beamjockey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beamjockey) wrote2011-10-31 11:47 pm
beamjockey) wrote2011-10-31 11:47 pm
The Rise and Fall of Wan Hu, Chinese Rocketeer
In his 1944 book Rockets: The Future of Travel beyond the Stratosphere (the book that would evolve through several editions into Rockets, Missiles, and Outer Space), Willy Ley tells a story:
The name is sometimes rendered Wan Hoo, sometimes Wan Hu. In 1970, a crater on the Moon was named Wan-Hoo (alternate transliteration Van-Gu). Mythbusters attempted to re-create his experiment. Even if the legend isn't true, people want it to be true. The guy is a star.
Here's what I want to know:
Where did Willy Ley get this story?
I'm not finding it in Google Books earlier than Ley's book. He was a hard-working researcher. He probably learned about Wan Hu in some dusty library, maybe in Germany, maybe in the U.S. I can't ask him; he's gone. (But he has his own lunar crater.) The trail is cold.
Presuming Willy didn't make it up, how did the tale of the ingenious official, the two kites, and the forty-seven servants get handed down from 1500 to Willy's time?
Maybe someone who knows about Chinese technology has a clue. Maybe someone who knows about European perception of Chinese culture has a clue.
Whom can I ask?
Edited to add:
Ron Miller, that's who. In his history of spaceship ideas, The Dream Machines, he writes:
Anyway, I now know a little more than I knew.
With the information that Frank Winter is involved, I am led to a citation in another book, which informs me of Winter's article "Who First Flew in a Rocket?" in the July 1992 issue of Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. Gee, I probably have that somewhere. In 1992, I probably read it, because I am a fan of Winter's work. But I had forgotten it.
Edited again to add:
Here's what John Elfreth Watkins wrote in Scientfic American, October 2, 1909, page 243:
Another such isolated instance of the application of rocket power is a story which may be legendary or it may be true-- there is no way of telling. It centers around the otherwise completely unknown person of a Chinese official whose name is given as Wan-Hoo.Other writers about rocketry loved this story, and put it into their own books. Herbert S. Zim, 1945. G. Edward Pendray, 1947. The Civil Air Patrol, 1949. After that, practically everybody.
This Wan-Hoo, the story goes, committed a rather spectacular suicide in or around ad 1500 by inventing and testing a rocket airplane. He took two large kites and connected them with a framework in the center of which a saddle was fastened. Forty-seven large powder rockets had been attached beneath the kites in strategic places and forty-seven coolies stood ready with flaming torches to ignite these rockets at a prearranged signal. When everything seemed ready, , the learned and daring Wan-Hoo seated himself in the saddle and finally signaled to the waiting coolies. They rushed at the machine, each one applying his torch to the rocket he was to ignite, and Wan-Hoo and his machine disappeared in a noisy cloud of black smoke.
The name is sometimes rendered Wan Hoo, sometimes Wan Hu. In 1970, a crater on the Moon was named Wan-Hoo (alternate transliteration Van-Gu). Mythbusters attempted to re-create his experiment. Even if the legend isn't true, people want it to be true. The guy is a star.
Here's what I want to know:
Where did Willy Ley get this story?
I'm not finding it in Google Books earlier than Ley's book. He was a hard-working researcher. He probably learned about Wan Hu in some dusty library, maybe in Germany, maybe in the U.S. I can't ask him; he's gone. (But he has his own lunar crater.) The trail is cold.
Presuming Willy didn't make it up, how did the tale of the ingenious official, the two kites, and the forty-seven servants get handed down from 1500 to Willy's time?
Maybe someone who knows about Chinese technology has a clue. Maybe someone who knows about European perception of Chinese culture has a clue.
Whom can I ask?
Edited to add:
Ron Miller, that's who. In his history of spaceship ideas, The Dream Machines, he writes:
Most authorities consider the story of Wan-Hoo apocryphal, including noted Sinologist Professor Joseph Needham, due to the large number of internal inconsistencies as well as an inability to discover any published reference to the tale earlier than 1909. It is most likely that the story was fabricated during the Chinoiserie period in Europe, during the 17th and l9th centuries, which was characterized by a fascination with all things Oriental. The earliest published account that historian Frank Winter has been able to locate was as late an October 2, 1909 issue of Scientific American (in which the name is given as “Wang Tu”). The story, however, is so charming that Wan-Hoo, fictional or not, has had a lunar crater named for him.Interesting. That issue of Scientific American is available on Ebay. It has a Zeppelin on the cover, at a time when Zeppelins were barely two years old. Speaking of birthdays and rocketry, Google also mentions to me that 2 October 1909 is also the birthdate of Alex Raymond, creator of Flash Gordon!
