Israeli astronaut’s diary

‘Launch. No, I couldn’t believe it. Until the moment the engine(s) were ignited, I still doubted it. In the last few days of our isolation in the Cape, since the fateful discussion [on] Sunday afternoon - in those days we all already felt that [this was] real, and yet - we didn’t believe it.’ This is from the space diary of Ilan Ramon, an Israeli fighter pilot and later the first Israeli astronaut. Tragically, he lost his life with six other crew members when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry into earth’s atmosphere. Astonishingly, though, 37 pages of a diary he kept during the mission were found at the Texas crash site. Now, more than 20 years later, these pages have been transferred to Israel’s national library in Jerusalem.  

Ramon was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, in June 1954, his father having fled Germany in 1935, and his Polish mother having survived Auschwitz. He joined the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in 1972 and graduated as a fighter pilot in 1974. He quickly rose through the ranks. He participated in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and took part in Operation Opera (the 1981 strike against Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor). He took time off from the military in the mid-1980s to study for a degree in electronics and computer engineering at Tel Aviv University. There he met Rona Bar Simantov, and they married in 1983. They had four children, but his oldest son Assaf died shortly after graduating from IAF flight school.

Within the IAF, Ramon served as a deputy squadron commander and later as a squadron commander. On being promoted to colonel in 1994, he became head of the Department of Operational Requirement for Weapon Development and Acquisition. In 1997, he was selected to become Israel’s first astronaut. He trained with NASA at the Johnson Space Center for five years becoming a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-107. The 16 day science and research flight ended in tragedy when, on 1 February 2003, the shuttle disintegrated, re-entering earth’s atmosphere. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, becoming the only non-US citizen to receive this honour. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Ramon Foundation, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

During the ill-fated mission, Ramon kept a diary, making notes and comments in Hebrew. Astonishingly some of the pages of this diary survived the explosion, and were among 84,000 other fragments found in East Texas. The complex process of restoration and preservation was carried out at the Israel Museum, assisted by the Israel Police’s forensic department. Earlier this year, the diary was finally transferred to the National Library of Israel. The event garnered much publicity - see The Times of Israel, The Guardian, NBC News. Here are two widely quoted extracts from the recovered diary.

‘Launch. No, I couldn’t believe it. Until the moment the engine(s) were ignited, I still doubted it. In the last few days of our isolation in the Cape, since the fateful discussion [on] Sunday afternoon - in those days we all already felt that [this was] real, and yet - we didn’t believe it.’

‘Travel diary, day six. Today was perhaps the first day that I truly felt like I was really ‘living’ in space! I’ve turned into a man who lives and works in space. Like in the movies. We get up in the morning with some light levitation and we roll into the ‘family room’. Brush my teeth, wash my face, and then go to work. A little coffee. Some snacks on the way, off to the lab . . . a press conference with the Prime Minister, and then immediately back to work, observing the ozone layer.’

Extracts from Ramon’s earlier personal diary and that of his son were published in Above Us Only Sky - The Diaries of Ilan and Asaf Ramon by Merav Halperin (Gefen, 2021). And brief excerpts from both can be found at Our Soldiers.

Our civilization’s survival

It is 50 years today since the death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, an extraordinary American who made his name as an aviation pioneer. However, he became even more of a celebrity when his toddler son was kidnapped and then murdered (the so-called ‘crime-of-the-century’). Subsequently, he inadvertently courted further publicity with his views on Germany, which led some to perceive him as a Nazi sympathiser - a view not dispelled, many years later, by the posthumous publication of a diary he kept during the war years. Long after his death, it was also discovered that apart from having a large family with his wife Anne Morrow, he had kept secret long-term relationships with at least three women, in Germany and Switzerland, each of whom had borne him children.

Lindbergh was born in 1902, the son of Swedish immigrants, his father being a lawyer and congressman, and his mother a chemistry teacher. He began to study engineering at the University of Wisconsin but left, after two years, to fly daredevil stunts at fairs. In 1924, he enlisted in the army, was trained to fly, and then joined the Robertson Aircraft Corporation as a pilot. In 1927, he took up a $25,000 challenge, that had stood since 1919, to fly non-stop from New York to Paris. Several St Louis businessmen helped finance the cost of a plane, with Lindbergh involved in the design. On 20 May he made the famous flight of around 5,600km in under 34 hours. Thereafter, he became a celebrity, and an active campaigner, partly backed by Harry Guggenheim, for the further development of aeronautics.

While in Mexico on a promotion trip, Lindbergh met Anne Spencer Morrow, daughter of the American ambassador. They married in 1929, he taught her to fly, and they made many foreign trips. In 1932, their toddler son, Charles, was kidnapped - causing a media frenzy - and ten weeks later the body was found. It took more than two years for the so-called ‘crime-of-the-century’ to be resolved when, in 1934, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was found responsible for the murder. He was executed in 1936. Since then, though, Hauptmann’s guilt has been much debated, with many books being written on the case, some asserting his innocence, others backing the original judgement.

To escape the press and media attention during these years, the Lindberghs and a second son (four other children were to follow) moved to England. Subsequently, Lindbergh attracted more public attention when he accepted a German medal of honour from Hermann Goering. After returning to the US in 1939, Lindbergh campaigned against US involvement in the European war, and was accused of being a Nazi sympathiser. After Pearl Harbor, though, he sought involvement in the war, and ended up flying about 50 combat missions even though he was a civilian. He also helped develop aviation techniques.

After the War, Lindbergh worked as an adviser for government and industry. His book The Spirit of St Louis, an expanded account of the 1927 flight, won a Pulitzer Prize. In the 1960s, he campaigned on environmental issues. From 1957 until his death on 26 August 1974, Lindbergh maintained a secret affair with Brigitte Hesshaimer, a German hatmaker, who had three children by him, as well as affairs with two other women (one German, one Swiss) who each bore him two children. It would be nearly 30 years after his death before these affairs became public. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Minnesota Historical Society, or the Spirit of St. Louis 2 Project.

In 1937, two years before the war in Europe began, Lindbergh began to write a diary, which he kept up until the war was over in 1945. However, this was not published until 1970 when Harcourt Brace Jovanovich brought out The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh. William Jovanovich, himself, provided a short introduction to the book:

‘The quarter century that has passed since the ending of World War II has dimmed our recollection, which is reason enough for us to be interested in reading a unique record of that terrible time. But the years have also lessened our sense of certitude. The past is always compromised by the present: many of the assurances of long ago, on re-examination, turn into questions and speculations. Both the exercise of memory and the writing of history tend to make it so, however different they are in resource. The historian will attempt to read the whole record of the past so far as he is able, but since he cannot write the whole record, he will select those events and circumstances that accommodate his thesis or his bias or his style or whatever. Those selected items of occurrence become, as Max Weber concluded, the facts of history.

So, too, in writing of the moment, as in a diary or journal, an act of selection takes place. One must decide what was significant in the course of a day before he can keep a reasonably short record of its passing. Yet the journal becomes, in the hands of a serious and candid person, an exceptional means by which events can be depicted literally, which is to say depicted with both accuracy of account and a consistency of view. This one recognises, casting back, in the journals of John Wesley, of Thoreau, and of General Charles (“Chinese”) Gordon, among a few other. It may be seen, now, in the wartime journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, which are here published twenty-five years after the last of the entries was written.’

Jovanovich also included a letter he received from Lindbergh. Jovanovich asked what Lindbergh had concluded on rereading the diaries, and Lindbergh replied: ‘We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before.’  In the letter, Lindbergh also summarised his reasons for writing the journal in the first place, and his reasons for agreeing to publishing it:

‘More than a generation after the war’s end, our occupying armies still must occupy, and the world has not been made safe for democracy and freedom. On the contrary, our own system of democratic government is being challenged by that greatest of dangers to any government: internal dissatisfaction and unrest. It is alarmingly possible that World War II marks the beginning of our Western civilization’s breakdown, as it already marks the breakdown of the greatest empire ever built by man. Certainly our civilization’s survival depends on meeting the challenges that tower before us with unprecedented magnitude in almost every field of modern life. Most of these challenges were, at least, intensified through the waging of World War II. Are we now headed toward a third and still more disastrous war between world nations? Or can we improve human relationships sufficiently to avoid such a holocaust? Since it is inherent in the way of life that issues will continue between men, I believe human relationships can best be improved through clarifying the issues and conditions surrounding them. I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues and conditions of the past and thereby contribute to understanding issues and conditions of the present and the future.’

The New York Times found Lindbergh’s diary fascinating. Eric Goldman, in his review, wrote: ‘Except in the limited instances where the entries concern highly technical matters, the “Wartime Journals” are fascinating, almost hypnotically so. The prose is always lean, often pungent; on occasions when Lindbergh’s mind or emotions were deeply engaged, it rises to a compelling eloquence.’ However, Goldman also finds much to question about Lindbergh’s beliefs:

‘If readers will surely be held by the volume, many will read on with decidedly mixed feelings. The integrity with which the journals have been published presents again the Charles Lindbergh who outraged millions of Americans in 1939-41. The basic issue involved in World War II, the diary repeatedly stresses, was the preservation of “civilization,” defined as the comforts and attitudes of the “Nordic,” middle-class West, against the forces of “disorder” and “leveling” threatening from within and without. The democracies were losing “character”; the “virility” of Nazi Germany was the barrier against the greatest menace, the Communism of “Asiatic” Russia. Franklin Roosevelt is pictured as a relentless schemer, distrusted by “friend or enemy,” who was quite capable of taking the nation to war out of sheer politics and vainglory. The diary show that Lindbergh had considerable compassion for the German Jews. But much more than his public charge, it attacks the “Jewish influence” in bringing war to the United States, particularly as a result of Jewish “control” of “huge part” of the mass media. A good deal of space is given to describing brutalities by U.S. troops against Japanese soldiers; the atrocities of individual Americans are equated with the official policy of the Third Reich. Not a sentence excoriates Nazism as a general credo or poses it as a menace to civilization in any tenable definition of the word, including Lindbergh’s own. Entry after entry bespeaks a preoccupation, almost an obsession, with the “race problem,” those “northern peoples” versus all others.’

