Grantville Gazette, Volume 71

by Bjorn Hasseler

  Nighttime Light Signals

  A ship might need to communicate with a friendly ship or with the shore. Daytime signaling with mirrors or smoke is ancient, but those aren't useful at night. Until radio communications become readily available, light signals may be useful. Bear in mind that light communications may be more difficult to intercept than radio ones once the enemy has radio receivers.

  It is worth noting that it takes "5 to 20 times as much light to distinguish the color of a light than to simply distinguish" its presence or absence (Lewis 34).

  Pyrotechnics may be handheld (like sparklers), attached to a scaffolding, or fired into the air by rockets, mortars, or signal pistols. The last of these was found to be particularly convenient. Pyrotechnics provide an intense but brief illumination.

  The first firework colors were ambers and off-whites (Plimpton 161), and it is possible that those were the only ones available in 1630s Europe Babington's Pyrotechnia (1635), chapter VIII claims to be able to make "stars" of "a blue color with red", but the ingredient list is suspect: saltpeter, sulfur vive, aqua vitae, and oyl of spike. More plausibly, Wright's Notes on Gunnery (1563) and Appier-Hanzelet's La Pyrotechnie (1630) proposed adding verdigris (copper sulfate) to obtain green, but this green was deemed unsatisfactory by later pyrotechnicians (Werrett 160-2, 230, 281 n. 117).

  My expectation is that shortly after the Ring of Fire there would have been research in Grantville as to how to attain red and blue (for the Fourth of July, of course!).

  For red, one may use calcium, from the calcium carbonate of chalk, eggshells, or seashells. But this would be rather orange-y, and would be replaced as soon as possible with strontium salts. Strontianite was available from lead mines in Braunsdorf near Freiburg in Saxony, and from the marls of Munster and Hamm in Westphalia (EB11/Strontianite).

  Blue could come from copper salts, several of which had long been known to the alchemists. The "resin of copper," copper chloride, was first synthesized in the old timeline by Robert Boyle in 1664; it was easy enough to make from copper and corrosive sublimate, as Boyle had demonstrated, or by other methods.

  By the mid-nineteenth century, the preferred green was from barium salt. Barite (barium sulfate) can be found in mines in the Black Forest and in Saxony and is reasonably likely to show up in a "canned" mineral collection sold to the high school for use in geology classes.

  All of these colorants are disclosed in EB11/Fireworks.

  Pyrotechnic signal codes. A two-color pyrotechnic signal system was conceived by Benjamin Coston in the 1840s, and a three-color one was developed and patented in his name (USP 23,356, 1859) by his widow, Martha Coston. According to this patent, the numerals 0 to 9 were represented by red, white and blue flares, either individually (for "1" to "3") or a sequence of two (e.g., white then red for "4") or three different colors (white then red then blue for "9"). The signals were fired from a signal gun. There were three different sizes of paper boxes that could be set off (either by hand percussion or by the percussion cap of a signal pistol), the larger sizes contained two or three different pyrotechnic compositions that would be burnt through in succession, corresponding to the key for that numeral. This was intended of course for use with a signal code book in which words or phrases were represented by numerical codes.

  It was not possible to achieve a bright blue, and in American Civil War implementation, green was used instead. Short white, red and green represented 1-3; long red, 4; long green, 5; white-red, 6 green-red, 7; white-green, 8; red-green, 9; and green-red-white, 0. There was also a "P" (white-red-white) meaning "preparing to send a signal" and an "A" (red-white-red) to acknowledge the preparatory signal.

  In 1878, the US Navy began using the Very code, which used a pattern of four bursts, each of which could be red or green, to encode numbers. Despite being a binary code, it did not correspond to Morse code in its original implementation (Wrixon 430).

  Signal lamps. In 1617, Raleigh used a fire signal aboard his flagship to send commands to the other ships in his squadron. Given the general availability of lanterns on ships, I would imagine that he was not the only naval commander to do this (Wrixon 417).

