 SHALL WE EVER BE ABLE TO VISIT THE MOON? by Charles Nevers-Holmes This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. SHALL WE EVER BE ABLE TO VISIT THE MOON? It is not impossible that the feat may someday be accomplished, but the difficulties to be overcome are very great. Many of us have traveled around our world a distance approximately 25,000 miles. Shall we ever be able to travel from our world to the moon a distance of about 239,000 miles? Today, of course, we cannot do so, but it is not impossible that someday men may travel from our earth to the moon and back again. No one at all familiar with the progress of modern science and invention will deny that such a journey is a future possibility. Indeed, it may be that tomorrow some stupendous discovery will revolutionize aerial navigation, and if this should occur, a journey to the moon would soon be occupying the minds and energies of terrestrial inventors and scientists. Even with the assistance of remarkable discoveries, however, there will remain great difficulties in the way of traveling from the earth to the moon. The first of these is the force that binds us to our world's surface. This force, which we call gravity, pulls us toward the center of the earth away from the moon, and it is so powerful that at present we know of no means by which to counteract it. To break its chain so that we can fly away from our planet home would require a velocity of not less than 37,000 feet per second. Since the best modern guns can throw a shell with a speed of about 3,000 feet per second, it is evident that we should have to be projected from our terrestrial surface about 12 times as fast in order to reach the surface of the moon. Furthermore, because both earth and moon are in motion, we should have to make careful mathematical calculations in order to hit the mark. Otherwise, in case our skycraft should miss the moon, we might go on traveling through space indefinitely, unless some planet like Jupiter were to capture us. A difficult and dangerous voyage. Moreover, there are other difficulties and dangers in making a trip to the moon. Our skycraft would have to be strongly constructed, very strongly indeed, to stand such a journey. Leaving out of consideration the friction and pressure upon it in passing through our atmosphere at such tremendous speed, there would be a great outward pressure from within it after we reached the vacuum-like environment of the ether. In order to remain alive, we should have to be surrounded by practically the same conditions inside our craft as they were when we left the terrestrial surface. We should have to breathe and to have about the same atmospheric pressure upon our bodies as at the surface of our earth. Therefore, unless some unpredictable scientific discovery should assist us, the walls of the craft would have to be exceedingly strong to resist the tendency to expand outwardly into the ether, thus causing some opening which might suddenly or slowly destroy us. Again, the walls of our skycraft would have to be very strong to resist possible collisions with air-lights, the small or large rock fragments popularly known as shooting stars. When we remember that these bodies are traveling with a velocity of 10 to 40 miles per second, not far from the earth's surface, and that our craft would be speeding seven miles per second, it is evident that a head-on collision would not be a gentle one. Moreover, when our skycraft reaches the moon, its landing is not likely to be at all a soft one since the moon possesses no known atmosphere to retard our speed, and the lunar surface is believed to be wholly rocky and hard. Doubtless were we able to hurl our skycraft free from terrestrial gravity, we could today build a craft that would weather an ethereal voyage from the earth to the moon. Doubtless it would be constructed to stand to the powerful attacks of pressure and of air-lights, as well as the sudden and terrific bump at the end of the route. Our astronomers of this 20th century could certainly aim such a craft so that it would reach its destination, and it is probable that the crew would not have much to do. Vast propulsive power needed. But the power required to hurl a skycraft weighing perhaps 10 tons or more, with a velocity of about 7 miles per second from the terrestrial surface and through the atmosphere into the aether, would be nothing less than terrific. It seems an almost impossible thing to do, but future discoveries and inventions may put it in a different light. We can calculate, at least approximately, how long such a voyage would take. Leaving out of consideration the acceleration of the skycraft owing to the attraction of the moon, the average time would be about 9 hours and a half. In other words, we could embark in America at 8 p.m. and disembark upon the moon before 6 o'clock the next morning. But now another problem arises. After we have reached the moon, how are we to get home? That is a difficult question to answer, although if we had the necessary mechanism to propel our craft, it would be easier to return to the earth than to go to the moon. Upon the lunar surface, owing to the smaller mass of the moon, the force of gravity is only about one-sixth that of our terrestrial gravity, and it would therefore require a velocity of only a little more than 6,000 feet per second to overcome it. However, the voyage would be longer, about 56 hours. Thus the whole trip to the moon and back, if there were no delay, would take almost three days. Shall we ever visit the moon? If we, or