, Saytzeff etc.
Last edited:
ComradeHuxley
Donor
Now I renember why I gave up on the timeline, the lack of editing function on the old board. So much stuff to clean up, getting the timeline at least somewhat coherent. But it is totally worth it ;-). Also new update.
Empire of the Rising Sun: The Nuka Cola Story
ComradeHuxley
Donor
Empire of the Rising Sun: The Nuka Cola Story
Come and blow,
Freezing wind of the Chichibu Mountains,
Come blowing down…
Coca-Cola, thank you very much.
Down the streets in Ginza, then to Owari-cho…
Another glass of Coca-Cola.
Kotaro Takamura (1914); Do Tei/ Journey [1]
Japan has long been one of the most dynamic markets for The Coca-Cola Company, building on a heritage that has spanned more than 100 years. As early as 1910, orders were received in Atlanta, from Japan, for Coca-Cola syrup to be sold at select soda fountain outlets in Tokyo. However Japan’s greatest contribution to the Soda industry would wait for a few decades.
Takemi was well-known as “Kenka Taro,” the belligerent Taro. The media in his time liked to take up the issues which he fought against the Japanese government, particularly the Ministry of Health and Welfare. It liked to depict him as a boss of doctors, according to media’s
coverage, who were all mad for money. Although Takemi admitted that one-third of doctors were “headmen of greedy selfish village,” he himself claimed to have a vision about Japanese medicine, which was based on his own philosophy.
There have been many commentaries about Takemi by either Takemi-lovers or Takemi-haters. The divided reputations show that Takemi was a person who caused a heated argument. Mizuno Hajime, who has been a medical journalist and a close contemporary observer of Takemi, noted, Considering his academic career and conversations with Takemi, what I thought was that Takemi himself did not want to be a scholar although he had an ability to be. Tanaka Shigeru, who was a doctor personally close to Takemi, also wrote, “Takemi’s
political skills were first-class, and it was widely agreed that Takemi would have been able to be the Prime Minister if he had aimed to be a politician.”
Takemi became neither scholar nor the Prime Minister although he might be able to be both. He chose to become the president of the Japan Medical Association. However this isn’t the story of his overall career, but of something more minor and yet more enduring, his invention of the Nuka Cola.
Special Coca Cola Logo for their Nuka Cola Edition
Takemi’s Early Life
In 1904, Takemi Taro was born in Niigata Prefecture, which is located in the largest island of Japan on the coast of the Sea of Japan. Despite that Niigata was a rural part of the country, Takemi grew up in an intellectual, international, and stimulating environment.
Takemi’s father went to the United States to study in 1887 when only about twenty years had passed since the feudal system ended and not so many Japanese would want to go abroad. Hido Shuichi describes that his father’s decision to study abroad was“ an example of Takemi family’s nonconformism.”
Takemi’s mother, on the other hand, received one of the besteducation for women at that time. She went to study in Ochanomizu High School and TokyoJoshi Kōtō Shihan Gakkō. Takemi often mentioned, “I respect my parents best of all.”
Takemi had an interesting uncle. Takemi family believed in Jōdo Shinshū, a Shin Buddhism sect. But his uncle became a believer of Nichiren Buddhism. It was founded by Nichiren in the thirteenth century. Nichiren claimed that his teaching was the true follower of Mahayana Buddhism and criticized other existing forms of Buddhism, including Shin Buddhism. By betraying his family’s belief, Takemi’s uncle was disinherited by his family. Hido claims that his uncle’s gene still survived in Takemi who makes a headlong rush on what he believes in.
Takemi showed his self-assertion when he was in elementary school. When his school constructed a new school building, he was asked to deliver an address to the governor of Tokyo. His teacher gave him a manuscript to memorize. He memorized ever everything that was written but he felt ridiculous about it. He eventually made his own speech. The teacher was upset and forced Takemi to stand in the classroom for about one hour as a punishment. Takemi mentioned that his aggressive attitude toward authoritarianism began in this period. He wrote, “If the education is to force students to repeat teachers’words, it is the height of degeneration.” He also noted, “I hate authoritarians.”
When he was fourteen, he suffered from a kidney disease and stayed in the hospital for about two years. His family was told that he might not be able to recover. But he did recover from the ailment. This period of hospitalization gave him time to read Fukuzawa Yukichi’
s books and he decided to transfer to Keio Futsubu School. His book collection also included Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species. He was captivated by the mystery of life and became interested in pursuing medical education in Keio University when thinking of the future.
Takami’s Life at Keio University
Takemi’s unique approach to study attracted attention from his friends. One of his friends at Keio university noted, “He was based on a completely different body of knowledge. I always wanted biology class to come to end as quickly as possible because I thought it was merely a work of rote memorization. But he stayed with a microscope for thirty minutes when he saw atomic fission.... He was special.... It is right and proper that everyone treated him as an eccentric person.”
Takemi was interested not only in medicine. He also took a serious interest in other fields of study. One of Takemi’s later friends recalled the flexibility of his thought by saying that Takemi had “an ability to think flexibly by adopting other people’s opinions. Whenever he faced problems related to philosophy, economy, and law, he asked specialists in these fields and got to know more about these fields than the specialists.”
