Extinct Technologies

I feel the way about a Springfield that I do about a Gooney Bird; some pieces of machinery are ultimate perfection of their sort, the only improvement is a radical change in design.
--Oscar, in Robert Heinlein's Glory Road

Sometimes a technology evolves to the point where the only improvement is a whole new technology.

Case(s) in point, last week, Pat and I took a mini-vacation to Pennsylvania, to Lancaster and Philadelphia. We visited Pat's cousin, Phil, deep in the heart of Amish country. Pennsylvania has more covered bridges than any other state; 30 in Lancaster County alone.


Covered bridges are the acme of wooden bridge design. Most employ the arched Burr truss --a double arch of laminated timbers combined with a series of triangular king posts. The king posts gave the bridge rigidity and the double arches (one on each side), distributed what engineers call the "live load" (the weight of moving wagons or trucks) to the bridge foundations. The arches are three 4x12 planks made of heartwood oak, steamed to allow a slight curve, and bolted in sections to each other. The seams are staggered so the pieces overlap, resulting in a single load-bearing piece. Most of the covered bridges we saw are still in use by traffic, including honking big farm machinery.


The bridges are made of locally quarried stone with local timber. Wood rots when wet. The builders added a roof, usually tin or shingle, to protect the wood elements and prolong the life of the structure. Uncovered wooden bridges have a lifespan of 10 years; covered bridges go ten times longer, maybe more. Wooden bridges were cheap and quick to build using local labor and were the way you crossed a creek dryshod until the advent of structural steel in the early 2oth century.

The bridge tour was part of the trip to Philly. On the way, we stopped at Strasburg, an early hub of railroading in the Keystone State. Three different railroad museums to choose from; one devoted to toy trains, one to model trains (there is a difference) and one featuring the real deal.

The model train museum, a private outfit, held a layout the size of a basketball court featuring local color. The sheer size of the layout and movement, including aircraft circling on wires, contribute to the biggest sensory overload I've experienced since going through It's a Small World at Disney World. Every 10 minutes or so, the lights dimmed and the houses, streetlights, and cars lit up. Pretty impressive. My favorite, though, was all the small jokes the modelers worked into the set. I saw several, but I'm sure I missed a lot. Jokes like the town square bronze statue of Eisenhower in full uniform with a pigeon on his head.

Or the hobo jungle with a club wielding three-headed troll under the bridge ("my brother is much bigger") the heads were miniature portraits of Larry, Curly, and Moe. There must have been 20 trains running all over the layout including a familiar face.

We saw gentlemen of a "certain age" leaving the gift shop with big shopping bags stuffed with model railroad cars and building kits. A trail of drool led to the door; you could almost smell the lust.

The real deal, however, was the Railroad Museum at Strassburg. I felt the same as when visiting the Smithsonian's Hall of Dinosaurs; big bellowing creatures that evoke the small kid's "Oh wow" response.


Steam locomotives ranging from one used to transport sugar cane in Hawaii to the huge Atlantics and Mikados that ran from one end of the continent to the other and back. A working exhibition train with coal smoke puffing from the stacks and brass bells agong.



Don't get me wrong; I harbor no nostalgia for bygone days. Being an American in the early years of the 21st Century is as good as it gets (on my optimist days) or as good as it ever will be (on my pessimistic ones). But the scent of live steam or the sound of hoofbeats on wooden decking evokes the same feeling as seeing a live mastodon.

When we have perfected aircars and matter-antimatter drive, I can't help but wonder what bits of today's stuff will be considered cool enough to keep.

Old Birds

People who visit museums tend to fall into one of two categories; those that know nothing about the exhibits in front of them, and those who know more than enough. These categories do not include the usual herds of school kids who only know that they are not in class today and who are savoring a rare taste of freedom.

I visited the Udvar-Hazy facility of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, also known as the Air/Space Annex, near Dulles Airport the other day. Forget the $12 parking fee and the fact that the building is out in the middle of nowhere (OK, not the middle, but you can see it on a clear day). Forget that the lots are less than 25% full and its the least visited of all the Smithsonian facilities. What's really cool is that it's big enough to house real airplanes, real really big airplanes.

The first to catch the eye is the SR-71 Blackbird. Sleek and flat black like Steve McQueen's Mustang in Bullet, as menacing as a T. rex, it sits on the ground floor, looking ready to chew right through the walls and take off.



