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Saturday, May 19, 2018

GOING IN CIRCLES

I doubt any critics will be surprised that on Thursday, 27 August, 1909 - opening day for the industrial test tack called the Indianapolis Motor Speedway -  two men were killed. The day began with Barney Oldfield setting a closed track speed record, covering a measured mile on the crushed stone and tar and water soaked  surface in 43 1/5 seconds – 84 miles per hour. And then Louis Chevrolet ran 4 laps (10 miles) around the 2 ½ mile oval in 8 minutes and 56 seconds – 67 miles per hour - another world speed record. But the centerpiece of the opening day was sponsored by a company that made natural gas lamps for automobiles, the “Prest-O-Lite 250 mile, $1,500 Trophy” race.
Even though there were only nine cars entered, the track surface quickly began to come apart. Arthur Chevrolet, driving a Buick, was lapping the field when, on lap 52, a stone kicked up by a slower car hit his goggles, driving glass fragments into his eye. Somehow he safely pulled off the track. Six laps later driver Wilfrid “Billy” Bourque, was warned by his riding mechanic Harry Holcombe of a car coming up from behind. While barreling down the main stretch at over 75 miles an hour, Wildrid looked over his shoulder, thus not seeing a deep rut torn in the surface just in front of the start/finish line.
The big steering wheel was jerked to the left, sending the car careening through a fence and slamming into the embankment of a drainage ditch. Following the laws of the conservation of energy, the back end of the car kept trying to continue at speed, lifting up to overcome the obstacle,  flipping the car upside down and catapulting the unrestrained passengers out of the cockpit. Harry Holcomb was hurled into a fence post, breaking both his arms, several of his ribs and smashing his skull. He died instantly. With a death grip on the over sized steering wheel Wilfrid "William" Bourque, stayed with the  2,300 pound car longer, slamming into the earth closer to the upended car.  Doctors found both of his legs were broken, one lung was punctured by broken ribs and his skull also fractured. He died without ever regaining consciousness. The Marion County coroner John J. Blackwell blamed the condition of the race track for the deaths.
But principle owner/promoter Carl Fisher (above), who was also an Indianapolis auto maker, insisted the track was safe. And Friday's races were held without incident. Then, on Saturday, 29 August, in front of more then 35,000 fans, the crushed stone track came apart again. This time a racer went off the track and plowed into the crowd. Again a riding mechanic was killed, this time along with two spectators, Homer Joliff, and James West. When another race car smashed into supports for a pedestrian bridge over the main stretch, the race was halted 65 laps short. Critics started calling the speedway “Fisher's Folly”.
But Carl was no fool. He canceled races set for October, and instead replaced the entire surface with 3,200,000 ten pound paving bricks. Guardrails were also installed on all four turns. “The Brickyard” was thus born, as was the myth that tragedies at the track immediately inspired new safety improvements. The first “Memorial Day 500 mile Sweepstakes” was held on Saturday, 27 May, 1911, and was won by Ray Harroun with his riding mechanic replaced by a rear view mirror, so Harroun would not have to turn his head to look for overtaking traffic. But in fact, Harroun's innovation inspired a rule requiring all cars to carry riding mechanics, which was not lifted until 1936, after another unlucky 13 riding mechanics had been killed at the track
Between the first tragic event in 1909 and 1950, 36 drivers and riding mechanics, two track workers and five spectators were killed at the Indianapolis Speedway, including 12 year old Wilbur Brink (above), who died while sitting in his own front yard at 2316 Georgetown Road . On Memorial Day, 1931 a rear wheel broke off a race car and came careening across the street, crushing the boy. It would be 1999 before wheel tethers would be required on all Indy cars to prevent that from happening again, or at lest make it less likely.
But who were these men who risked their lives to drive in circles in 1950?  Over half of the drivers who started the 1950 Indy 500 would die in racing accidents. The risks seem obvious today, because they still drove without seat belts (not required until 1956) roll bars (1959) or minimum standards for helmets (1960).  But to that generation of drivers, the dangers were accepted.  Almost without exception, they raced not because they loved speed, although they might. They raced because they were good at it, because if you won it paid better than an hourly wage, and even if you lost, it did not involve a much greater risk than construction or farming in the days before work place safety regulations.
