100 Years Ago: January 1926

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: January 1926

 

This is the 132^nd entry in my series of National Geographic rewrites of a 100-year-old issue.

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “On the Trail of Air Mail” and was written by Lt. J. Parker Van Zandt, U. S.my Air Service, Author of “Looking Down on Europe,” in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article contains sixty-seven black-and-white photographs, of which fourteen are full-page in size.  These photos were taken by Capt. A. W. Stevens for the U. S. Army Air Service.  The article also contains a sketch map of the United Stated showing existing and planned air mail routes on page 5.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

Aircraft, no doubt had their use in warfare, but what of peacetime?  There was a new revolutionary fact abroad in the land: aircraft had gone to work.  And the Nation was waking to find itself fast wedded to a new handmaid of progress – the U. S. Transcontinental Air Mail Service.  The story of that great overhead, skyline trail linking East and West, along which, through storm and calm, in darkness or in light, a score of winged couriers relayed the public mails across three thousand miles of continent in less than a day and a half, was a modern romance of transportation as fascinating as any that came to us out of the colorful past.  It was the undying spirit of the Old Frontier aflame again, that restless torch once borne by Daniel Boone and Bonneville, the heritage from two hundred years’ invasion of an untamed borderland.  It was the spirit that urged the lagging caravans along the Oregon Trail and spurred on the gallant riders of the Pony Express.  It was the quickened temper born out of the Winning of the West, that smoldered in the blood of every true American – that was the most American thing in all America.  Here, the author begins a series of first-hand snippets of the route from New York to San Francisco.  He starts at the station in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on a cold December night.  A plane with Christmas mail out of New York was due in.  The radio operator wat North Patte, 215 miles to the east, reported its departure at 9:50 p. m.  The Cheyenne station was one where planes with new pilots were swapped out.  The next pilot prepared to take the plane on to Salt Lake City, 400 miles across the Continental Divide, the next swap-out station.  The plane with the Christmas mail arrived and the next plane was ready.  The mail was transferred, and the next plane took off in snow and freezing weather.

The plane took the mail to Salt Lake City that night.  And Tuesday’s mail out of New York was read Thursday morning in California.  It took seven planes to hurdle the continent in 32 hours.  The author listed the planes by their pilots’ names.  Ames brought the mail out of New York, five hours to Cleveland.  Art Smith flew three hours to Chicago.  Page reached Omaha after dark.  Allison flew the plane to Cheyenne; Collison crossed the Divide to Salt Lake City, arriving in early light; Marshall flew five hours to Reno; and Vance, in the final lap, swept over the Sierra Nevada and down to San Francisco – thirty-two hours from New York Bay to the shores of the Golden Gate!  Day and night, seven pilots hurdled the continent at a rate of more than 2,000 miles a day.  Something of that great modern epic, the author already knew, from frequent flying visits to nearby Air Mail fields.  Bit by bit, out of conversations with the “grease-monkeys” (as the mechanics were called) and with the “beezos” (as the mechanics had nicknamed the pilots), the story began to come to light.  There was no mention in the archives of the Post Office Department; nor in records of Air Mail files.  So it was with keen delight that the author welcomed orders from the War Department to take a plane and make an inspection flight along the entire transcontinental airway of the mail.  Flying by easy stages from Washington to Monmouth, Illinois, where the Air Mail experimental shops were to be found, he hurried on after a brief visit and reached the field at Omaha late one afternoon.  The day had been rough and gusty, but, following a crimson sunset, a passing shower had cleared and cooled the air.  The author accepted it as a hopeful omen for the 1,600-mile journey that still laid before him.  He climbed the steep ladder of the beacon tower to watch for the incoming plane from Chicago.

A mile to the east, under a thin rising mist, laid the brood Missouri, whose muddy waters, “too thin for a beverage, too thick for a drink,” found their source in the faraway Rockies.  From a grassy meadow out in the dark river bottom a tiny automatic beacon winked cheerfully, marking the air trail that led eastward more than a thousand miles, to New York.   From his perch on the beacon tower, the author watched planes arrive and depart and the mechanics working below all day until well past midnight.  It was the darkest hours of the night that he finally scrambled down the tower, to find the hangar crew preparing to receive the eastbound mail; and as he dropped off to sleep on a hard little cot in the pilot’s room, the drone of the incoming plane sounded faintly across the hills, like a rumble of distant thunder.  Late the next afternoon, the author picked up a passenger and pushed on to North Platte.  Peter Berger, field manager at Omaha was an experienced mechanic who the author had flown before.  Berger had begged for his ten days annual leave, kiss his wife a hurried goodbye and vaulted into the seat, shouting, “California, here we come!”  The grazing horses and cattle frantically scuttled aside before the onrushing thunder of their engine.  Below them the dappled earth, alternated black and green, spread out like a vast inverted bowl as clouds drifted by.  They followed the westbound section lines, along the invisible lane binding the Nation.  Early the following morning, they were off for Cheyenne.  There began in earnest the desolate plains over which the bellowing of buffaloes once echoed like the ocean beating on a distant shore.  Their route skirted the flat bed of the South Platte.  Occasional tiny beacon markers in the open fields along the bank marked the night mail’s course.

A short half hour out, they skimmed by Ogallala, once the Gomorrah of the cattle trail, in 1925, a respectable-appearing little city.  Here it was that the “Long Drive” of Texas longhorns used to cross, out of Texas past Stinking Water Creek, to the Crazy Woman branch of Powder River. [See: “The Taurine World: Cattle and Their Place in the Human Scheme – Wild Types and Modern Breeds,” December 1925, National Geographic Magazine.]  Here, too, the old Oregon Trail wound through shallow gulches to the North branch of the Platte.  From their cool perch in the sky, under the drifting fringes of a low bank of cloud, the stories of hardships endured by those earlier travelers seemed as remote as the lessons of the Old Testament.  Eighty-five miles from North Platte, Pete drew the authors attention to an emergency field slipping under their wings – Chappell, Nebraska, the scene of one of the strangest accidents that had ever occurred in the Mail.  There. On a stormy July night, pilot Frank Yager crashed.  The plane was totally destroyed, but Yager miraculously survived.  The mail was an hour late reaching Omaha that night.  Pete got a stirring welcome when they landed at Cheyenne, two hours out of North Platte.  Cheyenne was the headquarters for the Mountain Division that stretched away over the Continental Divide, 400 air miles to Salt Lake.  From the train it appeared, for the most part, a dreary and tiresome waste.  League upon league of desert prospect, barren buttes, and sand cliffs rising out of the sage.  From the air, the whole scene was transformed.  There were hidden aspects of beauty in that unpromising land.  But one must take the air way to discover them.  One such they found in the Medicine Bow Range, lying west of the Laramie Valley.  Far south, the snow-cap of Longs Peak seemed to float in the pale blue of the sky.  To the north the majestic bulk of Elk Mountain (Big Horn) reared up grandly out of the plain.

But the frowning beauty of those ranges made little appeal to the Mail pilots, engaged in endless lonely combat in the dark, with man’s ancient and uncompromising enemy, “winter and rough weather.”  That sullen, lifeless belt of the Laramie Range, across the valley, rising 9,000 feet above the sea, had more than once clutched hungrily at a fleeting plane, only to have the pilot slip through its icy fingers.  There, Jack Knight had been caught in the canyon winds and flung against the mountainside, into a deep snowdrift.  When Knight regained consciousness, an hour later, he found himself lying several yards from the cockpit, the plane in pieces.  Those pine-covered slopes beneath them, gliding by in the glorious light of a midday sun, the scene of Jimmie Murray’s misadventure, one stormy spring, five years prior.  Thet was when the transcontinental mail route had just been opened and the idea of night-flying over that portion was as yet undreamed of.  Murray had attempted to pass south of Elk Mountain, through a rift in the lowering clouds.  He was caught in a raging snowstorm.  With no way to turn back, he cut both ignition switches and pancaked down “as gently as possible.”  The plane was very badly wrecked, but Murray was unhurt.  He could not see far; it was still snowing.  He started off down the slope through two feet of snow.  At dark, he came on a little lake and spent the night there, under a fir tree.  In the morning, the snow was still falling heavily.  He reconnoitered around the lake and found a deserted cabin.  A signpost nearby read, “Sand Lake – Arlington 14 miles,” and pointed along an old hunting trail.  It took him five and a half hours to cover the first eight miles, then the snow began to thin out and he made Arlington by 3 o’clock that afternoon. Just as he got into town a cowboy rode up and said that he found that a bear was tracking the pilot.