  A kerosene lamp with a focusing lens (Begbie lamp) came into use in the 1880s and was used until World War I (QSCVC). Subsequently, signal lamps were of the handheld incandescent (Aldis) or pedestal-mounted carbon arc type. Of course, signal lamps would require less power than searchlights of the same effective range.

  In the NTL Baltic War, all of Simpson ships had signal searchlights converted from mining truck headlamps (Flint, 1634: The Baltic War, chapter 37).

  It may be of interest to note that over the horizon communication is possible if there are cloud bases that can be illuminated.

  Also, passing into the weird tech department, it is possible to transmit speech rather than Morse code at short ranges, with the appropriate receiver. Photophony was demonstrated by Simon in 1901 over a 0.72 mile distance using a Schuckert 90-centimeter searchlight as the transmitter and a 30-inch parabolic mirror with a selenium cell at the focal point as the receiver. The major limitation on photophony range was the combination of the divergence of the beam and the intensity of the light source. With a three degree divergence, a 30-centimeter beam would spread out to 150 meters at a range of three kilometers, and the intensity is reduced to four-millionths of the source (Burns 202-4).

  Selenium is available according to canon; in October 1633, a radio with a selenium photo-resistor amplifier is being installed in a village, see Huff and Goodlett, "Credit Where It's Due" (Grantville Gazette 36). Selenium is usually obtained as a byproduct of refining copper, being associated with copper sulfide ores (chalcocite, chalcopyrite). There is reference to electrorefining in Carroll and Wild, “The Undergraduate, Episode Two” (Grantville Gazette 50).

  Signal lamp codes. In 1616, Franz Kessler proposed a binary code for use with a shuttered lantern for encoding letters of the alphabet and thereby sending messages (Ibid.). In 1862-3, Colomb used the combination of limelight and a shutter to send signals by Morse code (Sterling 209).

  An alternative approach, used by Preble in 1803, relied on the spatial arrangement of three or four lanterns to encode numbers and a few special signals (Wrixon 419).

  Colored light systems were proposed, too. In the 1850s, Ward proposed signals using combinations of red, white and no light (422). The Berg system used red, white, and green.

  In 1891, the US Navy adopted the Ardois system. It used a cluster of four double lamps read top to bottom or sender's right to left; within the pair, the upper light was red (Morse dot) and the lower light white (Morse dash); the light sources were 32-watt incandescents (424).

  Combination Signals. The Royal Navy's Night Signal Book for the Ships of War (1799) used a combination of lanterns, rockets, and "blank" cannon fires to encode numbers, which in turn had meanings specified in the code book (Wrixon 418).

  Sometimes the Coston flares were combined with rockets. For example, the force blockading Charleston in 1864 used a rocket followed by Coston No. 0 for "blockade runner going out."

  Combinations signals were made easier to interpret by Greene, who advocated timing the intervals between signals, making it easier to figure out when one signal sequence ended and the next began.

  Conclusion

  Warships with sufficient electric power are likely to get equipped with a carbon arc searchlight. While it should be possible to prepare a silvered glass mirror by the Liebig process, my guess is that the first NTL searchlight mirrors will not be one-piece mirrors, but rather faceted mirrors in order to improve durability.

  I would also expect them to use star shells, Until magnesium is available, these will probably use down-time "white star" compositions. However, I expect that some inventor will figure out how to add the parachute.

  Fiat lux!

  ****

  Notes from The Buffer Zone:

  The Analog Couch

  by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  First, befor
e I tell you this story, I must tell you that I’m a member in good standing of the Analog Mafia. When I earned my Analog Mafia button—by selling to Analog magazine—I became one proud, validated science fiction writer. You see, I’d been told at Clarion by other writers that my science was bad, and I would never ever be a science fiction writer.

  Mind you, the writers who told me that my science was bad were post-docs in various scientific fields and one was already working at NASA. (My husband later said to me, You were trying to compete scientifically with them? Really? Point taken.) Still, the words stung so badly that no sf sale ever made me feel better. Not until I sold to Analog when it was edited by Dr. Stanley Schmidt, who once rejected a story of mine because “your (made-up) planet’s name does not fit into the nomenclature.”

