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The Home of Monarchy – The History of Buckingham Palace

 

For nearly two hundred years, from the late 1830s until today, from Queen Victoria to Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace, in the heart of London, has been the seat of the British monarchy. The building is a symbol of power, tradition, a source of nationral pride and a place of national gathering during times of joy and grief. How many of us remember the photographs and newsreel-pictures of people crowding outside the gates of Buckingham Palace in May of 1945 to celebrate VE Day? How many of us remember the dozens of bunches of flowers which were laid against the gates, stacked up against the walls or tied to the railings by Britons mourning the death of Princess Diana in 1997?

But how much do we really know about Buckingham Palace? How old is it? How big is it? How many toilets does it have? How did it get its name and when was it built?

This article will look into the history of one of the world’s most famous royal palaces, from its humble beginnings as a lavish townhouse, to its grand finale as the home to the current queen.

Buckingham House

Does this building look vaguely familiar? It might. Behold Buckingham House, 1809.

The building which is today Buckingham Palace was originally a townhouse named Buckingham House, named after the Duke of Buckingham and Normanby and was constructed starting in 1703. The building was designed by Capt. William Winde, a notable architect of the day who was famous for designing several grand manor-houses. Unfortunately for Winde, few of his original structures survive today, either renovated, intergrated into other buildings or destroyed by fire over the two hundred plus years since his death.

Buckingham House did not last long in private hands, though. After being built for the Duke of Buckingham, it was then passed to his descendant Sir Charles Sheffield in the 1760s and thereafter into royal hands, starting with King George III.

Throughout the next sixty years, Buckingham House was gradually renovated, improved and enlarged. King George IV and his younger brother, the later King William IV, had Buckingham House extensively renovated and improved. In 1834, the British Houses of Parliament, the Palace of Westminster, burnt to the ground in a spectacular fire…

…The destruction of Westminster prompted William IV to turn Buckingham Palace into the new Houses of Parliament, but Parliament turned down the king’s offer, which allowed for the palace’s further renovations until the king’s death in 1837.

Buckingham Palace

It had been the wish of King William IV, who had been a popular and well-liked public figure, to turn Buckingham Palace from a mere noble townhouse into a palace and residence fit for royalty. Although renovations and building had been ongoing since the time of George IV, William, George’s younger brother, died before these renovations were completed.

On the 20th of June, 1837, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom, and became the first monarch to move into the new palace and so Buckingham Palace entered on its role which we know it for today – being the London home of the British monarch.

If you expected a palace fit for a queen to be glamorous and wonderful…think again. Victoria (then aged only 18) moved into her new house so fast that the renovations were barely completed! The palace hadn’t been cleaned properly, there were heating problems due to malfunctions with chimneys (which meant that fires couldn’t be lit in the fireplaces) and probably most dangerous of all, the newfangled ‘gas’ lighting wasn’t working properly, which could turn Buckingham Palace into the world’s most luxurious time-bomb!

Another problem with the new palace was space. If you’ve read my article on classical makeup of domestic servants, you’ll know that grand houses built during this era took a small army to keep them primped and proper and neat and tidy and running smoothly. Any grand house would have up to a dozen or more servants. In a royal palace, this number skyrocketed to a few hundred! Footmen, butlers, waiters, chefs, cleaners, laundresses, courtiers, valets, ladies’ maids, chambermaids…and then you had to consider the space needed for courtiers, guests, family…and all of their servants! There simply wasn’t enough room!

Originally constructed with a central building and two wings, it was decided that Buckingham Palace would require an extension. London’s famous Marble Arch, built to commemorate great naval victories, was originally the ceremonial entranceway to the palace. But it was only ceremonial, and little else. It was decided that Marble Arch took up too much space, and so it was moved to the corner of Hyde Park where it is today. In its place, a third wing was constructed, joining up the two other wings and enclosing a central courtyard that is the quadrangle that we know today. It is this last addition to the palace that makes it begin to resemble what we recognise today.


Buckingham Palace as it appeared in 1910, at the end of the Edwardian era

The enclosing of the quadrangle was completed in 1847 and this was one of the last major construction-efforts taken out on the palace until the early 20th century.

A New Palace for a New Century

With a new century came a new king. Edward VII, famous for being fat and friendly and for forgetting to button up his waistcoats, was well-known for being something of a party-animal. He loved entertaining. Dinners, balls, hunting-parties and dances were always on Eddie’s calender and the palace was modernised and renovated to suit the king’s needs and taste.

London is famous for a great many things. One of these is the notorious London fog. Fog or smog in London was not just low-hanging clouds. It was everything. Ash. Dust. Soot. Moisture. Smoke. Grit from the streets. Oil and grease from factories. On especially bad days, London’s smog was so bad, you literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. This unsightly and nasty fog caused terrible cosmetic damage to the palace. In the end, the damage of the smog to the palace’s stonework was so extensive that the stonework had to be entirely replaced…a process that took well over a year in 1913.

A Wartime Palace

As a symbol of Britannic pride, of monarchy, of patriotism, Buckingham Palace has long been a target in times of war. In the 1910s with the outbreak of WWI, George V was encouraged to lock the palace’s wine-cellars so as not to set a bad example to his subjects by enjoying himself and guzzling down wine while the country was in dire straits.

Warfare took a bigger toll on the palace in WWII, though. The Blitz on London, from 1940-1941 caused massive amounts of damage throughout the British capital and the palace was not spared. Hitler knew that he could seriously hurt British morale by destroying the palace and the Luftwaffe made it a specific target. It was bombed no less than seven times in the Second World War. One bomb detonated in the palace quadrangle, blowing out all the interior windows in the process! This particular attack made the front page of local newspapers and served as a morale-booster to the British public, glad that their monarchy had not deserted them in this time of national crisis.

The Palace Today

The palace in the 21st Century is still very much a working royal institution, just as it was when it was first inhabited by Queen Victoria over a hundred years ago. Events such as grand dinners, meetings and press-conferences still continue within its chambers and garden parties for everyone from adults to grandparents to children, now take place in the palace gardens on a regular basis.

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Top Floor: The History of the Modern Skyscraper

 

These days, the challenge to build the biggest, highest, tallest, strongest buildings is everywhere. Everyone wants to build the tallest building in the city, county, state, province, country…and of course…the tallest building in the world! In our modern megacities, where we’re surrounded by towering masses of glass, steel, concrete and wood, it’s very easy to forget that the building which makes our modern lives possible…the skyscraper…is only just over a hundred years old! In the scope of construction-technology, the skyscraper is but a child, something that we probably don’t think about very much, but it’s true.

Before the Skyscraper

It’s hard to imagine our cities without skyscrapers, isn’t it? The tallest fully-inhabitable structures were usually no more than five or six storeys tall. There was no elevator, there were no big, glossy windows and there were no handsome, artistically-carved facades of stonework to drool over. Without the invention of the elevator, the only way to move between floors was through dozens of staircases. People were unwilling to go up more than a few flights of stairs and so stairs normally stopped after only a few floors. Water-pumps were unable to build up enough water-pressure to force running water up pipes and into bathrooms and other rooms where water was necessary, beyond a certain height, and this too limited how high a practical building could be.

But the biggest thing restricting the construction of tall buildings was the lack of steel.

Although steel had existed for centuries, at the time it was difficult to mass produce. The shortage of this strong wonder-metal meant that it was too expensive to use steel to build frameworks and scaffolding for buildings. Without a strong frame to hold the building up and take the strain, the weight of the buildings was transferred to the walls. To combat the crushing weight of tons of masonary, glass and metal, early buildings which were to be built to what were then considered significant heights, had to have walls that were incredibly thick. In some extreme cases, as much as six feet of solid stone and brick!

The Development of the Modern Skyscraper

Cheap Steel

The skyscraper as we know it today was the result of several inventions and developments. Probably the first of these was the creation of a method for the mass-production of steel, which, prior to the mid 19th century, was an expensive metal and difficult and expensive to manufacture in large quantities.

Using a large, barrel-shaped device called a Bessemer Converter, English inventor Henry Bessemer was able to create a process for manufacturing steel cheaply and quickly. Molten pig-iron was poured into the open top of the Bessemer Converter and a fire which was made to burn hotter thanks to air injected into it by pipes at the bottom of the converter, allowed the pig iron to be superheated, burning or vapourising any impurities in the metal. Once the impurities had been burnt off, the huge Bessemer Converter (which, when full, could take thirty tons of pig iron!) was tipped over on the axle which attached it to a massive, secure frame built around it. When the converter was tipped over, pure steel poured out and ran into any moulds that were waiting for it. Once the metal had cooled, strong, preformed and perfect steel beams were ready for use!


A Bessemer Converter. Converters such as these lasted from the 1870s until the process was finally declared obsolete in the 1960s

The Bessemer Process was crucial for the development of the skyscraper. Without a way to quickly and cheaply manufacture steel, the skyscraper would never have existed. The thick, heavy, load-bearing walls of conventional buildings of the day would have to have been yards thick to be able to build buildings of the heights we know today. This all changed with steel.

With steel, buildings could now be built with frames first, each I-beam or girder held together by several red-hot rivets. These steel frames could be built quickly and they could be built high and they could be built strong! With the floors and the framework taking the weight of the building, the walls no longer had to be so thick. Now, walls could have more windows in them, they could have more decorative brick-and-stonework and…in the modern world…they could be made entirely of glass!

The Elevator

The modern skyscraper could not have existed without Bessemer steel. But even with Bessemer steel, it still would not have existed. In the 19th century, buildings were restricted in height due to the inconvenience of stairs! People were unwilling to go up endless flights of stairs. It was tiring, it was slow and stairwells and staircases took up an annoyiingly large amount of space inside a building. This changed when the electric safety-elevator was invented.

Elevators have been around for centuries. The Colosseum in Rome had lots of them! But these elevators were simple wood-and-rope affairs, driven by manpower or counterweights. Effective for rising up a few feet, but useless for rising up the dozens of storeys of the modern skyscraper. The electrically-powered safety-elevator allowed buildings and people to climb higher more efficiently, but these didn’t show up until the late 19th century.

An American named Elisha Otis is credited with inventing an elevator which people would feel safe on. Otis’s ‘safety elevator’ was so-called because in the event of the elevator-cable snapping, a pair of jaws and rollers at the top of the elevator-car would spring outwards and catch on the sides of the elevator shaft, thus preventing an accident. Of course, if the elevator was descending, this migh cause the safety-mechanism to trip accidently, so the elevator-brakes were speed-operated – they would only spring into action if there was a sudden drop of the elevator-car, consistent with a broken cable.

The first modern electrically-powered elevator came in the 1880s and, combined with Otis’s 1850s safety-elevator technology, the modern “lift” as we know it today, was born.

Lack of Land

People only build big and tall for two reasons: One, they can. Two, they have to. These days, skyscrapers are built because they can be built, but back in the turn of the last century, skycrapers were built because they had to be built. Cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Melbourne, London and Paris were becoming increasingly crowded due to factors ranging from the Industrial Revolution to immigration to gold-rushes. Cities were swelling up and unable to look down, city planners and architects started looking for ways to build higher. With cheap steel, elevators and a massive immigrant workforce, cities which made the skyscraper famous, such as New York, were born.

Where do we get the term ‘Skyscraper’ from?

Why ‘skyscraper’? Why not cloud-climber or sunkisser or moonhugger or man-mountain? Where did we get the term ‘skyscraper’ from?

The term ‘Skyscraper’ as we know it today, meaning a tall, thin building which is continuously inhabitable from the ground up, comes from the very lips of the men who built these massive structures. Many of the men who built skyscrapers around the turn of the century were sailors, men who spent weeks at sea climbing up and down the rigging of sailing-ships and who were therefore immune to the stomach-churning heights of hundreds of feet up in the air that skyscraper-builders had to face every day.

The sailors who made up the backbone of the skyscraper workforce named these new and fantastic buildings which they were constructing ‘skyscrapers’, which was the nickname for the very highest sail on a conventional, three-masted sailing-ship (the actual term is ‘Topgallant’). The name was amazingly appropriate, and it has stuck for the last a hundred and twenty odd years.


The main topgallant (‘E’ in the picture above) was colloquially called the ‘skyscraper’ by sailors, who made up the main workforce which constructed many famous early skyscrapers, and the name just stuck

Building a Tower Up to the Sun

By the first quarter of the 20th century, the skyscraper had changed the global cityscape forever. Skyscrapers were big business and they were shooting up all over the world. How big a business? Fat cats were so into building these massive structures that they did almost anything to entice construction-workers to work on their latest projects. The average construction-worker could earn twice what he usually did by agreeing to help build a skyscraper!

Although the pay for construction workers and general unskilled labourers who wanted to work on skyscrapers was double the usual rate, the work was easily a hundred times more dangerous. Construction-workers – riveters, crane-operators and general labourers, risked death every single day working at heights of a hundred, five hundred, a thousand feet and even higher up in the air!

But people do that today all the time so it’s no problem. Right?

Wrong.

From the 1890s-1940s, construction-safety as we know it today did not exist at all. At 900ft up in the air, a riveter or a general construction-worker was entirely on his own. He had no ropes. No cables. No harnesses. No winches. And certainly no hard-hat. Safety-nets? Forget it! One wrong step or one gust of wind while walking on a steel girder less than half a foot wide…and it was a freefall drop to certain death nearly a mile below. Working on a skyscraper was called “treading the steel” or “walking the steel”…because you literally had to walk around on those skinny steel beams to move around the building with absolutely no safety-gear. Experienced workers were called ‘roughnecks’ while new and inexperienced workers were nicknamed ‘snakes’. ‘Snakes’ because working with them was extremely dangerous. One wrong step, one distraction or one miscalculation…and the snake (and possibly other workers) were dead.


A famous photograph by Lewis Hine. It shows construction-workers on their lunch-break in the early 1930s. Note the lack of any safety-equipment. This photo isn’t staged and it hasn’t been retouched. The building they’re constructing is the Crysler Building, the building of which, Hines was commissioned to document with his camera

Even in the days before welding, skyscrapers were built phenomenally fast. The Empire State Building, the tallest building in New York City could rise up two or three floors a day (with a total of 102 floors!), which was amazingly fast when you consider that all the positioning, bolting, screwing and riveting was done entirely by hand! Due to the restricted size of the Manhattan streetgrid, girders which arrived at the Empire State Building would leave their delivery trucks still hot from the forge and would be winched up right away. There was nowhere on the ground to let the hot steel cool off before it was used, so instead the construction workers just hauled it up the moment it arrived and let the wind blow on it to cool it down as it rose.

The Skyscraper Today

These days, the skyscraper is a symbol of the modern world, the modern city, it’s a staple of our lives. To have a 21st century without the skyscraper is to have one without telephones, automobiles, the computer or the iPhone. And yet, while we may sometimes think of the skyscraper as a modern invention, one should also remember that it both is, and isn’t. Is it modern? Certainly. A hundred years is an eye-blink in the pages of history, but is it also old? Yes. To think that this icon of the modern city had its roots in the crowded, noisy, congested and choked streets of the late 19th century and that it has survived for so long.