In 1950 what may have been the most naturally talented driver who would ever race in Indianapolis  arrived at the track from California. His name was William “Bill” Vukovich; or to the press “The Mad Russian” or more accurately "The Silent Serb". His few friends just called him "Vuky". He was by all the accounts of those who saw him and who raced against him, the greatest natural driver they had ever seen. His father had been a carpenter who, on 13 December, 1923, had shot himself - on Bill’s 14th birthday. Vuky had to drop out of school to support his mother and his five brothers and six sisters. He began racing hot rods on the weekends, because he earned up to $15 for winning a race.
It was a cut throat competition. If Vuky didn’t win, his family might not eat. Vuky warned his older brother, when he took up the sport, “Don’t tangle with me. On the track you are just another driver.” By his 18th birthday Vuky was winning races regularly. And despite burns on his hands, broken shoulders, cracked ribs and a broken collar bone, all suffered in accidents, he was now earning up to $50 a week, at a time when the highest paid union workers (typesetters) were making $75 a week. 
To the local press, he became “The Fresno Flash”. Vuky didn’t smoke or drink and he stayed in shape by running daily.  All he cared bout was winning races. He was, in the words of one competitor, “…the epitome of excellence in motion”. And daring.  In one race Vuky so frightened his riding mechanic, the man could not stop screaming.  Finally, while the car was airborne yet again, Vuky took his hands off the wheel and told his complaining companion, “Okay, you drive it.” After the race the mechanic retired. But Vuky won that race. It was the age of “iron men in steel cars”, when trauma and fear were things to be endured but not talked about because nothing could be done to mitigate them. And the shy, quiet Yugoslavian with the lead foot seemed to fit that image.
Vuky couldn't get a ride on his first trip to Indianapolis in 1950, despite being the National midget car champion. But in the 1951 race, Vuky started in the 20th position and 15 laps later he was running 10th. Fifteen laps after that he was out of race with a broken oil tank. But for his 29th place finish, Vuky earned $750. And he earned respect. The next year he was hired to replace three time 500 winner Mauri Rose, who was retiring. With a competitive car under his hands, Vuky was leading the 1952 race when a steering pin broke with just 8 laps to go, sending him into a wall. He finished 17th.
In 1953, Vuky led 195 out of 200 laps and survived scorching temperatures (130 degrees Fahrenheit on the track, which caused one driver to die of heat prostration). And he won his first Indy 500 by 3 ½ minutes over the second place car of Art Cross .
 Vuky's purse was $89,496.00 (the equivalent of $760,000 today). And there can be no doubt, he won the race because of his skill. his physical conditioning, and because of his determination. 
But neither can there be any doubt, the victory and the effort were draining his body and mind. He was still running, still trying to prove himself worthy to a father who left.
The next year, 1954, Vuky won again, becoming only the third driver in history to win back-to-back 500’s. Roger Ward, who would go on to win two 500s himself, said that “Bill Vukovich was probably the greatest actual driver we have ever known…”. Vuky’s formula for success remained simple. "The only way to win here is to keep your foot on the throttle and turn left." The money was important, because Vuky had two growing children to support.
At the start of the 1955 race Vuky (above, left) and Jack McGrath (above, right) dueled through gusty winds for the lead. But Vuky took first place on lap 26 and never gave it up. By lap 48 he was leading McGrath by 10 seconds and had a full lap lead over 26 of the 33 other cars in the field. Then on lap 54 Jack McGrath dropped out with mechanical problems. Vuky seemed to be well on his way to an historic three straight Indy 500 wins.
