Well the plane may be long gone, but it appears that the Besler aircraft engine has survived, and may be seen either at the Warner Robins Air Force Museum in Warner Robins, Georgia USA, or at the Savannah Science Museum (from where it was loaned). This came from the Tiny Power website – makers of model and marine steam engines. Tiny Power has now started making scale model replicas of the aircraft engine. Their site has versions of the following two photos. (I’ve tinkered to make them more legible). According to the museum sign, the engine is a three cylinder single-acting radial design, putting out 70HP at 300PSI steam pressure. Bore and stroke: 3.125″ x 4.125″, displacing 165.38 inches and the whole unit weighed 100lb including pumps and propellor.
The aircraft used a 150 HP V-twin engine and a steam plant designed by Nathan Price, a former employee of the Doble motor company (of the car maker fame). I believe it was designed as a test-bed to prove a concept of a light but powerful steam plant with potential automotive applications.
Presumably the aircraft itself was either scrapped during WW2 or perhaps it found its way into a collection somewhere. It would be nice to think this aircraft might have survived somewhere.
It was first flown on 12 April 1933 – the aircraft being a Travel Air 2000 biplane. It was reportedly so quiet that at low altitude the pilot could exchange words with people on the ground.
And there is some movie footage on YouTube – there is a segment after a demo of the Doble steam car, showing the aircraft taking off, flying and landing.
The first rule of jet-lag – and how to overcome it is to drink water and get plenty of exercise and stay awake for the first day until well after dark. Okay, so that was three rules. Anyhow, after a delayed flight (are there flights not delayed out of European mainland?) I hit London walking.
Straight down the Strand – one of my favourite streets. Every time I go down the Strand I discover something new – or in this case very old. It was a chance glance down a laneway by Fleet Street that brought me to a church with a Wren-like steeple. I hadn’t previously encountered St Bride’s Church, and the name was intriguiing – especially it’s nickname: The Printer’s Cathedral. Okay, I was on Fleet Street – home to all those newspaper publishers – but I was surprised to find that the first moveable type printing press was brought here in 1500AD.
There is quite a history on this site. This is the eighth church built on this site, and it has been a Christian place of worship for 1500 years. The present church was the venue for the marriage of the parents of Virginia Dare (thanks for the comment) – the first European child born in Colonial America in 1587. The spire (above) is the tallest that Wren ever built and was the inspiration for the tiered wedding cake. This was also the church in which Samuel Pepys was baptized.
In 1940 a bomb revealed a crypt in which you can now see the pavement on which Romans walked in AD180 – and it is open to the public.
A bit further down is St Paul’s Cathedral, and one of my favourite things to do to stave off jet-lag is to climb the 530 stairs to the lantern on the dome where you get a superb view of London – and a good sense of the underlying landscape.
And inside the dome the magnificent paintings visible from the Whispering Gallery
Walking back along the Strand you can sense the history – as well as take some minor detours down some delightful laneways. Take this one, for instance, which would be entirely hidden were it not for a suitable tourist sign on the Strand, which points towards Temple church – reputedly built by the Knights Templar, but ceded to the Hospitallers. The church has gained some recent attention, having been featured in a movie about another semiotician, who uncovers a mystery. And yes, every Tuesday and Thursday at 2.30pm you can take the tour which explains the reality behind the myth underlying this church’s role in the Da Vinci Code. It is London’s only remaining Romanesque building – modelled after the the domed Church of the Rock in Jerusalem.
The stained glass windows are breathtaking, but turning towards the rear of the church, you can see several life-sized effigies laid out on the floor. Many are named, and some are in interesting cross-legged positions.
The effigies are of Templar knights from the 13 Century – this one is of Gilbert Marshall, fourth Earl of Pembroke and Templar knight who died in 1241. And don’t forget to look up at the walls – the row of grotesques is fascinating.
And, in case you were in any doubt about the Templar association, you need look no further than the pedestal outside the entrance.
