A Turkish Flight Attempt

In my previous post I mentioned the famous English philosopher John Wilkins and his book "The Discovery of a World in the Moon" in which he put his rather "radical" ideas and beliefs on space travel and space habitation.

In addition to his rather futuristic ideas for that time, there was another fact about his work that drew my attention. Somewhere in his text he says:

'Tis not possible that a man may be able to fly by the application of wings to his own body, as angels are pictured, as Mercury and Daedalus are feigned, and as hath been attempted by divers, particularly by a Turk in Constantinople, a Busbequius relates." [1]

Now, this sentence might not seem very interesting at the first glance, but there is one thing about it that is rather suprizing. In the sentence cited above Wilkins mentions the story of a flight attempt made by a Turk in Constantinople which he himself heared/read from Busbequius, also called Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq, a vlamish humanist who had travelled to Turkey (Ottoman Empire back then) during the reign of Süleyman the Maginificent.

Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq became very famous when the letters to his friend, that he wrote to him during his travel, were published in Europe. In his letters, partly due to the personal nature of his letters, he gives a fairly accurate account of the life in the Ottoman Empire and makes some interesting observations on the political situation as well.[2]

But, to come back to our question about the turkish flight attempt mentioned by Wilkins as related by Busbecq; At this point, I really wanted to know. Does such a reference to a Turkish flight attempt really appear in the writings of Busbecq and how did Wilkins hear from Busbecq?

After a thourough search through the letters of Busbecq I could not find any reference to a Turkish flight attempt. I looked at several different translations made from medieval latin versions but with no result. Finally, to be really sure, I contacted a Dutch professor specialized in Busbecq's writings. Again, he confirmed to me that nowhere in Busbecqs writings, there was any reference to a Turkish flight attempt.

This left behind some other possibilities:

First, there could be a kind of indirect oral transmission of a flight attempt seen by Busbecq, or secondly, Wilkins could have mixed up his source of this story and actually has a different source.

As the first option seemed highly improbable to, due to the time gap between Busbecq (1522-1592) and Wilkins (1614-1672), It seemed more appropriate to me to concentrate on the second possibility.

At this point, it is important here to mention that the only reference in Turkish literature to a Turkish flight attempt is containted in the "Seyahatname" of the Turkish traveller Evliya Celebi, who traveled within and outside the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, far into the European continent.

In his travel account, he mentions the succesful flight of a Turk called "Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi" who is said to have flown from the famous Galata tower over the Bosporus to land safely a few miles further, after which he was rewarded with gold by the Turkish Sultan.

Because it is known that Evliya Celebi travelled far into Europe, the question appeared in my mind, if there could be a connection between this documented event in Turkish literature and the event mentioned by Wilkins.

Again this was not very probable, because John Wilkins (1614-1672) and Evliya Celebi (1611-1682) lived almost in exactly the same period and there is no known latin translation of Celebi's travel account.

Thus it could not be the case of "Hezarfen " mentioned by Celebi that is referred to in the thus far unkown source of Wilkins.

Finally , I found a highly probable answer to this question, when I was looking at a historical list of flight attempts from prehistory until this time in a book called "The Prehistory of Flight" written by Clive Hart. [3]

One item in the list mentions a flight attempt made by a Turk in Constantinople in the year 1162, a date far before the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. It seems like it that it was a Saracen (Muslims where usually called "Turks" in medieval european literature), who stood on a column in the Hippodrome of Constantinople equipped with a sail-like cloak. He gathered the air for flight and jumped only to crash to his death. [4]

The list also gives the source of this attempt as Nicetas Choniates, a byantine historian, who mentions this attempt in his work "Historia". (Printed in Europe ,Basileae: 1557) p.60. The list also mentions that this attempt was frequently quoted in Renaissance and later. Especially the fact that this work was quoted very often in Renaissance and later, makes this work a highly probable source for the "Turkish" flight attempt as mentioned by John Wilkins

References:
[1] John Wilkins, Discovery of a New World in the Moon, London, 1638
[2] Edward Seymour Forster, The turkish letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Dutch Translation: A.H. Huussem, Het leven van Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, Leiden: A.W Sijthoff's uitgeversmaatschappij N.V, 1949
[3] Clive Hart, The Prehistory of Flight, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985 . The list is also contained in aan issue of Cabinet Magazine. See link http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/11/assets/flight_chart.html
[4] Saudi Aramco World Magazine, Online Edition, http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/196401/first.flights.htm

A Pale Blue Dot..

One of the biggest achievement of mankind is , no doubt, the exploration of space. The starry sky with its shiny moon, moving planets and thousands of "fixed" stars , has always been a source of wonderment for man.

For one, these mysterious points of light where heavenly gods, for the other they were signs of God who could be read if studied well enough. For that, it does not come as a suprize to us, that for thousands of year Astrology has gone hand in hand with Astronomy.

These beliefs did not change very much, until the invention of the telescope. Suddenly, the moon was not a shining disk but a world with strange but "earth-like" landscape and the planets, which for thousands of years have been mysterious moving lightpoints, became small disks.