any of the generations following us, should travel to this beautiful satellite of ours, they would, according to the testimony of the telescope, find it to be indeed a waterless, weird, and wonderful place. And of Shall we ever be able to visit the moon by Charles Nevers Holmes Read by Anita Sloma Martinez A Talk with Mr. Oscar Wilde by Gilbert Burgess From the Sketch, 9th of January, 1895 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org On the morning following the production of an ideal husband, I met Mr. Oscar Wilde as he came down the steps of a club at the top of St. James's Street, and I took advantage of the occasion to ask him what he thought of the attitude of the critics towards his play. Well, he replied, as we walked slowly down the street, for a man to be a dramatic critic is as foolish and as inartistic as it would be for a man to be a critic of epics, or a pastoral critic, or a critic of lyrics. All modes of art are one, and the modes of the art that employs words as its medium are quite indivisible. The result of the vulgar specialization of criticism is an elaborate scientific knowledge of the stage, almost as elaborate as that of the stage carpenter, and quite on a par with that of the call-boy. Combined with an entire incapacity to realize that a play is a work of art, or to receive any artistic impressions at all. You are rather severe upon dramatic criticism, Mr. Wilde. English dramatic criticism of our own day has never had a single success, in spite of the fact that it goes to all the first nights. But, I suggested, it is influential. Certainly, that is why it is so bad. I don't think I quite. The moment criticism exercises any influence, it ceases to be criticism. The aim of the true critic is to try and chronicle his own moods, not to try and correct the masterpieces of others. Real critics would be charming in your eyes, then? Real critics? How perfectly charming they would be! I am always waiting for their arrival. An inaudible school would be nice? Why do you not found it? I was momentarily dazed at the broad vista that had been opened for me, but I retained my presence of mind, and asked, Are there absolutely no real critics in London? There are just two. Who are they? I asked eagerly. Mr. Wilde, with the elaborate courtesy for which he has always been famous, replied, I think I had better not mention their names. It might make the others so jealous. What do the literary cliques think of your play? I don't write to please cliques. I write to please myself. Besides, I have always had grave suspicions that the basis of all literary cliques is a morbid love of meat teas. That makes them sadly uncivilised. Still, if your critics offend you, why don't you reply to them? I have far too much time, but I think some day I will give a general answer, in the form of a lecture in a public hall, which I shall call Straight Talks to Old Men. What is your feeling towards your audiences, towards the public? Which public? There are as many publics as there are personalities. Are you nervous on the night that you're producing a new play? Oh, no, I am exquisitely indifferent. My nervousness ends at the last dress rehearsal. I know then what effect my play, as presented upon the stage, has produced upon me. My interest in the play ends there, and I feel curiously envious of the public. They have such wonderful, fresh emotions in store for them. I laughed, but Mr. Wilde rebuked me with a look of surprise. It is the public, not the play, that I desire to make a success, he said, but I'm afraid I don't quite understand. The public makes a success when it realises that a play is a work of art. On the three first nights I have had in London, the public has been most successful, and, had the dimensions of the stage admitted of it, I would have called them before the curtain. Most managers, I believe, call them behind. I imagine then that you don't hold with the opinion that the public is the patron of the dramatist. The artist is always the munificent patron of the public. I am very fond of the public and, personally, I always patronise the public very much. What are your views upon the much vexed question of subject matter in art? Everything matters in art, except the subject. When I recovered, I said, several plays have been written lately that deal with the monstrous injustice of the social code of morality at the present time. Ah! answered Mr. Wilde, with an air of earnest conviction, it is indeed a burning shame that there should be one law for men and another law for women. I think—he hesitated, and a smile as swift as stones, hectic of a moment, flitted across his face—I think that there should be no law for anybody. In writing do you think that real life or real people should ever give one inspiration? The colour of a flower may suggest to one the plot of a tragedy. A passage in music may give one the sestect of a sonnet, but whatever actually occurs gives the artist no suggestion. Every romance that one has in one's life is a romance lost to one's art. To introduce real people into a novel or a play is a sign of an unimaginative mind, a coarse and tutored observation, and an entire absence of style. I'm afraid I can't agree with you, Mr. Wilde. I frequently see types and people who suggest ideas to me. Everything is of use to the artist except an idea. After this I was silent, until Mr. Wilde pointed to the bottom of the street and drew my attention to the apricot-coloured palace which we were approaching, so I continued my questioning. The enemy has said that your