Writer Archives - Harlan Epstein

Take Back The Rains

A state-wide awareness campaign about Nestlé’s water use

Amazon: Echo

a public art experience
about who is listening, and who is being listened to

Learnest

A set of essays for use in a collection of educational posters

this website

a public art experience
about who is listening, and who is being listened to

The Evolution of Telephonics

Although there is now evidence of such objects dating from upwards of a thousand years ago, the Lover’s Telephone (1), consisting of two hollowed cups connected by string, was introduced to the West in 1667.

Invented by Robert Hooke, an English scientist famous for pioneering microscopy and coining the word ‘cell’ in the context of biology, this was technically the first telephone, although it was only ever really used as a curio.

The early history of telephony is a tangle of patent claims and copyright lawsuits; in short, while the telephone would not exist without the innovations of many unsung 19th century engineers worldwide, it was American inventor Alexander Graham Bell’s 1876 patent that won out in the end: Bell’s Liquid Telephone (2) was the prototype on which the first ever intelligible words (Bell, to his assistant: “Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you.”) were spoken by telephone, and the next year, in 1877, his Bell Box Model (3) was the first telephone to be commercially available.

The Bell Telephone Company was also created in 1877 and, by 1886, more than 150,000 Americans owned a telephone. However, talking to an operator every time you wanted to call someone was time consuming and, as Almon Brown Strowger discovered, sometimes bad for business: Strowger, an undertaker in Pennsylvania, found out that his only competitor’s wife worked as a local switchboard operator and was routing all Strowger’s calls to her husband. Instead of just getting angry, he invented the rotary dial. His first commercial model, the 11 digit Potbelly Dial Candlestick (4), was released in 1905.

The Bell Telephone Company (later rebranded as AT&T) drove the progress of telephony for decades, even when it was late to the party: the dial, for instance, though invented in 1905, did not gain popularity until it was added to a Bell phone in 1921. In 1927, Bell’s subsidiary Western Electric released the Model 102 (5), the first widely distributed telephone that featured the transmitter and receiver in a common handset; previous transmitters had been movement-sensitive, needing to stay vertical to function.

Similar to the rotary dial, push-button dialling took a few decades after its invention to gain popularity.

The Bell Model 1500 (6) was the first phone to introduce residential customers to ‘Touch-Tone’ in 1963, yet it wasn’t until the 1980’s that they became the norm. The technology behind ‘Touch-Tone’ (dual-tone multi-frequency signalling) is the basis for the dialling system on all modern phones.

With the telephone becoming ubiquitous to the point that it was almost a necessity, mobile telephony was only a matter of time; before the 1970’s, it was limited to phones installed in, for instance, cars, but in 1973 Motorola produced the DynaTac, their first handheld mobile phone prototype. More than a decade later in 1984 Motorola released the DynaTAC 8000X (7), the first commercially available handheld mobile phone. 25cm tall without its aerial, and weighing over 750g, this behemoth allowed for a call of only about 30 minutes, and required ten hours of charging. Despite this, and its near $4,000 price-tag, waiting lists were in the thousands.

The years brought increased demand for mobile telephones, and newly-built cellular services followed, becaming more and more advanced. The original analog system was replaced with a second generation (nicknamed 2G), a digital cellular system. One of the companies that propelled this shift towards the new global standard was Nokia, who developed the first 2G network along with Siemens in the 1980s, and released the first 2G phone in 1992. In 2003, Nokia released what is now both its most iconic product and the most purchased phone handset in world history, the Nokia 1100 (8).

With mobile telephony’s takeover imminent, the industry was hungry to find new innovations in the field. The 1990’s had brought the advent of multi-function PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), but these had a generally limited popularity due to their high price and low battery life compared to other, simpler phones. Although Palm and Blackberry found success with their attempts in the early-to-mid 2000’s, it pales in comparison to the innovative eruption that was the 2007 iPhone (9). Apple’s first foray into telephony, the multifaceted iPhone was the first harbinger of a new technological revolution that shows no signs of slowing.

The Evolution of Car Travel

There had been attempts at a ‘horseless carriage’ before 1885, some steam-powered and some even electrical..

