Page 127 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

unhealthy and undesirable, capable of interrupting or suspending normal activi-
ties such as shipping or aviation.
In 1899 Cleveland Abbe described a local fog dispeller suitable for use on
ships to assist navigation, or perhaps to increase precipitation. It was called
the Tugrin fog dispeller. In foggy weather, a pipe 3 inches in diameter with a
musket-shaped flange at the end was used by the navigating officer to direct a
powerful stream of warm air from the engines to “blow a hole right through
the fog,” causing it to fall as raindrops and providing forward visibility of sev-
3
eral hundred feet, sufficient to avoid a collision. Abbe further suggested that
if the pipe was aimed vertically, it could be used to condense and precipitate
fog moisture—for example, for agricultural uses along the California coast.
According to meteorologist Alexander McAdie, in March 1929 a murky smoke-
fog, the densest and most persistent in twenty years, settled down over New
York City, forcing transatlantic liners to lie at anchor. Commerce was sus-
pended and commuters were stranded for several days. With the rise of com-
mercial and military aviation, efforts to dispel fog were driven largely by the
desires (and actual needs) of pilots to overcome the vulnerabilities and limita-
tions that fog imposed. In the second quarter of the twentieth century, electri-
cal, chemical, and physical methods of fog dissipation included the electrified
sand trials of L. Francis Warren and his associates, the experiments with chemi-
cal sprays of Henry G. Houghton, and the operational FIDo fog burners of
World War II. All these projects were relevant to aviation safety, and all were of
interest to the military.

electrical methods

From the time of Benjamin Franklin, the role of atmospheric electricity in
meteorological processes, including its suspected role in stimulating precipita-
tion and its possible role in clearing fogs, was under active investigation. In the
early nineteenth century, chorographer John Williams proposed a scheme to
dehumidify the British climate by electrifying it. For personal, political, and
vaguely scientific reasons, he argued that climatic change in England became
noticeable around 1770, with the spring and summer months becoming cloud-
ier, wetter, and colder and the winters milder. Williams attributed this shift
to human “change effected on the surface of our Island,” due to the cutting of
forests, digging of canals, and enclosing of lands—all of which had combined
to increase the amount of moisture released into the atmosphere and caused
adverse effects on human health and agriculture. These physical changes, he

110 | foGGy tHinkinG