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“A Boy’s Best Friend is His Mother…” – Ed Gein, the Butcher of Plainfield

 

Running water. Shadows. Screams. Dark, dark, red, red, rich, strong, running, dribbling, gushing blood. Screeching violin music. Clasping fingers. Shower-curtains. Broken rings. Curtains falling. Crumpled in a heap…

In 1960, famous British film-director Alfred Hitchcock created one of the most amazing horror films in history about a woman and a man and an isolated, family-run motel in the middle of nowhere. The ‘Shower Scene’ from the film ‘Psycho’ and its infamous high-pitched, screeching violin music is known the world over and has been parodied in countless TV shows, cartoons and movies. Norman Bates, a deluded, psychotic young man slashes a young woman in the bathroom of her motel cabin and leaves her to bleed to death.

While “Psycho” has gone down in history as one of the most famous horror films of all time, few people today would guess that the character of Norman Bates was actually based on a real person. Robert Bloch, the author who wrote the original novel “Psycho” which Hitchcock adapted to film, based the character of Norman Bates on a man which the press called the Butcher of Plainfield.

Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield

Plainfield, Wisconsin is a small, quiet little village. So small that in 2000, just under 900 people lived there. It was the Plainfield of the early 1950s that caught the world’s attention with a series of crimes that shocked the world and which made the murderer, a man named Edward Gein, a household name throughout America and the world, inspiring countless horror films, TV series and books to be written about him, based on him or which alluded to him over the next sixty years.

So who was Ed Gein and why was he called the Butcher of Plainfield? What was it that he’d done? Those with weak stomachs should not continue. Those with hardier constitutions…read on…

The Gein Family

Edward Theodore Gein was born on the 27th of August, 1906. His parents were George Gein and Augusta Gein. Ed had one older brother, Henry Gein. As is typical of stories of this kind, Mr. Gein was a violent father. He frequently abused his two sons Henry and Edward and was constantly drunk and often unemployed. George’s wife and Henry and Ed’s mother, Augusta, was a strong Christian. The only reason their marriage survived as long as it did was because they didn’t believe in divorce.

Augusta supported her family through the grocery store that she ran. Before long, the family decided to move from LaCrosse County to Waushara County in Wisconsin and a small village called…Plainfield.

In Plainfield, the Gein family lived in a primative farmhouse where Augusta sought to control her two sons’ every movement. Apart from school, the Gein brothers were not allowed to leave the farm. They spent their time doing chores and working the land. Augusta kept her boys in line by reading them passages from the Old Testament of the Bible, usually passages dealing with murder, immorality, forgiveness, retribution and the fact that all women (sweet, loving Mother Gein, of course, tactfully excluded from this mire of immorality and filth) were sluts, prostitutes and whores.


The Gein family farmhouse, on the outskirts of Plainfield, Wisconsin

Augusta’s domination over her sons had highly damaging affects. Constantly abused by their parents, the two Gein brothers became silent, introverted and mentally unbalanced. Edward was often picked on in school because of his strange behaviour which included bouts of random and totally unexplained laughter.

In 1940, George Gein died from a heart-attack. Because of the necessity for money, Augusta gave her sons a limited degree of extra freedom, which they used to become handymen, helping out around the village. Ed occasionally did some babysitting for the local villagers while Henry helped in various labourer-type jobs around Plainfield. Edward, probably due to the constant abuse he received at home, wasn’t able to relate to adults and appeared to bond better with children. It was at this time that Henry started getting detatched from his mother, wanting to leave the farm and make his own way in life. He feared the connection that Edward and mother had with each other and considered it unnatural. He began to speak out about this relationship to Edward, who refused to hear a single bad word against their mother, despite the fact that she once poured boiling water over Edward’s genitalia after she caught him masturbating…

In mid-1944, Henry and Edward were busy putting out a grass-fire near their farm. The story goes that Edward and Henry got separated as night fell. Apparently worried for his brother’s safety, Edward contacted the police who sent out a search-party. Edward led the police-officers through the shrubs and trees right to Henry’s body, despite claiming not knowing where he was. Although it was strongly suspected that Edward had murdered his brother, due to the head-injuries found on Henry’s skull, probably inflicted by Edward after another argument about their mother, the police wrote the death off as an accident. Cause of decease: Asphyxiation.

By now, alone and fully under the influence of his dominating mother, Ed’s mind began to become increasingly warped. As the months passed, he became more and more unstable until on the 29th of December, 1945, Ed’s mother Augusta finally died from a stroke.

Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield

The death of his beloved, abusive and highly-controlling mother was the last straw for Ed. Traumatised, brainwashed and abused since birth, isolated from people his own age and living on a mental diet of lies and deciet, Ed Gein’s mind finally snapped. Once Augusta had died, Gein lost the last tiny and weak grip that he had on any sense of the term ‘normality’ and he descended into a twisted and obsessive world of his own making and entrapment.

Such was Gein’s attachment to his mother, as well as the state of his incredibly warped, damaged and degenerated mind, that shortly after 1945, Gein, by now 39 years old began to unravel, taking on the persona which we would now readily identify with Norman Bates.

Augusta’s death shattered Gein in ways that many people can only imagine. The perverted relationship that they shared together meant that, despite everything she had done, Gein missed his mother. He started expressing a desire for a sex-change operation…which never happened…and he also tried to remember his mother in other, more macabre ways. Still living in the house which he had barely left since he was a boy, Gein closed off the upstairs living quarters as well as the downstairs parlour…rooms which his mother frequently used…and retreated into the kitchen and a small room adjacent to it. The Gein farmhouse was so primative that even by now in the late 1940s, it was probably one of the very few dwellings in or near Plainview that did not have electricity in it. The only lighting was provided by candles, oil lamps or sunlight in the daytime.

As the years progressed, Gein developed an interest in darker subjects such as taxidermy and death-cults. He shot and killed two Plainfield women, Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan, because they resembled and reminded him of his mother, whom he missed so dearly, and whom he wanted back with him again. Wanting to make himself a “woman suit”, Gein went on nightly graverobbing excursions, exhuming the corpses of recently-dead women who resembled his mother’s physical appearance. These bodies were variously butchered, skinned and dismembered for various purposes over the next few years.

Arrest and Trial

In a small town like Plainfield Wisconsin, news spreads fast. The deaths of Mary Hogan, a local tavern-owner, and Bernice Worden, owner of the Plainfield hardware store prompted swift police-action. Investigators questioned, requestioned, examined and cross-examined every single person in town. They even questioned Gein himself, but they deemed Gein…who was seen by the villagers as being something of a weirdo and oddball…to be too mentally deranged and timid to actually do anything as horrible as kill two big, strapping women such as Hogan and Worden. If they’d known the kinds of things that a mentally dranged oddball like Gein could do, they probably would have arrested him on sight.

As it turned out, policemen raided the Gein farm in 1957, searching for clues. In a shed near the house, officers discovered the body of Mrs. Worden, tied by her ankles to the ceiling and gutted and dressed out like a butchered game-animal.

Forcing entry into the Gein house and using flashlights to light the way, police officers were in for the shock of their lives.


A photograph of the kitchen in the Gein house, showing the squalor and disarray in which Ed Gein lived his life

Apart from the upper floor and a couple of rooms downstairs which Ed had sealed off as a memorial to his mother, the rest of the house was filthy. Body-parts, bits of body-parts and bits of bits of body-parts lay all over the house. The fridge was full of human organs, skulls were cut open and used as bowls, Gein’s bed had a bedframe with skulls on it for decoration. Furniture was upholstered with human skin, face-masks were made from actual faces, the skins of which had been tanned to prevent rotting.

The police were appalled by what they saw, and arrested Gein soon after. Gein confessed that he had killed Worden and Hogan and that he regularly went to cemetaries nearby to exhume recently-deceased women so as to skin their bodies and live out his transvestite dreams.

Gein was tried and found guilty of First Degree Murder. He entered a plea of Insanity and was thereafter and for all the days of his life, until he died in 1984, confined to a series of mental hospitals. In 1958, the Gein farmhouse “mysteriously” burnt to the ground. Police were pretty sure it was arson and that furious Plainfield townsfolk had torched the Gein house out of disgust and anger at what Ed had done, not only to their residents, but also to their deceased…but they conveniently turned a blind eye and pretended that they didn’t know who had started the fire.

Edward Theodore Gein died on the 26th of July, 1984, from respiratory and heart-failure due to complications from cancer. He was 77 years old. He was buried in Plainfield Cemetary.

Impact on Popular Culture and Society

Gein’s impact on popular culture is undeniable. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the various ‘Pyscho’ books and films and movies of perverted killers who skin their victims and wear their flesh all have their roots in the demented mind of Ed Gein.

Unlike Albert Fish or Jack the Ripper, Ed Gein did not kill a vast number of people. He murdered a grand total of two women. What makes him so infamous is what he did with human bodies, how he butchered them, how he used their body-parts and skins to craft all kinds of gruesome objects and decorations and how he tried constantly to find things or do things or wear things or create things…that would remind him of his mother, the one woman he ever knew and ever loved and who had so traumatised his life ever since he was a boy.

After all, as Norman Bates famously says…

“A boy’s best friend is his mother”.

B

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An Impossible Dream: The History of Flight

 

For centuries, man has wanted to do lots of things. He has wanted to ride in a wheeled vehicle unpowered by a walking manure-factory. He has wanted to sail the open seas…without sails. He has wanted to communicate long distances without having to travel long distances, he has wanted to invent a form of illumination that won’t set the house on fire and he’s wanted to explore under water without ending up under ground. But of all the dreams that mankind has had, none has been stronger than man’s desire…to fly.


Mr. Wile E. Coyote provides a historically-accurate practical demonstration of mankind’s early experiments with flight

For centuries, flight was considered impossible – the dream and fancy of fools, a pipe-dream, a hallucination, an idiotic fantasy. And yet today, we can fly halfway around the world within twenty-four hours. How? And…Why? This article will explore the history of manmade aircraft – anything that didn’t come with a beak, claws and a feathery lining, from the first experimental aircraft to airliners as we know them today.

Flight of Fancy

Since time immemoriam, man has looked at the skies, and has seen birds. Or maybe bats. Probably even flies. On the off-chance, even a mosquito. He puzzled and fumed and fussed over the fact that all these things could do the one thing that he couldn’t – Fly.

Mankind has had dreams of flight for centuries. Even the famous inventor and painter, Leonardo from Vinci, invented a bloody helicopter before the word had even been thought up! But even with wonderful sketches, ideas, dreams and brainstorming, man couldn’t make a successful flying machine. To many, it was considered impossible. Man did not understand what made something fly and, once it was flying, how to keep it flying and, once it was kept flying, how to make it stop flying!


Leonardo’s fantasmagorical flying machine…would it ever have really worked?

The very first flying machines never left the pages that they were drawn on. Leonardo, who created the world’s first helicopter prototype as well as a primative parachute, never actually manufactured his inventions, although modern reconstructions and testing has shown that, with enough persistance, the right materials and a whole heap of chutzbah, it could be done! So…when did man first take to the air?

Full of Hot Air

The first real flying machines that mankind created out of his own hands which really worked were primative hot-air balloons. Hot air balloons had been known for centuries; they were toys and novelties. Cute little fun displays to be seen at garden parties, a toy for the children to marvel at and something for older people to ponder: “What if…?”

The first unmanned hot-air balloons were introduced into the world centuries ago. Early experimenters realised two things about the air which we breathe: Cold air descends. Hot air rises. By this logic, if you put hot air (produced by a continuous heat-source, say, a candle) inside a sealed compartment (like a paper bag), then the hot air would cause the bag to rise, once it had been filled up enough. This proved to be the case, and the hot air balloon was invented.

The idea of travelling by hot air balloon took a while to ehm…get off the ground, though. It wasn’t until the early 18th century that the first experiements by European scientists and inventors were begun. The big problem confronting these early experimenters was weight! For this fancy-schmancy ‘hot air balloon’ gizmo to actually lift anything of value off the ground, it would need a massive envelope (the big ‘balloon’ part) and it would need even more hot air! It was all these scary weight-concerns that kept mankind grounded for so long. For a balloon flight to be successful, weight had to be kept to an absolute minimum!

It wasn’t until November 21, 1783 that the world’s first manned balloon-flight happened. The two lucky fellows in the basket on this historic day were Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes, a physics teacher and a soldier, respectively. The balloon being flown was a creation of the famous Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne. One likely reason why it took so long for man to take to the skies in hot air balloons was because of how long these things took to make! Apart from the exhausting testing that the Montgolfier brothers carried out on their balloons, there is also the physical size of the balloons themselve to consider. The historic balloon which took de Rozier and d’Arlandes into the air on that day in November, 1783 was absolutely massive! Here are the technical specifications of that famous balloon, as translated from the original French document:

Height of Globe: 22.7m (75ft).
Weight of Globe: 780kg (1,700lbs).
Diameter: 14.9m (49ft).
Lifting capacity: Max approx 830kg (1,800lbs).
Volume of Globe: 2,000 cubic meters (73,000 cubic feet).
Gallery (a doughnut-shaped basket attached to the envelope): 1m wide (3ft).

Needless to say, getting such a massive balloon into the air was not easy, but when it happened, history was well and truly written and made. The Montgolfier brothers’ success was so amazing that King Louis XVI elevated the entire Montgolfier family to the French nobility as a reward! If the Montgolfiers had known that the French Revolution was just a few years away, they might have decided to take the second prize of a two-door, 4hp carriage with guilded windowframes instead…


The hot air balloon created by the Montgolfier brothers

The Hot Air Balloon was now here to stay, and from the late 18th century until the early 20th century, it dominated flight around the world. Hot air balloons were popular attractions at public events, they were used as observation-posts during warfare and for the first time in history, man could fly over the land he owned and see everything from a bird’s eye view.

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

Although the hot air balloon allowed mankind its first proper view down on the world, it did have one major drawback – Hot air balloons were slow, hard to navigate and dangerous to fly. They could only move where the wind blew and could only move as fast as the wind allowed. This was deemed unsatisfactory, by some, and it was decided that what mankind really needed was a flying machine that could be completely controlled by man – A machine that could take flight, stay in the air, go where the pilot wanted it to, and land when and where he wanted it to land.

Like the balloon before it, the aeroplane was slow to take off. As Betty Boop says in one of her cartoons, “It was called insane by ‘most every man!”…and it was! The idea of a heavier-than-air flying machine was proposterous! How could such a thing ever work?

At the turn of the last century, mankind was only just beginning to understand aerodynamics, or how airflow affects moving objects. Chief among this group of people who were studying aerodynamics was a pair of brothers named Wilbur and Orville.

Orville and Wilbur Wright, (born 1871 and 1867, respectively) are the two men credited with inventing the world’s first controllable airplane, and it took some doing, too. And it’s proof that you don’t have to have a college education to be a genius…neither of the Wright Brothers attended university!

The Wright Brothers initially led very different lives. In 1885, Wilbur was hit in the face by accident during a game of hockey. There was no significant damage done (although he did lose a few teeth), but the shock of the blow did make him more introverted than he used to be. He spent most of his time at home, reading and looking after Susan Wright, the Wright Brothers’ mother who was by this time, dying of tuberculosis (she did eventually pass away in 1889).

Orville Wright worked as a printer after dropping out of highschool. Wilbur, getting rather bored with sticking around at home all the time, joined his brother in business, and the two boys worked together as editor and publisher respectively, of various small-town newspapers.

In the 1880s, a new machine was invented. It was light, fast, easy to ride and safer to operate than its predecessors, allowing the rider to balance on its frame more easily and control its speed and movement more comfortably.