…but that was the year that the German Benz Patent-Motorwagen (1), powered by an internal combustion engine, became the first car in public use, with only twenty-five ever produced.

Indeed, the first electrical car considered practical enough to be produced came almost a decade later in 1894, in the form of English engineer Thomas Parker’s Electric Car (2). Although about a third of the cars on the road in 1900 were powered by electricity, as speed and distance became more important their practicality soon dropped away.

These innovations aside, when most of us think of early automobiles, our first thought is 1908’s Ford Model T (3), the first truly mass-produced vehicle, invented by American tycoon Henry Ford. Its 19 year production run (during which 15 million were sold) remains the longest in automobile history, and its relative affordability opened up domesticated travel to the public.

That said, a Model T’s controls would be very foreign even to the most seasoned modern driver; the first widely available automobile with ‘conventional’ controls (a gear-shift, and traditional pedals) was the Austin Seven (4), originating in England in 1922. Its arrival on the British market made an instant change, replacing most other British economy cars of the early 1920s, and prompting it to be licensed and copied by other automobile companies globally.

Pioneering the mass production of both four-wheel independent suspension and front-wheel drive, the French 1934 Citroen Traction Avant (5) also exemplified a shift in the aesthetics of automobiles, moving them away from a chariot/carriage design and towards a new era of aerodynamic streamlining.

Volkswagen is German for ‘The People’s Car’, so it should come as no surprise that the original VW was envisioned as a car accessible to all. With this objective in mind, in 1938 Ferdinand Porsche designed the cheaply and easily mass-producible Volkswagen Beetle (6), which quickly became the most popular car in Nazi Germany. The Beetle is the most-manufactured car ever made, with 21.5 million produced (all models included).

Before 1945, off-road vehicles were exclusively available for military endeavours. Enter American automobile company Willys-Overland, and the CJ-2A (7). Modelled after their Willys Jeep, one of the allied forces’ greatest assets in WWII, the CJ-2A was the first mass-produced off-road vehicle, and jumpstarted an industry of agricultural and industrial vehicles.

Fifteen years later in 1959 came the English Morris Mini-Minor (8), another revolutionary of mass production. With its space-saving layout, this first ancestor of the modern mini allowed 80% of the area of the car’s floorpan to be used for passengers and luggage, influencing a generation of car makers.

At this point, cars had expanded from being prohibitively expensive status symbols to affordable transportation necessities. 1964 brought the American Ford Mustang (9), the first family-type ‘sedan’ car to marry the style and practicality of both of the market’s extremes.

The world’s first ‘supercar’ (high-performance sports car), the Italian Lamborghini Miura (10), came in 1966, and brought along with its high speeds of upwards of 276 km/h (171 mph) a trend of sleek, beautiful sports cars, and a seating layout that would become the standard for decades to come.

1969 saw the introduction of the English Range Rover (11), the forefather of the modern SUV. With a smooth off-road drive to rival the Willys CJ-2A, this car also drove comfortably on-road, the first of its kind to do so. The Range Rover was even shown in the Louvre in Paris as an “exemplary work of industrial design”.

Early warnings that fossil fuels were damaging to the environment renewed interest in an electrically-powered car and, in 1996, American behemoth General Motors came out with their GM EV-1 (12), the first mass-produced electric vehicle of the modern era from a major automaker. Although it was not very popular, it inspired a shift towards renewable fuels.

This shift continued with the next year’s Toyota Prius (13), the first production car to implement hybrid technology. The first to prove their viability, this Japanese car (whose name is derived from ‘prior’, latin for ‘before’) is credited as the precursor to a new era of fuel-efficient vehicles.

2009 saw Google create their first prototype of a fully automated vehicle, the Firefly (14), built expressly to demonstrate the abilities of Google’s automation technology. Completing the world’s first fully automated car ride (without controls or human backup) in 2015, it was retired in 2017 in favour of retrofitting cars built by automakers like Chrysler and Audi with sensors and automation.