Among the exhibitions I went to were The Road to Byzantium – a collection of luxury domestic goods from the St Petersberg Hermitage Museum, at the Hermitage Rooms. The exhibition runs from 30 March to 3 September 2006 – and is well worth a visit. Among the fascinating items are some Byzantine coptic textiles from Egypt in the 4th century AD.
The Coptic craftsmen had a vast number of images on which to draw for inspiration, many of which circulated in the form of patterns, a few of which have survived on papyri. They used pictorial motifs from the Greco-Roman tradition, including pastoral scenes related to the Nile River and mythological characters such as dancers who evoke Dionysian celebrations.
This textile is a fragment of a tunic with scenes from Euripides’ play Hippolytos, and is part of a group of textiles with representations of heroes from Greek tragedies. It is made from linen with wool weaving.
This textile depicts Dionysos’ chariot and the twelve labours of Hercules from 5th Century AD Egypt. It is made from linen with wool weaving.
A contemporary quote (4-5th century AD) from Asterius, Bishop of Amaseia of Syria condemned the growing fashion for clothing woven with images: “They have invented some kind of vain and curious warp and ‘broidery which, by means of the interweaving of warp and weft, imitates the quality of painting and represents upon garments the forms of all kinds of living beings, and so they devise for themselves, their wives and children gay-colored dresses decorated with thousands of figures.” (quote from Indiana University Art Museum website)
So it’s easy to avoid the Da Vinci Code tourists and find fascinating sites that remain undiscovered by so many – they don’t know what they’re missing!
One of the little-known museum gems in Paris is the Musee des Arts et Metiers – the museum of technology. Among the amazing objects there is Nicolas Cugnot’s steam tractor – the Fardier a vapeur. This is the first steam propelled vehicle – from which the development of the modern automobile began.
Back in 1769, when Captain Cook was preparing for his voyage to Australia, a French military engineer was considering the merits of using steam to propel a vehicle. With the backing of the Minister for War, the Duke of Choiseul, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot (1725-1804) developed a prototype steam tractor for towing artillery without horses. The prototype was built under Cugnot’s direction by Army mechanic Brezin at the Paris Arsenal. The first protoype showed some limited promise, and he went on to build a second vehicle in 1770. His idea was to use a three-wheeled cart, with a high-pressure boiler placed in front of the driving wheel, and a two-cylinder piston engine to push on a notched disc each side of the wheel. The whole driving assembly was mounted so it could pivot on a vertical axis for steering – with a steering lock of about 15-20 degrees in either direction. It seems very front-heavy, but it was designed to tow a heavy artillery piece.
The machine has a reverse gear and could move its five-tonne load at up to 4 km/h. It was only partially successful, however. The fire-box was small, and the machine could sustain steam for only about 15 minutes before it ran out of steam pressure. And the lack of brakes and and slow steering (by geared rack and pinion) made the machine unwieldy. On an early test run it failed to make a sufficiently sharp turn and crashed into a stone wall, and the project was scrapped – after the first motor vehicle accident in history – in 1771.
The test vehicle was long thought to have been destroyed during the French Revolution, until it was discovered in Napoleon’s time. It has been preserved in the Musee des Arts et Metiers since 1800.
I am happy to report that the machine is still in an excellent state of preservation, and the workmanship of the mechanic, Brezin, was very professional in its approach. The two single-acting cylinders are 13 inches in diameter, and the structure is robustly constructed on massive timber beams. Cugnot himself received a pension of 600 francs, which was revoked in 1789, forcing Cugnot into exile in Brussels. He was brought back to France and his pension reinstated by Napoleon shortly before he died in 1804 at the age of 79 years.
I was looking at designs of thread winders on the net, and came across this site – Folk Art in a Bottle and found pages of extraordinary wooden devices somehow inserted into a bottle. Many of these are intricately carved and turned and many have working mechanisms, sometimes rotated by cranks inserted into the bottle stopper. A fascinating look at some of the ingenious devices used by textile artists, quilters and embroiderers.