Pete and the author leaned over the side of the fuselage and studied the broad shoulder of Elk Mountain, where the rocky, snow-streaked gashes ran down into Medicine Bow meadows.  In another fifteen minutes Medicine Bow was behind them and the upper waters of the North Platte unrolled before their platform.  What appeared to be a jumble of toothpicks laid strewn for miles in the water.  These were railroad ties out of Saratoga, floating down to Fort Fred Steele.  Dropping from their high altitude, they cut across great sloping rows of upended rock strata that looked like successive battlements of some ancient gigantic fortress.  Ahead rose the smoke of Parco, a “tailor-made” oil town by the Union Pacific tracks.  They landed in Rawlings one hour and 28 minutes after leaving Cheyenne.  Rawlings was the highest Air Mail Service station on the entire transcontinental route, 6,745 feet above sea-level.  It was probably the poorest, as regards terrain, and they were thankful the next morning to get off with no problems.  The saving feature that made night-flying possible in and out of that field was the almost unfailing presence of a strong westerly wind.  They were headed toward Red Desert.  They saw no signs of life save one skulking coyote loping through the scattered sage across the red sand.  Pilot Collison lost his propeller there one morning, and had to land, “dead-stick,” gently down in the scrubby sagebrush.  Every section of the transcontinental route had its “hard-luck” pilot.  At Omaha, on the Central Division, Collison held that dubious honor, while on the Pacific Division, Scott held the “title.”  But there were other pilots whom trouble rarely visited.  Among them was Bob Ellis, who had flown for six years, over 200,000 miles, with only one dead-stick landing, and that was four years prior.

Red Desert now laid behind them and Table Rock rose up sheer and scorched on their left.  Beyond, the solitary smoke of a locomotive floated out of Bitter Creek canyon, the only evidence of life in the whole treeless waste.  Advancing crabwise along the course, in the grip of the strong wind, the welcome sight on an emergency field beacon tower rose above the sage; then the Lincoln Highway, a reddish vein through the dust-white earth.  They dropped down until the wheels almost stirred up the dust on the road.  It was somewhere on that highway that Collison made one of his dead-stick landings.  The author glanced to the side for a second when a stalled car loomed up dead in their path and the narrowly averted a collision.  And, they were gone over the brow of the hill, swinging gaily along toward Point of Rocks.  A deep gash in the desert floor opened below, revealing the Union Pacific tracks; then the dry bed of an ancient lake, forming a perfect landing field, with a beacon marker planted in its center.  Above the Aspen Mountains on their left, a tiny speck flashed and came floating by on outspread wings.  It was a great bald eagle, emblem of America.  It was incredible what one could see in that high, clear air.  The author could have sworn they could make out South Pass, 50 miles to the north, along the Sweetwater; and rising faintly beyond, the foothills of the Wind River Range.  Ahead, the smooth, flat top of Table Mountain spread across their path, a familiar landmark to the mail pilot.  On its broad back, one winter, Chandler had landed in several feet of snow; and against its side, Ellis had once been sucked into a snow drift.  The plane was buried in snow until Spring, while the pilot and mail were rescued by rope let down from above.  From the level rose a solitary Pilot Butte, and at its base by the dry Killpecker Creek, lied the Rock Springs Mail Field.

As they glided in for a landing, a gust of wind lifted one wing and canted them over fifty degrees, then rightened them suddenly again.  The plane landed, but Pete had lost his chocolate, scattered among the sagebrush, which he had placed on a shelf in the cockpit.  The hangar crew was busy.  They did not stay to offer their assistance, but hurriedly fed their thirsty mount water, gasoline, and oil and took off for Salt Lake.  At the base of Table Mountain, Bitter Creek led westward between tinted columns of sandstone pinnacles to Green River.  Leaving Green River, the Union Pacific swung northward, hugging the valley of Blacks creek, while they struck boldly west across the most desolate and inhospitable section of any they had seen.  For forty miles the course laid above a country that God had seemingly forgotten.  Ugly, waterless gulches wandered lost in cracked and cauterized earth, and the bleak, lifeless landscape simmered in the fires of an un-consoling sun.  Yet, for the Mail pilot, the curse had been largely lifted from that forsaken land.  He knew that his progress was closely timed by the watchful hangar crews, advised by radio of his departure.  Within an hour or so of being forced down by weather or motor trouble, teammate would be scouring the countryside to find him and bring him aid.  On Granger’s Bench, a broad ledge creeping slowly toward them, Lester Bishop once had the occasion to test the warmth of that fraternal bond.  He was forced down in a snowstorm.  After draining the water from his plane, he set out for Lyman, 20 miles away.  The snow was deep, and, near exhaustion, he heard his rescue plane.  An hour later, Bishop was at the Rock Springs field, carried back in the mail pit of Ellis’s plane, which had succeeded in landing on a windswept ridge nearby.

Beyond the seared cliffs of the benchland, the marshy meadows of Fort Bridger and Lyman shone out like an oasis of green.  Past Bridger’s Butte, whose oval top appeared as level as a ballroom floor, their course led by an old railroad bed, once the main route of the Union Pacific, but now abandoned for a shorter, tunneled route.  The silver pointer alone their left closed in and the massive, rounded dome of Porcupine Ridge rose frowning on their right. With the beautiful Chalk Creek canyon at its base.  For 60 miles, into Salt Lake across the Wasatch Range, there opened a mountain fairyland of fir.  To Pilot Boonstra, however, the sight of Porcupine Ridge kindled no such warm memories.  There, on a ledge, at 9,400 feet, he crashed one stormy December morning.  For 36 hours he struggled down through snow to the nearest ranch house.  From their high perch they could look down into Echo Creek canyon, 15 miles to the north, a colorful cleft in the mountains; then El Canyon Creek, half girdling the forested base of Lewis Peak and winding off between towering hills toward Devil’s Slide.  A low saddle appeared in the Wasatch Range marking the head of Emigration Canyon, the last stubborn obstacle in the path of the Mormon migration.  As they swept over the ridge, the glorious panorama of the Great Salt Lake Basin burst into full view, while far below laid Salt Lake City, as if set in a silver-chased cup.  They eagerly sought the Air Mail field.  Their goal now seemed just over the horizon.  To be sure, a trifling 600 air-miles still laid before them; but they shrank into insignificance as they thought of the more than 2,000 miles that stretched away to the east.  The unimpeded progress of their happy pilgrimage and the novel sights of the Mormon capital thrilled Pete and went to his head like wine.