The Evolution of Space Travel

The story of space exploration is remarkable not only for its great innovations and achievements, but for the speed with which these innovations have arrived:

Only 41 years after the Wright Brothers’ first successful manned flight in an airplane, in 1944 the German V-2 Rocket (1) became the first rocket to cross the Karman Line, leaving our atmosphere and officially entering outer space. 25 years after that, humans would be on the moon.

It is hard to overstate the surprise of the rest of the world upon the news that the Soviet Union had successfully launched Sputnik 1 (2), the first ever artificial satellite of the earth. Western newspapers at the time expressed the conflicting feelings of excitement at humanity’s advancement and terror at the prospect of a communist country being a leader in technology. This fear was so great within the US government that it triggered the creation of NASA within the year.

While NASA was certainly innovating in its own ways, Russia continued to beat the US to many aeronautical milestones: The first animals and plants to return alive to earth were sent by the Soviets, and, in 1961, three months after the US sent the first hominid into space (a chimpanzee called ‘Ham’) Russia sent Yuri Gagarin up in the Vostok 1 (3), making him the first man in space. Many at the time saw this as a major blow to NASA, even though American astronaut Alan Shepard performed the first complete space flight (landing the craft with himself in it) just a month later.

Soon after these early victories, the Russian government’s main focus turned towards the moon. This, in turn, led to US President John F Kennedy’s famous 1962 “We choose to go to the Moon” speech, in which he promised that the US would land on the moon by the decade’s end. For four years, both sides tried and failed to land their crafts on the moon intact, but in 1966, Russia would once again claim victory when the Luna 9 (4) landed on the moon, the first craft to do so without crashing.

President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 made the lunar exploration mission something of a memorial to him, and failure less of an option than ever. In 1969, their tireless efforts finally paid off, and NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, powered by the Saturn V Rocket (5), landed humans on the moon for the first time, making celebrities of its crew: Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins.

With a US flag stuck into the moon, the Space Race was all but over, but that didn’t stop the USSR from creating Lunokhod 1 (6), the first lunar rover, the very next year (1970). Two years later, in 1972, NASA launched Pioneer 10 (7), the first human-made craft to leave the solar system. These innovations notwithstanding, the next five years showed the competition between the two nations’ space teams fading, as America pulled ahead with innovations in space stations and exploratory craft.

Having been planned and funded as early as 1970, the Hubble Space Telescope (8) was delayed for decades by everything from technological roadblocks and budget worries to the Challenger shuttle disaster of 1986. Finally, in 1990, Hubble was launched into space by Space Shuttle Discovery, becoming the first space telescope ever, and has been sending stunning photographs back to Earth ever since.

NASA branched out in a number of directions after their successful moon missions, including a host of expeditions into both Earth’s orbit and deep space, but no direction so vehemently as the exploration of Mars. NASA had many successes on Mars with flybys and landers, but none demonstrated the great strides taken in the prior decades as clearly as 1996’s Sojourner Rover (9), the first operational rover to land on another planet.

1998 saw the beginning of construction on what would become the largest manmade object in space: the International Space Station (10). Originally an American project entitled ‘Space Station Freedom’, budget concerns and cuts led to its evolution into an international mission, with continued contributions from the USA, Russia, Japan, Canada, and the European Space Agency.

In recent years NASA, once a powerhouse of human spaceflight, has been losing public interest and funding. Unfortunate as this is, it has had the benefit of making room for other space programs, including the Indian Space Research Organisation, whose launch of 104 satellites in a single rocket created a world record in 2017, and the China National Space Administration, which became the first to land a craft, the Chang’e 4 (11), on the dark side of the moon in 2019.

The 21st century has also brought new possibilities of private space travel: some, like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, envision trips into Earth’s orbit for the personal enjoyment of those very very few with the resources to buy a ticket, while the mission for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose ‘Falcon 9’ (12) was the first reusable orbital rocket, is the eventual colonisation of Mars.

The Evolution of Artificial Lighting

While most mammals are only awake for 8 hours per day, fire allowed for the shifting of our circadian rhythms, giving humans a 16-hour waking day, and contributing greatly to the speed of our advancement.