Anyway, I now know a little more than I knew.
With the information that Frank Winter is involved, I am led to a citation in another book, which informs me of Winter's article "Who First Flew in a Rocket?" in the July 1992 issue of Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. Gee, I probably have that somewhere. In 1992, I probably read it, because I am a fan of Winter's work. But I had forgotten it.
Edited again to add:
Here's what John Elfreth Watkins wrote in Scientfic American, October 2, 1909, page 243:
Tradition asserts that the first to sacrifice himself to the problem of flying was Wang Tu, a Chinese mandarin of about 2,000 years B.C. who, having had constructed a pair of large, parallel and horizontal kites, seated himself in a chair fixed between them while forty-seven attendants each with a candle ignited forty-seven rockets placed beneath the apparatus. But the rocket under the chair exploded, burning the mandarin and so angered the Emperor that he ordered a severe paddling for Wang.
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There are in fact two such craters, Wan-Hoo and the related Wan-Hoo T, a small crater nearby, which was named in 2006. The Astrophysics Data Service shows no instance of either name being used in an abstract, but presumably if the crater has a name it's because someone made the case that they needed the crater in question named for some scientific work.. at least for the more recent naming.
The main crater is pretty decent sized, just under 50 km in diameter, but it is quite degraded. These craters are near the lunar equator, but on the far side, so one can guess maybe the original crater was named during the Apollo program... but for what reason, I cannot guess. Was it the Americans or the Russians who asked for the name?
I will ask if anyone on the committee knows anything about this.
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Their failure did not bust the myth in my opinion. They said that they had modern materials and fabrication, but they did not (apparently) have the knowledge of rocketry that the Chinese had 500 years ago. Most kids who have screwed with rockets for any length of time could have told them beforehand that that thing would just flop around wildly.
Mythbusters is still kind of seat-of-the-pants, but they've improved dramatically, especially in the last 2 or 3 years. They do controls a lot more than they used to, they talk about the scientific method, and they consult experts more than they used to. At least, it was never apparent that they were consulting with experts, now the experts do get at least mention and sometimes airtime.
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It wasn't second season, it was only a year or so ago. And what do you mean "were seat-of-the-pants"?
"They do controls a lot more than they used to, they talk about the scientific method, and they consult experts more than they used to."
They've always done all of those things - and then gone out and done whatever the heck they want to/makes for the most impressive TV anyhow.
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Note that I am not saying they're anything like rigorous now, but they used to be horrible. Still amusing in every season though.
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Ley had training in paleontology. I wonder if he encountered the story looking up information about fossil hunting expeditions to China. There was a big one in the Twenties.
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I was dismayed to hear the news of his passing.
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You may be interested in a novel Tor is publishing next year: SMALL WONDER, by Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington. The middle name is included because there are about five dozen Matthew Harringtons in the US-- and two of the others are also authors.
--Matthew Joseph Harrington
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Probably imprecise quote from Barry Hughart:
"Ox," Master Li said, "what profession is most often associated with insanity?"
"Emperor," I said promptly.
About the crater...
"The name was proposed shortly after the Soveit s/c Zond 3 relayed TV images of the Moon's western farside. The earliest announcement that I can find is in a reprint of a 1966 paper in the Sovient "Astronomical Journal" where the name is listed... an abbreviated bio. notes that the rocket story is "according to legend". The author is Yu.Lipskiy, but it is not known who first suggested the name...
"The name was also included in vol. 2 of the Soviet "Atlas of the Moon's Farside", 1966. Because of the subsequent improved coverage of the farside by Lunar Orbiter 5, the IAU took no action at the 1967 IAU General Assembly. Much correspondence over the next 3 years ensued... Wan Hoo was included in the final proposed list...and passed at the 1970 IAU Gen. Assembly, relying on the published Soviet data.
"There has never been a ban on including legendary names on the Moon. Thus we have Apollo, Daedalus, Icarus... the only thing different with Wan Hoo is that it is apparently a modern legend."
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Having read the "Gunpowder Epic" volume of Needham's "Science and Civilization in China, I think that a Wan Hu would have made a model dragon or bird if he were real, or even a truly Chinese legend.