Then, on lap 57 Vuky swept out of Turn Two and started down the 5/8 of a mile long back stretch. Just in front of him were the slower cars of Roger Ward,  NASCAR driver Al Keller and rookie Johnny Boyd. Vuky was approaching a window for a pit stop and he took the opportunity to glance down at his rear tires (the drive wheels) to check for wear. That may have been a fatal mistake, because suddenly things began to happen with lightening speed. A guest of wind had hit Ward’s car just as it came off the 14 degree banking of the second turn. This shoved him into the outside wall (above, smoke). No one caused it. It was a racing accident. 
Ward's car bounced off the wall sideways. The edge of both left side tires caught on the bricks, and his car flipped twice (above, right).  Keller steered left, away from of Ward’s car (above left).
Roger Ward' car landed right side up in the middle of the track (above center). Meanwhile, Keller (above left), trying to avoid spinning out on the infield  grass, turned his steering wheel to the right, back onto the tack. But he over corrected.
Keller clipped Al Boyd’s car, sending it in front of Vuky 's number 14.  In that instant, and just for that instant, the track was completely blocked. Nobody was to blame. It was the classic “racing accident”. Vuky’s left front tire struck Boyd’s spinning right front tire. The moving surface catapulted Vuky's car into the air. (above, right) at over 130 miles an hour.
 Vuky's car just cleared the low outside wall, and then came down nose first, the heavy engine driving itself into the pavement of the service road (above, center). Again, conservation of momentum drove the rear of Vuky's car forward, sending it head over tail, flipping down the service road. On that first flip, Vuky's head clipped the bottom of the pedestrian bridge (above, background) stretching over the backstretch, almost decapitating him. 
Having passed under the bridge, Vuky's car was now cartwheeling down the service road outside the wall. 
The nose of the roadster slammed into the hood of a parked car, tore across the hood of a red pickup truck (above)....
...and then crashed onto the top of a jeep, occupied by two national Guardsmen. 
Vuky’s car then flipped once more, before slamming into the ground  upside down (above, center), 400 feet  (2 city blocks) from where it had sailed over the fence at 130 miles an hour. Fire broke out from the ruptured fuel tank within seconds.
A friend of Vuky’s from Fresno, Ed “Smokey” Elisian, came out of the number two turn just after Vuky went over the wall. Sensing what had happened, he slid to a halt on the infield grass and then ran across the track (above, in white, center) almost being struck by another racer, desperate to reach his friend. 
He and others tried to lift the car to pull Vuky out, but the flames drove the would-be rescuers back. Ed Elisian kept repeating, “I’ve got to get him out.” But it was twenty minutes before fire equipment arrived (there were no fire engines stationed on the outside the track) and the car was finally cool enough to be tipped over to pull Vuky’s lifeless body out of the wreckage.
Looking at the car after the crash (above), it is difficult to believe a man died in it. The car remained largely intact, except for the cutting made to allow removal of Vuky's body. All of the violence of the impact had been transferred directly to the driver.

The fear and horror was that Vuky had died in the fire, burning alive while trapped under his car, trying to claw his way out (above). But the autopsy showed he had died before the fire ever broke out, from a basal skull fracture suffered while flipping under the pedestrian bridge. That obstruction would be removed the next year, in 1956, and replaced by a tunnel.
Bill Vukovich has a record never equaled at the Indianapolis Speedway, and one that may never be matched.  Now only did he lead the most laps for three years in a row, but he led 72% of all the laps he ran in competition at the Indianapolis Speedway. Could he have won three in a row? When asked, Vuky was pragmatic: "I plan on driving a couple of more years here anyway. And a guy can keep on winning here. He's got to have luck, sure, and the right combination. But it's not impossible. Nothing is impossible."   There was no second place for Bill Vukovich. And that is still true. He is buried in his home town of Fresno, California.
