Month: October 2019

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If It’s Tuesday…Revisiting Belgium

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The Atomium, Brussels, BelgiumAn old post popped into my feed recently and it reminded me of when I lived in Brussels. At the time I began a travelogue of sorts on a now defunct social media writing site. I’ve posted a few updated snippets here on Science Traveler. As I wrote in my introductory post:

In 1969 there was a movie by this title (“If it’s Tuesday, This Must be Belgium“) starring Suzanne Pleshette. It was a comedy about Americans experiencing Europe for the first time. Not long ago I had a chance to live out the idea behind the movie – the company I worked for at the time traded me from Washington DC to their office in Brussels (presumably for a scientist to be named later). I lived in Brussels for three years.

More posts covered my first visit to Brussels before the move, dealing with all my stuff (much of which was sold off, donated, or trashed because it would never fit), networking to get my bearings, and all the hoops I had to jump through to get a work permit.

In addition to offloading a lot of my accumulated personal debris for the move (the rest of which would be shipped to Brussels and then back three years later), I had to filter through years of file folders at work. I was staying with the same company so needed to bring current project work, but since I usually had dozens of projects running at any given time – and any number of old projects that might resurface – I had to bring several cabinets of paper. All of this got me thinking I need to streamline.

The day I moved was Earth Day, so I dutifully recycled what appears to be several trees worth of paper. This experience has taught me that I need to take advantage of my new presence in Europe to adopt the European tendency to minimize resource use.

So, upon my arrival I vowed the following:

1) To seek the ideal of a paperless office.  Okay, so I knew that ideal was unattainable. But I did reconsider all the emails I printed out (which thereby defeats the purpose of “electronic-mail”). I resolved not to print the huge documents that often sat unread on my desk…and when I did need to print them I did so double-sided to save paper.

2) To go car-less. My plan was to not own a car during my 3-year stay in Brussels. I walked to the office, about 3/4-mile from my office…or on lazy or lousy weather days, I took the tram that ran near my apartment. I also used public transportation to get around Brussels (luckily they had an excellent tram and subway system). I was able to walk to the grocery store and bicycled around town on errands whenever possible (though I occasionally begged rides from friends for longer trips). I took the train to visit locations out of town whenever possible (the train system in Europe is phenomenal).

3) To become more energy efficient. I adjusted my life style and habits to reduce my energy footprint. That included something as simple as using the sleep and hibernate modes on my computer wisely, as well as reducing lights, using energy efficient lamps, and not having a television. [I dumped my television in 2008 because it wouldn’t work in Europe; I haven’t had television service since then.]

4) To eat healthier. As long as I was being conscientious, I resolved to increase my natural and fresh food intake and reduce my use of processed and canned foods. [One could argue that I did accomplish the “eating more fresh food” part, but I also fell into the European trap of eating cheese and drinking wine. My net was anything but more healthy, but more on that in my memoirs.]

So with these resolutions in mind I went back to my Washington,DC office destruction program. I arrived in Brussels the following Monday morning, which meant the next “If It’s Tuesday…” piece was written from Belgium.  Woo hoo!

I enjoyed my three years in Brussels and learned a lot, both good and bad. The experience was something I have never regretted even though it was in Brussels where I realized my time with the firm that sent me would need to change, or end, after my return. But that’s a long story in itself.

P.S. The photo is me in front of The Atomium, built for the 1958 World’s Fair. In keeping with my Science Traveler theme, it represents an iron crystal.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Lincoln Receives First Transcontinental Telegraph Message

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Transcontinental telegraphIn October 1861, California Chief Justice Stephen Johnson Field reportedly sent a message to Abraham Lincoln via the newly completed transcontinental telegraph. The event was a milestone that predated the later transcontinental railroad.

By 1860 a network of telegraph lines covered much of the eastern United States. After the 1849 gold rush had spawned a rapid populating of the newly acquired California coast, telegraph lines quickly grew in that new state. But there was a huge gap in service through the central United States. The U.S. Congress authorized a transcontinental telegraph project in 1860, and like the transcontinental railroad that came after it, the telegraph system was built by separate crews that would meet in the middle. The Pacific Telegraph Company would start in Nebraska and head west while the Overland Telegraph Company would build east from Nevada, which was connected to the California network. Essentially the route followed that established by the Pony Express and the Overland stagecoach line.

