HOT AIR

 

I find it typical of capitalists that Joseph and Jaques Montegolfier saw their invention merely as an extension of the family paper business. Thus it was that at two o’clock on the afternoon of 21 November, 1783, when the first humans - neither of whom was a Montegolfier - made humanities’ first recorded free flight. 

The brother’s built an open fire on a barbeque in a wooden basket suspended beneath their colorfully painted paper balloon. Then, surrounded by stacks of kindling, in a vessel that was essentially built of kindling, the two volunteer aeronauts, Monsieur Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlenes, rose 500 feet above the Jardin du Chateau de la Muette, just  outside of the palace of Vincennes. While the Montegolfiers were solidly grounded and accepting royal congratulations for their ingenuity, the two royal employees floated gently off toward Paris. 

The airborne pair rose to 3,000 feet, but didn't make it to the big city.  After traversing some 5 miles Pilatre noticed their envelope was beginning to smolder at the edges and the heat was causing their glued wall paper to come apart at the seams. Desperately, Pilatre sacrificed his coat to smother the flames, and the cooling paper bag then settled gently back to earth in the suburbs.

Meanwhile, back at the Chateau, a skeptical audience member asked, “What does Doctor Franklin conceive to be the use of this new invention?” And Benjamin Franklin famously replied, “What is the use of a new-born child?”

There years later, on 15 June, 1785, Monsieur de Rozier attempted to cross the English Channel in a balloon, this time mixing the open flame required to produce hot air, with the staying power of flammable hydrogen. After being pushed 5 kilometers inland by unfavorable winds, the inevitable fire engulfed the contraption. The flaming mess then plummeted 1,500 feet onto the Pas-de-Calais countryside, killing the brave Pilantre and along with his passenger, Pierre Romain (above), thus proving that ballooning was going to be a dangerous profession.

When he was fourteen John Wise built a working model of a Montegolfier hot air balloon in his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When it landed on a neighbor’s roof, the open flame in the basket almost burned down his neighbor’s house. John’s father insisted that henceforth the boy limit himself to non-flammable kites and parachutes. In the long run this turned out to be an advantage.

John took a scientific approach to ballooning, so much so that he was generally refereed to as “The Professor”. He studied mathematics and parachutes. And it was not until May of 1835 that John became airborne himself for the first time when he undulated across nine miles of Pennsylvania farmland between Philadelphia and Hanover.

He was so inflated by this success that he abandoned his career as a piano maker, and became a full time aerialist. Being a practical man "Professor" Wise immediately began looking to make ballooning as safe as possible, by looking for some way to bail out of a burning balloon.  

Water color artist Robert Cocking was not the first man to use a parachute, that was  Frenchman Andr'e-Jacques Garnern, in October of 1797.  But on 24 July, 1837, the 61 year old Robert Cocking became the first parachute fatality. After that ballooning became even less popular.    

John Wise was wise enough to realize that the problem with Cocking’s parachute was its 250 pound weight. The following year John invented a successful “rip panel” which, if pulled, would collapse a balloon’s envelope into a practical parachute, allowing a desperate aeronaut to float safely to ground, and thus avoiding the hydrogen flames which too often engulfed the gas bags of the era.

On each flight, John made barometric readings, gauged wind speeds, and went high enough, often enough, that he was the first to suggest that there were great rivers of wind in the upper atmosphere, which would one day be called the Jet Stream. And being a dedicated balloonist, John also became expert in the manufacture of coal-tar  gas.

The process began by “cooking” coal in an airless oven, so it could not ignite. When the rock reached 2,000 degrees Celsius, all the water and aromatic hydrocarbons, the largest percentage of which was hydrogen, were driven off and could be captured. Clearly the nomenclature was not intended to imply the stench of an “aromatic” hydrocarbon.