The full volume can be borrowed digitally at Internet Archive. Moreover pages from The Boyhood Diary of Charles Lindbergh 1913-1916, published by Capstone Press in 2001, can be read online at Googlebooks. 

Here, though, are two extracts taken from the The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh.

26 August 1938
‘Left embassy at 10:30 after usual problem of tipping the servants. More difficult here because of exchange problem and the fact that American Embassy help are mostly Italian. [. . .]

Arrived at aerodrome shortly before 11:00. Many Russians and Americans there to see us off. Impossible to keep them from doing this, although it makes extra work for them and delays us in getting started. Took off Moscow 11:15. [. . .]

We flew first to Tula, then to Orel, then to Kharkov, making our first landing at the latter place. After a half hour’s stop at Kharkov, we flew practically direct to Rostov on Don. Our routes are laid out for us by the Russian officials, and we attempt to follow them exactly. I miss the unrestricted routes of the United States. Immediately after taking off from the Moscow aerodrome, we passed over the aircraft factory I visited several days ago. A few minutes later we passed several training fields. [. . .]

We are having high oil temperatures in this hot weather. Sometimes above 90°C. Everything else is all right, except both voltmeter and ammeter are fluctuating excessively. The English mechanics don’t understand this equipment, even though Phillips & Powis are the agents for our Menasco engine. In consequence it is never properly serviced. The English regulations load you down with logbooks, licenses, and other papers, but one good American mechanic is worth all of them, ten times over, including the Air Ministry inspections. I keep up the logs only enough to get by the regulations. They are no value whatsoever from my standpoint, but if I should crash the plane I am sure the authorities would blame it on some omitted entry or a bit of overload, regardless of the actual cause.

The readiness to blame a dead pilot for an accident is nauseating, but it has been the tendency ever since I can remember. What pilot has not been in positions where he was in danger and where perfect judgment would have advised against going? But when a man is caught in such a position he is judged only by his error and seldom given credit for the times he has extricated himself from worse situations. Worst of all, blame is heaped upon him by other pilots, all of whom have been in parallel situations themselves, but without being caught in them. If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one’s outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. Why should we look for his errors when a brave man dies? Unless we can learn from his experience, there is no need to look for weakness. Rather, we should admire the courage and spirit in his life. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?

We had a good opportunity to see the collective farms and coal mines of the Ukraine. The collective farms are unlike anything I have seen elsewhere. They consist of a row of twenty or so houses, strung out along a road, with garden patches of an acre or so behind them, and large fields outside.

Landed Rostov 7:01. There was a group of people to meet us, including the mayor and the head of the local Intourist. Also the head of the flying school we came to see. Colonel Slepnev was there, having flown from Moscow ahead of us. The Russians are doing everything possible for us. I feel embarrassed because it so much. Dislike to cause so much trouble. Colonel Slepnev had only one hour’s sleep last night. We have never seen anything to exceed Russian hospitality. Also, they have been unusually considerate in not crowding our days with too many engagements.’

21 July 1944
‘The Japanese stronghold on the cliffs of Biak is to be attacked again in the morning. Several hundred Japs are still holding out in caves and crevices in an area about 300 yards wide and 1,000 yards long. So far, they have thrown back all of our attacks, and inflicted nearly one hundred casualties on our infantrymen. They have as perfect a natural defensive position as could be devised - sharp coral ridges overlooking and paralleling the coast, filled with deep and interlocking caves and screened from our artillery fire by coral ledges. This area is clearly visible from the top of the coral cliff, ten feet from the back door of the officers quarters where I am staying - a brown ridge surrounded by green jungle on the coast of Biak about three miles across the water from Owi Island.

The intense artillery fire has stripped the trees of leaves and branches so that the outline of the coral ridge itself can be seen silhouetted against the sky. Since I have been on Owi Island, at irregular intervals through the night and day, the sound of our artillery bombarding this Japanese stronghold has floated in across the water. This afternoon, I stood on the cliff outside our quarters (not daring to sit on the ground because of the danger of typhus) and watched the shells bursting on the ridge. For weeks that handful of Japanese soldiers, variously estimated at between 250 and 700 men, has been holding out against overwhelming odds and the heaviest bombardment our well-supplied guns can give them.

If positions were reversed and our troops held out so courageously and well, their defense would be recorded as one of the most glorious examples of tenacity, bravery, and sacrifice in the history of our nation. But, sitting in the security and relative luxury of our quarters, I listen to American Army officers refer to these Japanese soldiers as “yellow sons of bitches.” Their desire is to exterminate the Jap ruthlessly, even cruelly. I have not heard a word of respect or compassion spoken of our enemy since I came here.

It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy - for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. What is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts. [. . .]

We must bomb them out, those Jap soldiers, because this is war, and if we do not kill them, they will kill us now that we have removed the possibility of surrender. But I would have more respect for the character of our people if we could give them a decent burial instead of kicking in the teeth of corpses, and pushing their bodies into hollows in the ground, scooped out and covered up by bulldozers. After that, we will leave their graves unmarked and say, “That’s the only way to handle the yellow sons of bitches.”

Over to the 35th Fighter Squadron in the evening to give a half hour’s talk to the pilots on fuel economy and the P-38.’

See also Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 August 2014.

Diary of a fallen psychoanalyst

‘I am 44 today and I have a distinct feeling I have reached halfway exactly. So far in my adult years I have lived by temperament and a belligerently reactive mind. Now I feel I can start to live from true self and sensibility . . . I have heaped huge odds against myself and I have also come a long distance.’ This is from the diaries - or Work Books, as he called them - of the controversial Indian-born psychoanalyst Masud Kahn. Born a century ago today, Kahn was a charismatic and, ultimately, a controversial figure.

Kahn was born in Jhelum in the Punjab, then part of British India (now in Pakistan). His father, Fazaldad was a Shiite Muslim of peasant birth but he became rich by selling horses to the British army and for polo. He married four times, and was in his 70s when he married Kahn’s mother (then still in her teens). Khan was raised with an older brother Tahir and a younger sister Mahmooda on his father’s estate in the Montgomery District. They moved to Lyallpur when Khan was 13. He was not allowed to see much of his mother during his early years, but after his father died in 1943, he went to live with her. 

Kahn attended the University of Punjab at Faisalabad and Lahore from 1942 to 1945, obtained his BA in English literature, and an MA with a thesis on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Further studies and training led to him being qualified as an analyst in 1950, as a child analyst in 1952 under the supervision of Donald Winnicott, and a training analyst in 1959. That same year he married Svetlana Beriosova. They had no children and divorced in 1974.

Kahn’s career within the International Psychoanalytical Association is said to have been brilliant, and his publishing activities intense. He was appointed editor of the International Psychoanalytical Library and the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and coeditor of the Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, for which he wrote many articles. During the 1970s, Khan’s practice was challenged within the British Psycho-Analytical Association. Following complaints and considerable hesitation, his title as a training analyst was withdrawn in 1975. At the same time he began suffering from lung cancer. In his final work, When Spring Comes (1988), Khan was so revealing in his discussions of technique and counter-transference that he was accused of madness, anti-Semitism, and bisexuality. The affair caused a scandal, and Khan was thrown out of the British Psycho-Analytical Association in 1988. He died in London the following year. Further information is available at Wikipedia and Encyclopedia.com.

From August 1967 to March 1980, Kahn wrote in what he called ‘Work Books’, essentially a diary. He left behind 39 such books containing, variously, observations and reflections on his own life, the world of psychoanalysis, his evolving theoretical formulations, Western culture, and the turbulent social and political developments of the time. A selection of extracts from the first 14 books were edited by Dr Linda Hopkins and Dr Steven Kuchuck and published in 2022 by Karnac Books as Diary of a Fallen Psychoanalyst: The Work Books of Masud Khan 1967-1972. Some pages can be freely sampled at Amazon.

According to the publisher, ‘this unique, first-person account of a particularly fertile period of European and American intellectual and cultural society is an absolute must-read for those interested in psychoanalysis, history, or biography.’ Inside, ‘readers will find fascinating entries on Khan’s colleague and mentor Donald Winnicott and other well-known analysts of the period, including Anna Freud. Khan’s unique charm extended to celebrity social circles, with cultural figures such as Julie Andrews, the Redgraves, and Henri Cartier-Bresson featuring in these pages of his diary.’

15 January 1968
‘All madness [has an external cause], hence madness cannot be cured (i.e. assimilated), only exorcised. From this derives the terrible total urgency of madness to exteriorize, objectify and declare itself and be met and known. The self stays hidden behind madness.

My need to learn French derives from the necessity of having words that are not confused with the chattering anxious countenance of my mother from infancy. Only thus can I hope to speak from my true self. All the other languages, especially English, are my manic expertise to drown her voiceless chatter and muttering in my head.’