plays lack action. Yes, English critics always confuse the action of a play with the incidence of a melodrama. I wrote the first act of A Woman of No Importance in answer to the critics who said that Lady Windermere's fan lacked action. In the act in question there was absolutely no action at all. It was a perfect act. What do you think is the chief point the critics have missed in your new play? It's entire psychology. The difference in the way in which a man loves a woman, from that in which a woman loves a man, the passion that women have for making ideals, which is their weakness, and the weakness of a man who dare not show his imperfections to the thing he loves. The end of Act 1, the end of Act 2, and the scene in the last act, when Lord Goring points out the higher importance of a man's life over the woman's, to take three prominent instances, seem to have been quite missed by most of the critics. They fail to see their meaning. They really thought it was a play about a bracelet. We must educate our critics. We must really educate them," said Mr. Wilde, half to himself. The critics subordinate the psychological interest of a play to its mere technique. As soon as a dramatist invents an ingenious situation, they compare him with Sardu. But Sardu is an artist not because of his marvellous instinctive stagecraft, but in spite of it. In the third act of Letosca, the scene of the torture, he moved us by a terrible human tragedy, not by his knowledge of stage methods. Sardu is not understood in England, because he is only known through a rather ordinary travesty of his play, Dora, which was brought out here under the title of Diplomacy. I have been considerably amused by so many of the critics, suggesting that the incident of the diamond bracelet in Act III of my new play was suggested by Sardu. It does not occur in any of Sardu's plays, and it was not in my play until less than ten days before production. Nobody else's work gives me any suggestion. It is only by entire isolation from everything that one can do any work. Idleness gives one the mood in which to write, isolation, the conditions. Concentration on oneself reveals the new and wonderful world that one presents in the colour and cadence of words in movement. And yet we want something more than literature in a play, said I. That is merely because the critics have always propounded the degrading dogma that the duty of the dramatist is to please the public. Resetti did not weave words into sonnets to please the public, and Corot did not paint silver and grey twilight to please the public. The mere fact of telling an artist to adopt any particular form of art in order to please the public makes him shun it. We shall never have a real drama in England until it is recognised that a play is as personal and individual a form of self-expression as a poem or a picture. I'm afraid you don't like journalists, I remarked nervously. The journalist is always reminding the public of the existence of the artist. That is unnecessary of him. He is always reminding the artist of the existence of the public. That is indecent of him. But we must have journalists, Mr. Wilde. Why? They only record what happens. What does it matter what happens? It is only the abiding things that are interesting, not the hooded incidents of everyday life. Creation, for the joy of creation, is the aim of the artist, and that is why the artist is a more divine type than the saint. The artist arrives at his own moment, with his own mood. He may come with terrible purple tragedies. He may come with dainty rose-coloured comedies. What a charming title! added Mr. Wilde with a smile. I must try to play and call it a rose-coloured comedy. What are the exact relations between literature and the drama? Exquisitely accidental. That is why I think them so necessary. And the exact relations between the actor and the dramatist? Mr. Wilde looked at me with a serious expression which changed almost immediately into a smile, as he replied, usually a little strained. But surely you regard the actor as a creative artist. Yes, replied Mr. Wilde with a touch of pathos in his voice. Terribly creative. Terribly creative. Do not consider the future outlook of the English stage is hopeful. I think it must be. The critics have ceased to prophesy. That is something. It is in the silence that the artist arrives. What is waited for never succeeds. What is headalded is hopeless. We were nearing the sentries at Marlborough House, and I said, Won't you tell me a little more, please? Let us walk down Palmal. Exercise is such a good thing. Exercise? he ejaculated, with an emphasis that almost warrants italics. The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk. And as he spoke he motioned to a passing handsome. We shook hands, and Mr. Wilde, giving me a glance of approval, said, I am sure that you must have a great future in literature before you. What makes you think so? I asked, as I flushed with pleasure at the prediction. Because you seem to me such a very bad interviewer. I feel sure that you must write poetry. I certainly like the colour of your neck-tie very much. Goodbye. The cardinal sin of the public man is theft. The cardinal sin of the public writer is mendacity. I abhor a thief, and I abhor a liar as much as I abhor a thief. I abhor the assassin who tries to kill a man. I abhor almost equally the assassin of that man's character. From shaping of public opinion and the Ninth Commandment. Chapter 7 Applying the Ninth Commandment Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Mr. Roosevelt