  Okay! Got it!

  Shortly after Clarion, I moved to Eugene, Oregon, where I often attended the monthly story critique sessions at the home of Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. The critiques were unfettered there; if someone had the floor, they could have it as long as they wanted it. (And if you’ve never heard a beginning writer expound about commas for twenty minutes, well, then, you probably have no idea why all of the workshops Dean Wesley Smith and I ran had a time limit on critiques.)

  The long critiques led to a lot of note-passing among the bored writers. And a bunch of us noticed that writers tended to congregate in groups. Fantasy writers huddled next to each other for warmth, newbie writers sat as close to Damon or Kate as possible, and hard sf writers sat on the hardest sofa in the world.

  Those hard sf writers wouldn’t expound about commas. Instead, they’d go off on what—to my ears—was always some ridiculous tangent. The story might be a slam-bang action adventure space opera, with Our Hero saving the universe, but one of the hard sf writers on the hard couch would say something like, “There’s no way that a spaceship of that size would be able to travel at that speed for that distance without blowing out its engines.”

  Never mind that the engines hadn’t been described. Never mind that the fuel had never been named. Never mind that Our Hero would never have wandered into engineering unaccompanied.

  Nope. The hard sf writers on the hard couch could not be swayed by such details. To them, it ruined the story.

  We note-passing writers sitting on even harder chairs (and having endured the comma critique from hell) needed a shorthand way to complain about the hard sf writers. So we called them “The Analog Couch.”

  We did not mean it nicely. We meant that these writers could be distracted by the wrong detail and go off on some scientific tangent that really had nothing to do with the story.

  There’s a great example of this from an early episode of The Big Bang Theory, in which Sheldon and Leonard discuss whether or not Superman could catch Lois Lane when she’s falling from space. Wouldn’t the force of her fall break her in half when she hit his arms? And how could the writers make that fall fit into the law of physics?

  If you saw that episode and shouted at the television, “Superman can fly! Lois can’t recognize a man without his glasses! You’re asking for real world logic from a comic book!” then you do not belong on the Analog Couch. If you said, “Exactly,” make the hard sf writers scoot over, because your ass belongs on that hard cushion too.

  Among our writing friends and in our writing network, the shorthand stuck. Now we use “The Analog Couch” to describe any critique that focuses on a silly scientific detail that makes no sense at all in context of the story.

  I thought I was immune from the Analog Couch curse, but I find as I consume more and more science fiction in all its various forms, I sit on the Analog Couch a lot. Heck, I sometimes sleep there. And (blushing) I probably live there.

  (Beware! Spoilers Ahead)

  For example, the movie Passengers.

  A man on essentially a cruise ship heading to a new world wakes out of cold sleep to find himself alone with no help at all. The movie deals with his dilemma, both physical and personal. It also presents some icky awful ethical conundrums in a way that only sf can do.

  So what bugged me about the film?

  If he was such a great engineer/tinkerer, why didn’t he 1) rig the food system so he could get a higher class of food? 2) build more androids from the specs he found in the back room, androids like the interactive bartender android on the ship? Oh, and 3) why was there only one interactive human-looking android on a ship that large? Why not dozens, or hundreds of them, especially considering the cost of putting the crew in cold sleep?

  I could go on and did at length to my husband. He finally asked me to quit.

  Or take the now-canceled TV show Time After Time. Critics complained about a lot of things. Viewers never warmed to the show. Me, I wanted to know this: how did Jack The Ripper get into the elaborate time machine in H.G. Wells’ basement in London and end up in 2017 New York? It was a time machine, not a machine that moved through space.

  Arrrrgh!

  I try not to have these Analog Couch moments. I watch the Marvel-based movies, the DC-based TV shows, any sf that shows up on film, and I grit my teeth past the inconsistencies by reminding myself that it’s a comic book or hey, Kris, you accept time travel, so why can’t you accept that the machine crossed the ocean as well?

