The historian of science Thomas Kuhn used to advise his students to
read the books and papers of the past not for their insights into
present-day science but, to the contrary, to notice what was strange
about them. Those puzzling ideas, he believed, could reveal the hidden
and deep assumptions of their age.
The same may apply to the technology and commerce of the past. And few of its innovations seem odder today than the smoking lounge on the airship Hindenburg, which caught fire upon landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey on May 6, 1937.
Wikipedia has an excellent summary of the facts of, and theories surrounding, the disaster. A ball of flame appeared as the great ship was docking at the mooring mast. It sank to earth, killing 35 of the 97 passengers and crew members, plus one worker on the landing field. Almost exactly 25 years earlier, when the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank at night, there were no photographs or outside witnesses. The Hindenburg’s crash, on the other hand, was broadcast the next day on network radio and memorialized in countless newsreels, television programs, and (more recently) Internet videos. (In a strange inversion of the Titanic tragedy, at least one crew member of the Hindenburg survived thanks to the bursting of a water ballast tank, saving him from the flames.)
Even after the nuclear meltdowns at Chernobyl and Fukushima, the Hindenburg remains the most spectacular technological tragedy captured on film, outside military and terrorist attacks.
Despite revisionist theories, such as one claiming that the paint on the airship’s surface both sparked and fed the explosion, most experts still blame hydrogen. The Zeppelin company originally preferred the cheaper and more readily obtainable hydrogen, but after 48 of 56 passengers on a British airship were killed in a storm in 1930, Zeppelin’s engineers planned the new design for the safer, nonflammable helium. Unfortunately for Zeppelin, Congress had passed a law in 1927 banning the export of helium because it was a strategic gas with military aviation potential. There was thus no alternative to hydrogen, despite its risks. (Interestingly, the United States lifted the ban on helium after the Hindenburg disaster, although it was reinstated in 1938 after Nazi Germany annexed Austria.)
Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/may/markets-risk-and-fashion-the-hindenburgs-smoking-lounge
The same may apply to the technology and commerce of the past. And few of its innovations seem odder today than the smoking lounge on the airship Hindenburg, which caught fire upon landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey on May 6, 1937.
Wikipedia has an excellent summary of the facts of, and theories surrounding, the disaster. A ball of flame appeared as the great ship was docking at the mooring mast. It sank to earth, killing 35 of the 97 passengers and crew members, plus one worker on the landing field. Almost exactly 25 years earlier, when the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank at night, there were no photographs or outside witnesses. The Hindenburg’s crash, on the other hand, was broadcast the next day on network radio and memorialized in countless newsreels, television programs, and (more recently) Internet videos. (In a strange inversion of the Titanic tragedy, at least one crew member of the Hindenburg survived thanks to the bursting of a water ballast tank, saving him from the flames.)
Even after the nuclear meltdowns at Chernobyl and Fukushima, the Hindenburg remains the most spectacular technological tragedy captured on film, outside military and terrorist attacks.
Despite revisionist theories, such as one claiming that the paint on the airship’s surface both sparked and fed the explosion, most experts still blame hydrogen. The Zeppelin company originally preferred the cheaper and more readily obtainable hydrogen, but after 48 of 56 passengers on a British airship were killed in a storm in 1930, Zeppelin’s engineers planned the new design for the safer, nonflammable helium. Unfortunately for Zeppelin, Congress had passed a law in 1927 banning the export of helium because it was a strategic gas with military aviation potential. There was thus no alternative to hydrogen, despite its risks. (Interestingly, the United States lifted the ban on helium after the Hindenburg disaster, although it was reinstated in 1938 after Nazi Germany annexed Austria.)
Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/may/markets-risk-and-fashion-the-hindenburgs-smoking-lounge
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