considered the Eighth and Ninth Commandments particularly applicable to public conditions, for one commanded the honest hand while the other commanded the honest tongue. If there was one person more than another for whom he felt profound contempt, it was the person with the forked tongue. He himself was the soul of candour. He would not dissimulate. What he had to say to an individual, he said to him direct and face to face. In his fight for a clean state he ran counter to numbers of men who were expert in trimming their sails to meet the prevailing wind. These men cared not what they did, nor for whom they worked provided the price paid was large enough. May 12, 1900 he published in the Outlook an article which he called The Eighth and Ninth Commandments in Politics, in which he explained how gravely those endanger the country who bear false witness against the honest man. In that article he wrote, Liar is just as ugly a word as thief because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in the one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law. Under the higher law, under the great law of morality and righteousness, he is precisely as guilty of, instead of lying in a court, he lies in a newspaper or on the stump. And in all probability the evil effects of his conduct are infinitely more widespread and more pernicious. The difference between perjury and mendacity is not in the least one of morals or ethics, it is simply one of legal forms. He found plenty of invective for editors, reformers, and clergymen who assailed men in conditions without proper knowledge of the facts. Criticism was needed, but the critic should remain silent unless he was assured that his criticism was truthful. It is quite as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell the truth about one who is not decent. When a certain newspaper reporter hit upon the name Ananias Club, Mr. Roosevelt eagerly seized upon it for cataloging those shifty individuals who misrepresented facts. The clubs served to put them where they belonged and to reveal their exact status to the country. The name especially appealed to him on account of his intimate knowledge of the Bible, where the mendacity of Ananias and Saphira his wife is recorded. The instance is recorded in the fifth chapter of Acts, where the two conspired to hold back from the Apostles Peter and John part of the price of the land they had bought representing it as the whole. Hence the Ananias Club was an excellent organization into which to put modern deceivers, men who could not be dependent on to tell the truth or to represent the exact facts against one's neighbor. He thought it would be well for writers and speakers to keep in mind the comment of Puddin Head Wilson, who said that while there were 999 kinds of falsehood, the only kind of specifically condemned in Scripture, just as murder, theft and adultery are condemned, this bearing false witness against one's neighbor. The Ananias Club rapidly became famous. The country delighted in it. Roosevelt took an immense delight in adding to the membership and secretly not a little satisfaction in getting before the country the names of false-hearted men who had long and bitterly opposed his policy of reform. He may have assigned persons to membership who did not deserve the notoriety. Roosevelt was not a paragon of patience when opposition from individuals he considered in the wrong was concerned. He had intensely human qualities, which were at once his strength and his weakness. He spoke as he felt with impetuous fervor. A number of times in his career, notably when he endorsed the Ananias Club following the organization of the Progressive Party and after the sinking of the Lusitania, he spoke and wrote with a bitter invective that made him many enemies and seriously impaired his influence in the estimation of a number of good people. As a matter of fact, his attitude in these instances was proof of his honesty. Other persons feel and dissimulate or remain silent through policy. Roosevelt felt and spoke his convictions, though he must have known the result for no man understood better how public opinion shapes itself. His enemies charged him with a long list of shortcomings. No one of them, however, at any time, accused him of being a hypocrite. His wide-open honesty of purpose was too evident. Roosevelt originated the term muckraker. Using the phrase first in an address given March 17, 1906, had a dinner prepared by Speaker Cannon for the Gridiron Club in Washington. He took the figure from Pilgrim's Progress, where is described the man with the muckrake, who would not look up to take the celestial crowd offered him, but kept his eyes on the filth he was raking up. Newspapers and magazines, at the time when the Roosevelt publicity method was uncovering an unbelievable amount of corruption and special privilege in high places, made much of the opportunity and printed articles that reeked with sensational discovery of malfeasance in high places. Roosevelt at once went to the heart of the matter. He said, He objected chiefly to that kind of writing, because it confused the public mind. To accuse an honest man of dishonesty, encourages rogues, and prevents decent citizenry. He objected chiefly to that kind of writing, because it confused the public mind. To accuse an honest man of dishonesty, encourages rogues, and prevents decent citizens from distinguishing the true attack from the false. By and by the average citizen distrusts all public servants, becomes disheartened, and