Now, the original goal of this process was the transformation of coal into coke, which burned hotter than regular coal and was used to melt iron and steel without imparting any contaminates into them. But after this nifty bit of chemistry was completed the coke manufacturers were left with buckets of a stinking flammable semi-liquid substance called coal tar, and a stinking vaporous lighter than air substance called “coal-tar gas”. Disposing of these vile and grotesque materials was both dangerous and expensive, so there was considerable motivation to find some profit in them.

In fact the search for profit from these waste products led directly to the entire field of organic chemistry, including the development of color dyes, explosives, fertilizers, even the creation of artificial rubber (plastics). Even today, most of what we call "organic chemistry" is really petrochemicals. As part of that new science,  the noxious coal gas would eventually be renamed “Town Gas” because of its popularity as an economical source of street lighting. Even Ben Franklin in 1783 had no idea the paper balloon he saw rising over Vincennes would led to all of that chemistry -  any more than a 1960’s taxpayer could know that the Apollo Moon program would lead to a non-stick Teflon fry pan and the 21st century micro-chip computer that now regulates the stove that cooks dinner.  How could they? In the Lafayette, Indiana of 1960, for instance,  there was only one computer, and it occupied an entire floor in a building at Purdue University, especially constructed to house it. 

A century earlier, Lafayette, Indiana was in many ways an average American town. It had a two story courthouse, a half dozen churches, a synagogue, two banks, three newspapers, several hotels, two breweries producing 4,000 bottles of beer a year, a bathhouse, a steam locomotive maintenance shop and businesses manufacturing everything from wagons, and farm machinery to bicycles, electric meters, steering gears, safes, and a meat packing plant. What made the town special was the Lafayette Gas Light Company, where coal was converted into coke and town gas.

And it was because of the Lafayette Gas Works, and because the nationally respected chemist Charles Wetherill was in town to meet his new in-laws and to encourage the Hoosier wine industry, that history, and John Wise, paused in the village of 10,000 souls for a single momentous moment. For “Professor "Wise had convinced that one day, “…our children will travel to any part of the globe without the inconvenience of smoke, sparks, and sea-sickness, and at the rate of one hundred miles per hour.”

On Tuesday, 16 August, 1859, next to the gas works at Forth and Union Streets in Lafayette, the fifty-one year old “Professor” John Wise began inflating his balloon with town gas.  Despite the large crowd gathered, estimated at 20,000, to witness the launch, a leaky value caused a 24 hour postponement. (an event which should be familiar to any who watched a Mercury launch at Cape Canaveral.) So it was at “precisely two o'clock the next afternoon (Wednesday,17  August, 1859) in the presence of a smaller crowd of citizens” that John Wise’s gas bag finally rose into the sky.

John carried with him a number of scientific instruments, in order to conduct airborne experiments of the “ozone” for Mr. Wetherill. He also carried copies of the local newspapers, as well 123 letters consigned to him by the local postmaster, making this fight the first official “air mail” delivery attempt in the United States. All the mail was addressed to people in “New York City”. The likelihood of success was doubted by the Daily Courier; “The fact is, that the aerial ship "Jupiter" is about as well adapted to the navigation of the "upper current" as Mr. Wise is adapted to preach the gospel.”

The temperature was 94 degrees when the restraining ropes were released, and “The Jupiter” rushed straight upward, to an altitude of perhaps 12,000 feet. And there the gas bag hung in mid-air, fully visible to the townsfolk, suspended in a breathless sky. “Professor” Wise noted in his diary, “My friends below wonder why I was not going on my voyage east. I thought so myself, but what can I do? (his balloon, which he had named) Jupiter was full as a drum—no wind—not a breath!” After an hour of motionless hovering, Wise released 55 pounds of ballast, and the balloon rose to 15,000 feet, until the Wabash River was little more than “a crooked thread of water” below him.  Still there was no discernable movement toward New York City. That balloon envelope, John reported, was, “now quite flaccid in her lower hemisphere.” Finally, at 3:55 p.m., the barest breath of air began to move the Jupiter – south.

