An Ocean of Air

by Gabrielle Walker

  As I watched the video of Kittinger's extraordinary leap, I stared at the thin blue line of the atmosphere that hovered over Earth's curved horizon. And after he jumped I watched him, floating on a sea of what he later said seemed like nothing. I was enchanted by the paradox of this atmosphere that Kittinger fell through. How can something so delicate also be so powerful? An unsung hero full of fragility and fire: What more could a writer ask for?

  And so I set to work. And the more I investigated, the more I realized that an extraordinary cast of characters had collaborated to show us the power of air. One of my favorites, and the hardest to pin down, was William Ferrel, the diffident West Virginia farmer who figured out the trade winds by drawing circles with a pitch fork on his barn door. Thanks to John Cox for help with sources about Ferrel's life and work. Thanks also to the fine folks at the National Academy of Sciences for sending me a copy of the sole autobiographical sketch that this remarkable man left behind, when I had exhausted all other possible sources. (How could the British Library have two sets of the entire series in which this sketch appeared and yet have that volume in each set be missing? And how could I fail to find it in the few remaining collections in the rest of the UK? And even at the few U.S. universities I tried in desperation. I half suspected the shy Ferrel of reaching beyond the grave to efface the few written details that remained of his life before I could read them.)

  In all other respects, the British Library was as valuable as I have come to expect, as were the ever-helpful staff of Reading Room Science 2. Thanks also to the staff and curators of the wonderful London Library. For some reason this element of literary London remains largely hidden. And yet the charming, archaic building in St. James Square houses a treasure of ancient and modern volumes in its labyrinthine stacks.

  Best of all, you can borrow books from the London Library and take them away with you. In my case I took them to France where I wrote the first half of this book in the tiny but welcoming village of Condeissiat in Ain. Thanks especially to the Famille Sinardet, and at Les Fausses: Hélène, Jean-Chris, and Hubert, not to mention Sammy, Choupette, and Clochette. Hélène kept me supplied with her peerless tartes à la crème, the boys with cheese, wine, and good English tea, while the animals provided me with distractions when I needed them and left me alone (more or less) when I didn't. And Hubert greeted me at the end of each working day with the simple question "How many words?" which focuses the mind tremendously.

  The second half of the book I wrote back in London during what seemed like a very long, cold winter. (Though Hubert was now away in Antarctica, he helpfully left me with an iPod recording saying: "How many words?"...pause..."Well done!" The fact that he didn't bother to record an alternative in case the words hadn't come also proved unexpectedly encouraging.)

  During that winter Fred Barron—the best of neighbors and of friends—made me laugh and fed me steaks and classic movies to keep up my strength. He has been fabulous throughout my writing of this book. From the beginning he has shared my excitement first over the topic and then the characters. When I came across a new story he was usually the first to hear it, and I think the people I wrote about began to seem as real to him as they did to me. Being a comedy writer, he was also quick to spot the places where I'd unwittingly blown my own punchline.

  David Bodanis, my friend and mentor, was also there from the start. Chapter 1 especially owes a great deal to his excellent advice. He also helped me immeasurably with what I find to be the hardest part of writing a book—the beginning.

  People who read and commented on the manuscript include Robert Coontz, Richard Stone, John Vandecar, Karen Southwell, Dominick McIntyre, Fred Barron, David Bodanis, Elan McAllister, Michael Bender, Andy Watson, John Mitchell, David Rind, and Stephen Battersby. Rosa Malloy employed her considerable talents for spotting where explanations grew tangled or stories grew overlong. All of their comments and criticisms improved the manuscript substantially; of course, any remaining errors are my own.

  Thanks to my agent, Michael Carlisle, for his unstinting efforts on my, and air's, behalf. And thanks especially to two of the best editors in the business: Andrea Schulz at Harcourt and Bill Swainson at Bloomsbury. Together they helped me shape the manuscript where it needed shaping, yet refrained from fixing any parts that weren't broken. (Though I am fairly sure they weren't in collusion, their opinions also coincided uncannily, which was very reassuring.)