ceases to believe an honest efficient government possible. Speaking after a political experience of thirty years, during which period he had not only every opportunity for observation, but the disposition and the mental balance to draw correct conclusions, he said that if he were to name three evils against which the nation should war most relentlessly, he would name dishonesty, lawless violence, untruthfulness and mendacity, especially that kind of mendacity, that took the form of slander. In this connection he remarked, For thirty years I have striven so far as the power was given me to fight for the cause of decency, and I feel that the greatest drawback in any such struggle is the man who consistently speaks what is not true until he misleads the public so that they cannot tell the truth from the false. He had suffered severely from writers who had not understood his motives, and who had misrepresented the cause for which he contended, and therefore was familiar with the immense power for harm possessed by these men. On more than one occasion he forcefully expressed himself in this particular. The influence wielded by newspapers in popular magazines is enormous, and in proportion to their influence, publishers, editors, writers and reporters should consider themselves public servants, and as such, quote, only exact fact, they should spend themselves finding the truth, for it is what they write that determines public opinion. He heartily condemned that paper or magazine which sought to sell as many copies as possible, and that only, that gave the public what it wanted, whether truth or falsehood. The first requisite of the person who writes should be honesty. He should not hesitate to tell the entire truth, however unpopular. His ideal newspaper man or editor applies so well that we shall quote it. He included the description in an address on the public press given before the Milwaukee Press Club, September 7, 1910. The highest type of newspaper man ought to try to put his business above all other businesses. The editor who stands as a judge in a community should be one of the men to whom you would expect to look up, because his function as an editor makes him a more important man than the average merchant, the average businessman, or the average professional man can be. He wields great influence, and he cannot escape the responsibility of wielding it. If he wields it well, honor is his beyond the honor that comes to the average man who does well. If he wields it ill, shame should be his beyond the shame that comes to the average man who does ill. And what I say of the editor applies to every man who writes for a newspaper or a magazine or who is connected with it in any capacity. One of the achievements of the Roosevelt administration was the passing of the Pure Food and Drugs Act. The act was persistently opposed by a large number of merchants who were making fortunes by illicit sales of adulterated products, chiefly foods. These merchants sold goods by means of a deceptive label that misrepresented the contents of the package. Since the adulterated food men advertised heavily in newspapers and magazines, papers and magazines carrying their advertisements threw in the great weight of their opposition. In fact, opposition was so well entrenched that six years passed before the bill became law. On the same principle that false witness should not prevail in high places, Roosevelt prosecuted vigorously other malefactor corporations. Scandalous abuses were practiced in the large meat-packing houses of Chicago and other cities. Despite bitter opposition from the packers and their satellites, a good meat investigation law was framed and passed. He stopped flagrant corruption by the railroads by abolishing the pernicious system of rebates and by favoring the passage of the Hepburn bill, which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission control over the railroads. He uncovered frauds perpetrated by the great American refining company, the Sugar Trust, punished the criminals, and restored to the United States Treasury four million dollars stolen by the trust through a system of short waits. Charles R. Heike, Secretary and Treasurer of the Sugar Trust, was convicted and sentenced to prison. About the same time Charles W. Morse, a prominent New York banker, was convicted of fraudulent handling of the people's money and likewise sentenced. Both these men, due to the influence of their position, were able to get commutation of their sentences. In view of this, and influenced by the fact that several of their subordinates who had been associated with the big criminals were obliged to serve out their term in jail, Roosevelt wrote his opinion of condoning the evil deeds of powerful men. Every time a big money defender who naturally excites interest in sympathy and who has many friends is excused from serving a sentence which a man of less prominence and fewer friends would have to serve, justice is discredited in the eyes of the plain people, and to undermine faith and justice is to strike at the foundation of the Republic. Roosevelt attacked slander and misrepresentation however powerful and high placed the factor that was practicing it. The New York Herald, one of the largest and wealthiest papers in the country, owned and edited by James Gordon Bennett, was found to be carrying a personal column of villainous character. At Roosevelt's order District Attorney Harry Stimson sued James Gordon Bennett for violation of the law that prohibited circulation of obscene literature