Forlorn and still sailing south twenty-five minutes later, “Professor” Wise floated 40 miles to Crawfordsville, Indiana (above). With the sun setting, and not enough ballast left to compensate for the cooling of the gas with nightfall, Wise set the Jupiter down on the road, six miles south of Crawfordsville.  

As the Lafayette Courier explained, “So endeth the "trans-continental" voyage. That it was only trans-county-nental is no fault of the great Aeronaut.” The air mail was delivered to New York via the railroad. The deflation of spirits in Lafayette was attended to by Herbert’s brewery, and the town became, according to a local reporter, the scene of “a colossal drunk”. “Ever light pole had a lein on it”, wrote another newspaper humorist. Surely Doctor Franklin would have never foreseen that such a mass intoxication would be the result of his newborn child’s hesitant first steps.

The final act in this drama was perhaps easier to predict. John Wise was last seen alive on this earth suspended beneath yet another gas bag, at 11:14 p.m., on 28 September, 1879, about 20 miles to the west of La Port, Indiana, headed north, out over lake Michigan. John had been accompanied on this his last flight by a paying customer, Mr. George Burr, who was a cashier at the Bank of St. Louis, Missouri. Their flight, from that city,  had only been intended as a test, to last only a few moments. 

But the wires holding the balloon down were weak, the wind was up, and without adequate warning, the bag was pulled into the air, then blown across Illinois and finally La Porte, Indiana (above), and then north over the chilly waters of the Lake Michigan, giving passenger Burr more flight time than he had sought. A body assumed to be his was washed ashore in Indiana several days later. But “Professor” Wise was never seen again, and was presumed dead.

But I am certain that old Ben Franklin could have predicted that tragedy, because he never risked his life in a balloon. He just sold them. Still, it was clear, that old Ben could recognize a revolution when he saw one, even if he could not imagine the resulting details.

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APPENDIX TO THE THEORY

 

I have a neat medical trick you can try at home. You will need to take off your shirt, and have a mirror and a marking pen at the ready. What you are first looking for is your hipbone. If you are an old fart like me, with 70 some years of subcutaneous fat accumulated, gently press in on the right front corner of your waist until you feel a sharp hard bone.  This is your hip and is called your illiac crest, and the most forward part of that is your anterior superior illiac crest. Mark this with a dot. 

Now find your belly button. Mark that with a dot, and try not to giggle while doing so. Now connect the dots with a straight line. Two thirds of the way down that line from your belly button is your McBurney's Tender Point. And directly beneath your McBurney's Point is your appendix. Ta Da!

This magical location was discovered by Dr. Charles Herber McBurney (above).  And because he was a surgeon, Doctor McBurney's only interest in the appendix was in cutting it out. This was not easy, because between your magic marker dot and your appendix are your abdominal muscles. Slicing willy-nilly through these could make it very hard to continue breathing, which is very bad. But then if your appendix bursts open, that is also very bad. And will kill you quicker.

It was Dr. McBurney  (above, center) who developed the life saving operation called an appendectomy, during which an appendix is safely removed. The procedure has become so standard that some people have their appendix taken out in advance, even though only 10% of the population ever develops appendicitis. “Better safe than sorry” is their motto. However the second most important motto in medicine should always be, “Not so fast.”

The proper name for this 4 inch long unprepossessing organ is the vermiform appendix, which means “a worm-shaped" organ (center), "...a blind pouch near the beginning of the large intestine".  And humans aren't the only creatures with one. 

Reptiles, birds, marsupials and mammals all share this structure, even some gastropods, but no fish, and very few creatures without backbones. Most are vegetarians, which has inspired human vegetarians to celebrate the appendix as a vestige of their vegetarian ancestors. Unfortunately, it turns out, it isn't. In the first place most animals are vegetarians, but in true vegetarians the appendix is very large.  In humans it's so small it seems like an after thought, an appendix to the main digestive story.

The human appendix juts out just below the junction of the large and the small intestine. But it appears to be an  empty sack that leads no where, inspiring Mark Twain to observe, “Its sole interest is to lie and wait for stray grape-seeds and breed trouble.”  