The bicycle had been introduced to the world.

Wanting to make as much money as they could, the Wrights packed up their printing press and jumped onto the cycling craze, opening a bicycle repair and manufacture-shop in the 1890s. Throughout the 1890s, flight pioneers were constantly making the headlines, with newer, ‘better’ flying machines. All this talk of flying got the brothers thinking. Wilbur was the one who really got interested in flying, and he set about trying to make a flying machine. Orville joined in later, once Wilbur’s work was showing a sufficient degree of promise.

The Wright brothers started out small, practicing their flying first with kites and then with gliders before attempting anything that we’d recognise today as a conventional airplane. Wilbur studied the movements of birds to try and discover the secret ingredient to Lift, the necessary component of flight to compensate for gravity. The Wrights theorised that it was the gliding motion of birds and the movement of air over their wings that allowed them to fly like they did, rather than the actual flapping motion which some inventors had tried for years to reproduce.

The brothers made a breakthrough when they discovered wing-warping, that is, bending or angling a pair of wings to create the correct kind of airflow to provide lift for the aircraft as well as giving it the ability to turn, rise and fall through the air. It was easy enough to bend a wing – just make it out of something light and flexible. The problem was how to control wing-warping. Left to their own devices, early wings would warp of their own accord, depending on wind-conditions. By attaching ropes and pulleys to the edges of their wings, the Wright brothers were able to pull on the cables and affect wing-warp themselves, giving them for the first time, an aspect of control over their aircraft!

Throughout the early 1900s, the Wright Brothers experimented with gliders to give them an idea of how wings and angling these wings affected flight and lift. To aid them with this, they built one of the world’s first wind-tunnels! With wind on demand, the boys were able to test their flyers more and more often and were able to record data more effectively.

Powered Flight

The dream of mankind was to have powered, controlled flight. By the early 1900s, the Wrights were already working on the “control” part, but they still needed to address the issue of power. They knew from their experiements that any power-source onboard an airplane would have to be as light as possible. Fortunately, their experience working on bicycles meant that the Wright Brothers already had some grounding in light and powerful machines.

The world’s first airplane, Wright Flyer I, took to the air in 1903. Using a custom-made internal-combustion engine created in their own bicycle-shop (after no established engine-manufacturers of the time were able to make one small, light and powerful enough for their needs) and propellers made of wood, tested relentlessly in their wind-tunnel, the Wright brothers were ready to fly.

For obvious reasons, this milestone was fraught with danger. Steering a glider, launching a glider and landing a glider was relatively safe – there were no moving parts. But with their new airplane, the boys had to be careful of the rotating propellers, which were literally revolutionary at the time, since nobody had yet figured out how an airplane’s propeller actually worked!

The historic first flight took place on the 17th of December, 1903.

Actually, more than one flight took place on the 17th of December, 1903, on the beaches near Kittyhawk, South Carolina. Four flights in total were conducted. A number of people came out to witness this historic event: Adam Etheridge, Will Dough, W. C. Brinkley, Johnny Moore, a local lad who was on the scene at the time, and John T. Daniels, a member of a nearby lifesaving station.

Of the four flights taken, the first, third and fourth were photographed. The famous “First Flight” photograph (With Orville at the controls and Wilbur jogging alongside) was taken by John T. Daniels, the lifesaver, and a man who had never operated a camera before (or since!). Daniels had been given instructions by Orville to take the shot when he saw the machine move in front of the camera. Daniels, too excited by what was going on around him, nearly forgot to take the photograph! At the last minute, he tripped the shutter and history was made…

The Airplane Takes Off

If the Wright Brothers thought that their newfangled “flying machine” (Oh what an absurd notion!) was ever going to be a wonderful, amazing, popular, attention-grabbing, imagination-stimulating, sought-after and life-changing machine!…They were wrong.

In fact they were so wrong they probably wondered why the hell they started in the first place. The truth was that very few people were actually interested in their new flying-machine. It didn’t make the headlines that they’d expected it to (probably because so many other flying-machines had done so, and they’d all failed!) and the military was not in the least bit interested. The planes were too light, too flimsy, too dangerous to fly. What possible military application could they have?

The Rise of the Airplane

Just like early anythings, planes were not seen as having much application in the world of the time. Cars were slow, tempermental things, new on the scene, expensive and prone to breakdowns. Similarly, planes were seen as expensive, rich, playboy toys which could never have any practical application in the real world. This changed during the years of the First World War when armies soon discovered the advantages of having an aerial wing which could fly over battlefields, bombing and strafing the enemy, which could take photographs and which could report on enemy troops and movements. By 1918, the airplane had proven itself as a practical and important machine in warfare.

If the 1900s were the experimental stages of airplane-operation, then the 1910s and the 1920s became the era of aircraft endurance-testing. All kinds of famous airplane-related events took place in the 1910s and 1920s, many of which are still fondly remembered today. Here’s a list of them:

1912 – April 16th. Harriet Quimby is the first woman to fly across the English Channel (Dover-Calais, in 59 minutes). Unfortunately, her moment in the sun and her chances of making the front pages were dashed when a little-known watercraft called the R.M.S. Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean the night before…

1927 – May 20-21. Charles Lindbergh flies the Spirit of St. Louis from New York City to Paris, France, in the world’s first solo nonstop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

1928 – 31st May-9th June. Sir Charles Kingsford Smith & Co make the first crossing of the Pacific Ocean in a three-leg journey from California, USA, to Hawaii, Hawaii to Fiji, Fiji to Brisbane, in Australia.

The 1920s also saw the founding of several famous commercial airline companies. United Airlines is founded in 1926 as Boeing Air Transport. The famous Australian airline company Quantas is founded in 1920. The German airline company Lufthansa is founded in 1926. Pan Am, the American airline is founded as Pan-American Airways in 1927.

Luxury Travel

From the second half of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century, luxury long-distance travel was to be had in only one way. That one way was in an amazingly grand and luxurious ocean-liner, which would transport you across vast stretches of water from England to America, America to Australia, Australia to Asia, Asia to Europe and so-on. The largely experimental status of aircraft in the early 20th century meant that the ocean-liner trade was still going strong well into the 1950s, but things were all about to change.

The 1920s showed everyone that airplanes, just like steamships, could safely travel amazing distances, and what’s more, they could do it in significantly more comfort and at faster speeds! This led to the 1930s boom of the airline industry.

Sometimes we like to kid ourselves that airline travel today is really luxurious…little personal TV screens, computer-games, telephone and internet access, luxurious onboard dining and crayons and those cheap, crappy plastic model-airplanes for the kiddies are all the luxury that we need.

In the 1930s, though, there was a whole new kind of luxury…the airship!

The airship was like a hybrid between the airplane and the hot air balloon. Invented in the 1900s, the airship had its golden age from the 1910s-1930s. Less noisy, larger and capable of carrying more passengers than early conventional, fixed-wing airplanes, the airship became the way to travel in style, comfort and most importantly…speed, in the early 1900s. A number of countries operated airship lines, from the United Kingdom, the United States and most notably of all…Germany.

Although large and amazing, airships were dangerous machines. The hydrogen gas which inflated the huge envelopes of many airships was highly explosive and extensive precautions were taken to prevent fires – in Germany, for example, you couldn’t take your camera or your cigarette-lighter onboard an airship – They were confiscated by the crew and locked in a special cargo-area, to be returned by the crew when the ship had reached its destination. The sparking of a cigarette-lighter or the burning flash from early, magnesium flash-bulb cameras was seen as a fire-hazard.

Due to their large size, airships could be difficult to control in bad weather. When the weather was fine, flying in an airship was an exciting and wonderful experience, but when there was a storm, heavy rains or lightning around, the experience could become quite frightening. Winds could rip at the cloth covering of the airship’s enevelope, dangerous static-electric charges could build up on the airship’s frame (although this could also create a spectacular display of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ to dazzle and awe passengers!) and heavy winds and rain could affect handling and manuverablity. The airship USS Akron crashed in April of 1933 due to flying in a storm after spending only 18 months in civilian service. Of the 76 passengers and crew onboard, only three people survived and were picked up by US. Coastguard watercraft after the crash.

The most famous airship crash is, of course, that of the Hindenburg, which spectacularly erupted into flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey in early 1937 and crashed and burned to the ground in a matter of seconds! Of the 97 passengers and crew onboard, roughly one third (36 people) of them died, including one member of the ground-staff. Destroyed after just over a year in service, the Hindenburg’s demise saw the end of grand airship travel, which was written off as just being far too dangerous.


The Hindenburg Crash. The structure on the right is the airship mooring-tower

To understand why the public was so drawn to airships, these flying death-traps, one has to see what they were really like and what they meant to people at the time. Airplanes are faster, but they’re smaller, more cramped, more uncomfortable.

The interiors of German commercial airships that flew through the air during the 1920s and 30s were bright, modern, luxurious, airy and with plenty of space to move around and stretch your legs. Passengers even slept in their own cabins, instead of trying to sleep strapped into their chairs like we have to do these days. Add to this the fact that travelling by airship was so much faster than travelling by…ship-ship. Steaming from England to America took at least five days using the fastest and most modern ocean-liners in the 1930s. Flying from Germany to America by airship in the 1930s took two or at a stretch, three days. For speed and convenience, the airship certainly won out here.


A period airship advertisement from the 1930s boasting a two-day crossing from America to Europe, which was three times faster than a similar crossing by ocean-liner

The risks of airship travel and the spectacular crashes that involved airships soon spelt an end to their aerial dominance, though. They were seen as just being far too risky a thing to use. Why speed up your trip by a few days when you risked crashing, falling from the sky and being killed when you could cross the ocean in a week by ship? And even if the ship was to sink, you could still get into a lifeboat and radio for help! By the late 1930s, the glory days of the airship were over.

Postwar Boom

The 1950s saw many things – the emergence of the Cold War, television, rock and roll and do-wop music. But it also saw the downfall of many things, such as the gradual dying-out of the transatlantic passenger-ship industry and the end of the airship industry. But from the ashes of the airship industry, a new form of transport was to emerge…

…the modern airliner.

Capable of transporting more people to more places with more speed, airliners were the thing of the future. Although the airliner of today probably shares several characteristics with the airliners of the past, early airliners had various perks such as the ability to smoke onboard planes (thank god that’s over with!) and being served meals with real cutlery, chinaware and glassware (something that doesn’t happen today!) and being able to listen to live piano-music! Yes, believe it or not, but early airliners used to have (specially made) pianos onboard them, usually in First Class, where passengers could listen to live music!


An airliner’s piano-bar in the 1960s

Continued safety-concerns and space-restrictions mean that spaces reserved for piano-bars, cocktail lounges, drinks bars and other public-seating areas on airplanes where passengers could mingle and chat, are now a thing of the past, leaving us with nothing but tantilising images of what is, what was, and what might have been…

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Lock, Stock and Barrel: A Concise History of Firearms

 

Guns. Pieces. Firearms. Rods. Heaters. Six-Shooters. Hand-Cannons. Bullet. Shot. Cap. Cartridge. .45. .38. .22. 9mm. Flintlock. Wheel-lock. Matchlock. Caplock…

In one way or another, firearms have been around for centuries…ever since some clever guy in China discovered that if you mixed sulphur, crushed charcoal and saltpetre (that’s an old term for ‘Potassium Nitrate’) in the correct quantities…and didn’t get killed in the process…you could produce a powerful explosive! It’s impossible to imagine today’s world without guns, isn’t it? What would police-officers use on violent criminals? What would soldiers fight with? What would armed criminals use to hold up the local convenience-store with?

This article will look into the history and development of firearms from the very earliest and most primative pieces, to the first modern firearms that we would know today.

The Big Bang and the Invention of Gunpowder

Just like everything else of value, such as the compass, decent food, the wheelbarrow, martial-arts and fireworks, the Chinese invented gunpowder. The first documented proof of this comes from the early 12th Century. The Chinese were quick to grasp the possibilities of this new invention. With an explosive such as this, they could create weapons…primative weapons, that’s true, but weapons nonetheless…and weapons of a kind that nobody else at the time, had ever seen. Cannons, muskets, grenades, bombs and even naval-mines, used to blow holes in ships.

By the 13th and 14th Centuries, the Europeans had also discovered gunpowder. Early gunpowder was tricky to make, though, and highly dangerous. It took considerable experimentation in the 1200s before those people brave enough to tamper with the stuff had come up with a suitable ratio of ingredients. Europeans improved gunpowder by moistening it in a process called ‘corning’. By corning the gunpowder, makers could form the powder into cakes and then break these down into individual little granules or ‘grains’. This prevented excessive gunpowder-dust from hovering around in the air, which was a significant explosive hazard.

The First Firearms

The very first firearms were crude, dangerous inaccurate weapons, little more than a tube that was open at one end, sealed at the other and with a small hole at the sealed end of the tube called a ‘touch-hole’. Called ‘hand-cannons’ or ‘hand-gonnes’, they were merely scaled down versions of larger artillery pieces in-use at the time. Little thought was given to them and they certainly weren’t relied upon in battle. Indeed, many early guns were so impractical that they often came with forked, wooden stands or poles upon which to rest the muzzle of the gun. That way, one hand could be freed from supporting its immense weight, to hold the burning match-cord or ‘slow-match’ (a precursor to the modern fuse) to the touch-hole to ignite the gunpowder and fire the ammunition.

Firing Mechanisms – Matchlock

The very first firearms had to be set off by putting a burning match-cord into a touch-hole to ignite the powder and fire the weapon. This was adequate, but hardly ideal. With both hands, or one hand and a forked, wooden stand needed to support the length and weight of early muskets and hand-cannons, guns were dangerous, agonisingly slow, inhibiting of movement and fatally slow to reload.

In the 1300s, the first reliable firing-mechanism was invented…the matchlock.


A man firing a matchlock musket. The burning white rope is the match-cord

The matchlock worked by filling the barrel of the gun with blackpowder, then driving down your bullet and a wad of cloth or paper to keep everything firmly seated. You then filled the flash-pan with powder and closed it. After this, you fitted your smouldering match-cord into the jaws of a simple, S-shaped lock on the side of the gun. You then opened the flash-pan by hand, aimed and pulled the trigger. If you’d lined up the match-cord with the pan, then the cord came forward, ignited the priming-powder in the pan and fired the gun for you. This kept both your hands free to fire and hold the gun and kept both your eyes on the target. From the 1300s until the early 1500s, this was the most advanced firing-mechanism available, even though it was incredibly slow, allowing only about two shots a minute (if you were lucky!).

It was during the matchlock period of firearms, when guns were coming onto the battlefield which had for so-long been dominated by bows, arrows, crossbows, bolts, swords and spears, that a new word was coined.

“Bullet Proof”.

These days, we’ll add ‘proof’ to the end of anything. Waterpoof. Fireproof. Leakproof. Greaseproof. Idiotproof.

What does “proof” actually mean?

The word ‘proof’ itself means to provide evidence or to show effectiveness. Hence the term ‘proving ground’, an open area where weapons were ‘proofed’ or demonstrated to show their effectiveness. Given this definition, what is the original meaning of ‘bullet-proof’?