The control of Fire (1), estimated to have occurred 125,000 years ago, was a turning point in human evolution for a number of reasons, from its heat which allowed us to survive harsh weather to the protection it offered from wild animals. However, the artificial light it also provided is credited with giving humans one of their main advantages over most other mammals: a longer waking day.

Many anthropologists believe that primitive versions of the Oil Lamp (2) may have been in use as early as 70,000 years ago. The oldest discovered oil lamp was found in a cave believed to have been inhabited 10,000-15,000 years ago, but oil lamps continued to be used practically until the 1800s, and are used in religious ceremonies to this day.

Candle (3) making was developed independently in many places throughout history. The Ancient Greeks are believed to have been the first to discover it, using them to honour the goddess Artemis on the sixth day of every lunar month. (Incidentally, this is believed by some to be the reason we blow out candles on our birthdays.) The Romans began making the kinds of candles we would recognise, dipped candles, around 500 BC, although wick-lit oil lamps were still their main source of light.

For millennia, candles and oil lamps were all that was available for illumination. Innovations and advancements were certainly made, from the chandelier to the cotton wick, but Aimé Argand’s was the most notable. Invented in 1780, the Argand Lamp (4) was a kind of oil lamp with an output at least 6 times as bright as a candle, much brighter than earlier oil lamps. A quick success, it became the main lighting appliance for almost a century.

William Murdoch’s invention of the Gas Lamp (5) in 1792 brought artificial lighting into line with the Industrial Age, allowing the controlled illumination of streets, factories, and theatres which had been previously very difficult to light. Gas lighting continued to be used in streetlights up until the early 1900s, when the growing popularity of electric lighting finally took over.

The Arc Lamp (6), so-called for its lighting mechanism of an electric arc between two carbon electrodes, was invented in the early 1800s by Humphry Davy, but its use only became widespread starting in the 1870s as a replacement for gas streetlights. Arc lighting was replaced in the early 20th century by the much less volatile incandescent lightbulb.

Ignacy Łukasiewicz invented the modern Kerosene Lamp (7) in 1853, following the discovery of petroleum refinement, which created a lamp fuel cheaper than gas and oil called kerosene. Kerosene lamps of this design are still extensively used in unelectrified areas, and both the cost and the dangers of combustion are a continuing concern in many countries.

One of the great debates in the history of science surrounds the Incandescent Lightbulb (8), specifically whose invention it truly was; many people would answer Thomas Edison, broadly considered to be the grandfather of electric lighting. However, Edison’s lightbulb was a culmination of many decades of other discoveries, including an 1800 demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the electric battery after whom voltage is named. Whoever invented it, the incandescent lightbulb changed almost every aspect of human life, and is still used worldwide, in spite of an environmentalist push to phase them out.

When the element Neon was discovered, in 1898, it was quickly discovered to be the perfect gas for a preexisting novelty of the time, the Geissler Tube. Named for Heinrich Geissler, these were glass tubes full of a gas that, when electricity was applied, gave off different coloured lights depending on which gas was inside. Neon, unlike the previous gases, lasted much longer in these tubes, and emitted much brighter light, giving rise to what we now know as Neon Lighting (9).

Neon lighting’s success led to similar innovations with other chemicals, most notably mercury vapour, which fluoresces when exposed to electricity. A Fluorescent Tube (10) is a glass tube of mercury vapour, a gas that, when exposed to electricity, causes a phosphor coating to produce visible light. Invented at American industrial giant General Electric in 1937, by 1951 the country was lit more by fluorescent light than incandescent, and most of the world soon followed.

The Halogen Lamp (11) is a high intensity incandescent lamp that, due to its small size and high output, is used in things like car headlights, motion picture projectors and the heating-elements in electric ceramic cooktops. They are used sparingly for the same ecological reasons as their regular incandescent counterparts.

Based on theoretical work by Albert Einstein, bolstered by studies by scientists at Bell Laboratory, and with a name coined by a graduate student at Columbia University, the LASER (12) (originally an acronym: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) is another invention built upon the work of multiple unrelated parties. Even stranger, the first laser was built by none of these parties, but by scientist Theodore H Maiman in 1960.