He grew loquacious, and from him the author learned much of interest beyond which he already knew about the early days in the Mail.  The Air Mail was born in 1918.  President Wilson and several members of his staff witness the first plane take off from the polo field in Potomac Park, Washington headed for Philadelphia, where a relay plane awaited to take the mail to New York.  The pilot, a young and inexperience cadet, could not even find Baltimore, only 35 miles away.  Lost, he landed near a small town and was told he was 25 miles from Washington in the wrong direction.  The following day the same pilot was given another – and last – chance to follow the elusive air trail to Philadelphia.  He vainly searched as far as Cape Charles, Virginia, where the Atlantic Ocean and lack of fuel put an end to his explorations with the Mail.  Out of such ignominious beginnings had grown the finest example of dependable air transportation that the world had yet seen, flying over 10,000,000 miles and transporting more than 6,000,000 pounds of mail.  During the tentative period of the first two years neither pilots nor green field crews were quite sure how it would all turn out, while inexperienced executives led them from one false trail to the next and a hostile Congress frowned on the whole impossible undertaking.  During the fateful year of 1920 several of the finest pilot lost their lives while flying unsafe and obsolete equipment.  Then a new policy came into force.  A standard type of plane, equipped with a 400-horsepower Liberty engine, was adopted.  The shorter mail routes were abandoned and all efforts concentrated on perfecting service along the transcontinental route.  The improved performance resulting from that policy was nothing less than remarkable.  Year by year the efficiency percentage rose and the morale of the service mounted with it.

In July 1924, a night schedule was established between Chicago and Cheyenne, the world’s first serious attempt at regular night-flying.  Within a short time, the lighted sector was extended westward to Rock Spring and eastward to Cleveland.  At the time of this writing, it was complete from New York to Salt Lake City.  Almost a million miles had now been flown at night without the loss of a single letter.  One fatality during the fiscal year 1925 was recorded, however.  A new pilot lost his head when flying into a snowstorm at night.  He attempted to jump from his plane but became fouled in his parachute.  The Mail pilots, of course, must take the weather as it comes, and be prepared for the worst.  The must know at a glance every hill and house, every road and river along a track from 10 to 20 miles wide and 500 miles long.  And they must know them under all the confusing conditions of which could be conceived.  Like that vanishing race of Mississippi River pilots, they had to learn their long course.  Their slogan, “San Francisco or bust!” was ill-chosen for at high noon the next day they nearly “busted” landing at Elko, Nevada, 200 miles west of Salt Lake.  A shallow, unmarked ditch laid hidden under the June grass at one end of the field. And into it they rolled, breaking the undercarriage.  The damage was far from irreparable.  A radio to the Army Reserve station at Salt Lake quickly brought a new undercarriage by airplane, and late the next afternoon they were in the air again, headed joyfully toward Reno.  By train the distance was more than 300 miles; but beyond Beowawe they deserted the tracks to follow the shorter air trail over Carson Sink, thereby saving 70 miles.  That land was all part of the vast inland plateau between the Wasatch and Sierra Nevada ranges.  Cut by a hundred minor mountain groups that rose above the general 5,000-foot level.

Almost every range between Salt Lake and Reno had made its bitter comment upon the progress of the mail, though, happily, no fatalities had resulted.  Stil, that land was not wholly devoid of beauty.  Some of the scarred desert hills were marvelously tinted with all the colors of autumn woods, and alkaline salt glistened like gold.  Across the whole length of the western sky, in the glow of the sinking sun, hung the white crown of the Sierras, “the eastern wall of the land of gold,” while in the fertile Truckee meadow at its base they made out Reno, the last stop between them and their goal.  Then came the great day.  Stright toward the mountains they headed, following Truckee Canyon.  As they climbed higher and higher, fresh beauty streamed into view and the grand, massive uplift of the Sierras spread out in all its ineffable glory.  The author wondered if in all the world there was another range so sublime and yet so accessible.  Deep in a girdle of snow-mantled peaks laid the broad expanse of Lake Tahoe, hidden under the shadow of a thunderstorm.  They fled westward, seeking the pass before the storm intercepted them.  Just in the nick of time they slipped through the saddle into Rubicon Canyon; and as they passed, a great forked arrow of lightning crashed into the mountain side nearby, throwing out a weird violet light, as if in sullen rage at their escape.  They were over “The Hump” at last!  Below them Rubicon River leapt in wild abandon down the rock steps of its canyon, while the pinnacles of the Sierras receded eastward, sharply silhouetted against the storm.  A glorious, iridescent rainbow ring formed in the spray at the head of a cascade and, plunging over the ledge with them, slid down the waterfall to vanish in a deep pool at the base.  Far ahead, beyond the dark forest zone, they could see Sacramento valley, Muir’s “Grand Central Garden.”

In a brief hour their long-dreamed-of goal laid spread before them.  The vast basin of San Francisco Bay, beaten with dry sunshine, glistened and sparkled in its hilly cradle.  Little ferryboats scampered across the water, trailing tiny white streamers of foam, and through the Golden Gate came floating long, lazy wisps of fog.  At the foot of Presidio hill, beyond the thick carpet of buildings, laid the field.  As their wheels touched the sandy ground, Pete gave a mighty shout, and the plane had scarcely stopped rolling before they both rose in their cockpits and, leaning across the windshield, solemnly shook hands!  Such a vision of America as had been accorded them!  Such an overwhelming revelation of the wonder and majesty of our national heritage!  With it their faith in perfection had passed into vision.  They had trailed the elusive West to its last retreat, and had found that the West was not a place – only a stage of progress: everywhere one people, one civilization, one spirit, one all-embracing sense of nationality.  They had followed the Mail to its farthest outpost; had shared its joys and some of its dangers; and they felt, after the manner of the Romans, that perchance they could join the Mail pilot in his proud boast, Civis aerius sum – “I am a citizen of the air!”

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Man’s Feathered Friends of Longest Standing” and was written by Elisha Hanson.  It has the internal subtitle: “Peoples of Every Clime and Age Have Lavished Care and Affection Upon Lovely Pigeons.”  The article contains thirty-five black-and-white photographs, of which seven are full-page in size.  One of those full-page photos serves as the frontispiece for the article.

Even before the dawn of history the breeding of fancy and racing pigeons was one of the favorite pursuits of man.  Wherever historians delved and archeologists dug they found evidence of the interest of men of olden days in pigeons.  That interest, in our own age of steam, electricity, and chemistry seemed to be growing.  There was a fascination about those birds that made it possible for men and women of all stations of life to enjoy them.  To some persons the breeding od pigeons opened the road along which to pursue an ideal, the ideal of beauty, in one of its highest forms.  Not all of us were artist, capable, using brush and palette, of catching impressions on canvas; but those of us who loved pigeons had an opportunity to create something essentially satisfying through the infinite variety in which their colors may be blended.  No one knows how many varieties were being bred in the world in 1925, or how many had been bred and abandoned in the past, but it was estimated that of the fancy birds alone there were upward of 200 distinct kinds, and it was known that many of those had innumerable subdivisions, where the type was the same but the coloring of each was different.  Besides fancy pigeons, where type and color made the variety and its subclasses, there were racing pigeons and utility pigeons.  The latter were reared in large numbers, principally for food purposes.  Finally, there were the Common pigeons, to be found in barn lofts, church steeples, and public parks and plazas the world over.  It was difficult for a pigeon fancier to describe the reasons for his strong attachment for these birds.  The author recalled his first impression of them, nearly thirty years prior, when he saw the timid, white creatures as they flew overhead in an old country woodshed.