Originally, bullet-proofing meant proving (that is, ‘demonstrating’) that bullets could not penetrate your body-armour. Back when soldiers still marched into battle wearing plate-armour, it was the job of the armourer to “proof” his armour. This was done by firing a bullet from a matchlock pistol or musket, at the breastplate of his completed suit of armour at point-blank range. If the armour was good quality, the musket-ball left a dent in the armour’s breastplate. This dent was circled or marked in some way by the armourer so that it stood out to the enemy. This circled dent, caused by the bullet, was the “proof” that his armour was impervious to firearms. Hence the term “bulletproof”.

Firing-Mechanisms – Wheel-lock

If you’ve ever used a modern cigarette-lighter, then the basic operation of the wheel-lock firing-mechanism should be pretty familiar to you. Invented in the early 1500s, the wheel-lock was the first self-igniting firing-mechanism. It didn’t rely on a tempermental and fiddly piece of smoking cord to light the powder…it created its own lighting-mechanism through pure friction.

The wheel-lock operated by pulling the trigger, which rotated a steel wheel inside the firing-mechanism. This wheel, when rotated fast enough by the pull of the trigger, created sparks which set off the gunpowder and fired the weapon.

Although the wheel-lock was pretty advanced…for the first time you could just load a gun and shoot it, for the first time, you could (with luck) shoot a gun in the rain, for the first time, you didn’t need to fumble with burning match-cords…its downfall was that the wheel-lock firing-mechanism really was…advanced. Far too advanced to be practical. The intricacies of the mechanism made it a pain in the ass to clean, lubricate and maintain. It was also hard to mass-produce and it required master gunsmiths to be able to disassemble, repair and clean them effectively. Because of this, they died out, to be replaced by…

Firing-Mechanisms – Flintlock

The flintlock firing-mechanism is one of the most famous firing-mechanisms in the world. Half of our firearms jargon and slang comes from the flintlock. A ‘flash in the pan’, meaning a sudden idea which amounts to nothing, referred to a gun misfiring, producing a quick flash of burning powder and nothing else. ‘Going off half-cocked’, meaning to start before being fully prepared, referred to flintlock guns firing before the hammer had been pulled off its safety-position. ‘Ramrod straight’ referred to the necessity for really straight, rigid ramrods, used to help load early firearms.

The flintlock mechanism was invented in the early 1600s, and for the next, at a rough estimate, 230 years…it remained the forefront of firearms technology. Even though it couldn’t operate reliably in wet weather like the wheel-lock mechanism, the flintlock was popular for a number of reasons: It was easy to use, easy to clean, easy to make and easy to repair. Its simplicity of operation meant that anybody could pick up a musket or a pistol and know how to use it within a couple of minutes, without risk of injury. The flintlock mechanism even came with its own “safety-position’: The hammer had to be cocked twice before a gun could be fired properly. The positions, called “half-cock” and “full-cock” related to how far away from the frizzen the firing-hammer could be pulled back to. Half-cock provided access to the flash-pan and frizzen, but would not cause the gun to fire if the trigger was pulled accidently. Pulling the hammer back to full-cock meant that when the trigger was pulled, the gun would fire.

The flintlock mechanism worked by using a type of stone (called…’flint’) which was clamped into the jaws of the gun’s lock (hence the term ‘flint lock’). The piece of flint ws usually a small, sharp piece of stone which, when the gun was fired, came down and struck against a ‘frizzen’ or steel striking-plate, creating sparks. After hitting the frizzen, the flint would push the frizzen back, allowing the sparks to fall into the ‘flash-pan’ which ignited the priming-charge of gunpowder. Once the priming-charge was lit, it would ignite the main charge of gunpowder inside the barrel through the small ‘touch-hole’ next to it, setting off the gun and firing the projectile. Considerably faster and safer and easier to maintain than other firing-mechanisms, a trained soldier could fire three or four shots a minute using a flintlock firearm, or, under exceptionally good training, up to five shots a minute, or one shot every twelve seconds! A considerable change from the matchlock mechanism which only allowed one or two shots a minute, a couple of hundred years before.

Firing Mechanisms – Caplock

The caplock mechanism was similar to the flintlock mechanism, but with a few advantages: It was easier and faster to load and, unlike the flintlock mechanism, it could enable a gun to be fired in wet weather. It worked like this:

You poured gunpowder down your musket-barrel, along with a bullet and a cloth or paper wad, to stop anything falling out. You rammed it all down with a ramrod, withdrew the rod, returned it to its cradle underneath the gun-barrel, and then you fitted a small brass cap (similar, but larger than a modern child’s precussion-cap, used for toy ‘cap-guns’) over the ‘nipple’, a small metal tube above the breech of the gun, which had replaced the more bulky flintlock mechanism.

With the gun loaded and the brass cap securely placed over the nipple, you pulled back the firing-hammer, aimed and pulled the trigger. The hammer hit the gun-cap, and a chain reaction occurred. On the underside of the gun-cap was a small, impact-detonated explosive charge. When the firing-hammer hits the cap, it sets off the charge, that sends sparks and flames down into the breech of the gun. This lights the gunpowder and the subsequent burning and expansion of gases forces the bullet out of the gun.

Until the advent of the modern, self-contained cartridge…this was as advanced as firing-mechanisms got, until the later stages of the American Civil War in the mid 1860s.

The Evolution of Ammunition

Ammunition has always been changing, and throughout history, there have been several kinds of ammunition used in firearms. The three most common are the round ball, the Minie ball and the modern bullet.

Musket-Ball or Lead Shot

The earliest type of ammunition was obviously a round ball. Originally made of rounded off pebbles or stones, the musket-shot, the mainstay of ammunition up until the second quarter of the 19th century, was later made out of lead. People used to make their own lead balls by melting down lead in a small spoon or cup over a fire, before pouring the molten lead into a small bullet-mould. When the lead had hardened, the mould was opened and a small, round lead ball came out. Lead-shot was easy and cheap to manufacture, but it was hardly accurate. Due to the windage (gap) between the interior of old gun-barrels and the musket-balls manufactured to go into them, and the fact that the barrels were smoothbore, meant that these bullets were not accurate beyond about a hundred meters. With the addition of rifling to muskets, a musket-ball could be fired accurately to a range of about 200-250 meters, however.

The Minie Ball

Invented by Claude Etienne Minie in the 1850s, the Minie Ball (despite its name), is not actually a ball. It’s a conical-cylindrical projectile, very similar in shape to the modern cartridge-bullet. The Minie ball was designed to be used with another innovation in firearms technology: Rifling.


Minie Balls, the new type of ammo that replaced the musket-ball of the 18th and early 19th centuries

Rifling is the process of cutting a curved, spiralling groove into the inside of a gun-barrel. This groove allows the bullet to spin in the barrel after the charge has gone off, giving it greater accuracy. Although rifling had existed on a smaller scale before the invention of the Minie ball, when the two were combined, it allowed guns to be significantly more accurate than before. This led to devastatingly high levels of carnage during subsequent military engagements such as during the American Civil War. The Minie ball fired from a rifled musket or rifle could hit a target more than twice as far away as a comparable, unrifled musket firing a regular lead ball. However, military tactics didn’t evolve as fast as the weaponry which meant that in the earlier years of the Civil War, armies were still lining up, shoulder to shoulder in close formation, within a few dozen yards of their enemies and firing at each other, just as their ancestors had done nearly a hundred years before, in the American Revolution.

Cartridge-Bullet

The modern bullet as we know it today, or rather, ammunition as we know it today, was the result and combination of three different elements: The impact-detonated precussion-cap (seen on muskets of the American Civil War), smokeless modern gunpowder and the modern, conical-cylindrical bullet, derived from the shape of the Minie Ball. But why is it called a ‘cartridge’?

The term ‘cartridge’ as it refers to firearms, has existed a lot longer than modern all-metal cartridges and bullets. A ‘cartridge’ originally referred to a rolled up tube of paper, which contained a pre-measured amount of gunpowder and a projectile (either a lead shot or a Minie Ball, depending on the period). The ball and the powder were seperated inside the cartridge by a twist in the paper. When a soldier needed to load his musket or rifle, he ripped the paper cartridge open, poured a bit of the powder into his flash-pan, closed the frizzen and then poured the rest of the powder down the gun-barrel. He then pushed in the shot or the Minie Ball and then scrunched up the paper cartridge, stuffed it into the gun-barrel and rammed it down with a ramrod.

The modern cartridge bullet as we know it today, containing the bullet and gunpowder in a sealed metal cartridge-casing, came around in the 1840s, however, its introduction was slow. In fact, in the early years of the American Civil War, many soldiers were still firing muzzle-loaded muskets and rifles, similar to the ones their ancestors used in the Revolution. The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century saw mass-production of cartridge-bullets which gradually led to the obcelescene of muzzle-loaded, loose-powder firearms.

Multi-shot Firearms

Thusfar, this article has concentrated on single-shot firearms. Pistols, muskets, rifles, blunderbusses and so-forth. The main weakness of these firearms brings me to the next part of this article…firearms that could fire more than one shot between reloadings.

Even the Minie-Ball-shooting rifle of the 1850s and 60s, though faster to reload and more accurate than its 18th century counterpart, the flintlock musket, had one major drawback: It could only fire one shot at a time. Once you loaded it and aimed and fired, you had to reload it all over again. In the heat of battle, this was a waste of precious time. This hazard of early firearms was the kind of problem that kept gunmakers up late at night, wracking their brains for centuries, trying to find a solution.

Various interesting firearms were developed throughout history, in an attempt to invent a gun that could fire more than one round before needing to be reloaded. The famous ‘Pepperbox’ gun or revolver is one of these inventions:


The ‘Pepperbox’ Revolver

Depending on the size and number of barrels, the pepperbox revolver could fire anywhere from five to ten rounds before it had to be reloaded. Pepperbox revolvers were not terribly accurate, but they did allow people to have more firepower on them without also needing more guns.

The modern revolver or “six-shooter”, a handheld firearm capable of firing six bullets in quick succession (hence the term ‘six-shooter’) was developed from the early pepperbox revolver and became a reality in the 1840s. Samuel Colt, the American inventor and firearms manufacturer did not invent the revolver, as some people believe, he merely improved on its design. Early revolvers were blackpowder firearms, requiring the user to load each bullet, powder and wadding one by one. Early cylinders had to be turned by hand and cocked and fired one by one. Sam Colt changed this by producing revolvers that would shoot cartridge-bullets. Cocking the firing-hammer immediately lined up a new bullet and pulling the trigger fired the gun. You still had to cock the revolver again after that shot, before you could fire the next shot, but the basic modern revolver as we know it today, had been invented. This style of revolver was called the “single-action” revolver, because pulling the trigger only fired the gun, it didn’t also rotate the cylinder and cock the weapon again (the later “double-action” revolver would do this, and allow you to fire the gun even faster).

Samuel Colt was many things, but amongst other things, he was a salesman. It was he who practically single-handedly, introduced the world to the modern revolver. Indeed, the revolving-cylinder handgun was so new in the 1840s that it was still called a “pistol”. It wouldn’t be for another few years that the term “revolver” became the accepted term for Colt’s new toy.

From the 1840s until the early 1900s, handheld firearms were limited to revolvers. However, a new invention, the automatic pistol, soon changed things, affecting how fast and how many bullets a person could fire at once.

The automatic pistol was developed in the late 19th century. In its most basic form, the pistol works by pulling the trigger, which sets off a chain reaction. After pulling the trigger, the firing-pin hits the primer-cap on the cartridge, which ignites the gunpowder and fires the bullet. The recoil from the bullet firing forces the slide at the top of the gun to shift backwards, ejecting the spent shell-casing and allowing a new cartridge from the clip stored in the gun-butt, to ascend into the firing-chamber above.

The automatic pistol was a big improvement on the revolver, for various reasons. It was faster to shoot and easier to reload. But an automatic pistol did require more care than a revolver. Failure to strip down and clean the pistol properly could result in the gun jamming and failing to work properly. The simplicity of the revolver meant that most civilians and police-forces stuck with the older firearm for longer, before updating to automatic handguns.


Colt M1911 pistol. One of the world’s most famous and recognisable automatic handguns

In situations where firepower means winning, revolvers were more quickly phased out and replaced with the newer handguns. The Colt M1911, one of the most famous automatic pistols in the world, developed…as the name suggests…in 1911, was the standard-issue sidearm for soldiers and officers in the U.S. Army for nearly 90 years! The Colt 1911 was finally replaced in the 1980s and 1990s by the Beretta 92, however, it continues to be used in various areas in the U.S. Army as well as in some professional police-forces. The fact that the Colt M1911 is now almost 100 years old and still in popular use says something considerable about its design and practicality.

The big problem about writing an article about firearms is that it’s such a vast topic. So far, I’ve covered the development of gunpowder, early firearms and the development of multiple-shot handguns. That’s as far as this particular article will go, however. Additional articles on various other aspects of firearms history may surface in the future.

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Battle of the Dauntless – A Short Story

 

Been a long time since I added anything to the ‘Creative Writing’ area of my blog. This is a short, 2,500-word piece that I finished recently and which I thought I would share with everyone:

Battle of the Dauntless

July, 1804
Northeast Atlantic, west of Spain

Timbers creak and waves slosh gently against a bobbing hull, like so many mothers’ hands reaching to comfort a crying baby. Sunlight, fresh and warm, beams down on white sails, furled for the time-being, and on ropes and rigging, some taut and which creak from tension, some slack and limp from lack of use. On the deck, I watch the men at work, coiling ropes, scrubbing decks and doing general maintenance. I head through one of the hatchways towards the back of the ship and knock on the door of the Great Cabin.
“Come!” a voice calls out. I open the door and step inside.
“Ah! Good morning, Mr. Colton!”
Captain Christopher Peale sits at one end of a table. Capt. Peale is a tall man, some six foot two inches in height and of solid build, with long, dark blond hair done up in the back in a rough ponytail to keep it out of the way. I smile at him in a way that exists between friends.

“Good morning, Christopher,” I said. Behind closed doors, I had decided to indulge in my social rather than professional relationship with the captain. The captain smiled and beckoned me to sit down. Next to the captain, a man in his late thirties, was another man of a similar age. Dr. James Frost. I have known Christopher Peale since we were a pair of ‘snotties’, midshipmen, both aged some twelve years old. Dr. Frost has been our ship’s surgeon these past five. We say ‘surgeon’ but he is both physician and surgeon and so much the better.

“Any news?” Christopher asked. I shook my head.
“Everything is as it should be,” I said.
“Excellent,” said Christopher. “Well Jack, James, I fancy we can help ourselves to the first drink of the day”.

Being First Lieutenant and a close friend and colleague of both the captain and surgeon always brings certain privileges with them, which I was happy to take advantage of. Our morning drink was interrupted when someone knocked on the door.

“Come!” Christopher called out.

Second Lieutenant Arthur Collins or ‘Artie’ as we called him, opened the door.

“Sail ahead, sir!” he said, “You’d best come see!”

Christopher nodded. “Very good. Thank you, Collins. Doctor, back to your quarters; Jack, close the windows and then join me on the foredeck”.

The men left the cabin and I leaned out to close the windows in the ship’s stern. Looking down, I read the large, white letters which spelt out the word ‘Dauntless’ on the stern. I closed the cabin door and headed up on deck.

“You see?” Christopher asked. He pressed a spyglass to my hands. I extended it and observed a ship several yards away. I could make out the red, white and blue French flag flapping in the wind and then I noticed a bright, white flash. The sun glinting off a spyglass lens!