17 January 1968
‘American civilization: it produced epic products before it had achieved its character and shape - e.g. Whitman and Melville. Chaucer, Spencer and Shakespeare epitomize some 500 years of evolution of feudal-royal tradition in England, before it changes character and begins its long route to mediocrity through democracy. Similarly, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gorki come at the end of a tradition. Same is true of Homer and Sophocles in the history of Greek literature, and Goethe, Heine and Nietzche in German, and Racine, Moliere and Corneille in French.’

30 January 1968
‘An hour’s meeting with Anna Freud. Sagacious, gracious, reticent and ceremonious person she is. Her advice: “Only do what you want, and speak only what you really mean.” ’

11 February 1968
‘Trauma: very rarely that which cumulatively achieves the psychic functions of trauma is traumatic at source.’

30 March 1968
‘Lacan has depersonalized the developmental-maturational process of human individuation into a mere language-game.’

6 June 1968
‘Robert Kennedy died. Another American murderous triumph over humanism.

The real cause of eruptive murderous violence against liberal individuals in America derives from a simple fact: here is the most powerful militaristic nation of our century that by its own overt and avowed ethos is committed against military conquest. This has never happened before in the history of peoples and nations. Powerful nations have conquered others, then exploited and conditionally nurtured them and gradually decayed and perished, and prided themselves for it. America has won wars and victories but not asserted its right to explicit possession and triumph from power. Hence its strength has never found a validity in facts mirrored by the humbled pride of others. Instead, its power has expressed itself by devious economic imperialism and pseudo-reparative intrusions of political idealism. In these, there is shame and guilt mixed with devious gain and not explicit endorsement of aggressively achieved self-esteem. 

Even the Negroes in America had been bought and not conquered - slaves by trade and deceit, and not from aggressive assertion of victory. Hence the aggressive pride of America has no idiom of actions and events to actualize it. In human history there are no models that can guide American ethos and policy. America is at present being murdered from lack of metaphors that could integrate its idealism to a frustrated strength from choice. The result is random hooliganism of murder!’

21 July 1968
‘I am 44 today and I have a distinct feeling I have reached halfway exactly. So far in my adult years I have lived by temperament and a belligerently reactive mind. Now I feel I can start to live from true self and sensibility . . . I have heaped huge odds against myself and I have also come a long distance.

Why has love been so idolized, when it is hate that has led to all true expansions, conquests, social institutions and individual progress? Why has hate become an ugly condemned word and emotion, when it alone has mobilized and initiated some of the most creative ventures of human effort and enterprise as well as achievement? A true understanding of the creative role of HATE alone would lead to a firm and solid establishment of human and humane order: social and individual.

Orientate my book Alienation in Perversions basically about the vicissitudes of hate in the aetiology and dynamics of perversions . . . What has led to stasis in analytic research on this topic is the exclusive emphasis on eroticism and vicissitudes of libidinal impulses.’

Master of Trinity College

William Whewell - scientist, philiosopher, college administrator, polymath - was born 230 years ago today. He defied his humble origins to become prominent in various fields, and to become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, a position he held for 25 years. He is largely forgotten today, in the sense that there’s no modern biography. There is, though, an early biographical work, which makes extensive use of Whewell’s letters, and, more occasionally, of his diaries. One extensive diary quoted in the biography describes a visit to Trinity by the Duke of Wellington.

Whewell was born on 24 May 1794, the eldest child in what would become a large family. His father, a carpenter, wanted him to apprentice to the trade, but William proved academically bright, and came to the attention of Revd Joseph Rowley, head of Lancaster Grammar School, who allowed him to study for free. Later, he won a part-scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1812. Following, perhaps, after his mother who had published poems, he won the Chancellor’s prize for an epic poem entitled Boadicea.

Whewell did well at Trinity, excelling at mathematics; and, having been considered something of a rustic or ill-mannered, he significantly improved his social status. He was appointed as a mathematics lecturer and assistant tutor in 1818, and the following year was one of the founder members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. By this time, his interests had extended beyond mathematics, towards science in general (indeed he is credited with coining the word ‘scientist’ in 1833) and philosophy. In 1828, he was elected to the Chair of Mineralogy.

In subsequent years, Whewell wrote a number of important papers on the subject of tides, and on the principles of education. In 1838 he was elected to the Knightbridge Chair of Moral Philosophy - before which he wrote History of the Inductive Sciences, and after which he wrote its sequel The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.

In 1841, thanks to the election of the Conservative Robert Peel as Prime Minister, Whewell was appointed  Master of Trinity College (over his more senior colleague, Adam Sedgwick, who would have been favoured by a Whig government). A little earlier the same year, he had married Cordelia Marshall. They had no children, and after Cordelia died in 1855, he married again, to Everina Frances, widow of Sir Gilbert Affleck in 1858.

Much of Whewell’s early years as Master were taken up by revising the college statutes; and, as Master of the largest college, he had much influence across the university. He also served twice as vice-chancellor. Although considered a reformer in his youth, he is remembered as a reactionary Master, sternly defending the autonomy of the colleges and the type of liberal education he espoused in Of a Liberal Education in General, with particular reference to the leading studies in the University of Cambridge (1845). He preached his last sermon in Trinity College chapel in February 1866, and died later the same year, after a fall from a horse. There is plenty of information about Whewell online, at Wikipedia, Cambridge University’s Janus website, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Victorian Web.

Richard Yeo, summarising Whewell’s reputation in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required), says: ‘At the time of his death Whewell was known as a great master of Trinity and a man of enormous intellectual power and learning. Within the scientific community throughout Europe he was recognized for his research on the tides, his contributions to conceptual debates and terminology, and for his unrivalled knowledge of the history of the sciences. Although some aspects of his philosophy of science were criticized, Whewell’s work set an example for the critical study of the nature of science and, since the 1970s, the historical inquiry on which he claimed to base his philosophy of science has been more warmly appreciated. He combined this study of the physical sciences with publications on education, moral philosophy, and other subjects in a manner that astonished his contemporaries. He did this at a time when intellectual activity was becoming more specialized - a phenomenon that Whewell recognized in his own philosophy of knowledge. Today we are able to see that his achievement was one of the last of its kind.’

The Trinity College archive of Whewell’s papers lists ‘diaries 1817-1853’, but the online summary contains no further details. As far as I can tell, none of these diaries have ever been published. However, Mrs Stair-Douglas (also known as Janet Mary Douglas), having been asked to do so by Whewell’s sister, Mrs Newton, put together a biography of Whewell, largely based on his letters. This was published in 1881 by C Kegan & Co as The Life and Selections from the Correspondence of William Whewell, D. D. late master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Occasionally, the book (freely available at Internet Archive) makes references to, and provides extracts from, Whewell’s diaries.

For example, Stair-Douglas writes: ‘The pocket-books of this year [1829] contain a brief pencil diary, and also a number of notes and memoranda, chiefly mineralogical and architectural, made during the tour in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, upon which Mr. Whewell started on July 4. [. . .]

The diary shows that Mr. Whewell habitually talked to all his fellow-travellers and extracted from them all the information he could. Sometimes a servant girl going to place tells him about wages; or a Belgian laments the high duty upon distillation, which shuts up all the smaller stills; or an ex-Franciscan or Benedictine monk tells him how the convent land was farmed, the wages of the lay brethren, &c. He always offered a seat in his hired carriage to any intelligent person travelling in the same direction. At Spires he notes that he fell in with a Frenchman who had been quarrelling with the Douane on occasion of his bringing from Baden a musical instrument with keys, the notes of which are produced as in the wind harmonica, and adds: “The difficulty of getting on with a German in conversation strikes one more on meeting a Frenchman. The German answers all your questions with the most sincere goodwill, but there you stick - you never set him ” [. . .]

After visiting the source of the Danube in Prince Flirstenburg’s grounds, he mentions his arrival at “the edge of the great basin of Switzerland - a most glorious prospect. The Lake of Constance spread out on the left, the cloudy and uncertain Alps in the distance, and in the midst of the scene six grand castled eminences scattered over a space of five or six miles. The summits bold, and rising abruptly from the more level land, and the ruins one more picturesque than another. If the snowy Alps are seen from hence, as I am told is the case in clear weather, I cannot imagine a more magnificent view. I hope for a fine morning to-morrow and then!”

The entry next morning unfortunately is: “August 7 - Wretchedly bad weather”; however, after quarrelling with tailor and shoemaker, he adds: “Off to Schaffhausen - went immediately to the fall. It is grand in all aspects, but standing in the gallery, all the surrounding objects confused by the blinding spray and a sort of eternity of waters hurrying past and filling the eye, one can scarce believe that the solid universe is not drifting away with immeasurable violence. They have managed also that the water leaps at you, and only seems just to fall short by a foot.” ’

After Whewell’s appointment as Master at Trinity, Stair-Douglas writes, one of the first visitors to the Master’s Lodge, was Mr. Salvin, an architect. He had been summoned because a former college student - one Beresford Hope - had donated money for the college to restore an oriel and mullioned windows removed from the building under previous alterations. She gives the following diary entries concerning this project (which would leave Whewell’s living rooms uninhabitable for most of the year).

