Trechos de Schrödinger: Life And Thought (1992), de Walter Moore.
[...] slow acoustic waves can be considered without references to effect due to rapid thermal motions of the individual atoms.
This paper is undoubtedly the most interesting of all written by [Erwin] Schrödinger before he was called into military service in 1914.
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RESEARCH IN UNIFORM
During the first months of the war Erwin was able to complete some scientific work. The advantage of being a theoretician was that he could make calculations even in a dugout, although he missed the possibility of consulting the scientific journals. [...]
He had began some experimental measurements with wide-bore capillaries. He conclued by saying, "I intend to continue the measurements, which had to be interrupted at the end of July, so as to obtain more extensive data for testing the formula." Obviously he did not think that the war would continue four more years.
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Erwin's next assignment was to Franzenteste, a fortress just north of Brixen in South Tirol. Meanwhile the German offensive towards Paris had ground to a halt and the war of attrition had begun.
A most unwelcome surprise to the forces of the Danube Empire was a humiliating defeat by Serbia. [...] but the exhausted Serbs could go no farther and all became quiet on the southeastern front. At about this time, Erwin was transferred to Komaron, a Hungarian garrison town between Vienna and Budapest.
While there he was able to write a paper for the Physikalische Zeitschrift, "On the Theory of Experiments on the Rise and Fall of Particles in Brownian Motion", which was received on July 26, 1915. This theory was related to work in progress in Vienna on the charge of the electron.
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ON THE ITALIAN FRONT
On July 26, Schrödinger's unit was ordered from Komaron to install a new 12-cm marine battery on the Italian front. For the next two months, he kept a detailed diary of his activities. The marine battery was a great puzzle, for nobody seemed to know exactly where it was supposed to go, only the name of the locality, a place called Oreia Draga on the Istrian peninsula south of Trieste.
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A battle raged around the Karst plateau, where the barren limestone rocks were pulverized by artillery fire. In repeated assaults the Italians failed to make significant gains through the Austrian defenses, but losses were heavy on both sides.
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When Erwin was there about two years earlier, the military situation was about the same except that the Austrians still held Gorizia and about half a million young men had not yet been killed. Erwin noted that "we stood about for hours on the Karst plateau, and about midday had the foresight to take a meal including green bean salad and a passable beer. Towards evening we went through Görz and reached Oreia Draga about 8 p.m. The men had eaten nothing all day, because the supplies had not arrived although the transport officer had ordered them from Ogenia." They were able to took some canned good, and a good-natured regimental doctor provided some wine.
On the morning of the 29th, they marched to St Peter, with almost unbroken cannonading beyond Sessana. In St Peter they were met by Captain Novak and Colonel Heckler. Their battery was already in place and had already fired. The men were quartered in a farmhouse and the officers in the castle of the local count. "Very fine except that all the windows had been blown out by our 30.5 cm Mortar, which had flattened almost everything in the park." This was the best of the K & K artillery weapons, known as a "wonder gun".
After a short sleep, Erwin went by motorcar to Görz, finding the town half deserted because of the bombardments. Nevertheless he enjoyed the unusual comfort of the best hotel. That afternoon he went to help direct some artillery that was firing from a suburb. [...] The next morning he continued to direct the battery. On August 1, he observed the first firing of the marine battery, which was blasting away at church towers in the distance.
On August 2, he noted that "we are firing badly. I was balled out. I took control of all the operations myself, which slowed down the action. I was balled out some more. By afternoon it was going well. It is incredible that we were not fired upon at all or only insignificantly since we were using strongly smoky powder. Airplanes were looking for us." On August 4, the shooting was again poor; Erwin suggested what to do but they did not believe him. "Thank God! The other battery is also shooting poorly. The emplacement is already quite crooked." On August 6 the battery was for some time solidly placed, and the shooting went well. The foundation blocks were inclined at 11°. "Heckler, deputy commandant, is unwilling to move himself to take a look at it. I go out in the evening. The cannon doctor repairs the springs which were already quite slack because of the poor mounting, and he pours in half a litre of glycerine."
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The war diary continued on September 6, with the notation that firing was resumed then after a long break on orders from Army Command. Probably they were short of ammunition, for at the end of August Erwin went to Leibach to collect some. There was a six-hour stop at Opcina, where he took the opportunity to visit the obelisk erected in 1830 in memory of a visit by Emperor Franz I. On August 24, he was thirteen hours in Leibach; the town was overflowing with about four times its normal population. "The streets were crowded with an unbroken stream of officers and whores. Most of the female refugees seem to live that way."
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At the evening mess in the Castle, there were interesting accounts from some officers who had taken part in the debacles in Serbia and Galicia. In Serbia, they all lost their heads entirely in the precipitate retreat. The Serbians appeared astonished and did not push the pursuit.
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On 19, September, Erwin wrote:
"Interesting events zero. For a long time it was absolutely quiet here, now at night there are front line attacks on the plateau. It is utterly boring. When I have otherwise nothing to do, I fill my mind with the psychology of the fundamentals of consciousness (memory, association, the concept of time)."
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"We have war! [Wir haben Krieg!] The word sounds playful. Truly, I swear, the word sounds playful. For it sounds as though this were some out-of-the-ordinary state."
At this point the war diary breaks off [September 27]. Schrödinger began to receive some books of philosophy and copies of scientific journals, and he was able to rouse himself from the desperate boredom and futility of military life and to turn his mind to the kind of problems that he loved.
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MILITARY CITATIONS
By the end of 1915, a combined German, Bulgarian and Austrian offensive had finally eliminated Serbia from the war, and some reinforcements could be sent to the Italian front. The third great battle of the lsonzo opened on October 18, with a seventy-hour Italian artillery barrage of unprecedented ferocity. Fortunately the K & K Fifth Army was in well fortified positions and when the attack was broken off early in December, the Italian gains had been limited to a small area of the west border of the Karst plateau. The Italians lost 125 000 killed and wounded, compared to the K & K loss of 80 000.