"Did you know," said an airplane geek, standing at the nose of the beast, "that when they flew this bird from Edwards Air Force Base to here, it broke the speed record for time across North America? And that was just practice." I knew that particular factoid, but went along anyway; "Last time I saw one of these, they had just been declassified and were touring the air show circuit." "Whoa," came the reply, "you go back some on this plane." I mentioned that when last I saw an operational Blackbird, the crew had spread tarps under it to catch the oil dripping out of the fuselage and wings. "Yeah," my expert replied, "these things were built loose in the airframe and leaked like sieves. When they got up past Mach 2 or 3, the air friction and heat caused them to tighten up. If they were that tight on the ground, they would implode at speed." I noticed the tail insignia and pointed it out. "oh, yeah," came the reply, now aimed at a small cluster of people who had gathered for the impromptu lecture, "that's the symbol of the Skunkworks." The Skunkworks was a super secret facility located in (wait for it) Area 51 out in the Nevada desert. The Blackbird, the B-1 and -2s and the U-2 were all developed and test flown there. No wonder people kept reporting UFOs all the time. Report seeing a highly classified aircraft that doesn't exist from an experimental facility that isn't there, and nobody in any authority will say "yeah, that's one of ours."



The museum is loosely divided in to general themes. Military, civil aviation, and space. The military wing has examples of aircraft I grew up reading about; a Nieuport with the Lafayette Escadrille emblem on the side, a Spad and a German biplane are the heart of the World War I section. The Spad comes equipped with a Lewis machine gun, state of the art in 1918, and cool enough to be used by George Lucas as one of the weapons carried by the Imperial storm troopers in the first Star Wars movie.




The World War II area has more aircraft, simply because the old biplanes are few and far between today. As a kid I built models of many of the WWII aircraft and hung them from my bedroom ceiling with monofilament fishing line. The Smithsonian has done the same with some of the smaller aircraft, using something stronger than monofilament. The windscreens aren't clouded over with gluey thumbprints either. An old Flying Tiger fighter, a Navy Hellcat and a short takeoff and landing Lysander used for inserting spies and agents into occupied Europe are locked in a frozen dogfight overhead.



The silver dollar in the penny pile, though, has to be the Enola Gay, arguably the most famous airplane in history. An airplane that changed history, carefully restored to look like it did on the morning of the last day of the old world. You can't look at this machine and be neutral about it. I once asked my dad, a veteran of the European Theater, what he thought about the atom bomb. His answer paralleled a quote from James Jones (a veteran combat infantryman and author of From Here to Eternity and several other World War II novels). "It meant" he said, "that I was going to be able to grow up and have a life." My musings were interrupted by a family strolling the catwalk and reading the signage. "This is the airplane that dropped the first atom bomb on Japan" read the dad. "I thought Japan was on our side." replied the semi-bored son. "It is now, but not then." I blame the education system. Had I wits quick enough, I would have quoted Robert Oppenheimer from the Batisvada, "Now I am become death, breaker of worlds" although I doubt anyone present would have got it.



Pride of place, however, goes to the Space Shuttle Enterprise, the first one and possibly the only shuttle named by geeks. Housed in its own gallery with the rest of the space stuff, the first impression is one of overwhelming enormity. It is hard to believe something that big can actually fly. It's like a building with engines you can stand up in. The eye ignores the space suited astronaut off in the corner and provided for scale.



The Smithsonian prides itself on keeping all their exhibits in working order. You could, for example type a letter on one of their vintage 1900 Remington typewriters. A few years back, they let out the Tom Thumb, the first locomotive in North America and took it for a spin on an old B&O spur line along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Maryland. I suppose they could, if the spirit moved them, oil and gas up any aircraft hanging from the ceiling and buzz Dulles Airport.

Humbirds

Q: Why do hummingbirds hum?
A: Because they forgot the words.
--Boys’ Life Magazine

I needed some photos of hummingbirds for an article I was researching for an on-line discussion newsletter. I called around to my various friends and acquaintances in the area parks. Most, when they thought about it, were somewhat puzzled that they hadn't seen any coming to their feeders lately. One park had a few coming in but they were irregular and couldn't be counted on to make an appearance. Finally, the desk volunteer at Huntley Meadows said "Yes, we have a pair. They alternate every 5 minutes or so. I'm looking at the male now." I thanked her and tossed my stuff in the truck.

Thirty minutes later, I was set up at the feeder and waiting. Hummingbirds just materialize out of nothing. One second you are staring at an empty feeder, and the next, there it is. "Beam me down, Scottie." The male, resplendent in a carmine gorgette (the "ruby throat" of Rubythroated hummingbirds), hovered while he sipped at the 1/4 sugar to water solution. A low buzz from the wings, like a bumble bee, only more punctuated, was audible even 10 feet away where I snapped like crazy. Three or four sips later and he was off, Turing the corner of the building and disappearing like so much fairy dust.