From that moment birds of all kinds, but pigeons especially, had held a place of deep affection in his heart.  That sentiment was far from unique.  Woodsmith experienced it one day while walking through his favorite forest.  A dove was singing to its mate.  But Wordsmith was not the first poet to write of his love of pigeons.  The Psalmists sang of them; Anacreon sang of them; Juvenal, Shakespeare, Mrs. Browning, Moore, and many others had recorded their love of pigeons in verse.  Some of the most charming strains of Liza Lehmann’s song cycles were about the sheer beauty of pigeons.  Literature, legend, and history were rich in pigeon lore and in all the records of warfare, there was nothing more stirring than the accomplishments of our own little feathered warriors in the great World War.  In legend, there was the story of the dove which brought to Noah the message that the great flood had subsided.  According to Arabs, the bird flew away on a second trip and came back with muddy feet. Noah prayed that they would always be that color, and they are red to this day.  We learned from Xenophon’s “Anabasis” that the love of pigeons was widespread in those parts of the world where the Greek army traversed.  We also learned from Pliny that ancient Rome was as keen about those birds as was modern Belgium.  Probably the best-known pigeon fancier in the world in 1925 was King George of England, whose lofts at Sandringham contained the finest racing specimens obtainable.  His Majesty’s grandmother, Queen Victoria, was also an ardent fancier, visiting pigeon shows whenever possible and spending hours in her aviary.  Thousands of years before King George, another king, Rameses III of Egypt, gloried in his donations of pigeons to the temples of Thebes, Heliopolis, and Memphis.

Since Rameses time, down to King George’s, the Orient, especially Mohammedan countries, had regarded pigeons as sacred.  Only recently (to the author), a riot occurred in Bombay because some Europeans killed the revered pigeons in one of the city squares.  In Belgium, pigeon racing was the national sport, in which many Belgians were keenly interested.  The Grand National of Belgium, in which fanciers from all parts of the country participated, provoked far more interest than the world’s series in the U. S.  Every village had its Homing-Pigeon club, and throughout the racing season thousands of birds were shipped to France and other adjacent countries each week for the fly back home.  Some clubs even used airplanes to shorten transportation time giving the birds additional strength for the flight.  Naturalists looked for the original stock of all domesticated pigeons in some wild variety, but could not agree as to whether it was the Stockdove or the ledge-roosting Blue Rock Dove, varieties of which were found in Europe, Asia, and Africa.  The most general view inclined to the latter, for when domesticated birds bred promiscuously, their offspring reverted rapidly into birds of the type of the wild Blue Rock Dove.  The love of pigeons was universal.  It was older than the love of flowers, and certain varieties of pigeons shown in 1925 probably had been distinct in color and type characteristics longer than the most distinct varieties of any other domestic bird, flower, or highly bred animal known.  Common pigeons were found everywhere.  They looked after themselves, with only incidental attention from men, and while they were inhabitants of cities, their lives, in so far as selective breeding was concerned, were the same as those of wild birds generally.  This article deals only with domesticated birds.

The house in which pigeons were kept was called a loft – a name probably derived from the fact that the Common pigeons usually nested in the highest parts of buildings.  Lofts were of various kinds and sizes.  In New York there were lofts on top of some of the tallest skyscrapers, but across the river, in Jersey City, a Racing Pigeon enthusiast for a time kept his birds in the basement and flew them from his basement window.  In Belgium many fanciers used the top story of their homes, and in England breeders utilized attics and outdoor lofts, as well as housetop lofts.  The chief essentials of a loft were light, air, cleanliness, and plenty of room.  It should be protected from drafts and secured against natural enemies like rats and snakes.  In the loft, the domestic life of pigeons was akin to that of men.  They mated in pairs and remained loyal until death.  Unlike all other birds, they bred the year round.  No fancier who was striving for improvement in his variety would permit his birds to breed continuously, as the parents were weakened thereby, resulting in defective young.  Fanciers usually bred his birds in February or March and separated then in July or August, keeping the cocks and hens in different lofts over the autumn and winter months.  If satisfied with the results he may breed the same pair again the next season.  If not, he will change mates, keeping the broken pair separated; otherwise, they would go back to each other.  When the birds were mated the male selected the nesting place and immediately drove his mate toward it.  Both shared in the work of building the nest, and the first eggs was laid from 8 to 12 days after mating.  Until the egg came, the male bird never ceased in his attentions to his mate, and fought off any other males which approached her.

Pigeons laid but two eggs (sometimes only one), about 48 hours apart.  The young, if all went well, hatched 18 days after the second egg was laid, and reach full size in four weeks, when they were weaned.  Before that time the mother laid another pair of eggs, and thus began rearing a   second family before the first was grown.  The female pigeon sat on the eggs from late afternoon until mid-morning.  The male bird assumed responsibility for the remaining hours.  After the young came the male parent was by far the best provider.  The squabs were fed by the parents first eating the food and then regurgitating it for the young.  At first the food looked like milk, but as the squabs grew older the food hardens, and just before they left the nest, whole, undigested grains were fed to them.  Pigeons should be fed hard, whole, dry grains, and grit and fresh water provided constantly.  In warm weather they should be given baths.  Pigeons were long-lived.  Some were said to have been bred at 16 years.  For sheer magnetism and intelligence, pigeons were equaled by no other bird.  Every variety had its distinct characteristics; every bird had its personality.  While pigeons had been used in war since the siege of Troy, not until the World War was widespread interest on those little feathered soldiers of the air.  The modern Racing Pigeon was developed in Belgium, probably in Antwerp, within the last century [from 1925]; but that racing specimen was entirely different from the birds used to carry messages in the olden days.  Whatever the earliest varieties of Racing or Homing Pigeons might have been, that used for racing in peace and for communications in war was one of the most marvelous results of selective breeding accomplished by man in any lie of naturalistic endeavor.

The modern Racing Homer weighed about 16 ounces.  It might be one of many colors, and either solid or checkered.  The best fanciers of Homing Pigeons seldom mated two birds of the same color, since emphasizing color was believed to minimize strength and racing ability.  Racing pigeons were flown from distances of 10 to 1,000 miles; but, as with race horses, different types were used for various distances.  There were sprinters among pigeons, just as among men and horses; there were also distance birds, just as there were Marathon runners and Derby horses.  Light birds made the sprinter, but the big ones went the route.  They made various speed depending on the weather and atmospheric conditions.  A good average speed, under fair racing conditions, was a little more than 1,200 yards a minute.  Pigeons were capable of 13 hours’ sustained flight, and could fly from as far as from Chicago to Washington, within that period.  That meant that they traveled more swiftly than our fastest trains.  The sport of racing pigeons was revolutionized with the revolution in transportation; first steamboat, then the railroad, and still later the airplane.  Where formerly pigeons were raced only from 10 to 30 miles, they were now [in 1925] flown from 500 to 1,000 miles.  Until about 1905, breeders believed that their birds would fly to a fixed loft only, and if either loft or bird was move, its flying days were over.  During the Russo-Japanese War, however, the Japanese Army used mobile lofts; and the same were used in the World War.  The discovery resulted from a very simple observation.  A Japanese officer noticed that pigeons on ships would return to their same ship even if it had moved.  He experimented to see if birds on land would act the same, and they did.

Pigeons were naturally afraid of gunfire; yet their work in the recent world conflict was astonishing.  The first extensive use of the birds by the American Expeditionary Force was during the Aisne-Marne offensive.  Due to rapid advance of American troops, the front line was constantly changing, yet of 72 birds used during that action none failed to return with its message, vitally important messages.  In the Saint-Mihiel drive, 90 messages were sent from the front line to headquarters.  In the offensive, 24 out of 202 birds were killed, but no message failed of delivery, messages were sent in duplicate using two birds.  During the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the 442 birds used delivered 403 messages safely, the losses due to the short period of training.  Not a single message went astray of fell into the hands of the enemy.  Many pigeons were wounded by machine-gun fire and artillery but still completed their missions.  The British, French, and Belgium governments commandeered the services of every Homing Pigeon in their respective countries.  Even the Royal loft was taken over by the Royal Navy.  Racing Pigeons had pedigrees like race horses, and they were bred and trained with care equal to that bestowed upon their equine brothers.  A Racing-Pigeon loft was equipped with a window made of wires which were easily pushed in, but not out.  These permitted the bird to enter the loft, but prevented his exiting.  Outside the window was a landing board, on which the birds alighted when returning from a spin through the air.  Training the bird started with placing the bird on the landing board with food placed inside the loft.  After the bird learns how to enter the loft, the next lesson, the window is removed and the bird allowed to fly free and return when hungry.