The trouble arrives with an infection, when the appendix swells up and bursts, spilling nasty bacteria all over your nice clean abdominal cavity. If you have a fever and are feeling a pain in your middle, find your McBurney's point and press down with one finger. If that causes excruciating pain, you are the unfortunate owner of a burst appendix, and you have a few hours to have it removed and your system flushed with antibiotics. Other wise, you are dead.

So here is this small, squishy sack, not much bigger than your index finger, that isn't connected to anything but your intestines, doesn't seem to produce anything, and you don't seem to miss it much when it's gone and occasionally it tries to kill you. Humans can be forgiving for thinking it was pretty much useless, like the last three vertebrae of your spine, all that is left of our once magnificent prehensile tails, reduced in modern humans to helping you balance when sitting on your butt.  What good is an appendix?. For the last hundred years, the opinion of the medical community was almost universal, echoed by the authors of the medical textbook, “The Vertebrate Body”, “Its major importance would appear to be financial support of the surgical profession.”: written like a true diagnostician.

There is one hint about what the appendix might be doing, in that when you look at it in place it doesn't look like its neighbors, even when inflamed and surrounded by puss (above). Where the intestines are various shades of red, pink and purple, the appendix is white, and this is clue that it is made up of lymphatic tissue, Latin for “connected to water”. 

The most common member of this variety of cells are lymphocytes, are also known as white blood cells (above).  Their job is to identify invaders floating in our blood stream, and swallow them. So any lymphatic tissue, like that found in the appendix, must be concerned with defense: right?. But the appendix has only a tiny opening connecting it with the intestines, and a healthy appendix contains no bacteria that are not also present in the intestines. What could it be doing for humans, if anything?

Well, it must be doing something, since the latest evolutionary genetic research indicates it has been invented at least 30 separate times in history. And then about a decade ago it was discovered that lymphocytes also raise the “PH” level in your intestines, thus encouraging reproduction and increase of the 700 or so different species of “friendly” bacteria that we require to digest our food.

See, the healthy human gut is acidic - the small intestines have a PH factor of 6.8. This will not burn through steel, but the 10 trillion Prevotella, Bacteroides and Ruminococcus bacteria (amongst others) in your gut, require that acidity to thrive. They break the proteins and sugars that pass through your intestines into smaller molecules, and those are then filtered into the blood stream. 

An invasion of “bad bugs” reduces the acid level. That's why those bugs are bad. And you know the bad bugs outnumber the good ones in your gut when you get diarrhea. In other words you are not what you eat, but what you digest. Now, eventually your lymphocytes will eat the invaders in your blood stream, and the diarrhea will flush them out of your intestines. But how do you replace the good bugs the bad bugs have murdered?

Well, according to Pediatrician Indi Trehan, at Washington University in St. Louis, that's where the lowly appendix comes into play. “The appendix has a unique anatomical location that is out of the way. Bacteria can be kept safe there for repopulating as needed,” he says. In other words, the appendix is a biological panic room. It keeps the good guys nice and safe, warm and happy, acidic and reproductive, even when your waiter forgets to wash his hands, or the tuna fish in the refrigerator goes bad, or the three bean salad is left out on the picnic table in the sun. It is in fact a validation of the theory of evolution- the use of available material to preform new functions.

Charles Darwin thought the appendix was vestigial, like your tail bone. He was wrong. Given the information available to us, he would have realized he was wrong. But its role as a panic room in the gut, and its construction from cells that had been evolved for other uses, and that it was re-invented over and over in species with and without placentas, (mammals and marsupials) is proof of Darwin's  fundamental idea of evolution. And so are the 10 trillion bacteria in your gut at this moment happily chomping away at your food, just like the bacteria in the gut of every living thing, from mosquitoes to elephants, even those without an appendix. .