Details of the crash have been exhaustively researched by Rex Dean, whose web site offers a comprehensive and well written forensic account of Vuky’s final accident. The death toll at the speedway now totals 66, the last car driver killed being Tony Renna, who died in October 2003, in a crash during tire testing. The attendance on race day now exceeds 300,000 people. The average speed for the 33 racers for the 2015 Indy field was 223 miles per hour, and the winner covered the 500 miles in 3 hours and 5 minutes. Safely
Impressive, for a track designed in 1908, for cars averaging 90 miles per hour, in which safety was less of a concern than pushing the car to the breaking point of its parts. The human spirit, its courage and traumas, has survived the test track called the Indianapolis Speedway  for over a century.  But the cost has been high.
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Friday, May 18, 2018

VICKSBURG Chapter Sixty - Seven

At 8:00 a.m., on Thursday, 22 May, 1863, the six Parrot guns of the 1st Wisconsin Light Artillery began to methodically shell the Railroad Redoubt from 600 yards. This massive earthen structure stood above the gorge through which passed the Baldwin Ferry Road and the Southern Railroad line, into Vicksburg.  Boom. Pause. Boom. Pause.  
Six rounds a minute, one round per minute from each rifle, the big Parrots sent 18 pound shell after 18 pound shell screaming at 1,900 feet per second into the packed earth northeastern wall until a portion slumped (above). This created an advantage which did not exist at any other 14 forts, redoubts and redans along the 6 mile front. And this advantage would kill hundreds of Yankee soldiers.
Inside the redoubt - which the rebels had labeled Fort Beauregard - were the traumatized remnants of the 31st Alabama infantry, some 240 men under Montgomery native, recently promoted Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Mann Arrington. Three weeks earlier, their Colonel, Daniel Hudley, had been shot in the hip and captured at Port Hudson, where the regiment had been decimated. Less than a week ago, at Champion Hill, the 31st had lost another 230 men, killed, wounded and captured - half their strength.
The spear which Major General John Alexander McClernand was about to toss at the Railroad Redoubt was the 22nd Iowa “Johnson County” regiment, under 35 year old politician, lawyer and judge, Colonel William Milo Stone (above).  Antebellum, Stone had helped nominate Abraham Lincoln. In April of 1862 Major Stone had been taken prisoner at the Battle of Shiloh. Sent to Richmond's Libby prison, William had been invited to meet Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and carried his peace offer to Washington. When Lincoln refused to negotiate anything but a Confederate surrender, Stone had dutifully returned to Libby prison. Exchanged later that same year, Stone was promoted to Colonel of 22nd Iowa.
Supporting the 22nd on their right was the 21st Iowa, as well as the 11th Wisconsin and the 77th Illinois, all from Micheal Lawler's 2nd Brigade, Eugene Asa Carr's 14th division, as well as the 97th Illinois regiment, borrowed from 2nd Brigade, Andrew Jackson Smith's 10th Division. McClernand held out no forlorn hope for his men. The Yankees came forward with fixed bayonets. Stone did not want his men wasting time getting across the kill zone in front of the Redoubt.
Talladega native, Major George Mathieson of the 31st Alabama, would dispassionately note that at 10:00 a.m., “...a heavy column of infantry appeared in front, and attempted to charge my position. The men of my command poured a heavy fire into their ranks...” Members of the 22nd Iowa saw things more emotionally. His sword held high, Colonel Stone set out, shouting, “Forward, 22nd Iowa!” The regimental adjutant, 22 year old Captain Samuel Pryce, wrote that “The regiment sprang forward ... hurling itself like a young hurricane....It was a tornado of iron on our left, a hurricane of shot on our right…we passed through the mouth of hell.”
The initial charge through “... a concentrated fire of grape and musketry...” took no more than 10 minutes, but only about 50 men managed to reach the trench at the foot of the redoubt. Among the wounded was Colonel Stone. With no scaling ladders, and so many officers injured, it was under the direction of 20 year old Sergeant Joseph Evan Griffith of “I” company,  that the men formed a human chain, pulling each other up the wall until there were about 15 or 20 men atop the redoubt. The regimental flag was planted there by Private David Trine.
At the same time, on their right, the 22nd Iowa made the same charge, but 22 year old college student, Sargent Nicolas Claire Messenger, led 11 men of the 22nd to the left, up and out of the ravine, directly into the partially collapsed flank of the redoubt.