19 January 1842
‘Mr. Salvin, architect, arrived, and under his direction and in his presence we made attempts to discover traces of the oriel which formerly existed as part of the front of the Lodge. We found the foundation of the wall of the oriel immediately below the surface of the ground. The plan was semicircular, the diameter of the semicircle 13 feet and 7 inches, exactly opposite to the oriel which exists towards the garden. By examination of the upper storey of the Lodge it appeared that there are no lodging-rooms over Henry VIII’s drawing-room, but only a blank garret, to which there is no access except through the windows.’

16 August 1842
‘We returned to the lodge and stayed one night, the workmen being then employed in the restoration of the front, in pursuance of Mr. Hope’s undertaking to bear the expense of the restoration of the windows and oriel. In the interval I had corresponded with Mr. Hope and had finally learnt that 1,000l. had been placed to the credit of the College at the banker’s to meet the expense.’

17 September 1842
‘We returned to College. The windows of the front were entirely without glass, the rooms without furniture, and the wall was removed from top to bottom where the oriel was to be. The house full of workmen.’

Stair-Douglas goes on to say that Whewell’s journal was kept with considerable regularity at this time. In it, ‘we find mention of very frequent meetings of the Master and Seniors to deliberate upon the revision of the College statutes. These statutes, which the governing body of the College had bound themselves to respect, to preserve intact and to carry into effect, had, from the changes which centuries had brought about in national habits, and many other circumstances, come into such discrepancy with actual, and often with any possible, practice as to occasion very serious difficulties. The Master and other College officers found themselves frequently compelled to choose between deliberately neglecting and modifying that which they had sworn to execute, or attempting to put in operation rules which had become totally useless and inapplicable. The difficulty was a very serious one, and one from which there was no escape.’

26 April 1842
‘Went to London to visit my wife’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, 41 Upper Grosvenor Street. I took with me to London the Draft of the College Statutes as revised by the Seniority, at the various preceding sittings. I reported to the Home Secretary, Sir J. Graham, that this revision was in progress, explained to him the general principles on which it had proceeded, and pointed out the few instances in which the privileges of the Crown were concerned, viz. (1.) Visitatorial power, (2.) Power of giving leave of absence, (3.) Power of appointing ten paupers. He informed me that he should lay the draft before the Attorney and Solicitor-General, and at a subsequent interview agreed to do so, while it was still unconfirmed by the Seniors. I also saw the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, who agreed to consider the unconfirmed draft; and I explained to them that the College did not expect or wish that they should suggest anything except what concerned the prerogatives of the Crown or the course of Law. For the purpose of consideration, I had two transcripts of the revised Statutes made, for which I paid 11l. 6s. I left one of these and a printed copy of the Statutes with Sir James Graham.’

Finally, here is a long extract from Whewell’s diary concerning a visit by the Duke of Wellington - Leader of the House of Lords in Peel’s government at the time - to Cambridge University.

4 July 1842
‘The Duke of Wellington arrived; his carriage stopped at the Great Gate and then proceeded to St. John’s, where he went to attend the Duke of Northumberland’s levee. He then walked with me to Trinity Lodge, and the Fellows were presented to him by me. He then went again to St. John’s Lodge, and accompanied the Duke of Northumberland to the Senate House. After his return to this Lodge he came into the dining-room, and then he conversed a good deal.

With reference to the news of the Queen having been shot at by Bean, which arrived this morning, he spoke of an attempt made to shoot him at Paris. He had previous information that he was to be shot at. The man tried in vain to find an opportunity in the streets. The Duke had said before the event that the assassin must inevitably make the attempt at his own house. So it turned out. The man placed himself behind a watch-box and fired as the Duke entered his own Porte cochère.

The postilion saw him raise his arm, and urged his horses to a gallop, so that the Duke thought he had knocked down one of the sentries in driving in. I asked him why he had done so, and he told me that a man had fired a pistol at me from a place close by. Mr. M (Mr. Milnes?) reminded the Duke that Napoleon left the man a legacy. “Yes” he said, “Napoleon left him 10,000 francs for trying to rid the world of an aristocrat.”

I spoke of the attempt made to kill the King of Portugal in the last century. “Yes,” he said, “that was under the Marquis de Pombal’s administration. It was one of the circumstances which led to the expulsion of the Jesuits. That event was an evil to Spain and Portugal. It ruined the education of the upper orders. They are now men of no education, no moral and religious education. You never find a well educated nobleman in Spain. Consequently they are regarded with no respect by those of lower rank, and are a worthless set. Nothing can save a country but a moral and religious education of its upper classes.”

He spoke much of the Afghan war. He had always disbelieved the accounts, he said, of the abandonment of Ghuznee. He never could believe that a person put in a command so important could be so destitute of resources as the accounts represented him. “I never could believe that such an officer could say that he was obliged to surrender for want of water, when he was snowed up. I never could believe that he could say that he had left the soldiers’ bayonets in the citadel. There is no more convenient way of disposing of a bayonet than at the end of the musket or in the scabbard by the soldier’s side.”

Speaking further of India, he said, “You have there the blessing of a free press; in that country, in a country quite unfitted for such a thing. You might as well try a free press on the quarter-deck of a man of war.”

Passing the picture of Perceval, he said he was a good debater and always spoke well when he had had previously to explain a measure to a meeting of his friends.

When the Duke had been in this Lodge a few minutes, he wished me to return to St. John’s Lodge, where the Duke of Northumberland was. I tried to detain him by representing that the Chancellor could not possibly go to the Senate House for some time, and that we should see him, and could join him when he passed the College gate. But he was not to be detained, so we walked together. As we went he said, “I came to do honour to the Duke of Northumberland, and I must be on the spot for that purpose. Nothing like being on the spot.”

When he had stayed at the Lodge some time after his return from the Senate House, conversing as above, I proposed to him to go to Magdalen College, where the Master had collected a party of distinguished visitors in the Lodge garden, with a band of music. We went there by the back of the Colleges and through Northampton Street. When we arrived near the gate the Duke asked who was the master of Magdalen, and when I told him Mr. Neville Grenville, he said “Oh, I know him, he officiates sometimes at the Chapel Royal. I usually go to the Chapel Royal. Sometimes I am there alone with the reader. ” Then aside, “Dearly beloved Roger.”

The Duke of Wellington went from Magdalen Gardens with the Bishop of London, and returned to Emmanuel to the Vice-Chancellor’s dinner. Here he stayed but a little while and went away before dinner, having determined to sleep at Hatfield. So far as I know he had no dinner till he got there, which must have been near eleven o’clock at night.

I left the dinner at the Vice-Chancellor’s early and came home to receive a few friends at the Lodge.’

At last we are off

‘At last we are off. The last of the cheering crowded boats have turned, the sirens of shore and sea are still, and in the calm hazy gathering dusk on a glassy sea we move on the long quest. Providence is with us even now. At this time of equinoctial gales not a catspaw of wind is apparent. I turn from the glooming immensity of the sea and, looking at the decks of the Quest, am roused from dreams of what may be in the future to the needs of the moment, for in no way are we shipshape or fitted to ignore even the mildest storm.’ This is from the diary of Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton - born 150 years ago today - at the outset of his very last expedition. His expedition diaries though never published in their own right have been used often as a first hand source for books about the expeditions he led.

Shackleton was born on 15 February 1874, in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, the second in a family of ten. His family moved to Dublin when he was four (so his father could study medicine at Trinity College) and to Sydenham in south London when he was ten. He was restless at school and allowed to leave at 16 to take up an apprenticeship ‘before the mast’ on a sailing vessel. After four years at sea, he passed his examination for second mate and then took up a post as third officer on a Welsh Shire Line tramp steamer. Two years later, he obtained his first mate’s ticket, and, in 1898, he was certified as a master mariner, qualifying him to command a British ship anywhere in the world. 

That same year, Shackleton joined the Union-Castle Line, but in 1901 he took leave and joined the British National Antarctic Expedition, to be led Led by Robert Falcon Scott. He was appointed third officer to the expedition’s ship Discovery; and a few months later was commissioned into the Royal Navy, with the rank of sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve. During this expedition (1901-1903). Shackleton made valuable contributions to scientific research and began to establish his reputation as an explorer. However, he was sent home early by Scott, ostensibly on health grounds, though some sources suggest Scott was jealous of Shackleton’s popularity. 

Back in Britain, Shackleton spent some time as a journalist and was then elected secretary of the Scottish Royal Geographical Society. In 1906, he unsuccessfully stood for parliament in Dundee. In 1908, he returned to the Antarctic as the leader of his own expedition, on the ship Nimrod. During the expedition, his team climbed Mount Erebus, made many important scientific discoveries and set a record by coming even closer to the South Pole than before. He was knighted on his return to Britain.

However, it was Shackleton's Endurance Expedition (1914-1917) that would etch his name into the annals of exploration history. The expedition, officially known as the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, encountered catastrophic challenges when their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in ice and eventually sank. Stranded on the desolate Antarctic continent, Shackleton and his crew faced unimaginable hardships - extreme cold, starvation, and isolation. Through sheer determination and inspired leadership, Shackleton successfully kept every member of his team alive and led them to safety.

After the war, Shackleton organised further expeditions, including the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition (1921-1922) aboard the Quest in 1921, which had the goal of circumnavigating the continent. Tragically, it was during this expedition that he suffered a fatal heart attack in January 1922, while on South Georgia Island. Further information is available from Encyclopaedia Britannica, the official Shackleton website, Wikipedia, and the BBC.