Schrödinger was awarded a citation for his outstanding service during this battle:
"In the battle of Oct. 23 to Nov. 13, while acting as a replacement for the battery commander, he commanded the battery with great success. During the preparations as well as in many engagements, he was in command as first officer at the gun emplacement. By his fearlessness and calmness in the face of recurrent heavy enemy artillery fire, he gave to the men a shining example of courage and gallantry. It was owing to his personal presence that the gun emplacement always fulfilled its assignment exactly and with success in the face of heavy enemy fire ... He has been at the front since July, 1915."
This was signed by his division commander on November 12, countersigned by divisional and corps commanders, and entered in his record in the War Archive.
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On May 1, 1916, Schrödinger was promoted to Oberleutnant, and May 15, after a long winter break, fighting was resumed. The Italians were able to advance about 10 km in a salient around Gorizia and then captured the town. These were the bloodiest of the lsonzo battles, with Italian losses of 286 000 men and the Austro-Hungarian less than half that many.
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Even though it did not solve the problem of abnormal audibility, this paper was an excellent example of classical applied physics. It is written with the clarity and attention to style and organization that already can be recognized as Schrödinger hallmarks. The harvest of long Gymnasium years devoted to the classical authors can be seen in the graceful prose of his scientific papers. If it were not for the mathematics, they could be read with pleasure as literary essays.
Schrödinger's stint in the army obviously had not dulled his theoretical skills, yet neither had the fallow period led to an outburst of original thinking about problems in the forefront of physics, in particular the problems of quantum theory and atomic structure that were stretching the fabric of classical physics to the breaking point. He was still reacting to various concerns of the somewhat isolated Vienna school, still using his great mathematical facility to make improvements in structures built by others, although he was now thirty years old, an age by which most great theoretical physicists have been prepared to rebel against the paradigms received from their university teachers.
FIRST PAPER ON QUANTUM THEORY
About midway through 1917, Schrödinger sent an article on "The Results of New Research on Atomic and Molecular Heats" to Die Naturwissenschaften [The Sciences].
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THE END OF THE WAR
The supply situation in Austria-Hungary was deteriorating. The soldiers lived mostly on soup made of dried vegetables. The meat ration was 200 g a week in the front line and 100 g in the rear echelons, less than a McDonald hamburger, but usually lean horse meat. The meat was often full of worms, but the government informed the troops that, though unappetizing, they were not dangerous to health. In some divisions, only front-line troops had uniforms; the reserves waited in underwear until it was their turn to be thrown into the battles. Under these conditions, Conrad persuaded Karl to launch a "final offensive" on the Italian front; when it foundered with heavy losses, he was finally retired.
The situation in Vienna was better, since a flourishing black market kept those who could afford it fairly well fed. In January, 1918, the bread ration was cut from 200 to 160 g a day, and workers went on strike in the armaments factories. It was necessary to detach seven divisions from the front to suppress the strikes.
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[...] the blockade of Austria was lifted, although it continued to be applied to Germany. It is difficult to find a parallel in history to this deliberate starvation of a defeated enemy.
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FROM VIENNA TO ZÜRICH
In the midst of all the postwar turmoil and suffering, Erwin took no respite from his intensive research at the Physics Institute. He also filled notebook after notebook with commentaries based upon his reading of European and Eastern philosophers. It was in these dying days of the Danube Empire that he formed the foundations of his philosophy, which was to remain remarkably constant all his life.
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Erwin thought deeply about the teachings of the Hindu scriptures, reworked them into his own words, and ultimately came to believe in them. Possibly his half-famished state at this time was an involuntary mortification of the flesh conducive to religious experience.
Mais:
http://g1.globo.com/2013/08/google-faz-homenagem-ao-criador-do-gato-de-schrodinger.html
Lise Meitner
Trechos de Field Marshal: The Life And Death Of Erwin Rommel (2015), de Daniel Allen Butler.
[August 1] war was declared on France and Russia a day later.
Immediately [Erwin] Rommel asked his commanding officer for permission to return to the 124th Infantry, a request that was readily granted. The regiment was assigned to the 53rd Infantry Brigade, itself part of the 27th (2nd Royal Württemberg) Division.
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Acording to Rommel's account of the journey to the front, there was an almost festive air about the mobilization:
The trip to the front on August 5, through the beautiful valleys and dells of our native land and amid the cheers of our people, was indescribably beautiful. The troops sang and at every stop were showered with fruit, chocolate, and rolls. Passing through Kornwestheim, I saw my family for a few brief moments. [todos os trechos em itálico são daqui]
Once at the German border, the men left the trains behind and began marching, arriving on August 18. Four days later, Leutnant Erwin Rommel, Jr., in command of a rifle platoon, had his baptism of fire.
It was near a village called Bleid, just inside Belgium, itself intrinsically unimportant to either side.
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Two days earlier, Rommel had led his men in clearing the village of Conses, "with fixed bayonets, fingers on triggers, and all eyes studying doorways and windows for telltale evidence of an ambush," but all they encountered was an old woman who assured them that the French soldiers had already left. This time, there was no mistaking where the French were.
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The action at Bleid, while all but inconsequential to the overall course of the war, looms large in the life of Erwin Rommel, beyond it being his introduction to combat. Courage, decisiveness, an understanding of the power of tactical surprise as a force multiplier - a skill that would receive the necessary honing in the years to come - and boldness.
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Again, not waiting to give his enemies time to gather their wits, he rushed forward, bayonet in hand (wiry and strong for his size, Rommel prided himself on the skills in hand-to-hand fighting he'd acquired in peacetime), only to be knocked off his feet when a rifle bullet hit his left thigh, blowing out a fist-sized chunk of flesh. Seeing their officer go down, the men of Rommel's platoon pressed home their attack, and soon he was safely behind German lines and on his way to a field hospital. Transferred to a corps hospital two days later, he underwent surgery to repair some of the damage to his leg - none of which was, fortunately for him, permanent - which was followed by three months of recovery and limited duty. The wound also earned Rommel his first combat decoration, the Iron Cross, Second Class.
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Rommel found himself leading his company in one such attack on January 29 [1915], on a stretch of front in the Argonne Forest just east of Verdun. [...]
Amazingly, the brash tactic worked, and the startled French attackers were thrown back in confusion long enough to allow Rommel to extricate his men through the barbwire entanglement and back to the German lines, losing only five men along the way. For this action, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class.