This new view of the human vermiform appendix as a panic room, has supported a rethinking of Dr. McBurney's approach to an inflamed appendix. Increasingly patients with inflamed appendixes  are being admitted to hospitals, not for surgery, but for a heavy course of IV antibiotics. And as long as the appendix has not yet burst, usually, this works. It is cheaper and safer for the patient, and easier on the doctors, as it cuts down (pardon the pun) on panic surgeries. And it also makes the 10% of Christian Scientist with appendicitis,  happier as well.

I'm not sure what the “homeschooled” children of fundamentalist will do about all of this information, the next time one of them has a pain in their gut. If, to quote Georgia Congressman Paul Broun, who is a medical doctor, the theory of evolution is a lie, “straight from the pit of hell”, then why would an IV course of antibiotics calm an inflamed appendix, regardless of the state of grace of the owner of the appendix or the doctors, or the nurse who hangs the IV bag? I've said it before and I will say it again here; belief in an almighty God does not require stupidity, no matter how many stupid people say otherwise.

                                                                           - 30 - 

CLEVER HANS

 

"I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that, my art is not above the ordinary."

Mark Twain.

I have no doubt Hans was clever. But what was he clever about? I mean, what are the odds the only genius mind-reading horse would be bought by a retired gym teacher who was just happened to be anxious to prove that horses could memorize the multiplication tables? Perhaps I should rein myself in here, and start at the beginning.

"Horses do think. Not very deeply, perhaps, but enough to get you into a lot of trouble."

Patricia Jacobson and Marcia Hayes - "A Horse Around the House"

Right out of the gate, Hans just looked smart (above). He was handsome, sleek, athletic and big, almost a thousand pounds and five and a half feet high at the shoulders. His breed had been founded by Count Orlov who crossed Russian mares with Arabian stallions, to produce spirited trotters. And then Count Rostophin threw in three oriental stallions to breed gentle, empathetic riding horses. So popular was the breed that by 1866 nearly half of all horses on Russian stud farms were Orlovs. And by the end of the 19^th century, they were even being sold in Europe.

"Small children are convinced that ponies deserve to see the inside of the house."

Maya Patel

The popularity of the Orlov is explained by the web site, InfoHorse.com (http://www.infohorse.com/ShowAd.asp?id=3693) ; “Possessed of amazing intelligence, they learn quickly and remember easily with few repetitions. There is often an uncanny understanding of what is wanted and needed of them....They can become extremely sensitive to the moods and emotions of their riders/owners, even reflecting them in self-carriage. Under saddle this makes for a partner of such willingness and awareness that traditional (dressage) exercises become poetry.”

"Horses are uncomfortable in the middle and dangerous at both ends."

Ian Fleming - Sunday Times of London, October 9, 1966

Which brings us to Wilhelm von Osten (above), a retired, grouchy, grumpy Berlin prep school mathematics teacher who believed that animal intelligence was sorely underrated. Beginning in the 1880's he attempted to teach simple math to a cat. The feline did not care scratch for his efforts, so von Osten switched his subject to a bear. The Ursula proved a bear market for von Osten's educational techniques. So in 1888 he bought a pony, whom he named Hans. Von Osten was giddy when, after a few weeks effort, when he wrote the number three on a blackboard, Hans tapped his right hoof three times. It seemed clear, to him at least, that he had harnessed the genius in the young stallion.

"It's always been and always will be the same in the world: The horse does the work and the coachman is tipped"

Old proverb

Von Osten now had the bit between his teeth. He asked Hans for the sum of three plus two, and the black beauty tapped his hoof five times. Eventually Hans was even figuring square roots and working with fractions. Hans even read a calendar, answering “, "If the eighth day of the month comes on a Tuesday, what is the date of the following Friday?” - something I would have trouble with. But there was more. Asked to identify a member of the crowd,  Hans was able to tap out a name, using a complicated code chart, even though no one had told the horse the man's name.   