When the bird was from nine to twelve weeks old his hard work began, proceeded by a careful physical examination.  The wings were the most important part of a Homing Pigeons body.  When those were spread, the feathers should overlap each other without any breaks.  Good length and breath of feather were desirable.  Each wing contained twenty feathers, ten primary at the outer edge and ten secondary on the inner side toward the body.  The Homing Pigeon tail, which was the rudder, was also important.  It had twelve flight feathers in two sets of six each.  When the bird was at top flight, the tail appeared to have but one feather.  Pigeon flyers watched the molt, or change of feathers, closely.  When the bird was six weeks old it began to drop its nest feathers and its first set of adult feathers began to appear.  It should never be flown while in heavy molt.  The new feathers, if food and housing were satisfactory, would all be in within eight to ten weeks from the start of the molt.  After the birds grew familiar with their surroundings, they were taken a mile or more from home in a basket and released.  The distance was increased from day to day up to 25 miles.  When that stage was reached, instead of being released in a group from the basket, they were single tossed – one at a time, two or three minutes apart.  That single-tossing process, repeated many times, put the individual bird on his mettle.  It also trained him to fly from a given point to a given point, regardless of the number of birds in a flock at the start of a race or the number of birds he might meet flying in the opposite direction.  From the 25-mile stage a jump was made to 50 miles, usually the last training stage.  The next step was ordinarily the 100-mile race, where the bird got his first test for speed and endurance.

The racing of pigeons was unlike any other sport in that the birds started from a given point but finish at different points.  When they were shipped to the race, a small band was placed on the leg of each contestant.  When the bird reached its home, it should go into the loft without delay, where the owner removed the band and put it into an automatic clock, which recorded the time of arrival.  The distance to each loft from the starting point was measured, and the winner was the bird which flew the greatest number of yards per minute.  When old birds were raced, the hen flew best when her eggs were from eight to ten days old, and the cock when the young were from ten to twelve days old.  While the cock was driving his hen, neither bird could be raced successfully.  It was also inadvisable to fly either male or female for several days after the eggs came, as the birds did not settle down immediately after the hen laid.  On longer courses pigeons usually terminate their race during the evening, so the female with eggs was anxious to get home to her nest and flew hardest to get there.  If there were young to feed, the male bird stained every muscle to see that they did not go hungry overnight.  On clear, quiet days pigeons flew high in the air; when weather was against them, they flew close to the ground to take advantage of any shelter.  In well-bred pigeons the instinct for home was so strong that birds sold to other cities had been known to return to their old lofts upon being released several years.  On the other hand, fine Racing Pigeons had been made so happy in their new homes that they were settled and flown from them.  Pigeons would fly in any month of the year, but the old birds’ racing season coincided with the period during which their owners allowed them to breed – from March to June.

“They came in a ship to Dundee.”  That brief sentence summed up the entry into Anglo-Saxon countries of many of the most beautiful birds in the whole realm of the fancy-pigeon world. From Calcutta, Bagdad, Hong Kong, Archangel, Bokhara, Constantinople, Asia Minor, and the Barbary Coast, those orchids of the bird kingdom reached Dundee.  From there they were distributed throughout the British Empire and America.  Notwithstanding man’s love of pigeons, little was known of the origin of many highly treasured varieties.  In London, in 1676, the ornithologist Willughby published a treatise on Pigeons.  Sixty years later John Moore wrote a history of tamed pigeons.  Tremendous strides in breeding had been made since that time. And the birds of his day would not be recognized by their descendants.  The Carrier, the Tumbler, the Pouter, the Barb, the Fantail, the Runt, the Jacobin, and the Nun, all prized varieties of 1925, were favorites with Englishmen in the time of Willughby and Moore.  Yet none of those birds originated in England.  Pigeon clubs and societies flourished then, and many importations from the Orient were first seen at the meetings of those clubs.  Of the ancestry of the Carrier, the Pouter, and the Tumbler we knew little.  The Fantail originated in Hindustan.  But even as late as 1850, a shipment of those graceful little dancers, arriving in Dundee, completely revolutionized the Fantail fancy and started a war between Scotch and English breeders.  The Fantail was a small, round-bodied bird which carried an enormous fan-shaped tail frequently having more than 30 feathers.  As it stood on its toes and held its tail erect, the bird’s chest, and not its head, should be directly over the feet.  The neck was long and fine, curved down and backward, and the head rested on a cushion at the base of the tail.

When viewed from the front in its pose, the Fantail’s head could not be seen.  The fantail was a bird of curves, whether one looked at the beautiful, circular tail or at the body.  When it was moving about its loft it danced blithely on its way about its business.  That description would have fitted Willughby’s and Moore’s ideal of a fantail, which in those days was called the “Broad-tailed Shaker.  But English breeders for several years concentrated on tail quality and forgot other properties.  The result was that they produced birds with enormous tails, but coarse in all other respects.  Then another ship came to Dundee, and on it were Fantails with small, round bodies and fairly large tails.  The Scotch fanciers at once began to ignore everything but body conformation, and the English everything but tails.  Meanwhile, the Fantail established itself in America, where fanciers were quick to see the ideal bird combined the good qualities of small body and large tail.  In 1925, America had many glorious Fantails with bodies even smaller than the old Scotch ideal and carrying large circular tails.  The Barb, a pigeon beloved by Shakespeare and by Mary, Queen of Scots, who pined for it in prison, was rarer in 1925 than 300 years prior.  It originated in northern Africa so long ago that all traces of its early history had been lost.  It was a small bird of the toy variety and was the only square-headed pigeon known.  It had a short, stout beak, like that of a bullfinch, and was also distinguished by an eye wattle, which covered almost the whole side of the head.  As the bird grew older, another heavy wattle appeared on the upper and lower parts of the beak.  The usual colors of the Barbs were beetle-green, black, red, and yellow.  The wattles, being flesh colored, formed a pleasing contrast against the body color.

The Carrier had for centuries been regarded as the king of pigeons.  It was a large, bold bird, which probably got its name from its aggressive carriage and not from its flying ability.  Like the Barb, it had an exaggerated eye and nose wattle.  The latter was so large that when the bird was fully mature it had the appearance of having shoved its beak through a beautiful, white rosebud.  The Carrier was the most quarrelsome of pigeons and would fight upon the slightest provocation.  When he could not find anyone else to quarrel with, he might beat his wife.  For that reason, Carriers were usually bred in individual compartments, for, in their constant conflicts, they could ruin their rose adornments, their chief claim to favor.  Of later origin than the Carrier was the Dragoon, a noble-looking bird with a bold head and eye.  The Dragoon had well-developed eye and nose wattles, but they were not as large as those of the Carrier.  Another bird of like type, the Horseman was much fancied centuries prior, but, by 1925, had practically disappeared and so his place being given over to the Racing Homer.  Jacobins and Nuns, two very old varieties, were wholly dissimilar in appearance.  The Jacobin had a hood which made it almost impossible to see the head.  Nuns had only a small hood called a “shell crest.”  The Jacobins came in solid colors – red, yellow, and black – with a white tail and white flight feathers on the wing.  The Nun had a pure-white body and crest, with colored head, tail, and flight feathers.  Nuns came in several colors, but black was most favored.  Queen Victoria kept many varieties of pigeons, but her favorites were the Jacobins, and many a prize winner found its way into the Royal lofts, from which in turn its offspring went back into the showroom and out into the fancy.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning was another pigeon fancier.