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On August 27, 1916, in what can only be described as an act of monumental stupidity, Romania had declared war on Austria-Hungary. [...]
Despite some initial successes, within a matter of two weeks, the Romanian forces were stopped in their tracks. [...] On September 18 the Germans and Austrians began their counterattack, and over the next 10 days, the Romanians were tumbled pell-mell out of whatever gains they had made and back into Romania itself. By the middle of October, however, they were able to stop the Germans at the passes of Vulcan and Szurduk.
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We climbed over a narrow footpath and our packs with their four days' uncooked rations weighed heavily on our shoulders. We had neither pack animals nor winter mountain equipment, and all officers carried their own packs. We climbed the steep slopes for hours.
It began to rain as we started to climb without benefit of a guide. The rain grew heavier as night began to fall and it was soon pitch black. The cold rain turned into a cloudburst and soaked us to the skin. Further progress on the steep and rocky slope was impossible, and we bivouacked on either side of the mule path at an altitude of about 4,950 feet. In our soaked condition it was impossible to lie down and as it was still raining, all attempts to kindle a fire of dwarf pine failed. We crouched close together, wrapped in blankets and shelter halves and shivered from the cold. ... After midnight the rain ceased, but in its stead an icy wind made it impossible for us to relax in our wet clothes.
When we reached the summit, our clothes and packs were frozen to our backs. It was below freezing and an icy wind was sweeping the snow-covered summit. Our positions were not to be found. Shortly after our arrival a blizzard enveloped the elevated region and reduced visibility to a few yards. ... The surgeon also warned that a continued stay in the snowstorm in wet clothes, without shelter, without fire, and without warm food, would result in many sick and much frostbite within the next few hours. We were threatened with court-martial proceedings if we yielded one foot of ground.
Numerous cases of high fever and vomiting were reported, but renewed representations to sector were without effect. ... When day broke the doctor had to evacuate forty men to the hospital. Captain Gossler had decided to move off with the remainder of the companies, come what may; ninety percent were under medical treatment because of frostbite and cold.
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Skillful use of terrain for concealment along with coordinated fire-and-movement by infantry sections, coupled with effective, concentrated covering fire to keep the Romanians' heads down, resulted in the capture of Mount Lesului with astonishingly light casualties.
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Rommel cooly adjusted his positions and continued to hold off the Romanians until Major Sprösser could bring up reinforcements, after which the Romanians gave up on their attack and withdrew, although exchanges of rifle fire continued throughout the morning. Another Romanian attack materialized in mid-morning, but by this time the fog had burned off, and the Romanian advance was halted in its tracks well short of the German lines.
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On November 27, 1916, Oberleutnant Erwin Eugen Johannes Rommel married Lucia Maria "Lucie" Mollin. [...]
The newlyweds had a bare two weeks together before Rommel had to return to the Mountain Battalion, though it wouldn't be until mid-January 1917 before he again saw any significant action. Bucharest fell to the Germans on December 6, two-thirds of Romania was now in the hands of the Central Powers, and the remnants of the Romanian Army retreated into northeastern and eastern Romania, behind a line of rugged ridges on the west bank of the Siret River, a defensive position of tremendous natural strength. Holding on like a thorn in the Central Powers' flesh, just to the west of the ridgeline, was a strong Romanian force dug in around and atop Mount Cosna, southeast of the town of Targu Ocna. The ridge behind Mount Cosna was the key to the entire Siret River Line; before the Germans and Austrians could mount any sort of attack on the enemy's main position, they first had to drive the Romanians off Cosna. To take Cosna, they first had to capture the village of Gagesti (modern-day Paragesti), which sat just below Cosna's southern slope.
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The Germans and Austrians had failed to take and hold the whole of Mount Cosna the previous December, and the Romanian Army, once all but left for dead, experienced something akin to a resurrection in the spring and early summer of 1917.
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From the Allies' perspective, the Romanian government's decision to go to war had been a colossal blunder: a neutral Romania had protected the southern flank of the Russian Army in its struggles with the Germans and Austrians - now, a Romanian defeat along the Siret would lay that flank bare to the Central Powers, and the consequences for Russia would be disastrous.
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The Romanians fought bravely and they fought hard, and immediately launched a counterattack to drive the Germans off the ridge. Their lack of proper training, despite the best efforts of their French advisors, coupled with their lack of combat experience, led to clumsy, uncoordinated attacks. They might have done well against the armies of 1914, but courage and tenacity were no match for men who already seen three years of war. The Romanians fell back yet again, this time to the slopes of Mount Cosna itself.
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Over the next three days the Romanians launched a series of strong, determined counterattacks, trying to retake the mountain; they fought fiercely and gave the German mountain troops all that they could handle, more than one company coming near to exhausting its ammunition supply in trying to hold back the Romanians. But again, superior training and bitter experience won out over élan and grit; the Romanian attacks were driven off every time.
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Fortunately for Rommel, the whole of the Alpenkorps was withdrawn from Mount Cosna on August 25. It was not a moment too soon:
In the afternoon, because of a high fever, I began to babble the silliest nonsense, and this convinced me that I was no longer capable of exercising command. In the evening I turned the command over to Captain Gossler and ... after dark I walked down the ridge road across Mount Cosna, back to the group command post, a quarter of a mile southwest of Headquarters Knoll.
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At 2:00 A.M. on October 24, a thousand German and Austrian guns, firing as fast as they could be reloaded and re-registered, erupted in a four-hour bombardment of the Italian defenses along the Isonzo.
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Rommel saw immediately that, with its heavy barbwire obstacles and deep trenches, even a halfhearted defense by the Italians would make direct assault akin to suicide. While pondering his next move, Rommel noted a steep-sided gully (he called it a "camouflaged path") running off to his left just below the Italian line.
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It was October 25, 1917: what followed would be, without a doubt, the most amazing single day in the whole of Erwin Rommel's remarkable life.
Rommel and his three companies moved out at first light, traversing the slope to the right so that they could come at the Italians from an unexpected direction. Using the skill he'd acquired in Romania at using dead ground to conceal movement, Rommel brought his detachment to a point less than 200 yards from the top of the ridge.