“He’s spotted us!” I said. I handed the glass back to the captain.
“So he has, the dog! Lieutenant Colton, alert the officers, beat to quarters and clear for action!”
“Aye sir!” I said, nodding. “Mr. Collins! Mr. Barkley, Mr. Shears! Beat to quarters and clear for action! Quickly, now!”

Soon, all was a flurry of activity as orders were shouted hither and thither. Piercing notes from the bosun’s pipes squealed and warbled through the air and voices yelled out loud and full of conviction.
“Mr. Jones, run up the colours! Midshipman Bell, two points starboard!” the captain shouted. I rushed below. A marine, dressed in his distinctive red and white uniform stood rapidly beating a drum, setting the pace for action. Men raced towards the gun-decks.

“Cast loose!” I and the other officers shouted and the gun-crews undid the ropes restraining the cannons to the hull of the ship.
“Run out the larboard battery!” yelled the captain, “Roundshot! Carronades and chase-guns to be loaded with grapeshot and case!”

“Run out!” I yelled. My friend Arthur yelled out the same. I bent down next to the nearest gun-crew and helped them to run out their gun. The Dauntless was a 5th Rate Ship-of-the-Line with forty-four guns: Twenty 18-pounders, twenty 12-pounders, four 6-pounder chase-guns as well as eight 18-pounder carronades, not counted in the ship’s armaments.

The view of the sea from the open gunport was small, and running the cannon-muzzle out through the gunport was hard work. Even with the help of the ship rolling in the swell, it still took the entire five-man gun-crew to push out the piece on its gun-carriage or pull it out using ropes and pulleys. Then, the action started.
Nothing could possibly describe over twenty cannons firing in quick succession, one after the other, after the other, after the other! As each order of “Fire!” was given, the gun-captain pulled on the lanyard that operated the gunlock and the whole contraption would explode! White smoke, flames and a jet black iron cannonball would come hurtling out and off into the distance. The gun leaps back with a kick like a stubborn mule, making the gun-deck shake from the blast! Through the gunport I could see the shots smashing into the timbers of the other ship. We had now drawn alongside the enemy which was firing back at us. Heavy iron cannonballs smashed into the hull, showering splinters everywhere!

“Reload!” I shouted. I heard gun-captains yelling out orders which echoed in my ears, a confusion of incomprehensible sounds.

“Worm! Sponge! Cartridge, wad, shot, wad, ram! Prime! Run out! Level! FIRE!”

The gun-decks were filled with choking, blinding smoke enough to make one double over in coughing and sound enough to make one deaf to all things around him. The steady ‘thud!’ of the guns firing, the whistling and droning of shot and the inevitable shattering and splintering of wood and the screams of the maimed, wounded and the fading groans of the freshly deceased filled the air. Through the smoke and blood and splintered wood, youths of fourteen, twelve, ten and even younger, were jogging back and forth in a relay race of death. Slung over their shoulders were cylindrical kegs. These unfortunate lads were the powder-monkeys . A sudden cannon-blast hit the side of the ship! One of the boys was thrown back against a support-beam! He screamed and fell to the ground. I snatched up his empty keg and jogged through the ship.

“Mr. Collins! Mr Barkley keep them spitting! You boys, get a move on! Sharpish, now!”

I sprinted through the ship, sliding down the staircases and ladders until I reached a large, copper-lined room: The Magazine. There, the Ship’s Gunner helped me fill the powder-keg with cartridges before sending me back up to the guns. From there, I headed up on deck to witness the full fury of the action.

The deck was a mess of wood, smoke and bodies. The carronades and chase-guns were firing on the enemy ship while the captain screamed out orders. After taking in sail so that we’d fall behind the enemy, the captain had ordered all sails set and the ship turned hard a’larboard. This swung our ship left, so that it passed by the stern of the enemy ship.

“Mr Shears! Run out the starboard battery!” the captain yelled. We ducked as something whistled past our ears and wrapped itself around a mast! I reached up and untangled a length of chain-shot and held it up to the captain .
“Bloody frogs can’t shoot worth a damn!” he shouted over the roar of cannons. I laughed.
“Take that below and have one of the lads send it back to them proper-like!” he ordered. I passed the chain-shot below with orders to fire it back before helping one of the ship’s boys to carry a wounded man below.

The surgeon’s quarters were below, aft, a room below the captain’s cabin. The windows were opened and Dr. Foster and his Mate were working double-time to attend the injured, which was everything from cuts and scrapes hastily washed and bandaged, to amputations requiring the use of the tourniquet, rum, laudanum, the flesh-knife and the bone-hacksaw.

“Another one, doctor!” I called out, helping the man into the room and sitting him on a bench. The ship rocked from another cannon-blast! But it wasn’t that which was preventing the doctor from paying attention to me. The blood drenching the floor was getting intolerable. The doctor’s loblolly-boy was scooping out handfuls of sand from a sack and throwing it onto the floor to try and soak it up, but wasn’t having an amazing amount of luck. I left them to their work and headed upstairs.

“What’s happening?” I shouted to the third lieutenant.
“Raking fire!” he shouted, “Give us a hand!”
Raking fire was always Captain Peale’s favoured method of attack. Indeed it was probably every captain’s favourite method, given the opportunity. And at the moment, the opportunity was golden.
“Fire as you bear!” I shouted to the men. “With a will, lads! Come on!”
Cannons were run out on their carriages and one by one, the lanyards were pulled and the guns fired!
“Off with the rudder, now!” Arthur shouted, “Gun-captains! On the down-roll…FIRE!”

There was a sickening blast! Shot smashed into the lower hull of the enemy ship, disabling its steering.
“Reload!” I shouted, “On the up-roll boys!…Steady…On the up-roll, FIRE!”

The ship groaned! Cannon-shot smashed into the stern of the French ship, ripping it to pieces! Just then, Fourth Lieutenant Shears ran up to me.

“Captain wants you on deck! Mr. Barkley, you’re to be here and command the guns, Mr. Collins also! Mr. Colton, cap’n wants men to lead boarding-parties!”

Up on deck, we prepared to board. I selected a brace of pistols and muskets and touched my hand to my side to ensure the security of my sabre. Again, it became a muddle of orders shouted out and begging to be heard, like drowning sailors in a sea of words.
“Boarders to me!”
“Reload! Case-shot!”
“Marines! Fix bayonets!”
“Ready…level…FIRE!”
“Grappling-hooks away! Bring forth boarding-planks! Handsomely, now! Make sure they’re secured!”

We charged across from our ship to the enemy’s. It was almost impossible to see anything. The smoke from the gunfire was as thick as a winter fog in London. Some of us swung over on grappling-hooks while others ran across the boarding-planks, jumping onto the quarterdeck of the enemy ship. I fired both my pistols scoring direct hits before shrugging my musket off my shoulder. Shoot, stab, swing, club! Move on! Sword, swing, stab, left, right! I am given a stark reminder of how hard it is to actually pierce the human torso, said task requiring quite an expenditure of strength on my part with the use of my bayonet. Behind me, I hear the captain charging forward with his men. I turned around for an instant and noticed two carronades on our ship firing caseshot onto the enemy quarterdeck to try and scatter and kill them. Two loud explosions nearby told me that Captain Peale was deploying his weapon of choice: a double-barrelled blunderbuss, a monster that was originally a coach-gun but which had been modified with a spring-loaded bayonet at the front for better use in close-quarters combat . Something black whistled over my head and hit the deck! The grenade rolled along the planking and clattered and bounced down the steps into the inside of the ship. It was followed by a loud blast and screams that alerted all around that it had hit its target!

“Jack! Lieutenant Colton! Take your men below and spike the guns!” the captain shouted as he held off two men with his sword. A dozen men and myself headed below. Spiking of the guns was not immediately necessary; the devastation wreaked by twenty cannons raking the enemy’s stern had already put most of the French guns wholly out of action. The few guns that needed spiking were already spiked by the French to stop us using them. We fought our way through the interior of the ship and then back up onto the quarterdeck where we were once again exposed to the full extent of the battle, with the crews of two ships fighting in a confined space. Men were thrown overboard, shot, stabbed, bludgeoned or slashed as British forces swept through the ship. Supporting fire from our still-active cannons soon gave us the upper hand. By degrees, we managed to corner the French until Christopher managed to get the enemy captain in front of him.
“Your name, Monsieur?” Captain Peale asked.
“Capitan Jacques Petard,” said the French captain. He was significantly older, probably in his fifties, with greying hair and scars from previous battles displayed like medals on his face.
“And do you surrender both your ship and your men to me?”
“Oui, monsieur capitan, and to whom do I have the honour of surrendering my ship?”
“Christopher Peale, Royal Navy, captain of His Majesty’s Ship Dauntless”.

Captain Petard unsheathed his sabre, and held it delicately between his fingers, handing it to Captain Peale, who sheathed it in his empty scabbard.

“Strike your colours,” Captain Peale said, “You and your men will be confined below decks until such time as we have made landfall. Lieutenant Shears, assemble some men to serve as a skeleton crew aboard ship, and half the full complement of marines to maintain order. Let us gather stock of these events and then proceed to repairs”.

The remaining French sailors were then confined to the lower decks of their ship, where marines were posted to guard them. Repairs were started almost immediately, by clearing and cleaning the decks and burying the bodies of sailors from both sides at sea. Each body was sewn up in its own hammock with a cannonball around its ankles to make it sink. The recovering wounded rested in the ship’s infirmary the ship’s carpenter proceeded to sound the vessel to check for damage.
“What orders, sir?” I asked as I directed the men in the repair of the ships.
“Once we’re underway, we’ll set a course East-Northeast”.
“East-Northeast…that would have us sailing to England, sir…”
“It would indeed, Jack. We’re going home. Alert Mr. Jones, will you?”
“Aye sir”.
By the next morning, with most important elements of the ship repaired, we set a course East-Northeast and sailed for home, with our captured prize no more than three ship-lengths behind us at any point during the journey.
“All in all, a very successful action,” Christopher said to myself and the other officers as we gathered in his cabin for our first proper dinner since we set our course for home.
“Indeed sir,” said Lieutenant Collins, brushing back his own blond hair and reaching for a brandy, “A most successful action indeed”.
“And what’s the butcher’s bill?” I asked.
“Fifteen dead, twenty wounded, five of them seriously so”.
“Define serious,” Captain Peale said.
“Two amputations, one concussion, two musket-ball wounds. I’ve removed the musket-balls but those two will have to be rested for a long time before they’re well enough to resume duties again, sir”.

Christopher sighed, “War’s a damnably messy thing, gentlemen. A hellish thing. But the action is done, so let us think of home and to our ships at sea”.

One by one, we raised our glasses and clinked them together.

“To our ships at sea” .

The End

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Classic Bling – Buying and Owning a Pocket Watch

 

I’ll be honest…I’m not a fan of wristwatches. Never have been, am not now, and never will be. I find them uncomfortable, irritating, pedestrian and boring. Plus, I can never find a dial that I like. I’m a simple person and I hate trying to read a watch-dial that has tiny numbers, that has no numbers, or that has a million other things on it, like day, date, month, moonphase, stopwatch, heartrate-monitor and an inbuilt, nuclear-holocaust-grade gieger-counter.

Unfortunately these days, most watches seem to come in one of those three categories. To add to this, I do a lot of things with my hands: Writing, typing, playing the piano and handling heavy stuff. And when I’m doing stuff like that, a wristwatch just gets in the way. I used to have a really bad habit (according to some), of removing my wristwatch all the time and putting it into my pocket whenever I used it, and only taking it out when I wanted to tell the time. Well, after a few years of this, I gave up and decided that for my 21st birthday a few years ago, I’d buy myself a pocket-watch.

I love pocket-watches. Call me kooky and weird if you must, but I do. They’re a classic piece of men’s jewellery which, sadly, has been out of fashion for the best part of the last fifty or sixty years. The last commercially-produced pocket watches were made in the 1970s, and by that, I mean you found them in shop-windows or in magazines. These days? Not on your life.

I wear a pocket-watch on a daily basis. It’s easy to read, it’s classy, I don’t have some ugly manacle on my wrist all the time…and believe me, the pocket-watch is an amazing conversation-starter!

On watch forums, on history forums and just generally online, I’ve heard of people who want to buy pocket watches, either to wear, or to practice watchmaking on, or to give as a present to a friend or relation. Maybe they want to establish a sort of classic dress-style and want the watch to complete their look. Maybe they’re steampunkists looking for that finishing touch to their outfit. But then they start wondering: “Where the hell do I find a pocket-watch?”

The biggest problem with pocket watches is that, since they’re so rarely worn these days, finding one can be a challenge. This is my guide to shopping for a good-quality antique, vintage or hell, even a modern pocket watch! So let’s get to it. Hopefully, you’ll find it helpful.

Where to Look?

This is probably the hardest thing. Where do you start looking? The days where you could mail-order a pocket-watch from a magazine or buy one in a regular shop are long gone. But there are still places you can go to find a pocket watch. Here they are:

Antiques Shops.

Duuuuuh! Pocket-watches in antiques shops are usually good quality, but keep in mind that these watches are being sold by professional antiques dealers. Their prices could be scarily expensive. And that’s without spending the money to get the watch serviced, as well! Unless you’ve got money to burn, it’s best to avoid these places.

Watch Shops.

Another rather obvious place. Some watchmakers’ shops do sell pocket-watches. Either modern ones or vintage and antique pocket-watches that they’ve bought, serviced and want to resell, or watches that people have sold or donated to them. Buying a pocket-watch from a watchmaker or a watch-shop is still going to be expensive, but you will at least have the peace-of-mind in knowing that you’re dealing with a professional who not only knows his stuff (hopefully!) but that you’re also buyinig a pocket-watch that has already been serviced, saving you a nice bit of money.

Flea-markets and watch-shows.

Flea-markets, bric-a-brac markets, watch-shows, junk-shops, thrift-shops and other dealers of second-hand junk are another nice place to look for pocket watches, however, these places can be fraught with various dangers, such as the quality of the timepiece, the knowledge of the seller, and of course…the fact that the watch is second-hand, being sold outside of a professional environment.

You might get amazingly lucky and buy a good-quality pocket-watch secondhand. But you still have to pay to get the watch serviced. You wouldn’t buy a car without having it serviced before driving it, would you? No. Neither should do that with a pocket-watch. They’re mechanical devices that require care and attention. If you do find a nice pocket-watch, then you have to deal with the seller. If the seller is ignorant of the quality of the watch, you could probably knock the price down pretty substantially before buying it, or, if the seller knows *exactly* what he’s selling, you might not get anywhere. The last factor is that you’re buying the watch second-hand outside of a professional environment. What do I mean by this?

By this, I mean that the watch most likely has not been serviced. Servicing means that the watch has been taken to a watchmaker, it has been examined, disassembled, examined, cleaned, examined, lubricated, reassembled, examined, timed for accuracy and then put back together into its complete state again. When buying any pocket-watch second-hand, remember that you will need to have it serviced and that you should factor at least $200 into the service-cost. So if you buy a watch for $100, it’ll cost about $300 (or more, depending on what needs to be done) to get the watch to a satisfactory, working condition.

Buying online.

Some watch-collectors or watchmakers or watch-sellers love selling stuff on eBay, and this can be a very nice place to look for watches, provided that you know what you’re looking for. As pocket-watches can be expensive, people aren’t likely to try and cheat you out of money, because if you buy a dud from them, they know that they’re probably never going to hear the end of it from you. Stick to online shops or sellers with high reputations.

