Last Day; Alexander Graham Bell

Sunday, July 16, 2017
Today was mostly a travel day with a couple of stops, as we wind our way back to Halifax for the trip home tomorrow.
Our first stop was at the Alexander Graham Bell site in Baddeck, Nova Scotia.  Bell, born in Scotland, came to Baddeck in 1885 and lived here most of the year for 37 years.  We know him for the telephone but he was so much more.  His life-long passion was working to better the lives of deaf people, and much of his work revolved around that goal.  He was a friend of Helen Keller.  But beyond working with and for the deaf, he was a relentlessly innovative scientist.  This site and museum explain all of that.
I’ll focus on a couple of things he worked on.  He was a pioneer in the development of the hydrofoil, and built many.  A full-size one is here, powered by two giant airplane engines:



He worked very hard in the development of flying machines, collaborating with a number of people including Glenn Curtis, and their machines ultimately were tried in Hammondsport, NY.  But he also had a strong belief that kites might be useful in powered flight, and he experimented with many kite designs here, including ones with engines.

Bell was a pioneer of space-frame construction, long before it was generally accepted.  Here’s a photo of a tower he built in 1907, a full 30 years before the techniques were widely adapted:

To me, however, the most intriguing small exhibit was this one, of eight different propellers ranging from 10 degrees angle to 80 degrees:

The reason I like this display so much is that, to me, it speaks to a way of thinking.  Bell didn’t have the mathematics to work out propeller design, but rather was an experimentalist who built eight different propellers and tested them.  We have a truly world-famous physicist on the trip with us named Wally Greenberg (he worked at Princeton with such luminaries as Oppenheimer and Einstein, and discovered some of the properties of quarks).  I asked Wally if the mathematics to do propeller design existed in Bell’s time, and he assured me that it did.  This led to a substantial discussion with him about theorists vs. experimentalists and the different ways they approached problems.  Bell clearly was an experimentalist who had no need for the mathematics of the things he studied.  Very pragmatically, he tried out what seemed like it would work best and got results—witness the trial of eight different angles for the blades of a propeller.  That is reflected in the displays at the site, where there is no mention of calculations, mathematics, or any non-hands-on way of approaching problems.
After the Bell site we drove on, had lunch, and wound up at the end of the drive at a 19th century preserved village, with many buildings devoted to carpentry and woodworking, blacksmithing, weaving, etc.  There was a very well-done display of the development of tools.  The whole place was reminiscent of the Genesee Country Village and Museum in Mumford, NY, just outside of Rochester.
We’ve had a final dinner together tonight and tomorrow will drive the short distance to the Halifax airport and start home.  Unless we have a major problem on United Airlines again, this will be the final post in this blog.  

Thanks for traveling with us, and thanks to everyone who send notes and comments.

Comments

  1. xctravelerJuly 16, 2017 at 6:47 PM

    I feel breathless at the pace of this trip and the "skimming the high points" sense I get from your posts. We have not been to the Alexander Graham Museum in at least 20 years (before motorhome) and am thinking I would like to spend several hours there next week when we are in the neighborhood. Also have a list of local music performances daily which we hope to partake of. Of course Fuel won't be there, darn! Hope your return to Rochester is uneventful.

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  2. Ralph P. LockeJuly 16, 2017 at 6:56 PM

    What a wonderful end to your trip (and to our vicarious travel "with" you)! Bell sounds like he was amazing, working things out concretely, patiently, systematically. I can see that that might produce results that are at least as satisfying as as figuring things out intellectually/mathematically. I certainly know that I have very little "theory" behind most of what I do in life--for whatever that is worth..... I mostly stumble through, trying to notice what has worked and what hasn't.

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    Replies
    1. Victor PoleshuckJuly 17, 2017 at 2:57 AM

      Of course, today no one works that way in aviation, right? Before a new airplane is built, it's flight characteristics are known by computer modeling. It sure saves a lot of trial and error.

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