  The reminder usually works. Okay, it sometimes works. Okay, it works enough that I can usually enjoy whatever I’m doing.

  But believe me, I’m aware that I have crawled over to that extra hard couch, and I actually like sitting there much of the time.

  Where do I stand on the Lois Lane/Superman physics conundrum? Well, you see, if Lois is dropped from space, and if she didn’t burn up during re-entry, she’d still be dead from lack of oxygen when she hit Superman’s arms, so who cares if she breaks in half?

  Besides, the woman is dumb as feathers. Here —watch me take off my glasses to prove it.

  Being a member of the Analog Mafia has nothing to do with the Analog Couch. I had joined that couch long before I earned my stripes as an Analog writer. I think nitpicking about the weirdest details is part of being an sf fan.

  At least, that’s what I tell myself as I start watching yet another sf TV show, hoping for perfection. As I write yet another sf story, hoping for perfection. Or rather, hoping that I closed the curtains tight enough over the process, that no one on the nearby Analog Couch thinks of peering behind them.

  Because you can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time, as some wag once said. And you certainly can’t deal with all those Analog Couch nits, no matter how good your story is.

  You just have to hope that you’ve written it well enough that no one has time to think of any objections—until hours after they finished the story.

  And maybe, not even then.

  ****

  This Issue’s Cover – 71

  Joy Ward's toe-tapping tale of downtime youths forming an uptime style rock band inspires this issue's cover. As a lifelong fan of rock and roll it's great to see the music spread through the Europe of the new timeline, as it should! Maybe next time Barbie and the MOB will take requests, so how about playing me some Who? I also love the art of 'psychedelic' rock concert posters, so it was really fun to try my hand at one. Rock on!

  The Great Chiefs' Lodge, Mesa Top

  Ni-T'o stood before those gathered around the central fire pit in the cavernous Great Chiefs' Lodge. The various sub-chieftains, elders, and wise-persons from the many so-called 'Pre-Mounds' tribes that made up the recently formed 'Mesa People' were all there. In addition were their rather surprising descendants by a thousand or so odd years, the 'Mound Builders,' represented by the esteemed Raven Priestess and her captains, allies who had become much more. The Raven Priestess had married one of the Mesa's Great Chiefs, Nate, and they intended to stay and build her a temple on the mesa, effectively joining the Mesa People as so many other of the scattered, time-lost tribes had done. In addition to himself and his cousin T'cumu, two of the Mesa's four great chiefs came from those enigmatic peoples
of an even farther future, a time in which the City of the Pyramids was long forgotten. Nate and Gonzalo, despite their exotic origins, were very much one of them now, brothers with a bond of love and friendship that remained firm through the most difficult of travails. Ni-T'o smiled; from all this diversity came strength, strength they would need to survive the trials to come. For now, they faced a foe far more deadly than any of the terrible monsters that roamed these lands: Other people.

  The survivors of the ill-fated party from the city they had rescued from a deadly attack by 'air demons' were included in their circle, faces drawn and exhausted from their ordeal. Five of their number had been lost, and their pain was deep. Their beloved leader, The Raven Priestess, sat among them, giving them what comfort she could. The great chiefs of the Mesa People would have liked to have given them more time to recover, but the travelers had brought ill news, and they had to learn all they could right away.

  As was so often the case, serene, perceptive Ni-T'o had been elected by his brother chiefs to lead the meeting. It was time to begin, so he raised his arms, stretched out wide in greeting.

  "Friends from the City of the Pyramids, know that we all grieve with you. We are sorry to call you here now, but we must know all that you can tell us of the attack on Stone Wall Village."

  The group nodded in unison, then their elected spokesperson stood, giving a polite bow to all gathered.

  "I am Hakáyu' U'ush (White Owl), a senior acolyte of the glorious Raven Priestess. We were coming to the Mesa to aid in the construction of Her temple here. We arrived at Stone Wall Village expecting to rest and acquire guides across the Drained Sea, but instead we found the village under siege! And so, we took our chances and fled, making our own way to you."