At Keio, Takemi did not study medicine as an isolated area of study but saw medicine in relation with other academic disciplines. Takemi later wrote, “Fundamentally speaking, Japanese people are good at integrating different things. We have a prodigious ability to break things into small pieces, but we all, from university professors to craftsmen, are very poor at having interdisciplinary approaches.”
After he graduated from medical school, just like many other graduates, he stayed at Keio as a member of the hospital staff. Being a member of the hospital staff was important for the graduates future career. Takemi however didn’t accept the need to conform. As he noted himself “When I got into internal medicine section to be a clinician in the future, what was the most surprising thing was that professor was god, old assistants were Shinto priests, and young assistants were garden keepers.”
What he did to his mentors, according to his metaphor, was a garden keeper rebelled against his god. It meant that he committed suicide in terms of his career. He had to rely on himself, living without any support and benefit from Keio’s academic faction. Takemi did not commit the career suicide without prudence. After he resigned his position at Keio, he moved to Rikagaku Kenkyūjo (Riken) which was established in 1917 as the first large-scale national science research institute. Takemi was acquainted with Nishina Yoshio who was a physicist and studied theoretical physics, nucleus, and cosmic rays at Riken. When Takemi told Nishina that he would leave Keio, Nishina allowed Takemi to work for him by saying, “Medicine might not be a science. But what you say is scientific.”
Although Takemi worked at Riken without pay, he was happy at Riken. Miwa Kazuo writes, “Takemi adapted himself well to the environment of Riken. Riken provided the environment in which mentors and disciples discussed without discrimination; it included scholars from various academic disciplines; and it provided a unique space for them to almost live under the same roof.”
At the this crossroad of interdisciplinary science he found his first research field, that would make him famous, nuclear medicine and heavy water.
Konan (OTL Hungnam) Factory Complex
Japan’s Heavy Water Industry
Before we continue Takemi’s story we learn about another man who made Nuka Cola possible, Shitagau Noguchi. Noguchi was a Japanese entrepreneur who founded the Nichitsu zaibatsu. Known as the father of electrochemical engineering in Japan, he invested heavily in the development of Korea and Manchukou in cooperation with the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. Noguchi was born to a samurai class family in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. He studied electrical engineering at the Tokyo Imperial University and was hired by Siemens in 1898. He designed Japan's first commercial production plant for Calcium carbide in Sendai in 1903. In 1906, two Germans, A.Frank and N. Caro, invented a new method to produce calcium cyanamide to be used a fertilizer. Noguchi learned of this invention in a newspaper and realized that the method could be used to utilize the calcium carbide that his plant produced. He went to Germany, and with the support of an acquaintance at Siemens obtained the patent rights, beating other, larger and better-known Japanese trading firms like Mitsui and Furukawa.
In 1906, he formed the company Kiso Electric, to develop a hydroelectric power in Kagoshima prefecture under contract by local mine owners in Kyūshū. Since the capacity of the plant he built – 800kW - was in excess of the demand, he established another company, Nippon Carbide Shokai, located in Minamata, Kumamoto, to produce calcium carbide with the surplus electricity in 1907.
With financial help from Mitsubishi, Noguchi merged his two companies into Nihon Chisso Hiryo (lit. "Japan Nitrogenous Fertilizer") in 1908. The name was frequently abbreviated to "Nichitsu". Then, with his collaborator, Fujiyama Tsuneichi, he developed a 'continuous method' of production to replace the 'alternate method' of Frank-Caro's technology. He also produced ammonium sulphate out of the calcium cyanamide, because it was safer and better known. In 1914, he formed "Hiroshima Electric", the forerunner of Chugoku Electric Power to develop the hydroelectric power potential of the Chugoku region of Japan.
In 1926, with the collaboration of the Imperial Japanese Army, Noguchi established "Chosen Electric Power" and "Chosen Chisso Hiryo". The former developed Pujon and Chagjin branches of the Yalu River in northern Korea with a number of huge hydraulic power plants, which supplied a number of huge electrochemical plants, producing a diverse range of products, from fertilizer and explosives to soda and metals. The most important of these projects was however was the construction of the Konan [2] Aqueous homogeneous reactor and the necessary heavy water supplying infrastructure.
Takemi and Heavy Water
As mentioned above Takemi had an intense interest in biological science and evolution. Thus he was well informed about the work of Thomas Hunt Morgan. When Morgan took the professorship in experimental zoology, he focused on the mechanisms of heredity and evolution. He had published Evolution and Adaptation (1903); like many biologists at the time, he saw evidence for biological evolution (as in the common descent of similar species) but rejected Darwin's proposed mechanism of natural selection acting on small, constantly produced variations. He began using fruit flies in experimental studies of heredity in 1910 in a laboratory known as the Fly Room.