Apart from eBay, there are also plenty of watch-sites online that sell new or used pocket-watches. These are also excellent places to search for pocket-watches, as each watch-listing will usually include all the important details about the watch’s manufacture, quality, age and service-history. Prices might be a bit high, so keep that in mind.

What to Look For?

Now you know where to look, the next thing to know is what to look for. Don’t forget that pocket watches have been around for about five hundred years. There were literally hundreds, if not thousands of watchmakers, making everything from the sensible, to the sensational, to the senseless! Making…er…sense…of all these watches and the varying qualities is important, so that you know what to look for.

Wanting to buy a pocket-watch is only half the battle. Knowing what makes quality is the other half. As most pocket-watches these days are ones that you’ll be buying second-hand, keep an eye on the following:

Brand/Company/Watchmaker

Pocket-watches have been around for centuries. There are millions of pocket-watches out there made by thousands of watchmakers. How do you know what’s good quailty? A general rule of thumb is: Never buy a pocket-watch if you can’t type the name of the watch-company or watchmaker into a Google Search, and find information on it. If nobody’s bothered to write about this company or watchmaker and post it online, there’s probably a damn good reason. The two main reasons are: Rarity (which means if your watch breaks, you can’t find parts for it!) or poor quality (which means you’re wasting money having it serviced!).

Stick to well-known watchmakers. Companies such as: Waltham, Hamilton, Elgin, South Bend, Rockford, Illinois, Patek-Philippe (if you can afford it!), Breuget (again, if you can afford it!), Tissot, Ball and Omega, to name just a few. All these companies made watches of good quality which are worth looking at.

General Condition

Never…ever…buy a broken pocket-watch. Buying a nonfunctioning watch is fine, but not a broken one. What’s the difference?

A ‘nonfunctioning’ watch is a watch which is in perfect mechanical condition. It just won’t run. This can be remedied by a trip to the watchmaker. Once it’s cleaned and reassembled, it should work wonderfully! So if you find a watch that’s in good condition but which doesn’t run, buy it and send it to the watchmaker.

A broken watch is…a broken watch. One with damaged components, one with missing components (even worse!) or one which is being sold ‘for parts’. If you’re unlucky enough to buy a broken watch, depending on the brand of watch, it may be possible to get the watch fixed and working, but this could mean a higher servicing-bill. Keep that in mind.

The next thing to look for in buying a watch is general condition…

Case and Caseback

In the strictest term, a ‘watch’ is the movement, the mechanics inside the case. The case around the watch is just something to keep it safe. Watch-cases are made up of various components:

– Bow. (Pronounced like ‘throw’). The bow is the round metal ring or loop on the top of the watch-case. This is where you clip your watch-chain to. A good bow should be centered properly and not too loose or likely to part company with the case.

– Bezel. The bezel is the metal securing-ring around the crystal. A nice bezel should be free from brassing, scratches and dents.

– Crystal. The crystal (some people like to call them the ‘glass’) is the circle of glass, plastic or crystal over the watch-dial. Crystals should be free from scratches, chips and cracks.

– Caseback. The caseback is the back of the case (duh!). Some casebacks have small cartouches or blank, empty spots on them. These were there for people to engrave their monograms or initials on. A good caseback should be free from scratches, dents and brassing.

– Crown. The crown is the round, corrugated knob at the top of the watch, above the pendant and below the bow. The crown is used to wind the watch, and in most cases, set it to the right time. A crown shouldn’t be too loose and wobbly. It should turn smoothly and evenly when you wind the watch and it should pop out smoothly and click back down smoothly when you set the time.

Dial

Watch-dials should be clean and easy to read, without any hairline cracks or chips or faded lettering and markings. A small note: A hairline crack does NOT damage the whole integrity of the dial: Dials were placed on metal backing-plates which secured them to the watch-movement, so a crack on the dial doesn’t mean that it’s going to fall to pieces.

Hands

A pocket-watch typically has three hands. Hour, Minute and Second. In most pocket-watches, the second-hand is a tiny thing which spins around the ‘seconds subdial’, which is a smaller, inset dial at the bottom of the watch, at the six o’clock point. Make sure that all the hands match and that they’re proportionate to the size of the watch.

Movement

The ‘movement’ is the mechanics inside the watch. Check for cracks, rust, missing screws, wobbly bits that shouldn’t be, and stationary bits that shouldn’t be. Most importantly of all, check the balance. The balance is the the heart of the watch. It’s the bit that swings back and forth, making the watch go ‘tick-tock’. Balances can be pretty delicate, so don’t touch it, just look at it. Check to see that the balance-spring (more commonly called a ‘hairspring’) is perfectly coiled. If it’s tangled up or if it’s off-center, that will need to be looked at by a watchmaker.

While you’re looking at the movement, search for the following features…

If you’re buying an American-made vintage or antique pocket-watch, look for the serial-number. The serial-number on the movement can tell you how old the watch is, how many of this model were made and how long they were made for. Also look for words like “Jewels” and “Adjusted”. Good quality pocket-watches always had jewels in them. These are typically rubies or sapphires which are used as bearings to cut down on friction. Cutting down on friction means that the watch runs smoother and keeps better time. Aim to buy a watch with at least seven jewels. The traditional jewel-counts for quality pocket watches started at seven, and then went up to nine, eleven, fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one and lastly, twenty-three jewels. A seven-jewel watch will give you decent timekeeping. A watch with more jewels should give you better timekeeping, but don’t expect quartz-watch accuracy…that’s not going to happen. Ever.

If you find the word ‘adjusted’ inside your watch, you might find extra words like “Adjusted to *X* positions”.

There are eight possible ‘adjustments’ that can be made to a watch. Adjustments for position (there are six of these) meant that the watch was expected to keep accurate time, no matter how you held the watch: upside down, right side up, flat on a table, flipped upside down on a table, on a stand on its side…anything. Then, there are two other adjustments: Isochronism and Temperature.

Isochronism (say that six times fast! Pronounced ‘eye-sock-row-nism’) is the ability of the watch to keep time regardless of the mainspring’s level of tension. All watches should be adjusted for this. If you find ‘Temperature’ engraved on the watch-movement, it means that the watch has been adjusted to keep time in extremes of temperature: Freezing cold and boiling heat (from about 0 degrees celsius to about 45 degrees, or 32 degrees farenheit and about 115 degrees).

Buying a highly jewelled, adjusted watch in good condition will assure you of good timekeeping once it’s been serviced by a professional. Don’t bother buying a mechanical pocket-watch without at least seven jewels in it…it’s not worth it. Watches like that were designed to be used until they broke, after which, they were meant to be thrown out. Don’t waste your money on that.

Buying your Watch

Now you know where to look, and what to look for. Antiques shops, watch-shops, flea-markets, eBay, online shops. What to check for on a good quality watch. Now you want to buy a watch. What do you do?

How much does a pocket-watch cost? This is probably the first thing you’re asking.

That really depends. I could go out right now and buy a mechanical pocket watch made in China for $15 (and yes, I have actually done that, a long time ago). But that $10 Chinese-made piece of junk isn’t going to last you any, and it’s not gonna look nice when you wear it. So how much should you expect to pay for a quality watch?

Modern Pocket-Watches

Modern pocket-watches are usually quartz pocket watches with plated watch-cases. A simple quartz pocket-watch can be had for about $10. It’ll last forever, it’s easy to maintain, and…that’s it. But when most people think about pocket watches, they imagine those old-timey wind-up things that you see in old movies. How much does one of those cost?

Antique & Vintage Mechanical Pocket-Watches

A word of warning: When buying mechanical pocket watches, newer is not always better. A modern, good-quality mechanical pocket-watch might be a nice thing to buy, and some of them are indeed great quality and worth the money, but remember that these days, most pocket watches are manufactured as showpieces and decoration…not as practical timepieces.

If you want a mechanical pocket-watch, it’s better to buy a vintage or antique watch from a famous watch-company. Why? Because back when these watches were made, quality-control, testing and general manufacturing standards were a LOT higher. This is because they had to be…they were the only watches around, so they had to be good quality. Unlike today when everything is a throwaway affair, back then, you bought a pocket-watch to last you your whole life, so quality was much better.

A watch like that can be had for anywhere from a hundred dollars (not including servicing) to around $500 or more, depending on quality, case-metal, reputation of the maker and of course, the functionality of the watch. Solid gold and silver watches are very hard to buy cheap. Unscrupulous people love buying watches like this…and they rip out the movement…they take off the crystal, they remove the dial…and they melt the watch-case down for scrap. Because of this, solid-gold watches or solid silver watches are getting increasingly expensive. Unless you have a lot of money, forget about owning one of those. Whatever you pay for your pocket-watch, be it $100 or $1,000, always remember to factor in another $250 for the servicing that the watch will have to undergo before you can use it!

Watch-Cases

If you want a gold watch, the best thing to go for is a gold-filled watch. Vintage and antique gold-filled watches are more common, they cost less and they looked just as nice. But just to clarify: Gold-filling is NOT gold-plating.

The Difference?

Gold-filling is done by getting two sheets of gold and sandwiching them either side of a base-metal (brass) and welding them together nice and solid. This creates the appearance of solid gold without the heart-attack-inducing price-tag. Because it was cheaper to produce but just as pretty, most watch-case companies made cases like this. They lasted a long time and they looked pretty. When checking a case for gold-content, gold-filled cases are usually marked “Gold filled” or “Guaranteed to wear for 5/10/20/25 years”. The longer the case is guaranteed to ‘wear’ or last for, the better the gold-filling and the better the quality. Gold-filled cases were usually 14kt, but this can vary.

Gold-plating is done by immersing a base-metal watch-case (made of brass) into a solution and electroplating it with gold. This is also cheaper and gives the appearance of gold. But unlike gold-filling, which will last for decades, you’d be lucky if gold-plating lasts a year. The gold-plating is often so thin (only a few microns) that enough rubbing and handling of the watch-case will soon rub all the gold right off. On the other hand, it takes decades of heavy use to do the same thing to a gold-filled case.

What if you want a silver watch-case instead? If you can’t afford real, sterling or coin-silver, then you’ll have to settle for silver-plate, or you could do the next step down and buy a watch with a nickel case. Nickel might sound cheap, but it can give a nice, silvery look to a watch at a fraction of the price.

Another thing you should consider is the case-style that you want. This won’t be too hard, there are only two. The first case-style is the ‘open-face case’. This means that you have the case and the bezel and the crystal and the dial, with the crown at 12 o’clock. The other case-style is the ‘hunter-case’. A hunter-case pocket-watch is one with a lid that closes over the watch-dial. This can be a useful feature for some people, who want to prevent the watch-crystal from getting scratched, cracked or chipped. A hunter-case watch is opened by pressing down on the crown, which releases a spring-loaded catch inside the watch-case to open the lid. Closing a hunter-case watch should be done by pressing down on the crown, closing the lid and then releasing the crown to keep it shut. Just snapping the case-lid shut can damage the catch and the metal on the edge of the case.

Setting-Mechanism

On most pocket-watches these days, setting the time is pretty easy. You pull out the crown, turn the hands and then pop the crown back down. Vintage pocket-watches, however, had about four ways to set the time. Knowing which one of these applies to your new antique or vintage pocket watch is important…doing it wrong could mean your watch has to go back to the watchmaker!

– Key-set.

Key-set watches are the oldest of the oldest pocket watches. These watches were set by using the watch’s winding-and-setting key. Watches like these were obsolete by the second half of the 19th century, though.

– Pendant/Crown-set.

The most common kind. You pull out the crown and turn it to set the hands and then push it back in. If your watch-crown doesn’t pop up neatly when you tug on it to set the time, don’t force it! It could be one of the following…

– Lever-set.

A lever-set watch (which was mandatory for ALL railroad-quality pocket-watches) works by unscrewing the bezel, pulling out the small, metallic setting-lever and turning the crown to set the time. Once the correct time is set, the lever is pushed back in and the bezel is screwed back on.

– Pin-set.

Pin-set watches are similar to lever-set watches, only, instead of pulling something out, you push something in. In this case, the setting-pin. On watches like this, the setting-pin is located near the watch-bow. You press down the pin and that allows you to turn the crown to set the hands. Once the hands are set, you release the pin and let the watch run.

Watch-Chains

Pocket-watches are rarely sold with their necessary watch-chains. Normally, you’re going to have to buy them seperately. A pocket-watch must be worn with its chain. Not only does it look nicer, it’s also a security feature. The chain catches the watch and prevents it from becoming abstract art on the pavement, if it should fall out of your pocket. The annoying thing about watch-chains is that they can be even MORE expensive than the watches themselves!

Solid gold watch-chains cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. The cheapest I’ve found is $400. On the other hand, you can get a nice gold-filled chain for a fraction of that price, and a nice, polished brass watch-chain for even less! My brass Albert watch-chain cost all of $20 and it looks great!

When buying a chain, you want to make sure that it’s got a decent length (at least 10-14 inches long), that it’s strong and that the swivel-clips work. The clip is, after all, what holds the watch to the chain, so examining its integrity is vital.

There are four main types of watch-chains around today: Albert, Double Albert, ring-clip and belt-clip.

The Albert and Double Albert (named for His Royal Highness, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria) are the most iconic of watch-chains. They feature a swivel T-bar at the end of the chain and were designed to be worn with jackets and waistcoats.

The ring-clip chain was designed to be worn with a pair of trousers. You put the watch into your watch-pocket and clipped the chain to your belt-loop.


A pocket-watch with a ring-clip chain

The belt-clip chain was also meant to be worn with trousers, where you put your watch into your watch-pocket and clipped the chain to your belt.

Wearing your Pocket-Watch

This is probably one of the most confusing things about pocket-watches in the 21st century. You’ve bought a nice, good-quality pocket watch. A 1902 Ball railroad watch with 21 jewels, eight adjustments and a pretty, gold-filled case and a nice, long watch-chain. Only…now…you don’t know what to do with it.

If you have absolutely no desire to actually wear your pocket watch, then another thing you can do with it is buy a pocket-watch stand. They’re cheap and easy to get online and you can put your watch (with the chain) onto your stand and use it as a clock on your desk or your dressing-table! That way, you can use it without using it…if that makes sense.

However, if you actually bought your watch and chain to wear it, but don’t know how…read on.

Now, a rather irrelevant piece of information is that I work as a volunteer in a charity shop. While helping out a customer there last week, she commented on my watch-chain and wondered what was on the end of it. I showed her, and this sparked a conversation between her and her friends about the pocket-watches that their fathers and grandfathers used to wear. She then asked me if you HAD to have a waistcoat (which is what I was wearing at the time) to wear a pocket watch?

The answer is ‘no’. I’ve been wearing a pocket-watch for the past two years, but I only bought a waistcoat a few months ago. Sadly, there is a HUGE misconception that you MUST own a three-piece suit, or at least a waistcoat, to wear a pocket-watch, and this tends to put people off. Maybe they don’t have a suit or a waistcoat, maybe they don’t want to wear it, but they feel that they have to. This simply isn’t true. Granted, the three-piece suit isn’t as prevelant today as it was sixty or seventy years ago, but you can still wear a pocket watch with modern dress. You just have to be creative.

Pocket-watches can be worn in a variety of ways; wearing one with a waistcoat is simply the most common one. There are a few ways you can wear a pocket watch, and here they are:

Suit-jacket breast-pocket.