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The 5,400-foot peak of Monte Matajur, to the west, was the objective, and Rommel began pressing in that direction as hard and as fast as he could, exploiting the surprise of his unexpected appearance in the Italian trenches to overrun and disarm as many of the enemy troops as possible, enlarging his foothold on the ridge in anticipation of the promised support from Major Sprösser. Suddenly, the entire detachment came under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire as Italians in a support trench, along with troops farther up the ridgeline, opened up on Rommel and his men - enemy infantry could be seen massing for a counterattack a hundred yards ahead - and Rommel's 2nd Company, sent forward to keep up the pressure on the Italians, was in danger of being overrun. Time was limited - and so were options.
Outnumbered and outgunned - again - Rommel quickly realized that there were no good defensive solutions to his dilemma, so he did what came most naturally to him - he attacked.
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The Italians halted their attack against the 2nd Company and tried to turn and face the 3nd Company. But the 2nd Company came out of its trench and assailed the right. Attacked on two sides and pressed into a narrow space, the enemy laid down his arms. ... An entire battalion with 12 officers and over 500 men surrendered in the saddle three hundred yards northeast of Hill 1192. This increased our prisoner bag on the Kolovrat position to 1,500.
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With the line of the Isonzo River defenses split wide open, the Italians had no choice but to retreat.
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Rommel and Sprösser would each be awarded the Pour le Mérite for their respective parts in the capture of Longarone, which would be remembered as one of the Italian Army's greatest humiliations. [...]
He would remain a staff officer for the remainder of the war, until Germany signed an armistice with the Allies on November 11, 1918 and the hostilities of the Great War ceased.
Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIY2RNbUdKcUE1Y0k
http://docs.google.com/file/d/143Cn0TTXZeYjXonrXpFH45IY1sVjep-p
Trechos de Wizard: The Life And Times Of Nikola Tesla (1996), de Marc Seifer.
Within two weeks of the beginning of World War I, Germany's transatlantic cable was severed by the British. The only reasonable alternative for communicating with the outside world was through Telefunken's wireless system. Suddenly, the Tuckerton and Sayville plants became of paramount concern. The Germans obviously wanted to maintain the stations to keep the kaiser abreast of President Woodrow Wilson's intentions, but the British wanted them shut down.
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[...] Wilson prepared a presidential decree "declaring that all radio stations within the jurisdiction of the United States of America were [to be] prohibited from transmitting or receiving... messages of an unneutral nature... By virtue of authority vested in me by the Radio Act," the president continued, "one or more of the high powered radio stations within the jurisdiction of the United States... shall be taken over by the Government."
Throughout the beginning of the war, [Nikola] Tesla stepped up his legal campaign against Marconi and continued to advise and receive compensation from Telefunken. Since the country was officially neutral (America would not enter the war for another three years), the arrangement was entirely aboveboard. Nevertheless, few people knew about the German-Tesla link, although the inventor made no secret of it to Jack Morgan.
February 19, 1915
Dear Mr. Morgan,
I am expecting to embody in their plant at Sayville some features of my own which will make it practicable to communicate with Berlin by wireless telephone and then royalties will be very considerable. We have already drawn papers.
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The years preceding America's entrance into World War I contained an overwhelming quagmire of litigation involving most countries and virtually every major inventor in the wireless field. At about the time of Tesla's breakup with Hammond, Fritz Lowenstein, who was paying royalties to both men (and to Morgan, through Tesla), began installing wireless apparatus aboard navy ships. Although the equipment was also being used by Hammond to test the guided missiles, this work was classified, and Hammond's patents became immune from litigation.
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On Tesla's fifty-ninth birthday, the Times reported that not only were the Germans dropping bombs over London from zeppelins; they were also "controlling air torpedoes" by means of radiodynamics. Fired from zeppelins, the supposed "German aerial torpedo[es] can theoretically remain in the air three hours, and can be controlled from a distance of two miles... Undoubtedly, this is the secret invention of which we have heard so many whispers that the Germans have held in reserve for the British fleet." Although it seemed as if Tesla's devil automata had come into being, as the wizard had predicted a decade before, Tesla himself announced to the press that "the news of these magic bombs cannot be accepted as true, [though] they reveal just so many startling possibilities."
"Aghast at the pernicious existing regime of the Germans," Tesla accused Germany of being an "unfeeling automaton, a diabolic contrivance for scientific, pitiless, wholesale destruction the like of which was not dreamed of before... Such is the formidable engine Germany has perfected for the protection of her Kultur and conquest of the globe." Predicting the ultimate defeat of the fatherland, the Serb, whose former countrymen were fighting for their own survival against the kaiser, no doubt stopped doing business with von Tirpitz, although he probably continued his relationship with Professor Slaby, who may have been morally opposed to the war.
Tesla's solution to war was twofold, a better defense, through an electronic Star Wars type of shield he was working on, and "the eradication from our hearts of nationalism." If blind patriotism could be replaced with "love of nature and scientific ideal... permanent peace [could] be established."
The period from 1915 to the date of the United States entry into the war, in 1917, was marked by numerous reports of espionage. [...] Shortly after America's entrance into the war, Tesla informed [George H.] Scherff that Lt. Emil Meyers, "who ran the Tuckerton operation... [had been placed] in a Detention Camp in Georgia," suspected of spying.
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With the onset of World War I, the use of wireless became a necessity for organizing troop movements, surveillance, and intercontinental communication. While the country was still neutral, the navy was able to continue their use of the German equipment - until sentiments began to shift irreversibly to the British side.
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In April 1917, the U.S. Navy completed the seizure of all wireless stations, including those of their allies, the British. At the same time, Marconi was in the process of purchasing the Alexanderson alternator, which was, in essence, a refinement of the Tesla oscillator.