It took just over three months to plant more than 27,000 poles carrying 2,000 miles of single-strand iron wire over prairies and mountains. The transcontinental telegraph was officially completed on October 24, 1861 in Salt Lake City and became a critical communication line for the Union. Justice Fields often gets credit for sending the first transcontinental telegraph to Lincoln; however, there is some uncertainty about this. In fact, documents show that on October 20, 1861 Lincoln replied by telegraph to Frank Fuller, the Governor of the Utah Territory reciprocating his congratulations for the telegraph achievement. Lincoln wrote:

Sir.

The completion of the Telegraph to Great Salt Lake City is auspicious of the Stability & Union of the Republic.

The Government reciprocates your Congratulations

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Fuller’s original telegraph message to Lincoln from earlier that day says:

`To the President of the United States:— Great Salt Lake City.

“Utah, whose citizens strenuously resist all imputations of disloyalty, congratulates the President upon the completion of an enterprise which spans the continent, unites two oceans and connects remote extremities of the body politic with the great government heart. May the whole system speedily thrill with quickened pulsations of that heart, the parricidal hand of political treason be punished, and the entire sisterhood of States join hands in glad reunion around the national fireside.

“FRANK FULLER,

“Acting Governor of Utah.”

So did Field send the first transcontinental telegraph message to Lincoln? Or did Fuller? Evidence suggests the latter. In either case, the telegraph played a hugely important role in the Civil War, and like many other technology-based advantages, helped the Union more than the Confederacy.

By the way, in May of 1863 Lincoln appointed Field as a U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice, thus becoming the first person to fill the newly created extra seat after Congress expanded the Supreme Court from 9 to10. But that’s a story for another time.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Lincoln in Peoria – The Speech Heard Round the World

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Abraham Lincoln PeoriaOn October 18, 1854 Lincoln rose to the forefront of the Republicans with a speech he gave first in Springfield, and then a dozen days later in Peoria. Newspapers published the second presentation, so it came to be known as the Peoria speech. It began when Stephen A. Douglas, the originator of the Kansas-Nebraska policy, spoke to a large crowd at the state fair in Springfield. Lincoln was in the audience and proclaimed that he would respond to Douglas’s arguments, saying “Douglas lied; he lied three times and I’ll prove it!” That evening he did so at the Illinois state house. While Lincoln sat quietly listening to Douglas’s speech, Douglas repeatedly interrupted Lincoln.

Lincoln vigorously condemned slavery. After giving a brief history of slavery in America, he forcefully denounced it. He reiterated his belief that slavery was morally and politically wrong, but also that the Constitution protected it in the areas where it already existed. Therefore, the federal government could not remove it from the South, but it could, and must, restrict its spread into the territories. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, he argued, violated those principles, and Douglas was contradicting himself with regard to his support for the Missouri Compromise, which the Act now voided. Lincoln made his views on the Kansas-Nebraska Act and slavery clear:

I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.

Lincoln further argued that slaves and free blacks were men, and as such had the same right to self-governance that white men did. Quoting from the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln asserted that the phrase “all men are created equal” included black men as well as white, and that “no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.”

These were progressive words in 1854. Being anti-slavery in the North did not necessarily signify belief in equality between the races. Lincoln recognized that even if all slaves were free, society would not function given inherent inequalities, attitudes, and bigotries. Overlooking the fact that most slaves at this time had been born in America, he favored colonization as a means for free blacks to leave the United States and set up black-led countries of their own. Despite this inconsistency, by forcefully arguing for the moral wrong of slavery and the dangers of slavery spreading because of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln set the framework for a slavery debate that lasted the rest of the decade.

And thus, like the shot fired in Concord, Massachusetts on April 18, 1775 that started the Revolutionary War, Lincoln’s Peoria speech on October 16, 1854 began the intense debate on slavery that would lead to the Civil War. Peoria was indeed, the speech ’round the world.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Traveling the Sugar and Slave Trades of St. Kitts

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St. Kitts sugar factorySt. Kitts is the larger of two islands that make up the nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Nevis is most famous for being the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, the musical about whom I recently saw in Chicago. While St. Kitts is now a tourist mecca, the island is best known for its dominant position in the colonial sugar trade. Lesser known is that St. Kitts also was a major hub in the slave trade.

A few years ago I visited St. Kitts along with a few other Caribbean islands. Remnants of the past sugar industry stand mostly as ruins on the island landscape. Abandoned, but not that long ago – St. Kitts clung to sugar until recently, the last sugar factory closing only in 2005.