Five minutes later, right on schedule, the female winked into existence. No ruby throat, but body shining in metallic green, she perched on the lip of the feeder and guzzled like a construction worker in a tavern.

Hummingbirds are tiny scraps of life; the Cuban Bee hummingbird, about the size of your thumb and weighing less than a penny is the world's smallest bird. The Giant hummingbird, found in the Peruvian Andes, is about the size of a starling and the Goliath of hummers. Hummingbirds only inhabit the New World and islands throughout the Caribbean have their own endemic species, such as the Jamaican Red-billed Streamertail with 8 inch tail plumes on the male (over twice the length of its body). The streamers hum during flight. The locals call it the doctor bird because the black plumes remind them of the old fashioned frock coats worn by physicians (“and the big bill”). The doctor bird is the logo for Jamaican Airways.

There are about 340 different species, though new ones are discovered almost every year. Sixteen species nest in North America, but only one, the Rubythroated hummingbird is found in the eastern half of the continent. Every year, however, we get reports of western species spending the winter in the East. One year, a Broad-billed hummingbird, usually found in the Rocky Mountains, wintered only a few blocks from our house.

Hummingbirds all have specially shaped short stubby wings that allow them to hover in place, back up, and even fly upside down. The wings cup air and provide lift on both the up stroke and down stroke; most birds’ wings only lift on the down stroke.

Hummingbirds all drink nectar for energy. They prefer red flowers with long tube shapes like trumpet vine. Pretty much any long flower, especially red ones are dependant on hummingbirds for pollination (most insects can’t see the color red) depositing the stuff on the birds’ heads and throats. With their long bills and longer tongues with fringes on the tip, they soak up nectar via capillary action and squeeze into their mouths. Hummingbirds also hunt small insects like aphids and tiny spiders for protein, and feed them to the chicks for a rapid growth boost.

Christopher Columbus was the first European to see hummingbirds, noting them in his ship’s log when he arrived at the island of Hispaniola; he thought they were bees. In fact, the name “hummingbird” comes from both the low buzz they make in flight and from the old name for bumble bees (humble bees); interesting aside: another old name for a bumble bee is “dumbledore”. Of course, the people who already were living in America knew about hummingbirds. The Aztecs believed them to be the ghosts of warriors who had died in battle, combining the bird's brilliant beauty and utter fearlessness. The Hopi people thought hummingbirds could predict rain. In the arid Southwest, hummingbirds build nests just before the summer monsoon rains to ensure a good supply of nectar-bearing blossoms and associated small insects.


Hummingbirds nests are tiny —the nest of a Rubythroated fits over the end of your thumb like a cap. The female builds nests of silk stolen from spider webs, lines the inside with soft plant down like dandelion fluff, and attaches lichens to the outside for camouflage. Silk stretches, allowing the nest to expand as the chicks grow. Two pinto bean-sized eggs, hatch in 2 weeks and the babies are up and out in about 3. Hummingbirds usually raise two broods a season, fixing and reusing the old nest with each new clutch.

Due to their tiny size and warm bloodedness, hummers have ferocious metabolisms, burning their way through life. Hearts, largest in size in proportion to body weight of any animal, run at 500 beats per minute at rest- double that in flight. They hover with wings going at 55 beats per second, 75 in flight. The human eye just can't follow that speed so all you get is a blur. Naturally, with such a jacked-up metabolism, you expect them to have a very short life span, but hummers have several tricks up their feathered sleeves. They go into torpor or temporarily hibernate every night and in cold weather. Body temperature drops 20 or more degrees and metabolic rate slows accordingly, saving energy. The oldest Rubythroated is documented at 9 years. Other species, particularly those in temperate regions may live even longer.

Hummingbirds in temperate areas are migratory. Rufus hummingbirds go from Alaska to California and back every year. Rubythroateds migrate 500 miles across Gulf of Mexico in one hop. They were once thought to ride on the backs of migrating geese since nobody could believe such a tiny bundle of feathers could make the trip on its own.

Hummingbirds, especially males posses iridescent feathers in metallic greens, blues and reds. Feather color is due to structure, not pigment, with layers of specialized scales on each feather acting like miniature prisms. The metallic feathers on the throats of males, called gorgettes, catch the light during courtship displays to show off to any females in the area. Males fly patterns to best display their colors - Rubythroats fly in low inverted arcs like a clock pendulum, other species fly spirals or weave back and forth through the foliage, flashing on and off like living neon signs.