Messenger was the first to breach the fort, where, according to an Iowa witness, “While standing on the parapet, Messenger fired his gun from his hips, and either killed or wounded a confederate with gray whiskers...” A Confederate witness confirmed that “The first man to enter, a sergeant, was rather tall (Messenger was almost 6 feet)...shot and killed a Confederate dressed in a new gray suit, sitting close to the brass cannon, and he then jumped in upon the balance of us...(and) commenced to club them with his musket...”
Of the 11 Iowa boys who entered the fort, only two made it out. Sargent Messenger survived because he stumbled upon a Confederate Lieutenant with 16 rebels caught between the lines. The big sergeant told them it was too hot for any man to stay and live, and ordered them to follow him. And they did. As they climbed back over the collapsed wall of the fort, 4 or the surrendering rebels were killed. But as soon as Messenger could turn his prisoners over to another, he clambered “....up on the top of the fort and there deliberately stuck his ramrod in the ground and commenced to load his gun...but he did not stay there long, as some of his comrades pulled him down ...”
Nick himself wrote later, “I was struck by three balls below the left knee...I pulled up my pants to inspect the damage...” But still he kept firing. There were only 15 to 20 men with him atop the redoubt, the best shots in the regimen,t each staying until they were either shot or could no longer hold themselves there. Adjunct Pryce said, “There was no room on the slope for more men. Neither was it an easy task to plant a heavy flagstaff into the hard ground with bullets flying all around.”
Another witness tried to describe the incomprehensible scene. “A surge of death and destruction swept over the parapet,” he wrote, “... blotting out men’s lives as a reaper cuts down standing grain. The missiles were flying and whistling...hands and faces were already streaming with blood. The ground was covered with the desperately wounded and dead.” Another soldier remembered flashes of horror. “The ground was covered with the dead and wounded on both sides.” At about noon, Welsh born Sargent Joe Griffith was ordered to escort Messenger's surviving prisoners to the rear.
The remnants of the 31st Alabama had reformed in the trench line behind the redoubt, where they were reinforced by the remnants of the 46th Alabama. The Confederates kept up a steady fire on the Yankees, and Major Mathieson noted the Yankee, “... killed and wounded lay thick on the field...I do not know the precise amount of his loss, but think it must have been 150 or 200 in killed and wounded.” As of 11:00 a.m., an hour into the assault, the Iowa boys sent back their second request for reinforcements. At the same time, everyone else on the battlefield had decided the day was a failure.
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Thursday, May 17, 2018

SEEING IS BELIEVING


I want you to remember the date; Friday, 30 October  1925.  That was the day when William Edward Taynton almost became famous. This 20 year old London clerk might have possessed the second most famous face of the twentieth century.  Instead he remained a nobody, even though the man who recorded William’s face, John Logie Baird, was a genius. But Baird was also, unfortunately, a genius who was wrong - a phenomenon far more common than you might think. Why Baird was wrong and why William would never be as famous as he might be, is best understood if you take a moment and try, like Baird, to invent television from scratch.
The idea behind television had actually been patented by German engineering student Paul Nipkow back in 1885. But it doesn’t appear Nipkow ever actually built a working device because it was darn near impossible to do so. At the core of Nipkow’s patent was a disc with a hole in it (or holes) which allowed light from the subject focused by a lens to fall on a piece of Selenium, which is one of those paradoxical toxic killer chemicals without which human life is not possible - like salt.
Selenium had been identified as photoelectric as far back as 1839, meaning that when photons hit it, the chemical emitted electrons – it converted light into electricity. But until Nipkow, nobody could figure out a use for it. And it was poisonous to even handle. Now, when Nipkow’s disc was set to spinning at high speed it built up an image producing flickering signals from the Selenium which could “paint” in binary (on/off bursts of electrons) a recreation of the subject placed in front of the lens.