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Shortly thereafter, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his throne and fled to Holland; his country had incurred a debt of $33 billion to the Allies. The new heroes of the age were aeronauts, like Eddie Rickenbacker, hailed as the top ace with twenty-six downed Messerschmitts. Humans were leaping continents the following year, with the British propelling the sturdy Dirigible R-34 from Edinburgh to Roosevelt Field and back to London in seven days. This first-ever round-trip transatlantic airship journey was commanded by Maj. G. H. Scott of the Royal Air Force, complete with his thirty-man crew and Willy Ballantyne, a twenty-three-year-old stowaway. The same year, with Tesla, Thomson, Marconi, and Pickering bickering about Martian signals and lunar plant life, Robert Goddard, military rocket expert and physics professor from Clark University, proposed a seemingly outrageous trajectory for sending a man to the moon. Even Tesla thought the scheme far-fetched, for the known fuels of the day did not have sufficient "explosive power," and even if they did, he doubted that a "rocket... would operate at 459 degrees below zero - the temperature of interplanetary space."
As the war faded, sports figures became the new heroes, the young Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth making the papers after being sold to the Yankees for a whopping $125,000.
Hugo Gernsback tried to put Tesla on the masthead of yet another futuristic Electrical Experimenter spin-off, but his financial offer was, in Tesla's eyes, puny, and he rejected it. Feeling that he had been underpaid for his autobiography, Tesla replied, "I appreciated your unusual intelligence and enterprise, but the trouble with you seems to be that you are thinking only of H. Gernsback first of all, once more, and then again." Gernsback, however, never wavered in his praise of Tesla and continued to feature Teslaic articles and drawings in his various periodicals.
Mais:
Electrical Age
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIb0I5V2pzWEZQYU0
JRR Tolkien and World War I
(Nancy Marie Ott)
[J.R.R.] Tolkien's battalion was sent to France in June 1916. He had three weeks of training at the British camp at Étaples, during which he was transferred to the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers. As battalion signaling officer, Tolkien was responsible for maintaining communication between officers in the field and the Army staff responsible for directing the battle. This information would be used to direct artillery fire to where it was needed, send or withdraw reinforcements, and support any gains the attackers made against the German lines.
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Fortunately for Tolkien, his battalion was assigned to the reserves at the beginning of the battle. It did not take part in the initial British attack on the dug-in German positions on the Somme, which failed to achieve its predicted breakthrough and led to massive loss of life. (Of the 100,000 British soldiers who entered No-man's land on the first morning of the Battle of the Somme, 20,000 were killed outright; another 40,000 were wounded.) His battalion was ordered into the trenches about a week later. Day after day of tours in the trenches and rest periods interspersed with attacks followed. The Battle of the Somme continued for months as the British unsuccessfully attempted to break through the German lines, although they did manage to push them back.
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Tolkien took part in two major offensives against the Germans. On his first day in the trenches, his battalion was part of an unsuccesful attack on Orvillers, a village held by the Germans. The barbed wire had not been cut and many men in his battalion were killed by machine gun fire. His battalion also took part in the attack on the Schwaben Redoubt (a strongly fortified German position) at the end of September, 1916.
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Tolkien's time in the army was not completely wasted in terms of his creative life. As he later wrote to his son Christopher, some of the earliest development of his mythology and languages was done in canteens, at lectures, in crowded and noisy huts, by candle-light in tents, and even in dugouts under shell-fire. He admitted that it did not make him a good officer.
Despite the action he had seen, Tolkien was not wounded.
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In late October, Tolkien contracted trench fever (a disease carried by lice) and was sent home to recuperate. He spent the rest of 1916 and early 1917 in hospital until his fever finally subsided. He was then posted to camps in England until the end of the war. Tolkien was reunited with his wife Edith and their first child was born during this period. He also began composing some of the tales that would later become The Silmarillion.
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The most noticeable way in which Tolkien's wartime experiences are expressed in The Lord of the Rings is in his descriptions of the landscapes of evil. Key elements of the landscapes of Mordor, the desolation of Mordor, and the Dead Marshes are directly inspired from the landscapes of the trenches and No-man's land of World War I. Tolkien clearly drew on his memories of the Western Front when describing the lands ruined by Sauron. As he later stated in one of his letters, "The Dead marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme."
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The parallels between the landscapes of No-Man's Land and Tolkien's landscapes of nightmare are striking. Mordor is a dry, gasping land pocked by pits that are very much like shell craters. Sam Gamgee and Frodo Baggins even hide in one of these pits when escaping from an Orc band, much as a soldier might have hidden in a shell hole while trying to evade an enemy patrol. Like No-Man's Land, Mordor is empty of all life except the soldiers of the Enemy. Almost nothing grows there or lives there. The natural world has been almost annihilated by Sauron's power, much as modern weaponry almost annihilated the natural world on the Western Front.
The desolation before the gates of Mordor is another savage landscape inspired by the Western Front. It is full of pits and heaps of torn earth and ash, some with an oily sump at the bottom. It is the product of centuries of destructive activity by Sauron's slaves, a destruction that Tolkien stated would endure long after Sauron was vanquished.
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The landscape of the Dead Marshes is also inspired by the Western Front. As Frodo, Sam, and their guide Gollum cross the Marshes, they see the ghostly, rotting forms of the dead soldiers of a war that had swept across the region thousands of years before.
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These men and other men in Tolkien's battalion served as inspiration for the character Sam Gamgee. As Tolkien later wrote, "My 'Sam Gamgee' is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself." Sam represents the courage, endurance and steadfastness of the British soldier, as well as his limited imagination and parochial viewpoint. Sam is stubbornly optimistic and refuses to give up, even when things seem hopeless. Indeed, the resiliency of Hobbits in general, their love of comfort, their sometimes hidden courage, and their conservative outlook owe much to Tolkien’s view of ordinary enlisted men. These traits enabled British soldiers not only to survive their tours of duty on the terrible battlefields of France, but to bravely attack and counter-attack the Germans.
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It's often theorized that Orcs represent German soldiers. There certainly are similarities between them. Orcs are almost caricatures of the German enemy of trench warfare: the hordes of gray, pitiless warriors who overwhelm the brave and outnumbered defenders of the West. [...]
The description of the sack of Gondolin in The Book of Lost Tales, Part II, written in 1917, has an eerie similarity to the type of industrialized warfare that Tolkien would have witnessed during the war. Morgoth’s dark and remorseless forces use great iron vehicles that seem much like tanks. Their sheer numbers and powerful, fiery weapons overwhelm the valiant Elvish warriors of Gondolin.
However, Tolkien himself dismissed claims that the Orcs represented a particular race or ethnic group, much less wartime Germans.