  Many other people have lived graciously along with me, while I was living with air. Thanks for particular support and tolerance go to John Vandecar, Karen Southwell, Stephen Battersby, and Dominick McIntyre.

  Finally, thanks to my wonderful family: Rosa, Helen, Ed, Christian, Sarah, Damian, Jayne and the kids, and Hubert. Only you know how little I could do without you.

  SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

  PROLOGUE

  The main information for Kittinger's spectacular leap comes from his own memoirs, in Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr., "The Long, Lonely Flight," National Geographic (February 1985), pp. 270–76, and Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr., "The Long, Lonely Leap," National Geographic (December 1960), pp. 854–73; as well as Johnny Acton's entertainingly written The Man Who Touched the Sky (London: Sceptre, 2002), and Craig Ryan's graphic and detailed Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995).

  "Man's Farthest Aloft," by Captain Albert W. Stevens in National Geographic Society Stratosphere Series, vol. 2 (1936), [>], gives a charming description of the state of the art before Kittinger.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence has an excellent Web site called "Horror Vacui," which gives thumbnail sketches of the main characters in the discovery of the weight of air, and also has some nice pictures. You can find it at www.imss.fi.it/vuoto/.

  Though there are hundreds of books about Galileo, most of them focus on his earlier life and his more famous discoveries, and few mention his experiments on air. The best way to find out what he did is to read his own, highly entertaining, words. The experiments described here are in his book Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, first published in Leiden in 1638. The version I used was translated by H. Crew and A. de Salvio (New York: Macmillan, 1914). Nearly four centuries after the book was written, it still makes a great read.

  One of the best sources for the relationship between Torricelli and Galileo, and for much else about the early development of pneumatics, is W. E. Knowles Middleton's The History of the Barometer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964). Though—unlike Galileo's books—it isn't written in the world's most entertaining style, the book is comprehensive and clear, and has some gorgeous facsimiles of the original letters and diagrams. There is also a useful entry on Torricelli in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, editor-in-chief, Charles Coulston Gillispie (New York: Scribner, 1970–80). Blaise Pascal's Physical Treatises is also a good source for Torricelli's work, as well as Pascal's own. I used the version translated by I. H. B. and A. G. H. Spiers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937).

  For Robert Boyle, a good starting point is Michael Hunter's excellent Web site on Boyle at www.bkk.ac.uk/Boyle. Hunter is an eminent Boyle scholar, and as well as good material on Boyle, his site is full of useful references. Many of the books written about Boyle over the years hover between dull and sycophantic, but a few are highly readable. Three of the best sources that I found are Roger Pilkington, Robert Boyle, Father of Chemistry (London: John Murray 1959), which is vivid but sensible; Louis Trenchard More, The Life and Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London: Oxford University Press, 1944); and R. E. W. Maddison, The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London: Taylor & Francis, 1969), which contains plenty of good detail and is well referenced. Also good is Thomas Farrington's A Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle FRS, Scientist and Philanthropist (Cork, Ireland: Guy & Co. Ltd., 1917).

  But as with Galileo, the best way to read Boyle is in his own (admittedly sometimes lengthy) words. Try Robert
Boyle's Experiments in Pneumatics, edited by James Bryant Conant, Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Sciences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), which contains plenty of quotes but also good context and analysis. Also recommended is Robert Boyle by Himself and His Friends, edited by Michael Hunter (London: Pickering & Chatto Ltd., 1994), which contains Boyle's own biographical sketch of his early life as well as biographical comments from various friends, and even a rather fulsome address delivered at his funeral.

  Best of all is Boyle's own masterwork, New Experiments Physico-mechanical Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (Made for the Most Part in a New Pneumatical Engine), which contains all the wonderful details of his experiments with the air pump. This is where you will find Boyle's descriptions of his proof that air has spring, as well as his experiments with honey bees and mice, and the ones with birds that so distressed his lady visitor.