The Fly Room was cramped with eight desks, each occupied by students and their experiments. They started off experiments using milk bottles to rear the fruit flies and handheld lenses for observing their traits. The lenses were later replaced by microscopes, which enhanced their observations. Morgan and his students eventually elucidated many basic principles of heredity, including sex-linked inheritance, epistasis, multiple alleles, and gene mapping
Inspired by these works Takemi began to introduce the concept of the Fly Room to the Riken, mostly in order to study the effects of atomic radiation on easy to study and produce organism. One of his most important experiments however was to explore the long time effect of heavy water supplied by the Konan facility on Drosophila melanogaster. As he described in his paper: ”We have investigated the effects of brief, non-specific deuteration of Drosophila melanogaster by including varyingpercentages of 2H (D) in the H2O used in the food mix consumed during initial development. Up to 22.5% deuterium oxide (D2O) in H2O was administered, with the result that a low percentage of D2O in the water increased mean life span, whereas the highest percentage used (22.5%) reduced life span. After the one-time treatment period, adult flies were maintained ad libitum with food of normal isotopic distribution. At low deuterium levels, where life span extension was observed, there was no observed change in fecundity.”
Or summarize it in simpler terms, just the right amount of heavy water added could help organism, too much could harm and to little did nothing. Even more interesting was its potential as organic radiation shield. As Takemi observed:
“Drinking water made available to mice was changed from ordinary tap water to tap water containing 30 atom% D2O when the animals were 6 to 8 weeks old. Twelve days later, the deuterated mice and an approximately equal number of nondeuterated control mice were subjected to whole-body gamma radiation from a 60Co source. All mice received ordinary tap water after the irradiation. Postirradiation mortality was significantly less in deuterated than in nondeuterated animals. These results may have practical implications for radiotherapy of human malignant tumors.”
As a next step Takemi wanted to introduce heavy water consumption to people working on nuclear machines, and maybe later event into the general human population. His great vision, however didn’t survive even the first meeting with higher bureaucracy. Where everybody else would have given up, however Takemi, got even more motivated by the challenge. Instead of following official channels, he found an odd but persuasive short cut. He approached the Japanese department of the Coca-Cola and convinced them to stage a publicity stunt. The release of a very, very limited batch of Nuclear Radiation Protecting Cola, or “Nuka Cola”. It quickly became a celebrated of Japanese ingenuity, enough so that it saved Takemi from any real repercussions. As far as he was concerned he got his message out, and continued walking the path that earned him the name "Kenka" Taro.
Notes and Sources
[1] Actually OTL.
[2] Hungnam, Korea
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/coc...resilience-key-to-coca-cola-heritage-in-japan
A Short Biography of Takemi Taro, the President of the Japan Medical Association (2011)
by Takakazu Amagishi
In: Journal of the Nanzan Academic Society Social Sciences
In Search of the Fountain of Youth -Preliminary Analysis of Deuterium’s Role in DNA Degradation (2003) by Kirk B. Goodall
Laissue JA, Bally E, Joel DD, Slatkin DN, Stoner RD, Protection of mice from whole-body gamma
radiation by deuteration of drinking water, Radiat Res 1983 Oct;96(1):59-64
Brief Early-Life Non-Specific Incorporation of Deuterium Extends Mean Life Span in Drosophila
melanogaster Without Affecting Fecundity
In: Rejuvenation Research · January 2013
Come and blow,
Freezing wind of the Chichibu Mountains,
Come blowing down…
Coca-Cola, thank you very much.
Down the streets in Ginza, then to Owari-cho…
Another glass of Coca-Cola.
Kotaro Takamura (1914); Do Tei/ Journey [1]
Japan has long been one of the most dynamic markets for The Coca-Cola Company, building on a heritage that has spanned more than 100 years. As early as 1910, orders were received in Atlanta, from Japan, for Coca-Cola syrup to be sold at select soda fountain outlets in Tokyo. However Japan’s greatest contribution to the Soda industry would wait for a few decades.
Takemi was well-known as “Kenka Taro,” the belligerent Taro. The media in his time liked to take up the issues which he fought against the Japanese government, particularly the Ministry of Health and Welfare. It liked to depict him as a boss of doctors, according to media’s
coverage, who were all mad for money. Although Takemi admitted that one-third of doctors were “headmen of greedy selfish village,” he himself claimed to have a vision about Japanese medicine, which was based on his own philosophy.
There have been many commentaries about Takemi by either Takemi-lovers or Takemi-haters. The divided reputations show that Takemi was a person who caused a heated argument. Mizuno Hajime, who has been a medical journalist and a close contemporary observer of Takemi, noted, Considering his academic career and conversations with Takemi, what I thought was that Takemi himself did not want to be a scholar although he had an ability to be. Tanaka Shigeru, who was a doctor personally close to Takemi, also wrote, “Takemi’s
political skills were first-class, and it was widely agreed that Takemi would have been able to be the Prime Minister if he had aimed to be a politician.”
Takemi became neither scholar nor the Prime Minister although he might be able to be both. He chose to become the president of the Japan Medical Association. However this isn’t the story of his overall career, but of something more minor and yet more enduring, his invention of the Nuka Cola.
Special Coca Cola Logo for their Nuka Cola Edition
Takemi’s Early Life
In 1904, Takemi Taro was born in Niigata Prefecture, which is located in the largest island of Japan on the coast of the Sea of Japan. Despite that Niigata was a rural part of the country, Takemi grew up in an intellectual, international, and stimulating environment.
Takemi’s father went to the United States to study in 1887 when only about twenty years had passed since the feudal system ended and not so many Japanese would want to go abroad. Hido Shuichi describes that his father’s decision to study abroad was“ an example of Takemi family’s nonconformism.”