Shackleton, like other early explorers, kept expedition diaries. However, as far as I can tell, they have never been published in diary form (as have other explorers’ journals - see Tragedy in Antartica for example by Sir Douglas Mawson and Vice-chancellor Priestley, both about the Nimrod expedition). Shackleton’s diaries have, however, been extensively used as source material for books about the polar expeditions, those by Shackleton himself and those by other explorers. See for example, The Heart of the Antarctic being the story of the British Antarctic expedition 1907-1909 (William Heinemann), and Shackleton’s Last Voyage - The Story of the “Quest” by Commander Frank Wild, C.B.E. (Cassell and Company). Both these latter books also contain a few direct quotations from Shackleton’s diaries.

From The Heart of the Antarctic
7 January 1909
‘We were up at 5 a.m., when the temperature was minus 13° Fahr. We were anxious to arrive at the end of our first five miles in good time for Mawson to get a meridian altitude, and take theodolite angles to the new mountain and Mount New Zealand, which were now almost disappearing from view below the horizon. Mawson made our latitude to-day 73° 43’. This was one of the coldest days we had as yet experienced on the plateau, the wind blowing from west by north. We all felt the pulling very much to-day, possibly because it was still slightly uphill, and probably partly on account of mountain lassitude. The distance travelled was ten miles.’

8 January 1909
‘To-day, also, was bitterly cold. The wind blew very fresh for some little time before noon from a direction of about west by north, raising much low drift. Our hands were frost-bitten several times when packing up the sledge. The cold blizzard continued for the whole day. At lunch time we had great difficulty in getting up the tent, which became again seriously torn in the process. Our beards were frozen to our Burberry helmets and Balaclavas, and we had to tear away our hair by the roots in order to get them off. We continued travelling in the blizzard after lunch. Mawson’s right cheek was frostbitten, and also the tip of my nose. The wind was blowing all the time at an angle of about 45° on the port bow of our sledge. We just managed to do our ten miles and were very thankful when the time came for camping.’

From Shackleton’s Last Voyage 
24 September 1921
‘At last we are off. The last of the cheering crowded boats have turned, the sirens of shore and sea are still, and in the calm hazy gathering dusk on a glassy sea we move on the long quest. Providence is with us even now. At this time of equinoctial gales not a catspaw of wind is apparent. I turn from the glooming immensity of the sea and, looking at the decks of the Quest, am roused from dreams of what may be in the future to the needs of the moment, for in no way are we shipshape or fitted to ignore even the mildest storm. Deep in the water, decks littered with stores, our very life-boats receptacles for sliced bacon and green vegetables for sea-stock; steel ropes and hempen brothers jostle each other; mysterious gadgets connected with the wireless, on which the Admiralty officials were working up to the sailing hour, are scattered about. But our twenty-one willing hands will soon snug her down.

A more personal and perplexing problem is my cabin - or my temporary cabin, for Gerald Lysaght has mine till we reach Madeira - for hundreds of telegrams of farewell have to be dealt with. Kind thoughts and kind actions, as witness the many parcels, some of dainty food, some of continuous use, which crowd up the bunk. Yet there is no time to answer them now.

We worked late, lashing up and making fast the most vital things on deck. Our wireless was going all the time, receiving messages and sending out answers. Towards midnight a swell from the west made us roll, and the sea lopped in through our wash-ports. About I A.M. the glare of the Aquitania’s lights became visible as she sped past a little to the southward of us, going west, and I received farewell messages from Sir James Charles and Spedding. I wish it had been daylight.

At 2 A.M. I turned in. We are crowded. For in addition to Mcllroy and Lysaght, I have old McLeod as stoker.’

25 September 1921
‘Fair easterly wind; our topsail and foresail set. All day cleaning up with all hands. We saw the last of England - the Scilly Isles and Bishop Rock, with big seas breaking on them; and now we head out to the west to avoid the Bay of Biscay. With our deep draught we roll along like an old-time ship, our fore-sail bellying to the breeze. The Boy Scouts are sick - frankly so, though Marr has been working in the stokehold until he really had to give in. Various messages came through. To-day it has been misty and cloudy, little sun. All were tired to-night when watches were set.’

26 September 1921
‘A mixture of sunshine and mist, wind and calm. Passed two steamers homeward bound, and one sailing ship was overhauling us in the afternoon, but the breeze fell light, and she dropped astern in the mist that came up from the eastward. Truly it is good to feel we are starting well, and all hands are happy, though the ship is crowded.

Two hands have to help the cook, and the little food hatchway is a blessing, for otherwise it is a long way round. Green is in his element, though our decks are awash amidship. He just dips up the water for washing his vegetables.

With a view to economy he boiled the cabbage in salt water. The result was not successful.

The Quest rolls, and we find her various points and angles, but she grows larger to us each day as we grow more used to her. I asked Green this morning what was for breakfast. “ Bacon and eggs,” he replied. “What sort of eggs?” “Scrambled eggs. If I did not scramble them they would have scrambled themselves ”- a sidelight on the liveliness of the Quest. Query, our wolf-hound puppy, is fast becoming a regular ship’s dog, but has a habit of getting into my bunk after getting wet.

We are running the lights from the dynamo, and, when the wireless is working, sparks fly up and down the backstays like fireflies. A calm night is ours.’

Baekeland makes Bakalite

‘I consider this days very successful work which has put me on the knot of several new and interesting products which may have a wide application as plastics and varnishes. Have applied for a patent for a substance which I shall call Bakalite.’ This is Leo Baekeland, born 160 years ago today and sometimes referred to as ‘The Father of the Plastics Industry’, writing in his diary on the very day he named the first synthetic plastic - a substance which would soon be known as Bakelite and take over the world. 

Baekeland, the son of a cobbler, was born in Ghent, Belgium, on 14 November 1863. He studied at Ghent Municipal Technical School and the University of Ghent, receiving a doctorate in chemistry aged only 21. He taught in Bruges and then back at the university until 1889. He married Céline Swarts that same year, and they would have two children. Together they emigrated to the US. There he worked for a photographic firm before launching his own company to manufacture Velox - his own invention, a photographic paper that could be developed under artificial light (indeed it was the first commercially successful photographic paper). In 1899, he and his partner, Leonard Jacobi, sold their Velox venture (Nepera Chemical Company) to the inventor George Eastman for $1m. With some of the money he purchased a house in Yonkers, New York, where heset up his own research lab.

Having signed a non-compete clause with Eastman, prohibiting him from photography research, Baekeland journeyed to Germany for a refresher course in electrochemistry. On returning to New York he was in demand as a consultant becoming involved in various successful ventures. But, in 1905, he began searching for a synthetic substitute for shellac (a natural secretion from a bug which had many uses), a search which led him to the discovery of Bakelite, a thermosetting plastic (produced from formaldehyde and phenol at high temperature and pressure). It was the first plastic invented that retained its shape after being heated, and it also held excellent electrical insulation properties. A process patent was awarded in 1909.

In time, his invention led Baekeland - dubbed The Father of the Plastics Industry - to receiving many honours. He served as president of the American Chemical Society in 1924. At the time of his death, in 1944, Bakelite was being used in over 15,000 different products, and world production was totalling around 175,000 tons. By then, too, Baekeland held more than 100 patents. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the National Academy of Sciences, 

Baekeland kept detailed diaries all his life, 62 of them, from 1907 to 1934, are held by Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History Archives. Before they were given to the Smithsonian, Céline Karraker, a granddaughter of Baekeland, read the diaries taking meticulous notes and intending to write a biography of her grandfather. They were also read by Carl Kaufmann, husband of Céline Karraker’s step sister, Ruth Wyman, who used the diaries to flesh out his master’s thesis, published as Grand Duke, Wizard and Bohemian: A Biographical Profile of Leo H. Baekeland.

More recently, however, the diaries have been digitalised and transcribed by Smithsonian Digital Volunteers, and are freely available online. A pdf of volume 1, for example, can be found here, with this intro: ‘The diary entries discuss his experiments during the time period in which he filed process patents for Bakelite. This diary [. . .] details Leo H. Baekeland’s daily activities. He writes often of his visits and discussions, as well as the subjects of correspondence he has written and received. Furthermore, Baekeland’s diary sheds light on the use and distance of travel by automobile in the early twentieth century. In the notes, Baekeland explains increasing time spent in the laboratory at the end of 1907 into 1908. The diary spans the spring months through the winter.’ Here are a few extracts, including the first mention of Bakalite. (Baekeland continued to use the term ’Bakalite’ in his diary for some time but he first started also using the term ‘Bakelite’ in November 1907.)

18-21 June 1907
‘Spent all days in my laboratory and found many interesting things. An exceedingly active period which allowed me to learn many mysterious reactions with which Thurlow has been struggling unsuccessfully since over a year. See laboratory notes marks CLS and BKL.

I consider this days very successful work which has put me on the knot of several new and interesting products which may have a wide application as plastics and varnishes. Have applied for a patent for a substance which I shall call Bakalite. Have found also a very practical solution for improving Novolak and make it practical as a varnish. All this work has been carried out while Thurlow was in Detroit showing to Berry Brothers how to deodorize Novolak. I am sure he will be surprised to hear about all what I have accomplished in so short a time.’