Suddenly, the fact that the moon and these planets were not points of light but "earth-like" globes gave birth to ideas that would nobody would have dreamed of before.

One famous example is the english philosopher John Wilkins, who in 1638 published a work named "The Discovery of a World in the Moon" in which he put his rather "radical" ideas and beliefs on space travel and space habitation.

Wilkins believed that the Moon is a habitable planet and he predicted that one day travel to the Moon will be possible. Wilkins was not the first to come up with this suggestion but it is typical of the way that he thought, allowing his mind to roam through ideas which others would have found too unconventional to consider. [1]

One chapter of the book bears the title, "That 'tis possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world; and, if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them." It is thus that the right reverend philosopher reasons:--

"If it be here inquired what means there may be conjectured for our ascending beyond the sphere of the earth's mathematical vigour, I answer.--1. 'Tis not possible that a man may be able to fly by the application of wings to his own body, as angels are pictured, as Mercury and Daedalus are feigned, and as hath been attempted by divers, particularly by a Turk in Constantinople, a Busbequius relates. 2. If there be such a great duck in Madagascar as Marcus Polus, the Venetian, mentions, the feathers of whose wings are twelve feet long, which can scoop up a horse and his rider, or an elephant, as our kites do a mouse; why, then, 'Tis but teaching one of these to carry a man, and he may ride up thither, as Ganymede does upon an eagle. 3. Or if neither of these ways will serve yet I do seriously, and upon good grounds, affirm it is possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit and give such a motion to it as shall convey him through the air. And this, perhaps, might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum, and commodities for traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion if the motive faculty be answerable "hereunto. We see that; great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. This engine may be contrived from the same principles by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and Regiomontanus a wooden eagle. I conceive it were no difficult matter (if a man had leisure) to show more particularly the means of composing it. The perfecting of such an invention would be of such excellent use that it were enough, not only to make a man famous but the age wherein he lives. For, besides the strange discoveries that it might occasion in this other world, it would be also of inconceivable advantage for travelling, above any other conveyance that is now in use. So that, notwithstanding all these seeming impossibilities, it is likely enough that there may be a means invented of journeying to the moon; and how happy shall they be that are first successful in this attempt!" [2]

A few centuries after Wilkins, Jules Verne, the world famous novelist would write a story about travelling to the moon. This time it was not a flying chariot with wooden wings like Wilkins imagined it, but a large metal cannon, that would shoot people to the moon. An idea that clearly shows traces of the industrial revolution. Wood was replaced by metal and wings by a big canon.

Bigger, faster, heavier...

Not long after Jules Vernes novel , famous scientists like Tchiolkovski, Goddard and Von Braun made major contributions to the science of rockets and soon rockets that could carry people and robots into space became a fact.

For over 50 years years now, spacecraft have been travelling through space to explore new worlds. Starting from the very first artificial satellite, the sputnik, to the "New Horizons" spacecraft being prepared for launch this month and which was developed for a 10 year long journey to Pluto, the only planet never visited by a spacecraft.

Strange enough, the biggest achievement of Space exploration is not very recent but going on for over 30 years now. The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, launched in the late seventies are still the only spacecraft to leave our solar system. Thanks to their succesful design and nuclear batteries, the Voyager spacecraft keep sending us information, even long after leaving our solar system.

Perhaps, the most famous "public" symbol for the voyager space mission is a picture called "The Pale Blue Dot". This picture, which is also the title of a famous book written by Carl Sagan, is no doubt the most special picture ever made.

This picture was taken in 1990 , 17 years after the launch, at the moment that the Voyager spacecraft was just about to leave our solar system at a distance of 6.4 billion km from earth when the spacecraft was cruising at a speed of 40 km/s.

Carl Cagan, working at NASA at that time, suggested to turnback the cameras of the spacecraft to make a final "family" picture, before it would start on its solitary journey into the vast darkness of space.

When the picture was transmitted back to Earth, the picture showed a minute pale blue dot in one of the coloured streaks of light. That dot, smaller than a pixel, was nothing else than our planet, our cradle, our home.

A picture that, on one hand, shows the greatest achievements of mankind, but on the other hand shows how small , little and vunerable we are.

A strange idea to see that our the world, which is so special and important to us, is nothing more than a "pale blue dot"..



References:

[1] http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Wilkins.html
[2] F. Marion, Wonderful Balloon Ascents: Or, the Conquest of the Skies, Chapter 2,
http://www.worldwideschool.org/

3-2-1-0 We Have Ignition..LIFT-OFF!!

Here it is.. Here i am..

My very first post on my first weblog ever. After hesitating for a long time whether i should open one or not, I finally decided to go for it, only after discovering that even my mother of 52, who was introduced to internet barely a year ago, has her own weblog. :)

Well, you know what they say.. standing still means going back these days. I wonder where this new "technological "adventure will lead me to this time..

Time will show :)