Takemi’s mother, on the other hand, received one of the besteducation for women at that time. She went to study in Ochanomizu High School and TokyoJoshi Kōtō Shihan Gakkō. Takemi often mentioned, “I respect my parents best of all.”
Takemi had an interesting uncle. Takemi family believed in Jōdo Shinshū, a Shin Buddhism sect. But his uncle became a believer of Nichiren Buddhism. It was founded by Nichiren in the thirteenth century. Nichiren claimed that his teaching was the true follower of Mahayana Buddhism and criticized other existing forms of Buddhism, including Shin Buddhism. By betraying his family’s belief, Takemi’s uncle was disinherited by his family. Hido claims that his uncle’s gene still survived in Takemi who makes a headlong rush on what he believes in.
Takemi showed his self-assertion when he was in elementary school. When his school constructed a new school building, he was asked to deliver an address to the governor of Tokyo. His teacher gave him a manuscript to memorize. He memorized ever everything that was written but he felt ridiculous about it. He eventually made his own speech. The teacher was upset and forced Takemi to stand in the classroom for about one hour as a punishment. Takemi mentioned that his aggressive attitude toward authoritarianism began in this period. He wrote, “If the education is to force students to repeat teachers’words, it is the height of degeneration.” He also noted, “I hate authoritarians.”
When he was fourteen, he suffered from a kidney disease and stayed in the hospital for about two years. His family was told that he might not be able to recover. But he did recover from the ailment. This period of hospitalization gave him time to read Fukuzawa Yukichi’
s books and he decided to transfer to Keio Futsubu School. His book collection also included Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species. He was captivated by the mystery of life and became interested in pursuing medical education in Keio University when thinking of the future.
Takami’s Life at Keio University
Takemi’s unique approach to study attracted attention from his friends. One of his friends at Keio university noted, “He was based on a completely different body of knowledge. I always wanted biology class to come to end as quickly as possible because I thought it was merely a work of rote memorization. But he stayed with a microscope for thirty minutes when he saw atomic fission.... He was special.... It is right and proper that everyone treated him as an eccentric person.”
Takemi was interested not only in medicine. He also took a serious interest in other fields of study. One of Takemi’s later friends recalled the flexibility of his thought by saying that Takemi had “an ability to think flexibly by adopting other people’s opinions. Whenever he faced problems related to philosophy, economy, and law, he asked specialists in these fields and got to know more about these fields than the specialists.”
At Keio, Takemi did not study medicine as an isolated area of study but saw medicine in relation with other academic disciplines. Takemi later wrote, “Fundamentally speaking, Japanese people are good at integrating different things. We have a prodigious ability to break things into small pieces, but we all, from university professors to craftsmen, are very poor at having interdisciplinary approaches.”
After he graduated from medical school, just like many other graduates, he stayed at Keio as a member of the hospital staff. Being a member of the hospital staff was important for the graduates future career. Takemi however didn’t accept the need to conform. As he noted himself “When I got into internal medicine section to be a clinician in the future, what was the most surprising thing was that professor was god, old assistants were Shinto priests, and young assistants were garden keepers.”
What he did to his mentors, according to his metaphor, was a garden keeper rebelled against his god. It meant that he committed suicide in terms of his career. He had to rely on himself, living without any support and benefit from Keio’s academic faction. Takemi did not commit the career suicide without prudence. After he resigned his position at Keio, he moved to Rikagaku Kenkyūjo (Riken) which was established in 1917 as the first large-scale national science research institute. Takemi was acquainted with Nishina Yoshio who was a physicist and studied theoretical physics, nucleus, and cosmic rays at Riken. When Takemi told Nishina that he would leave Keio, Nishina allowed Takemi to work for him by saying, “Medicine might not be a science. But what you say is scientific.”
Although Takemi worked at Riken without pay, he was happy at Riken. Miwa Kazuo writes, “Takemi adapted himself well to the environment of Riken. Riken provided the environment in which mentors and disciples discussed without discrimination; it included scholars from various academic disciplines; and it provided a unique space for them to almost live under the same roof.”
At the this crossroad of interdisciplinary science he found his first research field, that would make him famous, nuclear medicine and heavy water.
Konan (OTL Hungnam) Factory Complex
Japan’s Heavy Water Industry
Before we continue Takemi’s story we learn about another man who made Nuka Cola possible, Shitagau Noguchi. Noguchi was a Japanese entrepreneur who founded the Nichitsu zaibatsu. Known as the father of electrochemical engineering in Japan, he invested heavily in the development of Korea and Manchukou in cooperation with the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. Noguchi was born to a samurai class family in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. He studied electrical engineering at the Tokyo Imperial University and was hired by Siemens in 1898. He designed Japan's first commercial production plant for Calcium carbide in Sendai in 1903. In 1906, two Germans, A.Frank and N. Caro, invented a new method to produce calcium cyanamide to be used a fertilizer. Noguchi learned of this invention in a newspaper and realized that the method could be used to utilize the calcium carbide that his plant produced. He went to Germany, and with the support of an acquaintance at Siemens obtained the patent rights, beating other, larger and better-known Japanese trading firms like Mitsui and Furukawa.
In 1906, he formed the company Kiso Electric, to develop a hydroelectric power in Kagoshima prefecture under contract by local mine owners in Kyūshū. Since the capacity of the plant he built – 800kW - was in excess of the demand, he established another company, Nippon Carbide Shokai, located in Minamata, Kumamoto, to produce calcium carbide with the surplus electricity in 1907.
