Alfred Wegener: Difference between revisions
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{{In creation}}
Alfred Wegener proposed "continental drift" theory in 1912 and developed it extensively for nearly twenty years. His book on the subject, "The Origin of Continents and Oceans", went through four editions and was the focus of an international controversy in his lifetime and for some years after his death. Wegener's basic idea was that many problems and puzzles of the earth's history could be solved if one supposed that the continents moved laterally rather than supposing that they remained fixed in place. Wegener worked over many years to show how such continental movements were plausible and how they worked, using evidence and results from geology, geodesy, geophysics, paleontology, climatology and paleogeography.
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Alfred, once again unable to stand the suspense, took a train the next day to Copenhagen, arriving on Mylius-Erichsen's doorstep. With money in hand and little time to waste, Mylius-Erichsen was now prepared to take Alfred's participation seriously. When they finally met face to face, he made a decision on the spot and formally offered Alfred the job of physicist and meteorlogist on the expedition, with the provision that he would also be expected to make geological observations and to take part in the cartographic and position-finding work. They signed a preliminary agreement and discussed salary. Mylius-Erichsen told Alfred that he should prepare his personal and scientific kit immediately, since the expedition would leave in less than three months.
The expedition contracts specified that the Committee of the Danmark Expedition would pay for all the scientific equipment, but declined to specify what that equipment might be. Each scientist had to plan his own program and then build, buy or borrow the instruments to carry it out. The Committee would have to approve the purchases, but the scientists were responsible for acquiring their equipment and getting it to Copenhagen by the middle of June. Each man had a budget. The more ingenuity he showed in stretching that amount, the more instrumentation he could take and the more science he could do.
On 28 March 1906, he wrote a letter to Wladimir Köppen, head of the Meteorological Department of the German Marine Observatory at Hamburg, asking to buy meteorological kites. Aßmann immediately gave his blessing and promised twenty kites and three varnished-cotton captive balloons, at all cost. In a response to a letter sent with Berson's endorsement, de Bort not only agreed to sell Wegener two of his meteorographs at cost, but also made him a present of two additional meteorographs. Hans Gerdien agreed to loan him instruments for measuring atmospheric electricity, with instructions for their use.
=== Ballooning (3) ===
Alfred was exhilarated to put together his part of the expedition, but he still had a burden of work at Lindenberg. He and Kurt had been selected by Aßmann and Berson to represent Lindenberg and the German Empire in the Gordon Bennett International Balloon Competition, scheduled for 4 April 1906. Teams of aeronauts all over Europe were to compete for time, altitude and distance. For the Lindenberg team, they were to exploit their night flight to practice navigation by star sightings. Kurt Wegener, with five previous flight, would direct the flight. Alfred would serve as navigator, instrument monitor and ballast heaver.
On 3 April, Alfred and Kurt traveled to Berlin to prepare for the balloon flight. They carried in their luggage the balloon's meteorological instrument package and Alfred's own balloon theodolite for night navigation, as well as camera and glass plates.
They arrived at Reinickendorf early on the next morning to discover that their balloon had sprung a leak while filling. The other available balloon owned by the observatory was too small to carry the load, so hurried arrangements were made to borrow one of the army's 1,200 cubic-meter military balloons.
The substitute military balloon, a mass-produced, tested, completely unexceptional design, was unpacked overnight. In the early dawn hours of 5 April, filled rapidly with 1,200 cubic meters of hydrogen. The instruments were lifted on board and secured to the basket rim and to the trailing cable. The meteorograph had to be suspended away from the balloon basket if it was to be read properly. The ballast sacks, 38 in all, were slip-knotted to the inside of the ballon basket, with their pull toggles at the level of the basket rail. The provision sack for the flight, containing 0.9 kilograms of chocolate, four smoked pork chops, 2 liters of seltzer in rechargeable siphon bottles and two oranges, was gently stowed in a corner. Setting their watches by the station chronometer and checking the engagement of the catch on the meteorograph recording drum, they jumped aboard, attired in summer suits and their fedoras, waited for their scheduled liftoff.
At 9.00 am, the balloon took off rapidly and flew northwest. It headed directly for Brandenburg and flew right over the Ruppiner See, just a few kilometers from die Hütte. From there it proceeded on to Wittstock, Richard Wegener's birthplace and the destination of many childhood visits. Kurt and Alfred were able to photograph it from the air at an altitude of 500 meters. From there, still heading northwest, the balloon passed over the Plauer See (scene of many boyhood sailing adventures) then on to the Baltic, and then headed straight for Denmark, crossing into Jylland at about dark.
As the wind dropped, it began to drift east, over the Kattegat (between Denmark and Sweden) and to gain altitude, passing 1,000 meters. With the coming of night and the increase of altitude, the air turned sharply colder. It was only then that Kurt and Alfred realized that they had left their overcoats in Berlin. The air temperature fell below freezing and soon shivering made sleep impossible. They moved about to keep warm as much as they could.
By morning they were both nearly frozen. In the dry air they had risen to 2,500 meters and were drifting slowly back south in slack wind. Not until noon on 6 July did the wind pick up again. Then the balloon began to rise and fall in the convecting air. Down to 300 m, up to 1,000 m, down again. They began to drift away to the west. At about 8.00 pm, they passed back over the Danish coast. They had now been in the air for 35 hours and they had been up most of the night previous to the flight, while the balloon was being filled. They were dehydrated, very cold and very tired. It looked that evening as if the balloon was going to head directly west across Jylland to the North Sea. They knew that once past that coast, it was 500 kilometers of open ocean to England. Consequently, they began to pack the instruments and prepared to set down.
Just then, however, the balloon changed course and began to gain altitude and fly south toward Hamburg. In continued on this course through the night, traveling at very low altitudes, sometimes sinking to 100 m. This was hair-raising, as it put them repeatedly within a few seconds of crashing to the ground. At least, it was warmer at the lower altitude, for they were weakening badly and beginning to cramp in their arms and legs from dehydration and almost 40 hours of bracing against the swaying of the basket.
As dawn broke, they passed over Kassel (between Hannover and Frankfurt). They were by then shivering uncontrollably, having been at −16°C for three hours or more. They were out of food and water.
They decided to make a final push for altitude before ending the flight. Their target altitude was above 5,000 meters. However, this time cold and hunger were stronger than will. They were so weakened that when they tried to drop ballast, neither of them could push a sack over the rim of the balloon basket. They were done. They drifted to a landing near Aschaffenburg, east of Frankfurt.
They sent the following telegram to Aßmann : "Today at 1-30 landed very smoothly at Laufach near Aschaffenburg after 52 hour flight over Aalborg on Jylland around 3000 m minus 16 degrees". They had stayed aloft for fifty two and a half hours, having broken the world record for time aloft by seventeen hours.
Their flight was a major event in the early history of aeronautics. It was treated as such by newspapers around the world. Everyone involved got a share of the rewards. Aßmann was delighted, as was his principal patron, Kaiser Wilhelm. The German army was pleased that their balloon had accomplished the feat. It gave Kurt a remendous boost in landing the job he desired at Frankfurt. It gave Alfred something priceless at the moment : widespread name recognition while he was writing to numerous officials who had never heard of him, asking them for large and expensive favors. It gave him a distinctive achievement as an explorer before he had even gone anywhere.
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