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Although the War of the Ring progresses in a very different manner than World War I did, the sense of their both being endless, unwinnable wars is much the same.
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The fates of Sam Gamgee, Frodo Baggins, Pippin Took and Merry Brandybuck after they return to the Shire are in many ways reflections of the fates that faced veterans returning after the war. [...]
[Sam] was able to put the terror of his wartime experiences behind him and successfully coped with the trauma of his journey to Mordor. [...]
On the other hand, Frodo could not put the War of the Ring behind him and had a difficult time coping with the trauma he suffered. In many ways, he is like the shell-shocked veteran of the trenches whose minds and spirits never recovered from the horrors they witnessed.
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Much that was beautiful in Europe lay in ruins. Millions of young men who would have contributed much to society were dead or maimed, their families and communities overwhelmed at dealing with this trauma. There was personal grief at the deaths of loved ones, and grief at the death of a way of life. In many ways, the new Modern age seemed a lesser one.
The Lord of the Rings is suffused with a similar sense of grief and sorrow. It too is about the end of an era.
Fonte:
http://greenbooks.theonering.net/guest/files/040102_02.html
Mais:
http://literatura.uol.com.br/tolkien-na-grande-guerra-293749-1.asp
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIV0hIcXF6VkFoSUU
HISTÓRIA VIVA
Março de 2010
Rasputin se recusa a morrer
A história da morte do mago e curandeiro da realeza russa que, em uma única noite, foi envenenado, alvejado por tiros e mutilado, mas se recusou a morrer nas mãos de seus assassinos.
(Alain Frerejean)
Em 1916, Grigori Iefimovitch Novykh, vulgo Rasputin, era o homem mais poderoso da Rússia. Dizem que tinha um olhar penetrante e magnético, compatível com a fama de místico que ampliava seu poder pessoal. De fato, exercia indiscutível fascínio sobre o frágil czar Nicolau II e sua bem-amada esposa, a imperatriz Alexandra Feodorovna. Mas o poder de Rasputin não era nem um pouco oculto. Apoiava-se na excepcional ascendência que tinha sobre os monarcas absolutos da Rússia de então. Ele nomeava ministros do mesmo modo que os derrubava. Sua aparência era desagradável. Filho de camponeses (então chamados "mujiques", sinônimo de pobreza associada à servidão), o mago era sujo e grosseiro: a barba estava sempre desgrenhada, e os cabelos eram compridos, maltratados e gordurosos. Mal sabia ler e escrever. Príncipes e grão-duques ficavam chocados diante da visão daquele homem. A população o temia. A nobreza espalhava boatos de que ele seria o responsável por todas as agruras pelas quais o país passava na Primeira Guerra Mundial, e as más línguas o acusavam, infundadamente, de ser amante da czarina, além de agente da inimiga Alemanha. Alguns conspiravam para assassiná-lo, o que ele não ignorava.
No início de dezembro daquele ano de 1916, Rasputin enviou a Nicolau II uma carta profética: Czar de todas as Rússias, tenho o pressentimento de que até o final do ano eu deixarei este mundo. Serei assassinado, já não estarei entre vós. Se eu for morto por gente do povo, gente como eu, tu não tens nada a temer, continuarás no trono. Mas, se eu for morto por nobres, as mãos deles ficarão manchadas pelo meu sangue. Eles se odiarão e matarão uns aos outros. Dentro de 25 anos não restará um único nobre neste país. Nenhum parente teu, nenhum de teus filhos sobreviverá mais de dois anos. O povo russo dará cabo de todos. Assim, depois que eu desaparecer, tem cuidado, pensa bem, protege-te. Diz a todos os teus que derramei meu sangue por eles. Reza, reza, sê forte, pensa em tua família.
Alguns dias depois, em 29 de dezembro de 1916, um telefonema anônimo avisou Rasputin de um perigo iminente, mas sem mais detalhes. Um pouco mais tarde, Protopopov, ministro do Interior, foi pessoalmente pedir que ele se trancasse em casa. Tudo em vão, pois à meia-noite, o místico se vestiu e se perfumou para sair.
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Uma noitada social aguardava o enjeitado filho de camponeses no palácio Iussupov, o ambiente mais luxuoso de Petrogrado (atual São Petersburgo). O carro do próprio príncipe Félix Iussupov foi buscá-lo em casa para o programa: conhecer sua casa e sua jovem esposa, Irina; em seguida, os três buscariam diversão fora dali, com os ciganos. Era uma armadilha. Na realidade, Irina estava em Ialta, na Crimeia. O príncipe havia organizado uma farsa. No salão do primeiro andar, um fonógrafo tocava árias de dança, como se a dona da casa estivesse dando uma recepção para a alta sociedade local. Na verdade, ali estavam somente os quatro cúmplices do príncipe: o grão-duque Dimitri Pavlovitch, o deputado Purichkevitch, o tenente Sukhotin e o médico Lazovert. Para produzir o som de vozes femininas, eles tinham convocado Marianna Defelden, parente de Dimitri, e Vera Karalli, bailarina do balé Bolshoi. [...] [Havia] Docinhos envenenados com cianureto de potássio pelo doutor Lazovert. Também havia veneno em dois dos quatro copos - para que não houvesse chance de erro na dose.
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Ele [Rasputin] gostava de vinho, pediu para ser servido novamente. Iussupov conseguiu então dar a ele um dos dois copos que continham veneno. Rasputin bebeu de um só gole, sem perceber nem gosto nem cheiro suspeito. E nada aconteceu. Aterrorizado, Iussupov desculpou-se e subiu ao primeiro andar, para avisar seus cúmplices que o veneno não fazia efeito: Rasputin tinha seguramente parte com o diabo.
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O príncipe desceu novamente, com uma arma escondida. [...] Empunhou a arma e acertou-o no peito. Com um grito, Rasputin desabou no chão. Ao ouvir o ruído, os quatro cúmplices entraram correndo e levaram o corpo do infeliz, em convulsão, até o pátio. Antes de irem jogar o corpo no rio, os quatro voltaram ao primeiro andar, para se despedir das duas senhoras e avisá-las de que o crime estava consumado. [...] Para ter um álibi, matou com um tiro na boca seu cachorro mais fiel, para o caso de alguém declarar posteriormente ter ouvido estampidos de armas.