With financial help from Mitsubishi, Noguchi merged his two companies into Nihon Chisso Hiryo (lit. "Japan Nitrogenous Fertilizer") in 1908. The name was frequently abbreviated to "Nichitsu". Then, with his collaborator, Fujiyama Tsuneichi, he developed a 'continuous method' of production to replace the 'alternate method' of Frank-Caro's technology. He also produced ammonium sulphate out of the calcium cyanamide, because it was safer and better known. In 1914, he formed "Hiroshima Electric", the forerunner of Chugoku Electric Power to develop the hydroelectric power potential of the Chugoku region of Japan.
In 1926, with the collaboration of the Imperial Japanese Army, Noguchi established "Chosen Electric Power" and "Chosen Chisso Hiryo". The former developed Pujon and Chagjin branches of the Yalu River in northern Korea with a number of huge hydraulic power plants, which supplied a number of huge electrochemical plants, producing a diverse range of products, from fertilizer and explosives to soda and metals. The most important of these projects was however was the construction of the Konan [2] Aqueous homogeneous reactor and the necessary heavy water supplying infrastructure.
Takemi and Heavy Water
As mentioned above Takemi had an intense interest in biological science and evolution. Thus he was well informed about the work of Thomas Hunt Morgan. When Morgan took the professorship in experimental zoology, he focused on the mechanisms of heredity and evolution. He had published Evolution and Adaptation (1903); like many biologists at the time, he saw evidence for biological evolution (as in the common descent of similar species) but rejected Darwin's proposed mechanism of natural selection acting on small, constantly produced variations. He began using fruit flies in experimental studies of heredity in 1910 in a laboratory known as the Fly Room.
The Fly Room was cramped with eight desks, each occupied by students and their experiments. They started off experiments using milk bottles to rear the fruit flies and handheld lenses for observing their traits. The lenses were later replaced by microscopes, which enhanced their observations. Morgan and his students eventually elucidated many basic principles of heredity, including sex-linked inheritance, epistasis, multiple alleles, and gene mapping
Inspired by these works Takemi began to introduce the concept of the Fly Room to the Riken, mostly in order to study the effects of atomic radiation on easy to study and produce organism. One of his most important experiments however was to explore the long time effect of heavy water supplied by the Konan facility on Drosophila melanogaster. As he described in his paper: ”We have investigated the effects of brief, non-specific deuteration of Drosophila melanogaster by including varyingpercentages of 2H (D) in the H2O used in the food mix consumed during initial development. Up to 22.5% deuterium oxide (D2O) in H2O was administered, with the result that a low percentage of D2O in the water increased mean life span, whereas the highest percentage used (22.5%) reduced life span. After the one-time treatment period, adult flies were maintained ad libitum with food of normal isotopic distribution. At low deuterium levels, where life span extension was observed, there was no observed change in fecundity.”
Or summarize it in simpler terms, just the right amount of heavy water added could help organism, too much could harm and to little did nothing. Even more interesting was its potential as organic radiation shield. As Takemi observed:
“Drinking water made available to mice was changed from ordinary tap water to tap water containing 30 atom% D2O when the animals were 6 to 8 weeks old. Twelve days later, the deuterated mice and an approximately equal number of nondeuterated control mice were subjected to whole-body gamma radiation from a 60Co source. All mice received ordinary tap water after the irradiation. Postirradiation mortality was significantly less in deuterated than in nondeuterated animals. These results may have practical implications for radiotherapy of human malignant tumors.”
As a next step Takemi wanted to introduce heavy water consumption to people working on nuclear machines, and maybe later event into the general human population. His great vision, however didn’t survive even the first meeting with higher bureaucracy. Where everybody else would have given up, however Takemi, got even more motivated by the challenge. Instead of following official channels, he found an odd but persuasive short cut. He approached the Japanese department of the Coca-Cola and convinced them to stage a publicity stunt. The release of a very, very limited batch of Nuclear Radiation Protecting Cola, or “Nuka Cola”. It quickly became a celebrated of Japanese ingenuity, enough so that it saved Takemi from any real repercussions. As far as he was concerned he got his message out, and continued walking the path that earned him the name "Kenka" Taro.
Notes and Sources
[1] Actually OTL.
[2] Hungnam, Korea
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/coc...resilience-key-to-coca-cola-heritage-in-japan
A Short Biography of Takemi Taro, the President of the Japan Medical Association (2011)
by Takakazu Amagishi
In: Journal of the Nanzan Academic Society Social Sciences
In Search of the Fountain of Youth -Preliminary Analysis of Deuterium’s Role in DNA Degradation (2003) by Kirk B. Goodall
Laissue JA, Bally E, Joel DD, Slatkin DN, Stoner RD, Protection of mice from whole-body gamma
radiation by deuteration of drinking water, Radiat Res 1983 Oct;96(1):59-64
Brief Early-Life Non-Specific Incorporation of Deuterium Extends Mean Life Span in Drosophila
melanogaster Without Affecting Fecundity
In: Rejuvenation Research · January 2013
Last edited:
I love this timeline. With all the weird and fantastical developments that have taken place in this world, I wonder how things are going to look in 2016?