  CHAPTER 2

  In spite of the burning of his house and loss of his papers, enough of Joseph Priestley's considerable output survived to provide rich resources for those interested in finding out more about his life and work. Good places to start are "Joseph Priestley" in Great Chemists, edited by Eduard Faerber (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1961), [>]; and Robert E. Schofield's The Enlightened Joseph Priestley (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004).

  Two excellent articles are "Joseph Priestley: Public Intellectual," by Robert Anderson, in Chemical Heritage Newsmagazine, vol. 23, no. 1 (Spring 2005), and "Priestley, the furious free-thinker of the enlightenment, and Scheele, the taciturn apothecary of Uppsala," by John W. Severinghaus, in Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica, vol. 46, pp. 2–9 (2002).

  Of Priestley's own extensive writing, I would recommend Joseph Priestley, Autobiography of Joseph Priestley, Memoirs Written by Himself, an Account of Further Discoveries in Air (Bath, England: Adams & Dart, 1970), and Joseph Priestley, A Scientific Autobiography, edited with commentary by Robert E. Schofield (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966).

  W. R. Aykroyd, Three Philosophers, Lavoisier, Priestley and Cavendish (London: William Heinemann, 1935) is full of rich, lively descriptions and interesting insights. Another fascinating work is James Gerald Crowther, Scientists of the Industrial Revolution: Joseph Black, James Watt, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish (London: Cresset Press, 1962).

  For the science of oxygen, look no further than Nick Lane's marvelously rich and detailed Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World (London: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  There is a useful entry on Antoine Lavoisier in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. For more detail, try Jean-Pierre Poirier, Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist, translated from the French by Rebecca Balinski (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). A bit drier, but still good, is Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

  CHAPTER 3

  The life of Joseph Black is well described in A. L. Donovan, Philosophical Chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Doctrines and Discoveries of William Cullen and Joseph Black (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975), and in Sir William Ramsay, The Life and Letters of Joseph Black, MD (London: Constable & Co., 1918). Also see the excellent book by James Gerald Crowther, Scientists of the Industrial Revolution: Joseph Black, James Watt, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish (London: Cresset Press, 1962). Great Chemists, edited by Eduard Faerber (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1961), has chapters on both Joseph Black and Svante Arrhenius.

  For more about Stephen Hales, see D. G. C. Allan and R. E. Schofield, Stephen Hales, Scientist and Philanthropist (London: Scolar Press, 1980).

  The richest source of information about John Tyndall is John Tyndall: Essays on a Natural Philosopher, edited by W. H. Brock, N. D. McMillan, and R. C. Mollan (Dublin: Royal Dublin Society, 1981). This book of essays examines Tyndall's life and work from many perspectives, some technical, some from the point of view of his religious, philosophical, and social values.

  Many acres of trees have been chopped down to produce books about global warming, and some of the most worthily sacrificed were for Spencer R. Weart's excellent The Discovery of Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Also see http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm, which gives a brief but accurate overview of the discovery of the greenhouse effect, with thumbnail sketches of the main characters.

  CHAPTER 4

  A fascinating discourse on almost every aspect of wind can be found in Lyall Watson's Heaven's Breath (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984). Among the many books about Christopher Columbus, I found some of the most useful to be Washington Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, vol. 1 (London: Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1827), which is austere and ponderous but full of interesting detail; Samuel Eliot Morison's Christopher Columbus, Mariner (London: Faber and Faber, 1956), which is much livelier and more entertaining, though occasionally a bit misleading (for instance, yes, Columbus had red hair, but by the time he embarked on his voyages it had already turned white); and David A. Thomas's Christopher Columbus, Master of the Atlantic (London: Andre Deutsch, 1991).

  But there's nothing like reading the descriptions of the voyages in Columbus's own words. For this, go to Christopher Columbus, the Journal of His First Voyage to America, which is available in many editions. I used the one translated and with notes by Van Wyck Brooks (London: Jarrolds Publishers, 1925).

  Shy William Ferrel left few of his own words behind, but there is a useful description of his life in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. There's also an excellent entry on Ferrel in John D. Cox's fascinating Storm Watchers (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2002), [>].