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Na pressa, esqueceram de pesos que fizessem o cadáver afundar. Dois dias depois, a 200 metros da ponte, surgiu o morto coberto de gelo e horrivelmente mutilado. Mais surpreendente eram suas mãos: estavam erguidas, como se tentassem se soltar das cordas. A autópsia revelou a presença de água nos pulmões, prova de que apesar do veneno, das balas e dos golpes que sofrera, ainda respirava quando foi jogado na água. Morreu afogado e de frio.
Toda a cidade soube então da morte do místico. Uma multidão acorreu ao local, munida de baldes e garrafas, para pegar a água que tinha estado em contato com seu corpo, como que para recolher uma parcela de sua força sobrenatural. A polícia identificou rapidamente os assassinos. Na alta sociedade as pessoas comemoraram a vitória da "pátria" sobre o suposto traidor, mas o povo passou a vê-lo como mártir - o homem vindo da miséria, que defendia os interesses dos pobres junto ao czar, assassinado pela nobreza. Para a czarina, foi uma tragédia: ela perdia aquele em quem depositava toda a sua confiança, um homem de Deus, aquele que lhe dava segurança. Alexandra viu nas mãos erguidas do morto um presságio sinistro: tudo desmoronaria na Rússia. Tinha razão. Um ano e meio depois, na madrugada de 16 para 17 de julho de 1918, ela foi assassinada pelos bolcheviques, assim como seu marido e seus cinco filhos. Nicolau II não era tolo. Ficou horrorizado com as circunstâncias do assassinato. Todavia sabia que, se aquele tipo de processo evoluísse publicamente, seu prestígio político e seu trono correriam perigo. Mandou expulsar os assassinos da cidade e ordenou o encerramento das investigações.
O APOCALIPSE SEGUNDO O MAGO
Aos 19 anos, Rasputin se casou com uma camponesa e teve com ela cinco filhos. Seis anos depois, acreditou ver a Virgem Maria no campo. Um eremita o aconselhou a ir ao monte Atos, na Grécia. Ele abandonou a família, partindo em uma peregrinação que duraria mais de dez meses. Viveu da caridade e fez paradas em mosteiros, onde adquiriu parco conhecimento da escrita e um verniz suficiente para se fazer passar por religioso. Foi assim que cresceu pouco a pouco sua reputação de sábio e de curandeiro. Mas havia também uma vida mística secreta a envolver Rasputin. Ele frequentava reuniões dos khlysty, seguidores de uma seita que associava erotismo e religião.
Depois de ouvir dizer que o imperador e a imperatriz eram excessivamente ocidentalizados, ele quis conhecê-los e iniciá-los no que seria "a verdadeira alma russa". Em 1904, munido da carta de recomendação de um bispo, foi para São Petersburgo e impressionou a grã-duquesa Anastácia, que o apresentou à família imperial. Como sabia que o herdeiro Alexis era hemofílico, Rasputin pôs suas mãos sobre o garoto e mandou que fossem jogados fora os remédios que tomava - aspirina, cujo efeito anticoagulante era desconhecido na época. A criança, claro, melhorou.
Três anos mais tarde, Alexis teve crises de hemorragia interna, que os médicos não conseguiam controlar. Rasputin foi chamado, benzeu a família imperial e se pôs a orar. Ao cabo de dez minutos, disse: "Abre teus olhos, meu filho." E o menino despertou, sorridente. Rapidamente, sua saúde melhorou. Encantada, a imperatriz delegou-lhe grandes poderes políticos. Ele assinava e transmitia petições de promoções e nomeações. Não cobrava dos pobres, dos ricos pedia somas razoáveis, e das mulheres, favores sexuais.
Tinha horror à guerra. Assim, em 1914, suplicou ao czar que a Rússia ficasse fora da Primeira Guerra Mundial. "Tu és o czar, o pai de teu povo. Não deixes que os lunáticos triunfem, te destruam a ti e a teu povo. (...) Nós nos afogaremos em sangue. Grande desastre e miséria infinita", escreveu ao czar. Fiel a sua aliança com a França, Nicolau II enviou suas tropas. O que veio depois da grande crise decorrente da guerra foi a revolução de 1917, que lhe custou a vida e a de sua família.
Fonte:
http://www2.uol.com.br/historiaviva/artigos/rasputin_se_recusa_a_morrer.html
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx2zMUCsdM0
http://www.changingthetimes.net/samples/ww1/could_rasputin_have_prevented_th.htm
Jogos modernos
Foi na brumosa data de 393 d.C. que ocorreram pela última vez os chamados Jogos da Antiguidade.
Depois de um significativo hiato, em 1896 foram realizados em Atenas os primeiros Jogos Olímpicos da era moderna.
A imensa expectativa pelo evento explodiu numa retórica em que não faltaram estilhaços como "Nova Era", "confraternização", "estímulo de aproximação entre os povos". Palavreado ambicioso que casava bem com aquela época vertiginosa de avenidas rasgadas por bondes elétricos, proliferação de telefones, malucos projetando máquinas voadoras e a recente coqueluche do cinematógrafo.
Um dos competidores, o jovem ciclista francês Léon Flameng teve um desempenho nada menos que brilhante, abarcando três medalhas (ouro, prata e bronze) em diferentes modalidades. Dezoito anos depois, Léon participaria de outro acontecimento, esse também uma disputa acirrada, esse também muito citado como divisor de águas: Primeira Guerra Mundial.
O impiedoso jogo da guerra moderna fora inaugurado. Um brutal choque de realidade que esmagou a crença absurda de que o progresso científico e empreendedor cedo ou tarde traria a reboque o progresso ético e moral.
Um dos esportes presentes na olimpíada de 1896 foi a natação. Um fenômeno conhecido e temido pelos nadadores e mergulhadores é a embolia gasosa, a obstrução dos vasos sanguíneos causada por bolhas de nitrogênio, geralmente decorrentes da expansão do ar nos pulmões com a diminuição brusca da pressão durante uma subida rápida à superfície.
