Murray and Lanman's Florida Water (1904)

Here's an interesting ad for a company that's still in business today and a product they're still producing! Murray and Lanman (now Lanman & Kemp-Barclay & Co.) started out in 1808 in New York, NY though they've moved to New Jersey since. They produced an assortment of beauty aids, everything from hair tonic to soap as well as the oddly named Florida Water. Put simply, Florida water is the American equivalent of Eau de Cologne with an emphasis on sweet orange, lavender, and clove. According to Wiki the name is a reference to the Fountain of Youth though, as too often is true, they provide no citation for this dubious sounding statement.

The ad is a little creepy, especially with all the color robbed from it by the scanning process. Santa, descending by rope from his Santa Claus zeppelin to deliver crates of cologne to the residents of some country home. You can almost see his revulsion in his face, "Jeesh, these people reek! Send down another three cases, Giggles, four won't be enough!" I also find the ad copy a little less than convincing. "An acceptable gift at all Seasons but especially appropriate as a Christmas Box". Acceptable? I don't want acceptable gifts. I want spectacular gifts, thoughtful gifts, marvelous gifts, not ones I'll look at and think "well, it doesn't offend me." Also the term "Toilet Perfume" is a little off-putting. When I hear "toilet perfume", I'm thinking it's an euphemism, not a gift.

Steampunk Saturday - Attack by Airship!

If the commander of the air-ship desires to make his heaviest attack upon a steamship, he will turn the head of his ship earthward and glide just as does a volplaning aeroplane.

An image from the June, 1913 issue of Everybody's Magazine depicting an airship descending on a steamship for an attack in the style of Fritz Lang. Add a bit of Victoriana and you've got a steampunk scene worthy of H. G. Wells. A couple words in the caption stick out to me. Firstly "volplaning" and then the archaic spelling of "aeroplane".

At the time of this article, volplane would have drawn the derision of word-snobs in the same way their modern progeny shudder at trendy words of our era. It is an anglicized version of the French vol plané which translates to "gliding flight". A description of the movement of an airship in an era when airships were so new as not to have language to describe their behavior. Evidence of this comes from the fact that the first usage cited by Merriam-Webster was in 1909, just four years before this article ran.

Likewise, aeroplane is an archaic form of the modern English "airplane". It is an anglicized version of the French aéroplane. Its first cited usage was much earlier, in 1873. That makes perfect sense, you don't need words to describe the behavior of something that hasn't been invented yet!

Steampunk Saturday - Airships over Trains

"Gee, Bill! What desperate chances a feller must have took to beat them railroad  trains they used to have."

Life Magazine, July 28, 1904

A new turn on hitching a ride in a boxcar, this time steampunk style! Makes me wonder what the life of a steampunk hobo would be like!

World War I: The First Zeppelin Raid on Britan

Early Zeppelins

In January of 1915 the average British citizen read about the battles slogging on in France and Belgium in the daily papers with interest, doubtless worried for the well-being of their loved ones who were across the channel and, maybe, the future of the Empire. But the artillery and machine gun fire existed only in their imagination. Like the specters of an M. R. James Christmas ghost story, the horrors of war described by the papers haunted their nighttime hours and lurked at the edges of their minds in idle moments. That was until January 19, 1915 when the monstrosity of war became all too real.

In 1909 Count Zeppelin had started the world's first national airline. Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft (DELAG) was founded to promote the airship as a means of travel and potential military platform. Zeppelin airships operated like flying cruise ships, offering twenty well-healed passengers at a time a new-fangled pleasure cruise aboard a faddish, innovation. But travel by airship was a dicey affair. Occasionally a trip ended in unscheduled stop when inclement weather drove the huge aircraft into the ground. Zeppelin slowly improved its design and service and, by the outbreak of the war in August of 1914, the company's airships had carried over 10000 paying passengers on over 1500 flights. As war ravaged the European countryside, the German Army and Navy equipped themselves with Zeppelin's M Class airships, capable of carrying a payload of 20100 lbs. and travelling at a (then amazing) speed of 52 mph.

Early in the war, German war planners imagined the possibility of bombing London, but technology and logistics prevented their realizing this plan. Being filled with hydrogen, the airships tended to burst into flames when hit by ground-fire. It's also important to remember that in 1914 the bomb (as we understand it) hadn't been developed. Early raiders dropped artillery shells on their targets. On the August 5, 1914 a Zeppelin bombed the city of Liege, but it was damaged by small arms fire and destroyed after a crash landing near Bonn. On the March 20, 1914 two Zeppelins successfully bombed Paris, dropping 4000 lbs. of explosives, killing one, and injuring eight.

Forewarned

Zeppelin (at "The Fat Boy"): "I wants to to make your flesh creep!"

John Bull: "Right-O!"

Punch, November 4, 1914

The first raids on Britain would come on the night of January 19, 1915 when two Zeppelins dropped bombs on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn, and the surrounding villages killing four, injuring sixteen. The Kaiser authorized raids on the London docks on February 12, 1915, but the raids were delayed until April 19 and 30th when the German Army received new P Class airships. Raids were conducted on Ipswich, Southendon, Dover, and Ramsgate in April and May killing six, injuring six, and on the last day of May the first raid against London proper resulted in 120 bombs being dropped in a line from Stoke Newington southward to Stepney and then northward toward Leytonstone.

Steampunk Saturday - The Mother of Airplanes!

The article in Popular Mechanics dubbed this "The Mother of Airplanes", probably because they hadn't coined the word carrier back in October of 1925 when it ran. It reminds me of something I drew in grade school, complete with little biplanes and ships steaming toward some conflagration in  foreign land. Note the tail cannons mounted below the landing deck on the airship? Poised to blow the rudder right off the tail and send the blimp into a horrible uncontrolled circuit above the enemy battlefield that takes the ship through withering fire until someone gets lucky and sends her plummeting earthward.

Still, I love the idea. It appeals to my inner Jules Verne, I imagine the captain's quarters to be Victorian, filled with dark wood accents and a good silver service. The engines are powered by aether, of course. A process created and perfected by your good captain; harnessed for his plans to take over the world...