Although electroluminescence was discovered in the early 20th century, and was studied throughout, the Light Emitting Diode (13) as we know it today was invented in 1961, first only emitting infrared light, and then visible red light a year later. As the technology advanced, LEDs were invented that could emit white light, and their output and efficiency rose to the point that, as of 1995, they have been increasingly used as replacements for incandescent and fluorescent lighting.

Compact Fluorescent Lamps (14), or CFLs, were invented in 1976 specifically for energy saving purposes. Although they are 75% more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, and last up to 10 times longer, they are still fluorescent, and the mercury they contain makes them less eco-friendly than modern LED lamps.

The Evolution of Airplanes

Humanity had been flying for more than 100 years by 1903, starting with the Montgolfiers’ hot air balloon in 1783...

… but it was an American brother team, Wilbur and Orville Wright, who built the Wright Flyer (1), marking the first successful manned flight in a heavier-than-air craft, and inspiring generations of aeronautic engineers.

One of those heavily influenced by this boom was Igor Sikorsky, a Russian engineer who would eventually become a great innovator both of helicopters and intercontinental airliners.

In 1914, a 25-year-old Sikorsky built the plane that established his reputation. A more refined and practical version of his earlier plane ‘Russkiy Vitaz’, the Il’ya Muromets (2) was the first mass-marketed multi-engined aircraft. Becoming prevalent as both a luxury liner and as a bomber, it established his reputation as an innovator, and anticipated decades of aeronautic development trends.

Even after WW1 aeronautics were still largely a novelty for the general public. However, with the arrival of the Douglas DC-3 (3) in 1936 a gruelling 25-hour journey across its native US that had required three planes and many more stops became a single-plane, 15-hour trip with just three stops. The DC-3 is considered the first plane able to make money carrying passengers.

The Second World War elevated more than a few planes to the status of ‘icon’ – the British Spitfire and the German Messerschmitt, for instance – but none was so groundbreaking as American aviation company Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress (4): Most famous perhaps for delivering the final blow to Japan at the end of the war, the Superfortress, introduced in 1944, was fitted with many ahead-of-its-time technological advancements. Five years later, in 1949, it was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping.

The Superfortress was also the mother ship of numerous other experimental aircraft, including the Bell X-1 (5), the first ever of the X-planes, a series of experimental United States aircraft and rockets, used to test and evaluate new technologies and aerodynamic concepts. X-planes are still being created and experimented with. Manned by American paragon Chuck Yeager in 1946, the X-1 was the first plane to break the sound barrier.

As air travel grew increasingly ubiquitous, the focus of its innovations began to change: In late 1957, the CIA and Lockheed began work on the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (6) which is still today the world’s fastest airplane, with a top speed of Mach 3.3 (over 2,200 mph). These days, however, it has been supplanted as the spy craft of choice by unmanned drones.

A few years later, on the other side of the Atlantic, the British created the world’s first vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) combat aeroplane to enter operational service, the Hawker Siddeley Harrier (7). Though helicopters had existed for decades, the Harrier brought new velocity to VTOL craft.

Around the same time, Boeing were working on what would become the original ‘jumbo jet’, the Boeing 747 (8). Aided by its upper-deck which gave it its signature hump, the 747 held the passenger capacity record for 37 years (276 passengers), now held by the Airbus A380-800 (835 passengers).

While the Russian Tupolev Tu-144 beat the French Concorde (9) into flight by two months, a huge marketing push, which ranged from international advertising campaigns to an ill-conceived 1979 action film starring, among others, Academy Award-winner George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke), helped make Concorde the longer-enduring of the only two supersonic jets ever to carry commercial passengers.

Most planes have historically been used either for war or transportation, but there are some that are marketed to individual pilots and hobbyists. The most famous of these is the American Cessna 172 (10). Released in 1956, this four-seater is the highest selling plane of all time at more than 43,000 units sold, and can be found in most small airports and flight-training schools around the world.

In home-plane-building circles, VanGrunsven is a hallowed name. Van’s Aircraft RV-3 (11), launched a 70’s boom of kit-built single-seater craft; these days, the number of VanGrunsven-designed homebuilt aircraft produced each year in North America exceeds the combined production of all other commercial general aviation companies.