3 April 1907
‘I spent the morning at Westchester Hat Co. Yonkers and made an experiment so as to determine whether I could felt asbestos fibre in one of the hat machines so as to produce a cheaper diaphragm than the asbestos cloth diaphragm we are using now at Niagara Falls. The experiment was thoroughly satisfactory. In a very few seconds the whole operation was finished. I used asbestos fibre No.1 of the Johns Mandeville Asbestos Co. I intend to have the experiment repeated directly on flat cathode plates in such a way that they are placed above an opening on a flat table with suction below and a distributer of fibre above. It occurs to me that in order to utilize shorter fibre, we might stretch cheesecloth either free or over the cathode plate and thus produce an initial support for the asbestos fibre. Wetting and pressing the surface favors felting. I shall try wetting with gummy solutions or perhaps silicate of soda. We might also apply the iron paint we are using now at Niagara Falls so as to bind everything together. It occurs to me that in order to counteract the difference in hydrostatic pressure at the diaphragm in the cells we might make the lower part of the diaphragm thicker than the upper part. I have given instructions to Mr. Rowland and Marsh to carry out some further experiments on the subject. Afterwards I intend to apply for a patent.

In the afternoon went to the office of D. & F. Co. and wrote some letters.’

13 July 1907
‘A very active day which I spent in my laboratory on further research work on Bakalite. Thurlow worked on acetone formaldehyde and acetone - phenol products. See laboratory notes’

14 July 1907
‘Sunday. Started very early in my laboratory. Obtained  the first large sample of Bakalite in a bottle. The subject looks very encouraging. I believe I have an excellent thing. and it would be a great disappointment if my patent application had been preceeded by an earlier invention of somebody else.’

15 July 1907
‘Got a telegram from Townsend that Bakalite patent has been filed at Patent Office last Saturday.’

16 July 1907
‘Hard at work in laboratory.’

17 July 1907
‘Another busy day in laboratory further research work in relation to Bakalite.’

18 July 1907
‘Another hot sultry day. But I do not mind it and thoroughly appreciate the luxury of being allowed to stay home in shirt sleeves and without a collar. How about these Slave millionaires in wall street who have to go to their money making pursuit notwithstanding the sweltering heat. All day spent in laboratory - Bakalite’

25 October 1907
‘Went to N.Y. with Mr. Oppenheimer in his Limousine. Met Prof Ira Woolson at Columbia and asked him to test Bakalized Wood for me. He seemed much interested in my subject when I showed him Bakalite and told him the wood was impregnated with it. He gave me some black gum to try the process on it.

Spent remainder of morning in Prof. Tuckers laboratory testing conductivity of Graphite-Bakalite. He too seemed much interested when I showed him my samples.

Went to Wall Street where I was astonished to see mounted police men and rather dense crowds. Run on the Trust Co of America in front of office of Development & Funding Co. Good metered patient crowd line extending overlay the block until beyond custom house. Probably mostly small depositors judging from looks and appearance. Great uneasiness everywhere on account of financial condition.

Received two first copies of my book which has appeared yesterday. Consulted with Marsh & Lansing three hours, (chge 1/2 day)

Hook, Marsh & myself went to Delmonicos for lunch. Wilcox secretary of Public Utilities commission came to our table. General talk everywhere. The unsatisfactory financial condition. Asked my payment of my last bill to Hooker but he asked that I should wait and be satisfied with half of it.

Evening went to Toch’s where took supper he told me all his cash was tied up at Knickerbocker Trust Co which had suspended payments. He was rather more depressed than he ever appeared to me. Lewis fetched me at Chemists club with motor car . Took Bogurt and Toch home and we arrived here about midnight.’

23 November 1907
‘Spent all day writing letters wrote one to Quigley of Armstrong Cork Co telling him how cork Bakelite could be made in a continuous process by feeding continuously hot granulated cork with Bakelite then compressing and let the hot mass harden by itself.

All afternoon was utilized for laboratory and making a condensed report on the result of my wood impregnation tests.

Evening Mandel & wife came to eat mussels. After supper Branchi & wife joined. Showed Mandel in my lab alone my products and told him how Bakalite was made.’

Killed ♀ Ivory Gull

’The ice we are amongst is chiefly this years, but fragments of older floes are intermixed and some heavy pieces of berg. A large one is lying at the head of the bay inside of Prince Imperial Island. I suppose there must be a discharging glacier somewhere at the head of the bay. Depth 47 fathoms mud. Killed ♀ Ivory Gull.’ This is from the diary of Henry Wemyss Feilden - born 190 years ago today - who served as naturalist on Sir George Nare’s Polar Expedition in 1875.

Feilden was born at Newbridge Barracks in Kildare on 6 October 1838 the second son of Sir William Henry Feilden, 2nd Baronet of Feniscowles. He was educated at Cheltenham College before joining, aged 19, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland (The Black Watch). He fought in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny 1857-1858 and at the Taku Forts in China in 1860. In 1862, he volunteered for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, serving as assistant adjutant-general with the remnant of the Army of Tennessee under General Joseph E. Johnston. In 1864, he married Julia, daughter of a South Carolina judge. He returned to the British Army, where he made captain in the Royal Artillery, in 1874. 

The following year, Feilden was selected to serve as naturalist to Sir George Nare’s Polar Expedition in H.M.S. Alert. After the expedition, he returned to active service, participating in the South African campaign between 1880 and 1881. He visited Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya as a naturalist on private expeditions between 1894 and 1897, publishing short notes on his findings. During the Boer War, he returned to South Africa as Paymaster of the Imperial Yeomanry, retiring from the army as a colonel. He was decorated for his service in India, China and South Africa, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1900. 

From 1880, Feilden had lived in Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, becoming, for a while, president of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society, but he moved to a property he inherited in Burwash, Sussex, in 1902. He died in 1921, a year after his wife had passed away. A little further information is available from Wikipedia, British Birds and Archives Hub.

Although not known as a diarist, Feilden did keep a detailed log during his polar expedition. This was only edited and annotated recently, by Trevor Levere, and published as The Arctic Journal of Captain Henry Wemyss Feilden, R. A., The Naturalist in H. M. S. Alert, 1875-1876 (Hakluyt Society, 2019). Many pages from the book can be sampled at Googlebooks. In his introduction, Levere explains the background to the expedition and the journal:

‘The disappearance of Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition of 1846-1847 and the failure of numerous attempts to find the ships and men made the British Admiralty reluctant to expend any more resources on Arctic exploration, despite appeals from the Royal Geographical Society and other scientific organizations. However, in 1874 the leader of the Conservative Party, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), became Prime Minister and he decided, partly for political reasons, that a new expedition should be sent to explore towards the North Pole, carrying out scientific work en route. A British Arctic Expedition, commanded by George Strong Nares (1831-1915), was swiftly called into being, with detailed scientific as well as naval instructions. Henry Wemyss Feilden (1838-1921) was the naturalist in Nares’s ship, H.M.S. Alert, which wintered at the north-east corner of Ellesmere Island. This volume is an annotated version of the journal which Feilden kept during that expedition, including the preparations and the immediate aftermath, from 1 February 1875 until 7 January 1877. The original manuscript is in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society in London and it has never been published before, although Nares as leader produced a two-volume account of the expedition, to which Feilden contributed appendices on ethnology, mammalia, and ornithology. Feilden’s journal has the immediacy of an account written day by day, illustrated by sketches, all of which have been reproduced.’

Here are several extracts from the edited diaries.

10 August I876
‘Dobbin Bay. The young ice is forming rapidly and consolidating the loose floe-pieces. Captain Nares after ascending a hill and looking round thought that we could reach some loose looking stuff outside of Cape Hawks. Under steam by 2 p.m. both boilers, Discovery and ourselves boring through the pack. We could make but little way. It is extraordinary the rapidity with which the young ice even when only an inch or two thick joins the floes together. We moored again between 4 and 5 p.m. after getting about three-quarters of the way across Dobbin Bay.

Thermo sunk to +18° it feels quite cold again. Markham landed on Prince Imperial Island, and brought from it a skull of the walrus, it had been broken by human agency.

Ginger the cat invaded my sanctum this evening tore off the head of a Ptarmigan I killed yesterday and which I took great pains to carry clean onboard and also destroyed two snow-buntings.’

23 August 1876
‘The wind blew so strong directly in our teeth this morning that with 98 revolutions we could hardly hold our own. We took shelter in a small bay which I take to be Hayes’ Gould Bay. If I am right then our next Cape South is Leidy and then Cape Louis Napoleon. A tremendous big floe is jammed against the shore and extends out into the channel, at 9 a.m. we moored to this floe waiting for something to turn up.

A fine falcon Falco graenlandicus flew round the ship, but did not come within range. Parr shot a floe-rat P. hispida a female weight 65 lbs. Tip of hind flipper to snout 4’. 3 1/2”. Girth behind axillae 2’.4”. Front of fore-flipper to nose 1’.0” girth round umbilicus 2’’.4 1/2” occiput to nose 7 ins. Length between fore and hind flipper 2’. 2 1/4” Length of fore-flipper 5 1/2” Length hind flipper 8 in. Dovekies are numerous in the pools around us, counted 27 in one party. The big floe to which we were moored drifted N. so we ran for shelter into the little bay we left this morning.

Landed with Nares & Hart, found many fossils - saw a Walrus. Parr saw a little auk.’

25 August 1876
‘At 3 a.m. the Captain called me and asked me to accompany him on shore and look at two old Eskimo camps that he had seen on the beach, from the crowsnest.

He and I and Malley landed. The Eskimo traces consisted of two rings of stones for summer tents, placed on a shingle beach raised 15 feet above high-water mark. The sea must have encroached at this particular point for half of one of the circles had been undermined and washed away.

