Page 80 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

glycerine, dynamite, gun cotton, gunpowder, or fulminates, and connecting the
balloon with an electrical apparatus for exploding the ordnance.
Like his predecessor Espy, Ruggles made surprising claims to have “invented
a method for condensing clouds in the atmospheric realm, and for precipitating
rainfall from rain-clouds, to prevent drought, to stimulate and sustain vegeta-
tion, to equalize rainfall and waterflow, and by combining the available scientific
inventions of the age, to guard against pestilence and famine, and to prevent,
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or to alleviate them where prevailing.” He claimed that the concussions and
vibrations of the explosions would, under the proper conditions, consolidate the
“diffused mists” passing overhead into rainfalls. His scheme favored the remote
detonation of the explosives using timed fuses or electric wires, but for more pre-
cision (and much greater risk) he also imagined aeronauts bombing the clouds
with torpedoes attached to parachutes. Promising scientific rigor (still a chal-
lenge today in rainmaking), he proposed to select clouds on which to experiment
in conformity with “well-defined meteorological data,” which he listed as “baro-
metric tension, thermometer and its changes, hygrometer, anemometer, anemo-
scope . . . , elevation, average rainfall, river stages, and magneto-electric condition
of the atmosphere” (10).
Arguing that if God had not wanted us to manipulate the clouds, he would
not have placed them so clearly in our line of vision, Ruggles promised “to appro-
priate the atmospheric laws of cloud-land, in sunshine and in storm, and direct
them, so far as may be practicable, within the sphere of the great industrial inter-
ests and energies of man” (12). Dazzled by his own genius, the scope of the under-
taking, and the prospects for “untold advancement,” he exclaimed, “The field is
broad—very broad; as deep as it is broad—it is very deep!” (12).
Ruggles claimed (as did every generation afterward) that he was taking the
next step technologically, in this case by ascending above the Earth’s surface into
the atmospheric realms with balloon probes and human aeronauts using the lat-
est chemical explosives and electrical devices, all under the banner of advanced
engineering and meteorological science unknown to Espy:

The gigantic stride of the engineer through the cloud-capped mountains, and
with miraculous force rendering asunder the foundations of old ocean’s bed; the
modern “Prometheus,” magneto-electric lightning, had not then been enchained;
the leviathan “steam” had not then been bound to the billowy ocean’s foam; aer-
ial navigation sat with clipped wings in the portals of the temple of science; the
grand triumphs in chemical philosophy in the development of explosives; in the
condensation of the elements of light in the photographic art; the development of
mines of vast extent and fabulous wealth; the unfolded banner of meteorological

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