Archibald
Banned
Particularly if those thre brilliant minds work on nuclear pulse rocketry. I'm rooting for Orion !
So, is he no longer part of the group that founded the JPL, or is his life story similar to that OTL?
I just came across this, and wondered if it might make an appearance in this timeline? It does seem to fit with the setting.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
I actually saw I documentary on Herman Sörgel and Atlantropa. They came to the conclusion that his idea of uniting Europe trough the construction of monumental damn was admirable but unrealistic. Even if it had worked it would have resulted in a giant salt desert so even if he makes a guest cameo nothing much will come out of it. It is however certainly the kind of mega construction project that fits the spirit of the timeline.
A Scientific Prohibition: Soma, A Realistic Alternative?
ComradeHuxley
Donor
A Scientific Prohibition: Soma, A Realistic Alternative?
Soma, a History
"This Soma is a god; he cures
The sharpest ills that man endures.
He heals the sick, the sad he cheers,
He nerves the weak, dispels their fears;"
Soma or GHB/gamma-Hydroxybutyric was discovered by a great colleague of mine the late Aleksander Mikhaylovich Zaitsev in 1876. Unfortunately he only shared his great discovery with me only a year before his death. In hindsight we might be grateful that this oppertunity wasn't lost forever.
GHB is a remarkable molecule because it can suppress depressive ideation and anxiety, sometimes within less than 30 minutes. It also seems to be immediately active on the most severe and treatment-resistant forms of depression. Worlds apart from any of the natural remedy we tried before. Because of such remarkable properties my friend Alekhin, an astute, well orientalist versed orientalist started to call GHB "Soma", after a divine brew from Indian mythology. Indeed a molecule which can block your depression and suicidal ideas, anxiety, etc, in such an efficient way is truly divine because it can literally save your life, rescue you from your own personal hell.
In the last few years GHB saved the live of a close friends as well as many patients life. For years I studied patients suffering of depressive episodes without having a potent tool to help them. Even after discovering some natural herbs that had a significant effect they were far cry from Soma. After years of reflexions on depression I realized one day that a real antidepressant should stimulate sociability, something returning withdrawing patients back to the world.
Why? Because depression is basically a defect of sociability. Depression is a state of lowered sociability and when natural sociability is lowered in a human brain (for instance through competition, etc) then this brain starts to suffer morally. Experience has shown that when sociability is enhanced, depression vanishes. GHB is the second substance after the alcohol that shows such a powerful effect. In a way, I reckon that many alcoholics are actually self administering a (very destructive) cure for their depression.
What a great day, that we discovered Soma which does just this: it stimulates sociability without many of the harmful side effects associated with alcohol.. This is why I GHB call GHB a sociabiliser, for the foreseeable future probably the socialiser drug. As said above GHB suppresses depressed ideation with amazing rapidity! You may feel incurable dysphoria with suicidal ideation, anxiety, etc, and think that no medicine or no one could help you until you try gamma-hydroxybutyrate! Afterwards you might just think how crazy you were and feel how life is beautiful and deserves to be lived and enjoyed!
Gamma-hydroxybutyrate strongly stimulates the desire to be and to remain alive despite unfavorable circumstances. Nothing else known to man can do that. GHB therapy is also very short: less than a month of treatment is effective, as opposed to months or years of treatment with other treatments.
How to use GHB for Therapeutic Purpose
“The faint with martial ardour fires,
With lofty thoughts the bard inspires;
The soul from earth to heaven he lifts;
So great and wondrous are his gifts,
Men feel the god within their veins,
And cry in loud exulting strains:”
GHB should be used as follows: Three doses of 2g per day on an empty stomach. For instance, 2g in the morning, then 2g before eating your first meal, at noon, then the last dose at around 6 in the evening. If you suffer from intractable moral pain you will be surprised to feel that your blocked gratifying emotions come back very, very fast! GHB is a self-limiting medicine, which means that you discover by yourself when it is time to stop medication. Why? Because GHB induces emotional satiety and when you are emotionally satiated you do not feel like asking for more joy as you feel already fed up with happiness!!!Yes, you can be fed up with happiness! This is why people using GHB do not become addicted. In fact, I successfully applied "Soma Substitute Therapy" to treat treat alcohol and even cocaine and opiate addicts.
GHB should never be mixed with alcohol, opiates, or anything else ideally. In case of alchol mixing the two can be lethal. The recommended dose of GHB should not be exceeded. If you overdose, you may fall into a hypnotic sleep from which you cannot awaken for hours. Moreover, it could promote "petit mal" epilepsy in such overdoses, plus nausea and vomiting. Vomiting is a clear sign of relative over-dosage of GHB. However all these drawbacks are competitively easy to avoid and pale in the light of the actual healing power this wonder drug offers. Anyhow, there is no need for overdosing. If used as prescribed here it is a very safe antidepressant and anti-panic medication. I advise those people who see everything in term of white or black to look into the considerable benefits for sufferers that GHB could bring if it is demonstrated to be the superior antidepressant I claim here. Afterwards, more research will certainly lead to refined versions of GHB with minimal side-effects.
Description of the Psychotropic Effects of GHB
“We've quaffed the Soma bright
And are immortal grown:
We've entered into light,
And all the gods have known.