Uma parte da geração da virada dos séculos XIX-XX era um nadador submerso nas profundezas do otimismo irresponsável, da húbris. E que de repente saiu afoito dando braçadas até a superfície, achando que lá estaria a Panaceia, a Resposta a todas as suas inquietações, finalmente conseguida por meio de avanços do intelectualismo cético e da tecnologia. Acabou vítima de uma embolia em forma de crise armada internacional.
As olimpíadas de 1916 foram canceladas por causa das hostilidades. O pedaleiro talentoso e soldado Léon Flameng foi morto em combate em 1917.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Uq5amGfBg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fin_de_siècle
http://www.aeragon.com/first-modern-war/first-modern-war-defined.html
GERMANY
In analyzing why major peace initiatives occurred, it is best to consider them in two distinct time periods: those from 1914 through 1916 and, secondly, those from early 1917 through early 1918. In the first time frame, Germany and the United States were the chief actors in trying to get some kind of peace talks going. In Germany's case, its chief efforts were initially directed at France and especially Russia. Driven by their failure to achieve a decisive military victory in the first few weeks of the war and their concern that they could not win a long war against a united Allied coalition, German officials made contact with various French dissident figures from late 1914 through 1916, suggesting that France could have peace in exchange for giving Germany a war indemnity and perhaps colonial concessions. They especially focused on politicians close to ex-Minister President Joseph Caillaux, who they thought opposed the war and the existing French political system. The initiative for a separate peace with Russia likewise began in late 1914 and continued into 1915, peaking in late June and July. German leaders sent out peace offers to Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia through Hans Niels Andersen, a shipping magnate and confidant of Christian X, King of Denmark, as well as to Russian ex-Premier Count Sergei Witte, who was rumored to be pro-German. Germany's Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg assured the Russians that Germany wanted "only small concessions in order to protect our eastern border, as well as financial and commercial treaties." Germany pursued still other contacts through family connections of the Tsar, stating that the Central Powers would allow Russia free passage of the Straits in exchange for peace.
Germany's approach toward peace negotiations took a new turn in late 1916. On 12 December, declaring that the Central Powers "have given proof of their indestructible strength in winning considerable successes at war," Germany and its allies publicly called for peace negotiations with their enemies, stating no specific conditions or demands. On its surface, this peace note appeared based on Germany's confidence in its military position. In reality, the calculations behind it were more complicated. Bethmann, the chief proponent of the initiative in the German government, thought time was not on Germany's side in the war. At home, Germany's largest political party, the Social Democrats (SPD), broke apart over supporting war credits in late 1914, and its majority faction, while still behind the war effort, increasingly demanded assurances that Germany wanted peace and fought only in self-defense, not for conquest. Germany's chief ally, Austria-Hungary, also seemed weak and demoralized and, while Germany's armies occupied enemy territory in the east and west, the Reich faced an Allied coalition with superior resources and a naval blockade that was slowly strangling Germany's economy. Desperate to break the military stalemate, German military and naval leaders were anxious to begin unrestricted submarine warfare, a course Bethmann feared would bring the United States and possibly other neutrals into the war on the Allied side. Bethmann's peace initiative aimed to relieve all of these domestic and international pressures on the Reich. If the Allies accepted Germany's peace offer, unrestricted submarine warfare could be averted and negotiations would be based on the existing status quo, which heavily favored Germany. If they refused, which was likely, the Allies would be responsible for prolonging the war, not Germany. This would rally leftist Germans to the war effort and invigorate Austria-Hungary's determination to fight. By highlighting Germany's desires for peace and Allied intransigence, an Allied rejection of Germany's peace offer might also increase the chances of neutral nations, including the United States, tolerating Germany's unleashing of its submarines. Finally, Bethmann expected that a refusal by the Allies to negotiate would spur antiwar sentiment in France and Russia, which might advance another effort to convince one or both of those countries to sign a separate peace with the Reich.
THE UNITED STATES
Very different motives lay behind the other major peace efforts of 1914-1916, those of President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. The President early on saw himself as a potential mediator of the war. He repeatedly tried to prod the Germans and the British into a discussion of peace terms, usually on the basis of roughly the status quo ante bellum and postwar disarmament. On two occasions, in early 1915 and then again in early 1916, he sent his chief foreign policy advisor, Colonel Edward M. House to Europe for face to face meetings with British, German, and French leaders, trying to find an avenue for wider talks or an opening for an American demand that hostilities cease. In May 1916, Wilson publicly endorsed U.S. participation in a postwar international security organization as a way to entice the belligerents into welcoming a U.S. mediation initiative. He followed this gambit up in December with a formal call for the belligerents to state the exact objects for which they fought and then, in January 1917, gave an impassioned plea that the war end with a "peace without victory" and the establishment of a "League of Peace" that would include the United States.
Wilson's desire to mediate an end to the war arose in part from his conception of America's role in the world. The president deeply believed that the United States had a unique character among nations. Its exceptionalism, he argued, lay in the success of its democratic political system; its embracing of equality of opportunity for its citizens; its diverse population drawn from a wide variety of nations; and, lastly, its lack of territorial ambition and its detachment from the immediate causes of the war. These peculiarities, Wilson felt, made the United States a force for world progress; it had a "mission in the world... a mission of peace and goodwill." If any country could and should bring the war to an end, it was the United States.
Wilson's view of U.S. national security also underlay his mediation efforts. He perceived that the longer the war went on, the more likely it was that the United States would get drawn into it, especially because of frictions with Germany over its submarine warfare. More basically, Wilson thought that balance-of-power politics had caused the war and that if power politics persisted after the war ended, eventually the United States would get caught up in its currents. The president was convinced that if either side of belligerents won a decisive victory, they would continue the arms races, alliances, and secret diplomacy that had fundamentally caused the war in the first place. Sooner or later, another global conflict would occur - and, Wilson warned his countrymen in October 1916, "this is the last war of the kind, or of any kind that involves the world, that the United States can keep out of." By ending the war with the aims of each side frustrated. Wilson hoped the belligerents could be made to see that power politics had produced nothing but disaster and that the security of all nations, including the United States, would be best served through the creation of a new system of collective security, institutionalized in a league of nations.
Fonte:
http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/peace_initiatives
Mais:
A Paz
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