But after years of giving public demonstrations before enthusiastic crowds, von Osten grew frustrated by official indifference.  So, in the summer of 1902, he advertised for sale his “beautiful, gentle 7 year old stallion”, in a military newspaper.  In fact Hans was not seven, and he was not really for sale, but the ad did mention, “He distinguishes ten colors, reads, knows the four arithmetic operations, etc.” That elicited the sought after response from cavalry officers, who stampeded to von Osten's house. They came prepared to mock but left impressed. Because of this growing support by such a respected segment of Emperial German society, within two years even the Minister for Education was singing Han's (and of course, von Osten's) praises.

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him participate in synchronized diving.”

Cuthbert Soup - “Another Whole 'Nother Story”

The mockery poured upon the Minister for those statements finally achieved Von Osten's goal. A panel of 13 “experts” was herded together; a veterinarian, a circus manager, a Cavalry officer, the Director of the Berlin Zoo, some school teachers and the psychologist Carl Stumpf,  The panel put Hans through his paces, and when faced with Han's 89.9% accuracy,  came to the unanimous conclusion there were no tricks involved.  That declaration even made the New York Times chuckle (“Berlin’s Wonderful Horse. He Can Do Almost Everything but Talk.”)  The German government was now facing a night-mare of public humiliation.  So before declaring himself mentally un-stable, Professor Stumpf decided to go one step further.  He asked his assistant, Oskar Pfungst, to put Hans through his paces, again.

I'd rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

J.D. Salinger - “The Catcher in the Rye”

Pfungst designed experiments for Dr. Stumpf, and he now laid down four restrictions to begin a series of new tests for Hans,  to be conducted in the courtyard of the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin.  First Pfungst cut von Osten right out the herd.  Then he put blinders on Hans, so he could only see the human asking the question.  And then he varied whether the questioner knew the answer or not.  The key turned out to this last bit. When the human was ignorant of the correct answer,  Han's accuracy dropped to just 6%.  So Hans was only as smart as the human asking the questions.  That lead to testing the questioner.  

By closely watching the humans and not the horse,  Pfungst found they were subtly and unconsciously tensing their muscles as Han's approached the correct answer, and showed a similar relaxation immediately afterward.  Pfungst's theory was that Hans was watching for the same muscle clues he expected when a human was riding on his back. In his December 1904 report – "Clever Hans (the horse of Mr. von Osten) A Contribution To Experimental Animal And Human Psychology" - Plungst revealed, that he could now “call forth at will all the various reactions of the horse by making the proper kind of voluntary movements, without asking the relevant question.” .

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has, which keeps it from betting on people."

W.C. Fields

But for me, von Osten's mane arguments were finally reduced to horse d'oeuvres when Pfungst used von Osten's techniques to train his own dog, (above, left center),  Nora, to duplicate all of Hans' feats...or hoofs.  Of course, having hitched his reputation to his halter-ego, Von Osten bridled at the suggestion he did not own a genius horse – Hans, that is.  So he bolted for the exit - von Osten did, that is.  He told a newspaper “one can hardly see in these experiments more than a kind of scholarly jest....”  He retreated to his families' estate in Prussia.  And there the bitter old man died, on 3 July, 1909.  He was buried at the Church of Zion (Zionskirchhof) back in Berlin

"If the world was truly a rational place, men would ride sidesaddle."

Rita Mae Brown

Hans, still as clever as ever, was adopted by Karl Krall, a wealthy jeweler in the west German town of Elberfeld. Krall was also determined to prove Hans a genius, and the stallion continued to spend hours each day, now with two stall mates,  standing through interminable instruction and testing sessions. The horse genius was last heard of in 1916 when he was drafted, and probably died pulling wagons in World War One. 

Meanwhile, the "Clever Hans (in German “Kluge Hans”) Effect", still plagues researchers by producing false positive results by search, drug and bomb sniffing dogs, dolphins and primates used in language research and even human sufferers of autism. And I suspect it also occurs in contestants on American Idol.

"There are only two emotions that belong in the saddle; one is a sense of humor and the other is patience."

John Lyons

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