In fact the process is far more complicated then it sounds because you needed two spinning discs, each with multiple holes and you have to match their rotations, and because the signal produced was in direct proportion to the quantity of photons striking the Selenium, and because only a fraction of the light was reflected off the subject toward the Selenium, the subject had to be so hot it almost melted, and Nipkow could only produce one image a minute.
And then there was the problem of scale. The image created was no larger than the Selenium, which meant the image could be no larger than the size of a business card. And all those problems were repeated in reverse at the receiving end.
It was enough to make you pull your hair out, which may explain why Nipkow (above) developed such a prominent receding hairline.
Enter the sickly, oddly obsessed genius, John Baird (above). At twelve Baird had been labeled “very slow” and “…by no means a quick learner.” But as an adult he was the prototype for the idiosyncratic absent minded “...disheveled, shaggy-haired and sallow “ The epitome of the  British amateur scientist - except that he was Scottish. Baird did not have large corporations supporting him. Instead, working in a tiny workshop amongst the tourist traps in Hastings, England, Baird had actually improved on Nipkow’s device, transmitting his crude images across an entire room. Okay, it wasn't a large room, but it was a transmission.
But in July of 1924 he almost electrocuted himself, whereupon his landlord politely asked him to leave.
So Baird moved to an attic apartment (above)  in the Soho section of London with his equipment and his ventriloquist's dummy, Stooky Bill. His Nipkow disc and transmitter were “...glued together with sealing wax and string…but it worked.” Desperate for investors, and a regular income, Bard dropped by unannounced to the Daily Express tabloid newspaper, offering a demonstration. The editor pleaded with his staff, “For God's sake, go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him — he may have a razor on him.”
The editor missed a great story. Baird could now scan twelve images a second, which made live transmission of motion, sort of practical. And that was why he went to see William Edward Taynton. William was an office boy who worked a few floors below Baird’s room. He was also partially disabled. He had expressed an interest in Baird’s experiments and the two had struck up an unlikely friendship. Perhaps it was that Baird could find no fellow scientists who understood or believed in his methods. But it was on this penultimate day in October that Baird asked William to come up stairs and help him with an experiment.
William sat in a straight back chair in front of Baird’s Nipkow scanner. He had to shut his eyes very tightly to avoid being blinded (even with his eyes closed) by the banks of bright lights.
The photoelectric cell had no signal booster so the light reflected off of William’s face would only produce an image of equal power. The lights were so hot that William had to be paid to stay put. Baird turned the scanner on, the discs began to spin and Baird asked William to slowly turn his head to the left and then to the right. It might have been an historical moment. Instead the blasting glare produced only a shadow of fame.
In 1954 William appeared on the American television game show “I’ve Got a Secret”. In 1965 he spoke with a BBC talk show about his friendship with John Baird. But William himself was never properly famous. The first human whose image was captured on television was not even recognizable, in part because the image was so primitive, and in part because John Baird was on the wrong track.
Baird’s invention was mechanical. The invention by the American, Philo Farnsworth, was electronic. The Mormon genius had invented his method while he was still a teenager in high school. His scanner was not a spinning disc but a sweeping arc of electrons; faster, more precise and overall simpler than the Nipkow disc. With no mechanical moving parts, the Farnsworth invention was true television.
Still, John Baird (above)  was not a failure. In January 1926 he demonstrated his system before fifty scientists. They were amazed. Investors finally responded, including the BBC. In 1927 Baird sent a moving live image (in color) over 438 miles via telephone lines, between Glasgow and London. The first long distance television broadcast and the first color broadcast.
Then in 1938 the BBC compared Baird’s system to Farnsworth’s system. During the competition Baird received a demonstration from Farnsworth himself, and even before the BBC's decision was announced Baird merged his private British company with America's RCA Corporation to gain access to Farnsworth's patents. But Baird was caught in a doomed competition without enough funds. His mechanical version of television died a merciful death.
In 1946 the sickly Baird died of a heart attack. It would be sixty years before his contributions to television would be remembered, including his invention of the very word, “television”. He deserves to be remembered for that, if nothing else.
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