What mortal now can harm,
Or foeman vex us more?
Through thee, beyond alarm,
Immortal god, we soar.”
GHB has the following properties:
1) GHB stimulates sociability, which means that you feel like communicating with other people in all ways: emotionally, intellectually, and overall virgor. And from this communication you feel a very strong and deep happiness.
2) GHB gives you a strong desire to touch others, physically and psychologically.
3) Communication becomes extremely gratifying as you feel you want to become close to people, not to isolate yourself.
4) GHB induces a strong sense of beauty. Everything looks so beautiful, so vivid, so enjoyable, so pleasurable, so important, so "deep".
5) The perception of movement is enhanced.
6) Three-dimensional perception is enhanced and vision seems more clear, better than usual.
7) The contrast of colours between objects is increased. A yellow "pissenlit" (dandelion), or a rose, etc, situated in front of, say, green grass, looks brighter, more real, closer to you.
8) If you are a man, a woman will look magnificent and very attractive. She may become just like a goddess to your eyes. Women will experience the same feelings towards men. However, these kinds of feelings depend of your cultural background. For instance, a simple peasant woman will not feel such intense feelings but will report that she feels drunk! GHB is a very important tool in investigating the emotional background of a person. For instance loving people will become more loving while people devoid of these feelings will just feel in good mood, only. Some people may cry, which demonstrates that they have a lot of repressed material in themselves, etc. Crying under GHB is a very liberating experience because you can take out and release things which you normally keep deep inside and which thus hurt you. Crying under GHB takes away accumulated inner moral pains.
9) Sensuality becomes very intense. You want to touch, to kiss, to caress, to hold, to love, to hug, to make love. In summary, you want to contact others through any means available because you are just highly sociable!
10) You can sometimes feel a deep sense of "meaningfulness". Things become meaningful to you, even you are unable to scientifically define such a mystical feeling. This meaningfulness of reality is a very interesting phenomenon from a scientific point of view as it seems to show that there exists a "circuit" of meaningfulness in our nervous system. Non-specific activation of this circuit, under GHB, would give us a "deep" sense of "meaningfulness" which is, of course, imaginary.
11) GHB stimulates your recall abilities related to previous GHB experience. Each time you take GHB you can often clearly remember memories stored under another GHB context. Emotions are especially well-remembered and re-experienced. From these and other observations, I think GHB should be a tool of choice in psychoanalysis.
12) GHB induces a very pleasant sense of muscle relaxation, especially in the legs.
13) Although, in fact, some patients report a stronger muscle growth at the same time.
14) One of the most remarkable action of GHB is that it gives you a strong desire to live and to remain alive, despite unfavorable conditions.
Notes and Sources
As you may guess this an educational pamphlet written by Sergey Sergeevich Korsakov. For convenience sake, he also coined the term anti-depressant when he discovered the anti-depressant effects of
Psilocybin mushroom.
Drug classification: making a hash of it?
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/hmvp/hmvp12.htm
GHB: The First Authentic Antidepressant by Claude Rifat
Soma, a History
"This Soma is a god; he cures
The sharpest ills that man endures.
He heals the sick, the sad he cheers,
He nerves the weak, dispels their fears;"
Soma or GHB/gamma-Hydroxybutyric was discovered by a great colleague of mine the late Aleksander Mikhaylovich Zaitsev in 1876. Unfortunately he only shared his great discovery with me only a year before his death. In hindsight we might be grateful that this oppertunity wasn't lost forever.
GHB is a remarkable molecule because it can suppress depressive ideation and anxiety, sometimes within less than 30 minutes. It also seems to be immediately active on the most severe and treatment-resistant forms of depression. Worlds apart from any of the natural remedy we tried before. Because of such remarkable properties my friend Alekhin, an astute, well orientalist versed orientalist started to call GHB "Soma", after a divine brew from Indian mythology. Indeed a molecule which can block your depression and suicidal ideas, anxiety, etc, in such an efficient way is truly divine because it can literally save your life, rescue you from your own personal hell.
In the last few years GHB saved the live of a close friends as well as many patients life. For years I studied patients suffering of depressive episodes without having a potent tool to help them. Even after discovering some natural herbs that had a significant effect they were far cry from Soma. After years of reflexions on depression I realized one day that a real antidepressant should stimulate sociability, something returning withdrawing patients back to the world.
Why? Because depression is basically a defect of sociability. Depression is a state of lowered sociability and when natural sociability is lowered in a human brain (for instance through competition, etc) then this brain starts to suffer morally. Experience has shown that when sociability is enhanced, depression vanishes. GHB is the second substance after the alcohol that shows such a powerful effect. In a way, I reckon that many alcoholics are actually self administering a (very destructive) cure for their depression.
What a great day, that we discovered Soma which does just this: it stimulates sociability without many of the harmful side effects associated with alcohol.. This is why I GHB call GHB a sociabiliser, for the foreseeable future probably the socialiser drug. As said above GHB suppresses depressed ideation with amazing rapidity! You may feel incurable dysphoria with suicidal ideation, anxiety, etc, and think that no medicine or no one could help you until you try gamma-hydroxybutyrate! Afterwards you might just think how crazy you were and feel how life is beautiful and deserves to be lived and enjoyed!