The Evolution of Rail Travel

Though trains as we know them now came millennia later, the first evidence of crude rails dates to 600 BC, used by the Ancient Greeks to aid animal-drawn carts.

The oldest existing railway in the world is the Reisszug (1), a cable railway first documented by a visitor to Salzburg’s Hohensalzburg Castle in the late 15th century, built for easier movement of supplies up the steep hill upon which the castle sits. Still in use today, it now runs via an electric motor, rather than the physical labour (both human and animal) it used until 1910.

Similar to rails, steam had its own history in machinery before trains; Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine was first introduced in 1712, powering water pumps to quickly dry out previously unworkable mines. Although a litany of engineers internationally upgraded, added to, and found new applications for the engine over the course of the coming decades, sparking what would become known as the British Industrial Revolution, it was almost 80 years until the debut of steam locomotion.

Although his vehicles were built for road, English engineer Richard Trevithick is widely considered a forbearer of steam locomotives and therefore of rail travel. His Puffing Devil (2), first driven on Christmas Day 1801, was the first full-scale working steam locomotive. When it broke down just three days after its maiden voyage, the operators accidentally left the fire still burning while they went to a nearby pub. When the water had all boiled off, the engine overheated, and the machine burned, instantly destroyed.

In 1825 another Englishman, George Stephenson, was the first to build a public railway with a steam locomotive running on it: the Locomotion No.1 (3). This train ran for 32 years between Liverpool and Manchester, carrying both passengers and goods. The growing prevalence of trains was one of the main forces of 19th century national and global proliferation, inspiring a new era of global travel, the development of early retail chains, and the creation of standard time.

With industry booming in England, London was becoming bigger and busier, and had little space on the surface for urban transport. With this in mind, Great Western Railway commissioned three companies to build what was called the Metropolitan Class (4), intended for use on the world’s first underground train system, the Metropolitan Underground Railway, in 1863; before becoming the first electrified metro line in the early 20th century, the trains were steam-powered, and even gas-lit.

In the latter half of the 1860’s, two private rail companies, Central Pacific and Union Pacific, built The First Transcontinental Railroad. With the US government funding the project by the mile, this was one of the most lucrative and therefore competitive construction jobs in modern history. The line was completed in 1869, connecting the two coasts and shortening the cross-country journey from a four-month horse-drawn slog to a three-and-a-half-day jaunt. The Jupiter (5) was the first train to travel on the completed line.

Electrification was happening all over the world, and rail engineering was no exception: in 1879, German engineer Werner Von Siemens built the first electrified rail-line a circular tram-line, a novelty rather than a mode of transport. Electrification was not used on a main-line train until 1895, with a four-mile stretch of the famous B&O Railroad (6), which travelled along the East Coast of the United States between Baltimore and Ohio.

When most people think of iconic British trains of the 20th century, the first on their mind might be the Flying Scotsman, the first steam engine to officially reach 100mph. However, The Mallard (7), built around a decade later, is still the fastest steam train ever at 126mph. Built by Nigel Gressley in 1938, the Mallard covered almost one and a half million miles before it was retired in 1963.

With steam power too unstable to reach the speeds that Japan’s rapid economic growth was suddenly demanding, Japanese National Railways began work on the Shinkansen, the first network of high-speed electric trains. The original model was the Tokaido Shinkansen 0 Series (8), considered ‘the world’s first bullet train’, which took its first voyage in 1964. Shinkansen trains are still a mainstay of Japanese domestic travel, with an average of 160 million yearly passengers.

1984 saw the introduction of one of the most important pieces of technology in rail history to the public, in an unlikely place: Birmingham Airport, the UK’s 7th busiest, became the home of the world’s first commercial MagLev line, and was until 1995, when it was removed after a string of breakdowns. Though you might not think so from looking at the AirRail Link (9), which did not even have enough connected cars to be considered a train, these days almost all the fastest trains in the world use MagLev technology.

Project Type: Writer

another othello

nine the musical

Take Back The Rains

Amazon: Echo

Colorado

Learnest

Grand Hotel

this website

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The Evolution of Rail Travel