through the males. Mr. Bennett was living at the time in Paris, and every effort was made to enable him to conduct his case from that city. Even the friendship of the Herald was offered Mr. Roosevelt, but the law declared that the accused must appear in person to answer to a criminal charge, and the prosecution made the law apply to Mr. Bennett as it would have made it apply to an unknown defendant. Mr. Bennett eventually crossed the ocean and was sentenced by the court to pay a fine of $30,000. The obnoxious personal column disappeared from the Herald, but Roosevelt thereafter was relentlessly pursued in the columns of that paper. The other New York papers had excluded all mention of the trial, save one obscure notice. In consequence, the public does not know today why the Herald under Bennett pursued the Roosevelt administration with such persistent, virulent opposition. The belief has prevailed quite widely that Roosevelt was a party man, and that he was a shrewd politician. Listen to his own statement in regard to the matter, a statement he bore out more than once to the letter. I ask you, whatever your politics may be, to be nonpartisan when the question of honesty is involved. A certain type of big corrupt corporation cares nothing whatever for political parties when its interests are at stake, and labor unions of the same type act in the same fashion. I ask the people in their turn to pay no heed to parties when the great fundamental issues of honest and decency as against dishonesty and indecency are involved. Only let them act in the reverse way from the corporations and unions in question. When it comes to the question of a crook, I will respect party feeling to just this extent. If there are two crooks, one of my party and one of another party, I will cinch the crook of my party first because I feel a shade more responsible for him. It must be evident that Roosevelt faced continually grave and critical periods in his application of the Ninth Commandment, and faced along with them the human tendency to indecision and nonaction. Excuses can usually be found for refusing to assume risks that carry with them certain censure and determined opposition. Roosevelt's idea of action in such instances is thus revealed. If the man is worth his salt, he will do his duty. He will give the people the benefit of the doubt and act in any way which their interests demand and which is not affirmatively prohibited by law, unheeding the likelihood that he himself, when the crisis is over and the danger passed, will be assailed for what he has done. In an address he delivered before the Pacific Theological Seminary in September 1911, he appealed for honesty in public life as follows. To all good citizens, I make the appeal to stand for honesty in public life and to stand for the creation of an opinion which shall demand truth and decency in the press and the magazines. Do what you can by private effort, but especially by organized effort, and by pressure upon those who are your representatives to bring about the day when the man who willfully misleads the public and willfully lies to the public on any question of interest to the public shall be amenable if possible to the law, if not to the force of public opinion exactly as if he were a mal-factor of any other kind. In Roosevelt's estimation the chief offense of the public man was theft and that of the public writer of mendacity. The infamy of the creature who tries to assassinate an upright and honest public servant doing his duty, he said once, is no greater than the infamy of the creature who tries to assassinate an honest man's character. In his judgment the two cardinal points for voting citizens were, Thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Multitudes of men break these moral laws and escape human law because they are adroit, but in the eyes of the higher justice they are equally as culpable as their more foolish brethren who get into the penitentiary. We can afford to differ on the currency, the tariff, the foreign policy, but we cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty in itself of quite evident importance is not enough. Public servants must have the courage and wisdom to enforce unpopular measures. Honesty is not salvation for weaklings and cowards. Slander, perversion of truth, and dishonest manipulation of funds had small chance while Mr. Roosevelt was president. He was at all times a defender of public righteousness. It is a good old principle to act upon in the long run, he declared, that the most uncomfortable truth is a safer traveling companion than the pleasantest falsehood. He based his attitude on an ancient and wise code and he could not have had a better justification. End of Chapter 7 Applying the Ninth Commandment from the Ideals of Theodore Roosevelt by Edward H. Cotton Travels in the Air Chapter 3 A Sense from Wolverhampton September 5, 1862 by James Glacier This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to learn how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org September 5, 1862 This ascent had been delayed owing to the unfavorable state of the weather. We left the earth at one hour three minutes p.m. The temperature of the air was 59 degrees and that of the dew point 50 degrees. The air at first was misty. At the height of 5,000 feet the temperature was 41 degrees, dew point 37.9. At one hour 13 minutes we entered a dense cloud of about 1,100 feet in thickness where the temperature fell to 36.5 degrees, the dew point being the same, thus indicating that the air here