Before 1900

1900s, 1910s, 1940s, Aircraft, Australia, Before 1900, Blogging, tweeting and podcasting, Periodicals

The problem of ærial propulsion solved

In the venerable tradition of lazyblogging, here is a storified version of an exchange of tweets today between myself and @TroveAustralia, concerning an apparently forgotten Australian aviation pioneer, W. T. Carter of Williamstown, formerly a member of the Victorian colonial legislature. In the mid-1890s, Carter dabbled in electric motors (with help from A. U. Alcock,

1940s, After 1950, Before 1900, Books, Periodicals, Sounds

The London Hum

‘The Hum‘ is a mysterious low-frequency sound just at the edge of hearing which seems to infect some places, but which only some people can detect. What causes it is unknown — theories range from factories and air conditioners to gravitational waves — and responsible authorities often deny that it exists at all. The most

1910s, 1920s, 1930s, Air defence, Before 1900, Books, Civil defence, Poetry, Thesis

The dragon will always get through — III

Let’s turn now to Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Smaug’s attack on Lake-town (Esgaroth).1 In my PhD thesis I identified six characteristics of the ideal theory of the knock-out blow from the air: it would be a surprise attack, on a large scale, which would strike at the interdependent structures and civilian morale of its targets,

Before 1900, Blogging, tweeting and podcasting, Counterfactuals

Early modern operational research?

I’ve been remiss in not noting the arrival of Military History Carnival #28 at Cliopatria. While it seems to be moving from a round-up of the best military history blogging to covering ‘military history on the Internet’ generally, there are still some good old-fashioned blogs therein. For example, Sellswords, mercenaries and condottieri presents a fascinating

1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Before 1900, Blogging, tweeting and podcasting, Books, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Publications, Tools and methods

A little history of the Scareship Age

A couple of months ago, Alun Salt did a very nice thing for me: he unexpectedly assembled some of the posts I’ve written here about phantom airships into an e-book. Using that as the basis, I’ve had a go at learning how to do e-books myself. (Alun recommended using Jutoh, an e-book project manager, and

1900s, 1910s, 1940s, Before 1900, Blogging, tweeting and podcasting, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics

Mystery aircraft of the Scareship Age

Over the years, I’ve written a number of posts about various phantom airship scares (which I take here to mean things seen in the sky which weren’t actually there). There are many more I might do in future, pending access to good sources (and maybe I’ll even get around to writing something for publication!) but

Before 1900, Other, Thesis, Tools and methods

Aweſomeneſs

A tweet from William J. Turkel alerted me to the possibility of using 18th century-style fonts in LaTeX. The most noticeable difference from modern typesetting is the long s, but there are different ligatures too. There are a number of ways to do it but the easiest way is with the inbuilt Kepler Fonts package.

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