Elle on Travel: Of Interest to Aviator Types

For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. --Wilbur Wright

Recent travel with friends and family took me to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I soon realized that we were very, very close to an important site to aviators worldwide: Kill Devil Hills (Kitty Hawk). In 1903, this windy expanse was where the Wright Brothers did their glider experiments and are recognized as having successfully made the first sustained powered aircraft flight...While at the Wright Bros. National Memorial, I walked the length of the marker for the first flight (120 feet) to the 4th--852 feet away from the takeoff point. Looking back down the way, I realized how phenomenal that must have been at the time. People thought they were crazy...
...but thanks to them, we can cross oceans and have even left the Earth altogether. We now take for granted what was but a dream to them then.

Elle Overseas: Funicular Railways

My goal? The top of the Montmartre Butte. My reality? There was no way that I was going to make it up all of those stairs (300!) to its summit and Sacre Coeur. What's a lady to do? The funiculaire!

Funicular railways were devised as a way to move passengers or loads up and down steep inclines by a means of counterbalancing the cars. For example, as one goes up the track the other is going down. If you look at the postcard of the original one above (which was completed in 1900), it follows the standard parallel track configuration that was popular until the 1890s, when passing tracks became the standard--allowing the cars to pass mid-track. Montmartre's original funicular was powered by water, moving the cars as the cisterns filled or emptied.

Although this is the more modern incarnation of it, I thought I'd share my ride up with you:

Elle Overseas: The Eiffel Tower as Steampunk Monument

"Here is the string of iron that the wizard has thrown up to the heavens...which he invites his friends to climb..." --Jean Giraudoux

I have returned home from my travels overseas and while in Paris, I once again visited that most recognizable and magnificent of steampunk edifices--the Eiffel Tower...Called everything from a "tragic street lamp" to a "hole-riddled suppository", the Tower was rather reviled at the time of its construction for the Exposition. In 1887, leading artists and tastemakers of the time thought it would bring a "dishonor and ugliness that could not be corrected." Naysayers be damned, no? It was the vision of its creator Gustave Eiffel, whose main design consideration was actually wind resistance and stability--as any proper engineer would be mindful of. He believed that the Tower would "possess its own beauty..." and mused "Do people believe that because we are engineers, beauty plays no part in what we build...?"Completed in 1889, Eiffel's masterpiece stands 1063 ft tall (including its antenna), weighs 7300 tons, has 2,500,000 rivets (like those of boilers and locomotives) and 18,038 iron parts that were created in the Fould-Dupont factories as seen below... Eiffel saw the Tower's scientific possibilities and encouraged it to be used for metereological and aerodynamics purposes, maintaining a lab upon it and encouraging other scientists to perform experiments there as well. This is a shot of the elevator wheels in the North pillar. While waiting to go up, I could see the counterweights and such. What an impressive hydraulics system for its time! Although I have visited the Tower before, I was still in awe of this stunning engineering marvel...

Off to See the Sights

Gentle Readers, I shall be away for a week or so to see the sights. I look forward to visiting Paris again. Being a bit--a lot--afraid of heights, I do not know if I will ascend into that engineering marvel of a Tower. Perhaps I will have a crepe and wait at its base, but at some point I shall definitely sit at a cafe and partake of coffee and people watching...I am also spending time in another favorite city, London, which greatly reminds me of my own home city. I love the hustle and bustle there...And friends will be taking us on a side trip to visit Glastonbury. I look forward to seeing the Tor and the Abbey ruins...
I shall be back on the 9th and will resume this aethernet journal upon my return. Do try to not destroy the Grid in my absence. Think of the hopping bunnies.