Most suit-jackets or suit-coats will have a buttonhole in the left lapel. That’s not just there to look weird or to put a flower into…it’s also where you put your watch-chain! Inserting the T-bar of an Albert-chain into the buttonhole from the front will keep the T-bar out of sight and keep the chain securely in-place. Your watch and the rest of your chain sits snugly in the jacket’s breast-pocket. You can, if you like, hang the rest of your chain out of your pocket, if you don’t want it cluttering up your breast-pocket and making it look too bulky.

Trousers watch-pocket.

Not many people are aware of this, but often when you buy trousers or jeans, they come with enigmatic little pockets, usually on the right side, near the hip. Useless for keys, mobile-phones, coins and condoms, these were actually added to jeans to serve as…you guessed it…watch-pockets!

Due to the “designer” fad of jeans at the moment, not all fifth-pockets will accomadate a pocket-watch, but most of the traditionally-styled jeans should present no problem at all. Just slip your pocket-watch into your trousers or jeans watch-pocket and then clip your ring-clip chain to the nearest convenient belt-loop, or slide your belt-clip chain over your belt. This latter chain is best clipped onto the belt from behind the belt, instead of in front, so that the clip doesn’t snap off the belt accidently when you pull on it. You may notice that the watch will sit in the pocket rather snugly – this is because you’re not meant to shove your fingers in there. Instead, pull on the watch-chain to slide the watch out instead.

Waistcoat pocket.

Last but not least, the classic way: Wearing a pocket-watch with a waistcoat. To do this, you’ll need an Albert or Double-Albert chain. A pocket-watch can be worn with a double or single-breasted waistcoat and in any one of the two (or four) pockets. It’s really a matter of personal choice. Which-ever pocket is selected, the chain should be inserted into a buttonhole so that the top of the chain is in line with the top of the watch-pocket.

Caring for your Pocket Watch

Now that you have your pocket-watch, how do you look after it?

Winding

A pocket-watch should be wound once each day, either when you wake up, or when you go to sleep. Winding it more than once a day is not damaging to the watch, but it serves absolutely no purpose. A functional pocket-watch should be wound at least twelve turns. If it doesn’t, then it needs to be checked by a watchmaker. A pocket-watsh should be able to be wound right up and let to to run. If it’s wound up tight and it doesn’t run, it needs to be serviced. ‘Overwinding’ is a misnomer. It doesn’t mean that the watch has been wound too tightly and won’t run, it means that it’s been wound fully, but that the watch is too dirty internally, to run properly. This can be fixed with a routine servicing.

Storing your Watch

When you’re not wearing your watch, you should keep it in a clean, dry, dust-free place. In a jewellery-box, on a watch-stand or on a table where it won’t get bumped. Laying your watch on its back on your bedside table when you’re not using it (such as before going to bed) is perfectly fine.


My two pocket-watches sitting and hanging from their watch-stands on my desk, in company with my other great passion…my fountain pens!

Caring for your Watch

The caseback of the watch should be opened as rarely as possible, to prevent dust from getting inside the movement. Never try any of your own mechanics on your watch unless you’re actually studying watchmaking. The only exception to this is moving the regulator to get the watch to keep better time.

Keep your watch away from water, heights and dust. Antique and vintage pocket-watches are not waterproof or shockproof and both water and a significant-enough jolt are enough to send them back to the watchmaker. Keep the watch dust-free by keeping the caseback closed at all times unless you really need to open it.

Servicing your Watch

In the old days, a pocket-watch had to be serviced every two years. These days, you should have it serviced every five years (if you use it regularly) or every ten years (if you don’t). It’s important to find a watchmaker who will do a good job servicing your watch. If he charges less than $100 for a servicing…find another guy. If he promises to have the watch back to you quicker than two weeks…find another guy. If this person’s idea of a watchmaker is someone who changes batteries, does engraving and puts on watch-straps…find another guy.

Pocket-watches are delicate, fine machines that only an expert watchmaker should service. Servicing will cost at least $100-$200 (sometimes more, if the watch is exceptionally fine or exceptionally terrible!) and should take about 2-4 weeks. There’s over a hundred tiny little components inside a pocket-watch and they all have to be checked for integrity and quality, so servicing a pocket-watch takes time. Don’t expect it to be done in a hurry.

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Fountain Pens: How to Buy and Where to Find the World’s Most Wonderful Toy.

 

Haven’t done one of these in a while. A post about that most boring and yawn-inducing of subjects, a topic bound to alleviate even the most hardcore of insomniacs from their troubles…the fountain pen.

Many people see fountain pens in movies, in magazines, at other peoples’ houses, or somewhere out in public, in the hand of a fellow writing something down in a cafe, or at the office. Sooner or later, a few of these people will start thinking that they’d like a fountain pen of their own. Only…they don’t really know where to find one…

So, if you want a fountain pen, either as a special gift or as an everyday writing instrument, where and how do you go about looking for one? And, having found their secret lair, how do you infiltrate it and decide which pens are the best for you?

Fountain pens, by their very nature, are highly personal posessions. A Bic Cristal is no-more personal than a plastic coffee-cup and retains as much sentiment as a tissue-paper retains water. Fountain pens, on the other hand, can literally last for decades…and will certainly be around for a lot longer than any time that you’d be on this earth for.

With that in mind, selecting and buying a fountain pen is a bit like buying a car. It’s a slow, careful and involved process, a lesson in patience, attention to detail and product-knowledge.

What to Know

Before buying a fountain pen, you need to know a few things about yourself, first. Chief among these are:

– How will you use this pen? Is it an everyday writing-instrument? Is it a ceremonial thing, to be brought out at weddings to sign registries, cheques and wills?

– Have you used a fountain pen before? Yes? Then you might know a bit more about what will suit you. No? Then move on to…

– What’s your writing like? Big? Small? Cursive? Curly? Print? The size and style of your handwriting will determine what type of fountain pen is best for you. Unlike ballpoint pens, no two fountain pens are exactly alike, and picking one that fits your handwriting comfortably is an odessy like trying to find the Holy Grail.

– What is your budget? If you’re already used to fountain pens, you might like to spend a bit more to get a really nice one. But if you’re starting out, a cheaper fountain pen that you won’t cry over if you lose it, might be a better option. There seems to be a huge misconception these days that fountain pens are hideously expensive, starting at a million bucks and skyrocketing up from there. This is absolutely NOT true. Fountain pens can be found at any price, it’s just a matter of what you’re willing to pay and the quality you’re expecting.

Picking Your Pen

Having decided that you would seriously like to buy a fountain pen, the next hurdle is to decide on WHAT pen to buy. There are thousands of fountain pens out there which could start at $10, or could start at $10,000. What brand or pen-maker do you want to focus on? What is important to you? Weight? Style? Comfort? Ease-of-Use?

Things that will help you decide what pen is best for you, include…

– Style. Do you want an older pen? A newer one? Something a bit retro and 30s Art Deco, or something that just rolled off the production-line? Something that’s made of metal and all futuristic? Or something that looks like what your grandfather used, for that vintage touch?

– Weight. Fountain pens are made out of LOTS of materials. Steel, silver, gold, celluloid, plastic, casein, ebonite, wood…need I name more? The type of material used to make the body of the pen will affect its weight, and therefore, comfort. If you’re wanting to own a pen which you’ll use for regular writing, you might want to pick one that’s lighter. Instead of wood or metal, pick one made of rubber or plastic.

– Overall Size. Fountain pens can be as thin as a drinking-straw, and as thick as a salami. The overall girth and length of the instrument is important. If you’ve got bigger hands, a larger, chunkier pen like a Montblanc 149 might fit more comfortably. If your hands are smaller, a slimmer number such as a Waterman Phileas might be more comfortable.

Brand Focus

Having decided on the general size and style that you want to go for, picking a good brand now becomes important. There are literally dozens of fountain pen manufacturers out there making pens of all styles and price-ranges. Some of the more well-known pen-makers include Parker, Sheaffer, Waterman, Visconti, Montblanc, Lamy, Rotring, Conklin and OMAS. You should take your time to sift through all the available options. Some pen-manufacturers only make really expensive pens, but others make pens of all price-ranges. If money is no object, look at everything you can find. If money is an object, limit your field to pen-manufacturers that produce pens at a variety of price-ranges.

Keep in mind that fountain pens have been around for over a hundred years. There are lots of defunct pen-manufacturers with perfectly functional vintage and antique pens still floating around the market. Some of these older pen-makers include such notables as Wahl-Eversharp, Mabie-Todd, Onoto and Morrison. And there are also hundreds of discontinued pen-models made by hundreds of well-established companies that are still available for purchase. How about a Parker Duofold from the 1920s? A 1950s Parker ’51’? A Sheaffer Balance from the 1930s? A Waterman Ideal from the 1910s? If you want a more vintage pen, keep an eye out for stuff like that.

Where to Buy?

You’ve figured out the brand, size, style, nib-type and the hundred and one other little tiddly things that you should know about fountain pens before buying one, and now you want to know…where the hell do I find one of these things?

First up, a stationery shop or a news-agent is not your best bet as a hunting-ground. Like it or hate it, fountain pens have drifted into the sort of “Novelty” area of desk accessories in the last thirty or forty years, and most news-agencies and stationery-shops are unlikely to stock fountain pens. If they do, they won’t be the really nice ones that you want, they’ll be the cheap, disposable kind. This might still be useful to you, however, if you’re thinking of getting a simple fountain pen just to give a trial-run before looking into pens more seriously.

The most obvious place to go to is a pen-shop or a large-sized stationery or office-supplies store. Places like Staples or OfficeWorks or any of those big, aircraft-hangar-sized stationery & office-supply shops may have a pretty decent selection of mid-priced and cheap fountain pens from a variety of manufacturers. It’s in places like this that you’re also likely to find the cheaper pen-models made by established manufacturers like Parker, Sheaffer and Waterman.

Pen shops are the top place to go. A good pen shop should be brightly lit with nice, easily-visible display-cases with the pen-brands clearly signposted all over the place. Head in and start browsing. Pen shops are also handy places to buy notebooks, diaries, ink and some general stationery-products such as sealing-wax, calligraphy-sets, envelopes and address-books.

Feel free to speak to the staff at the pen-shop. Any good pen-seller worth his salt, will be knowledgeable about the various brands and models of pens that he sells and will be able to help you make an informed choice on what you want.

Like I said before, buying a fountain pen is much like buying a car; you don’t just go out and buy it sight unseen and hand untouched. A good pen-shop should allow you to pick out a selection of fountain pens and perform what is known as a ‘dip-test’. A dip-test means that the clerk or shopkeeper will give you a notepad and a bottle of ink for you to dip and write with the fountain pens that you’re interested in. This is important as it allows you to see exactly how the pen performs. In some shops, there are even specific ‘sample’ pens placed aside, deliberately for this purpose.

If, for any reason, the shopkeeper or clerk won’t allow you to try a ‘dip-test’…move on to something else. Don’t waste your time arguing, just remember that the guy behind the counter just talked himself out of a potential sale. You wouldn’t buy a car without driving it first, and neither should you buy a fountain pen without first seeing how it writes.

Online Buying

Pen-shops are non-existent! They’re staffed by idiots! The prices send you to the hospital suffering from heart-failure! The local office-supply shop is staffed by clueless teenagers who wouldn’t know the up-side of a pen if you stabbed them in the eye with it! Damn it!…Now what?

Ironically, there are dozens of places online where you can buy fountain pens! The most obvious places to start are on pen-company websites, but there are also the smaller, independent pen-maker websites that you can visit. Some people (called pen-turners) manufacture their own, custom-made pens using a variety of materials and sell them online. If you’re looking for something unique, try there.

I mentioned vintage pens earlier. These pens can be up to a hundred years old. How is it that they still work today? This is made possible by the dedication and skill of the dozen or so expert pen-repairers in the world. Fountain pen repair and restoration is a niche market, but there is a solid community of these folks who accept, repair and re-sell fountain pens. Some of these repairers sell fountain pens via their websites, whether they be vintage models or brand-new pens. Buying from people like this will ensure that you’re dealing with professionals who know their product and that what you’re buying will actually work when you fill it with ink.

Lastly but not least…the electronic flea-market. eBay.

Buying fountain pens on eBay is an experience, to say the least. While you can find some amazing things there, keep in mind a few tricks and traps which can snare you and leave you crying in the corner. First, buy from sellers with a good reputation. Some pen-repairers have eBay accounts where they sell their restored vintage fountain pens. If you want peace of mind, deal with these folks. Some people are pen-collectors who want to sell some of their collection because it’s getting too big. As with any collecting niche, fellow collectors hate being ripped off, so you’re likely to get some very honest answers here to any questions you ask.

Then there are people who are clueless about what they’re selling. This can be a gold-mine, or it can be a minefield. Some sellers genuinely have absolutely no bloody idea what they’re selling…they just want to get rid of it! You can get some nice bargains here, but be sure to check the descriptions and photos for any signs of damage. Be mindful of…

– Cracks.
– Chips.
– Bent, cracked, or otherwise broken nibs.
– Bent filling-levers. This is a sign that someone tried to force the filling-mechanism on a lever-filler. This pen will need to be re-sacced before use.
– Missing parts.
– General quality and condition.
– Operational condition. Does the pen fill and write properly?

Some sellers *know* what they’re selling…and WILL try to rip you off. Best to stay away from folks like this, but if you really want what they’re selling, be mindful of various phrases that might jump out at you. In fact, any person on eBay may use these phrases, and it’s best to know what hidden meaning they contain…

“Fills with water”

That’s nice. But I need a pen, not a teapot. Does it fill with INK? And does it WRITE? Just because a pen fills with water and empties with water is no guarantee that it will work properly. Only ink and a writing-sample will tell you that.

“Rare!”

Seller: I’ve NEVER seen one of these before. Don’t let this fool you. Just because it’s advertised as ‘rare’ doesn’t mean it IS rare. If every pen in the world was ‘rare’, you’d never own one.

“Value $500/$1000/$25000. For you? $50”

The pen might be perfectly legitimate, but don’t be fooled. Unless it’s encrusted with diamonds and gold…no fountain pen is worth that kind of money. The ONLY time there might be exceptions to this rule are with limited edition or particularly old pens (when I mean old, I mean at least 90 years).

“12/14/18kt gold nib”.

Most honest pen-sellers or clueless sellers will mention this fact as a matter of common courtesy and habit. Nothing wrong with that. You want to know what you’re buying, and they’re telling you.

Where it becomes a problem is when an unscrupulous seller tells you that the nib is 14kt gold and demands a ‘Buy it Now’ price of $2,500. Gold is expensive, yes…but it’s not THAT expensive. Truth be told, the amount of gold in a nib is worth $15…MAX. Don’t be dragged in by this. They want you to think that this is REALLY SPECIAL…it isn’t. MILLIONS of fountain pens have 14kt gold nibs and it has absolutely NO affect on the value.

“Never used”

Perhaps not by you, the seller, but if it’s a second-hand pen, take for granted that it has been used and that it *may* need some professional attention.

“Genuine/Authentic”

Be careful of sellers who are trying to rip you off by selling FAKE fountain pens. Montblanc is HIGHLY prone to this. Keep a few things in mind…

– Montblanc nibs are 14 or 18kt gold. They do NOT say “IPG” (“Iridium Point, Germany”) on the nibs and they are NOT made of steel. The nibs are 14 or 18kt SOLID GOLD, not gold-plate-on-steel.