Saw a magnificent Falco candicans sitting on the slope of Cape Leidy. Crawled up to him and let rip two barrels at him 70 yards off. No result. Walking towards the south, Malley picked up a broken Eskimo harpoon. Found a foxes skull, and a few fossils. (Trilobite.).

Back to the ship by 6 a.m. got under weigh and worked through the pack some five miles, moored to floe two miles north of Cape Napoleon. Several broods of Eiders were passed, the old birds became much excited. Landed in the evening with Nares, and walked along the beach round Cape Napoleon, until we saw well into Raised Beach Bay, this was rimmed with heavy ice, and so was Dobbin Bay beyond. It appears to me as if a deal of heavy ice from the N. had drifted down here and stuck

The ice-foot along this coast is beautifully wide and smooth. At this late period of the summer it is much cut up by water channels but in the spring in must be fine travelling.

Saw a circle of stones marking Eskimo encampment a mile and a half N. of Cape Napoleon.’

28 August 1876
‘Dobbin Bay. A cheerless looking day. The snow has covered the hills with their winter garb. Several Ivory Gulls are cruising round the ship just out of shot, and picking up their livelyhood [sic] from the small pools still left open. The ice we are amongst is chiefly this years, but fragments of older floes are intermixed and some heavy pieces of berg. A large one is lying at the head of the bay inside of Prince Imperial Island. I suppose there must be a discharging glacier somewhere at the head of the bay. Depth 47 fathoms mud. Killed ♀ Ivory Gull.’

7 September 1876
‘Franklin Pierce Bay. Up steam at 9.30 a.m. and the ice slackening we moved into a large pool of water extending some distance to the eastern side of Walrus Island. Moored to a berg and landed on the island. Snow about 3 inches in depth, effectually concealed the Eskimo traces which we know to be so numerous on the Island.

Here and there a cache or the walls of an unroofed igloo were to be seen. I took a pick with me but the soil was too hard frozen to make any impression. Numerous skulls of Walrus showed above the snow, these crania are interesting because they have all been broken in the same manner, the skull broken through across the eye-holes and the front part split in order to extract the tusks. I also found the skull of a large seal P. barbata.

Several broods of eider ducks in a pool were still unable to fly. Giffard bagged 8, Malley was carrying them when the ice breaking, Malley let go the ducks, Giffard only managed to save one. I saw a pair of Ravens, and 2 Ptarmigan. A Phoca hispida was shot in the afternoon.

It was a strange sensation standing alone on the point of Cape Isabella, to the north lay the channel to the unreached Pole, a route ever to be impressed on our minds by the recollection of our dangers and escapes. The ships were drifting with the tide along with heavy masses of ice to the northward, and to the south an open sea with dark lowering clouds hanging over it. the boom of the waves breaking against the granite shore, brought back a flood of recollections from the outer world that have not crossed my mind for 18 months. So interested have I been in my work that up till now, I have never let the thought of home enter my mind, but the southern wind and open sea brought back a strange longing for home, which our letters did not dispel.’

Power of a lion

‘I feel the power of a lion in me, since I have broken the heavy ban which encircled me for years. I know now only one goal: extreme particular education in natural sciences, a body like steel and iron and then to the farthest south.’ This is from the diaries of Karl von Terzaghi, an Austrian civil engineer and geologist, sometimes called ‘the father of soil mechanics’, who was born 140 years ago today. His colourful life, some of which was spent in the US, included a long-running scientific duel which had a tragic end, employing Sylvia Plath’s mother as his secretary, and engaging with Hitler on the best way to lay building foundations.

Terzaghi was born on 2 October 1883, the first child of a soldier and his wife in Prague. On his father’s retirement, the family moved to Graz, but Karl was sent to military boarding schools where he developed an interest in astronomy and geography, and excelled at mathematics. In 1900, he started studying mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Graz, graduating in 1904. A year of military service followed, during which time he translated a popular English geology field manual into German, and undertook further studies in geology.

Terzaghi went to work for a firm involved in hydroelectric power generation, and, by 1908, was managing construction sites; he successfully completed complex projects in Croatia and Russia. In 1912, he went on an extended tour in the US, visiting major dam construction sites. On returning to Austria he was drafted into the army to lead an engineering battalion. Before the war’s end, he took up a professorship at the Royal Ottoman College of Engineering in Istanbul where he began his groundbreaking research into the behaviour of soils.

By 1924, working at Robert College, also in Istanbul, his work was receiving much attention, and he accepted a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here he set up his own laboratory, and published widely, not least in popular magazines such as Engineering News Record. During this period, he employed Aurelia Schober Plath (later to become the mother of the poet Sylvia Plath) as his secretary. It appears, Terzaghi was a much sought-after dinner companion, apparently because of his charisma and scintillating conversation. In 1928 he met a young geology student, Ruth Dogget, and soon married her.

By 1929, Terzaghi was back in Vienna, having accepted a newly created chair of soil mechanics at Vienna Technical University. He travelled a lot through Europe, lecturing and consulting. During a sabbatical (1936-1937) he became involved in a conflict over the best way to lay the foundation for a Nazi building project in Nuremberg, which in turn led him into a discussion with Hitler. On returning to Vienna after a tour in the US and just after the birth of his first son Eric, a long-running dispute (originating in different views over the so-called uplift problem) with another Austrian scientist, Paul Fillunger, came to the boil and ended with Fillunger’s suicide.

Terzaghi moved to the US in 1938, serving as professor of civil engineering at Harvard University from 1946 until his retirement. His consulting business continued to expand, and included the chairmanship of the Board of Consultants of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam project until 1959. He died in 1963. Wikipedia has a little more information; otherwise try Googlebooks for Richard Goodman’s biography: Karl Terzaghi: The Engineer as Artist.

Terzaghi left behind an extensive set of diaries, though, as far as I know, these have not been published. However, Reint de Boer used them extensively in writing his book, The Engineer and the Scandal: A Piece of Science History, published by Springer, 2005. This might provide good science history but it is not great science writing. The prologue begins as follows: ‘This book gives one an indepth study into an important part of the development of the Theory of Porous Media’ - hmmm, sounds a bit dull so far - ‘as well as the amazing story of the glittering life of Professor Karl von Terzaghi.’ The scandal in the title refers to the dispute with Fillunger.

Further along in the prologue, de Boer explains: ‘[Terzaghi] left behind an extensive record of his life in diaries, manuscripts, books, pamphlets, statements, notes etc. In particular, his diaries contain a lot of facts about his life, individuals, who accompanied him, and his surroundings. However, von Terzaghi was a vain person and belonged to that group of people who work their whole lifetime on their own memorial. In his diaries he sometimes described important events in his life not on the day on which they occurred, but a long time later, and he glossed over many facts. Thus, one has to be careful in adopting his view on facts and his description of certain occurrences uncritically. [. . .]. von Terzaghi kept not only the extended diaries, discovered at his home in 1995/97, which are the basis for this treatise, but also an incomplete set of diaries with short entries which have already been known for a longer time [. . .]’

Much of The Engineer and the Scandal can be previewed at Googlebooks. Here are a few short extracts as quoted within the narrative of the book.

6 September 1902
‘I have happily finished my treatise “On the Intellect”. It is the first time that I have taken up the pen. That should be the beginning and the introduction to a series of larger and smaller papers which I will attack soon.’

September 1902
‘I feel the power of a lion in me, since I have broken the heavy ban which encircled me for years. I know now only one goal: extreme particular education in natural sciences, a body like steel and iron and then to the farthest south.’

September 1902
‘I have heavily sinned by my failed efforts, by nearly outrageous meditations, although not responsible, and I am punished severely by disorder and unsteadiness. I will regain all this by the greatest strictness against myself and systematic working.’

October 1902
‘I must learn to give talks, the skill to have an effect on other persons by means of language in order to convince them with that, which I have recognized as the truth. Truth? No, I have to convince them from that, which I have inspected as right and desirable. I stand here, isolated, and will represent my opinion as the present right one, will myself as the center and not as a follower. My work will be to a great extent independent. . .’

31 December 1902
‘Too many intentions, too little energy. Great phrases, small thoughts. Innumerable books, lack of concentration. The year which I end today, is as each of the proceeding [sic] years, distracted. I spent a part of my time with wandering about in the dark instead of with systematic work . . . However, I must admit that I made quite an imposing piece of progress this year. I have founded my philosophy of life recently through the realization of the moral law in us. I have won by this a measure of regulation and opinion in my way of acting.’

23 October 1903
‘Now I have determined plans for the future. I will abandon all dreams of my youth and choose a profession in which I can work most fruitfully. I would like to graduate from the Technische Hochschule as well as possible in order to enlarge as ever possible, the chance to get a professorship for mechancs.’

October 1912
‘It is just the calling of my life to develop all the skills which I possess as completely as possible. I have a certain hesitation going back to Europe, even for a short time. Europe is the land of the sins of my youth. There I developed, alongside many good things, all the bad seeds in my nature.’

2 October 1922
‘I must thank the Creator that I pass the threshold of the 40th year of my life as a mature man who has made his talents unfold and has already realized to a large extent the goals, of which he dreamed in his youth. In this summer I had the feeling of being on top of life. My achievements are beginning to receive the recognition and attention which they deserve. The publications of the total results of my previous research and thinking ensured. And the unnatural relationship with my wife cleared up. On September 14, I arrived in Constantinople. There following two weeks appeared to me like one year as a result of the variety of events. The old love to Olga struggled with the indignation at her behaviour and the indignation succeeded.’

