It’s hard to believe that fifteen years have passed since Tim Berners-Lee released the software and the concept of the world-wide-web to the public. I remember having used ‘Gopher’ to retrieve documents, and then being amazed by Mosaic v1 when I first saw it. I’d used email since 1989 at the university, so I guess it was fairly early when I came to the World-Wide-Web, in about October 1993. I suppose I could put in a shameless plug for my book Virtual States (The Internet and the boundaries of the Nation-State) here, but I won’t 😉
The BBC has put up a timeline of world-wide-web history – ever wondered whatever happened to the Cambridge University coffee pot? It’s all here 🙂
Posted by Jerry on February 14th, 2007 — Posted in History, Technology
Okay, I admit it, I like Apple Macintosh computers. And yes I’ve been using them since about 1999 – and I do still have almost all the macs we have bought over the years, each a generation above the next. I guess all up we have eight, from the humble 512k through the mac plus and colour classic to a couple of the old iMacs and so on. And they all still work.
The 512k mac (with its half a meg of RAM) still boots up on a 400k disk using System 0.95 (yes it’s before System 1!) – the same disk also has MacWrite and MacPaint – text and graphic editors – and still has enough space for several documents – all on a 400k floppy disk. Programs were very light in those days.
But some people are serious collectors and Jeremy Mehrl (aka soyburger) has 67 macs in his basement, all neatly wired in place and fully functional.
And his bar uses 30 mac classics – there’s something delightful about the repetetive design element that is very appealing
Giles Turnbull of Or’Reilly caught up with Soyburger and did an email interview with him about the collection.
Another exhibit in the Musee des Artes et Metiers is that of a long forgotten French Aviation pioneer, Clement Ader (click on ‘NoFlashMuseum’ then Transports’ then ‘1850-1950’ and finally the last small image on the right.
Again, I had no idea before going there that this pioneer aircraft had been preserved for posterity – one of the great ‘almost made it’s among the early aviators. Like the Wright brothers, he was a bicycle designer.
Ader was born in 1841 at Muret in Haute-Garonne. He was multi-talented and was awarded numerous patents during his lifetime, including a ralway system and telephone. But he had a lifelong fascination with flying – inspired by birds and bats, using the latter as a model for his aircraft design. Ader built kites and small-scale gliders and measured the forces needed to keep them flying, using dynamometers. He was the first engineer to know the value of lift and thrust needed for flying.
Clement Ader’s Avion III
He built his first machine between 1882 and 1889, known as the Eole I which reportedly made a low-level hop on 9 October 1890 at an altitude of about 30cm for about 50 metres. Ader was credited with introducing the French word for aircraft – avion – into the French language.
His second machine, Eole II was damaged during trials in 1891. Avion III was built with the help of the Defence Ministry and was completed in 1897. It had a wingspan of 16 metres and had a tricycle undercarriage. It weighed a mere 258kg unladen, and less than 400kg with pilot. It was powered by two lightweight 20hp steam engines designed by Ader, which independently drove two contra-rotating four-bladed propellers. The two motors shared a single flash steam boiler and condenser. The wings were made from bamboo covered with lightweight fabric.
Ader’s steam engine for Avion III
Flash Steam Boiler for Avion III
This plane made one flight attempt at the French Army’s Satory proving ground on 14 October 1897 – without success.
But later in life Ader claimed success for both the Eole and the Avion III. Irrespective of his success or failure – he was far-thinking in terms of his innovative design – the enclosed body, the tricycle undercarriage and the power-to-weight ratio commensurate with the scale of the wings.
His big failure was in not making any provision for control once airborne. But his was a big step on the way towards successful heavier than air flight.
Avion III
This plane was certainly the inspiration for a number of steampunk fanciful depictions of the future of flight – including this automaton 🙂
One of my favourite museums in Paris is the Musee des Artes et Metiers – home of the surviving second Cugnot steam wagon (fardier a vapeur). But it is also home to much more as I found when I started to look more closely at the photos I brought back from there last year.
One of the exhibits, not far from Cugnot’s wagon is another remarkable survivor from the pioneering days of self-propelled road vehicles.
Serpollet-Peugeot steam tricar (1889)
Leon Serpollet – largely credited with inventing the flash steam boiler (by which steam is generated almost instantaneously as needed rather than by the slower process of boiling in a pressurised vessel). It is said that he came up with the idea when watching his father quench newly-forged horseshoes in his blacksmiths shop. It’s as good a tale as that of James Watt and the kettle!
After a couple of lightweight ‘test-bed’ three-wheelers based on pedal vehicle, in 1889, in conjunction with Armand Peugeot, he built a much heavier more business-like tricar.
In the book Steam Cars 1770-1970 Lord Montagu of Beauleiu and Antony Bird describe this tricar as follows:
… a large three-wheeled carriage.. it ran on wooden spoked wheels with a cricket seat above the single front wheel and a more comfortable bench for two, just ahead of the back axle with the engine concealed beneath it. The Serpollet hopper-fed coke-burning flash boiler, with a downtake flue, was hung behind the back axle on which the wheels were driven by side chains from a differential countershaft connected to the two-cylinder engine by spur gears. Unlike the contemporary Benz petrol tricars, which it otherwise resembled, the Serpollet-Peugeot had the front wheel fork curved to provide castor action. The fork itself was unsprung, but leaf springs were interposed between the mounting of the fork and the chassis frame.
Serpollet-Peugeot steam tricar 1889
I knew from the description that I had stumbled across the exact vehicle being described.
After it was shown at the Paris Exposition in Autumn 1889, the carriage was driven from Paris to Lyon – a journey of around 300 miles (480km) – a journey which took, on various accounts, between ten and fourteen days. It was not a blessed journey and showed the tenacity required of a motoring pioneer:
[during this journey]… almost everything which could break or fall off did so, including the steering arm, the brake, the back axle and a wheel. The engine and boiler gave relatively little trouble except that a piston rod gland nut worked loose and was mangled by the connecting-rod before the engine could be stopped, and the door of the ash-pan fell off allowing too much draft through the fire which overheated and melted two grate bars.
After this journey from hell, Peugeot decided to explore petrol engines and another marque was launched.
Nevertheless, the few Serpollet carriages were known for their outstanding turn of speed – even on hills and were known to achieve 12-14 mph (19.3-22.5kph). And the flash boiler meant that steam could be raised in a couple of minutes, rather than the half hour or more for standard boilers.
Be warned though, the Musee des artes et Metiers website is not easy to navigate!
Now here’s a gem – one of the pieces in the Future Museum of South West Scotland is a sheet of parchment comprising part of a medieval music manuscript found reused as the cover for a book of records from Stranraer.
The museum covers key people, key industries, social history and arts and crafts and the site is well worth a visit. Thanks to Linn Skinner of ‘The Embroidress’ for pointing it out 🙂
Lord Montagu of Beauleiu and Antony Bird describe this tricar as follows:
