Grantville Gazette, Volume I

by Eric Flint

  References

  The Dutch Republic, Jonathan Israel. Oxford University press. 1995.

  Introduction to Bacteria: for students of biology, biotechnology & medicine, Paul Singleton. Chichester; New York : Wiley, 1992. 2nd ed.

  When Plague Strikes : the Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS, James Cross Giblin, New York : HarperCollins, 1995.

  The Speckled Monster: a historical tale of battling smallpox, Jennifer Lee Carrell. New York : Dutton, 2003.

  Vaccines: What You Should Know, Paul A. Offit and Louis M. Bell. New York : Chichester : Wiley, 2003 .3rd ed.

  Health, Disease and Society in Europe, 1500-1800; A source book, Peter Elmer and Ole Peter Grell eds. Manchester University Press, 2004.

  The Conquest of Smallpox, Peter Razzell. Caliban books 1st ed. 1977. 2nd ed. 2003

  Online Resources

  http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/westn/people.html , life of the people in the early modern era

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

  http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/291/5512/2323

  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=47385 , UK vaccination schedule

  http://www.dur.ac.uk/anthropology.journal/vol13/iss1/casiday/casiday.html , http://www.cdc.gov/NIP/vacsafe/research/lancet.htm

  http://www.geocities.com/issues_in_immunization/fearmongers/opposition_to_immunization.htm vaccine scares in the 20th century.

  http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n13/penn01_.html , fraud and media in causing disruptions in vaccine coverage

  ALL ROADS LEAD. . . .

  By Iver P. Cooper

  A seventeenth-century visitor might well think that all roads lead to Grantville, not Rome, because down-time roads pale by comparison. "Captain Gars," riding on Route 250, noted its "perfect flatness," and considered it to be "the finest road he had ever seen in his life." (1632, Chap. 57). Rebecca Abrabanel likewise was amazed by the "incredible perfection" of the first up-time road she saw (1632, Chap. 5).

  Those roads give Grantville a tremendous strategic military advantage, a force multiplier. "Moses and Samuel [Abrabanel] soon realized that the striking power of the Americans, dependent as it was on their dazzling motor vehicles, was somewhat limited in range. But anywhere within reach of the rapidly expanding network of roads surrounding Grantville, they had little doubt that the Americans could shatter any but Europe's largest armies."

  Highways are also important economically. Adam Smith wrote: "Good roads . . . by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of the country upon a level with those in the neighborhood of a town. They are upon that account the greatest of all improvements." (EB).

  It should be noted that in the early seventeenth century, long-distance overland travel is mostly by packhorse or packmule, not by wagon, because of the poor quality of the highways.

  Not everyone will be in favor of improving roads. Innkeepers may fear that travelers will pass their hotel by and go on to the next town. Landowners in some parts of Europe have the right to collect whatever falls from a wagon onto the road, and therefore are perfectly happy to see them overturn. (Forbes, 524) They may also not like to see the central authority exercised more vigorously in their locale, thanks to the improved access.

  What roads exist may deteriorate as a result of weather conditions, heavy traffic, and neighbors who figure that it is easier to mine stone from the road than from a distant outcrop. And if the road nonetheless attracts business, then that will in turn attract highwaymen to prey upon travelers.

  Up-Time Resources

  Grantville is based on the town of Mannington, West Virginia. That is one of four states in which there is no county or township ownership of highways. Hence, the West Virginia Department of Transportation is responsible for the maintenance of over 91% of the public roads in the state. ("West Virginia Highways") The District 4 headquarters is in Clarksburg, and there is a "superintendent" for Marion County. The history section of the City of Mannington website notes that "a WV Department of Transportation garage is located in Mannington which assures that our highways are the first to be taken care of during bad weather." For what is in that garage, see the "Road Construction Equipment" section.

  However, the city of Mannington also has a Street/Water Superintendent, and presumably a street crew, responsible for the public roads not under state control.

  The Grid indicates that Grantville has a "Streets and Roads Department," with eleven up-time employees. It is possible that most of these were originally employees of the WVDOT garage, but were quickly incorporated into the municipal government shortly after the RoF.

  Of the "S&R" up-timers, two are listed as "heavy equipment operators," and another two as trainees. Then we have a dump truck driver, a maintenance scheduler, an equipment maintenance manager, a retired road maintenance man, a street foreman, and a record keeper (and an eleventh employee whose position is not stated).

  Another six up-timers are listed as former employees of the state highway department.

  * * *

  The West Virginia Division of Highways classifies state roads by surface type as follows: (A) primitive, (B) unimproved, (C) graded and drained, (D) soil surfaced, (E) gravel or stone, (F) bituminous surface treated, (G) mixed bituminous, (H) bituminous penetration, (I) asphaltic concrete, (J) concrete and (K) brick (see Roadbuilding Addendum, www.1632.org, Appendix 1 for definitions). I have identified types A, B, C, D, and E, as well as paved roads representing one or more of types F–H, in the vicinity of Mannington, West Virginia (list of roads in Appendix 2). These roads presumably have Grantville equivalents.

  According to the map in the 1632 RPG Sourcebook, twenty-one roads were cut by the Ring of Fire. Some of these will, coincidentally, be readily linkable to the surrounding German road network. Others will lead into the middle of nowhere. The latter roads may nonetheless serve a useful purpose; modern pavement structure can be studied there.

  If these "orphan" roads don't include all of the important road types, then some judicious trench-digging (and subsequent repair) may be helpful for teaching roadbuilding and repair techniques to down-time apprentices.

  Canon only identifies one up-time highway as being active in post-RoF Grantville. Route 250 runs by the high school, and in its vicinity parallels Buffalo Creek. It is described as a "well-built two lane highway," surfaced with asphalt, on which it is possible to drive up to fifty miles an hour.(1632, Chap. 2).

  Named Grantville streets in Canon include Main (Goodlett, "The Merino Problem," 1634: The Ram Rebellion), Turnbull (Mackey, "The Essen Steel Chronicles, Part 1: Crucibellus," Grantville Gazette, Volume 7), Clarksburg (home of the Inn of the Maddened Queen)(Id.), and High Street (government offices)(DeMarce, "In the Night, All Hats Are Grey," 1634: The Ram Rebellion).

  Several down-time roads have been given "official status." According to canon, that means that they are "invariably widened and properly graded. Graveled too, more often than not." "Route 26" is a north-south road passing just west of Eisenach. Two miles to the north of the town, it is crossed by "Route 4" (1632 chap. 52). We also know that the road from Grantville to the (fictional) Imperial City of Badenburg has been improved. (Huff, "God's Gifts," Grantville Gazette, Volume 2). As of Eddie's trip, "the main road to Magdeburg was slated for improvement as an urgent priority," but had yet to undergo its makeover. (Weber, "In the Navy," Ring of Fire).

  Brother Johann (Wood Hughes, "Hell Fighters," Grantville Gazette, Volume 3) crossed the Alps, and eventually took a road "down the Elbe River Valley towards where the Salle River joins its flow. There, he saw a road construction machine in action (it had a scoop on an articulated arm). "The road, from that point, became noticeably more level. It had a layer of crushed rock which had been packed in some way. Where washes had been there were now metal pipes to allow the water flow to go under the roadbed."

  That road fed into the "'American road' (presumably the extens
ion of Route 250 beyond the RoF) along the north shore of the Schwarza River."

  I don't want to spoil Virginia DeMarce's story "Bypass Surgery" (1634: The Ram Rebellion) for those who haven't read it yet. So let's just say that roads play a prominent role in it.

  * * *

  The WVDOT garage, and perhaps also Grantville City Hall, should have copies of at least some of the WVDOT manuals (possibilities include the Construction Manual, the Standard Details Books, and Standard Specifications—Roads and Bridges).

  They may also have some of the publications of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). Many states base their highway design manual on the AASHTO "Green Book."

  In the Grantville school and public libraries, most of the information on roadbuilding is in the encyclopedias. However, the public library does have a copy of Searight's The Old Pike: An Illustrated Narrative of the National Road.

  * * *

  It is clear that the S&R department is training down-timers to work on road crews. However, S&R is geared toward maintenance of existing roads, not design and construction of new ones. If highways are to be designed scientifically, someone will need to create the appropriate educational institutions. These can be specialized (in OTL, the world's first institute for road and bridge design was established in France, in 1747, see Hindley 75), or a part of a larger university.

  According to the Grid, several individuals hold a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering: Jere Haygood, Kimberly Jane (Collins) Glazer, Mason Chaffin, Derek Modi, Allen Lydick , Edward Monroe, Garland Franklin, Jacob Bruner, Ronaldus "Ron" Koch, and Farris Clinter; Mason Chaffin is the Grantville surveyor, in fact. While these individuals are going to be devoting quite a bit of their time to military projects, we can hope that on a rotating basis, they can teach civil engineering students in Magdeburg, Jena or Grantville.

  West Virginia University's undergraduate civil engineering curriculum requires students to take courses in Engineering Design, Engineering Economics, Thermodynamics, Surveying and Computer-Aided Design, Statics, Dynamics, Mechanics of Materials, Fluid Mechanics, Materials, Structural Analysis, Foundations Engineering or Earthwork Design, Concrete, Steel or Timber Design, Hydrotechnical Engineering, Soil Mechanics, and Transportation Engineering. The latter is described as "Integrated transportation systems from the standpoint of assembly, haul, and distribution means. Analysis of transport equipment and traveled way. Power requirements, speed, stopping, capacity, economics, route location. Future technological developments and innovations."

  The students are also required to take two 400-level civil engineering electives. It is possible that one of them has taken CE 431, Highway Engineering, as an elective: "Highway administration, economics, and finance; planning and design; subgrade soils and drainage; construction and maintenance. Design of a highway. Center line and grade line projections, earthwork, and cost estimates."

  We can assume that all of these individuals have kept their course textbooks. (I still have my chemistry books from the early seventies.)

  Common Knowledge: Roman Roads

  For the seventeenth-century European, the "gold standard" for highways were certainly the Via Appia, Via Flamina, and other Roman roads. According to Nicholas Bergier (1567–1623), European peasants thought they were "the work of demons, giants, and fairies using magic arts."

  Bergier was a French lawyer, living in the ancient town of Rheims (Roman Durocortorum). He pioneered the study of the Roman roads, eventually writing the influential treatise Histoire des Grands Chemins de l'Empire Romain (1622) at the command of Louis XIII. (Von Hagen, 14–15). It went through many editions, and copies are certainly available in down-time private libraries in the USE.

  USE engineers can see the Roman roads for themselves, but only if they are willing to travel a bit. Thanks to the Teutonic victory at Teutobergerwald ("Varus, give back my legions!"), the Romans did not penetrate deeply into Germany. The Romans fortified the Rhine River, and Roman roads connected the garrisons along the west bank. Another Roman road ran along the Danube from Switzerland to the Danube delta, first along the north bank and then (crossing the river north of Munich) along the south one. (Von Hagen, 18–19) This is shown clearly on a map in the modern Encyclopedia Britannica.

  The most elaborate form of the Roman road was the via munita, distinguished by a convex surface (dorsum) of rectangular or polygonal blocks of hard stone (such as lava). The via glareata had a graveled surface, and the via terrena, one merely of leveled earth. The surface used depended on both the importance of the road, and on the availability of suitable local materials.

  While the via munita structure may sound ideal, it actually requires a great deal of maintenance to handle wagons. Once one block sinks a little more than the others, perhaps as a result of settlement of the underlying soil, it will tend to be driven deeper by the shock of each passing wagon falling onto it. Hence, wheeled traffic demanded a softer pavement, such as one of earth or broken stone, which could be smoothed out readily. (Gregory 123–4).

  The early imperial poet Publius Papinius Statius described the construction of the Via Domitiana in his poem "Silvae." (The first medieval edition was published in 1472.) According to Statius, the workers dug two parallel, widely separated, drainage ditches (sulci) and heaped the excavated material in-between (forming the gremium or agger). Curbstones were laid between the ditches and the elevated roadbed, and the latter was flattened. The other road layers were then laid on top of the soil.