The Pouter was not only the aristocrat but also the buffoon among pigeons.  There were eight or ten varieties of pouting pigeons, but two, The English Pouter and the Pigmy Pouter, had outstripped all others in popularity.  The former was a tall, thin-waisted bird, some 18 inches in length, and stood on long, thin, stork-like legs completely covered by stockings of feathers.  At his throat there was a crescent of white like an old-fashion cravat.  The wings were often colored black, red, yellow, and blue, with rosettes of white on each shoulder.  There were also pure white Pouters, but only during the last few years had they approached the colored birds in perfection of type.  The name of this variety came from an ability to inflate its neck into a large circular globe.  In good specimens it was exceedingly attractive.  The name had no bearing on the bird’s personality.  The cock was not a good husband or father, and was always ready to neglect his home duties and go philandering.  The Pigmy Pouter was a miniature, in all respects, of the English Pouter.  While the latter had been known for centuries, the Pigmy was a creation of the last century.  Originally, it came from continental Europe and was not related to the English Pouter.  During recent years [to 1925], breeders had outcrossed and inbred the two so that in 1925, the only difference between them was not one of type, but of size.  The Tumbler had more friends the world over than any other variety of fancy pigeon.  Man’s affection for it had lasted over three centuries.  The bird had changed drastically over that time, and the birds of 1676 and 1736 showed little resemblance to those of 1925.  This pigeon derived its name from the ability of its ancestors to turn somersaults while flying through the air.  There were still Tumblers which performed, but they were not the ones seen in the showroom.

The acrobats themselves were divided into many classes, some of which made but one turn at a time, others two or three, still others side dipped, and yet others which flew high in the air and descended (sometimes to an untimely death) by a series of backward revolutions.  In addition, there were Parlor Tumblers, which could not fly at all, but performed on the ground.  The Parlor Rollers turned in a series of backward somersaults along the ground.  Those that rolled the farthest were the best.  The Hindus originated the performing Tumbler, and in addition to the varieties known in America, they had another called the Lowtan, which would not perform until it was shaken up rather roughly several times in the hand.  The old-fashion Tumbler was a plain-headed sort, but the modern bird had a large, broad, bulging forehead, the broader the better, and the beak should be set at a right angle to the head.  Tumblers were known as clean-legged and muffed.  The former had no feathers on their feet; the latter had a profusion of feathers, and the longer and more profuse the better.  Tumblers came in solid colors of red, white, blue, black, yellow, and silver.  There were also birds with colored bodies and white wings, called “whitesides,” and birds with mottling on the wings.  One of the most fancied subvarieties was the “baldhead,” which had a white head, and flight and tail feathers, with a colored body.  For many years, the Almond, or short-faced Tumbler, was the most popular of those birds, but of late its vogue had declined.  During the 16^th and 17^th centuries in England, good Amond Tumblers commanded as high a price as a good horse.  Pigeon fanciers believed that the pioneer aviators learned to do many of their stunts, such as side dips and loops, by observing Tumblers in flight. 

Among pigeons, as with men, there were long-nosed and pug-nosed individuals.  One of the most popular groups of fancy pigeons was made up of the “pug-noses,” or so-called “short-faces,” which included the Turbits, Owls, and Oriental Frills among the favorite members.  Formerly they were unrelated, but due to interbreeding in the last 50 years, in 1925, they were grouped together.  The longest-nosed pigeon was the Scandaroom, which originated in Bagdad centuries ago.  It was a large bird, with colored body, white wings, and a long beak.  It was ferocious in appearance and disposition.  The Turbit was the oldest-known member of the short-faced family.  He was a small bird with white body, wings, and tail, and colored shoulders.  The favorite colors were black, blue, silver, red, and yellow.  The Turbit’s outstanding feature was his head, with was large and bold, with a bullfinch beak and a small peak crest.  Down the breast was a roselike frill of feathers.  The feet were free of feathers.  There were three varieties of Owls, name for their resemblance to the nocturnal bird.  They had no crests and their heads were more nearly round than that of the Turbits.  They came in solid colors and had no feathers on their feet.  The African Owl was the smallest, the English Owl the largest.  The Chinese Owl, the rarest of those birds, was between the two in size, and carried a double rose frill on his breast.  This group came in standard colors and also in exquisite powdered blues and silvers.  Oriental Frills were introduced into England about 75 yeas prior by H. P. Caridia, a former resident of Asia Minor.  There, this that variety was originated hundreds of years ago and held sacred.  The Orientals had outstripped both the Turbit and the Owl in popularity and appeared to be entitled to the esteem it had won.

In the Oriental Frills, the fancier had pigeons with at least three different shades of color on one feather; pigeons which come from the nest with one group of color tones and which assumed an entirely new group on reaching maturity.  The four subvarieties in greatest favor were the Satinette, the Blondinette, the Bluette, and the Silverette.  The Satinette had a white body with penciled and laced wings.  The penciling had the appearance of blue, black, dun, sulphur, or brown tracing.  The blue-laced Satinettes had blue tails, with a white spot on each feather.  In the others, the tails were laced like the wings.  The Blondinettes were colored or laced all over.  The Bluettes and Silverettes had white bodies and blue or siler wings.  The heads of the Orientals should resemble those of the Turbits.  The legs and feet were covered with short, thick feathers.  The coloring of the Orientals was so rare that many fanciers had tried to introduce it into their birds, without success.  On the other hand, if Owl or Turbit blood was introduced into the Orientals, the structural properties sought were obtained and the Oriental coloring regained in full within a few generations.  The Russian or Bokhara Trumpeter was the greatest talker among pigeon.  He was a heavy, booted fellow, with a rose crest, and sounded like a trumpeter at practice with a low-pitched horn.  There was another variety, in 1925 almost extinct, called the Laugher, whose cooing resembled a human chuckle.  It was impossible to describe all the varieties of fancy pigeons seen at shows.  There was the great class of German toys, with more than twenty subvarieties, including Swallows, Frill Backs, Helmets, and Priests.  There were the Magpies; the Hungarians; the Mookies, Snabians, Sherajees, Chinese Dewlaps, Starlings, Modenas, and numerous others.

Fancy pigeons mated like the Homers and, as a rule, were good parents.  The short-faced birds, however, needed assistance to bring up their young, and unless “wet nurses” were provided, valuable youngsters might be lost.  Fanciers solved that problem by switches by transferring the eggs from short-faced to long-faced and vice versa, for the short-faces, while unable to rear their own young, were able to feed those with longer beaks.  If a fancier belonged to a pigeon club, he marked his birds with a registered seamless band, which was placed on one leg when the baby pigeon was about five days old.  Pigeons were exhibited as youngsters and Orientals, did not appear at and as old birds.  Some, such as Carriers, Barbs, and Orientals, did not appear at est until they were from three to five years old.  Others, such as Pouters and Fantails, coarsened with age.  In England, pigeons were judged both in their single coops and in walking pens, and were marked on the double showing.  In the U.S., only the walking pen was used.  In this, every bird had to display himself before the judges, just as a horse or a dog performed in the tanbark ring.  Up to 1915, American Fantail breeders had striven in vain for good silver-colored birds.  In 1916, a pair of the author’s blue Fantails hatched a beautifully colored silver hen.  He mated the hen to a blue cock and they produced two blue cocks.  He mated the better-colored of the two with his mother and produced two silver hens.  In 1919 the process of inbreeding continued.  The old hen was remated to her son and the better young silver hen to her blue half-brother, who was also her uncle.  The results of those matings produced all silvers, both cocks and hens.  Since then, those birds had been inbred, line bred, and outcrossed, and, in 1925, the silvers were among the best of his large family of Fantails.