Gamma-hydroxybutyrate strongly stimulates the desire to be and to remain alive despite unfavorable circumstances. Nothing else known to man can do that. GHB therapy is also very short: less than a month of treatment is effective, as opposed to months or years of treatment with other treatments.
How to use GHB for Therapeutic Purpose
“The faint with martial ardour fires,
With lofty thoughts the bard inspires;
The soul from earth to heaven he lifts;
So great and wondrous are his gifts,
Men feel the god within their veins,
And cry in loud exulting strains:”
GHB should be used as follows: Three doses of 2g per day on an empty stomach. For instance, 2g in the morning, then 2g before eating your first meal, at noon, then the last dose at around 6 in the evening. If you suffer from intractable moral pain you will be surprised to feel that your blocked gratifying emotions come back very, very fast! GHB is a self-limiting medicine, which means that you discover by yourself when it is time to stop medication. Why? Because GHB induces emotional satiety and when you are emotionally satiated you do not feel like asking for more joy as you feel already fed up with happiness!!!Yes, you can be fed up with happiness! This is why people using GHB do not become addicted. In fact, I successfully applied "Soma Substitute Therapy" to treat treat alcohol and even cocaine and opiate addicts.
GHB should never be mixed with alcohol, opiates, or anything else ideally. In case of alchol mixing the two can be lethal. The recommended dose of GHB should not be exceeded. If you overdose, you may fall into a hypnotic sleep from which you cannot awaken for hours. Moreover, it could promote "petit mal" epilepsy in such overdoses, plus nausea and vomiting. Vomiting is a clear sign of relative over-dosage of GHB. However all these drawbacks are competitively easy to avoid and pale in the light of the actual healing power this wonder drug offers. Anyhow, there is no need for overdosing. If used as prescribed here it is a very safe antidepressant and anti-panic medication. I advise those people who see everything in term of white or black to look into the considerable benefits for sufferers that GHB could bring if it is demonstrated to be the superior antidepressant I claim here. Afterwards, more research will certainly lead to refined versions of GHB with minimal side-effects.
Description of the Psychotropic Effects of GHB
“We've quaffed the Soma bright
And are immortal grown:
We've entered into light,
And all the gods have known.
What mortal now can harm,
Or foeman vex us more?
Through thee, beyond alarm,
Immortal god, we soar.”
GHB has the following properties:
1) GHB stimulates sociability, which means that you feel like communicating with other people in all ways: emotionally, intellectually, and overall virgor. And from this communication you feel a very strong and deep happiness.
2) GHB gives you a strong desire to touch others, physically and psychologically.
3) Communication becomes extremely gratifying as you feel you want to become close to people, not to isolate yourself.
4) GHB induces a strong sense of beauty. Everything looks so beautiful, so vivid, so enjoyable, so pleasurable, so important, so "deep".
5) The perception of movement is enhanced.
6) Three-dimensional perception is enhanced and vision seems more clear, better than usual.
7) The contrast of colours between objects is increased. A yellow "pissenlit" (dandelion), or a rose, etc, situated in front of, say, green grass, looks brighter, more real, closer to you.
8) If you are a man, a woman will look magnificent and very attractive. She may become just like a goddess to your eyes. Women will experience the same feelings towards men. However, these kinds of feelings depend of your cultural background. For instance, a simple peasant woman will not feel such intense feelings but will report that she feels drunk! GHB is a very important tool in investigating the emotional background of a person. For instance loving people will become more loving while people devoid of these feelings will just feel in good mood, only. Some people may cry, which demonstrates that they have a lot of repressed material in themselves, etc. Crying under GHB is a very liberating experience because you can take out and release things which you normally keep deep inside and which thus hurt you. Crying under GHB takes away accumulated inner moral pains.
9) Sensuality becomes very intense. You want to touch, to kiss, to caress, to hold, to love, to hug, to make love. In summary, you want to contact others through any means available because you are just highly sociable!
10) You can sometimes feel a deep sense of "meaningfulness". Things become meaningful to you, even you are unable to scientifically define such a mystical feeling. This meaningfulness of reality is a very interesting phenomenon from a scientific point of view as it seems to show that there exists a "circuit" of meaningfulness in our nervous system. Non-specific activation of this circuit, under GHB, would give us a "deep" sense of "meaningfulness" which is, of course, imaginary.
11) GHB stimulates your recall abilities related to previous GHB experience. Each time you take GHB you can often clearly remember memories stored under another GHB context. Emotions are especially well-remembered and re-experienced. From these and other observations, I think GHB should be a tool of choice in psychoanalysis.
12) GHB induces a very pleasant sense of muscle relaxation, especially in the legs.
13) Although, in fact, some patients report a stronger muscle growth at the same time.
14) One of the most remarkable action of GHB is that it gives you a strong desire to live and to remain alive, despite unfavorable conditions.
Notes and Sources
As you may guess this an educational pamphlet written by Sergey Sergeevich Korsakov. For convenience sake, he also coined the term anti-depressant when he discovered the anti-depressant effects of
Psilocybin mushroom.
Drug classification: making a hash of it?
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/hmvp/hmvp12.htm
GHB: The First Authentic Antidepressant by Claude Rifat
Also how would one go about acquiring GHB? Er, a friend of mine was asking 
.
.