– The Montblanc Star should be PERFECTLY centered on the top of the cap. If it isn’t…fake.

– The pen (If fairly new) should have a serial-number electronically engraved onto the clip-band. If not…fake.

– The pretty swirling patterns found on Montblanc nibs is mechanically pressed, not engraved by hand. If the patterning is off-center or rough in appearance or in any way suspicious…fake.

– The word ‘PIX’ should be stamped on the UNDERSIDE of the pocket-clip. If you don’t see a photo proving this fact…advance cautiously. This could be an older pen without this authenticity safeguard on it, or it could be a fake.

– Montblanc pens may have ‘Germany’, ‘Made in Germany’, ‘W. Germany’ or ‘Made in W. Germany’ on them. Older pens up to the early 1990s will have the latter two markings, more modern pens will have the former two. ‘W. Germany’ is WEST GERMANY, where Montblanc was located, before the reunification of Germany after the collapse of the USSR. Some fraudsters will try and trick you and type in stuff like “Made in Gormany” on their boxes and hope you won’t notice (I have seen this, you’d be amazed how stupid people will think you are).

“Pen functions/writes well / Working Condition”

This will generally mean that once you’ve got the pen with you, it should work right away. If doubtful, ask the seller to post a writing-sample or ask him/her how well the pen fills and empties with ink.

Pen-Sellers Jargon

As fountain pens are rather something of a niche market, some online pen-sellers may use specific jargon (slang) that you may not be familiar with. Here’s a few of the more common terms.

“BCHR/BHR”. Black (Chased) Hard Rubber. A pen made of Hard Rubber (ebonite) which may or may not have ‘chasing’ on it. Chasing is heat-pressed patterning on the cap and barrel of the pen. Pens of this kind were manufactured from the very earliest days of fountain pens up to the mid 1920s. SOME modern pen-makers (such as Conklin and Bexley) still make pens this way.

Similarily, there is also “RCHR/RHR”, which is Red (Chased) Hard Rubber. Same concept, different colour.

Flex/Flexy/Flexible/Semi-flex/Wet Noodle. Some pen-sellers will use these terms to describe nibs. Flexible-nibbed pens were very popular from the 1880s to the 1930s. It means that the nib will flex (bend) according to the amount of pressure placed on the writing-point. This produces lines of varying thicknesses. Thin (light pressure) or broad (heavy pressure). If you do calligraphy, you might like a pen like this. Flex-nibbed pens are NOT for beginners as they can take a bit of getting used to.

NOS/NIB. New Old Stock and New In Box. This means pens which were once new, but which were never sold commercially and which should still have all their papers and boxes with them. If you’re after particularly nice pens, keep an eye out for those acronyms.

Wet/Dry. A seller’s description might say that a pen writes ‘wet’ or ‘dry’. This relates to amount of ink that the nib lays on the paper. A ‘wet’ pen lays down a liberal amount of ink that may take some time to dry. A ‘dry’ pen lays down ink sparingly, which will mean it dries quicker. If you’re a left-handed writer, a dry-writing pen might be best.

Sprung. A seller selling an imperfect pen might use this term to describe the nib or the clip. A nib or a clip that has been ‘sprung’ is one that has been bent out of its original position. This IS repairable, so don’t freak out!

Sac/Bladder. From about 1900 until the 1950s, the majority of fountain pens filled with rubber or plastic ink-sacs (also called bladders). Over time, these can wear out, ossify (harden up) or simply just lose their elasticity due to overuse. Sacs in this condition must be replaced, fortunately, it’s a relatively simple job that any pen-restorer will be able to do.

Buying Pens at Flea-Markets

No pen shops, prices too high, unhelpful staff, no places nearby to buy pens, can’t buy pens online because you promised your wife/husband/parents that you wouldn’t or you can’t because your cards are maxed out. What now?

If you have one nearby, visit a flea-market, also called a trash-and-treasure market, a bric-a-brac market or a car-boot sale. The folks at places like this often just have a whole heap of junk at home that they want to get rid of or have collections of things that they want to trim down. You can find some amazing bargains here, if you know where, when and how to look. Here are some guidelines about searching for pens at flea-markets.

Turn up EARLY

‘The Early Bird Gets the Worm’ might be a tired and worn-out saying, but in this case…important. Collectors of ANYTHING, from stamps to records to CDs to…fountain pens…swarm around flea-markets like bees around honey. If you expect to find anything of quality and value at the flea-market, you MUST arrive early. If the market opens at six o’clock in the morning and you stroll in casually at nine…go and have breakfast, because you’ve missed the boat. Hardcore treasure-hunters will arrive before the sun’s up to scour through everything like a Victorian mudlark on the River Thames at low tide. Arriving early at the market means that you get FIRST PICK of any and all pens that are to be found there that day.

Tool Up

Bring along a few tools to help make your pen-hunting easier. Essentials include cash in small denominations, a jeweller’s loupe or a magnifying-glass, a small notepad and a bottle of fountain pen ink. If you’re arriving early and it’s dark…bring a decent flashlight/torch along with you as well.

The Hunt is On…

It’s six in the morning, it’s cold enough to freeze the nads off a brass monkey, you’ve got a hundred bucks in $5 notes, a magnifying glass strong enough to read microfilm and a flashlight powerful enough to fry eggs on. What now?

Really…it’s up to luck. First thing’s first. Don’t expect to find anything. Let’s face it…chances are, you may go there every weekend for a month and find nothing, so never get too excited. Secondly, know where and how to look.

Don’t waste your time with stalls or tables at the market which have absolutely nothing to do with pens. Unless of course, you’re looking for a new copy of Dante’s “Inferno” as well as a nice pen. Move quickly from stall to stall and scan everything carefully. Keep an eye out for display-cases, big boxes of crap and tables covered with all kinds of nicknacks. Pens are TINY things and they can hide almost ANYWHERE.

Time must be taken to find them. Knowing the likely places to search is important. Due to their size, people selling pens are likely to put them in glass-lidded display-cases so that they’re easily visible, but they may be buried or obscured by those cheap Mickey Mouse wristwatches, that 1912 Waltham pocket-watch or the collection of raunchy, 1890s postcards. Once you’ve found those display-cases, boxes, stands or cabinets, take your time to examine them thoroughly. The pen of your dreams might be hiding underneath the stack of Playboy magazines next to the shoebox of junk thoughtfully laid on the seller’s table.

Having found a stall or table that sells pens, remain calm and self-controlled. A hint of excitement and the price is likely to shoot up, or it’ll never come down when you want to try and haggle. It’s always best to ask the seller if you can handle his offerings, as some people can be a mite nervous of shoppers snatching stuff and running off with it or breaking it. Once you have the pen in your hands, check for a few things…

– Brand. Is the pen-name one that you recognise? If you want a quality pen with a good reputation, pick one with a reputable brand such as Parker, Waterman, Sheaffer, Conway-Stewart, Morrison, Wahl, Wahl-Eversharp, Conklin, etc. These were the “First Tier” pens (pens of best quality). Below them were brands such as “Mentmore” which produced mid-ranged “second tier’ pens and then there are ‘third tier’ pens such as Platignum and Summit.

– Quality. Check for damage. Loose cap-rings, bent or loose clips, missing clips, cracks, dings, bite-marks, chips, abrasions, fading, banana-ing (where the pen is bent like a banana), oliving (on BCHR pens where the sun has leeched the black from the pen, leaving it olive green) and any other imperfections.

– Nib. Check the nib for cracks. Make sure the tines of the nib are aligned and that the tipping is whole and intact. A bent nib IS REPAIRABLE, so don’t throw it out if it is. An untipped nib can be re-tipped. A pen with a tine missing *may* be salvagable if the right nib can be found for it (but here, you’re really skating on thin ice). Cheaper pens will have simple, steel nibs. Steer clear of these. There’s a reason nibs were made of gold…they don’t rust. Nibs made of stainless steel, however, are safe to buy.

– Check the filling-system. Chances are, pens that you find at flea-markets are the ones that have been in grandpa’s desk for fifty years. And grandpa died fifty years ago, so nobody’s touched them since then. In most cases, the filling-system will need to be serviced. If the rest of the pen is in good condition, buy it and then send it to a pen-restorer to fix the filler-system.

You’ve found a nice pen. It’s what you want, it’s in good condition (or it may need a bit of fixing) and you want to buy it. You attract the stallholder’s attention and indicate the pen.

Two things can happen here.

One: The price is reasonable, you knock it down a bit, or you pay the full amount, and walk off with the pen. Everybody wins.

Two: The price is massive, by this I mean $150 for a non-functioning 1920s Waterman. There are two main reasons for this high price. AGE and…GOLD.

People frequently believe that because something is really old, it’s automatically incredibly valuable. It isn’t. If it was literally a one-of-a-kind and a hundred years old…then yes. But if it’s one in a million and it’s a hundred years old…no. Rarity makes value, not age.

Similiarly, if the pen-nib is gold, this may prompt the seller to jack up the price. Again, this is unjustified, as I explained earlier, the gold counts for a miniscule amount of the pen’s already rather diminutive value. IF the pen was WORKING and in MINT condition (or at least very good condition), then a high price might be understandable, but if not, then as a rule, don’t bother paying more than $50 for any pen you find at a flea-market. It’s not worth it, otherwise.

Well, that just about wraps it up. Hopefully this guide will help you in finding and selecting your very first fountain pen.

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Bridging the Thames: The History of the Tower Bridge

 

The United Kingdom has a lot of famous things. Queen Lizzie, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Top Gear, Mock the Week…famous authors, terrible weather, national cuisine of a questionable quality, colourful slang and one of the most powerful naval forces in the world.

And then there’s this thing:

Tower Bridge, which crosses the River Thames in London, the British capital, is one of the most famous structures in the world. It’s recognised and admired all over the globe as a national, aesthetic and engineering masterpiece of the Victorian age. Despite what we might think, Tower Bridge is nowhere near as old as some of us would like to think. In fact, Tower Bridge opened on the 30th of June, 1894. Little more than a hundred years ago. Today, we could hardly imagine London without it.

Before the Bridge

London has been around for centuries, ever since a town called “Londinium” was founded by the Romans in 47AD. For a considerable time, there were very few crossings of the River Thames and for centuries, London Bridge (originally built by the Romans) was the only bridge crossing the Thames within the boundaries of London.

Fast forward a few centuries, and you’ll find more and more bridges added to London to cross the river it’s built around. By the time the Tower Bridge was dreamt up in the 1890s, the River Thames had…

Regent Bridge (Vauxhall Bridge) (1816)
Westminster Bridge (1862)
Waterloo Bridge (1817)
London Bridge (1831)

Increasing commercial and industrial development in the East End of London during the second half of the 19th century (brought on by the Industrial Revolution) meant that another bridge needed to be built across the Thames to ease the congestion on London Bridge and the nearby Tower Subway tunnel (which, despite the name, was really a pedestrian tunnel and wasn’t actually used by trains).

By the 1870s, congestion on London Bridge was chronic and a committee was set up in 1876 to decide on a new crossing-point on the River Thames, down-river from London Bridge. A competition was held, inviting engineers and designers to send in their ideas for a new bridge to cross the Thames. One of the big challenges in designing the new bridge, however, was the fact that in building this bridge, it would be blocking river-access to the Port of London. Any bridge built down-river from London Bridge would have to be high enough to allow ships and boats to pass safely beneath it, not an easy thing to accomplish when the Thames is a tidal river with tides that rise and fall several feet at a time.


London Bridge, Ca. 1910. Although this painting was completed sixteen years after Tower Bridge was opened, it shows quite clearly how congested London Bridge had become, and the absolute necessity for a new river-crossing

Over fifty designs were sent to the bridge committee for consideration, but a potential winner was not decided upon until, in October of 1884, two men, Horace Jones and John W. Barry, came up with their idea for a bascule-suspension bridge. The Committee were quick to see the advantages of Jones and Barry’s design and approved it for construction.

The suspension-bridge is able to span great distances, such as the River Thames, easily. The double-bascule segment of the bridge in the middle meant that ships could easily pass through the structure to head upriver. The ‘bascules’ were the two leaves of the central drawbridge, which could be raised (to let ships pass through the bridge) and lowered (to allow vehicular and foot-traffic to cross the river) by mechanical means.

Building the Bridge

Construction of Tower Bridge started in 1886. For the number-crunchers reading this, here’s a few statistics:

Number of Contractors: 5.
Number of Construction-Workers: 432.
Construction-time: 8 Years.
Amount of Concrete to make bridge piers: 70,000 tons.
Amount of Steel for the bridge’s framework: 11,000 tons.
Cost of Construction: 1,184,000 pounds sterling (approximately 100,000,000 pounds sterling today).


Tower Bridge under construction

As the bridge was constructed, tons of granite and Portland Stone was brought in to build the bridge’s distinctive towers. At the top of the bridge, linking the two towers, is a pair of walkways. These were included in the bridge’s design so that pedestrians could continue to cross the bridge even when the drawbridges were opened and crossing the bridge via its main span was impossible. The walkways were closed soon after, though, when they became a favourite haunt of prostitutes and thieves.

The bridge was completed in 1894 and was originally painted chocolate brown. It’s current red, white and blue colour-scheme was added in 1977 in commemoration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee (which marks the 25th year of the Queen’s reign).

Opening the Bridge

The bridge was formally opened on the 30th of June, 1894, by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII later in life).


A painting capturing the atmosphere of the formal opening of Tower Bridge in 1894. Note all the ships dressed with their signal-flags for the occasion

Tower Bridge became popular in a hurry. Not just because it looked really neat, but also because it was toll-free (a surefire hit with any bridge-crosser). The nearby Tower Subway tunnel charged a toll for its use while the bridge did not. Because of this, intelligent Victorians soon abandoned the Tower Subway tunnel and started crossing the bridge regularly instead. The bridge was so popular that by 1898, the Tower Subway tunnel closed due to a lack of revenue!

If you’re wondering why the two structures are called ‘Tower Subway’ and ‘Tower Bridge’, it might do well to examine a map of London. The tunnel and the bridge which put the tunnel out of business were named ‘Tower’ due to their close proximity to the Tower of London, the ancient fortress and prison on the north bank of the River Thames.

Raising and Lowering the Bridge

One of the most famous things about Tower Bridge is not its shape or its size or the fact that it was named after some spooky old castle next door…it’s the fact that it moves! The raising and lowering the drawbridges that make up Tower Bridge’s central span, is the most recognisable feature of this marvel of engineering. So how is it done?

From its opening in 1894 until 1975!…Tower Bridge was opened using steam-powered hydraulic engines. There were two engines, one to raise each side of the bridge. At the press of a button, the two halves of the bridge could be raised up to their full angle of 86 degrees each. This whole process took about one minute. Speed was important on the River Thames, when ships needed quick access to the London Docks further up-river.

During the Second World War, a third steam-engine was made. Its purpose was to act as a standby in case Tower Bridge was hit by a German bomb during the Blitz and one of the operational engines was put out of commission by the damage. Fortunately, this never happened and the third engine (along with the other two original steam engines) is now a museum-piece.

In 1976, the bridge’s original steam-powered engines were removed and replaced with more modern electrical ones. They still raise and lower the bridge using hydraulic power, but don’t require as much maintenance.