Regressions constantly appeared in the best pigeon family.  A strain of blue Fantails breeding for ten years had produced birds that were clean-legged, as Fantails were suppose to be, yet, in 1924, produced a blue hen with grouse-feathered feet.  Also, Fantails were supposed to have fine smooth heads, but a pair of birds whose ancestry was known for five generations produced a crested fan.  Last year, in an effort to improve blue saddles, a mating between a saddle cock with a solid-blue hen gave a pure-white youngster which proved good enough to win at a Fantail club meet.  Pigeons were good to eat, and if one bred only from the best, there was certain to be plenty for the pot.  There were several varieties of pigeons bred mainly for the table, including Runts (the largest of all the pigeons and one of the oldest), Carneaux, Kings, Mondaines, and Working Homers.  The French were the first to rear squabs for culinary purposes, but within the last 25 years [in 1925] squab breeding had spread over the world.  The young pigeon was heavier at four weeks, when it was just ready to leave the nest, than at any later period of its life.  It was fat and soft and made one of the finest delicacies served in 1925, being especially good for convalescents and children.  Squab breeders worked year-round and were not separated in winter like the fancy and racing birds.  If not crowded, they produced from 10 to 14 young yearly.  The most profitable squab plants were those operated as a side job, after hours, or by the owner himself doing all the work.  Labor and building costs were so high that the cost of additional help and housing above a one-man-plant size was prohibitive.  Not all lovers of pigeons could exhibit their birds, but one’s real pleasure were to be found with the birds in the loft.  Exhibitions were soon over but one’s own aviary furnished constant joy.

 

 

The third item listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “Pigeons of Resplendent Plumage” and has Hashime Murayama in the byline.  It is not an article, but “Twelve Pages of Illustrations in Full Color” containing “12 Paintings from life,” and is embedded within the second article.  Mr. Murayama is the artist.  The twelve full-page color paintings are on plates numbered I through XII in Roman numerals and represent pages 65 through 76 of the issue.  This block of plates, together with the article containing many descriptions and links to the plate numbers (not shown in my article above), almost make up a field guide.

A list of the caption titles to the twelve paintings, with their plate numbers is as follows:

• “Victoria Crowned Pigeons” – Plate I
• “Park Pigeons” – Plate II
• “Fantails” – Plate III
• “Pigeon Ecclesiastics” – Plate IV
• “A Pigeon Medley” – Plate V
• “Pouters” – Plate VI
• “Table Pigeons” – Plate VII
• “Racing Homers” – Plate VIII
• “Tumblers” – Plate IX
• “Swallow Pigeons – Plate X
• “Oriental Frills” – Plate XI
• “Magpies” – Plate XII

 

 

The fourth item (third and last article) listed on this month’s cover is entitled “Measuring the Sun’s Heat and Forecasting the Weather” and was written by C. G. Abbot, Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.  The article has the internal subtitle: “National Geographic Society to Maintain a Solar Station in a Remote Part of the World to Cooperate with the Smithsonian Institution Stations in California and Chile.”  The article contains fifteen black-and-white photographs, of which four are full-page in size.  It also contains a sketch chart on page 124 showing rainfall and temperature for Buenos Aires from May to August 1924.

Riding one day, between Sat Lake and Los Angeles, the authors newly-met seatmate learned that his business was to observe the heat of the sun.  The man said that he did not believe it.  He stated, “The higher one goes on a mountain or in a balloon, the colder it gets.”  The author explained to the gentlemen that the sun’s energy was not heat, but radiation.  The visible sun’s rays were like radio waves only much smaller.  The sun warms a room in winter even though the window panes stay cold.  Glass, like air, was transparent to sunlight; they do not absorb any energy from it, so they stay cold.  Black objects absorb most of the sunlight and grow warm.  Besides charming us in the rainbow, the sunset, and the blue of the sky, sun rays kept the earth warm enough to live on.  They maintained the inimitable chemical processes by which plants grew and distilled into clouds all the ocean water that came to us as rain.  [See: “Toilers of the Sky,” August 1925, National Geographic Magazine.]  When we get wise enough, sun rays will furnish us a trillion horsepower, for mechanical, electrical, and heating purposes, if we needed so much power by that time.  The National Geographic Society had given the author a grant to measure the radiation of the sun.  But since he had been in that work for the Smithsonian Institution for more than 30 years, members of The Society had a right to know what more was expected to be found with the aid of that generous grant.  The fact was, we had discovered that the sun was a variable star.  Mr. H. H. Clayton, an eminent American meteorologist, who had been cooperating in the work, had proven that very distinct changes of barometer, temperature, and rainfall were caused by those changes of the intensity of sun rays.  Mr. Clayton believed that what we called weather, as opposed to climate, was due to the sun’s variations.

That seemed a bold claim.  What interested them still more was that he found it possible to predict weather for days, weeks, and even months in advance, just by using observation of the sun’s radiation and its changes.  The astonishing feature about his results was that very small solar changes, even those less that 0.5% in the sun’s radiation were able to produce considerable changes in the weather.  That seemed at first rather preposterous.  We thought of night and day, with 100% change from light to darkness, and of the great change in intensity of the sun’s rays between summer and winter.  Neither of those tremendous changes of solar radiation gave tremendous changes of temperature.  They must forego possible explanations of Clayton’s paradox, merely that a small pull of a pistol trigger could do great damage; and something analogous might be involved here.  They were only now thinking that if 0.5% change was important, it threw a hard task upon whoever had to determine the sun’s variation.  Measuring from under an ocean of air, filled with water vapor, clouds, and haze, and having to get so exact a measure of losses produced by those factors that 0.5% could be detected in solar rays.  That was what the Smithsonian Institution had attempted to do by keeping up two observing stations, one in California and one in Chile; but it had proved impossible quite to reach the desired accuracy.  Now the National Geographic Society, appreciated the worldwide importance of the work, had come to the rescue by offering to build, equip, and support for several years, a third observatory in another part of the world.  Where do they locate those solar observatories, and why?  On desert mountains to avoid clouds; far separated to reduce error; situated at high altitude to reduce atmospheric interference; and in an accessible area.

It was also necessary to select for each station a director to make observations, and the instruments if needed; and be able to cope with loneliness; deal with the locals; and be dedicated to the work.  As the author saw it, there were only three promising places remaining available.  One was in Algeria; another, British Baluchistan; the third, Southwest Africa, under British mandate.  In one of those three regions he hoped to install The Society’s new station within a year, and to place in charge of it a trained man meeting all the requirements named, and with him a worthy assistant.  Already the apparatus was being prepared.  It would take some months to complete it and to prepare the buildings for its reception.  The outfit was unique, altogether strange in an astronomical observatory.  It was without a telescope.  They employed a machine called the coelostat to reflect the sun’s rays constantly in a fixed direction into the observing chamber.  It had two mirrors, one rotating half as fast as the earth, the other stationary.  The first reflected the sunbeam in a fixed direction and the second sent it into the chamber.  Those mirrors could not be silver-backed like ordinary hand glasses.  It would be harmful for the sunlight to go through glass.  It was reflected from the front surfaces.  They formerly used silvered mirrors; but silver, when open to the air, tarnished.  They now used the very hard alloy, stellite – a costly material, that was still more costly when ground and polished to a perfect optical figure.  Its harness was so great that a carborundum grinding wheel would not send off a train of sparks from stellite as it did from hard steel, but only slowly made any impression on it.  Within the observatory, the sunbeam fell into a spectroscope, which broke it up into the beautiful band of color called a spectrum – violet at one end, red at the other.