  As for his friends' recollections, there is a collection of memorial articles in the American Meteorological Journal, December 1891, vol. viii, no. 8, pp. 337–69. In the same journal, February 1888, vol. iv, no. 10, pp. 441–49, there is an obituary by Ferrel's friend Alexander McAdie. Another of Ferrel's closest friends, Cleveland Abbé, wrote an obituary in the Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington, vol. 12, 1892, pp. 448–60. Most valuable of all, from the diffident Ferrel, is the brief outline of his life written himself after much urging from McAdie. This is in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 3 (1895), pp. 265–309. The same reference contains a memoir by Cleveland Abbé and a list of Ferrel's publications. See also "William Ferrel and American Science in the Centennial Years," by Harold L. Burstyn, in Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences, Essays in Honor of I. Bernard Cohen, edited by Everett Mendelsohn (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 337–51.

  And of course there is Ferrel's own essay "An essay on the winds and currents of the ocean," which is the first entry in "Popular Essays on the Movements of the Atmosphere by Professor William Ferrel," published as number XII of the Professional Papers of the Signal Service (Washington, D.C., 1882).

  For more about the science of the wind, see Roger G. Barry and Richard J. Chorley, Atmosphere, Weather and Climate, 8th edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). I would respectfully suggest that this is the best textbook ever written about the movements of the air and the way they affect weather; it's no wonder it's in its eighth edition and counting.

  The best source on Wiley Post is Bryan B. Sterling and Frances N. Sterling's Forgotten Eagle: Wiley Post, America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001). The book is now sadly out of print, but you can find it second hand. Beware, though: A printing error meant that the first copy I bought was missing the crucial (and fascinating) description of Post's stratospheric flights. Fortunately, I found a sympathetic second-hand bookstore owner in Cape Cod, who patiently leafed through his copy to check that it was all there before sending it to me in London.

  And for more about the disappearing plane, see BBC Horizon's Vanished: The Plane that Disappeared, which was broadcast on November 2, 2000. The transcript of this fascinating p
rogram is available on the Web at http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/ vanished.shtml.

  CHAPTER 5

  Thomas Midgley's life and work are nicely described in an essay by William Haynes in Great Chemists, edited by Eduard Faerber (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1961), pp. 1589–97, as well as "Thomas Midgley" in Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 3 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941–45), pp. 521–23, and Charles Kettering's affectionate memoir of his friend in Biographical Memoir of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. xxiv, no. 11 (1947), pp. 361–80.

  There is an excellent account of how it all went wrong and the rest of the ozone story in "An environmental fairytale" by Aisling Irwin in It Must Be Beautiful, Great Equations of Modern Science, edited by Graham Farmelo (London: Granta Books, 2002). A longer, but engaging and very readable, account is in Sharon Roan's Ozone Crisis: The 15-Year Evolution of a Sudden Global Emergency (New York: Wiley, 1989). John McNeill's stern book Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000) contains a good section on "Climate change and stratospheric ozone." But the best read of all for the ozone wars and the rest of his extraordinary life is James Lovelock's marvelous autobiography, Homage to Gaia: The Life of an Independent Scientist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  The Nobel prizes Web site is also a rich source of both technical and biographical information about the ozone laureates and the context in which they worked. See http:// nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1995.

  CHAPTER 6

  Excellent descriptions of elves, jets, and sprites can be found in two New Scientist feature articles: "Bolts from the Blue" by Keay Davidson (August 19, 1995, p. 32) and "Rider on the Storm" by Harriet Williams (December 15, 2001, p. 36). For more details on the bizarre science of the ionosphere, try J. A. Ratcliffe, Sun, Earth and Radio, an Introduction to the Ionosphere and Magnetosphere (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970). J. A. Harrison's The Story of the Ionosphere or Exploring with Wireless Waves (London: Hulton Educational Publications, 1958) is fun for its relentlessly 1950s schoolboy tone. For those who want something much more serious and detailed, there is Robert W. Schunk and Andrew F. Nagy's Ionospheres: Physics, Plasma Physics and Chemistry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).