was saturated with moisture. At this elevation the report of a gun was heard. Momentarily the clouds became lighter and on emerging from them at one hour 17 minutes a flood of strong sunlight burst upon us with a beautiful blue sky without a cloud. And beneath us lay a magnificent sea of clouds. Its surface varied with endless hills, hillocks and mountain chains and with many snow-white tufts rising from it. I here attempted to take a view with the camera, but we were rising with too great rapidity and revolving too quickly to enable me to succeed. The brightness of the clouds however was so great that I should have needed but a momentary exposure. Dr. Hill Norris having kindly furnished me with extremely sensitive dry plates for the purpose. We reached the height of two miles at one hour 22 minutes where the sky was of a darker blue and from whence the earth was visible in occasional patches beneath the clouds. The temperature had fallen to the freezing point and the dew point to 26 degrees. The height of three miles was attained at one hour 28 minutes with a temperature of 18 degrees and dew point 13 degrees. From one hour 22 minutes to one hour 30 minutes the wet bulb thermometer read incorrectly, the ice not being properly formed on it. At one hour 34 minutes Mr. Coxwell was panting for breath. At one hour 38 minutes the mercury of Danielle's hygrometer fell below the limits of the scale. We reached the elevation of four miles at one hour 40 minutes. The temperature was 8 degrees the dew point minus 15 degrees or 47 degrees below the freezing point of water. Discharging sand we in 10 minutes attained the altitude of five miles and the temperature had passed below zero and then read minus 2.0 degrees. At this point no dew was observed on Regnault's hygrometer when cooled down to minus 30 degrees. Up to this time I had taken observations with comfort and experienced no difficulty in breathing, whilst Mr. Coxwell, in consequence of the exertions he had to make, had breathed with difficulty for some time. Having discharged sand we ascended still higher. The aspirator became troublesome to work and I also found a difficulty in seeing clearly. At one hour 51 minutes the barometer read 10.8 inches. About one hour 52 minutes or later I read the dry bulb thermometer as minus 5 degrees. After this I could not see the column of mercury in the wet bulb thermometer, nor the hands of the watch, nor the fine divisions on any instrument. I asked Mr. Coxwell to help me to read the instruments. In consequence, however, of the rotary motion of the balloon which had continued without ceasing since leaving the earth, the valve line had become entangled and he had to leave the car and mount into the ring to readjust it. I then looked at the barometer and found its reading to be 19.75 inches, still decreasing fast, implying a height exceeding 29,000 feet. Shortly after I laid my arm upon the table, possessed of its full vigor, but on being desirous of using it I found it powerless. It must have lost its power momentarily. Trying to move the other arm I found it powerless also. Then I tried to shake myself and succeeded, but I seemed to have no limbs. In looking at the barometer my head fell over my left shoulder. I struggled and shook my body again, but could not move my arms. Getting my head upright for an instant only, it fell on my right shoulder. Then I fell backwards, my back resting against the side of the car and my head on its edge. In this position my eyes were directed to Mr. Coxwell in the ring. When I shook my body I seemed to have full power over the muscles of the back, and considerably so over those of the neck, but none over either my arms or my legs. As in the case of the arms, so all muscular power was lost in an instant from my back and neck. I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell and endeavored to speak, but could not. In an instant intense darkness overcame me so that the optic nerve lost power suddenly, but I was still conscious, with as active a brain as at the present moment whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia and believed I should experience nothing more as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were entering my mind when I suddenly became unconscious as ongoing to sleep. I cannot tell anything of the sense of hearing as no sound reaches the air to break the perfect stillness and silence of the regions between six and seven miles above the earth. My last observation was made at one hour fifty-four minutes above twenty-nine thousand feet. I supposed two or three minutes to have elapsed between my eyes becoming insensible to seeing fine divisions and one hour and fifty-four minutes, and then two or three minutes more to have passed till I was insensible, which I think therefore took place about one hour fifty-six minutes or fifty-seven minutes. Whilst powerless I heard the words temperature and observation, and I knew Mr. Coxwell was in the car speaking to and endeavouring to rouse me. Therefore consciousness and hearing had returned. I then heard him speak more emphatically but could not see, speak, or move. I heard him again say, do try, now do. Then the instruments became dimly visible. Then Mr. Coxwell, and very shortly I, saw clearly. Next I arose in my seat and looked around as though waking from sleep, though not refreshed, and said to Mr. Coxwell, I have been insensible. He said, you have, and I too very nearly. I then drew up my legs which had been extended and took a pencil in my hand to begin observations. Mr. Coxwell