The eye was unable to see that for some distance beyond the red there were still solar rays, and beyond the violet others also.  X rays lied still farther beyond violet, but with those they did not have to deal.  Since neither eye nor photography could observe the whole gamut of solar spectrum rays, they were obliged to absorb them on a lampblack surface, so that they produced their equivalent as heat.  They then measured the solar-ray power in terms of heat it produced.  A very delicate electrical thermometer for that purpose was invented by Dr. Langley, a pioneer in solar-radiation measurements, as he was later in aviation.  He called his instrument a bolometer, which meant “a ray-measurer.”  It consisted of two blackened, hairlike ribbons of platinum, each about one-half inch long, 1/250 inch wide, and 1/2000 inch thick.  Those were joined by two coils of wire to form a “Wheatstone’s bridge,” and connected with an electric battery and a highly sensitive galvanometer.  Electric lamps used about one-fourth ampere of current.  The apparatus they were describing detected current changes ten billion times smaller.  It also detected changes of temperature of one of the little platinum ribbons of less than one millionth of one degree.  The solar spectrum, being moved along from beyond the violet to beyond the red, passing over one of the ribbons, produced its tiny heating effects, and caused thereby swings of the sensitive galvanometer index.  A recording of those was kept on a moving photographic plate.  Thus, they produced, in seven minutes, a measurement of the heat found in all those solar spectrum rays, from far beyond the visible violet to far beyond the visible red.  Why was that necessary?  Because our atmosphere attenuates differently the several rays of the spectrum.  They had to measure its effect on each of them.

By measuring intensities first at low sun, when the atmospheric path was oblique and very long, and again later, at high sun, they came into possession of the facts which enabled them to compute what energy each solar-spectrum ray contained outside the atmosphere altogether.  Summing up those computed energies for all the spectrum rays, they found at last what the total of the solar heat would have been if taken on the moon, with no troublesome atmosphere to interfere.  Reducing their results to what it would be at average solar distance, for the earth was 3,000,000 miles farther away in July than in January, they reached at last their goal.  They thus found the total intensity of energy of the sun’s rays for the day.  Comparison with similar measurements of other days revealed the variation of the sun.  That was the simplest picture one could draw on the subject.  There were various complexities not rehashed here.  They demanded still other kinds of apparatus, much of which was invented and constructed by the Smithsonian Institution.  Altogether, the outfit for an observing station comprised of about 20 principal pieces, with many little auxiliaries, weighed two tons, and cost nearly $8,000.  They expressed their measurements of the intensity of solar radiation in calories.  There were, however, two kinds of calories.  One was spelled with a capital C.  That was the one used by food experts.  They used the kind spelled with the small c.  It was 1/1000 as large a unit as the other.  In units of heat, the intensity of solar rays at mean solar distance outside our atmosphere was called “The Solar Constant of Radiation.”  From several thousand measurements, some from sea level, others from mountains from one to three miles altitude, and one from a balloon more than 15 miles up, they stated the mean value of the solar constant at 1.938 calories per square centimeter per minute.

“Solar Constant” was a misnomer, for they found solar-radiation values variable between the limits 1.85 and 2.03 calories – a range of nearly 10%.  Such extreme values were rare, but fluctuations of 2 or 3% from the mean were not uncommon.  What evidence supported that claim?  Not only do the two independent stations, in California and Chile, which were 4,000 miles apart, in opposite hemispheres, supported each other, but visible changes in the sun went hand in hand with their measurements.  Increased radiation was to be expected when sunspots were numerous.  The sun rotated o its axis in about 27 days.  Hence, sunspots and other visible features crossed the solar disk in about half that time and remained the other two weeks on the sun’s invisible hemisphere.  When in that rotation, a sunspot crossed the central part of the visible disk, they almost invariably observed a depression of their solar-radiation values.  So, they saw that when the presence of many spots betokened high solar-radiation values, each individual spot, as it crossed the sun’s center, pulled the value down.  They thought there was a sort of cloudiness over each sunspot group which intercepted part of the sun’s rays.  Sometimes the depressing effect greatly exceeded the positive one due to increased solar activity.  That was doubtless why, when spots were very numerous, the average solar-radiation values were sometimes made lower instead of higher.  Beside the sunspots, they saw on the solar surface bright patches called faculae.  When those were numerous, solar radiation values ran high.  Mr. Clayton had made use of that relation to predict for five days in advance what values of solar radiation they were going to observe.  The results of seven months’ consecutive daily predictions ran strongly in his favor.

Hence, we see that many visible phenomena upon the solar surface underwent changes closely associated with their measurements.  That fact supported the view that they were on the right track, and that their indications of changes in the sun’s output of energy were real.  The sun, in other words, was a variable star.  There was evidence that some of the other stars varied in a manner similar to the sun.  But what was the practical applications of all this?  Could they make use of solar variation to predict changes of weather upon the earth?  A good many people over the past century studied sunspots in an attempt to predict the weather.  Among them were Henry C. Maine and Father Ricard.  The Smithsonian observations had shown that sunspots did play a role in solar intensity, so it was not surprising that they had some success.  About ten years prior, Mr. Clayton, who was then the chief forecaster for Argentina, undertook to study the relation between the weather and their results on solar intensity.  Realizing that the results were faulty, he did not use them individually, but took the means of groups of high, medium, and low solar values for his research.  Thus, with the years 1913, 1914, 1915, and 1918 grouped in that manner and compared to the temperatures of Buenos Aires, he obtained results that showed some correlation between solar radiation highs and lows and Buenos Aires temperatures – ten days later!  It was probable that the average solar values stated by Mr. Clayton showed excessive range, because their Mt. Wilson observations of that time were faulty.  Here, indeed, was a bright forecasting prospect.  Mr. Clayton continued his studies, and after the Chile station was established, the Argentine Weather Bureau arranged to receive their daily observations regularly by telegraph.

By December 1918, Mr. Clayton was ready for a public trial of a new method of long-range forecasting.  From that time to the present [in 1925], the Argentine weather service had issued, every Wednesday, a bulletin giving a forecast of temperatures expected each morning and evening at Buenos Aires for the week beginning Thursday.  The bulletin also included the dates and intensities of expected rainfall.  These bulletins were not given away, but were sold to clients.  Retiring to private life in 1922, Mr. Clayton returned to the U. S. and published a notable book, “World Weather,” in which a summary of his studies of the relations of solar change to weather conditions was included.  Later, with a grant from Mr. John A. Roebling, Mr. Clayton began the study of solar variation a related to the weather of North America.  He undertook to forecast for the city of New York.  To ensure the trustworthiness of the experiment, the Smithsonian forwarded to Mr. Clayton the solar conditions of the previous day.  He then prepared a forecast for days 3, 4, and 5, from the solar observation.  He then sent his forecasts back to the Smithsonian, so to have no further control over them.  After a full year of the experiment, the forecasts were compared with the official records by a computer at the Smithsonian.  A very decided prevision was plainly shown.  It was clear that he hit the zero day of his forecast very accurately, and that his plus expectations averaged 3 degrees above his minus expectations, while his normal expectations were really normal.  Not only did he prepare those forecasts for definite days, but on Friday of each week and the 28^th of each month he prepared forecast of expected departures from normal temperatures for the following weeks and months.  Of 51 weeks, 31 proved to be forecasted with the correct sign.

In all these experiments Mr. Clayton, being at home in Massachusetts, had no help from official weather records other than those published in the daily newspapers.  Doubtless, if the full official information had been available, somewhat higher accuracy might have been reached in the three-, four-, and five-day work, although present [in 1925] Argentine practice was to make long-range forecasts on solar data alone without the use of daily weather maps.  The Smithsonian had published papers by the author, by Clayton, and by Hoxmark, giving more extensive accounts of this research.  Enough was given here, the author hoped, to convince the members of the National Geographic Society that a promising opening had come in the study of that puzzling changeling, “The Weather,” and that with the generous aid of The Society, the Smithsonian Institution would be able to obtain valuable evidence to promote further progress.

 

 

Tom Wilson

[Melvin L. De Vilbiss]

Well done Tom!