  There is some dispute as to the exact nature of those layers. Based, for example, on Vitruvius' description of pavement construction in De Architectura, Bergier believed that beneath the road surface were three other layers. (Ramsay; Gregory 66). The modern Encyclopedia Britannica accepts (without proper credit) Bergier's analysis, and describes the four courses, from top to bottom, as follows:

  summa dorsum: large stone slabs at least six inches deep.

  nucleus: about twelve inches thick, concrete made from small gravel and coarse sand (other sources say that this was made from broken pottery or bricks, cemented with lime).

  rudus: about nine inches thick, concrete made from stones under two inches in size (other sources say that these stones were larger than those of the nucleus).

  statumen: ten to twenty-four inches thick, stones at least two inches in size (other sources say hand size or larger).

  However, some later writers have questioned whether the road structure was usually so elaborate (Von Hagen, 35; Chevalier, 86). In Britain, at least, stone surfacing was rare, and roads were made of gravel, flint, chalk, loam, and occasionally, as an underlayer, sandstone, limestone or iron slag. (Margary, 500–1).

  Roman roads were elevated, sometimes as much as four or five feet over the native ground level. (Margary 20) This seems higher than necessary for drainage, and it has been speculated that it rendered marching troops less liable to attack—enemy forces could be seen at a distance, and would also have to attack uphill. The imperial highways were also more direct than what economics alone would dictate, and this too, was probably for military reasons, as again it reduced the risk of ambush. (Belloc, 134–7; Hindley, 41).

  Down-Time Knowledge: Medieval and Renaissance Treatises

  The modern Encyclopedia Britannica briefly mentions the work of Guido Toglietta (1585) and Thomas Procter (1607). Toglietta (1585) described a pavement system based on broken stone; EB characterizes it as an improvement on the Roman structure, but provides no further details. Forbes credits Toglietta with the modern-sounding conceptualization of the wheel as the "destructor" and the road as the "resister." Toglietta "describes the construction of cobble pavements, but favors a foundation of gravel carrying a road surface of stone, sand and mortar." Preferably, this surface is two inches thick. (Forbes; Borth 64).

  Procter (1607) authored the first English language text on highway construction. EB doesn't state the title, but I suspect that our English correspondents will know it under the name
"A profitable worke concerning the mending of highways."

  Other treatise writers will become known to us only through consultation with down-time scholars. These authors would include Andreas Palladio (1518–1580), Vincenzo Scamozzi (1552–1616), and Castelli (1577–1644). From Forbes' brief commentary, it doesn't seem likely that they will do more than help us persuade the down-timers that drainage control is important.

  Up-Time Knowledge: Roadbuilding Innovations from 1750–1850

  In 1632, Mike Stearns announced one of Grantville's strategies for survival: "Gear down, gear down. Use our modern technology, while it lasts, to build a nineteenth-century industrial base."

  Amazing improvements were made in roadbuilding technology during the period 1750–1850, and the USE can readily exploit them. Before then, when roads fell into disrepair, rulers blamed it on the wagoners, and placed onerous restrictions on loads, wheel dimensions, and so forth. Nineteenth-century builders, notably John McAdam, urged that roads should be made to suit the vehicles, not the other way around (Reader, 131).

  The modern Encyclopedia Britannica presents cross-sections of roads as designed by Pierre Tresaguet (1716–1794), Thomas Telford (1757–1834), and John McAdam (1756–1836). The overview which follows is based closely on that provided by EB, and leaves out some important details which are covered later.

  Tresaguet's and Telford's roads were what you might term "Roman Lite." Tresaguet's lowest course, eight inches thick, was of uniform stones set edgewise and packed together. He then laid two-inch thick layer of "walnut-sized" stones, followed by a one inch thick layer of smaller rocks.

  Telford's lowest course, like Tresaguet's, was of set stone (seven inches thick according to EB). This was known to later builders as the "Telford base," although the EB makes it sound quite similar to that of Tresaguet. Above this came another seven inches of broken stone, the fragments being not more than two inches in size. This was capped by a one inch layer of gravel.