told me that he had lost the use of his hands, which were black, and I poured brandy over them. I resumed my observations at two hours seven minutes, recording the barometer reading at eleven point five three inches, and temperature minus two degrees. It is probable that three or four minutes passed from the time of my hearing the words temperature and observation till I began to observe. If so, returning consciousness came at two hours four minutes p.m., and this gives seven minutes for total insensibility. I found the water in the vessel supplying the wet bulb thermometer, one solid mass of ice, though I had by frequent disturbances kept it from freezing. It did not all melt until we had been on the ground some time. Mr. Coxwell told me that while in the ring he felt it piercingly cold that whorefrost was all around the neck of the balloon and that on attempting to leave the ring he found his hands frozen. He had therefore to place his arms on the ring and drop down. When he saw me he thought for a moment that I had lain back to rest myself and he spoke to me without eliciting a reply. He then noticed that my legs projected and my arms hung down by my side and saw that my countenance was serene and placid without the earnestness and anxiety he had observed before going into the ring. Then it struck him that I was insensible. He wished to approach me but could not and when he felt insensibility coming over him too he became anxious to open the valve. But in consequence of having lost the use of his hands he could not do this. Ultimately he succeeded by seizing the cord with his teeth and dipping his head two or three times until the balloon took a decided turn downward. No inconvenience followed my insensibility and when we dropped it was in a country where no conveyance of any kind could be obtained so I had to walk between seven and eight miles. During the descent which was at first very rapid the wind was easterly. To check the rapidity of the descent sand was thrown out at two hours and thirty minutes. The wet bulb seemed to be free from ice at this time but I held the bulb between my thumb and finger for the purpose of melting any ice remaining on it or the connecting thread. The readings after this appeared correct. That took place in the center of a large grass field belonging to Mr. Cursall at Cold Weston seven miles and a half from Ludlow. I have already said that my last observation was made at a height of twenty nine thousand feet. At this time one hour fifty four minutes we were ascending at the rate of one thousand feet per minute and when I resumed observations we were descending at a rate of two thousand feet per minute. These two positions must be connected taking into account the interval of time between this thirteen minutes. And on these considerations the balloon must have attained the altitude of thirty six thousand or thirty seven thousand feet. Again a very delicate minimum thermometer read minus eleven point nine degrees and this would give a height of thirty seven thousand feet. Mr. Cursall on coming from the ring noticed that the center of the aneroid barometer its blue hand and a rope attached to the car were all in the same straight line and this gave a reading of seven inches and leads to the same result. Therefore these independent means all lead to about the same elevation this fully seven miles. In this ascent six pigeons were taken up. One was thrown out at the height of three miles when it extended its wings and dropped like a piece of paper. The second at four miles flew vigorously round and round apparently taking a dip each time. The third was thrown out between four and five miles and it fell downwards as a stone. A fourth was thrown out at four miles on descending. It flew in a circle and shortly alighted on top of the balloon. The two remaining pigeons were brought down to the ground. One was found to be dead and the other a carrier was still living but would not leave the hand when I attempted to throw it off till after a quarter of an hour it began to peck at a piece of ribbon with which its neck was encircled. It was then jerked off the finger and shortly afterwards flew with some vigor towards Wolverhampton. One of the pigeons returned to Wolverhampton on Thursday the 7th and it was the only one I ever heard of. In this ascent on passing out of the clouds there was an increase of nine degrees and then there was no interruption in the decrease of temperature till the height of 15,000 feet was reached when a warm current of air was entered which continued to 24,000 feet after which the regular decrease of temperature continued to the highest point reached. On descending the same current was again met with between 22,000 and 23,000 feet. A similar interruption but to a greater amount was experienced till the balloon had descended to about the same height in which it was reached on ascending. After this, no further break occurred in the regular increase of temperature the sky being clear till the descent was completed. From the general agreement of the results as observed by Regnault's hygrometer and those of the dew point as found by the dry and wet bulb thermometers there can be no doubt that the temperature of the dew point at height succeeding 30,000 feet must have been as low as minus 50 degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit scale or 82 degrees below the freezing point of water implying that the air was very dry. End of travels in the air Chapter 3 A Sense from Wolverhampton, September 5, 1862 by James Glacier