Today you can take a scenic railway around the island. With views of Nevis towering to southeast and Mount Liamuiga rising in the interior, the railway crawls the perimeter in search of sugar plantations. Sugar cane was the main source of sugar on the islands, and some remains for visitors to appreciate. Periodically the remains of cinderblock processing buildings and chimneys stick up out of the recovering natural vegetation. The railway itself is a remnant of the industry. Individual sugar cane growers would harvest the crop and do some initial processing, then wait for the train to stop on its daily circling of the island, stopping at each grower to pick up raw materials. Eventually the train would drop off the crops at the central factory the grew up in the early 20th century. It was this factory that finally closed its doors in 2005, turning over the island’s economy almost entirely to tourism.

A trio of local singers serenades us with old spirituals as a covey of school children in green-shirted uniforms keep pace with the train. The sugar ruins and spirituals remind us that St. Kitts was once a key cog in the slave trade triangulating between Europe, Africa, and America. Great Britain was the biggest purveyor of slave trading at that time. Bringing weapons and gunpowder from England to Africa, ships would cram as many kidnapped Africans as they could in the bowels of the ship, selling or trading the survivors for sugar and rum in Caribbean and South America, then bringing those commodities up to the slaveholding colonies – and then states – before heading back to England to start the process again. It was in St. Kitts that, supposedly but not fully confirmed, Thomas Jefferson’s ancestors got there start in the new world, and from here they became slaveowners that continued through Jefferson’s life.

Slavery was abolished in all the British Empire, including St. Kitts, on August 1, 1834. St. Kitts now celebrates August 1st as Emancipation Day, a public holiday.

As I soon head back to the Caribbean I remember my time on St. Kitts and its connection between sugar science and slavery. On this trip I’ll be seeing other islands that were focal points in the slave trade, hoping to learn more about the business that enslaved human beings for the profit of a few. More to come.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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Galesburg – Chasing Lincoln’s 5th Lincoln-Douglas Debate

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One of the stops on my Chasing Abraham Lincoln tour was the campus of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, site of the 5th Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Drawing the largest crowd of any of the seven debates, Galesburg seems the natural place to host the Lincoln Studies Center led by Co-Directors Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson.

Due to fierce winds and foreboding weather, the debate platform had to be moved into the shadow of “Old Main,” the largest building on the Knox College campus. To reach the platform Lincoln, Douglas, and other dignitaries needed to enter the building and crawl out a window. The self-taught Lincoln, according to tradition, noted that “At last I have gone through…college.”

The day of my visit mimicked the day of the debates. Overcast and windy, I dodged puddles and raindrops (and a few modern day students) to record the following report:

As with all of the debates, the primary issue debated was slavery. Douglas denied there was any wrong in slavery, and in fact, vociferously argued that the government was by and for white people. Lincoln strenuously disagreed:

I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social, and political evil [and] desire a policy that looks to the prevention of this wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end.

Two more debates would occur over the following week or so and due to the vagaries of the law at that time Lincoln would lose the election to Douglas despite Republicans gaining more votes [state legislatures still chose Senators; the 17th Amendment giving direct vote to the people wasn’t until 1913]. But these debates would firmly place Lincoln in the public’s eye for the forthcoming presidential election in 1860.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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Nikola Tesla’s Views on Marriage and Celibacy

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Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla spent much time learning to exert self-control over his will. Once an addicted gambler, he worked hard to rid himself of that destructive desire. Not leaving a trace of desire apparently extended to his views on marriage and celibacy.

The late William H. Terbo (the son of Tesla’s sister’s son) once suggested that “womanizing” may have contributed in part to Tesla never completing his studies in Graz. Yet despite the opinion of a professional palmist, who opined that Tesla’s hand revealed “a flirtatious streak,” Tesla purposefully chose celibacy throughout his life. This did not stop the media of the time (even the technical journals) from urging him to get married—after all, “important people were expected to procreate for the good of the country.” As young science writer and close friend Kenneth Swezey later put it, “Tesla’s only marriage has been to his work and to the world…he believes…that the most enduring works of achievement have come from childless men…” Swezey described Tesla as “an absolute celibate.” Tesla himself claimed that to be a great inventor one must not allow himself to be distracted by love. When asked if he believed in marriage, he replied that:

“for an artist, yes; for a musician, yes; for a writer, yes; but for an inventor, no. The first three must gain inspiration from a woman’s influence and be led by their love to finer achievement, but an inventor has so intense a nature with so much in it of wild, passionate quality, that in giving himself to a woman he might love, he would give everything, and so take everything from his chosen field. I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”

While rumors abounded over Tesla’s relationship with Katharine Johnson, wife of The Century editor (and Sierra Club co-founder) Robert Underwood Johnson, he never did marry, hence why his grandnephew William Terbo was so active in keeping Tesla’s name alive.

[Adapted from my book, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity]

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.