22 October 1922
‘I have thought of you [Olga] daily, this year, of the women I have loved so much, and of our small child, Verele.’ Here de Boer explains: ‘He lamented his previous and then-current situation in over eight pages of his diary and expressed several muddled thoughts and strange statements indicating that he was completely out of balance.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 2 October 2013.

The bluff to Old Snuffy

‘In the afternoon Lt. Wheeler and I came to a rapid where we deemed it advisable to wait for the Picture [a boat]. I climbed the bluff to Old Snuffy [one of the brown dolomite tongues in the Bright Angel Shale]. Near the water line are rocks with scolithus, loosely aggregated sandstone, Potsdam sandstone? It must be 75 feet thick on the granite.’ This is from the diary of Grove Karl Gilbert, one of the founders of geomorphology, written during an early expedition under the command of the pioneering explorer and cartographer, George M. Wheeler.

Gilbert was born in Rochester, New York, on 6 May 1843. He was home schooled for much of his childhood, and, though not always healthy, was an attentive student. He graduated from the University of Rochester, and tried teaching but soon resigned his first job. In 1863, he took an apprenticeship at Ward Natural Science Establishment, at Cosmos Hall on the Rochester campus, which manufactured and distributed scientific equipment for schools. He avoided the Civil War, most likely because of poor health. In 1869 he took part in the second Ohio State Geological Survey as a volunteer assistant; and, in 1871, he joined the Wheeler Survey, one of the four great surveys of the American West. In 1874, he married Fanny Loretta Porter; and in 1875, he was transferred to the John Wesley Powell survey, which took him to Utah. In 1877, he published his first important monograph, The Geology of the Henry Mountains. 

Following the creation of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879, Gilbert was appointed Senior Geologist. In 1884 he was placed in charge of the Appalachian division of geology, and in 1889, upon the creation of the division of geologic correlation, he was placed at its head. In 1890, he published his History of the Niagara River, but in 1892 he relinquished his position as chief geologist. Although wrongly attributing the origins of a crater in Arizona to volcanic activity, he correctly concluded that the craters on the moon were caused by meteorites and not volcanoes. He joined the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899. Two weeks after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he took a series of photographs documenting the damage along the San Andreas fault. 

Gilbert, much honoured in his lifetime, won the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London in 1900. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1902. He was awarded the Charles P. Daly Medal by the American Geographical Society in 1910. And, he is the only geologist to ever be elected twice as President of the Geological Society of America. ‘Gilbert,’ Wikipedia says, ‘is considered one of the giants of the sub-discipline of geomorphology, having contributed to the understanding of landscape evolution, erosion, river incision and sedimentation. He died in 1918. Further information is also available Encyclopaedia Britannica, and EOS.

Although Gilbert was a lifelong diarist, the many diaries he left behind have been described as ‘colourless’. Here is an extract from William M. Davis’s memoir on Gilbert - as found online at the National Academy of Sciences: ‘During Gilbert’s apprenticeship at Cosmos Hall he formed the habit of keeping a concise diary, and this habit was pursued all through his life. Brief entries were made in small pocket-books concerning the persons he met and the places he visited; and 51 of these consecutive annual records have been preserved, beginning in 1868 and continuing to 1918; the last entry was made only a few days before his death. It is a great privilege to look over the personal records of such a man, not in the way of peering curiosity but in a reverent spirit, with the memory of the man constantly present, and with much of the sadness that one feels when standing alone and in silence by the grave of a trusted friend. A sincere interest is aroused by every item that teaches something of his habit of thought, something of his inner nature, something of the powerful and beautiful personality that so greatly aided the progress of geology in America and that endeared itself so warmly to all his associates.

Unhappily, entries in the diaries are for the most part colorless records of fact, with very few expressions of opinion or of feeling. There are occasional blank periods, and these are prolonged when the diary was replaced by field notebooks during many seasons of work in the West. Annual summaries of travel and other leading topics are found in many of the later books. Mention is frequently made of stops on journeys westward or eastward at Rochester to see parents or elder brother; or at Jackson, Mich., to see a sister; but there is nothing written to indicate the warm affection that united the diminishing family. Instead of drifting apart in later years by reason of separated residence, the survivors seemed to grow closer and closer together. Brief extracts from the diaries will be found on later pages, where they occasionally serve to fix the dates of journeys and or to clear up matters that would otherwise remain obscure.’

That said, one of his diaries has been transcribed, by George Simmons, and is available online at Colorado Plateau River Guides (CPRG) website. CPRG says that when presented with this manuscript by Simmons ‘we almost fell dead’. This is a very significant piece of literature,’ it continues, ‘that has, to our knowledge, never been published. The trip occurred in the fall of 1871, before John Wesley Powell’s second expedition through the Grand Canyon. This is one of three factors which led to the decision by Powell to abandon the rest of his expedition at Kanab Creek in 1872. Lt. George M. Wheeler was in charge of the expedition in which Grove K. Gilbert was the geologist. This is the third expedition to reach Diamond Creek.’ 

Here are several extracts.

26 September 1871
‘The gravel that underlies Fortification Rock and Table Mountain, is newer than Black Canon lavas and older than the basalt of those peaks. The river bluffs above are of more recent gravels. Think the lower (red) bed of Table Mountain is lava - the yellow above gravel. The same beds north of the river bear the same relation to the basalt that forms the Table Mountain there.

At Fortification Rock were pictured the Butte itself the sculptured gravel opposite and some sand-worn rocks. We left the spot at about 1 P.M. and to Vegas Wash - 2 or 3 miles - had to tow up a steep hill made by the debris from the wash. The slack water above this dam gave us easy work nearly to Callville, a distance of ten miles(?). All the way the banks show gravel bluffs of coarse and fine material, half consolidated so as to give rough semi-castellated forms.’

6 October 1871
‘I propose to call our boat (No. 3) the Trilobite. We

managed to get off from Camp Crossing at about 10 A.M., just in time to miss the swimming of the mules. Mr. Marvine accompanies us so far as to get a glimpse of the mouth of the Canon and then returns. We camp outside the Canon and Hecox and I start to climb the wall. Hecox sickens (morally) at the first third of the climb, and returns. I do not reach the top until after sunset though I started at about 1 P.M. It is the hardest climb I ever undertook.’

8 October 1871
‘This morning we got ready early and I walked back to

meet Lt. Wheeler who with O’Sullivan had camped a mile below. With him I revisited the springs on the north shore and we named them.

A large one of the crater style with flowers we called Tufa Spring and Tufa Springs would be a good name for the group. Another larger one with a fantastic canopy of tufa is Grotto Spring.

A third is Baptismal Fountain.

A fourth (now dry) and hanging against a larger one is the Holy Water Fountain.

A dripping spring where tufa a foot from the water projects far over it. Starting our boat along we find yet other springs on both shores. Many of them voluminous. At one are some scrubby trees a foot or two in diameter but with the habit of the water willow. The leaf is small and unequally cordate [sketch omitted] the leaves on sprouts being rounder than those on old stems.

Verdure is to be seen at many points on the bank and referable to springs. It is confined however to the sandstone doubtless because the limestone is not so pervious [barometric readings omitted].

In the afternoon Lt. Wheeler and I came to a rapid where we deemed it advisable to wait for the Picture.

I climbed the bluff to Old Snuffy [one of the brown dolomite tongues in the Bright Angel Shale]. Near the water line are rocks with scolithus, loosely aggregated sandstone, Potsdam sandstone? It must be 75 feet thick on the granite [sketch and description of geologic section omitted].’

16 October 1871
Hecox and I were out of camp last night on account of boat accident, and the camp missed us for we had food and beds, and our boat crew went without either. They had however some bread in the morning when we came up and some of them made up all deficiencies by a good hearty grumble lasting through the day. Tonight Lt. Wheeler puts us on short allowance of flour - four pounds a day for seven men (the full ration is 7 lbs. 12 oz.). Our bacon is gone, and beans and rice are scant, but coffee is in plenty and will outlast every other item. Our flour will hold out at this rate six days and those must bring us to the Diamond River or back to the crossing, the former if possible. I make out from lves map and Newberry’s section that we are not to expect any great change in the character of the canon at Diamond River, but merely a retirement of the Red Wall from the immediate cliff. It is now far enough back to be out of sight except through canon vistas.

The granite cliff continues to show much schistose rock gneiss, chlorite slate, etc.

Basalt veins (as I can only suppose them to be for I have no time to examine them) have appeared along the cliff at many (3 or 4) points today though we have come but 1 1/2 miles.

Our work of today was the completion of the passage of Double Rapid. On the upper half Salmon and Hecox broke loose in a boat and brought up in an eddy between the two falls and on the wrong side. Indians had to swim the river and climb around to them (a work of 2 hours) to row them over when they succeeded in getting them up. Once above the rapid we found deep slow running water (with slight interruption) for 1 1/2 miles when we encamped and drew our daily ration or half ration. Drew the Picture up for repairs.

The force of the current in high water is here so great that no small gravel remains on the surface of the bottom - only large boulders. These give the rapids quite different character as regards navigation. Standing ground is generally convenient for men on the tow line. Sunken rocks are likewise abundant and the water is much tossed. The towing force does not have to wade, but pulls hand-over-hand. The steersman and bowman have to be on the alert.

Astronomical Obseravations tonight: Camp 28.’