A common complaint1 about this blog is that it doesn’t feature nearly enough pictures of airships. So here’s one, a 27-metre long non-rigid which belonged to Henry Spencer, scion of a remarkably airminded family (sixteen aeronauts across four generations). Indeed, he built it with his brothers. The photograph was taken on 16 February 1909 and […]
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] Folk physics (or naive physics — there’s also folk biology, folk psychology, and so on) is the term used in philosophy and psychology to describe the way we all intuitively understand the physical world to work. It’s very often at odds with scientific physics (unsurprisingly or else there’d be no need for
Der Spiegel has a lengthy article based upon a new book by historians Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer called Soldaten (no English version yet, unfortunately). It’s based on the transcripts of secret recordings made of the conversations of German POWs captured by British and American forces in the Second World War. They would have talked
This is a BBC interview with Group Captain Robert Lister, recorded in 1980, about his experiences as a junior officer in 20 Squadron on the North-West Frontier. He transferred there in 1935, and flew Audaxes in air control operations against Waziri tribespeople, sometimes in support of the Army, sometimes independently. He candidly notes that the
Last year I was interviewed by Dan Vergano, science reporter for USA Today, for an article he was writing for Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine on the 1909 phantom airship wave. It’s finally been published, in the July 2009 issue, and can also be read online. It’s a lively and engaging overview of the episode, and
I was invited this week to take part in a ’round table’ discussion between Major Paul Moga (USAF), Professor James Arthur Mowbray (Air War College), and selected bloggers with an interest in aviation (including Scott Palmer of the Avia-Corner). I’m not sure the producers realised that I’m down under, but although the scheduled time for
E. H. Carr in conversation with Collin Brooks, BBC Home Service, 30 September 1940: After 1919 we were always worrying about keeping up our naval supremacy. And, of course, we were right. But what did we do about the Air Force? Hardly anything. We just let it dwindle away. We thought air power of so
Among other things, the Fathom Archive has an online seminar on Early Contributions to Aviation. Of most interest to me is this 1960 oral history interview with Sir Thomas Sopwith (of Sopwith Camel fame, among other things): he highlights the role of the First World War in forcing aviation technology. Whoever transcribed the interview clearly
